Different challenges arising from increasingly uncertain and unpredictable environmental and economicconditions have been shifting the focus of public governance and socio-economic development. Morerecently, empirical studies have demonstrated a transitional epoch in which humanity is currently in: TheAnthropocene, as well as its harmful effects that degrade the biosphere, and thus our economic, political,social well-being. The casual dynamics of climate change and its impacts on life-supporting ecosystemshas increasingly been recognized by a resilient approach which incorporates adaptive processes andschemes, allowing public governance to embrace the changes rather than control uncertainty. Thisresearch introduces the interwoven concepts of adaptive capacity, adaptive governance, and resiliencewithin a social and environmental framework. It provides a review of how these concepts support aparadigm shift to mitigating current and future challenges—understood through a multidisciplinaryapproach, and how scholars have sought to develop a blueprint to improve the need to foster and mobilizeadaptive capacity within the governance of the commons. In Sweden, key governmental and businessleaders have shown the ability to foster environmental governance that is capable of developing analternative form of planning, implementing, and managing public policy. Moreover, Sweden’s concertedmultilevel governance and public policy efforts have promoted an all-encompassing generational, mainlythrough: coordinated environmental policies and private, public, and civil society partnerships. Theseinitiatives have led to innovative technologies and projects (e.g. urban vertical farming technology) as wellas cross collaboration and integration of companies and industries in order to achieve economic, social,and environmentally symbiosis.

No description available.

Sustainability has become increasingly important in global debates and in world politics, where the UN has formulated 17 sustainability goals. This has led to increased pressure on companies to focus more on sustainability. However, sustainability is a broad and difficult concept, where there is a lack of understanding of sustainable working methods. The purpose of the thesis is thus to study how companies transforms strategic approaches into something concrete and how it is communicated to organizations. Through a case study of a sustainability-leading IT consulting company, the research questions; "How does management translate sustainable strategies into concrete initiatives for communicating sustainable approaches?" and "What can be understood about the challenges of communicating sustainable ways of working through the organisations internal communicative processes?", is being answered. Based on the theoretical framework of the thesis, on Sensemaking and Double Loop Learning, the communication process has been mapped within the company, through semi-structured interviews supplemented with qualitative document analysis. The results show three main challenges: (1) to concrete sustainability and sustainable working methods; (2) to communicate and establish a unified understanding of sustainability and sustainable working practices throughout the organization; (3) to establish systems thinking for sustainable working methods.

Quality assurance has been a vexed and troubled journey for private providers in South Africa in a complex and burdensome educational environment. It is well recognised that private providers are significant role-players in the provision of education and training in South Africa and the stated intention is to create a more enabling regulatory framework The focus of this thesis is on the private providers at the post-school level. The quality assurance regime was examined and contextualised to analyse what is required, and to determine how the private provider is impacted by the regulatory requirements for the establishment and operation of a private tuition provider in South Africa. The experience of private providers, CEOs of professional bodies, ETQA managers and ETD practitioners was investigated using a mixed methods research approach. The conclusion is a call for a far more streamlined system with a centralised oversight body, greater stakeholder consultation, less political interference and a deeper appreciation for the contribution that private providers make to the education of learners in South Africa. / Educational Leadership and Management / D. Ed. (Education Management)

An increased competitive climate has enhanced the importance for companies to differentiate from other companies. Today, the customer support within service organizations are often disregarded as a source of value due to the focus on costs. Further, it has become more important to leverage the contact with the customer at all encounters. New technological advancements within Business Intelligence have also enabled companies to increase their competitiveness through improved decision support. The objective of this thesis is through a case study investigate how an insurance company could leverage its customer support as a source of creating shareholder value as well as how to apply trends within Business Intelligence for increased decision support. This was done through developing a conceptual model based on academic theory in order to provide a tool for analysis and development of a customer support. The research questions intends to investigate how an customer support can contribute to, and balance a focus on service quality, costs and sales in order to enhance shareholder value. A business driven approach was further used in order to understand how a customer support could leverage the emerging trends of Business Intelligence. This since the thesis also aims to provide some first insights into how to leverage the trends of mobile- and Self-Service- Business Intelligence within the customer support within insurance companies. The research emphasizes the need to have a holistic view of what drives value and costs with regard to the retention, growth and acquisition of customers when viewing the customer support as a source of value. The thesis concludes that both the trends of mobile- and Self-Service- Business Intelligence could enable an insurance company to gain new insights through utilizing existing internal as well as external data in order to conduct a more continuous and flexible analysis of important matters.

<p>As society works to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, the demand for renewable energy and clean energy technologies continues to grow rapidly. Lessons learned from the ongoing electronics waste crisis necessitate closing material loops to secure supply chains and redirect valuable resources away from the landfills.</p><p> </p><p>Inspired by the principles of industrial ecology, the circularization of renewables is demonstrated by applying the notion of Life Cycle Symbiosis (LCS), an extension of Industrial Symbiosis (IS). This is achieved by identifying waste streams that may have value as potential raw material/feedstock and the subsequent development of industrial synergies in the context of end of life (EoL) photovoltaics (PVs). Per metric ton of EoL PVs, the avoided global warming potential (GWP) and ecotoxicity impacts were calculated to be as high as 2750 kg CO₂ eq and 32,000 CTUe respectively, while the water savings and electricity savings were over 37,000 m³ and 3600 MJ. Building upon this work, a hybrid multi objective optimization (MOO) method was proposed to support the creation of industrial synergistic networks or eco industrial parks (EIPs). The hybrid method addresses the challenges associated with the early design and development stages of EIPs (supply, demand, potential synergies, etc.), and also those in relation to considering multiple conflicting sustainability objectives.</p><p> </p><p>Apart from addressing material scarcity, rising pollution levels and exposure to toxins, recovery and circularization may also contribute towards stabilizing feedstock prices. Supply chains for renewables and clean energy technologies are brittle because of risks associated with possible supply deficits stemming from complex geo-political situations and oligopolies. This can translate to price fluctuations among high-value, critical materials on which clean energy technologies rely. In order to ensure a smooth transition to a clean energy technologies, and one that is also sustainable, it is vital to assess the impact of these very complexities on the market dynamics for the critical material feedstocks. To this end, a system dynamics model has been developed to capture price trends of rare earth elements (REEs) used in EVs under varying market scenarios. The proposed model aims to aid automobile manufacturers in developing effective business strategies as they work towards electrifying their vehicle fleets.</p><p>This thesis reports on the development of some strategies rooted in industrial ecology to prevent renewables and clean energy technologies from themselves becoming environmental liabilities in the future.</p>

No description available.

<p>Professional engineers think and act in distinctive ways when addressing engineering problems. Students need to develop this reasoning or engineering thinking during their education. Unfolding the undergraduate students’ thinking is a necessary step in designing experiences and teaching materials that foster not only their understanding of engineering concepts but also their learning to think as professional engineers. While there are previous studies about the students' thinking in other disciplines, more research is needed in engineering. This three-study dissertation aims to further our comprehension of undergraduate students’ engineering thinking using an adapted version of the Engineering Habits of Mind (EHoM) model. Specifically, the dissertation’s studies work together to continue the research that addresses the question:<em> What are the characteristics of undergraduate students</em>’ <em>engineering thinking?</em></p> <p><br></p> <p>The first study used naturalistic inquiry to holistically explore the cognition associated with the EHoM of senior chemical engineering students when improving a chemical plant. The analysis of students’ interactions showed that their redesign process followed an iterative co-evolution of the problem and solution spaces. Furthermore, they treated the task as a socio-technical problem considering engineering and non-engineering factors. In addition, while exploring problem and solution entities, they used multiple representations to communicate ideas but had difficulties translating symbolic representations into more physical, concrete representations. Regardless the technical issues and time constraints, the students completed the conceptual redesign and communicated their proposal to the client.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The second study used qualitative content analysis to examine first-year engineering students’ ideation as a cognitive skill associated with the EHoM of problem finding and creative problem solving. Particularly, it focused on students’ ideation of questions and recommendations when doing data analytics to help improve a client’s enterprise. The analysis of students’ reports showed that they expanded the problem space of the task by bringing additional information that was not provided. They asked questions focused on performing statistical analysis of the dataset and requesting information about the company’s business model. At the end of their data analytics, students made high- and low-quality recommendations considering their alignment with a specific problem, robust evidence, and the client’s needs. </p> <p><br></p> <p>The third study used qualitative descriptive research to investigate undergraduate participants' cognitive competencies within engineering systems thinking at the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition. These competencies are associated with the EHoM of problem finding, creative problem solving, systems thinking, and visualization. Mainly, the study focused on analyzing the evidence of cognitive competencies documented in the publicly available participants’ wikis where they registered their design process. Results showed that iGEM teams developed solutions with biological systems interacting with other systems and used concepts and tools from multiple disciplines. They also cooperated with stakeholders, which helped them analyze their system from multiple lenses. Moreover, depending on their upfront task, they fluidly represented their systems from structural, behavioral, and functional perspectives. </p> <p><br></p> <p>The final chapter of this dissertation presents an overarching discussion across the studies. The findings and implications will support curriculum designers, instructors, and other interested readers to prepare learning environments that promote undergraduate students’ engineering thinking. Furthermore, they may guide future efforts to continue exploring the students' thinking process when addressing engineering problems. </p>

No / Hospitals are under pressure to reduce waiting times and costs. One strategy that may be effective focuses on optimising the flow of emergency patients. We undertook a patient flow analysis of older emergency patients to identify and address delays in ensuring timely care, without additional resources. Prospective systems redesign study over 2 years. The Geriatric Medicine Directorate in an acute hospital (Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) with 1920 beds. Older patients admitted as emergencies. Diagnostic patient flow analysis followed by a series of Plan Do Study Act cycles to test and implement changes by a multidisciplinary team using time series run charts. 60% of patients aged 75+ years arrived in the Emergency Department during office hours, but two-thirds of the admissions to GM wards were outside office hours highlighting a major delay. Three changes were undertaken to address this, Discharge to Assess, Seven Day Working and the establishment of a Frailty Unit. Average bed occupancy fell by 20.4 beds (95% confidence interval (CI) -39.6 to -1.2, P = 0.037) for similar demand. The risk of hospital mortality also fell by 2.25% (before 11.4% (95% CI 10.4-12.4%), after 9.15% (95% CI 7.6-10.7%) which equates to a number needed to treat of 45 and a 19.7% reduction in relative risk of mortality. The risk of re-admission remained unchanged. Redesigning the system of care for older emergency patients led to reductions in bed occupancy and mortality without affecting re-admission rates or requiring additional resources.

Increasingly unpredictable, extreme and erratic rainfall with higher temperatures threatens to undermine the adaptive capacity of food systems and ecological resilience of smallholder landscapes. Despite growing concern, land managers still lack quantitative techniques to collect empirical data about the potential impact of climatic variability and change. This thesis aims to assess how ecosystem services and function and how this links with biodiversity and human wellbeing in smallholder agro-ecosystems in a changing climate. To this end, rather than relying on scenarios or probabilistic modelling, space was used as a proxy for time to compare states in disparate climatic conditions. Furthermore, an integrated methodological framework to assess ecosystem services at the field and landscape level was developed and operationalised, the results of which can be modelled with measures of wellbeing. Various multidisciplinary analytical tools were utilised, including ecological and socio-economic surveys, biological assessments, participatory open enquiry, and documenting ethnobotanical knowledge. The study was located within monsoon rice farms in the Terai Plains of Nepal, and dry season vegetable farms in Northern Ghana. Sites were selected that are climatically and culturally diverse to enable comparative analysis, with application to broad areas of adaptive planning. The linkages that bring about biophysical and human changes are complex and operate through social, political, economic and demographic drivers, making attribution extremely challenging. Nevertheless, it was demonstrated that within hotter and drier conditions in Ghana long-tongued pollinators and granivores, important for decomposition processes and pollination services, are more abundant in farms. Results further indicated that in cooler and drier conditions in Nepal, the taxonomic diversity of indigenous and close relative plant species growing in and around farms, important for the provisioning of ecosystem services, decreases. All other things equal, in both Nepal and Ghana findings indicate that overall human wellbeing may be adversely effected in hotter conditions, with a potentially significantly lower yields, fewer months of the year in which food is available, higher exposure to natural hazards and crop loss, unemployment, and psychological anxiety. Yet, surveys indicate smallholders continue to maintain a fair diversity of species in and around farms, which may allow them to secure basic necessities from provisioning ecosystem services. Moreover, farmers may employ adaptive strategies such as pooling labour and food sharing more frequently, and may have greater access to communication, technology, and infrastructure. Novel methodological and empirical contributions of this research offer predictive insights that could inform innovations in climate-smart agricultural practice and planning.