Party's Point Research Articles

Evaluation of Public Participation in EIA in Hong Kong: A Comparison of Government Projects and Private Sector Projects

Conducting public participation in an environmental impact assessment (EIA) study and assuring its effectiveness is very indispensable as it acts as a scrutiny role from a third party's point of view when comes to the decision-making process. Both governmental proponents and private proponents are required to do the EIA study if their proposed projects are subject to designated projects. It is discovered that a majority of public participation in EIA studies carried out in government-run projects prudently follows the provisions as well as principles and serves as a high-interactive medium for information dissemination and exchange. In contrast, there is no significant influence of public participation organized in EIA study of private-run projects. Therefore, this paper aims at revealing the implementation of public participation in EIA responsible by different types of proponents and digging out the reasons behind it through an investigation and comparison of two representative cases from government-run projects (Lok Ma Chau Rail Spur Line Project) and private proponent-run projects (Fung Lok Wai Wetland Project) respectively. The study indicates that the compliant operation of public participation in government-run projects originates from the intention of benefiting the public as most of the projects are designed to be public infrastructure while the purpose of private components to start up a project is to seek profit, consequently resulting in the one-way and dictatorial decision-making. By tapping these voids, this paper provides a critical understanding of the disparity between the actual practice and specified criteria and attempts to establish a reference model for engineering projects that need to conduct an EIA study. This paper advocates improving the relevant system and strengthening supervision of EIA.

Twilight of Rationality

Twilight of Rationality

OPTIMAL REINSURANCE FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF BOTH AN INSURER AND A REINSURER

AbstractOptimal reinsurance from an insurer's point of view or from a reinsurer's point of view has been studied extensively in the literature. However, as two parties of a reinsurance contract, an insurer and a reinsurer have conflicting interests. An optimal form of reinsurance from one party's point of view may be not acceptable to the other party. In this paper, we study optimal reinsurance designs from the perspectives of both an insurer and a reinsurer and take into account both an insurer's aims and a reinsurer's goals in reinsurance contract designs. We develop optimal reinsurance contracts that minimize the convex combination of the Value-at-Risk (VaR) risk measures of the insurer's loss and the reinsurer's loss under two types of constraints, respectively. The constraints describe the interests of both the insurer and the reinsurer. With the first type of constraints, the insurer and the reinsurer each have their limit on the VaR of their own loss. With the second type of constraints, the insurer has a limit on the VaR of his loss while the reinsurer has a target on his profit from selling a reinsurance contract. For both types of constraints, we derive the optimal reinsurance forms in a wide class of reinsurance policies and under the expected value reinsurance premium principle. These optimal reinsurance forms are more complicated than the optimal reinsurance contracts from the perspective of one party only. The proposed models can also be reduced to the problems of minimizing the VaR of one party's loss under the constraints on the interests of both the insurer and the reinsurer.

Leadership Communication Strategies for Establishing Social Harmony and Sustainable Development – Mr. Narendra Modi as a Case Study

Leadership has been defined in different ways by different persons. Effective leadership today is seen as essential for running successfully a business as also ensuring the progress of a nation. The 21 st C is witnessing a sea change in businesses and societies on account of rapid progress in information and technology. Business leaders need to restructure businesses to suit the changed scenario and tight budgets, learn to adapt to different cultures and work practices, and use technology constructively to ensure sustainable businesses. They have to communicate strategically the vision and motivate employees. National leaders or heads of nations have to do away with the 20 th C practice of speaking from their political party's point of view, and speak from the nation's point of view. They must think in terms of how to solve their nation's problems and how to change, if necessary, the nation's mind set for implementation of the solutions. They must communicate persuasively and unite the nation as one team for achieving objectives and dreams. The paper reflects on Mr Narendra Modi's communication strategies as the new leader of India in his capacity as its Prime Minister and their suitability for leading India towards sustainable development.

Total Economic Value in Investment Analysis

Forest ecosystems are often defeated in decisions about investment and economic development. There is a very wide gap between policy makers and development investment on the one hand and environmentalists on the other hand, who see the forest ecosystem from the perspective of ecology and environment. The first party considers that forest ecosystems have a low value, while the second party often shows very fantastic figures about the economic value of forests. From the second party's point of view, the first party could be ignorant or having a short-term interest; while from the first party's point of view, the second party loves to produce the figures that are too good to be true. As a result, the total economic value of ecosystems is not only ignored as a consideration in investment decisions, but the total economic value of ecosystems has been seen as a boring scientific joke. Why did the gap occur and how to close the gap will be discussed in this paper. Economic valuation of ecosystem needs to be done more realistically so that the results are more plausible before policy makers. On the contrary, policy makers need to be aware that once a species vanished it never goes back. Keywords: ecosystem, goods and services, value, trade-off, double counting DOI: 10.7226/jtfm.19.3.201

Do suppliers' formal controls damage distributors' trust?

Do suppliers' formal controls damage distributors' trust? Extensive studies on this question show mixed results. This article develops a theoretical model that (a) takes into account the use of formal controls for both decision control and decision management; (b) employs perceptual measures from the controlled party's point of view; (c) proposes that the control-trust association is contingent upon the character (coercive vs. enabling) of different control tools; and (d) focuses on a mature relationship. This model was empirically tested with survey data from 107 distributors, trying to capture the moderator effect of two control tools on the association between formal control uses and trust development. With this approach, the results seem to show that decision-control and decision-management uses simultaneously substitute for and complement distributors' trust, and that their effects are partly moderated by the coercive or enabling character of the specific control tool used to manage the relationship.

The ‘absolute existence’ of phlogiston: the losing party's point of view

Long after its alleged demise, phlogiston was still presented, discussed and defended by leading chemists. Even some of the leading proponents of the new chemistry admitted its 'absolute existence'. We demonstrate that what was defended under the title 'phlogiston' was no longer a particular hypothesis about combustion and respiration. Rather, it was a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions and the empirical practices associated with them. Lavoisier's gravimetric reduction, in the eyes of the phlogistians, annihilated the autonomy of chemistry together with its peculiar concepts of chemical substance and quality, chemical process and chemical affinity. The defence of phlogiston was the defence of a distinctly chemical conception of matter and its appearances, a conception which reflected the chemist's acquaintance with details and particularities of substances, properties and processes and his skills of adducing causal relations from the interplay between their complexity and uniformity.

Subcontracting in IT Industry: The End of the Road...or Beginning of a New Dawn

The article takes a synoptic look at subcontracting as a key managerial strategy to drive competitive growth. Subcontracting as a business operational strategy enables the primary company to focus on its core area and opens up the market for smaller players to compete at an optimal cost, high efficiency manner. Proliferation of subcontracting in the IT industry has been very fast with large quantum of work being subcontracted in both lines of business - H/W and S/W. All sectors ranging from H/W production and manufacturing, product support to S/W development, product services and maintenance services have been riding the bandwagon of Subcontracting. Advantages offered by subcontracting in the IT industry includes not only cost cutting but also agility in implementing solutions, access to new resource pools, ability to leverage the power to scale, greater operational efficiency and above all improved quality. Perils of subcontracting in the IT industry incorporates loss of innovative capability on part of the parent company, risk of loss through critical technology transfer, too much dependence on external sources and an inherent uncertainty in weakly implemented subcontracts. Success of Subcontracting is largely dependent on correct and precise definitions of the deliverables and responsibilities in the contract. It is important from the subcontracted party's point of view to adopt standard Quality Management practices, identify risks involved, have a back up risk mitigation plan supported by strict adherence to contract.

TIER 3 RESPONSE CENTRES—THE CHALLENGE OF OPERATING IN A TIER 2 ENVIRONMENT1

ABSTRACT East Asia Response Limited (EARL) in Singapore is a regional Tier 3 centre that provides response services throughout the Asia Pacific region. The Tier 3 response centres are designed to provide external international support to members. When these resources are used, the management of the response and the logistics support are drawn from the receiving organization. When a spill occurs in the Singapore Straits, particularly involving a shipping company or a P & I club, a whole new set of expectations and responsibilities need to be recognized both from the Government and the responsible party's point of view. The Port Authority has the jurisdiction over Singapore Port and is responsible for managing the clean-up under the guidance of the National Contingency Plan. The responsible party is looking for a comprehensive spill response service. EARL has put in place various additional arrangements to meet the new expectations of authorities and responsible parties. These include the training of external manpower sources, development and testing of booming plans for sensitive sites and logistics plans to support response crafts and waste management. This paper will highlight preparedness, response planning and activation in what is one of the world's busiest ports.

Disputants' Perceptions of Interactional Justice: Comparing How Employees and Supervisors Interact in Mediation

This paper examines how a disputant's role in a conflict impacts the disputant's perceptions of and satisfaction with transformative mediation. Specifically, it examines evidence of disputants' interactions in the context of transformative mediation for employees and supervisors at the United States Postal Service (USPS). The paper finds that managers/supervisors are more likely than employees to report that they learned something new about the other party, acknowledged the other party's point of view or apologized to the other person. There is also evidence for a modest amount of recognition from both employees and supervisors of the acknowledging, learning and apologizing of the other party. Both employees and supervisors report high rates of settlement when they report high levels of interactional justice in the transformative mediation. This indicates that the quality of participants' interactions in mediation is related to the quality of the mediated outcome. It is also evident that a participant's role in mediation impacts his or her interactions with the other participant.