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1 – 10 of 417Insects have been on the earth for 350 million years, 348 million years longer than man. With one to two million species, insects account for over three‐fourths of the animal…
Abstract
Insects have been on the earth for 350 million years, 348 million years longer than man. With one to two million species, insects account for over three‐fourths of the animal species on earth. They are found in practically every terrestrial habitat.
Jacques G. Richardson and Walter Rudolf Erdelen
Specific examples or brief case-histories in different fields or disciplines illustrate the inventive process from conception to realization.
Abstract
Purpose
Specific examples or brief case-histories in different fields or disciplines illustrate the inventive process from conception to realization.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examine predictions made in 2007 by “China experts” about what the Chinese business environment would look like in 2017. Their predictions were accurate in respect of around two-thirds of the issues they were asked to consider. The authors focus on the one-third of issues about which they were wide of the mark and examine the likely reasons.
Findings
The newly named Anthropocene is a time of increasing conception, research, design, development, evaluation and exploitation of new artifacts and services. Objectivity: careful problem-analysis assures the authors’ understanding of innovating pathways.
Research limitations/implications
Trial-and-error methods may be disorderly, log-type research records are not kept, accidents not considered relevant.
Originality/value
Examples cited are transdisciplinary, often requiring inputs from other economic or cultural sectors. These complexities should be of incalculable value to innovators with single-field backgrounds.
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Suzanne St.‐Jacques and Richard Janke
Faced with a relentless upsurge in the number of online searches from 1981 to 1982, the Head of Reference, Morisset Library and the Coordinator of Online Searching for the…
Abstract
Faced with a relentless upsurge in the number of online searches from 1981 to 1982, the Head of Reference, Morisset Library and the Coordinator of Online Searching for the University of Ottawa ran, in June, 1982, a limited survey of staff allocation practices for online searching in 10 Canadian university libraries. The results of this survey and its implications for specific remedies to online staffing problems at the University of Ottawa are detailed. Recommendations for personnel allocation for online searching may find application in other university library systems in North America and elsewhere.
Walter R. Erdelen, Jacques G. Richardson and Moneef R. Zou’bi
This study aims to propose an approach towards reducing differences between national economies and living standards existing between the world’s wealthiest and least affluent…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to propose an approach towards reducing differences between national economies and living standards existing between the world’s wealthiest and least affluent nations.
Design/methodology/approach
A systemic review identifies the impeding purpose as proposed above: an entirely new initiative.
Findings
The efforts recommended are vital for preserving the human species and ensuring the integrity of our planet. For both the future of the human species and the planet itself, it is essential to reduce the divide between wealthy and poor. Now is the time to give force to the types of implementation necessary to meet these combined goals.
Research limitations/implications
This essay avoids dissecting problems of current geopolitical and ideological character. Despite their sometimes contentious nature, they are often reduced by intelligent diplomacy.
Originality/value
The study proposes a holistic approach to bridging the North-South divide.
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Walter R. Erdelen and Jacques G. Richardson
This paper aims to discuss the history of human migration till the present day.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to discuss the history of human migration till the present day.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyze the human movement from pre-hominid times, forming patterns of existence. Thus, ambient sun and water, weather and climate extremes, shelter, food supply, natural or human-made disasters gave rise to Homo sapiens’ wanderlust.
Findings
Despite obstacles, formidable barriers and even perilous deterrents, the species explored and exploited new soils and waters, whether beneficial or destructive of nature’s ample providence.
Originality/value
The authors treat societal as well as individual action, cultural behavior and the emergence of economic anthropology. Migratory legislation and regulation now risk transformation into resentment and then xenophobia.
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The purpose of this paper is to understand a spontaneous movement of social mobilization and protest known as the yellow vests and their unrelenting demand for increased buying…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand a spontaneous movement of social mobilization and protest known as the yellow vests and their unrelenting demand for increased buying power.
Design/methodology/approach
A capsule history of France and the universal struggle for a living wage lead to a post-Marxian process of intensified civic action to support the universal aims of well-being and fair play.
Findings
The yellow vests appear to be assuming the proportions of an unorthodox labor fraternity, a novel pressure network transcending the usual time-and-money quests of integrated trade unions.
Research limitations/implications
Little attention is paid to the changing nature of employment, work itself and labor competitiveness. These require further research.
Originality/value
Internal and external factors are identified, combining to explain the lack of discipline and orderly evolution by both animators and demonstrators.
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Jacques G. Richardson and Walter R. Erdelen
This study aims to assess progress toward achieving international (United Nations’) goals and targets for attaining sustainable development and discuss the risks of worldwide…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to assess progress toward achieving international (United Nations’) goals and targets for attaining sustainable development and discuss the risks of worldwide failure.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors highlight the relationship between global goals/targets and governance, relate this to the concept of sustainable development, outline and compare Millennium Development Goals and their successors, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and lastly view SDG implementation from two major spaces i.e. the governance and science space, respectively.
Findings
Governance and culture as new components of sustainable development may be sine qua non for humanity’s transformative action toward global and just sustainable development. Through fostering informed decision and policymaking, modern science, as sketched in this contribution, should provide the framework for realizing Agenda 2030. Earth System Science and its innovative notions such as the Anthropocene, planetary boundaries, tipping points and tipping elements will be key in the process of “designing” blank a sustainable future of and for Homo sapiens.
Originality/value
This essay proposes developing holistic approaches to cooperate at all levels in urgent efforts to meet goals projected for 2030 and 2050. The complexity and functioning of the governance space, comprising a system of governance systems, is illustrated not only in the diversity of the institutional landscape but in particular through the blurring of all scales – local to global.
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Tereza Bicalho, Jacques Richard and Cécile Bessou
The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is a specific example of life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to legislative measures that have far‐reaching implications for economic…
Abstract
Purpose
The Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is a specific example of life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to legislative measures that have far‐reaching implications for economic operators. This paper aims to analyze LCA limitations for biofuels based on RED from an environmental accounting perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
LCA limitations are identified on the basis of a literature review and illustrated in the specific context of RED. The limitations encountered within the study were classified into two categories: lack of data, and lack of standards. From this perspective, the LCA‐based problems and their implication and possible improvements in the RED context are discussed.
Findings
The study identifies that the absence of an environmental accounting that could provide periodic enterprise‐specific information is a significant cause of limitations of LCA as a decision‐supporting tool within RED. In turn, environmental accounting approaches address a number of initiatives that are not systematically linked with LCA research. The paper recommends that RED should provide rules to address enterprise‐specific data in addition to other methodological approaches to overcome problems already discussed in the extant literature. This would enable RED to provide economic incentives more effectively and promote the application of environmental accounting systems in companies with higher quality data for LCA applications.
Originality/value
This paper explains how LCA applications could be improved by the introduction of environmental accounting systems and how RED could be more effective by considering environmental accounting.
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Jean‐Guy Degos and Richard Mattessich
This paper offers a general survey of accounting literature in the French language area of the first half of the 20th century: After a general Introduction, referring mainly to…
Abstract
This paper offers a general survey of accounting literature in the French language area of the first half of the 20th century: After a general Introduction, referring mainly to renowned French authors of past centuries, it deals first with historical accounting research (Dupont, de Roover, Gomberg, Vlaemminck, etc). Then come publications in financial accounting theory and its application (Faure, Dumarchey, Delaporte, Penglaou, de Fages de Latour, etc.), followed by a section on cost accounting and managerial control (Julhiet, de Fage de Latour, Detoeuf, Satet, Bournisien, Brunei, Sauvegrai, etc.). Alarger Section is devoted to inflationary problems (Delavelle, Raffegeau and Lacout, Bayard, Léger, Faure, Thomas, Bisson, Dumarchey, Durand, Beaupère, Ratier, etc.). Another large section refers to charts of accounts and public supervision (Otlet, Faure, Blairon, Detoeuf, Caujolle, Fourastié, Gabriel, Chardonnet, Gamier, etc.). The paper closes with a concise general conclusion about this period of transition from a mainly traditional agricultural to an industrial society with its costing problems, its organizational control, and its greater service orientation.