The Role of GIS in DRR: Classifying and Improving GIS Capabilities in Small Towns and Rural Areas

Optimizing GIS capability does not always require that the municipality obtain cutting edge professionals and resources. This paper offers a disaster risk reduction (DRR) design methodology for small towns and rural areas that employs a multi-variable classification system, enabling customization for effective DRR. Determining appropriate GIS capacity requires that a community first be evaluated in order to identify its disaster risk reduction/disaster management (DRR/DM) requirements. These requirements are then considered in conjunction with the municipality's resources to establish the desired capability. Qualification levels for major aspects of GIS capability with respect to DRR/DM are provided along with descriptions of each level and suggested procedures for advancement to the next level. It should be noted that a municipality can be classified at a different level with respect to different variables. Needs vary according to the community, thus attainment of a uniform capability level may not be necessary.

Capabilities of Police and Military Forces in Central America -- A Comparative Analysis of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras an d Nicaragua

A difficult transition to a new paradigm of Democratic Security and the subsequent process of military restructuring during the nineties led El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua to re-consider their old structures and functions of their armed forces and police agencies. This study compares the institutions in the four countries mentioned above to assess their current condition and response capacity in view of the contemporary security challenges in Central America. This report reveals that the original intention of limiting armies to defend and protect borders has been threatened by the increasing participation of armies in public security. While the strength of armies has been consolidated in terms of numbers, air and naval forces have failed to become strengthened or sufficiently developed to effectively combat organized crime and drug trafficking and are barely able to conduct air and sea operations. Honduras has been the only country that has maintained a proportional distribution of its armed forces. However, security has been in the hands of a Judicial Police, supervised by the Public Ministry. The Honduran Judicial Police has been limited to exercising preventive police duties, prohibited from carrying out criminal investigations. Nicaragua, meanwhile, possesses a successful police force, socially recognized for maintaining satisfactory levels of security surpassing the Guatemalan and El Salvadoran police, which have not achieved similar results despite of having set up a civilian police force separate from the military. El Salvador meanwhile, has excelled in promoting a Police Academy and career professional education, even while not having military attachés in other countries. Regarding budgetary issues, the four countries allocate almost twice the amount of funding on their security budgets in comparison to what is allocated to their defense budgets. However, spending in both areas is low when taking into account each country's GDP as well as their high crime rates. Regional security challenges must be accompanied by a professionalization of the regional armies focused on protecting and defending borders. Therefore, strong institutional frameworks to support the fight against crime and drug trafficking are required. It will require the strengthening of customs, greater control of illicit arms trafficking, investment in education initiatives, creating employment opportunities and facilitating significant improvements in the judicial system, as well as its accessibility to the average citizen.

Latin America: Nuclear Capabilities, Intentions and Threat Perceptions

Three key states are relevant in considering future nuclear proliferation in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Argentina and Brazil are critical because of their relatively advanced nuclear capabilities. For historical and geopolitical reasons, neither Argentina nor Brazil is likely to reactive nuclear weapons programs. Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chávez, has repeatedly demonstrated interest in developing a nuclear program, yet Venezuela lacks any serious nuclear expertise. Even if it had the managerial and technological capacity, the lead-time to develop an indigenous nuclear program would be measured in decades. Acquisition of nuclear technology from international sources would be difficult because members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group would insist on safeguards, and potential non-Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) suppliers are highly surveilled, risking the exposure of such a program before Venezuela could put a deterrent into place. While South American states have historically opposed nuclear weapons, their acquisition by Brazil and Argentina would lead to little more than diplomatic condemnation. Brazil and Argentina are both geopolitically satisfied powers that are deeply embedded in a regional security community. On the other hand, Venezuela under President Chávez is perceived as a revisionist power seeking a transformation of the international system. Venezuelan acquisition of nuclear weapons would be met with alarm by the United States and Colombia, and it would prompt nuclear weapons development by Brazil and possibly Argentina, more for reasons of preserving regional leadership and prestige than for fear of a Venezuelan threat.

Hospitality IT: What Does the Future Hold?

The impact of information technology (IT) is far-reaching and driving dramatic shifts in business paradigms. Trends suggest greater adoption of IT will continue and develop at accelerating rates. Hence, hotel operators and executives must learn how to embrace IT and capitalize on the many capabilities it has to offer while minimizing the threats. The authors attempt to provide a sense of focus and a roadmap to help hoteliers understand the issues, see the future, and find an appropriate on ramp to the information superhighway.

Empowering development: capabilities and Latin American critical traditions

This thesis theoretically and critically examines the move towards people-centred approaches to development. It offers a critical examination of the work of Amartya Sen using theoretical resources emerging from Latin American traditions. Amartya Sen’s calls to understand Development as Freedom (1999) have significantly influenced mainstream development thinking and practice, constituting the clearest example of people-centred approaches to development today. Overcoming the limitations of previous state-centred notions of development articulated around ideas of economic growth, in Sen’s Capability Approach (CA) development is seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. In this understanding, the agency of development shifts from the state to individuals and the analytic focus moves from economic growth to individual capabilities. In this manner, this framework is structured towards the central goal of empowerment, wherein the expansion of capabilities is seen both as the means and end of development. Since its inception, the widespread support for the CA has allowed for the expansion of ethical considerations within mainstream development thinking. Even while the remarkable advances offered by Sen’s work should be praised, this thesis argues that these have come with new limitations. These limitations stem from, what is termed here, a “Paradox of Empowerment” that effectively encloses Sen’s approach within Western notions of development. While Sen’s approach is poised to provide a theoretical framework that is built on the expansion of freedom and individual agency, there is little agency here to move beyond the ideas of development fundamentally linked to liberal democracies and market economies. This thesis engages with several critical traditions from Latin America, recovering their often undervalued insights for development thinking. Crucially, this engagement provides the critical framework to illustrate the aforementioned paradox and explore multiple dimensions of empowerment central for contemporary development thinking and practice. In this, the thesis engages Sen’s work with the Liberation Theology of Gustavo Gutierrez, with Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy and with the contemporary discussions of ‘Buen Vivir’ associated with Indigenous philosophies of the Andean region. Throughout its chapters,it uncovers the conceptual baggage within the Paradox of Empowerment in Sen’s work and examines the ethical challenges and boundaries of this approach in relation to the collective dimension of development processes, the possibilities for structural transformation and concerns for sustainability. Progressively engaging the different dimensions of this paradox, this thesis advances the recovery of the transformative potential of the ideas of empowerment for development.

THE ROLE OF DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES IN THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF MEDIUM SIZED FINNISH MANUFACTURING FIRMS - A case for Sormat Oy

A rapidly changing business environment has necessitated most small and medium sized enterprises with international ambitions to reconsider their sources of competitive advantage. To survive in the face of a changing business environment, firms should utilize their dynamic organizational capabilities as well as their internationalization capabilities. Firms develop a competitive advantage if they can exploit their unique organizational competences in a new or foreign market and also if they can acquire new capabilities as a result of engaging in foreign markets. The acquired capabilities from foreign locations enhance the existing capability portfolio of a firm with a desire to internationalize. The study combined the research streams of SME organizational dynamic capability and internationalization capability to build a complete picture on the existing knowledge. An intensive case study was used for empirically testing the theoretical framework of the study and compared with the literature on various organizational capability factors and internationalization capabilities. Sormay Oy was selected because it is a successful medium sized company operating in Finland in the manufacturing industry which has a high international profile. In addition, it has sufficient rate of growth in sales that warrants it to engage internationally in matters such as, acquisitions, joint ventures and partnerships. The key findings of the study suggests that, medium sized manufacturing firms have a set of core competences arising from their organizational capabilities which were identified to be employee know how and relationship with stakeholders which aid the firm in its quest for attaining competitive advantage, ensuring production flexibility and gaining benefits present in a network. In addition, internationalization capabilities were identified under both the RAT test and CAT test whereby the primary findings suggests that, firms that outperform their competitors produce products that meet specific customer and country requirements, foresee the pitfalls of imitation brought about by the foreign local companies and members of a particular network through joint ventures, acquisitions or partnerships as well as those firms that are capable to acquire new capabilities in the foreign markets and successfully use these acquired capabilities to enhance or renew their capability portfolio for their competitive advantage. Additional significant findings under internationalization capabilities were discovered whereby, Sormay Oy was able to develop a new market space for its products despite the difficult institutional environment present in Russia.

Knowledge management capabilities and organizational performance: an investigation into the effects of knowledge infrastructure and processes on organizational performance

Knowledge is one of the most important assets for surviving in the modern business environment. The effective management of that asset mandates continuous adaptation by organizations, and requires employees to strive to improve the company's work processes. Organizations attempt to coordinate their unique knowledge with traditional means as well as in new and distinct ways, and to transform them into innovative resources better than those of their competitors. As a result, how to manage the knowledge asset has become a critical issue for modern organizations, and knowledge management is considered the most feasible solution. Knowledge management is a multidimensional process that identifies, acquires, develops, distributes, utilizes, and stores knowledge. However, many related studies focus only on fragmented or limited knowledge-management perspectives. In order to make knowledge management more effective, it is important to identify the qualitative and quantitative issues that are the foundation of the challenge of effective knowledge management in organizations. The main purpose of this study was to integrate the fragmented knowledge management perspectives into the holistic framework, which includes knowledge infrastructure capability (technology, structure, and culture) and knowledge process capability (acquisition, conversion, application, and protection), based on Gold's (2001) study. Additionally, because the effect of incentives ̶̶ which is widely acknowledged as a prime motivator in facilitating the knowledge management process ̶̶ was missing in the original framework, this study included the importance of incentives in the knowledge management framework. This study also identified the relationship of organizational performance from the standpoint of the Balanced Scorecard, which includes the customer-related, internal business process, learning & growth, and perceptual financial aspects of organizational performance in the Korean business context. Moreover, this study identified the relationship with the objective financial performance by calculating the Tobin's q ratio. Lastly, this study compared the group differences between larger and smaller organizations, and manufacturing and nonmanufacturing firms in the study of knowledge management. Since this study was conducted in Korea, the original instrument was translated into Korean through the back translation technique. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to examine the validity and reliability of the instrument. To identify the relationship between knowledge management capabilities and organizational performance, structural equation modeling (SEM) and multiple regression analysis were conducted. A Student's t test was conducted to examine the mean differences. The results of this study indicated that there is a positive relationship between effective knowledge management and organizational performance. However, no empirical evidence was found to suggest that knowledge management capabilities are linked to the objective financial performance, which remains a topic for future review. Additionally, findings showed that knowledge management is affected by organization's size, but not by type of organization. The results of this study are valuable in establishing a valid and reliable survey instrument, as well as in providing strong evidence that knowledge management capabilities are essential to improving organizational performance currently and making important recommendations for future research.

Which way out of poverty? the human capital versus human capabilities approaches

La pobreza es un problema mundial que afecta a personas de diferentes maneras. El propósito de este artículo es explorar dos teorías principales que abordan la pobreza y la posibilidad de su superación, que son los enfoques de capital humano y de capacidades humanas. El enfoque del capital humano se centra exclusivamente en la faceta económica de la pobreza; en esta perspectiva, la pobreza se define como la falta de dinero y puede abordarse mediante el aumento de los ingresos financieros de las personas que viven en la pobreza. El enfoque de las capacidades humanas ve la pobreza como un problema multidimensional que va más allá de la economía para áreas como la salud, la educación y la libertad. Este enfoque se orienta hacia el cambio social y ayudar a las personas en situación de pobreza para descubrir y desarrollar su potencial. El autor considera que las capacidades humanas abarcan con mayor precisión el alcance de la pobreza y las personas afectadas por el mismo, aunque debido a su amplia gama ha sido difícil diseñar e implementar políticas eficaces que aborden todas las facetas de la pobreza.

Introducing mobile edge computing capabilities through distributed 5G Cloud Enabled Small Cells

Current trends in broadband mobile networks are addressed towards the placement of different capabilities at the edge of the mobile network in a centralised way. On one hand, the split of the eNB between baseband processing units and remote radio headers makes it possible to process some of the protocols in centralised premises, likely with virtualised resources. On the other hand, mobile edge computing makes use of processing and storage capabilities close to the air interface in order to deploy optimised services with minimum delay. The confluence of both trends is a hot topic in the definition of future 5G networks. The full centralisation of both technologies in cloud data centres imposes stringent requirements to the fronthaul connections in terms of throughput and latency. Therefore, all those cells with limited network access would not be able to offer these types of services. This paper proposes a solution for these cases, based on the placement of processing and storage capabilities close to the remote units, which is especially well suited for the deployment of clusters of small cells. The proposed cloud-enabled small cells include a highly efficient microserver with a limited set of virtualised resources offered to the cluster of small cells. As a result, a light data centre is created and commonly used for deploying centralised eNB and mobile edge computing functionalities. The paper covers the proposed architecture, with special focus on the integration of both aspects, and possible scenarios of application.

Measurement of Entrepreneurial Dynamism Capabilities and Performance in Collaborative Networks

Part 16: Performance Measurement Systems

Investigation of managerial capabilities and challenges of a core plant role

The competiveness within the global market has forced large manufacturing companies to reorganize their global operations. To act proficiently abroad is therefore no longer a choice but an important prerequisite. In global production networks, there are different plant roles that serve different purposes. One of the important roles within these networks is the core plant role. There are limited amount of the researches done regarding the core plant role. There is also a lack of consistency regarding the definition of the core plant role. It is also evident that there is a knowledge gap regarding the managerial aspects of this plant role both in the academia and in the industry. Managing a core plant requires certain capabilities. It is important to target this knowledge gap since global manufacturing is becoming a common norm for large enterprises and the importance of the core plant role is getting more evident. There is also a lack of understanding towards the challenges that a core plant must deal with both within the organization and globally towards the other plants within the manufacturing network. To address this knowledge gap further, two research questions were created ―What key capabilities are required in order to manage the core plant role?” (RQ1) and ―What are the main challenges in managing the core plant role?” (RQ2). Case study was chosen as the research method for this study since it is the most appropriate method when investigating a phenomenon in its own context. Interviews were the main research technique used to collect data. 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted in eight different cases. A literature review was conducted and was the foundation for the interview guide used in the interviews and for the data analysis. The results show that various capabilities are important for the management of the core plant role. Proximity to R&D and knowledge were the most emphasized factors. For the main challenges in terms of managing a core plant, the communication, cooperation and coordination where the most challenging aspects. Based upon finding, two frameworks have been proposed a concluding generalization and contribution of this research study. The study provides a generalization based upon data that has been collected from companies from different industries. These findings are a contribution towards both the large enterprises operating globally and the academia. 

International student exchanges and entrepreneurial capabilities: insights from colombian students studying in France

It seems globalization has challenge different types of fields around the world. Cultures, politics, economies and even education are day by day challenged due to the open of boundaries, therefore countries, institution and people need to develop new activities in order to gain a competitive advantages over others, that’s why entrepreneurship comes to the discussion as an opportunity and a possible solution to situation, but what triggers it? Can it be influenced through different programs and can it be teach changing university curriculums? Well, as boundaries are falling even in educational institutions, this study aims to explain if there’s any effect on students’ entrepreneurial capabilities after being part of international exchange programs. It will be done through the collection of primary data from Colombian students studying in France and if this program influenced their skills as entrepreneurs.