Water use scenarios assessment using multicriteria analysis

Water management is a fertile terrain for research, and can be investigated using several methodological instruments and approaches. Multipurpose water resources, which allow for the contemporary presence of in‐stream (fishing, swimming, etc.) and off‐stream uses (agriculture, household, etc.), are particularly difficult to management due to increasing water demand and the conflict between consumptive and not consumptive uses. New scenarios in agricultural policy (Reform of the European Common Agricultural Policy) and new requests from local stakeholders (recreational activities, rising household water demand, etc.) involve use of decision support methods to find a balance between multiple potential uses. This study describes the application of multicriteria decision aid for choosing the best project for water management and local development among a set of alternatives, using the regime method. The regime method can integrate quantitative data with quality judgement and preference index. The study aims to verify if the regime approach is understandable for the decision maker and if it is suitable for use in ambiguous situations where no quantitative information is available. It is not always possible to get the ‘best alternative’ in multicriteria evaluation: in this study we found two top‐rank alternatives, with minor differences, to submit to the decision maker. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Participatory Policy Making: Balancing between Divergence and Convergence

In participatory policy-making processes many different stakeholders have access to the policy-making arena. In order to benefit from the diversity of perspectives the stakeholders carry with them, interaction between these stakeholders should be facilitated. Three modes of facilitation are distinguished which differ in the balance they seek between divergence and convergence: inducement of better understanding, shared perspective, and policy learning. In particular it is examined how the technique of gaming simulation facilitates participatory policy making. From the application of this technique it is derived that a minimum common ground is necessary as a starting point for participatory policy making. Participatory policy making should start with a common challenge as well as agreement between stakeholders on some core concepts and rules of interaction. At any moment, stakeholders should be forced to put the common ground that is evolving up for discussion.     

Using Ecological Theory to Evaluate the Effectiveness of an Indigenous Community Intervention: A Study of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Programs

In recent years, there has been renewed interest among community psychologists in indigenous interventions, which are programs created by local practitioners (rather than researchers) already rooted in their communities. Indigenous interventions have strong ecological validity, but their effectiveness is often unknown because so few are rigorously evaluated. The goal of this project was to use Kelly and Trickett’s ecological theory as a conceptual framework for evaluating an indigenous intervention and its mediating mechanisms of effectiveness. The focal intervention was a midwestern Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program, which provides post-assault medical care, crisis intervention, and medical forensic exams for sexual assault survivors. Prior studies of SANE programs have suggested that these interventions may help increase sexual assault prosecution rates. In this case example, we used a mixed methods design to determine if this program contributed to increased prosecution rates, and if so, why. Based on qualitative interviews with key stakeholders, we found substantial evidence for the Principle of Interdependence such that the SANE program strengthened the interconnections between the legal and medical systems, which contributed to increased prosecution. The intervention was effective in these outcomes because it promoted Cycling of Resources throughout the systems and fostered Adaptation of new roles for legal and medical personnel. Moving beyond this specific case example, this paper also examines cross-cutting advantages and struggles of using an ecological approach in the evaluation of indigenous community interventions.     

Making Energy Infrastructure: Tactical Oscillations and Cosmopolitics

Abstract

Integrating renewable energy sources into the power grid and ensuring public interest in energy is a key concern in many countries. What role may art play, and what political strategies do artists employ, in order to intervene in the infrastructuring of energy and public environments? As the case study here, a Copenhagen art and energy competition invited artists and designers from around the world to submit ideas for large-scale public artworks that can generate utility-scale renewable energy. The competition process had a smooth and consensus-seeking political strategy, manifested in a set of tactical oscillations. In order to engage with local stakeholders and ensure the success of the competition, the project managers oscillated between presenting the competition as part of existing policy initiatives and as posing alternatives to existing policy. They oscillated between being situated in a pragmatic present and in an unprecedented future; between being tied to the specific site of the competition and belonging to no place in particular; and not least between being predominantly an art project and primarily an infrastructure project. Remarkable differences between cosmopolitics and smooth politics appear here, especially compared to the literature analysing the roles played by art and design when imagining new ways of living with energy. Oscillation between smooth politics and cosmopolitics may provide a generative way forward for actors wishing to engage in the infrastructuring of environments.     

Age rationing and the just distribution of health care: is there a duty to die?

The author analyzes the argument that a policy involving distributive justice in the allocation of scarce health care resources, based on the strategy of rational self interest maximation under a veil of ignorance (Rawls/Daniels), would result in an age rationing system of voluntary, socially encouraged, direct termination of the lives of the elderly rather than their medical abandonment. She maintains that such a policy would be a fair response only in a situation of substantial scarcity of resources that cannot be relieved without introducing greater injustices. Battin suggests that some of the current pressure on resources could be reduced by pruning waste and the expenses attributable to paternalistic imposition of treatment and to the practice of defensive medicine. She also advocates reconsideration of societal priorities assigned to various social goods.     

A network approach for distinguishing ethical issues in research and development

In this paper we report on our experiences with using network analysis to discern and analyse ethical issues in research into, and the development of, a new wastewater treatment technology. Using network analysis, we preliminarily interpreted some of our observations in a Group Decision Room (GDR) session where we invited important stakeholders to think about the risks of this new technology. We show how a network approach is useful for understanding the observations, and suggests some relevant ethical issues. We argue that a network approach is also useful for ethical analysis of issues in other fields of research and development. The abandoning of the overarching rationality assumption, which is central to network approaches, does not have to lead to ethical relativism.     

外部环境资源短缺对员工薪酬奖励偏好的影响与机制

以往关于时间与金钱奖励选择问题的探讨主要从员工工龄视角着手。但这一视角不能直接解释外部环境资源短缺时, 员工对时间与金钱奖励选择偏好的差异问题。本文依据生命史理论, 探讨外部环境资源(如就业资源和自然资源)短缺与否对员工选择时间和金钱奖励偏好的影响及内在机制。本文以即将步入职场的大学生和企业员工为样本, 发现不管是外在就业资源短缺还是外在自然资源短缺都会促使员工更加偏好金钱而非时间奖励, 内在机制是外部环境资源短缺时人们的心理表征更具体, 并且这一现象在高物质主义者身上更为明显(实验1和2)。本文结尾讨论了对资源短缺、时间和金钱等研究领域的理论突破与推进。     

Teaching ethical analysis in environmental management decisions: A process-oriented approach

The general public and environmental policy makers often perceive management actions of environmental managers as “science,” when such actions are, in fact, value judgments about when to intervene in natural processes. The choice of action requires ethical as well as scientific analysis because managers must choose a normative outcome to direct their intervention. I examine a management case study involving prescribed burning of sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) communities in south-central Montana (USA) to illustrate how to teach students to ethically evaluate a management action by precisely identifying: 1) the proposed management action, 2) the deficiency of the system to be remedied by the action, 3) the stakeholders affected by the action, and 4) the category and type of values affirmed in the management action. Through such analysis, students are taught to recognize implicit and explicit value judgments associated with management actions, identify stakeholders to whom managers have legitimate ethical obligations, and practice a general method of ethical analysis applicable to many forms of environmental management. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting, Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, February 24–27, 2005.     

Parallel,additional or alternative histories of philosophy? Questions on the theory and methodology of the history of philosophy

ABSTRACT

Methodologies and theories for writing histories of philosophy are particularly relevant today due to the abounding challenges to the discipline that have emerged: e.g. the problem concerning the precise mode of the inclusion of non-Western philosophies in the history of philosophy, the response to postcolonial considerations at large, the transformative impact of new media and the question whether the history of philosophy is primarily a philosophical, rather than merely historical, enterprise. À propos the relative scarcity that is to be witnessed in explicit articulations of methodologies and theories for writing histories of philosophy, in this note I focus on certain spontaneous, rather than theoretically planned, responses that have emerged to the above challenges – in particular, Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy without any gaps – and in conclusion, as an example of methodological development, I touch on some of the problems we encounter in the case of the inclusion of Byzantine philosophy in the history of philosophy.     

Decision‐Analytic Approach for Water Sustainability Definition: A Higher Education Case Study

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a multi‐criteria decision analysis approach that can be used to circumscribe the definition of sustainability within an organization or institution with multiple operational divisions. Although our overall definition of sustainability is a process, the George Washington University (GW) definition of water sustainability is articulated through construction of an objective‐value hierarchy representing GW's strategic objectives and articulation of strength of preference among the attributes in that hierarchy. This study used multi‐criteria decision analysis methods, including structured interviews with four individual stakeholders and swing weighting. Three findings are of note. First, our stakeholders' thinking about their objectives was greatly influenced by perceived constraints and mandatory obligations on institutional performance implied by contracts or tradition. Second, in considering the trade‐off weights obtained from the swing‐weighting portion of the value assessment, all stakeholders placed similar emphasis on each of the fundamental objectives. Third, because of the decentralized nature of the university, the process through which the value assessment will be achieved must be transparent and accepted by each of the stakeholders supporting sustainability decisions. This case study illustrates a decision‐analytic sustainability approach that may be applied to large‐scale infrastructure systems, stakeholder engagement and negotiation in sustainability investments or alternatives assessments. Although the commitment to reduce climate impacts has been widespread, there have been fewer publicly announced water initiatives at the university level. At the university level, GW is only one of a handful of universities with a cohesive, visible, water plan. In addition, we demonstrate an approach in which explicit structuring of fundamental sustainability objectives may increase transparency for sustainability definition construction. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A framework for understanding cross-national differences in the relationship between research and policy

Nothing much seems to have changed since Caplan described the “worlds” of research and policy as being incompatible. Across Europe, representatives from both communities in the field of migration and integration issues discuss their linkage as having failure wired into it and label successful interaction as the exception to the rule. Nevertheless, research-policy linkages differ substantially between countries in their intensity and in their dominant modes. How stakeholders talk about these differences does not sit well with current understanding of the issue. A major reason for the general feeling that social science analysis of the research-policy interface has not delivered much relief is caused by its fixation on the utilization of knowledge. Benchmarking research-policy linkage shows that the discussion about similar issues (such as interdisciplinarity) is primarily in terms of the quality of the relationship between the actors involved and the effects of the relationship (i.e., non-use or underuse of academic knowledge) are considered in derivatives terms. It is argued that thinking about the interaction of research and policy in terms of relationship rather than utilization, in combination with a focus on the wider context in which the relationship unfolds, makes for a useful analytical framework for understanding crossnational differences in the use of research by policy.     

NGOs and the future of the migration debate

Over the past quarter of a century, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working with refugees and immigrants in the United States have emerged as a formidable force. The government funds them to help newcomers adjust, policy-makers listen to them, the media quotes them, and immigrants and refugees rely on them for assistance and advocacy. This development has caused tensions with other stakeholders in the US immigration debate and raised concerns that it will lead to polarization over progress in the policy arena. The author argues that although NGOs and other key actors have had a difficult time responding to the pace, scope, and diversity of immigration into the US, a combination of factors make it possible, even likely, that in the coming decade NGOs, federal and local governments, researchers, refugee and immigrant communities, and intergovernmental organizations will forge new understandings and modernized policy structures that will manage migration intelligently rather than repress it ineffectively.     

组织认同一定会促进亲组织非伦理行为吗？社会责任型人力资源管理的作用

基于社会认同理论,以社会责任型人力资源管理作为组织道德性的线索,探讨其对组织认同与亲组织非伦理行为之间关系的调节作用及其对亲组织非伦理行为的直接影响。采用多层线性建模技术进行数据分析,结果表明：当社会责任型人力资源管理水平低时,组织认同正向影响亲组织非伦理行为;当社会责任型人力资源管理水平高时,组织认同对亲组织非伦理行为没有显著影响;社会责任型人力资源管理对亲组织非伦理行为具有抑制作用。     

组织认同一定会促进亲组织非伦理行为吗？社会责任型人力资源管理的作用

基于社会认同理论,以社会责任型人力资源管理作为组织道德性的线索,探讨其对组织认同与亲组织非伦理行为之间关系的调节作用及其对亲组织非伦理行为的直接影响。采用多层线性建模技术进行数据分析,结果表明：当社会责任型人力资源管理水平低时,组织认同正向影响亲组织非伦理行为;当社会责任型人力资源管理水平高时,组织认同对亲组织非伦理行为没有显著影响;社会责任型人力资源管理对亲组织非伦理行为具有抑制作用。     

The Puzzle of Multiple Endings

Why is it that most fictions present one and only one ending, rather than multiple ones? Fictions presenting multiple endings are possible, because a few exist; but they are very rare, and this calls for an explanation. We argue that such an explanation is likely to shed light on our engagement with fictions, for fictions having one and only one ending seem to be ubiquitous. After dismissing the most obvious explanations for this phenomenon, we compare the scarcity of multiple endings in traditional kinds of fiction to their profusion in the case of interactive fictions. This contrast poses a challenge to accounts of our engagement with fictions in terms of games of make‐believe. We conclude that solving this puzzle is likely to improve our philosophical understanding of fictions.     

A hypothetical clinical vignette of delusional disorder: how potential legal issues could be addressed in the United Kingdom and the United States

One of the major difficulties in presenting an international perspective on delusional disorders and their impact on offending or violent behaviour is that no two legal systems are quite the same, and there are substantial differences between some of them; in addition, there is international variation in relevant service provision or use. We therefore invited several experts practising in forensic mental health services or the law to consider the following case and to use relevant literature, statute and case law to draw out similarities and differences in process and management of the following case. Annie Smith is not a real person; the things that happened really occurred.     

Bringing actors together around large-scale water systems: Participatory modeling and other innovations

Conclusion The five areas of innovation found in the three case studies have brought actors together in new ways around water management strategies. We paid special attention to the role of participatory modeling, because it has been able to generate new policy options. For such complex and often deadlocked water management issues, new options are at a premium. The cases demonstrate that participatory modeling efforts are a key part of successfully addressing these major water management issues faced in the U.S. as well as elsewhere. Recent publications include Ecology, Engineering and Management: Reconciling Ecosystem Rehabilitation and Service Reliability (with Emery Roe; Oxford: Oxford University Press). Current research interest include the reliability of critical infrastructures (such as electricity, water, telecommunications and the internet) and the development of methods to recast the intractable policy issues. Since 1999, he has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and Mills College, Oakland. where he teaches and directs research in the application of economic theory and systems analysis methods to the solution of environmental and regional water resources problems. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters, served on various committees of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, and was a U.S. member of an advisory committee for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. Emery Roe has published widely on science, technology and environmental controversies, including the debates over large technical systems, sustainable development, and ecosystem management. His books include Narrative Policy Analysis (Duke University Press, 1994), Taking Complexity Seriously: Policy Analysis, Triangulation and Sustainable Development (Kluwer, 1998), Except-Africa: Remaking Development, Rethinking Power (Transaction, 1999), and Ecology, Engineering and Management: Reconciling Ecosystem Rehabilitation and Service Reliability (with Michel van Eeten; Oxford: Oxford University Press).     

Dis-inviting the Unruly Public

Abstract

Recently, Welsh and Wynne have argued that policy efforts to include ‘the public’ in dialogue about technoscience have been accompanied by a simultaneous rise in control over uninvited publics, particularly protestors. Research with a group of knowledge-based activists in the UK suggests a further category between invited and uninvited. The concept of an ‘unruly public’ functions within the sociotechnical imaginary to disinvite those whose response is unwanted or unpredictable, while still appearing to be engaging with ‘the public’ as a whole. Listening to the unexpected questions of the unruly public may in fact support, rather than hinder, efforts to incorporate social concerns into frameworks for responsible innovation at both national and European levels.     

Democratisation of wellbeing: stakeholder perspectives on policy priorities for improving national wellbeing through paid employment and adult learning

Recent policy initiatives in the UK have heightened the degree to which wellbeing can be considered a political construct: The acceptance of different policy options for wellbeing depends on the extent to which those options are responsive to popular wellbeing concerns. Drawing on the views of over 400 people gathered through a variety of methods and across the UK, we outline different stakeholder views of what wellbeing is and the priorities that stakeholders believe should be addressed to improve wellbeing. We draw out the implications for reframing policy debates around wellbeing, the practice of career guidance, academic debates around identified wellbeing priorities, and the best means of developing a policy and a practice-oriented and stakeholder-responsive approach to researching wellbeing.     

Greenpeace campaign case study — StopEsso

As some corporations begin to enjoy power and influence on a scale comparable with or even more extensive than governments, it is consumers rather than voters who are starting to hold the key to political and social change. Companies which fail to take consumer opinion into account face real threats to their brand image, and ultimately to their bottom line. This case study explores the Greenpeace‐led StopEsso campaign, detailing the campaign history, strategy and tactics, and assessing its impact so far. It shows how negative consumer perceptions of ExxonMobil (Esso), based around the issue of the company's approach to climate change, are damaging the company's interests and that the changing interactions of other key stakeholders with the company could also threaten Exxon's competitiveness. It concludes that as corporate power increases, so must corporate responsibility, for consumers are increasingly unwilling to accept dishonest or unfair behaviour, and increasingly willing to withdraw their financial support for companies which fail to respond to their expectations. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications Ltd.