China's Growing Influence in Latin America

This article examines China's growing influence in Venezuela and other parts of Latin America as it seeks to secure a steady supply of cheap oil and new export markets. In recent years, China has offered loans to cash-strapped nations in the region on better terms than those offered by the United States and other multilateral lending institutions. China's growing influence worries the United States and other global observers who fear the spread of anti-democratic and anti-capitalist views. China maintains that its only interest in the region is economic. The current political turmoil in Venezuela offers China the opportunity to assuage these fears by supporting the presidency of Juan Guiado.     

Workplace travel plans: past,present and future

Transport policy in the UK now emphasises managing travel demand, with the generators of travel expected to play a role. Workplace travel plans are part of this, with a cohort running within organisations since the early 2000s. Concentrating on the private sector, this article presents the results of an employer survey of 25 organisations, showing how the motivations for travel plans have changed over time, and what they are anticipated to be in the future.An important finding has been to identify factors that have led to a travel plan progressing from a reactive (e.g. a planning consent), to a proactive state, whereby the travel plan starts to deliver business objectives, becoming organisationally embedded.     

Economy and the remembered future

The millennium dawns to the strains of a duet: multiculturalism in culture, globalization in economy. While the one claims to be the last word in pluralism, the other sees itself as having inaugurated an age beyond ideology. This doublet has been able to plant itself as the reigning universal because of a collective forgetting. Through a politics of memory drawn from Walter Benjamin's notion of remembrance, it is argued that the mythical still lurks within the depths of the multicultural economic machine, and is still capable of infiltrating back into the postmodern global order triggering a slippage within it. Economics, and the institutions it serves to legitimize, are both forced to labor continuously to keep this spectre at bay.     

Sustainable clothing: challenges,barriers and interventions for encouraging more sustainable consumer behaviour

Research with consumers has revealed limited awareness of the sustainability impact of clothing (Goworek et al., 2012). Semi‐structured interviews conducted with a range of experts in sustainable clothing to increase understanding of the challenges for sustainable clothing revealed that a focus on sustainability alone will not drive the necessary changes in consumers’ clothing purchase, care and disposal behaviour for three reasons: (i) clothing sustainability is too complex; (ii) consumers are too diverse in their ethical concerns and (iii) clothing is not an altruistic purchase. The findings identify the challenges that need to be addressed and the associated barriers for sustainable clothing. Interventions targeting consumers, suppliers, buyers and retailers are proposed that encourage more sustainable clothing production, purchase, care and disposal behaviour. These interventions range from normalizing the design of sustainable clothing and increasing the ease of purchase, to shifting clothes washing norms and increasing upcycling, recycling and repair.     

A multidisciplinary approach to denials prevention

Children's National Medical Center's approach to preventing denials and managing response to audits includes the following: Mapping out problem areas in the claims submission process and developing solutions with the help of a multidisciplinary team. Using case managers to help prevent denials and assist in the appeal of rejected claims. Requesting oral reconsideration of pended claims and supporting attending physicians in orally responding to the payer's medical team regarding the case.     

Can loss framing improve coordination in the minimum effort game?

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - I study how framing payoffs as losses affects group coordination using the minimum effort game. The previous literature shows groups as small as...     

Exploring safety impacts of pedestrian-crossing configurations at signalized junctions on urban roads with public transport routes

This study explored the impacts of pedestrian-crossing configurations and other design features, on accident occurrences at signalized junctions situated on central public transport routes (PTRs) of urban arterials. Statistical tests and negative-binomial regression models were applied to identify factors affecting accidents and to examine accident numbers of the PTR junctions as opposed to comparison-sites. At the PTR junctions, a consistent impact of pedestrian-crossing configurations on accidents was found, where a gradated-crossing with mixed-shifting is the least safe. Four-legged junctions tend to higher accident numbers relative to the three-legged junctions. PTR junctions are characterized by higher accident numbers, related to comparison-sites, when controlling for other design characteristics. The study findings may assist in selecting preferable design solutions while planning PTR.     

Prototyping sustainable mobility practices: user-generated data in the smart city

Although smart cities are now the subject of a growing literature, there is a paucity of research which considers how smart city projects develop on the ground. This paper begins to address this concern by exploring the development of a transport application, MotionMap, within the MK:Smart smart city programme. MotionMap aims to provide city-wide real-time transport information services. It is being developed through an ongoing dialogue sparked by the interaction of lead users and prototypes of a smart transport app. We draw on insights from Strategic Niche Management and social practice theories to explore how ‘smart’ might be integrated within and potentially transform the plurality of mobility practices that exist in cities.     

Reinforcing Ethical Decision Making Through Corporate Culture

Behaving ethically depends on the ability to recognize that ethical issues exist, to see from an ethical point of view. This ability to see and respond ethically may be related more to attributes of corporate culture than to attributes of individual employees. Efforts to increase ethical standards and decrease pressure to behave unethically should therefore concentrate on the organization and its culture. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how total quality (TQ) techniques can facilitate the development of a cooperative corporate culture that promotes and encourages ethical behavior throughout an organization.