Search results

This paper aims to assess recent foresight exercises applied to cities by evaluating three major issues. Have foresight practitioners understood cities complexity? Have urban planners used adequate tools to generate plausible future visions? Are city policy makers using foresight studies to limit urban uncertainty?

In total, 20 city foresight examples were selected which either have international relevance or which constitute good examples of future-oriented initiatives. Case studies were classified into five taxonomies: European Union initiatives; local initiatives; academic initiatives; corporate initiatives; and architectural initiatives. A set of assessment criteria was established: city complexity conceptualization; methodological approach; and study impact.

Preliminary research outcomes show growing doubts about the appropriateness of the foresight tools used in cities and about the competency of foresight practitioners in understanding the complex and dynamic nature of contemporary cities. Furthermore, policy makers do not seem to grasp the potential of foresight to formulate urban strategies.

Some of the initiatives studied are relatively recent, so impact analysis has been limited by available data. Mostly, secondary documented sources were used to validate cases’ assessment. Research suggests a number of areas in which foresight studies may have a practical application to the urban realm.

The value of the present work lies in the effort for assessing and improving forward-looking activities undertaken at cities through a set of criteria which take into consideration the complexity and diversity of contemporary cities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the need to go beyond the “monumentalist” vision in restoration of built heritage and embrace principles of sustainability in this architectural practice.

Case studies as conceptual reference. Architectural typology.

The environmental crisis that is currently recognized as one of the most important problems that contemporary society must address urgently is a situation that still has not permeated enough in the practice of monumental restoration, which is still carried out using unlimited resources.

In that sense, the close relationship between the built and the natural environment as an essential ingredient of the vernacular is analysed.

Much of the sustainable principles, that have been put forward as an example to be followed, are elements that have hundreds of years in the constructive tradition.

In this context, vernacular architecture has much to contribute in the field of conservation by the enormous accumulated knowledge that its shapes, materials and social use represent.

This experience must be retrieved, but not as an aseptic laboratory experiment, but through its updated application and active implementation to improve the quality of life for inhabitants and contribute to the preservation of our cultural and natural environments.

Management of technology, technological innovation, business innovation and new product development, innovation, design and strategy, entrepreneurship innovation and leadership strategic planning of technological innovation.

MBA.

KidZania® is a Mexican company of family entertainment centers, founded in 1996 by Luis Javier Laresgoiti Fernández and fully developed by Xavier López Ancona. An innovative concept inspired in a fusion of nursery and theme park, KidZania®, brings together strong brands as partners to support their own and offer a complete entertainment and educational experience to kids between two and 16 years old. A unique business model, involvement of experts and a committed board of directors has been the key to the innovation of KidZania®. Its managers, by 2011, operate eight centers – two in Mexico, two in Japan and the rest in Indonesia, Portugal, United Arab Emirates and South Korea – and have plans to expand to more countries in Asia, Latin America and Europe in 2011 and finally to the USA. The future of KidZania® seemed bright, and the manager of the company believed that the growth appeared unstoppable because the purpose was to grow on 100 percent. The strategy appeared clear: dominate in the emerging and consolidated markets (big cities) in order to strengthen its competitive position and then, enter the US market with all the muscle and take the lead in the biggest market. But what was the competition going to do about it? What will the moves be for big players like Walt Disney – which had revenues of US$38.06 billion (USSEC, 2010), for example? Will the competitors try to buy the new entrant in order to build it up or to disappear it? Or will they try to imitate KidZania®? What would be the future of this new edutainment business model?

This case has been used in executive and MBA courses in creating and sustaining innovation, recognizing disruptive technologies, and in identifying effective methods of marketing a new innovative business model. Instructors can use the case to achieve the following two learning objectives: the KidZania® case helps students to refine their understanding of the model of disruption. They are forced to look closely at the product/service and decide whether it is a disruptive innovation or a sustaining innovation. This close examination becomes a helpful tool as students think about what decisions they would make to secure the success of the KidZania® in the entertainment market. The KidZania® case allows students the opportunity to develop their knowledge and understanding of the model “skating to where the money is”. Based on their analysis of the company and product students, must decide whether the KidZania® is a business that will produce sustained revenue and is worth investing in.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or e-mail support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

In this chapter, we analyse the role of women in armed Basque nationalist and separatist terrorist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) from a gender perspective. ETA women were essential agents in the armed conflict, but their image in the mass media and society has been very different from that of their male colleagues (Rodríguez Lara, 2017). Also, their role in the terrorist gang has described a sexually based functional specialisation. In addition, this chapter seeks to contribute to the area of feminist studies on women and political violence. Women's role in one of the most important armed nationalist groups in Europe, ETA, stands as a suitable case study to understand how the mass media (press, journalism), audiovisual content, and social representations of ETA have portrayed these women. The final conclusion of this chapter is that women were not portrayed in the same way as their male colleagues. Women of ETA were doubly penalised because they were women and because they were terrorists.

To overview and discuss the technical, economical, legal, and social reasons why public key infrastructures (PKIs) have failed so far, summarizing the lessons learned, and giving expectations about the future development of the field.

A detailed analysis of the developments in the PKI field, pointing out the achievements so far and the issues that still remain unsolved.

The possible reasons for the failure of PKI technology.

Identifies and analyses the problems of PKIs considering the different perspectives, i.e. not only the technical issues but also other issues like the economical, legal, and social issues that have also influenced the failure of PKIs.

Distributed systems usually contain objects with heterogeneous security requirements that pose important challenges for the underlying security mechanisms and especially in access control systems. Access control in distributed systems often relies on centralised security administration. Existing solutions for distributed access control do not provide the flexibility and manageability required. This paper presents the XML‐based secure content distribution (XSCD) infrastructure, which is based on the production of protected software objects that convey contents (software or data) and can be distributed without further security measures because they embed the access control enforcement mechanism. It also provides means for integrating privilege management infrastructures (PMIs). Semantic information is used in the dynamic instantiation and semantic validation of policies. XSCD is scalable, facilitates the administration of the access control system, guarantees the secure distribution of the contents, enables semantic integration and interoperability of heterogeneous sources, provides persistent protection and allows actions (such as payment) to be bound to the access to objects.

This paper aims to analyze the security issues that arise when integrating wireless sensor networks (WSN) and the internet. Also, it seeks to review whether existing technology mechanisms are suitable and can be applied in this context.

The paper considers the possible approaches that can be used to connect a WSN with the internet, and analyzes the security of their interactions.

By providing the services of the network through a front‐end proxy, a sensor network and the internet can interact securely. There are other challenges to be solved if the sensor nodes are integrated into the internet infrastructure, although there exists interesting advances on his matter.

The complete integration of sensor networks and the internet still remains as an open issue.

With the current state of the art, it is possible to develop a secure sensor network that can provide its services to internet hosts with certain security properties.

The paper studies the interactions between sensor networks and the internet from the point of view of security. It identifies both solutions and research challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to verify the existence of financial constraints for investment in Brazil, an emerging market with growing international visibility.

Using panel data methodology and generalized method of moments (GMM), the paper estimates dynamic investment models based on the Euler equation and Tobin's q for a panel data set of 199 Brazilian non-financial firms for the time period 1995-2006.

Results show that Brazilian firms face financial constraints since their investments depend on internally generated funds. Results are robust to different investment models based on the Euler equation, also controlling for growth opportunities. Significant investment-cash flow sensitivity has been found for the whole sample of firms. Subsamples of firms considered as under financial constraints, according to dividend payout and equity issuance policies, have higher investment-cash flow sensitivity. Investment-cash flow sensitivity of financially constrained firms in Brazil is higher than that in the UK and in Romania, a transition economy.

The results extend empirical evidence of financial constraints in Brazil. The paper contributes to the literature by assessing the firms’ financial constraint status on an annual basis, and by using panel data methodology and GMM to estimate dynamic models of investment that take into account the proposals of the hierarchy of finance theory. In addition, the paper controls for growth opportunities. Capital market imperfections affect firm investment in Brazil and such effects are even stronger for financially constrained firms.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to understand the problem of informality and how it develops, taking advantage of the control flaws of public and private institutions and its growth by the legitimacy of society; to analyze the role of the regulatory body in its fight against informality from the area of its influence, which is the energy sector; to analyze the economic and social impact of a solution like the one proposed in the case; to analyze the impact at the level of public policies of solutions such as the one proposed in the case; and to review the strategy of the hand of technology that can achieve the development of original solutions to fight against informality.

The case study was written on the basis of a real success story that explains the development of a technological solution that allowed the Supervisory Agency of Energy and Mining of Peru to effectively deal with informality in the commercialization of fuels, which became a reference in the region. The story begins by recreating the system that existed for the commercialization of fuels and how the shortcomings of this system itself encouraged the appearance of informal merchants who benefited from the situation. It also explains how the regulatory authority decides to deal with this problem by creating a special unit that confronts this issue and how, after some failures, an original strategy was able to be designed with the help of technology to control informality.

Business schools, where different aspects can be analyzed, such as the strategy used in the supply chain of informal or formal commerce. It is also recommended for use in master’s programs in specific sectors, such as public management or energy management. Finally, it can also be used in entrepreneurship, given that informal entrepreneurship is considered as a new line of research in this field.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Provide a secure solution for web services (WS). A new interoperable and distributed access control for WS is presented.

Based on the separation of the access control (AC) and authorization function.

Mechanisms presented allow seamless integration of external authorization entities in the AC system. The Semantic Policy Language (SPL) developed facilitates specification of policies and semantic policy validation. SPL specifications are modular and can be composed without ambiguity. Also addressed was the problem of the association of policies to resources (WS or their operations) in a dynamic, flexible and automated way.

The ACProxy component is currently under development. Ongoing work is focused on achieving a richer “use control” for some types of WS.

Administrators of WS can specify AC policies and validate them to find syntactic and semantic errors. Components for automated validation of policies at different levels are included. This ensures that the AC policies produce the desired effects, facilitating the creation and maintenance of policies. It also provides mechanisms for the use of interoperable authorizations.

A practical system that provides a secure solution to AC for WS. To the best of one's knowledge, no other system provides mechanisms for semantic validation of policies based on external authorization entities. Likewise, the mechanisms for interoperability of external authorization entities are also novel. The system provides content‐based access control and a secure, decentralized and dynamic solution for authorization that facilitates the management of complex systems and enhances the overall security of the AC.