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This chapter draws on data from a qualitative study examining the extent to which children and young people age 7 to 17 are able to participate and influence matters affecting them in their home, school, and community. It was commissioned by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in Ireland to inform the National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-Making, 2015–2020. Utilising Lundy’s (2007) conceptualisation of Article 12 of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and Leonard’s (2016) concept of generagency, this chapter will examine children and young people’s everyday lives and relationships within the home and family in the context of agency and structure.

In the study, home was experienced by children generally as the setting most facilitative of their voice and participation in their everyday lives reflecting research findings that children are more likely to have their initiative and ideas encouraged in the family than in school or their wider communities (Mayall, 1994). Key areas of decision-making included everyday consumption activities such as food, clothes, and pocket money as well as temporal activities including bed-time, leisure, and friends. This concurs with Bjerke (2011) that consumption of various forms is a major field of children’s participation. Positive experiences of participation reported by children and young people involved facilitation by adults whom they respected and with whom they had some rapport. This locates children as relational beings, embedded in multiple overlapping intergenerational processes and highlights the interdependency between children’s participation and their environment (Leonard, 2016; Percy-Smith & Thomas, 2010).

Classical definitions of motivation typically involve two main components: direction and activation. Motivated behavior is directed toward or away from particular stimuli (i.e., appetitive and aversive motivation). Furthermore, activational aspects of motivation refer to the observation that motivated behavior is characterized by substantial activity, vigor, persistence, and exertion of effort in both the initiation and maintenance of behavior. Although separate neural systems direct organisms toward distinct motivational stimuli (e.g., food, water, sex), there appears to be a common circuitry regulating behavioral activation and the exertion of effort. Mesolimbic dopamine is one of the brain systems mediating activational aspects of motivation and exertion of effort. This system integrates aspects of motivation and motor control functions involved in the instigation of action. Research on the neurobiology of effort has contributed to our understanding of the pathophysiology of neurological and psychiatric disorders that are characterized by motivational dysfunction.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

Today, long-term success requires firms to sense changes in their environments early and react efficiently to them. Increasing middle managers’ participation in decision-making about market-related and product-related questions has been suggested as one way of enhancing this strategic responsiveness; abandoning formal planning, such as annual budgets, has been another. Yet, empirical evidence on the matter is scarce and conflicting. Drawing on data from Denmark’s 500 largest firms, we show that participation of middle managers in decision-making about new products and markets to serve, in-deed, increases firms’ strategic responsiveness as assessed by a reduction in firms’ downside risk. However, this effect is not a direct one. Nor does it interact positively or negatively with the emphasis put on formal planning as submitted in literature. Our evidence suggests that emphasis on planning mediates the relation between stronger participation of middle managers in decision-making and the increase in firms’ strategic responsiveness. This has implications for ongoing theory building and practice.

X = multiple interpretations