Stakeholders In Processes Research Articles

Discussing ecosystem services in management of agroecosystems: a role playing game in the eastern Brazilian Amazon

This research assessed how ecosystem services (ES) are taken into account in the decision-making process of stakeholders involved in the management of agroecosystems, in particular agroforestry systems, and how an Role-Playing Game (RPG) can serve as a tool to allow them to discuss the issues concerned. The study was conducted in two municipalities (Paragominas and Irituia) located in the Brazilian Amazon. The game was developed in 2018 using a co-construction process that mainly included farmers, students and researchers. Data was collected during two sessions of the game held in 2019, with participation by heterogeneous participants from different local institutions. Our results demonstrated that game sessions showed how the provision of ES, as well as other factors (e.g. values, availability of factors), is taken into account in planning the spatio-temporal configuration of the agroecosystem and associated agricultural practices. They also revealed some trade-offs involved in this decision-making process. We conclude that the RPG allowed stakeholders to synthesize and discuss different types of knowledge about this process. Bringing these elements to the discussion can contribute to an improved shared understanding of the challenges and possibilities of the ecological management of agroecosystems and can indicate solutions that are in line with local expectations.

A stakeholder-based view of the evolution of intellectual property institutions

In this article, we address several limitations of prior international business studies that investigate how and why intellectual property rights (IPR) institutions evolve in ways of consequence to multinationals. To do this, we develop a dynamic stakeholder-based view (SBV) of micro- and macro-processes shaping the evolution of formal institutions. The SBV micro-processes include (1) establishment of endogenous and exogenous stakeholders, (2) formation of stakeholders’ interests, (3) evaluation of stakeholders’ salience, (4) governance of the focal institution, and (5) interpretation of the impacts from institutional governance. The SBV macro-processes include (1) feedback loops among the micro-processes and (2) the stickiness of each stakeholder process. We demonstrate the explanatory power of our framework by offering historical examples of how and why the SBV processes have shaped the heterogeneous evolution of IPR institutions in China, the US, and other countries. We argue that IPR institutions, despite experiencing significant convergence in places, will continue to diverge across countries in ways of consequence to multinationals due to the stickiness of stakeholder processes. We also illustrate that the third SBV micro-process, evaluation of stakeholders’ salience, most immediately explains IPR institutions’ evolution. Our work challenges recent assertions about the evolution of IPR institutions and what this means for multinational firms doing business across borders.

Exploiting digitalization for the coordination of required changes to improve engineer-to-order materials flow management

Purpose The dynamic nature and complexity of construction projects make it challenging to ensure that the engineer-to-order (ETO) materials supplied onsite match changing needs. The quick and efficient communication of required changes in material fabrication, delivery and use, due to changes in the design and construction schedules, is needed to address the challenges. This study aims to provide a novel integrated management framework with its embedded informatics to help major stakeholders efficiently absorb agility during communication to deal with required changes and improve workflows. Design/methodology/approach An integrated management framework is developed that integrates the milestones in look-ahead plans and structured iterative processes for major supply chain stakeholders to quickly disseminate information emanating from changes in design, schedules, production and transportation. A prototype system is devised including the informatics to support the framework, which consists of BIM-RFID functional modules and a central database and uses a client-server architecture. The usefulness of the prototype is illustrated using a construction of part of a fictive but realistic high-rise building. Findings The integrated management framework with the informatics provides major stakeholders with the ability to coordinate their activities efficiently and stimulate their agility (measured by process time) in planning and controlling material information. Although only a fictive example was used, it is shown that the use of the system is likely to result in a substantial reduction in the time required to deal with required changes when delivering ETO materials onsite (by 18% in the example). Research limitations/implications The functionalities of the prototype system can be easily scaled up to coordinate changes in the design and scheduling of other types of materials. More functional developments are needed to show the extent of the possible improvement for entire construction projects. Future work should focus on investigating the possible improvements for other types and sizes of construction projects, and eventually in real-world construction projects. Practical implications By fitting the look-ahead plans into structured iterative processes through digital data sharing, stakeholders increased their capability to quickly capture required change information and resolve associated problems. This is particularly useful for the management of ETO supply chain processes, where prefabricated elements such as ductwork, plumbing, and mechanical systems typically have to be modified because of last-minute design and schedule changes. Originality/value Unlike traditional information technology (IT) based supply chain management practices, this research is characterized by a process-centered management framework that provides explicit decision points over iterative planning processes for major stakeholders to manage material information. The iterations through digital data sharing allow stakeholders to quickly respond to last-minute changes on site, which fundamentally achieves workflow agility in the construction supply chain context.

Expanded Neonatal Bloodspot Screening Programmes: An Evaluation Framework to Discuss New Conditions With Stakeholders.

Neonatal bloodspot screening (NBS) programmes that screen for rare but serious conditions are expanding worldwide. Fast developments for testing and treatment put pressure on implementation processes. In 2015 the Netherlands embarked on an NBS expansion from 17 to 31 conditions. An evaluation framework was developed based on international NBS frameworks to gain insight in test properties, clinical findings, follow-up and implementation. A stakeholder process took place with implications for the planning of the expanded NBS panel. The evaluation framework progressed into a go/no go framework to start national screening, and is currently explored as basis for continuous evaluation of the NBS panel. The framework and stakeholder process may serve as an example for other programmes.

A formative and self-reflective approach to monitoring and evaluation of interdisciplinary team research: An integrated water resource modelling application in Australia

Recent literature on model evaluation has highlighted the need, particularly in an interdisciplinary problem and team setting, to go beyond the evaluation of results and outputs of a problem-solving pathway (process), and monitor and evaluate the pathway itself to improve ongoing activities undertaken by the research team that best achieve the desired impact. By reflecting on what decisions have been made, the reasons, influences and effects of each decision, such evaluation can improve the learning process of stakeholders and researchers. The authors have designed a formative, self-reflective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) process and applied it to an integrated assessment and modelling project in the Campaspe catchment, part of the Murray-Darling Basin in Victoria, Australia. The M&E process consists of six steps: 1) review of documents to understand research goals, priorities and records, 2) pathway assessment, 3) reflective meetings with each team member, 4) analysis of qualitative data from meetings to capture perceived strengths, weaknesses, successes and failures, and suggested actions, objections and goals, 5) survey to elicit feedback on identified goals, objectives and actions, and 6) a report of approved actions based on the conducted survey of team members. Four overall goals and constituent objectives were identified with 42 actions, and between 37 and 42 of these actions appear to have support for adoption. The evaluation indicated the benefits of the enhanced M&E approach to realise a more adaptive and effective problem-solving modelling and assessment project.

CALS–Technology as a Basis of Creating Modules for Assessment of Construction Products Quality, Regulation of Organizational, Technological and Business Processes of Stakeholders of Construction Industry Under the Conditions of Cyclical a

CALS–Technology as a Basis of Creating Modules for Assessment of Construction Products Quality, Regulation of Organizational, Technological and Business Processes of Stakeholders of Construction Industry Under the Conditions of Cyclical and Seasonal Variations

Path towards community resilience: Examining stakeholders’ coordination at the intersection of the built, natural, and social systems

It is well established that low-income and communities of color often receive delayed disaster recovery while disproportionately impacted from disasters. Governments have more recently employed equity principles into their policies and frameworks to improve resiliency of such communities to disasters. However, although many city agencies have an overlying goal to advance racial equity, the reality of coordination efforts may reveal shortcomings that perpetuate inequitable outcomes in the decision-making process of city stakeholders. This study assessed internal stakeholder interviews from city agencies, social services, and a nonprofit in summer of 2018 to identify obstacles and opportunities for building community resilience in Southeast Austin. An inductive qualitative analysis was then performed to extract emergent themes from the interviews. Key recommendations for improving equitable community resilience planning were developed such as, increased internal coordination and collaboration, and improved external communication and engagement. This study contributes to understanding the relationship of equity in community resiliency planning and represents an important contribution to understanding the influential factors that shape a decision-makers role in planning efforts. Improving such understandings can support more collaborative and participatory decision-making processes between affected community members and city agencies.

Analysis on asymptotic stabilization of eco-compensation program for forest ecotourism stakeholders.

Nowadays, many countries in the world have paid attention to the issue of improving the eco-compensation program for their forest ecotourism systems aiming to successfully drive forest ecosystem protection. However, an operable eco-compensation mechanism must give a fair and balanced consideration to each involved party's pursuits which naturally encompass benefits and responsibilities. In this study, based on the evolutionary game theory, we developed a set of mathematical models to evaluate the attitudes and preferences toward the eco-compensation programs in which the three primary stakeholders are involved including farmers, local government, and business groups in order to investigate whether the stakeholders' asymptotic stabilization strategy can be discovered. In addition, the simulation analysis shows the sensitivity characteristics and evolution process of stakeholders influenced by multiple influencing factors. The results show that the threshold effect of these factors turns out to be an important basis in formulating sustainable development schemes for the eco-compensation program in the forest ecotourism system. Furthermore, the simulation analysis also shows that the initial state of stakeholders affects the rate of convergence to the asymptotic stability. Accordingly, we put forward the three-stage strategy and address policy implications on the operable eco-compensation program development of the forest ecotourism system.

New method for predicting long-term travel time of commercial vehicles to improve policy-making processes

Abstract Long-term travel time prediction, ahead of making a trip, is vital from the planning perspective of delivery freight, timetable design, vehicle/crew scheduling and further activities. The better the prediction is, the higher the reliability of service that can be offered. This study presents a discrete and continuous combined analysis for attaining improved long-term travel time prediction (LTTP) of commercial vehicles. One main problem of LTTP is that the speed factors are unknown ahead of trips. In light of this, the nonnegative tensor factorization and completion with neural weighted initialization is proposed to extract the potential speed patterns among multiple discrete factors and to complete the sparse tensors. The Gaussian mixture regression is adopted for handling the continuous factors. The proposed methodology with a combined discrete and continuous analysis is able to effectively integrate multiple factors into the computation, including vehicle type, road type, days, time period, weather conditions, driver differences and travel distance. The methodology is able to reduce the long-term travel time prediction error between 14% and 43% compared with the traditional average speed method and other baseline methods, which suggests its effectiveness. It can strategically assist policy-making processes of stakeholders on investment, insurance, planning and management, and can help tactically in predicting long-term travel time ahead of the scheduled trips to improve the reliability of the schedules. Furthermore, operationally, it can also be used to enrich current navigation information systems by separately predicting the commercial vehicles’ travel time based on multiple factors.

Analytical Framework for Homeowner-Focused Computational Cost-Benefit Mitigation Decision Making

As a result of increasing windstorm losses in the United States over the past 50 years, a variety of residential wind hazard mitigation strategies have been recommended. Wind hazard mitigation undoubtedly reduces windstorm losses; however, little customized information is available to support the economic decision-making process for individual stakeholders, especially at the consumer level. Therefore, there is a need for decision support tools to calculate, evaluate, and present the economic benefits of mitigation over variable decision-making time horizons for unique building characteristics in specific geographical locations. This paper presents a cost-benefit computational decision-making recommendation framework that evaluates and presents the cost effectiveness of mitigation, customized based on location, years of interest, and building characteristics. The decision-making framework consists of two cores. The user-independent core and user-dependent core which consists of eight steps, divided into four subprocesses: (1) data acquisition, (2) data evaluation, (3) cost-benefit calculation, and (4) results comparison and decision making. To demonstrate the framework, a wood-framed single-family home in light suburban terrain in Golden Meadow, Louisiana, is used as a case study, considering retrofit mitigation with a $15,000 budget and a decision-making time horizon of 30 years. The case study provides six mitigation options, with cost ranging between approximately $2,000 and $15,000 and net benefit/cost ratios ranging from 2.4 to 13. Once fully implemented in a decision making information tool, the developed mitigation recommendation framework will provide valuable information that can be used by home designers, builders, owners, and other stakeholders to better understand the economic facets of wind hazard mitigation, providing critical information as part of the overall decision-making process.

Developing a Conceptual Model for Sustainable water Resource Management and Agricultural Development: the Case of the Breede River Catchment Area, South Africa.

The complex relationship that exists between water resources and agricultural production has been increasing constantly globally. Several factors are interacting to influence the management of water resources making the system complex and dynamic. To increase the understanding of these complex and dynamic systems, relevant tools are needed to identify the causal relationships that exist between the drivers and their influences on the system. Participatory modelling based on the system dynamics approach provides a simplistic and visualisation tool that can improve the understanding of the functioning of a complex and dynamic system. A multi-stage participatory approach was used in this study involving relevant stakeholders in the development of an integrated conceptual system dynamic model using causal loop diagrams. This approach was used because it captures the thought process and mental model of relevant stakeholders in the development of the model, making it a valuable tool for policy and decision making at government and individual levels. The integrated model built in this study used causal loop diagrams to address problems of water management and agricultural sustainability in the Breede River Catchment. The model shows major causal-relationships and feedback loops that determine the functioning of the overall system. The model demonstrates the usefulness of the participatory approach in solving problems related to water management and agricultural development in the catchment.

N’KaNa-my dream: Community action towards the holistic child development in India

Every child has a right to dream for their future. Children are vulnerable and face challenges in accessing their rights, including but not limited to joyful family and community life; quality health, education, and career facilitation; and an understanding of their ecosystem. Innovations in holistic child development are essential and require child-centered and right-based approaches in the welfare system. There is a need for a customized and personalized approach to bridge the gap in the child development process and to help children explore and enjoy their rights and realize their full potential as rights-holders in society.To address this need, Trust for Youth and Child Leadership (TYCL) initiated N’KaNa, a holistic mentorship program for children living in difficult circumstances, such as institutional care and vulnerable communities such as slums and Dalit and tribal villages of Puducherry and Tamil Nadu regions of India.N'KaNa aims to build brother/sister relationships between needy children and local pre-assessed and pre-selected professional mentors. The program relationships include a mentee (child), a mentor (professional), and a student volunteer.Mentorship progress is tracked through a mobile application.This paper has been developed based on the impact measurement of the N’KaNa project. The researchers adopted a decolonizing research methodology to theorize a postcolonial indigenous way of conducting research and applied a triangulation strategy to qualitativeresearch approaches. Focused life story interviews with children ofN’KaNa assessed holistic child development indicators such as education, health, relationships with friends and family, community support, safe environment, and personal hygiene. Triangular feedback and child mentorship tracker data was used to cross-validate the qualitative data. The study found that the children's lived experiences highly influenced their career goals and that the program helps them track their progress systematically. The research also observed positive indicators of change in children's education, health, family safety, community environment, attitude, and behavior. This paper captures the model of the N’KaNa project, a participatory holistic child development process, its outcomes, challenges, and lessons learned from the process and recommendations for key stakeholders of the child welfare system in India.

Electricity Market of the Future: Potential North American Designs Without Fuel Costs

Electricity markets in the united states and Canada have evolved since their inception in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Not all states and provinces moved toward restructured organized electricity markets, but rather those that have belonged to markets operated by independent system operators (ISOs) and regional transmission organizations, with designs developed through stakeholder processes and approved through state, provincial, or federal agencies, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Ontology-based Process Reengineering To Support Digitalization Of MRO Operations: Application To An Aviation Industry Case

After sales services are characterized by interlinked service provider and customer operations. Furthermore, proper management of data related to the physical product and its lifecycle is essential for proposition of value-adding services. In this article, we present a novel ontology-based approach for improvement of maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) processes, where the ontology captures information of industry standards and product-related data. By clearly defining relations, the ontology supports the digitalization of operations and utilization of data in operational processes of different stakeholders. The approach was developed and demonstrated by investigating data of a case from aviation MRO industry.

Explaining Individual and Collective Programming Students’ Behavior by Interpreting a Black-Box Predictive Model

Predicting student performance as early as possible and analysing to which extent initial student behaviour could lead to failure or success is critical in introductory programming (CS1) courses, for allowing prompt intervention in a move towards alleviating their high failure rate. However, in CS1 performance prediction, there is a serious lack of studies that interpret the predictive model’s decisions. In this sense, we designed a long-term study using very fine-grained log-data of 2056 students, collected from the first two weeks of CS1 courses. We extract features that measure how students deal with deadlines, how they fix errors, how much time they spend programming, and so forth. Subsequently, we construct a predictive model that achieved cutting-edge results with area under the curve (AUC) of.89, and an average accuracy of 81.3%. To allow an effective intervention and to facilitate human-AI collaboration towards prescriptive analytics, we, for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, go a step further than the prediction itself and leverage this field by proposing an approach to explaining our predictive model decisions individually and collectively using a game-theory based framework (SHAP), (Lundberg <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">et al.</i> , 2020) that allows interpreting our black-box non-linear model linearly. In other words, we explain the feature effects, clearly by visualising and analysing individual predictions, the overall importance of features, and identification of typical prediction paths. This method can be further applied to other emerging competitive models, as the CS1 prediction field progresses, ensuring transparency of the process for key stakeholders: administrators, teachers, and students.

Patent infringement analysis using a text mining technique based on SAO structure

As can be seen in the emergence of non-practicing entities, patent infringement lawsuits are very significant events for companies, both financially and technologically. Thus, the importance of patent infringement analysis has been emphasized to support a decision-making process of potential stakeholders. Since identifying patent infringement needs to consider various factors, the most appropriate method is to review the expert analysis in each case. However, as the size of valuable data continues to grow in recent years, the need for automated quantitative analysis that enables to perform such processes without experts has increased. Thus, this research aims to develop an automated approach for patent infringement using Subject-Action-Object structure-based text mining technique and SAO2Vec, which focus on the functions of technology in patent documents and product documents. The proposed framework consists of three modules. In the first module, the types of companies in which patent infringement can occur are defined, and then lists of companies selected by various databases are identified. In the second module, vectors of the SAO structures are derived from the patent documents of the selected company using the Doc2Vec-based SAO2Vec. In the last module, the results of the first and second modules are used to calculate the patent infringement indicators. To validate the suggested approach, we applied it to the case of Nintendo, which had recently become an issue in patent infringement lawsuits. We found that the proposed indicators were a statistically good indicator to judge the patent infringement, identifying the pairs of patents that have a high possibility of patent infringement.

Technology Use of Older Adults and Caregivers: Discoveries and Opportunities for Improvement

Innovative technology can improve the lives of older adults, including those diagnosed with dementia, and their caregivers. Yet a lack of careful attention to preferences and needs of end-users and continuous updates to resources could leave consumers without a valuable user experience. This symposium will cover exemplar cases of innovative technologies, available resources, and current research. The first presentation will discuss virtual reality used among older adults with dementia and the opportunities to further explore it’s use as an intervention. The second presentation will share the process of seeking stakeholders’ preferences in the design specifications for a socially assistive robot and how the perspectives shaped the development of the Quori robot. The third presentation will focus on detailing the Information Quality Framework for Online Dementia Care Resources. The fourth presentation will discuss the implications of a systematic review that revealed researchers are reporting on all older adults within a category of 65 and older, thus failing to present variance among different older age cohorts. These presentations will all conclude with a discussion on opportunities for improvement in the respective areas.

Building trust in SWAT model scenarios through a multi-institutional approach in Uruguay

The inherent complexity of numerical models and the diversity of stakeholders in integrated water resources management (IWRM) create challenges in achieving credibility, salience and legitimacy to develop trust in model-based scenarios. In Uruguay, there has been significant debate on increasing agricultural production while managing agriculture’s environmental impacts (e.g., on water quality and environmental flows). This paper reports on the evolution of a stakeholder process in a case study with a multi-institutional participatory modelling group, supported by researchers. This specific participatory modelling (PM) project is unique in that the active stakeholders are the actual hydrological modellers, and the role of “experts” is mainly in facilitation and capacity building. The results highlight the different bottlenecks and the factors that enabled effective collaboration in this PM project. The main bottlenecks were related to: different views on representation of the watershed, the quality and usability of different input data, the public information for the technical implementation of the model, and the priority of output scenarios. The factors that enhanced collaboration were: a focus on a single basin problem, strong support from upper management, and support from experts in coordination and capacity building. The detailed documentation provided with this project can inspire similar approaches in the future.

Advancing neighbourhood sustainability assessment by accounting for sustainable development goals: A case study of Sha Tin neighbourhood in Hong Kong

Traditional triple bottom line approach used in existing neighbourhood sustainability assessment (NSA) tools provide an unbalanced focus on sustainability dimensions and are non-spatial. As a consequence, these tools may not aid decision-making process of different stakeholders. For this purpose, we propose an urban sustainability spatial hotspot analysis that integrates the Five Capitals Model (FCM) with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The FCM based NSA framework redefines sustainability in existing NSA tools as it considers the maintenance of five major stocks – natural, social, human, financial, and manufactured – in a neighbourhood. The evaluation of the flow of these stocks is conducted at the level of each residential estate based on indicators that are mapped to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). GIS is integrated to facilitate bottom-up model of indicator development with high-resolution data and discover spatial inequalities through heat maps. The developed method is applied to Sha Tin neighbourhood in Hong Kong. Heat maps generated identify priority intervention areas in Sha Tin that need much attention. The developed tool aims to democratize the use of NSAs by addressing different decision-making challenges for a diverse set of stakeholders across various levels.

Sustainable housing development: the legitimacy-seeking perspective

PurposeRapid urbanization and the influx of rural residents to urban cities has led to the growth of informal settlements globally. Drawing on institutional theory, this paper aims to examine institutional actors’ legitimacy seeking behaviour to housing issues and their responses to regulative, normative and cultural pressures.Design/methodology/approachThe qualitative case-study research approach is adopted by conducting 25 in-depth interviews that involved purposefully chosen institutional actors in the housing sector. Online observations and documents are used to support the interview data.FindingsThematic analysis of data gathered suggests that these actors, guided by sensemaking, invest in relationship-building to attain market, social, relational and political legitimacy. The relationship-building also leads to the legitimation of institutional actors’ existence via an eclectic mix of economic, social and political actions.Originality/valueThe results not only guide policymakers faced with potentially conflicting demands to legitimize sustainable housing developments policy that could benefit the urban poor’s shelter needs but also to consider the interactive and dynamic processes of stakeholders’ pressures, in a highly regulated housing environment.