Financializing Desalination: Rethinking the Returns of Big Infrastructure

Against the trend prevalent during the 1990s and 2000s, large‐scale infrastructural projects have made a comeback in the water sector. Although sometimes framed as part of a broader sustainable transition, the return of big infrastructure is a much more complicated story in which finance has played a crucial role. In the following article, we explore this encounter between finance and water infrastructure using the case of Britain's first experiment in desalination technologies, the Thames Water Desalination Plant (TWDP). On the surface, the plant appears to be a classic example of the successes of normative industrial ecology, in which sustainability challenges have been met with forward‐thinking green innovations. However, the TWDP is utterly dependent on a byzantine financial model, which has shaped Thames Water's investment strategy over the last decade. This article returns to the fundamental question of whether London ever needed a desalination plant in the first place. Deploying an urban political ecology approach, we demonstrate how the plant is simultaneously an iconic illustration of ecological modernization and a fragile example of an infrastructure‐heavy solution to the demands of financialization. Understanding the development of the TWDP requires a focus on the scalar interactions between flows of finance, waste, energy and water that are woven through the hydrosocial cycle of London.     

特别的商贸展 商贸站上的照明标志——以及它们的特殊要求

商贸展有它自己的规则。那些准备参展的公司经常自己设计、策划和建造他们的展台、但是,大多数情况下,他们还会借助广告公司和招牌公司来设计并打造它们。设计一个成功的商贸展台需要许多做很多不同的工作,而且,由于空间有限,我将集中介绍一些照明方面的知识,特别是商贸展上的照明标志设计和结构。     

Environmental and Economic Dimensions of Sustainability and Price Effects on Consumer Responses

The lack of attention to sustainability, as a concept with multiple dimensions, has presented a developmental gap in green marketing literature, sustainability, and marketing literature for decades. Based on the established premise of customer–corporate (C–C) identification, in which consumers respond favorably to companies with corporate social responsibility initiatives that they identify with, we propose that consumers would respond similarly to companies with sustainability initiatives. We postulate that consumers care about protecting and preserving favorable economic environments (an economic dimension of sustainability) as much as they care about natural environments. Thus, we investigate how two sustainability dimensions (i.e., environmental and economic) and price can influence consumer responses. Using an experimental method, we demonstrate that consumers favor sustainability in both dimensions by giving positive evaluations of the company and purchase intent. In addition, consumers respond more negatively to poor company sustainability than to high company sustainability. In comparison, consumers respond more negatively to the company’s poor commitment to caring for the environment than to the company’s poor commitment to economic sustainability. We also find that consumers do not respond favorably to low prices when they have information about the firm’s poor environmental sustainability. Finally, we find support for an interaction effect between consumer support for sustainability and corporate sustainability; that is, consumers evaluate a company more favorably if the company shares the consumers’ social causes. Overall, we conclude, from our empirical study, support for the idea that consumers do respond to multiple dimensions of sustainability.     

Subjective probability assessments of the incidence of unethical behavior: the importance of scenario–respondent fit

Largely due to the difficulty of observing behavior, empirical business ethics research relies heavily on the scenario methodology. While not disputing the usefulness of the technique, this paper highlights the importance of a careful assessment of the fit between the context of the situation described in the scenario and the knowledge and experience of the respondents. Based on a study of online auctions, we provide evidence that even respondents who have direct knowledge of the situation portrayed in the scenario may develop significantly different assessments of the level of unethical behavior. Further, those assessments may be conditioned in different ways by the same moderating variables. We conclude that care should be exercised when recruiting respondents to choose only those who can be expected to understand the scenario in its true context and that separate analyses should be conducted for groups of respondents who have different perspectives within that context.     

Directors' attributes and corporate governance effectiveness in Hong Kong

The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of Hong Kong (HK) legal practitioners on how the major attributes of knowledge, continuous education, and qualification among directors in HK relate to their board of directors' corporate governance effectiveness. The results revealed that the respondents perceived directors' attributes in HK to be not good enough for discharging their legal obligations to their companies. The results also suggested that a company was more effectively governed if its directors were more qualified for their jobs and more familiar with company law and/or corporate governance.     

建设环境 建筑招牌在建筑主题中如何找到自己的位置?

22年以来,社会环境图形设计社会(SEGD)一直举行设计大奖的颁布活动,并且它为进入环境图形设计这个圈子铺了一条道路。