Low-mobility: The future of transport

Nearly all researchers into the future of global passenger transport assume that both car-ownership and overall vehicular travel will continue to rise. But they also increasingly acknowledge the environmental and resource problems facing vehicular transport, particularly global climate change and oil depletion. In order to meet these challenges, researchers propose a variety of technological solutions, including greatly improved vehicular fuel efficiency, alternative fuels and propulsion systems, and carbon capture and storage. In this paper we question whether these optimistic solutions can be developed and widely deployed in the limited time frame available, and argue instead that not only are ever-rising vehicular mobility levels unlikely to occur, but that the human costs of continuing this approach are also too great. Instead we argue that because transport is a derived demand, we must first articulate a preferred vision of the future, then design an appropriate, sustainable transport system. Finally, we briefly outline what such a low-mobility future transport system would look like, using our own city, Melbourne, Australia, as a case study.     

Partnerships and production: Agriculture and polygyny in Tanzanian households

Women make important contributions to household food production in sub‐Saharan Africa. Women's agricultural productivity is often reduced, however, by inefficient intrahousehold allocation of agricultural resources. Complex marital structures found in polygynous households may complicate resource allocation. Using three waves of the Tanzania Living Standards Measurement Survey–Integrated Survey on Agriculture, we measure the effect of the marital structure, wife position, and plot management on agricultural productivity and input allocations. We find evidence of cooperation within polygynous households. Plots managed by husbands and wives in polygynous households produce more valuable crops, have higher yields, and are more likely to use fertilizer than their monogamous counterparts. Within polygynous households, we observe that plots jointly managed by husbands, first wives, and second wives (together) have significantly more family labor than plots managed by husbands and first wives. This result may provide evidence of different production technologies across plot managers within the same households.     

A Study of the Validity of the Moral Ethos Questionnaire and its Transferability to a Chinese Context

This paper begins by comparing and contrasting the Moral Climate Questionnaire (MCQ) and the Moral Ethos Questionnaire (MEQ), and identifies differences in their theoretical orientations. It argues that they seek to measure different things and should not be seen as competing instruments. The MEQ is based on Kohlbergian assumptions, regards the six individual stages of moral development as having equivalents within organisational moral atmosphere, and measures the relative strength of these organisational stages or forces. In validating the MEQ, one problem is its ranks-based questionnaire format, making standard assessments of reliability and validity difficult. The researchers investigated the MEQ's cross-cultural transferability and comprehensibility, by assessing how accurately three groups of 60 undergraduate business students, two Hong Kong Chinese and one Australian, assigned MEQ items to their designated stages. The Australian group met the comprehensibility criterion of 50% stage assignments (hits), but the Chinese did not, with Chinese students using an English version of the MEQ achieving fewer accurate hits than those using an expertly translated Chinese version. The results indicated some lack of cross-cultural transferability and some language-related interpretation differences. Students tended to assign stages 2, 3 and 4 items with greater accuracy than stages 1, 5 and 6, and the paper gives explanations for the lower comprehensibility of the latter. The paper concludes with comments on teaching Kohlbergian concepts to Chinese students and using the MEQ to research Chinese organisations.     

审计伦理测量及中美大学会计专业学生审计伦理水平的比较

采用一种基于审计案例的测量工具,首次实证调查和测试中国会计专业学生的审计伦理水平。结果发现,中国大陆地区大二、大三和大四会计专业学生在审计伦理方面没有显著差异,但总体水平比美国和中国台湾的大四会计专业学生低一些,而中国台湾学生与美国学生没有显著差异,这应引起中国大陆会计教育界和政府主管部门的关注。     

Interactive visualization of 3D mantle convection

The current availability of thousands of processors at many high performance computing centers has made it feasible to carry out, in near real time, interactive visualization of 3D mantle convection temperature fields, using grid configurations having 10–100 million unknowns. We will describe the technical details involved in carrying out this endeavor, using the facilities available at the Laboratory of Computational Science and Engineering (LCSE) at the University of Minnesota. These technical details involve the modification of a parallel mantle convection program, ACuTEMan; the usage of client–server socket based programs to transfer upwards of a terabyte of time series scientific model data using a local network; a rendering system containing multiple nodes; a high resolution PowerWall display, and the interactive visualization software, DSCVR. We have found that working in an interactive visualizastion mode allows for fast and efficient analysis of mantle convection results.     

The split delivery vehicle routing problem with minimum delivery amounts

In the vehicle routing problem, a fleet of vehicles must service the demands of customers in a least-cost way. By allowing multiple vehicles to service the same customer (i.e., splitting deliveries), substantial savings in travel costs are possible. However, split deliveries are often an inconvenience to the customer who would prefer to have demand serviced in a single visit. We consider the vehicle routing problem in which split deliveries are allowed only if a minimum fraction of a customer’s demand is serviced by a vehicle. We develop a heuristic method for solving this problem and report computational results on a wide range of problem sets.     

Small Sawmills in Estonia

Government support of industry in transition economies needs to be judged by the industry's potential to become self-supporting. Government assistance should be designed with this goal in mind. The case of small sawmills in Estonia is a good illustration of this. Estonia's priorities for economic development include promotion of exports, small business and regional development. Small sawmills satisfy all three priorities but the industry's long run viability is in doubt. Current cost advantages depend on cheap raw material, labour and electricity, which are likely to disappear or be reduced with EU membership or further economic reform. Long run viability could emerge if producers cooperate in purchasing raw material, securing access to credit and marketing and adopt a niche market approach. Government can assist by providing export market support, credit access, a revised auction system for roundwood, retraining and extension programs and assistance in financing the set-up of joint-use production facilities. But such assistance, except for structural changes to promote competition and export marketing support, should all be temporary if the industry is ultimately to compete in the Western Europe market.     

Policies for sustainable development in the hillside areas of Honduras: a quantitative livelihoods approach

In this article, we use data for 376 households, 1,066 parcels, and 2,143 plots located in 95 villages in the hillside areas in Honduras to generate information needed by decision makers to assess the needs and opportunities for public investments, and design policies that stimulate natural resource conservation. We develop a quantitative livelihood approach, using factor and cluster analysis to group households based on the use of their main assets. This resulted in seven household categories that pursue similar livelihood strategies. We use a multinomial logit model to show that livelihood strategies are determined by comparative advantages as reflected by a combination of biophysical and socioeconomic variables. While 92% of the rural hillsides population in Honduras lives on US$1.00/capita/day or less, households that follow a livelihood strategy based on basic grain farming are the poorest because they often live in isolated areas with relatively poor agro‐ecological and socioeconomic conditions. Opportunities for off‐farm work tend to be limited in these areas and household strategies that combine on‐farm work with off‐farm work earn higher incomes. Per capita incomes can be increased by improving road infrastructure, widening access to land, policies that reduce household size and dependency ratios, and adoption of sustainable land management technologies that restore soil fertility. We used probit models to show that the latter can be promoted by agricultural extension programs and land redistribution. Investments in physical assets should be directed toward households that pursue livelihood strategies based on off‐farm employment or coffee production, while agricultural training programs are best focused on livestock producers.     

Childhood obesity in Mexico: the effect of international migration

This article estimates the effect of international migration from Mexico to the United States on the obesity status of children who remain in Mexico. Theory suggests that increased liquidity as well as changing time allocations resulting from migration may influence obesity outcomes. Natural disasters are used as an identification strategy. Results suggest that older boys in urban areas are more likely to become obese when either a male or female migrates from the household, while girls in urban areas are less likely to become obese. Both changes in food expenditure patterns and time use changes after migration are likely pathways that affect childhood obesity. While there are some changes in food expenditures, we find more importantly that urban girls engage in more housework and screen time after migration, whereas urban teen boys do not substitute for adult work as much as girls. These changes in strenuous activities, particularly for girls, likely explain the differential effect that migration has on boys’ and girls’ obesity outcomes in Mexico.     

Effective use of analytic DSS and job performance: Looking beyond technology acceptance

This study extends and test the work done on effective use of information systems (IS) by developing measures for this construct which expands the conceptualization of use beyond the popular technology acceptance model (TAM). Effective use posits dimensions of use (informed action, representational fidelity, and transparent interaction) which are intended to measure a user’s ability to effectively use an IS in a given context. Moving beyond simple adoption and use contexts is an important distinction that expands researcher’s and practitioner’s ability to assess usage effectiveness. In a work context, it is more important to have high performance and effective usage of systems in comparison to just having high usage rates. Therefore this study uses the context of analytic decision support systems (DSS) and tests the relationship between the proposed dimensions of effective use and job performance. A survey (N = 265) of executives with work experience using analytic DSS was conducted to maximize realism and generalizability. This study is the first to empirically test the proposed relationships of effective use to performance. Results indicate that informed action is a significant predictor of individual job performance. However, representational fidelity and transparent interaction are not significant predictors of job performance.