Suriname and Guyana face oil-driven climate challenges

Significance Both economies now look set to be driven by oil investment and production for at least the next decade. This economic trend is the opposite of that experienced by many other economies which are attempting to transition towards clean energy in an effort to mitigate climate change impacts. Impacts Submission of Guyana’s second Paris Commitment goals will spark greater scrutiny of current climate change initiatives. Extractives companies operating in Guyana and Suriname may look to fund climate change initiatives there to bolster their reputations. Guyana’s renewable energy commitments will lead to new investment opportunities in this sector from 2022.

Integrating Service Learning With Systemic Change

This chapter examines the redesign of the Petey Greene Program (the PGP), which prepares undergraduate and graduate student volunteers at 30 higher education institutions to tutor people in prison. Through a redesign process, the PGP shifted from a service learning organization that only supplements existing prison education programs with volunteer tutors to one that also pursues systemic improvement in educational access for justice-impacted people and facilitates volunteer activism. The chapter explores how service learning programs may perpetuate unjust systems if they are not integrated into systemic change initiatives and offers a guide for using service learning programs as a platform for pursuing systemic change. The case study illustrates how higher education institutions can partner with external organizations to educate justice-oriented citizens who understand and address the structural root causes of injustice.

The social dynamics in establishing complex community climate change initiatives: the case of a community fridge in Scotland

Multiple factors are involved in community change processes, yet understanding how factors interact to shape these complex social processed is limited. This has important implications for both research and sustainability practice. This study examines key social dynamics in establishing complex community change initiatives using an in-depth action-oriented transdisciplinary approach with a case study of the development of a community fridge. Four critical social dynamics were identified: reinforcing interpretations, reinforcing interconnections, re-alignment of identities, and quality social relations involving multiple normative facets converging and diverging in different ways as the process unfolded. Initially, this led to a degenerative dynamic that heightened tensions between actors; however, re-alignment with wider social identities and expressions of the underlying normative dimensions involved in the initiative, a regenerative dynamic was created. This strengthened the conditions to support shared understanding, learning and enhanced relationships to enable different actors to work together to shape aspects of the initiative. Overall, the study highlights that future community-based change initiatives need to be guided by explicit approaches that work with social relationships, but where these relationships are conceptualised as dynamic normative spaces of interaction and exploration. This can inform understanding on how to develop beneficial reinforcing regenerative dynamics, where advances in one aspect of social relationships within initiatives can begin to reinforce others and ways that increase collective capacity as a whole. Developing this regenerative potential through social relationships within initiatives is thus critical for engaging with complex challenges across communities.

Role and Applicability of the Constructs “Readiness for Change” and “Capacity for Change”

Readiness for change is amongst the major factors influencing the success of change initiatives in organizations. The construct is multifaceted and usually refers to the commitment (of employees) and belief (shared by the group, organization) in their collective capability to implement a specific change initiative. Applying the dynamic capabilities and organizational ambidexterity lens, some researchers suggest a different construct – organizational capacity for change. The capacity for change refers to the successful implementation of multiple, often overlapping change initiatives, and thus allows organizations to simultaneously achieve short-term, operational tasks and long-term, strategic goals. The capacity for change describes the appropriate organizational context, leadership, organizational learning and takes into account previous experience with changes and the extent to which these are considered fair and personally beneficial by employees. Readiness and capacity for change are not always clearly distinguishable and, in some cases, appear as interchangeable terms denoting similar phenomena. This conceptual article explores the two constructs based on a theoretical study of conceptual and empirical studies. The research conclusions support the proposition that the two constructs share similarities but also differences, which justify their distinct roles in deepening our understanding of change in organizations and how to manage and successfully implement it.

Advancing Paulinian Core Values As SPUP’s Response To Climate Change

With the adverse effects of Climate Change in the environment, it is necessary to critically examine attitudes and behaviors relevant to environmental values. Highlighting the incorporation of the Paulinian Core Values, St. Paul University Philippines (SPUP) fostered environmental programs, projects, activities, and partnerships towards the realization of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on Climate Change. Utilizing the descriptive research design, this study examined the extent of integration of the Paulinian Core Values, namely: Christ-centeredness, Commission, Charity, Charism, and Community in the implementation of SPUP’s Climate Change initiatives. With participants composed of teachers, students, alumni, and members of partner-communities, the results showed that the degree of integration of the Paulinian Core Values in the realization of the University’s Climate Change-related endeavors is gauged to a “Very Great Extent”. Moreover, the findings also demonstrated the ability of SPUP to foster relevant and responsive environmental advocacy in engaging its academic and partner-communities towards the advancement of its Climate Change undertakings. This is reflected in the paradigm on SPUP Environmental Core Values, where the principles of ecological spirituality, environmental integrity, environmental justice, environmental engagement, and environmental stewardship are advanced vis-à-vis the Paulinian Core Values. KEYWORDS: St. Paul University Philippines, Climate Change initiatives, Paulinian Core Values, Environmental advocacy, SPUP Environmental Core Values

Digital Health Value Realization Through Active Change Efforts

Digital health has massive potential in health care but has been slow to evolve in comparison to other information-intensive industries, which have more readily taken advantage of new technology. One of the key barriers has been the complex relationship between the perceived return on investment for the investor and the resulting value to patients and caregivers. Those actors who pay for technologies do not always see an appreciable return for themselves, while those actors who must apply the technology to generate value are not always incentivized to do so. This misalignment across health system payers and administrators, clinicians and patients must be better understood and addressed to help accelerate digital health. This paper will examine this challenge through the clinician experience, using empirical case examples from Canada to illustrate opportunities for change. While many factors may influence digital health adoption, this paper specifically aims to explore the shifts in the balance of the perceived value of implementing digital health tools, vs. the efforts required to adopt them. It will explore two contrasting case examples: clinical adoption of EMRs in Canada from 2009 to 2015, and clinical adoption of virtual care technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2021. In 2006, Canada lagged peer countries significantly in the adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) in community-based care. Financial support and cooperation of multiple levels of government and clinical stakeholders were required to address the misaligned incentives, which led to significant uptake by care providers. The rapid adoption of virtual care in Canada in response to the pandemic provides another relevant example of the importance of alignment among the factors of clinical workflows, clinical appropriateness, technology integration and payment models. Experts have highlighted the need for standardization, regulation, and clear policy to ensure sustainable, high quality virtual care that complements in-person care. In both cases, the costs and effort of adopting new technologies outweighed direct clinician value, requiring change initiatives to catalyze progress. This imbalance could be unique to these examples in Canada, and may not be globally generalizable to the adoption of all digital health tools. However, how change efforts can be tailored to adjust to a rapidly evolving health care workforce, spanning diverse jurisdictions and stakeholder groups will be critical to the sustainability of virtual care adoption. Furthermore, what key elements must be considered to guide change initiatives for successful implementation, designed to influence change while adding value for patients, clinicians and Canada's health care systems? Using insights from successful change initiatives past and present, this paper aims to answer these questions to enable a smoother transition to digital health innovations of the future.

Considering the corporeal to facilitate research to practice transitions

PurposeThe authors suggest that the research-to-practice gap, such as that found in evidence-based management, is due in part to a lack of attention to embodied knowledge. The recommendation is for change agents to bring attention to embodied knowing when implementing change based on research. The purpose of the paper is to address the research-to-practice gap.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that considers limitations of the predominant approach to considering the research-to-practice gap. The literature on phenomenology, feminist theory, and learning theory form the basis for exploring these challenges as well as possible solutions for transcending the research-to-practice gap.FindingsStrategic opportunities for introducing increased corporeal understanding are advanced. The suggestions address the research-to-practice gap at three critical stages of research-based change initiatives. These include making embodied knowledge integral to change initiatives in framing research, reducing resistance, and increasing acceptance. Among the specific strategies discussed are attending to tacit knowledge when considering the change, embracing the embrained body including attending to kinesthetic resistance and starting with the body to increase acceptance when implementing change.Originality/valueThere has been very little previous attention to the corporeal in management research and practice, including in the organizational change literature. This paper not only increases this discussion significantly but also provides suggestions for how to move forward in practice.

A Comparison of Modern Heating Methods to Reduce a Heat Treaters CO2 Carbon Footprint

Several governments across the world have recently stepped up their action to fight climate change. Initiatives include from clean energy production to efficient buildings and reduced emissions from industry. The manufacturing industry will need to examine methods to reduce its carbon footprint, especially across energy-intensive sectors such as heat treatment. This paper explains and explores the latest developments in energy management in heat treatment with a specific focus on electrical heating and associated digital tools. In this paper, developments in IGBT (insulated-gate bipolar transistor) and SCR (silicon-controlled rectifier) technology will be compared as energy-efficient alternatives to variable reactance transformers (VRT’s) for electric vacuum furnaces.