On the concept of sustainability – assessing the sustainability of large public infrastructure investment projects

Assessing the sustainability of large public investment projects within the general framework of three-pillar thinking is a complex affair. Such ventures involve multiple actors – e.g. planners from various disciplines such as engineers, economists and social scientists, in addition to politicians, users and other people affected – each carrying with them particular agendas and priorities, and corresponding understandings of the concept of sustainability. In this paper, we propose to frame the concept of sustainability assessment within the context of investment projects, in order to enable communication between the multiple actors, to assess different impacts of an investment project against one another in a meaningful way and, ultimately, to enhance the commensurability of investment project alternatives. Our main idea is that there exist different levels according to which the assessment of sustainability ought to refer – operational, tactical and strategic – and that properly addressing these levels can permit the different actors to comprehend one another, and thereby allow for more clarity and positive action.     

个人特征、家庭特征对农村非农就业影响的实证

工业化对于一个国家或地区经济腾飞的重要性,已经被西方发达国家的经验和道路所证实。在实现工业化的过程中,农村劳动力转移是世界各国都曾经或必将面对的重要课题。本文运用行为主义研究方法,利用2003-2006年全国农村固定观察点的数据,建立Probit模型实证分析了农民个体特征和农户家庭特征对农村非农就业的影响。研究发现:就样本个人特征而言,户主或家庭主要经营者、男性、文化程度较高、身体健康的农民从事农村非农就业的意愿更强,职业教育或培训对于农村非农就业有明显的促进作用,而是否农业户口对农村非农就业的影响并不明显。就样本家庭特征而言,家庭类型会影响农民在农村的非农就业倾向,同时,乡村干部户从事非农产业的倾向性更强,少数民族户和信教户从事非农产业的倾向性较弱,"是否国家干部职工户"、"是否党员户"对农村非农就业的影响并不显著。重视农民的个人特征和家庭特征差异,大力发展农村非农产业,促进农村非农就业是我国政府解决农村剩余劳动力转移问题的重要战略选择。     

三峡库区城镇移民家庭生活安置状况调查与分析

利用回溯性的调查资料来研究已经搬迁的城镇移民家庭在搬迁后的生活安置现状,分析城镇移民家庭的生活安置适应性。在评价方法上首先是对比城镇移民家庭搬迁前后的生活条件和社会保障的变化,再分析移民各个分项满意程度,最后将所提取的因子得分值作为自变量,总体“生活安置满意度”作为因变量,对数据进行Logistic回归分析,分析移民安置过程中哪些方面的满意度会影响到城镇移民对总体安置满意度的判断。研究发现城镇移民家庭的生活居住条件良好。搬迁后,城镇移民家庭的生活和居住条件都得到了较大幅度的改善,住房面积增大,房屋居住的安全系数有所提高。城镇移民家庭医疗保险享有率很高,但养老保险的享有率不容乐观,城镇移民家庭的养老保障仍有待提高。城镇移民生活安置满意度随着社区满意度和居住满意度的提高而提高     

业务外包环境下的企业安全管理

涉及承包商的生产安全事故不断发生,需要关注企业安全管理所处的业务外包环境以及外包环境对企业安全管理的深刻影响。分析和研究表明:当前的业务外包环境存在着供需关系不平衡、供需信息不对称、配套资源制约、风险转嫁思想和现象等种种与业务外包相关的问题,都在很大程度上影响着企业安全管理。目前,改善业务外包环境下的企业安全管理可从3方面入手:其一,加强立法与监管、调控风险因子组合;其二,引导企业增强社会责任感;其三,完善企业业务外包管理措施。当前在业务外包环境下加强承包商管理是政府和生产经营单位安全管理工作的重要内容,但影响业务外包环境下企业安全管理的因素还有涉及更广泛的内容。     

基于PDCA持续改善架构的企业业务持续管理研究

以研究业务持续管理相关的国际法规条款与PDCA持续改善架构,给出业务持续管理关键要素定义以其在PDCA架构中所担任的角色与位阶,进而制定企业业务持续管理的PDCA封闭式管理模型,并阐述企业典型业务持续管理各个要素的实行重点,为企业的业务风险管理提供可用的方法与可执行的建议。     

青藏铁路格拉段货运环境特殊性及安全保障体系研究

分析了青藏铁路格拉段的货运环境特殊性和格拉段铁路货运的突出特点,指出了影响格拉段铁路货物运输持续、畅通的主要原因,即铁路货运能力和货运需求的季节性波动;对青藏铁路货物运输影响极大的公路集疏运条件也存在明显的季节性波动。从实际情况出发,着重探讨保证格拉段货运安全的对策,提出了做好包含货运量的空间分布,铁路运能、公路集疏运能力和客运需求的时间分布,年度到发货运量计划的货运量的时间分布计划;以在格尔木设立大型物流中心为重点,加强有货运作业车站的仓储能力;进出藏适箱货源集装化和适当增加车站线路等措施,并构建格拉段铁路的货运安全保证体系。     

Effects of social interaction between Afghan refugees and Iranians on reproductive health attitudes

Afghan refugees in Iran, like many Muslims around the world, think that using contraceptives is against their religious beliefs. The majority of Iranians also thought so until a decade ago. Since then an all-encompassing social movement has emerged in Iran in which women and young people have played decisive roles. This movement has led to an attitude shift towards acceptance of family planning across Iranian society. High-ranking clerics, responding to the social movement, issued progressive edicts indicating that poor families could practise family planning. This paper reports the findings of focus group studies carried out among Afghan refugee men in two communities in Iran. The findings indicate that exposure to Iranian life, especially the rulings of Iranian clerics, have influenced Afghans' views on family planning. The findings also indicate that a system of justification is needed to help people avoid both social sanctions and individual stresses resulting from a controversial practice regarded as a sin for centuries.     

The adoption of green business practices among small US Midwestern manufacturing enterprises

Manufacturers around the world green their businesses for a variety of reasons, including competitiveness, social responsibility, and external stakeholder pressure. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are thought to lag behind larger ones in the adoption of green business practices. This paper explores the motivations for US Midwestern SMEs adopting a variety of green business practices, using a survey of 59 SMEs in the tool and die manufacturing industry. The majority of firms appear to be internally motivated to implement green practices – driven primarily by cost and competitiveness concerns, more than by social responsibility concerns. External coercive pressure from government or customers does not appear to be a significant motivation for these SMEs. However, informal pressure through government incentives and support programs, as well as mimetic pressure through peer learning via industry associations, appear to be more effective in helping these SMEs to further ‘go green.’     

A meta-ethnography to synthesise household cultural research for climate change response

Cultural change is critical to climate change responses, but the in-depth qualitative research that investigates culture is necessarily conducted at scales difficult to integrate with policy. A focus of climate change mitigation and adaptation is affluent developed world households. Adapting methods used elsewhere in social science, we report and assess a meta-ethnography of household sustainability research, scaling up findings from 12 studies encompassing 276 Australian households. Seven themes are dominant: family concerns are central to household practice; adaptiveness is contingent but more pervasive than often assumed; households make sense of climate change not through abstract arguments, but through physical resources and materials; boundaries of the home space are dynamic and subjective; daily time is an important currency; paradoxes abound among everyday practice; and privacy and a sense of autonomy are prioritised. Insights from the method include new light on familiar themes when seen through an environmental lens, thickening and triangulation of existing research, and a stronger basis for international comparisons. Some findings have straightforward application to policy, others identify potential areas of risk and resistance, others still are more conceptual. We conclude the method has considerable potential and is worth developing further, providing a critical perspective is maintained.     

The ripple effect: A spillover model of the detrimental impact of work–family conflict on job success

Exploring the role of both the employee and supervisor, we tested a model of how cognition‐based work‐to‐family conflict manifests itself in the workplace, impacting employee job success. Based on conservation of resources theory and the concept of loss spirals, we hypothesized that when an employee's work interferes with family demands, the resulting work‐to‐family conflict spills over to the work domain via employee emotional exhaustion. We further argued that the behavioral manifestation of employee emotional exhaustion in the workplace is low employee engagement, as assessed by the supervisor. Drawing on signaling theory, we proposed that supervisor assessments of employee engagement are related to promotability, performance ratings, and salary. Work scheduling autonomy, as a boundary condition, is examined as a resource that attenuates these relationships. Data collected from 192 employee–supervisor dyads of a Fortune 1000 company, as well as performance ratings and salary obtained from company records 9 months later, indicated support for our conceptual model. Future research examining employee work–family conflict and job outcomes is discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.