Sustainability in the union

Operating as the center of student life, college unions have a central role to teach citizenship, social responsibility, and leadership. The perspective of stewardship is adopted in this chapter to advance a discussion about college unions as a model for campus sustainability.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90521/1/20014_ftp.pd

Poverty-Centred Rural Road Funds Sharing in Sub-Saharan Africa

Poverty-centred allocation of funds for rural roads and their systematic prioritisation are important to enhance sustainability, provide equality of transport opportunities and mitigate poverty. The aim of this work was to investigate and develop new approaches with specific emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa, given that the existing decision systems do not appropriately consider social impacts and poverty. An understanding of rural road funds allocation and road scheme prioritisation to alleviate poverty is important as road transport is by far the most predominant form of transport in Africa. This study developed new allocation and prioritisation processes for rural roads based on expert opinion surveys and empirical evidence, which were then applied to analyse allocation and road scheme selection processes used in Uganda and Ghana. The study found that the multi-dimensional poverty index is the most highly prioritised factor in rural road scheme selection and, for regional rural road funds sharing, poverty is equally weighted with the rural accessibility index. A goal programming model, based on expert opinion weightings, is recommended for poverty alleviation

The Dark Side of Transfer Pricing: Its Role in Tax Avoidance and Wealth Retentiveness

In conventional accounting literature, ?transfer pricing? is portrayed as a technique for optimal allocation of costs and revenues amongst divisions, subsidiaries and joint ventures within a group of related entities. Such representations of transfer pricing simultaneously acknowledge and occlude how it is deeply implicated in processes of wealth retentiveness that enable companies to avoid taxes and facilitate the flight of capital. A purely technical conception of transfer pricing calculations abstracts them from the politico-economic contexts of their development and use. The context is the modern corporation in an era of globalized trade and its relationship to state tax authorities, shareholders and other possible stakeholders. Transfer pricing practices are responsive to opportunities for determining values in ways that are consequential for enhancing private gains, and thereby contributing to relative social impoverishment, by avoiding the payment of public taxes. Evidence is provided by examining some of the transfer prices practices used by corporations to avoid taxes in developing and developed economies

Clarifying Differences Between Reading Skills and Reading Strategies

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88049/1/RT.61.5.1.pd

Regulating disasters? The role of international law in disaster prevention and management

Purpose – This article explores the role of international law in disaster prevention and management, with a particular focus on the emerging field of international disaster law, and its relationship with international human rights law. It further introduces the four articles of the special column of this journal issue, dedicated to disasters and international law. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is based upon primary sources of legislation and policy, as well as academic literature on disasters and international law. Findings – Although the field of international disaster law is at its infancy, we argue that this emergent area does have the potential to gain widespread recognition as a distinct field of law, and that this could be of benefit for the wider disaster management community. Originality/value – The article introduces key legal features and themes relating to international law and disasters, highlighting their relevance for disaster management. The added value is to widen the discussion on aspects of disasters regulated by international law, thus facilitating the future exchange with other academic subjects and operational fields. Keywords – disasters; international law; disaster management; treaties; human rights; international disaster law; international human rights law. Paper type – Research pape

Cost overruns – helping to define what they really mean

Civil engineers are often in the firing line for alleged cost overruns, particularly on major publicly funded infrastructure projects. This usually occurs when the final cost of a project is simply compared with the original estimate, even though this was published a long time ago, in different circumstances and for a quite different project to the one carried out. This paper proposes a systematic approach to ensure that cost overruns, should they occur, are more accurately defined in terms of when the initial and end costs are assessed, from which point of view, at which project stage, and including scope changes and financial assumptions. The paper refers to the UK’s £163 billion nuclear decommissioning programme

The strategic economic governance of Greater Manchester's local labour market by the local state: implications for young workers

This article explores how work and employment conditions for young workers are affected by the actions of the state at the spatial scale of the locality. The article argues that young workers have experienced deteriorating labour market conditions following shifts in the form which capitalist accumulation takes in the UK. This shift has altered the composition of the national state which has in turn led to changes in how it regulates both local labour markets and the economic strategies of the local state. One result of these changes is the diffusion of neoliberal labour market reforms which have led to negative material consequences for young workers; these are manifest in the expansion of low-waged work concentrated in a small number of sectors, and characterized by an intensified labour process

An e-learning support toolkit for social work students on placement

Students of the social work professions generally are required to be placed in social work settings and to undergo assessment in the workplace during their training. These students are usually supported by qualified practice tutors who regularly meet with them and give feedback on their practice performance and progress. The support procedure sometimes is fragile and affects the quality of the students? learning experience. Through a user centered design approach, the Remora project aims to provide an integration of mobile software toolkits and social software applications to support work-based learning and assessment for social workers. Two main applications are created and deployed on two categories of portable devices to help practice workers in their administration, information sharing and collection of documents linking with competency learning resources. The applications are extendible to be applicable to any work-based learning situation

Firm-level technology transfer and technology cooperation for wind energy between Europe, China and India: From North–South to South–North cooperation?

For several decades the leading wind energy nations were European, while China and India were mainly the recipients of technology transfer. This paper aims to explore the role technology transfer/cooperation from Europe played in shaping firm-level wind energy technologies in China and India and to discuss whether the recent technology cooperation between the Chinese, Indian, and European wind firms challenges the classical North–South technology cooperation paradigm. The research finds that firm-level technology transfer/cooperation shaped the leading wind energy technologies in China and to a lesser extent in India. The paper also finds that several trends towards South–North technology cooperation have been observed between China, India and Europe, such as South–North flows of capital, drivers for market access, and R&D leadership, while the origins of innovation (e.g. patents) seem to remain predominantly in the global North. The paper concludes that the technology cooperation between China, India, and Europe has become more multi-faceted and increasingly Southern-led