Suchergebnisse

While e-diplomacy is gaining momentum, there are certain factors that are hampering its implementation by governments, and by foreign ministries in particular. Uthayasankar Sivarajah and Vishanth Weerakkody examine these factors and argue that diplomats need to embrace digital diplomacy now if they are to reap its benefits.

This book aims to provide the reader with an understanding of the concept of the circular economy, in relation to food supply chains. The current food supply chain system, based upon the linear supply chain model, is unquestionably unsustainable: make, use, dispose. The circular supply chain model, on the other hand, aims to keep resources in use for as long as possible, while regenerating products/materials at the end of their service life. In short: reduce, reuse, recycle. This book puts forwards the circular economy as an alternative to the traditional supply chain management models. The circular economy aims to minimise material, energy and environmental damage without restricting economic growth and social and technological progress. It involves transition to renewable energy sources, and it builds on economic, natural and social capital. This shortform monograph will appeal to academics working in the fields of supply chain logistics, operation management, agricultural management, and sustainability more broadly.

PurposeCircular economy is presented as an approach to economic growth that is in line with sustainable development. However, the recent literature has highlighted the limits of the concept in terms of environmental sustainability. The study examines the relationship between circular economy and conservation of ecosystems, using a case study on the implications of a circular economy for Slovak forests and forest sector.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a qualitative methodology through a focused review of the relevant literature on circular economy and sustainable development and primary data gathered through semi-structured interviews with 15 experts and practitioners in the forest sector, forest conservation and circular economy context, both from within as well as outside of Slovakia.FindingsThe study finds that the forestry sector has an important role to play in a shift to a circular economy in Slovakia, with significant opportunities for improved efficiency as well as substitution of wood for non-renewable resources. There is also growing potential for ecosystem stewardship and restoration. However, the increased application of biomass could crowd out other needs, including for biodiversity. Safeguarding these services depends ultimately on good governance.Originality/valueThe study highlights that circular economy taken in a narrow focus on resource efficiency is insufficient to ensure environmental sustainability but rather needs to be set within the broader environmental and social context.

PurposeWhile the importance of leadership in various domains has been highlighted in the extant literature, effective leadership in the context of higher education sector has not been well addressed in the leadership scholarship. There is a need to address the challenge of leadership effectiveness in the education sector, including business schools, given the failures noticed in the sector attributed to poor-quality leadership. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore the factors that affected leadership in the context of higher education institutions.Design/methodology/approachThe research is exploratory in nature as the study critically reviewed extant literature surrounding leadership practices specifically from a public-sector context to identify factors affecting leadership effectiveness.FindingsThe findings of the study pointed out that, regardless of the nation or organisation, leadership effectiveness is a factor that is dependent on how well the followers have accepted the leader. This indicates that, amongst the different challenges explored in this study, leadership effectiveness is not only a challenge by itself but is also affected by other challenges, including leadership practice and style.Research limitations/implicationsThis research provides a better understanding of the critical factors affecting leadership practice of deans of business schools and how the styles' influence on leadership practice, the relationship between leadership practice and leadership effectiveness and how leadership style translates into leadership effectiveness.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the growing body of knowledge surrounding leadership scholarship from a public-sector context about the challenges that affect leadership effectiveness in the context of HEIs and stimulates further investigation into those challenges.

Part 1: Methodological Issues in eParticipation ; International audience ; "Enabling Multichannel Participation through ICT Adaptations for Participatory Budgeting ICT-enabled platform" (EMPATIA) is a multi-channel participatory budgeting (PB) platform that represents a significant social innovation process of democratic deliberation and decision-making, involving citizens within complex public-institution structures. EMPATIA was targeted to deliver socio-economic and political benefits, such as enhancing citizen-government engagement, increasing public value through PB process, promoting 'inclusiveness' among the marginalized groups of citizens, and impeding political discontent that underpins distrust and scepticism towards the government. The attainment of these benefits will be driven by the EMPATIA's performance. Hence, a performance measurement tools is needed to enable assessment of EMPATIA, empirically. With an aim to propose an integrated performance evaluation metrics, this study presents a set of assessment criteria for multi-channel digitally enabled PB service platforms – especially EMPATIA. Findings from a qualitative, multi-strategies research approach suggest that the metrics should include five key technical and non-technical performance indicators, to be used as the basis for the development of future evaluation instruments. Of major signposts, the metrics would inform key performance aspects to be considered during the PB platform development, and evaluated to indicate the PB platform performance.

Part 7: e-Government and Civic Engagement ; International audience ; Public administration has endured signification transformation over the last decade enabled largely through Information and Communication Technology. In recent times, second generation web technologies (Web 2.0) such as social media and networking sites are increasingly being used by governments for its digital activities ranging from public relations to knowledge management. However, as Web 2.0 technologies are more interactive than the traditional models of information provision or creation of digital services, these technologies have brought about a new set of opportunities and challenges to those government authorities. This study draws on the extant literature to examine the opportunities that Web 2.0 technologies offer to public authorities and the challenges they may need to overcome when integrating these technologies into their work practices.

This research assesses the feasibility of using video communication in an existing local government service, which advises entrepreneurs on how to set up a new business. In line with this aim, we conducted focus groups and in-depth interviews with the municipality staff presently advising the entrepreneurs in the current form the service is offered, and citizens (i.e. potential entrepreneurs) using these advisory service to find out more information about their needs and requirements a video communication service should have. The results highlight the necessity of having a good infrastructure, clear communication protocol and the necessity to address trust and confidentiality issues prior to deploying such a service. A key conclusion of this study is that neither the entrepreneurs nor the municipality staff expected the video service fully replacing the face to face communication, but complementing it and providing a better and more flexible access to citizens.

Part 3: Big and Open Data ; International audience ; Governments across the world are releasing public data in an effort to increase transparency of how public services are managed whilst also enticing citizens to participate in the policy decision-making processes. The channel for making open data available to citizens in the UK is the data.gov.uk platform, which brings together data relating to various public services in one searchable website. The data.gov.uk platform currently offers access to 25,500 datasets that are organized across key public service themes including health, transport, education, environment, and public spending in towns and cities. While the website reports 5,438,159 site visits as of June 2015, the average time spent on the site has been recorded at just 02:12 min per visitor. This raises questions regarding the actual use and usability of open data platforms and the extent to which they fulfill the stated outcomes of open data. In this paper, the authors examine usability issues surrounding open data platforms and propose a framework that can be used to evaluate their usability.

Yes ; The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Digital technologies (DT) is proliferating a profound socio-technical transformation. Governments and AI scholarship have endorsed key AI principles but lack direction at the implementation level. Through a systematic literature review of 59 papers, this paper contributes to the critical debate on the ethical use of AI in DTs beyond high-level AI principles. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that identifies 14 digital ethics implications for the use of AI in seven DT archetypes using a novel ontological framework (physical, cognitive, information, and governance). The paper presents key findings of the review and a conceptual model with twelve propositions highlighting the impact of digital ethics implications on societal impact, as moderated by DT archetypes and mediated by organisational impact. The implications of intelligibility, accountability, fairness, and autonomy (under the cognitive domain), and privacy (under the information domain) are the most widely discussed in our sample. Furthermore, ethical implications related to the governance domain are shown to be generally applicable for most DT archetypes. Implications under the physical domain are less prominent when it comes to AI diffusion with one exception (safety). The key findings and resulting conceptual model have academic and professional implications. ; The full-text of this article will become publicly available at the end of the publisher embargo on 5 Oct 2023.

Yes ; Second generation web-based technologies (Web 2.0) such as social media and networking sites are increasingly being used by governments for activities ranging from open policy making to communication campaigns and customer service. However, this in turn has brought about additional challenges. By its very nature, Web 2.0 technologies are more interactive than the traditional models of information provision or creation of digital services. Such technologies open up a new set of benefits, costs and risks to those government authorities who make use of these social and digital media to enhance their work. This study draws on the extant literature together with an in-depth qualitative case enquiry to propose an emergent framework for evaluating the intra-organisational use of Web 2.0 technologies and its impact on local government. The study findings identified additional four factors (i.e. benefits: intra-marketing, informal engagement, costs: workload constraints and risk: integration with other systems) as part of the evaluation criteria which have not previously been discussed in the existing literature surrounding the context of Web 2.0 use in local government. The study concludes that a combined analysis of the evaluation and impact assessment factors, rather than one particular approach would better assist decision makers when implementing Web 2.0 technologies for use by public administration employees.