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This project has explored the implementation of an integrative and collaborative policy _ vision in a real world setting - the emerging relationship between the river basin management planning (RBMP) and development planning regimes in Scotland. This relationship fits comfortably with some of the latest paradigms in the fields of water management and land use planning. Both fields espouse the need for greater integration and collaboration, particularly within and between public sector organisations. Such approaches are often portrayed as key to achieving ambitions for sustainability. The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) places particular emphasis on building linkages between water management and land use planning systems. There is growing understanding that such linkages can emerge as a patchwork of overlapping and interrelated institutions. However, there is still limited empirical understanding of such institutional relationships and what they mean in practical terms for those involved. This project's approach is based in interpretive policy analysis, and it has explored how various public bodies have constructed different understandings of this emerging relationship - what it is, how it works, and why it is needed. Methods included analyses of key documents, as well as in-depth interviews, primarily with RBMP and planning staff from local authorities, SEPA and other agencies. The findings show that the locus of the relationship is 'downshifting' towards lower levels of the planning regime - i.e. local development plans, and development management. In keeping with this, some higher level issues - such as the wider tradeoffs between enabling new development and ensuring the protection and improvement of the water environment - are not being discussed in this context. This pattern is shaped by wider socio-political aims, such as the government's central purpose of increasing sustainable economic growth. These findings support the need for higher-level interactions in which these wider aims can be discussed and debated.

M.Com. (Business Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.A. / The inability and shortcomings of current scientific models, methods and theories to fully and effectively explain certain phenomena and provide certain solutions to everyday problems, is a great cause for concern. The ruling Newtonian scientific paradigm that serves as the foundation for current scientific methods and theories, provides an insufficient ontological basis for studying and explaining complex and interdependent phenomena and questions. The attempt to explain and address problems and phenomena from this deterministic and fragmented viewpoint, was generally unsuccessful - an instance that is especially prominent in the social sciences. As with most fields of study, Development studies is also affected by the abovementioned reality. Development theories and approaches are still being distinguished by singular and fragmented approaches and views, where only single facets of the development process are being addressed. These theories and approaches also try to find solutions for development problems from a Western, First World perspective. Local communities' meaning-giving context was, and still is, rarely considered as part of the development equation and development as viewed by the West, was consequently "enforced" on these communities. In recent years there has been a shift in emphasis to a search for approaches that are inclusive, non-deterministic and process-driven which would better explain complex behaviour, problematique and phenomena. This tendency is also to be found in all the fields of scientific inquiry, including Development studies. In view of the abovementioned reality, it is subsequently necessary to examine the holistic ontology as it provides a clear and essential, albeit supplementary, alternative to the Newtonian scientific paradigm. The holistic ontology, which manifests concepts like linearity, causation, determinism, objectivity and inductive reasoning, differs from the Newtonian scientific paradigm in that it represents an opposite reality where concepts such as process, context and recursive relationships play a central role. The holistic ontology is also non-linear, non-causal and non-deterministic in nature. This dissertation then focuses on the holistic ontology as applied to development studies. The topics that receive attention in this dissertation are the meaning and goals of the concept of "development", the evolution of development theory, the concept and nature of holism and how the holistic ontology can be applied and operationalised in terms of development. It becomes evident that holism can contribute in a positive manner towards the whole development discourse and that this approach will sensitise developers (on a conscious level) of the importance of communities' recursive relationships and meaning-giving context in the development process. The holistic ontology thus provides, for the first time, a clear and definite alternative to the current fragmented Newtonian-based approaches from where development can be implemented.

M.Com. (Economics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract