Measuring quality performance of cadastral survey and deeds registration work processes

When land parcel boundaries are surveyed for purposes of registration in most southern African countries, the cadastral survey records and diagrams prepared have to be examined and approved by the Surveyor General first before they can be registered in the Deeds Registries. For such records to be approved, their quality must conform to requirements stipulated in relevant acts and regulations. Where regulatory requirements are not met, the records are rejected and returned for corrections and resubmission. From a cross-organizational context, poor quality documents lodged upstream have the effect of congesting examination processes downstream as records are rejected and returned backwards due to quality failure. The paper proposes a quality performance measurement model to analyze quality performance in land administration work processes. The developed model is tested on 2 survey examination and approval sites and 3 deeds registration sites in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Based on below expected quality results obtained at one of the sites, a root cause analysis was conducted to establish recurring and underlying causal factors upon which quality improvement strategies can be built on.     

The roles of insurance and well-specified standards in dealing with environmental risks

The present liability system for managing environmental risks has had huge transaction costs through the courts with limited funds actually utilized for compensation (except to the lawyers) and cleanup of wastes. This paper discusses the use of insurance coupled with well-specified standards as an alternative to the current system. It illustrates the potential for the use of these policy tools in the context of two environmental risk management problems: providing liability protection to contractors involved in asbestos removal and protecting commercial property lenders and owners from liabilities associated with environmental contamination.     

TRAINING AND LABOUR MARKET SEGMENTATION

A two period model of the training decision is analysed using a human capital approach. The segmented labour market model where training opportunities distinguish entrants is compared with a competitive structure with homogeneous entrants. The main conclusions in the paper are the clear effects of training wages and the different effects in the two market structures of both wages and employment prospects in the unskilled market on training.     

Technology-enabled interactions in digital environments:a conceptual foundation for current and future research

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science -     

Targeting Conservation Investments in Heterogeneous Landscapes: A Distance-Function Approach and Application to Watershed Management

To achieve an environmental objective at least cost, decision makers must integrate information about spatially variable biophysical and economic conditions. Although the biophysical attributes that contribute to an environmental outcome are often known, the way in which these attributes interact to produce the outcome is often unknown. We introduce a nonparametric conservation targeting approach that relies on distance functions to cost-efficiently allocate conservation funds. We apply the approach empirically to the case of conservation contracting for water-quality objectives. The contract portfolios derived from the application have many desirable properties, including intuitive appeal and robust performance across plausible parametric scoring measures.