Search results

The practice of field burning has been used for many years in the south regions of Brazil as an ideal way to maintain pastures. The purpose of this paper is to understand if such activity is logically explicable or if it is the result of a cultural reality, being “prisoner” of this technique because of path dependence, within the paradigm of the path dependence theory.

This present research is exploratory. The use of cases study was the most appropriate technique to explore the field burning practices and their impact in this specific region of Brazil, while describing its context, for which limits are not clearly defined. Thus, this research carries out a multi-case study that provides a greater perception than a single case and has an identical methodological structure.

This paper analyzed the reasons why the producers insist with the procedure and identified these reasons are not merely economical. The study demonstrates a clear path dependent process and it became obvious that once the technique is part of the family use history, it anchors a strong conviction that field burning is actually the best technique to be used for land maintenance.

This work suggests a need for other specific researches to substantially complement field burning practices to other phenomenon.

The fact that alternative techniques are rejected, giving priority to field burning, it may suggest that other situations and practices may be tied to inadequate or less profitable technologies as well (milk, confined raising, pasturing). The study raises the question on the validity of such practice as a paradigm of reason and pragmatism, or as a “Platoons Cavern” in which they are “trapped” in their decision process developed over time.

Presence and implications of environmental laws, which tend to be observed by the producers much more because they fear punishment than because they really understand the benefits of its application; showing the government’s failure in teaching and informing the producers about environmental laws.

This essay provides evidence that the invention of agriculture was not a dramatic technological advance in the history of humankind and that agriculture was quite consistent with nomadic hunting and gathering. The available clues also suggest that exact origins of agriculture do not seem important. Rather, the crucial question is why certain societies dramatically increased their dependency on agriculture for subsistence two to ten millennia ago. Unfortunately, most of the major theories purporting to explain the neolithic revolution – either the origins or the spread of agriculture – are either untestable or inconsistent with the available evidence. What is at stake for economic historians is to rethink the process of the adoption of agriculture using a multi-causal approach.

Although extant theory has illuminated conditions under which organizations mimic each other in form and practice, little research examines how organizations seek to differentiate themselves from conventional forms. Our comparative ethnographic studies examine how the Burning Man and Open Source communities developed organizations to help coordinate the production of an annual temporary arts event and nonproprietary, freely distributed software. Both communities sought to differentiate their organizations from reference groups, but this was not a sufficient condition for sustaining organizational novelty. We found that the ability to pursue a differentiated strategy was moderated by environmental conditions. By exploring the organizing decisions that each community made at two critical boundaries: one defining individuals’ relationship with the organization; the second defining the organization's relationship with the market, we show how organizing practices were recombined from the for-profit and nonprofit sectors in unexpected, novel ways. This comparative research contributes a grounded theoretical explanation of organizational innovation that adjudicates between differentiation and environmental conditions.

Drawing on Bourdieu's field, habitus, and capital, I show how disparate experiences and “dispositions” shaped several departments’ development in the organization behind the annual Burning Man event. Observations and interviews with organizers and members indicated that in departments with hierarchical professional norms or total institution-like conditions, members privileged their capital over others’ capital to enhance their authority and departmental solidarity. For another department, the availability of multiple practices in their field fostered disagreement, forcing members to articulate stances. These comparisons uncover conditions that exacerbate conflicts over authority and show how members use different types of capital to augment their authority.

The progress of solid propellent technology appears to have been retarded by lack of development of a fundamental mechanism of burning. A study of previous work indicates that while experimental techniques used are valid, hypotheses were inadequate; and fresh hypothetical approaches are needed. There is evidence of lack of theory development in the more fundamental field of the combustion of turbulent, pre‐mixed, fuel‐rich flames as it applies to propellent burning. The roles of radiative heat transfer and a physical disintegrative mode of surface dissipation are proposed for consideration. Previous experimental techniques together with new ones are proposed to exploit these hypotheses.

This paper aims to explore how a Malaysian palm oil company responded to the pressure for change towards sustainability in their sustainability reporting of negative incidents and in actual sustainability practices.

The study used qualitative methodology through an interpretive case study of a palm company. The study gathered primary and secondary data via semi-structured interviews with key organisational members and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informal conversations, focus groups, document/annual report content analyses and observations. Symbolic and substantive management was used as the theoretical lens to explain the findings.

After experiencing a series of negative events regarding their social and environmental performance, the case company responded by using selective disclosure and a symbolic/legitimising strategy to address the majority of recurring negative events. In actual practice, the company changed structurally but policy-implementation gaps remain despite these changes. Strategically, the company changed in terms of its expansion policy but remained unchanged in traceability issues. The increased awareness of sustainability in the company’s culture appeared to suffer in favour of profit and cost/efficiency considerations that remain prominent. Both substantive and symbolic changes were found in both reports and practice but were more inclined to be symbolic.

The study provides guidelines for companies changing towards sustainability in both practice and reporting, in their effort to contribute to sustainable development goals.

The study provides evidence of symbolic and substantive changes as complementing activities instead of a dichotomy, which was mostly assumed in previous literature and suggests companies adopt a combination of these depending on the severity of sustainability-related issues, level of scrutiny and cost/efficiency considerations.

Because ethical decisions about what is fair or just are at the heart of most controversial issues in the public sphere, understanding how high school seniors reason ethically about conflicting democratic values is important. Teachers and teacher educators would be assisted in leading discussions if they know the ethical frameworks most often used by students and how the facilitator might encourage consideration of alternative ethical viewpoints. By creating a professional community of practice between four U.S. government teachers, a university researcher, and a political science professor, we asked high school seniors to discuss their position relative to the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. Johnson (1989), which upheld flag burning as an expression of free speech. We were curious to know what ethical frameworks students used in wrestling with the value conflict in freedom of expression. We found all students used Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1976) ethic of justice framework almost exclusively and reasoned primarily in stages four and five on Kohlberg’s hierarchy.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The purpose of this study is to develop an ecosystem-based DRR concept and explore how far the concept can be applied in a disaster-management context.

The authors used the ecosystem concept established by Tsujimoto et al. (2018) as the foundation of this study. They then conducted a literature search to adapt the ecosystem concept to fit the context of disaster management. Thus, they developed an ecosystem-based DRR concept. They used a case study method to test whether the adapted ecosystem concept can be applied to examine a real-life case of disaster management. For data collection, they used qualitative methods; a semi-structured interview with practitioners and other actors involved in disaster-management practice as well as document review. For data analysis, they used thematic analysis to find themes within the data.

By using this concept, the authors found some actors fulfil their role in the ecosystem toward the DRR effort, some actors are ill-equipped, and some actors are actively working against DRR effort. There are also implementation challenges, as numerous programs are only halfway done due to a lack of resources. However, the main problems of this disaster can be summarized into three categories: technical problems, socio-economic problems and law-enforcement problems. All three problems need to be addressed altogether because even neglecting only one problem would lead to a flawed solution.

One of the limitations is the respondents' bias. This research aims to find out their part, or more accurately what they are representative of, regarding disaster management for forest and land fire case. As some of the questions may reveal unflattering action or may even hurting their credibility, respondents might not have provided an entirely honest answer. Another limitation is the differing respondents' roles within the disaster. As each of the respondents is a representative of an actor in disaster management, they all have different traits. Thus, this situation makes it challenging to produce similar quality and quantity data for each of them.

As concluded, the ecosystem-based DRR concept can be used as a framework to examine a real-life case of disaster management. It can be utilized to explain roles, relationships and the whole network of disaster-management actors. The authors hope that this concept could help decision-makers in designing their policies.

The main problems of this disaster can be summarized into three categories: technical problems, socio-economic problems and law-enforcement problems. All three problems need to be addressed altogether for even neglecting only one problem would lead to a flawed solution. However, the yearly reoccurrences of fires and the widespread of illegal and dangerous practice, slash and burn agriculture, are evidence that the government mishandles the other two problems. There is a need for reform within legal institutions and government's treatment regarding local farmers. There is a need for trust, cooperation and synergy between disaster-management actors.

The ecosystem concept has been used widely in the field of management of technology and innovation. However, while ecosystem concept is commonly used in the management of technology and innovation, it is rarely used in a disaster-management context.

Fuel moisture is an important determinant of fire behaviour. Changes in climate will result in changes in fuel moisture and this will impact fire management by modifying the length and severity of the fire season and by changing opportunities for prescribed burning. This paper aims to examine the effect of climate on fuel moisture in Eucalypt forests.

A climate model is used to predict weather for five Australian cities from 1961 to 2100 under a high‐emissions scenario. Time series are extracted from the model and used as boundary conditions for a process‐based fuel moisture model. Fuel moisture predictions are used to examine two management variables: the number of days suitable for prescribed burning in spring, and the number of days when fire could burn in summer.

There were significantly more fire days in warmer‐drier years. The number of days with extremely low fuel moisture was also higher in warmer‐drier years. Variation in the number of burning days was narrower than for fire days but the number of burning days was lower in warmer‐drier years. The lower number of burning days in warm years was due to a higher rate of fuel drying in these years.

Analysis was limited to Australian locations. In future, the work should be expanded to include Eucalypt plantations on other continents.

The changes predicted will require changes to fire management practices, particularly the timing of prescribed burning.

This paper uses a new, physically based method to examine the effect of climate change on fuel moisture. It will be useful to fire managers seeking to adapt to a changing climate.