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Attributes of a sustainable transition for the traditional manufacturing sector in regions of Australia
No full textEmpiriical thesis."Centre for Workforce Futures, Faculty of Business & Economics" -- title page.Bibliography: pages 196-212.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Methodology -- Chapter 3. Identifying attributes of a sustainable transition for traditional regional manufacturing industry sectors – a conceptual framework -- Chapter 4. Insights into a sustainable transition of the traditional manufacturing firm and industry sector in Australia -- Chapter 5. Transitioning a manufacturing region – a spatial insight -- Chapter 6. Interfirm customer-supplier collaboration for a sustainable transition -- Chapter 7. Discussion and conclusion -- References -- Appendices.Although there is a great body of knowledge regarding the status of and threats to extant mammal populations in Australia there remains limited comparable information on reptiles. One in five reptilian species are threatened with extinction globally, with one in four species of Australian reptile considered to be in decline. Several prominent threatening processes have been identified as being the likely cause of reptile population declines and local extinctions including: 1. grazing history; 2. human induced habitat loss and fragmentation; 3. habitat homogenisation caused by changes in recent fire regimes; 4. increased predation pressure caused by the introduction of cats and foxes; 5. harvesting, and more recently; 6. climate warming.Since European settlement within Australia only a single record exists of an Australian reptile becoming extinct—Christmas Island forest skink (Emoia nativitatis) in 2014 however, ten reptile species are listed under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999 as Critically Endangered, 20 as Endangered and 33 as Vulnerable. Of these, at least six species are arid zone specialists, including the great desert skink Liopholis kintorei, which is nationally listed as Vulnerable.In the context of general accelerating change, the World Environment and Development Commission defined ‘sustainable development’ as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Environment Development Commission 1987). As a consequence, sustainable transitions research has been undertaken since the early 1990s. Studies have investigated fundamental changes (such as technology, organisations, socio-economic) in systems (products, services, structures) towards more sustainable, social and environmental alternatives. Such a rich body of work focuses on long-term, multi-dimensional and fundamental transformation processes through which established socio-technical systems shift to more sustainable modes of production and consumption.This form of enquiry has increased rapidly and constitutes a field of research that is of high societal relevance, given the sustainability challenges the world is facing today. Although broadening its scope over the last decade, much of the sustainable transition research currently has limited relevance outside Europe or energy and urban centred domains and has not, to date, considered the elements of a transition within traditional manufacturing in Australian regions. This study aims to develop an innovative integrated model to enable the identification of sustainable transition attributes across the traditional manufacturing sector in regions of Australia.The interdisciplinary theoretical framework ‘Attributes of a Sustainable Transition’ integrates four existing conceptual approaches (i.e. Advanced Manufacturing, Sustainable Transitions, Regions are Spatial and Transition Regions) in order to generate new ways of identifying the characteristics of transitions. Empirical analyses of the first two concepts of the Attributes of a Sustainable Transition identified, across 24 traditional manufacturing firms in regional Australia, that where the manufacturing regime is secure and stable, firms struggle to reshape existing systems. Where destabilisation has commenced through business model innovation, collaboration, knowledge absorption and strategic visioning, a reconfiguration towards sustainability is more likely to be underway.To address the general lack of empirical evidence as to how and where specific transitions take place in particular city regions, an Evolutionary Economic Geography approach has been used to explore the uneven spatial landscape of transition example. This approach looks at why industries concentrate in space, how networks evolve in space, why some regions grow more than others and how institutions co-evolve with industrial dynamics in regions. Comparative case study analyses of three city regions, demonstrated that a Replication Strategy (e.g. replicating existing capabilities based in related activities, duplicating existing knowledge or experience) exists in each region as a result of cognitive, functional and political influences. In addition, an Exaptation Strategy (e.g. promoting manufacturing knowledge and technology to create new sustainable niche-innovations in related sectors) existed in two city regions and a Transplantation Strategy (e.g. developing an industry, unrelated to its knowledge base and institutions) exists in one city region.Finally, to examine the interfirm customer-supplier relations that influence sustainable transitions within the manufacturing sector, a ‘systems’ oriented socio-technical assessment was completed. Four sustainable-technology customers with headquarters in Australia demonstrate a range of attributes that are essential for stimulating a manufacturing supply chain shift towards sustainable market-niche innovation and collaboration. Significant findings include the range of dynamics that trigger and challenge a transition of the firm, reinforcement that the concept of sustainability remains a singular compartmentalised feature of change, rather than a component of a systematic sustainable and innovative transition.Taken together, the results of the empirical analyses demonstrate that the ‘Attributes of a Sustainable Transition’ hypothesis makes a valuable contribution in identifying the sustainable transition attributes of the traditional manufacturing sector in regions of Australia. An overall implication of the thesis is that while each empirical investigation contributes to the attribute identification process, each inquiry also highlights the complexities inherent in system structures that cannot be solved with ‘one size fits all’ solutions. Solving this problem requires a transition towards adopting systems thinking and action. The process of transition, within each firm, has significant implications in terms of the creation of new value chains, niche innovation and global production networks.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (234 pages) diagrams, table
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Technological trends and future management practices in global value chains
No full textRecent advancements in technology such as the internet of things, 3D printing and blockchain will undoubtedly have a disruptive impact on the business models of many organisations. By examining the megatrends in emerging technologies, this chapter will examine the implications these recent advancements in technologies may have on the management practices within organisations. More specifically, this chapter will consider how these changing management practices may affect the management of global value chains (GVCs). The implications for managers and organisations in developing capabilities to support these changing management practices is fundamentally important for competitively positioning the organisation and contributing effectively within GVCs, and so a discussion on the implication for managers and management practices ensues. The conclusions in this chapter suggest that megatrends in GVCs are critically dependent on emerging technologies, which in turn require appropriate capabilities within an organisation, reflected in the management practices of the firm
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Case study
No full textThe agricultural sector is a pillar of the New Zealand economy. A variety of agri-food businesses attempt to optimize their own operations with little collaboration with upstream and downstream business entities. New Zealand’s agri-food businesses face the common challenges inherent in the agri-food products. Agri-food supply chain management (ASCM) is more challenging than its counterpart in typical manufactured products, as agri-food products raise additional concerns, such as food safety and perishability. The quality and safety of agricultural products heavily relies on efficient and effective ASCM. Internet of Things (IoT) technology can monitor the storage conditions and maturity level of agri-food products. Combined with the use of big data analytics, it can predict the remaining shelf life of agri-food products for the purposes of proactive inventory management and promotion and sales decisions. A few large New Zealand and regional agribusiness firms have pioneered or are testing IoT-enabled solutions
Case study
No full textThe horticultural sector is increasingly becoming a very important export earner for New Zealand. The global supply chains are complex and there is a need to manage these with precision due to the limited shelf life and fragile nature of the products. Zespri is the name and image of the New Zealand kiwifruit industry. Before Zespri, the New Zealand kiwifruit industry was steadily pacing itself downhill due to all the distributors and exporters trying to survive by selling their fruit at the lowest prices due to the lack of differentiation. The Zespri brand is fundamental to the company’s success. The brand is uncompromisingly about quality, because to get a premium price for products, exporters must have consistent quality. Zespri and the kiwifruit industry are making larger profits than ever, and it is partly because of their internal and external integration
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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