Developing transition pathways for a low carbon electricity system in the UK

This paper describes the approach to developing transition pathways for a low carbon electricity system in the UK, being pursued in a major new inter-disciplinary research project. The project aims (a) to learn from past transitions to help explore future transitions and what might enable or avoid them; (b) to design and evaluate transition pathways towards alternative socio-technical energy systems and infrastructures for a low carbon future; and (c) to understand and, where appropriate, model the changing roles, influences and opportunities of large and small ‘actors’ in the dynamics of transitions. The paper describes the approach, which builds on the work of Dutch researchers on transitions and transition management using a multi-level framework of niches, socio-technical regime and landscape, as well as on other parts of the innovation systems literature. It also describes its application to several outline transition pathways to a low carbon energy system in the UK. The pathways embrace both the evolution of the physical and institutional infrastructure changes and the roles of both large actors, e.g. multinational energy supply and distribution companies, national governments, major investors, and small actors, e.g. households, innovators and entrepreneurs.     

Designing the Best: A Review of Effective Teaching and Learning of Design and Technology

The role of Design and Technology (D &; T) in schools in England is changing. As from September 2002, D &; T will no longer be compulsory from age 14, but students will have a statutory entitlement to opt to study the subject. These proposed changes have renewed policy-makers' interest in a subject, which was first introduced into the National Curriculum in England and Wales in 1990. It provides the immediate context for a review of the literature published in English on Design and Technology commissioned by the Department of Education and Skills. Four databases were searched: the British Education Index (BEI), Educational Resources Information Centre (ERIC), PsychInfo, and Current Educational Research in the UK (CERUK). This article draws from the findings of the review and focuses in particular on two questions: How can D &; T be delivered effectively and what enhances learning and teaching in D &; T? The reviewers conclude that the factors which enhance effective learning and teaching of D &; T include: adequate equipment and accommodation, appropriate curriculum content and teaching methods, up-to-date continuing professional development for teaching and management support to allow teachers to implement innovative practices. In addition, they suggest a research agenda, which could inform future research in D &; T.     

From complete exclusion to minimal inclusion: African Americans and the public accounting industry, 1965–1988

African Americans have always been severely under-represented among certified public accountants. After active exclusion for the first several decades of this century, in 1965 African Americans comprised only 0.1% of CPAs. Twenty-five years later, African Americans comprised close to 1% of CPAs, still far below their 12% representation in the population. This paper examines the accounting industry's response to the change in public expectations regarding equal employment opportunity that followed the civil rights movement. The study reveals that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s when support for equal opportunity was at its peak, the industry ended its complete exclusion and engaged in some visible efforts to recruit African Americans. However, even these minimal efforts waned with the decline in emphasis on fair employment in the 1980s.     

Control your inventory in a world of lean retailing

As retailers adopt lean retailing practices, manufacturers are feeling the pinch. Retailers no longer place large seasonal orders for goods in advance-instead, they require ongoing replenishment of stock, forcing manufacturers to predict demand and then hold substantial inventories indefinitely. Manufacturers now carry the cost of inventory risk--the possibility that demand will dry up and goods will have to be sold below cost. And as product proliferation increases, customer demand becomes harder to predict. Most manufacturers apply one inventory policy for all stock-keeping units in a product line. But the inventory demand for SKUs within the same product line can vary significantly. SKUs with high volume typically have little variation in weekly sales, while slow-selling SKUs can vary enormously in weekly sales. The greater the variation, the larger the inventory the manufacturer must hold relative to an SKU's expected weekly sales. By differentiating inventory policies at the SKU level, manufacturers can reduce inventories for the high-volume SKUs and increase them for the low-volume ones--and thereby improve the profit-ability of the entire line. SKU-level differentiation can also be applied to sourcing strategies. Instead of producing all the SKUs for a product line at a single location, either offshore at low cost or close to market at higher cost, manufacturers can typically do better by going for a mixed allocation. Low-variation goods should be produced mainly offshore, while high-variation goods are best made close to markets.     

Alternative food consumption (AFC): idiocentric and allocentric factors of influence among low socio-economic status (SES) consumers

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the factors that drive consumer demands for alternative food consumption (AFC) options in western society (i.e. plant-based, organic and local diets) as means to achieve sustainability and a state of food well-being. Specifically, we propose a holistic framework in order to identify factors that influence its adoption: idiocentric (functional, ideological and experiential) and allocentric (situational, sociocultural and institutional). The proposed framework provides a basis for discussion on how marketing can contribute to the establishment of AFC in western society and contribute to sustainability and food-well-being among low socio-economic status (SES) consumers. Marketing and public policy implications of this framework are discussed in light of food consumption by low SES consumers, a target particularly vulnerable to flawed states of food well-being.     

Taxpayers' Perceptions of Practitioners: Finding One Who is Effective and Does the Right Thing?

This paper examines Australian taxpayers' perceptions of their idealized tax practitioner as well as their perceptions of their current tax preparer. The analysis was based on survey responses from 2,040 randomly selected Australian taxpayers who completed the "Community Hopes, Fears and Actions Survey" (author, 2000). Three dimensions were identified as underlying taxpayer judgements of their idealized practitioner. A minority of the sample indicated that their ideal was a creative, aggressive tax planning type, a person who was well networked and familiar with tax office intelligence and enforcement priorities. A second type of idealized practitioner engaged in the cautious minimisation of tax. Unlike creative accountants, practitioners of this type avoided conflict, while being sophisticated about identifying opportunities to minimise tax. The most popular idealized type was the low risk, no fuss practitioner who was honest and risk averse. The data revealed that taxpayers are likely to find tax practitioners who have the attributes that they value most highly, but that when taxpayers' perceptions of their tax practitioner are combined with their ideals, only two substantive dimensions emerge, tax avoidance and doing the right thing. Our inability to distinguish tax practitioners who are seen to provide cautious and aggressive advice in practice has important implications for the growth of aggressive tax planning markets in the community.     

Migration with local public goods and the gains from changing places

Without public goods and under fairly standard assumptions, in Hammond and Sempere (J Pub Econ Theory, 8: 145–170, 2006) we show that freeing migration enhances the potential Pareto gains from free trade. Here, we present a generalization allowing local public goods subject to congestion. Unlike the standard literature on fiscal externalities, our result relies on fixing both local public goods and congestion levels at their status quo values. This allows constrained efficient and potentially Pareto improving population exchanges regulated only through appropriate residence charges, which can be regarded as Pigouvian congestion taxes.     

Seeking for Solutions within a Project Setting

There has been increasing attention focused on the importance of ‘solution selling’ in the often very close relationships that characterize business-to-business marketing. While an extant predominantly product-centric view of solutions prevails in the literature, this has recently been juxtaposed with a more process-oriented view. We review such a process-oriented solution model briefly, and focus on the managerial challenge of how firms make this process-oriented approach work in practice. We argue that, in parallel to adopting a process-oriented approach, companies also have to focus their attention specifically on how to mobilize the different parties in order to amalgamate the perspectives and orientations between the interacting counterparts. We propose an interaction process model of how this ‘collective mind’ is achieved, using as an example a study of the United Kingdom’s Lean Aerospace Initiative (UK LAI), a large project with a specific solution in mind – improving the global competitiveness of the UK’s Aerospace industry. We use our model to show how the three main groups of actors (Government bodies, four Universities, and the aerospace companies themselves) interact in their pursuit of co-creating their collective solutions.