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The aim of this paper is to present a parametric design method to generate optimum adaptive facades regarding occupants' comfort and building energy criteria. According to the literature review, the following questions have arisen to address the research gaps: Is it possible to have the outside view throughout the whole year without discomfort glare by utilising adaptive solar facades (ASFs)? How can architects integrate both view quality and quantity into ASF design? What is the impact of dynamic vertical shading systems mounted on south facades on the outside view, occupants' visual comfort and operational energy? How can we evaluate the view quantity through multi-layer shading systems?

In recent years, there is a surge in demand for fully glazed buildings, motivating both architects and scholars to explore novel ideas for designing adaptive solar facades. Nevertheless, the view performance of such systems has not been fully explored especially when it comes to the effect of dynamic vertical shading systems mounted on south facades. This fact clarifies the need to conduct more research in this field by taking into account the window view and natural light. Consequently, a simulation research is carried out to investigate the impact of a dynamic shading system with three vertical slats used on the south facade of a single office room located in Tehran, on both view quality and quantity, visual comfort and operational energy. The research attempts to reach a balance between the occupant's requirements and building energy criteria through a multi-objective optimisation. The distinctive feature of the proposed method is generating some optimum shading which could only cover the essential parts of the window area. It was detected from the simulation results that the usage of a dynamic vertical shading system with multi slats for south facades compared to common Venetian blinds can firstly, provide four times more view quantity. Secondly, the view quality is significantly improved through enabling occupants to enjoy the sky layer the entire year. Finally, twice more operational energy can be saved while more natural light can enter the indoor environment without glare. The final outcome of this research contributes toward designing high-performance adaptive solar facades.

This paper proposes a new metric to evaluate the view quantity through a multi-layer shading system. The proposed method makes it clear that the usage of dynamic vertical shading systems with multi-layers mounted on south facades can bring many benefits to both occupants and building energy criteria. The proposed method could (1) provide four times more view quantity; (2) improve view quality by enabling occupants to watch the sky layer throughout the whole year; (3) slash the operational energy by twice; (4) keep the daylight glare probability (DGP) value in the imperceptible range.

The research limitations that should be acknowledged are ignoring the impact of the adjacent building on sunlight reflection, which could cause discomfort glare issues. Another point regarding the limitations of the proposed optimisation method is the impact of vertical shading systems on users' visual interests. A field study ought to be conducted to determine which one could provide the more desirable outside view: a vertical or horizontal the view. Research on the view performance of ASFs, especially their impact on the quality of view, is sorely lacking.

This paper (1) analyses the performance of dynamic vertical shadings on south facades; (2) evaluates outside view through multi-layer shading systems; and (3) integrates both view quality and quantity into designing adaptive solar facades.

The city of São Paulo, as one of the World’s mega‐cities, has considerably increased the quantity of commercial floor space recently, with around 160,000m² added in this sector in 1998 and another 400,000m² planned for 1999. For this post‐occupancy evaluation (POE), the building chosen was a recently designed office building, considered to be high‐tech which has a total of 34 floors including six underground levels, 1,033m² of useful area per floor and circulation of more than 3,000 people per day. The unique situation of the different users, with their particular layouts, is an area that has still not been analyzed in POEs in Brazil. This paper will present the results of a pilot POE applied to four floors occupied by the headquarters of a manufacturer of domestic appliances, focusing on the methodological approach.

In this chapter, we consider dominant arguments for the ‘disaggregation’ of the value of culture into discrete dimensions – economic, social, environmental, heritage and cultural and so forth – and their separate measurement. We discuss the role of proxies in assessment processes (‘parts’) and their relationship to the cultural experiences (‘wholes’) for which they are taken to be representative indicators. Disaggregation encourages a divisible approach to cultural activities that, at their heart, present as non-divisible experiences. Thus, we should speak of ‘culture's value’ as opposed to ‘cultural value’ as a way of highlighting a crucial methodological point – that arts and culture are more than the sum of their parts and that the assessment of a particular cultural activity must consider not only the benefits returned by its separate dimensions but also the activity's overall purpose, scope and place in the world. These non-divisible, often non-measurable, contextual features should not be considered contingent externalities but as sense-providing parameters that give meaning to any numerical data whatsoever. We conclude by looking at the issue via an example of a recent stage play from South Australia, Mi:Wi 3027 written by Ngarrindjeri playwright Glenn Shea and commissioned by Country Arts South Australia. The values of the drama cannot be and should not be distinguished from its value, and assessment processes must therefore look to frame the primary cultural experience it embodies in ways that make sense of its purpose, scope and place in the world.

Two ideal types of data can be distinguished in housing research: structured and less-structured data. Questionnaires and official statistics are examples of structured data, while less-structured data arise for instance from open interviews and documents. Structured data are sometimes labelled quantitative, while less-structured data are called qualitative. In this paper structured and less-structured data are considered from the perspective of measurement and analysis. Structured data arise when the researcher has an a priori category system or measurement scale available for collecting the data. When such an a priori system or scale is not available the data are called less-structured. It will be argued that these less-structured observations can only be used for any further analysis when they contain some minimum level of structure called a category system, which is equivalent to a nominal measurement scale. Once this becomes evident, one realizes that through the necessary process of categorization less-structured data can be analyzed in much the same way as structured data, and that the difference between the two types of data is one of degree and not of kind. In the second part of the paper these ideas are illustrated with examples from my own research on the meaning of preferences for dwelling features in which the concept of a meaning structure plays a central part. Until now these meaning structures have been determined by means of semi-structured interviews which, even with small samples, result in large amounts of less-structured data.

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

The purpose of this research objective was to analyse social reporting within MERCO Business companies both from the point of view of the quantity of information disclosed and the references about their quality. This approach constitutes a novelty with respect to previous literature on the subject.

This paper assesses how social reporting is being carried out by the companies included in the MERCO Corporate Reputation Business Monitor, MERCO Business, during the period 2014–2016. The methodological design include the construction of a weighted index based on two unweighted indexes related to the quantity revealed and the quality detected. In addition, this study integrates intellectual capital and social responsibility approaches in order to deep into these voluntary disclosures.

While social reporting is considerable from a quantitative point of view within MERCO Business companies, they do not reach very high levels of quality, which is good to counteract the final value of the quantity–quality index that the authors' propose.

In MERCO Business companies, quantity is not a proxy for quality within social reporting. In this sense, only considering both dimensions it will be possible to assess these disclosures in a more complete way.

This study allows a more accurate and comparable view of social reporting than those studies that only focus on how much information is disclosed. Besides, it involves an important advance in the identification of the relative quality of social reporting, opening a new line of research that will be key to comparing this type of disclosures in a more homogeneous way. Likewise, the results can be applied in future studies in the intellectual capital field given the complementarity between both types of disclosures.

Likewise, these results will be of interest for future actions aimed at regulating the improvement of the quality of social reporting in the hands of managers, investors and regulators.

The authors have tested the value of quality in social reporting using a weighted index amongst the most reputable companies in the Spanish scenario. These disclosures have been compared with and without the use of it in order to deduce its value to obtain valid conclusions about social reporting.

Overview All organisations are, in one sense or another, involved in operations; an activity implying transformation or transfer. The major portion of the body of knowledge concerning operations relates to production in manufacturing industry but, increasingly, similar problems are to be found confronting managers in service industry. It is only in the last decade or so that new technology, involving, in particular, the computer, has encouraged an integrated view to be taken of the total business. This has led to greater recognition being given to the strategic potential of the operations function. In order to provide greater insight into operations a number of classifications have been proposed. One of these, which places operations into categories termed factory, job shop, mass service and professional service, is examined. The elements of operations management are introduced under the headings of product, plant, process, procedures and people.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

This paper addresses revolutionary changes in the education, fertility and market work of U.S. families formed in the 1870s–1920s: Fertility fell from 5.3 to 2.6; the graduation rate of their children increased from 7% to 50%; and the fraction of adulthood wives devoted to market-oriented work increased from 7% to 23% (by one measure).

These trends are addressed within a unified framework to examine the ability of several proposed mechanisms to quantitatively replicate these changes. Based on careful calibration, the choices of successive generations of representative husband-and-wife households over the quantity and quality of their children, household production, and the extent of mother’s involvement in market-oriented production are simulated.

Rising wages, declining mortality, a declining gender wage gap, and increased efficiency and public provision of schooling cannot, individually or in combination, reduce fertility or increase stocks of human capital to levels seen in the data. The best fit of the model to the data also involves: (1) a decreased tendency among parents to view potential earnings of children as the property of parents and (2) rising consumption shares per dependent child.

Greater attention should be given the determinants of parental control of the work and earnings of children for this period.

One contribution is the gathering of information and strategies necessary to establish an initial baseline, and the time paths for parameters and targets for this period beset with data limitations. A second contribution is identifying the contributions of various mechanisms toward reaching those calibration targets.