Negotiating Stakeholder Relationships in a Regional Circular Economy: Discourse Analysis of Multi-scalar Policies and Company Statements from the North of England

Circular economy (CE) literature discusses the need for cooperation between different stakeholders to promote a CE; there is also an assumption regarding the benefits of loop closing on a local or regional scale. However, the potentially conflicting priorities, understandings, and expectations of the stakeholders involved have not been sufficiently addressed. Regional (or local) authorities have a responsibility to promote prosperity for stakeholders in their administrative region, within the constraints of national policy; conversely companies can have financial imperatives associated with stakeholders who may be globally distributed. Evidence of these conflicting priorities, the various positions stakeholder take, and their expectations of each other can be seen in the language choices regional actors make in their public-facing policy and report documents. The aim of the paper is to consider the challenges for creating a regional-scale CE that might arise from the differing priorities and values of companies and public agencies relating to specific places. It uses discourse analysis (including critical approaches) to examine how policy and business documents represent the stakeholders of the CE, their place in it, their priorities, and, importantly, the relationship between CE actors, focusing on the case of North Humberside on the North East coast of England. The plans set out in these reports are designed for external stakeholders and allow us to gain an insight into company and policy thinking in relation to CE developments in the coming years, including how they view each other’s roles. Findings indicate a shared motivation across scales and sectors for the CE as a means towards sustainable growth within which business plays a central role. However, there is a critical double disjuncture between different visions for implementation. First, between policy scales, a regional-scale CE is prioritised by regional policymakers, who have an interest in economic advantage being tied to a specific place and call for national scale support for their actions. Second, between regional policymakers and business, companies focus on their own internal operations and potential supply chain collaborations, with little attention given to the regional scale. This can be seen in the way organisations represent the actors of a nascent CE differently. In addition, a hegemonic business-focused growth discourse excludes other visions of the CE; the public are relegated to a passive role primarily as consumers and recipients of under-specified “opportunities” of wealth creation. CE theorisations need to incorporate and address these critical perspectives in order to support the development of strategies to overcome them.

A Machine Learning Approach for Anomaly Detection to Secure Smart Grid Systems

The rapid industrial growth in cyber-physical systems has led to upgradation of the traditional power grid into a network communication infrastructure. The benefits of integrating smart components have brought about security issues as attack perimeter has increased. In this chapter, firstly, the authors train the network on the results generated by the uncompromised grid network result dataset and then extract valuable features by the various system calls made by the kernel on the grid and after that internal operations being performed. Analyzing the metrics and predicting how the call lists are differing in call types, parameters being passed to the OS, the size of the system calls, and return values of the calls of both the systems and identifying benign devices from the compromised ones in the test bed are done. Predictions can be accurately made on the device behavior in the smart grid and calculating the efficiency of correct detection vs. false detection according to the confusion matrix, and finally, accuracy and F-score will be computed against successful anomaly detection behavior.

Evaluating the Performance of Using Balanced Scorecard Case Study: Al-Aqsa University

This study aimed to identify the concept and dimensions of the balanced scorecard, identifying the degree to apply Al-Aqsa University the dimensions of the balanced scorecard, and identifying the fifth dimension related to the environmental dimension and the extent of its application at Al-Aqsa University. Al-Aqsa University seeks to use the best modern methods and keep pace with the development taking place. The descriptive analytical approach was used, and this study relied on collecting secondary data from several sources beside the primary sources represented by the questionnaire. The study concluded that Al-Aqsa University maintains a high market of registered students among the universities of the Gaza Strip throughout the academic years, and also Al-Aqsa University fulfills the elements of customer dimension in its performance and is keen to treat students fairly and without discrimination, but it does not give much attention to complaints submitted by students, The university also fulfills the requirements of the internal operations dimension, as the university is characterized by the diversity of the faculties and specializations in it to suit the requirements of students and the labor market, but it is blamed for its inability to provide job opportunities for graduates, but this is due to the economic conditions that the Gaza sector suffers from. As for the dimension of learning and growth, it was found that the academic staff at Al-Aqsa University is distinguished in terms of academic degrees, and this is reflected positively on the educational services provided. In addition to the interest in publishing scientific research and conferences, the university also has a deanship of scientific research and a magazine for publishing scientific research, all of which confirms the university's interest in learning, and finally it turns out that the university is keenly interested in the environment and providing an appropriate environment for its students. In light of the results, the study recommended a set of recommendations, the most important of which is the necessity of applying the Balanced Scorecard as a planning, evaluation and measurement card.

EFFECTS OF MOBILE BANKING ON THE PERFORMANCE OF ISLAMIC MICROFINANCE INSTITUTIONS IN BANGLADESH

This study examines the effect of mobile banking on performance of Islamic Microfinance Institutions (IMFIs) in Bangladesh which includes their efficiency and internal operations, staff productivity, communication, breadth and depth of outreach, financial sustainability and portfolio quality. A questionnaire survey method was used for collecting the relevant data (n=200) from the selected sample representing the study population. The findings of this study reveals that Mobile Banking (MB) has a significant and positive effect on the performance of Islamic Microfinance Institutions (IMFIs) in Bangladesh, and it is perceived from the results that MB could significantly improve the performance of IMFIs by increasing the efficiency, staff productivity, communication, outreach and financial sustainability except portfolio quality.

Governance Challenges and Opportunities for the International Labour Organization in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The International Labour Organization has confronted several governance challenges in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article looks at the impact of the pandemic on both the internal operations of this unique tripartite UN Specialized Agency and on the ILO’s substantive work on labour market and social protection governance. It explores how international labour standards and their monitoring offer human rights pointers for addressing the crisis. The article highlights interaction (not always coherent) between the ILO and other organizations in connection with COVID-19 and economic recovery. It foreshadows initiatives on how to ‘build back better,’ with the ILO again seeking a strengthened multilateral role in support of its social justice mandate, as informed by resolutions adopted by the International Labour Conference. The article also touches on the pandemic’s impact on the functioning of the ILO Administrative Tribunal, which adjudicates employment disputes for many international organizations.

East-African women’s thoughts on stimulating the growth of their mid-scale enterprises

Background: Some of the obstacles to successful entrepreneurship in emerging economies are embedded in the internal operations and management of enterprises, especially women mid-scale enterprises. This includes the lack of effective strategies that promote the growth of women-owned mid-scale enterprises and their inclination towards necessity-based entrepreneurship, which greatly limits their growth potential.Aim: The study explored the experience and know-how of strategies applied by three high-profiled women-owned mid-scale enterprises in East Africa to stimulate their business growth.Methods: A qualitative research approach, using perspective seeking methods by applying unrestrictive semi-structured questioning was adopted.Results: Findings suggest that women must embrace, recognise and own their internal aspirations and ambition to grow their mid-scale enterprise.Conclusion: Women-owned mid-scale enterprises showed the need to map out their strategic growth plan and it must be built on a solid foundation to justify the need to grow for all stakeholders to buy into it.

Online-Based Hotel Information System

As with many occupations, computers and technology have become vital parts of working life. With hotel management, computers can be used to record, report and analyze the effectiveness of internal operations such as reservations, registration, guest history, guest accounting audit, and back-office accounting, thereby bringing a variety of benefits including ample amount of memory, advanced communication, advanced functioning among others. In view of these, this study design and develop an online-based hotel information system for University of Benin Guest House, Benin City, Edo State. The system is met to automate data entry methods; ensure efficient and reliable communication within the Guest House and enable fast and easy retrieval of guest records and data for fast reference activities. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) was used to model the system architecture and design, while the software was developed using PHP and MySQL. Also provided in this report is a description of the software design and implementation requirements.

How Digitization Lowers Oil & Gas Industry Break Even Cost

The Oil&Gas industry has experienced three price crises over the past twelve years. Swings in the key variables of politics, economy and technology affect supply and demand dynamics and consequently oil prices. The rise of unconventional sources brought the industry into a recurrent surplus of supply, putting pressure on prices and the combination of a supply shock, shortage of storage and an unprecedent demand drop brought prices to a 30-years low in April 2020. Although volatile oil prices make it challenging for oil companies to manage their markets, the silver lining in low oil prices is that it forced the industry to focus on rendering their internal operations more efficient. O&G producers cut their costs dramatically to remain profitable. The industry embarked on an optimization path and consequently accelerated the adoption of digital transformation. The COVID-19 crisis along with increasing societal pressure has only been a catalyzer to this digital transformation, unlocking significant operational improvements and reducing carbon emissions. According to the latest Rystad Energy analysis average breakeven price dropped 35% between 2014 and 2018, and an additional 10% over the last 2 years, to a $50 breakeven price per barrel.

Efficiency of Higher Education in the Presence of Shared Inputs using Data Envelopment Analysis

This study measures the efficiency of higher education institutions with respect to teaching activity, research activity, and overall activities and also provides a direction for low-performing institutions to improve their performance. In many instances, the efficiency of the institution is a sum up of the efficiency of its activities. However, when the activities consume some resources in common, it requires the allocation of shared resources among the activities. Since sums up the efficiency of each activity does not give the institution's overall efficiency, we use a joint data envelopment analysis that takes into account the institution's internal operations to measure the teaching efficiency, research efficiency, and overall efficiency of the institutions. The empirical results indicate that the institutions that execute both activities simultaneously become more productive rather than adopt a single activity. Hence, this study suggests a useful and measurable action to improve the institution’s performance.

Academic Leaders in Al-Baydaa University Assessing the Strategic Performance by Using B.S.C: تقييم القيادات الأكاديمية بجامعة البيضاء للأداء الاستراتيجي باستخدام بطاقة الأداء المتوازن

This research aimed to evaluate the strategic performance of Al-Baydaa University by using BSC with its four perspectives (financial - clients’- internal processes - learning and growth, the researcher used the descriptive survey method, while it relied on Delphi method for data collection, the questionnaire applied to (17) experts was the tool. The research concluded the following results: The general assessment of the reality of the strategic performance of the University of Al-Baydaa got a total average (1.54 out of 3), with a degree (weak). At the level of dimensions, the beneficiaries dimension got the highest average (1.58), then the internal operations dimension with an average (1.56), and thirdly the financial performance dimension with an average (1.54), and finally the learning and growth dimension with an average (1.47), all of which came with a performance degree (weak) ranked. The researcher recommendation that universities must adoption BSC to evaluate and improve performance because it has a completely perspectives strategic tool, which needs availability necessary materialism and non- materialism potentials. It also made a number of proposals, including the need to study the requirements for developing the strategic performance appraisal system in Yemeni universities, "a qualitative field study."