Diss. Univ. St. Gallen, 2008. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).

Diss. Goethe-Univ. Frankfurt am Main, 2009. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).

Diss. Goethe-Univ. Frankfurt am Main, 2009. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).

Diss. HHL - Leipzig Graduate School of Management, 2006.

Diss. Univ. Mannheim, 2005.

Diss. Techn. Univ. Darmstadt, 2009. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).

Diss. Techn. Univ. Darmstadt, 2009. / Business and Economics (German Language) (Springer-11775) (GWV).

Post-disaster reconstruction, critical in restoring the affected community, provides new opportunities to redevelop the disaster affected region for economic growth, future vulnerability reduction and sustainable development as well. However, previous studies reveal that these opportunities have not been fully exploited. Many reconstruction projects have performed poorly due to various political, administrational, social, and policy/regulation-related reasons. To address the spotlighted gaps in post-disaster reconstruction, Public-Private-People Partnership (4P) is proposed and developed to procure more sustainable public infrastructure and to improve the overall performance of disaster management (DM) through integrating preparedness and mitigation into reconstruction processes. Public- Private Partnerships (PPP), which have demonstrated superior performance compared to the traditional approach in many infrastructure projects, are the practical and theoretical foundation of the proposed 4P. The integrated 4th P-‘people’ refers to major stakeholders who play critical roles in reconstruction, namely Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), local communities, academia, professional groups and media. A 4P framework, comprising of a procurement framework and a partnership framework, was developed based on the consolidated findings from a literature review and empirical data. The procurement framework provides a three-stage procurement process to deliver a typical 4P project, including planning for post-disaster reconstruction procurement, establishing framework agreement and 4P delivery. Through pre-disaster arrangements formally linking potential participants in advance, it enables targeted 4Ps to mobilize faster, while being more efficient and sustainable. The partnership framework provides the corner-stone of establishing sustainable and successful relationships among multiple participants, to ensure smooth execution of 4P projects. Developed on significant findings from previous research on partnerships/relationship management in the construction industry, it describes the partnership structure, role of each major participant and institutional and relational strategies to improve the partnership/relationship. A comprehensive research design enabled collection of the data required to achieve each objective of this research project. The first-round semi-structured interviews were conducted to mainly investigate the feasibility of applying PPP in reconstruction and integrating ‘people’ into PPP, so as to narrow down the potential scope of the proposed 4P. Findings from the first-round interviews, current practice and pitfalls in the DM cycle especially in reconstruction were examined in the subsequent two parallel sets of questionnaire surveys targeting DM and PPP professionals. The results derived from 14 first-round interviews and 81 responses received in the questionnaires clearly suggest that 4P has great potential to deliver better performance in reconstruction projects of certain types. Nine second-round interviews helped to test and improve the established preliminary 4P framework. In addition, to further probe into the role of ‘people’, case studies of ‘Project Mingde’, which comprises of three construction projects including a Sichuan reconstruction project, were implemented. The proposed 4P framework, developed based on the above research, was validated through a focus group meeting. It is concluded that the 4P approach could help realize better performance and sustainable redevelopment in appropriate reconstruction scenarios, as well as contribute to improving the overall DM. The 4P framework also provides a basic methodology and conceptual foundation to procure 4P projects in industry with pointers for future development in academic research. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

As Rural Development assumes a greater importance in European policy, one strategy to stimulate economic activity across a broad range of sectors is to use small towns as a focal point for economic development. This may be particularly relevant in the UK where there is increasing concern over the future vitality and viability of these towns. However, such a strategy rests on the assumption that there is a strong level of interdependence between small towns and their surrounding areas. While their historical legacy suggests close integration, developments in the wider economy and resultant socio-economic restructuring have undermined the traditional functions of small towns and may have severed many of these local linkages. Methodologies are developed to measure the size and spatial distribution of economic linkages in and around two small towns in rural England; one located in the 'remote' area of South Devon, and one in more 'accessible' Buckinghamshire. Results from two validation exercises indicate that self-completion methods are a useful means of obtaining spatial economic data from producers and consumers. Analysis compares the degree of economic integration of the towns into their respective local economies, and identifies key characteristics of firms and households that are good predictors of strong local integration. Results show that the strength of local economic integration is a function of economic and demographic structure as well as proximity to urban centres. This illustrates that the functional role of small towns in the economy is a more useful criterion on which to base policy recommendations than is demographic size. The town in the 'remote' rural area is found to be more strongly integrated into its locality than the town in the 'accessible' area; indicating that benefits of intervention are more likely to 'trickle out' into the surrounding area in the former case. Further, the minimal role of agriculture in the local economy implies that traditional measures of farm support are no longer likely to provide a valuable method of supporting rural communities. A useful area for subsequent enquiry would be to employ an 'integration index' to develop settlement typologies so that more generalisations can be made to aid the process of policy formulation.

Univ., Diss.--Bremen, 2007.