287 research outputs found
An investigation into the legal performance of small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs), encompassing compliance levels, the impact and effectiveness of environmental legislation and improving SME environmental compliance control systems
No full textThere has been a great deal written about the difficulties faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) compared to larger businesses. SMEs face difficulties complying with environmental legislation, particularly because of the amount of complex law. This can result in the ‘environment’ being treated as less of a priority even though SMEs collectively have a significant environmental impact. Over the past few years, the UK has been focused towards achieving ‘better regulation’. In particular, Hampton highlighted the need for more strategic thinking when it comes to developing regulation. Hampton suggested that regulators should use a risk-based model similar to that used by the England and Wales Environment Agency (EA). This view is shared by Local Authorities and other environmental regulators; however, there has been criticism from some commentators who suggest that certain legislation is not successfully enforced.The increased use of risk assessment by the EA has reduced the number of inspections resulting in more ‘pressure’ being put on remaining inspections as well as there being less opportunity to identify non-compliance. In addition, those businesses not included under direct regulatory regimes are unlikely to be audited for compliance against any environmental legislation; consequently a significant portion of all businesses go un-inspected and uncontrolled. Because of the number of SMEs, there needs to be an effective system of regulation that controls activities and targets those businesses that pose a risk to the environment, without unnecessarily over-burdening SMEs. It is clear from the coalition Government’s planned austerity measures in 2011 that management of the environment will have to be done with less resource than before. This thesis draws together findings from research conducted between 2005-2011. Previous research on compliance with legislation has often been conducted in isolation with little research comparing compliance across a range of legislation, and certainly not using triangulation methods to assess SMEs’ overall legal performance.This study aimed to investigate the legal performance of UK SMEs with a range of environmental legislation. This study identifies: • the level of compliance (‘spirit’ and ‘letter’ of the law) with environmental legislation;• the impact and effectiveness of environmental legislation; and• ways of improving the environmental compliance control systems for SMEs.The study incorporated a wide range of environmental legislation, including that covering:waste management/ transfer, environmental permitting (including waste exemptions), site waste management plans, WEEE, RoHS, packaging, oil storage as well as identifying other potential environmental offences. Detailed compliance audits were conducted with 44 SMEs from 5 different sectors from the north-west of England. Interviews with SME management, site staff, regulators, Government policy officials and support organisations; in total 99 individuals were interviewed. The study indicates: • Low levels of compliance with the ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’ of the law.• Knowledge and understanding of environmental legislation was poor; no single SME, regulator or support organisation appreciated ‘environmental compliance’ as a whole.• Enforcement activity and surveillance of the SMEs audited was very low; this reflected nation enforcement figures.• The impact of environmental legislation on SMEs is overstated. The impact increased commensurate with ‘effort to comply’ and ‘enforcement action’.• There was evidence of direct and indirect environmental harm as a result of noncompliance.• Regulation can only be effective if it is complied with; measuring the link between the legislation and environmental protection must be accompanied by a clear understanding of compliance levels.This study produces an initial assessment methodology for SMEs, compliance performance indicators and recommendations to improve SME compliance controls
Environmental (waste) compliance control systems for UK SMEs
No full textWhile the ‘environment’ is often perceived as a heavily regulated area of business, in reality, directly-regulated businesses represent a small proportion of the business community. This study aimed to evaluate and outline potential improvements to compliance controls for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly those involved in the waste sector. Forty-four SMEs from England were interviewed/audited between April-September 2008. Using a UK-based system as a case-in-point, the Environment Agency’s (EA) Operational Risk Appraisal (‘Opra’)/Compliance Assessment Report (CAR) system was analysed. Environmental compliance performance indicators and an initial assessment methodology for SMEs were developed. The study showed:• Compliance with permitting legislation was poor in many areas.• Regulatory authorities are either unable/failing to implement their enforcement policies or unable/failing to identify non-compliances due to the infrequency or limited nature of their inspections.• Improvements are needed to the EA Opra/CAR system – control measures are not fully taken into account when calculating risk.Recommendations to improve SME compliance controls include using internationally applicable general and specific compliance and non-compliance performance indicators, re-designing the Opra system and using an initial assessment methodology based on understanding the hazardousness of SME categories, compliance levels and operator competency.<br/
An evaluation of the impact and effectiveness of environmental legislation in small and medium-sized enterprises: experiences from the UK
No full textWith Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) accounting for 99.7% of the 4.7m UK businesses, they can have a huge collective impact on the environment, which in turn, is increasingly regulated. This study investigated the impact and effectiveness of environmental legislation on UK SMEs as well as determining if ‘compliance’ results in improved environmental protection. Interviews were conducted with SME management, site staff, regulators, policy officials and support organisations. Forty-four SMEs from the north-west of England participated in the study and overall, a total of 99 individuals were interviewed. The study clearly indicates that the impact of environmental legislation on SMEs is overstated and impact increased commensurate with effort to comply and enforcement action. Only 1 of the SMEs studied had been prosecuted and only 2 had been inspected. Compliance issues identified in those SMEs subject to direct regulation did not correlate with previous compliance audits conducted. In general, SMEs had poor awareness of compliance issues; non-compliance was only really recognised and acknowledged if identified by a regulator and only regarded as serious if prosecuted. Regulation of the environment is clearly only effective if complied with; understanding compliance levels can help measure the link between legislation and environmental protection. The effectiveness of environmental legislation can only be understood if SMEs are subject to regular regulatory contact. Recommendations to improve SME compliance control systems are provided
The sisters: a study of D. H. Lawrence's mode of female characterization
No full textDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras
Gut bacteria and necrotizing enterocolitis: cause or effect?
No full textDevelopment of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) is considered to be dependent on the bacterial colonisation of the gut. With little concordance between published data and a recent study failing to detect a common strain in infants with NEC, more questions than answers are arising about our understanding of this complex disease
D.H. Lawrence: the duel for power: a study of selected tales and short stories
No full textBibliography: p. 134-140.This title is not available online. Access options are:
- consulting the copy from Archives in our reading room in person - https://asc.ucalgary.ca/visiting/
- borrowing a circulating copy from the Library catalogue – https://ucalgary.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=01UCALG_INST:UCALGARY&lang=e
The margin and the mainstream : positioning Harry Partch's theories within the broader discourse of musical aesthetics
No full textBibliography: leaves 102-106.The dissertation examines the broader musical value of microtonal composer Harry Partch's musical theories by locating his critique of abstract music within mainstream compositional theory and aesthetics. This contextualisation aims to deconstruct Partch's iconoclastic image so as to understand his contribution within a wider realm of critical discourse. The work of composers that follow in Partch's footsteps becomes important in this context, especially that of his one-time student Ben Johnston whose own microtonal aesthetic is firmly rooted in European aesthetics from Debussy to Schoenberg. By a study of Johnston's utilisation of Partch's theory of just intonation the dissertation attempts to arrive at a more inclusive compositional theory, one which continues to address those aspects of Partch's theories that serve as a valid and constructive critique of traditional musical values. Taking Adorno's view that musical critique must deal with the problem of reification at the level of musical materials, the author proposes a reading of Partch's corporeal philosophy that is applicable beyond the confines of narrative musical drama. By creating a distinction between historical models of organisation and 'second nature' forms of musical presentation, it is suggested that critique does not necessarily prefigure alienation from the mainstream, but can rather be situated within musical discourse in such a way that a new image of the latter's forms results. On a practical level, the dissertation explores the validity of expanded just intonation as a means of achieving this immanent critique, both in the realm of compositional theory and, implicitly, in that of analytical theory, concluding with the description of a tuning system with the capacity to synthesise the range of compositional theories explored
Frieda Lawrence Letters 1907-1954, 2010
No full textThe collection holds some letters of Frieda Lawrence, primarily sent to her sister Else Richthofen-Jaffé and Else's son Friedel Jaffé. Included in the first folder of the collection is a summary of the letters by Guenther Roth, which also provides context for them and biographical details on Frieda Lawrence.Frieda Lawrence, born 1879 in Metz, Germany, the sister of Else Richthofen-Jaffé. 1912-1930, after her marriage to Ernest Weekley, she was married to the author D.H. Lawrence. She died 1956 in Taos, New Mexico.The Frieda Lawrence letters are part of the Christopher Jeffrey Collection, AR 25348.Frieda Lawrence was born in 1879 in Metz, Germany, the daughter of Baron Friedrich Ernst Emil Ludwig von Richthofen. Her elder sister was Else Richthofen-Jaffé and she had a younger sister named Johanna. Frieda’s first marriage was to professor Ernest Weekley, with whom she had three children: Charles Montague, Elsa, and Barbara Joy. In 1914 she married the author D.H. Lawrence, whom she had known since 1912. After his death in 1930, she returned to the ranch given to them by Mabel Luhan, called Kiowa Ranch, in Taos, New Mexico and spent much of the rest of her life promoting Lawrence’s work. In 1934 her memoirs of her life with D.H. Lawrence, Not I, but the Wind, were published. In 1950 she married Angelo Ravagli. She died in 1956 in Taos, New Mexico.Finding aid available onlineProcesseddigitize
Representations of adultery and regeneration in selected novels of Ford, Lawrence, Waugh and Greene
No full textThis thesis is an examination of how the themes of adultery and regeneration are interwoven and explored by selected English novelists in the first half of the twentieth century. It is essential to establish that Ford, Lawrence, Waugh and Greene do not adhere to the ‘archetypal’ pattern of the adultery novel established in the nineteenth century and, in fact, turn that pattern on its head.
Ford’s The Good Soldier and Parade’s End provide two differing perspectives. The first uses adultery as a metaphor for the disintegration of English society, mirroring the social disintegration that accompanied the First World War; Parade’s End, however, presents an adulterous relationship as being a regenerative force in the post-war society. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover also uses an adulterous relationship as a means of addressing the need for social, and national, regeneration in the inter-war years.
Waugh’s A Handful of Dust presents a woman’s adultery as the ruin of not only a good man, but also civilisation in general; Brideshead Revisited is more religious in tone and traces the spiritual regeneration of its central character, whose conversion, ironically, is made possible through his adulterous relationship. Similarly, Greene’s The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair portray the process of spiritual regeneration; in both novels this movement towards salvation is intertwined with an exploration of adulterous love.
The ultimate question probed in this thesis is how the twentieth century novel of adultery overturns the traditional literary approach to the subject. Adulterous unions and illegitimate children are no longer presented as being exclusively socially destabilising or subversive in these novels; most intriguingly significant is that, in some of these novels, the illegitimate child becomes a symbol of hope, and, indeed, of regeneration
An overwhelming question : Jewish stereotyping in English fiction and society, 1875-1914.
No full textThis thesis sets out to examine the nature of modern Jewish
stereotyping in English society with reference to a wide range of English fiction which, for the most part, has been previously undocumented in these terms. Instead of a purely literary analysis of the fictional Jewish stereotype, this thesis places the Jewish stereotype in a specific
ideological and historical context which is then related to a given writer-or group of writers—and their fiction. Two chapters, moreover, demonstrate the material results of Jewish stereotyping in English society with reference to the internalisation and institutionalisation of Jewish stereotyping by British Jewry and the AngloJewish novel. The variety and impact of Jewish stereotyping is shown
to encompass the ideologies of liberalism, social Darwinism,
Imperialism, antisemitism, proto-Zionism, Socialism and mainstream versions of sexuality. The concluding chapter relates the modern Jewish stereotype, which was formed after the 1870s, to a more general ahistorical mythic view of the Jew. In particular, this chapter refers to the
links between modern Jewish stereotyping and the traditional
Christian view of the Jew. With reference to a wide range of
writers, more general questions are raised in this chapter concerning the continuity of Jewish stereotyping and the choice of a given stereotype by a particular social or literary group
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