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In the 21^st Century, a region 's growth and prosperity will depend upon its intermodal transportation infrastructure and its ability to efficiently move goods, materials, and people within the system whether it be from origin to destination; from supplier to customer through the various levels of the supply-chain; or from point to point within the system. Planning for the future focuses on improving a region 's intermodal transportation system efficiencies and infrastructure, its connection to other economies, and on the development of logistics institutions and facilities.

With China 's rapidly developing economy and society, record numbers of new modern facilities such as airports, ports, highways, logistics parks and warehouses are being built. Along with this, companies have made extensive investments in information technologies and software to support the tremendous growth that has taken place in the logistics industry. The development and improvement of China's historic inland water transport system is essential to their continued future growth and prosperity. In Korea, past and present National Governments have emphasized the importance of developing a North East Asian Logistics and Business Hub in their region and have worked on strategies, which include water transport, as part of an important national agenda to that end.

This article looks at how trade flows in the Yangtze and Yellow Sea Regions and between China and South Korea might be enhanced by application of improved shipping methods in marine commerce that will promote economic growth in the region. The application of logistics practices and use of barges is explored for the movement of containers on inland and coastal waterways as well as in short sea shipping which could greatly facilitate the region 's situation with respect to future economic growth.

Using a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden as a case, this article aims to explore the state governance of a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden and how officials at the state agency level made sense of the reform ideas and operationalized them in policy actions.

Data were integrated from Swedish Government Official Reports and formal directives from the Ministry of Education. Officials of the Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE) were also interviewed. Data were analyzed to identify how regulatory rules, professional norms and cultural–cognitive beliefs shaped SNAE's design of the program.

The article shows how different types of governance (i.e. regulatory rules, professional norms and cultural–cognitive beliefs) set the direction for managing large-scale school improvement. In particular, in the studied case, the lack of clear regulatory directives enabled sensemaking processes clearly influenced by normative ideas and cultural–cognitive beliefs.

The findings are mostly presented from the perspective of managers, so further study is required to attain a broader understanding of the state agency level's role and function.

By illustrating the strengths of understanding various dimensions of educational governance, the findings are highly relevant to both policymakers and educational managers at different levels of school systems.

The article offers a valuable perspective on large-scale school improvement and educational governance by focusing on a level that has hitherto received little attention.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment risk between lesser and higher educated people during an economic downturn. A focus is put on potential job competition dynamics and cumulative (dis)advantages of the lesser and higher educated.

The paper uses multi-level data. The fifth wave (2010) of the European Social Survey was used and combined with macro-level data on labour market policies of the OECD. The sample consisted of 18,172 observations in 19 countries.

The results show that higher levels of participation and spending on training policies are related to a smaller difference in the unemployment risks of the educational groups. Higher training policy intensity is associated with a lower unemployment risk for the lesser educated and a higher unemployment risk for the higher educated. This implies that the lesser educated are better able to withstand downward pressure from the higher educated, thereby, reducing downward displacement during an economic downturn. Hiring subsidies do not seem to be associated with the impact of education on unemployment.

The paper adds to the discussion on ALMP training and hiring subsidies that are primarily rooted in the human capital theory and signalling theory. Both theories ignore the social context of labour market behaviour. The job competition theory and cumulative (dis)advantage theory add to these theories by focussing on the relative position of individuals and the characteristics that accompany the social position of the individual.

The role of list price is often discussed in a narrative describing sellers’ preferences or sellers’ price expectations. This paper aims to investigate a set of list price strategies that real estate brokers have available to influence the outcome of the sale, which may be many times self-serving.

By analyzing real estate brokers’ arguments on the choice of the list price level, a couple of hypotheses are formulated with regard to different expected outcomes that depend on the list price. This study empirically tests two hypotheses for the underlying incentives in the choice of list price from the real estate broker’s perspective: lower list price compared to market value leads to the higher sales price, lower list price compared to market value leads to a quicker sale. To investigate the two hypotheses, this paper adopts different methodological frameworks: H1 is tested by running a classical hedonic model, while H2 is tested through a duration model. This study further tests the hypotheses by splitting the full sample into two different price segments: above and below the median list price.

The results show that H1 is rejected for the full sample and for the two sub-samples. That is, contrary to the common narrative among brokers that underpricing leads to a higher sales price, underpricing lower sales price. H2, however, receives support for the full sample and for the two sub-samples. The latter result points to that brokers may be tempted to recommend a list price significantly below the expected selling price to minimize their effort while showing a high turnover of apartments.

Although there are a large number of previous studies analyzing list price strategies in the housing market, this paper is one of the few empirical studies that address the effect of list price choice level on auction outcomes of non-distressed housing sales.

Immersive virtual reality (IVR) has been frequently proposed as a promising tool for learning. However, researchers have commonly implemented a plethora of design elements in these IVR systems, which makes the specific aspects of the system that are necessary to achieve beneficial outcomes unclear. Against this background, this study aims to combine the literature on presence with learning theories to propose that the ability of IVR to present 3D objects to users improves the presence of these objects in the virtual environment compared with 2D objects, leading to increased learning performance.

To test this study’s hypotheses, the authors conducted a 2 (training condition: approach vs avoid) x 2 (object presence: high vs low) between-subjects laboratory experiment that used IVR with 83 female participants.

The results support this study’s hypotheses and show that training with high object presence leads to greater reactions to cues (chocolate cravings) and improved health behaviour (chocolate consumption).

This study shows that increased object presence leads to unique experiences for users, which help reinforce training effects. Moreover, this work sheds further light on how immersive computer technologies can affect user attitudes and behaviour. Specifically, this work contributes to IVR research by showing that learning effects can be enhanced through an increased degree of object presence.

Organizations are confronted with problems and political risks to which they have to respond, presenting a need to develop tools and frames of understanding requisite to do so. In this article, we argue for the necessity of cultivating “political judgment” with a “sense of reality,” especially in the upper echelons of organizations. This article has two objectives: First to highlight how a number of recent interlinked developments within organizational analysis and practice have contributed to weakening judgment and its accompanying “sense of reality.” Second, to (re)introduce some canonical works that, although less in vogue recently, provide both a source of wisdom and frames of understanding that are key to tackling today’s problems. We begin by mapping the context in which the need for the cultivation of political judgment within organizations has arisen: (i) increasing proliferation of political risks and “wicked problems” to which it is expected that organizations adapt and respond; (ii) a wider historical and contemporary context in which the exercise of judgment has been undermined – a result of a combination of economics-inspired styles of theorizing and an associated obsession with metrics. We also explore the nature of “political judgment” and its accompanying “sense of reality” through the work of authors such as Philip Selznick, Max Weber, Chester Barnard, and Isaiah Berlin. We suggest that these authors have a weighty “sense of reality”; are antithetical to “high,” “abstract,” or “axiomatic” theorizing; and have a profound sense of the burden from exercising political judgment in difficult organizational circumstances.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what happens when changes to clinical practice are proposed and introduced in healthcare organisations. The authors use the implementation of Treatment Escalation Plans to explore the dynamics shaping the translational journey of a complex intervention from research into the everyday context of real-world healthcare settings.

A qualitative instrumental collective case study design was used. Data were gathered using qualitative interviews (n = 36) and observations (n = 46) in three English acute hospital trusts. Normalisation process theory provided the theoretical lens and informed data collection and analysis.

While each organisation faced the same translational problem, there was variation between settings regarding adoption and implementation. Successful change was dependent on participants' ability to manage and shape contexts and the work this involved was reliant on individual capacity to create a new, receptive context for change. Managing contexts to facilitate the move from research into clinical practice was a complex interactive and iterative process.

The paper advocates a move away from contextual factors influencing change and adoption, to contextual patterns and processes that accommodate different elements of whole systems and the work required to manage and shape them.

The paper addresses important and timely issues of change in healthcare, particularly for new regulatory and service-oriented processes and practices. Insights and explanations of variations in implementation are revealed which could contribute to conceptual generalisation of context and implementation.

This study describes preparedness of emergency physicians and general practitioners following chemical, radiological and nuclear incidents.

Five emergency physicians and six general practitioners were interviewed individually, and data was analysed using qualitative content analysis.

The study results showed that physicians' preparedness for chemical, radiological and nuclear incidents is linked to one main category: to be an expert and to seek expertise and two categories: preparations before receiving CRN patients, and physical examination and treatment of CRN patients with subcategories.

The results have implications for further research on the complexity of generalist vs specialist competence and knowledge when responding to chemical, radiological and nuclear incidents.

This study provides insights regarding chemical, radiological and nuclear preparedness among physicians at emergency departments and primary healthcare centres.

The initial policy of the countries that developed vaccines has been to lock the vaccine by patent. This has been due to the fact that domestic demand for vaccine was mounting. Since only a few countries could invest in it, manufacturing and export remained at the behest of those few resulting in deep inequity in the global rollout. Pandemics are global health crises. Hence, calls for the patent waiver for the COVID-19 vaccine are growing to access the vaccine. The vaccine and its production, marketing and distribution have been politicized driven by the hegemonic aspiration. Both manufacturing and import-dependent countries are racing to win the diplomatic battle: the former has to win to gain hegemony and the latter to get the vaccine. Hence, the vaccine distribution has been marked with deep discrimination, and as a result, the migrant community is less likely to get their vaccine on time. This article engages in the decades-long debate over intellectual property rights and patenting life-saving vaccines. We argue that exemption of COVID-19 vaccines from intellectual property rights would improve global access and equity.