Alternative Destinations for Contested States

Populations at Special Health Risk: Displaced Populations

Mapping product knowledge to life cycle inventory bounds: a case study of steel manufacturing

Sports have been recently conceptualized as an effective tool for development. Questioning that argument, recent evidence suggests that the practice of soccer reveals national cultures of violence prevailing in players’ countries of origin. We model violent behaviour in the soccer pitch as a function of game specific controls as well as socioeconomic, political, cultural and conflict variables characterizing players’ home countries. We construct a database for the Latin American 2008 Libertadores Cup Competition and find that across multiple specifications and estimating techniques, only game specific variables determine sanctions to violent actions. There are three compatible explanations for this result: highly skilled soccer players may not be representative average citizens; violent conflicts may not necessarily cause a violent culture affecting all corners of society; and even when violent cultures are transmitted to individual players, those values do not condition significantly their behaviour during games. After all, sports may not be a pernicious activity that intrinsically transmits violent values to youths.

The commercial success of heavy oil projects highly depends on the intensive use of the right combination of technologies and competencies during the life cycle of reservoir assets in order to achieve world class recovery of hydrocarbons, with highly productive wells and flow assurance supported by a reliable production infrastructure including oil upgrading facilities in some cases. When projects are located in environmentally or socially sensitive areas other technologies are required to assure the viability and sustainability of the project. In this paper we present a methodology to assess uncertainties and risks of heavy oil projects using Front End Loading (FEL) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and it is based on comparing data and information systematically during the definition phase vs. results from the execution phase of similar projects. We have applied this methodology successfully in several heavy oil projects providing an alternate approach to complex data hungry methods. A general model and taxonomy is used to standardize activities performed in the different phases of a heavy oil asset project life cycle allowing adapting and adopting this methodology for any heavy oil field. All activities are classified based on their impact in capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operational expenditures (OPEX) using FEL to establishing the level of definition of each asset component and Life Cycle Costing for comparing different scenarios with combination of technology options. Uncertainty and risk analysis is performed for all cost driven variables by analyzing cause and effects relationships and assigning typical probabilistic distributions for key and important activities in each phase of the heavy oil asset life cycle. The standardized heavy oil asset model provides an acceptable representation of life cycle phases of asset components (natural and physical) so the associated costs can be forecasted probabilistically using data and information from projects in similar assets (analogs) and technologies. We recommend application of this methodology as an alternative for traditional project planning especially during early phases of a heavy oil assets life cycle particularly discovery and appraisal and we provide a roadmap with hands on description of work flows and techniques so it can be applied by asset project teams who can create data bases with standardized data and information from heavy oil asset projects that can be shared to improve recovery of existing heavy oil resources at worldwide level.

International agencies, nonprofits and governments have maintained that food insecurity is a significant driver of violent intrastate conflict. This paper tests this popular assumption with a model drawn from Azar's Theory of Protracted Social Conflict and a fixed effects logistic regression and finds that food availability has no significant effect on the probability of violent civil conflict onset. However, other factors such as a country's level of integration into the international system of states and economic growth are likely to be more effective at maintaining global stability. The policy implications are that efforts to promote peace can be more effective by focusing on integration into the world community and economic growth than by focusing exclusively on food availability.

The notion of peacekeeping usually conjures up images of UN- sponsored Blue Helmets or other armed military or police forces deployed in areas of violent conflict in poor countries. But unarmed peacekeeping, by civilian members of global non-governmental organizations who employ proven strategies, is a valuable, cost-effective complement (or an alternative) to the currently dominant approach of armed peacekeeping. Unarmed civilian peacekeepers offer services of protective accompaniment and ‘proactive presence’, monitoring, creating neutral safe spaces, and inter-positioning—close to where threatened, vulnerable people live. As such, they provide a much-needed, low-cost, disciplined, benign, professional force for peace, steeped in the best tradition of theory and praxis of non-violent conflict transformation. The 21st century is likely to face more, not less, violent conflict, and the need for preventive international third-party nonviolent presence is greater than ever. As long as the world community (and the UN) has not tried large-scale civilian unarmed peacekeeping, this remains a huge missed chance for peace.

We analyze the externalities arising from a bilateral asylum policy—the list of safe origin countries—relying on a tractable model. Using self-collected monthly data, we estimate that including one origin country on the safe list of a given destination decreases asylum applications from that origin to that destination by 29 per cent. We use a counterfactual policy simulation to quantify the spillover effects occurring across origin and destination countries. Individuals from targeted origin countries move to alternative destinations. Individuals from untargeted origins divert from alternative destinations. The magnitude of the externalities depends on the size of the affected flows.

Analysis of energy consumption structure on CO[formula omitted] emission and economic sustainable growth

Generally, it is considered that the products have five phases in their life cycle, namely, introduction, growth, maturity, saturation and decline. But with the rapid advancement of technology and globalization, the product life has dwindled. This paper studies the life cycle of the products whose life cycle has been reduced to only three phases. The life cycle of the various products especially electronic goods (mobile phones) has been studied and it has been observed that life span of these products has been reduced drastically. Another observation is that the introduction and the growth phase have been clubbed into one. Many of the products either will have the growth in the initial part of their life cycle or will be unable to survive, so there is no possibility of the other phases of life cycle. This study formulates a model for the products having only three phases of the life cycle and having a very short life span. While the earlier models have considered five phases of product life cycle with longer duration. The mathematical model considered here has only three phases of life cycle which matches with the life cycles of the electronics products, whose demand increases rapidly during the growth period and declines exponentially during the decline phase.

Perspektiva životnog puta u istraživanjima starenja i migracija

Recognition of human resource management practices by professional bodies has continuously evolved since it has been realised that the employees play a pivotal role in the success of any project. The hypothesis of the study explores the direct impact amid relationship of selected HRM practices: 'employee recruitment and selection (ERS)', 'employee training and development (ETD)', 'employee performance appraisal (EPA)', 'employee compensation system (ECS)' and project success (PS) as well as the moderating effect of environmental factors of Islamic work ethics (IWE) and country of origin (COO) in hydel projects of Pakistan. The study is cross-sectional based on the survey questionnaire data collected from 357 personnel. The results of the study will help the national/multinational firms to focus on efforts for the hydroelectric generation in Pakistan in further strengthening their human resource productivity by extending attention to the factors of concerns vis-a-vis HRM practices.

PurposeThis commentary and conceptual paper is aimed at investigating marketing perceptions of the country-of-origin (COO) perspectives, and emphasis is placed on the “Cool Japan” concept.Design/methodology/approachA review of research on COO and the concept of “Cool Japan” was conducted, including commentary of previous relevant theoretical frameworks.FindingsThe evidence has shown that the brand images of various COOs is dependent on their cultural exports. In the case of Japan, the “Cool Japan” initiative, which initiated the creation and dissemination of Japanese cultural contents such as anime, games and art, has led to tremendous and sustainable economic growth in Japan till date.Research limitations/implicationsAs previous studies on COO are wide-ranging, they are not exhaustively presented in this paper. However, the importance of considering not only animosity, which has traditionally been taken into account, but also the coolness aspect is suggested.Practical implicationsThis paper shows that “coolness” is an important concept when nations or regions consider their branding strategies and an integrated approach is needed.Originality/valueThis paper extends previous COO research and adds coolness to the traditional animosity. It also considers these in comparison across countries and goes as far as the need to propose a new scale. Conceptual findings from this paper would therefore provide future directions for advancing COO research Cool Japan.

Bellandi (20212022) has developed a matrix to assess the consistency between sustainable financial growth and sustainable ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance, hereafter ESG) growth, and how this may impact shareholders versus other stakeholders. This article further builds on that matrix, to link the product life cycle approach and the BCG matrix to the sales growth axis of the matrix and determine both the actual revenue growth and the financially sustainable revenue growth associated to each stage of a product life cycle and each quadrant of the BCG matrix. The article also illustrates how the Life Cycle Assessment methodology can be linked to the product life cycle model, and better quantify the ESG impact of each product life cycle stage on the ESG axis of the financially-ESG sustainable growth matrix. The article shows how the reading of both product life cycle and BCG matrix can be expanded from a proprietory (shareholders) to a societal (other stakeholders) perspective. This opens a new direction of research to evidence alternative ESG improvements in each stage of the life cycle model that may make a product more ESG compliant, therefore suggesting strategies to improve the ESG rating of a business or a company. This article is also a methodological step forward to create an index of ESG sustainable growth, which is currently missing.

In this article, we analyze how environmental aspects can be derived from life cycle management instruments for procurement decisions of low-value products. For our analysis, we chose the case of operating room textiles. The review includes the life cycle management instruments: life cycle assessment, environmental labels, and management systems applied within the textile industry. We do so in order to identify the most important environmental decision criteria based on which the procurer of low-value products can decide for the most environmentally friendly option. We conducted a systematic literature search in the relevant literature databases. We critically evaluate the identified life cycle assessment studies for sound methodology, verifiability, completeness, and actuality. Based on this review, we analyze and compare the results of the three most comprehensive studies in more detail and derive the most important environmental aspects of operating room textiles. In a second step, we extend the operational perspective via the strategic perspective, namely environmental management systems and further existing life cycle instruments such as eco-labels. We then synthesize the gathered information into a decision vector. Finally, we discuss how the gathered data can be further exploited and give suggestions for a more sophisticated assessment. The review of the existing life cycle assessments on operating room textiles showed that procurers should not base their decisions exclusively on existing life cycle assessments. In addition to problems such as methodological weakness, incompleteness, outdated data, and poor verifiability, the information provided is far too complex to prepare procurement decisions regarding low-value products. Furthermore, the results for the textiles assessed in the existing life cycle assessments are not necessarily transferrable to the textiles considered by the procurer because of restrictive assumptions. Therefore, it is necessary to downscale the available information and synthesize it in an applicable decision support tool. Our decision vector consists of the key environmental aspects water, CO2, energy, and waste and is completed by environmental management systems, eco-labels, and the countries of origin that matters for environmental and social aspects as well. The decision vector supports procurers when considering environmental aspects in procurement decisions and provides a mechanism for balancing the information between overcomplexity and oversimplification. Therefore, it should be the basis for future development of an eco-label for operating room textiles.

Many European studies find that immigrants and the native population differ in their long-term care use. These differences have been attributed to immigrants’ cultural preferences, among others. However, the cultural integration process of immigrants may result in a potential caregiving conflict between foreign-born immigrants’ preferences for long-term care and their children’s willingness to provide long-term care. In this study, we empirically assess to what extent cultural factors that prevail in foreign-born immigrants’ country of origin are reflected in their children’s value of informal care. Using data from the German Family Panel and the World Values Survey/European Values Study, we regressed second-generation immigrants’ value of informal care on the cultural strength of family ties that prevails in their parents’ country of birth. Probit models were estimated and individual characteristics were accounted for. The results show that second-generation immigrants who originate from cultures with stronger family ties are more likely to express a high value of informal care than second-generation immigrants who come from cultures with weaker family ties. We conclude that immigrants’ values of informal care are deeply shaped by their country of origin. Policy makers should keep immigrants’ needs and preferences in mind when implementing long-term care interventions. The same set of long-term care interventions can have very different effects, depending on immigrants’ values.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10433-022-00730-1.