On Measuring the Complexity of Urban Living

This paper explores the concept of city ranking as a way to measure dynamics and complexities of urban life. These rankings have various dimensions and uses. Both the context in which these rankings are done, and their nature has changed considerably overtime. These rankings are also afflicted with many methodological and measurement problems. A review of major city rankings and related literature is carried out to suggest a framework for measuring Pakistani cities.Quality of Life, Cities, Urbanization

Forest Management

This study analyses the institutional set-up of forest management in Pakistan, focusing on the North West Frontier Province, which houses 40 percent of the total forestlands. These areas have faced significant deforestation in the past. It is feared that if nothing is done to check this process, these forests will soon disappear. The study argues for the Property Rights School of thought that the roots of environmental problems are to be traced to inadequate and ill-defined property institutions. The study develops a normative criterion, describing the conditions that are essential for optimal utilisation and conservation of a resource, to be used in assessing the present situation. The analysis indicates that there are problems in the ownership structure, in the enforcement of property rules, as well as in the management system. It is concluded that the present institutional set-up is inappropriate to achieve the objective of forest conservation, and changes in this set-up are suggested. The study puts forward ‘collective management’ as an alternative institutional set-up.Forests, Institutions, Property Rights

Comments on Masudul Alam Chuodhury: 'Islamic critique and alternative to financial engineering issues'

This review questions Chuodhury's use of topological spaces for criticising the risk-return issues in mainstream financial literature. It highlights the failure of the work in producing an understandable Islamic alternate framework for the purpose.Financial engineering, Risk return analysis; scarcity of resources

The Performance Implications of Fit Among Environment, Strategy, Structure, Control System and Social Performance

Purpose – The paper examined concept of corporate performance. The paper seeks to examine the impact of corporate social performance on the relationship among business environment, strategy, organization, and control system and corporate performance. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a synthesis of the existing literatures in strategic management and accounting filed. Findings – The paper finds that corporate social performance defined as stakeholder relationship become one important dimension of the strategic behaviors that an organization can set to improve corporate performance. Research implication – the contextual variables as discussed in strategic management and accounting domain will be contingent upon strategic behaviors, which are behaviors of members in an organization. Originality/value – The paper integrates the contextual variables including business environment, strategy, organization structure, and control system with corporate performance by using corporate social performance as moderating variable by means of a recent literatures study from strategic management and accounting field. Keywords Contextual variable, strategic behavior, corporate social performance, corporate performanc

On a Lagrangian formulation of the incompressible Euler equation

In this paper we show that the incompressible Euler equation on the Sobolev space $H^s(\R^n)$, $s > n/2+1$, can be expressed in Lagrangian coordinates as a geodesic equation on an infinite dimensional manifold. Moreover the Christoffel map describing the geodesic equation is real analytic. The dynamics in Lagrangian coordinates is described on the group of volume preserving diffeomorphisms, which is an analytic submanifold of the whole diffeomorphism group. Furthermore it is shown that a Sobolev class vector field integrates to a curve on the diffeomorphism group

Identification of generic errors for effective formative feedback in energy studies thematic area of mechanical engineering

The paper describes the findings from a CETL funded project for the identification of generic errors made by undergraduate students within the thematic area of energy studies in an accredited Mechanical Engineering programme. The idea came from the author’s own experience of teaching in the above thematic area when he observed that the mistakes and errors that the students usually make have some recurrence. Also, the mistakes committed within this subject area are very much theme focused. A systematic qualitative investigation was carried out on the student works available within module boxes. Usually the number of student works kept in a module box is square root of n, where n represents the total number of scripts in a cohort. Four different modules spread over three academic levels (Levels 3,4,5) and for three academic years were available and considered for data collection. Altogether the number of student works that were available was 185. The methodology involved the standard qualitative categorisation approach where the scripts were scrutinised and re-scrutinised in an attempt to identify the commonality of mistakes. After several trials along with critical analysis of the tutor feedback on each individual script, it was possible to identify nine generic errors and mistakes. The frequencies were then counted and data presented in percentages. Interestingly, the findings from this study have later been compared with errors found in examination scripts (of one energy study module) in later years and a broad similarity has been found. Based on such observation, the author regularly uses the findings to remind students of the generic errors and mistakes and highlights the various ways in which they can be minimsed. The feedback from students has been found to be very positive. The results also highlight that similar templates can be produced for other thematic areas of learning such as ‘design’ or ‘mechanics’ within engineering disciplines. Students will greatly benefit from such an in-house list which may serve as a feed-forward template in their future years in the university and beyond

The Determinants of the Relationship of Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance: Conceptual Framework

The objective of this paper is to investigate relationship between CSP and CFP using contingency perspective derived from the strategic management domain. The investigation will be done using lens of slack resource and good management theory. This study is expected to provide a new insight on the link between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance using contingency perspective as suggested in the strategic management and accounting literature, an area has not been examined in the prior studies. The result of this study can resolve the existing conflict in the literatures by developing an integrated model of the link between CSP and CFP and the notion of corporate performance which, in strategic management, is highly affected by four factors: business environment, strategy, organization structure, and control system. The model will explain in what condition the relationship of CSP and CFP is valid Keywords: Corporate social performance, corporate financial performance, slack resource theory, good management theory, contingency theory, and moderating effect