Shaomin Wu, Derek Clements‐Croome, Vic Fairey, Bob Albany, Jogi Sidhu, Duncan Desmond and Keith Neale
The purpose of this research is to show that reliability analysis and its implementation will lead to an improved whole life performance of the building systems, and hence their…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to show that reliability analysis and its implementation will lead to an improved whole life performance of the building systems, and hence their life cycle costs (LCC).
Design/methodology/approach
This paper analyses reliability impacts on the whole life cycle of building systems, and reviews the up‐to‐date approaches adopted in UK construction, based on questionnaires designed to investigate the use of reliability within the industry.
Findings
Approaches to reliability design and maintainability design have been introduced from the operating environment level, system structural level and component level, and a scheduled maintenance logic tree is modified based on the model developed by Pride. Different stages of the whole life cycle of building services systems, reliability‐associated factors should be considered to ensure the system's whole life performance. It is suggested that data analysis should be applied in reliability design, maintainability design, and maintenance policy development.
Originality/value
The paper presents important factors in different stages of the whole life cycle of the systems, and reliability and maintainability design approaches which can be helpful for building services system designers. The survey from the questionnaires provides the designers with understanding of key impacting factors.
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Dennis Caplan and Saurav K. Dutta
Recent public policy initiatives seek greater transparency in financial reporting through an honest, balanced and thorough management discussion of company performance in the…
Abstract
Recent public policy initiatives seek greater transparency in financial reporting through an honest, balanced and thorough management discussion of company performance in the annual report. Management’s discussion invariably includes key performance indicators, such as financial ratios, relevant to external stakeholders. We model the impact of accounting estimates, assumptions, choices and errors on the risk of misleading financial ratios. This framework is illustrated through good and bad examples of financial reporting practices and by simulation of financial data of public companies. We provide a structured approach to inform policymakers, auditors and other stakeholders of the incremental financial reporting risk that accompanies current regulatory efforts.
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Neha Chhabra Roy and Viswanathan Thangaraj
This study gauges the profitability and performance of Indian commercial banks under the technology advancements. In this study, the authors identified three domains that give…
Abstract
This study gauges the profitability and performance of Indian commercial banks under the technology advancements. In this study, the authors identified three domains that give advantage to banks due to technology incorporation, that is, increased sales revenue, reduced operating expenses, and increased employee productivity. The authors assess the effect of these domains on banks’ profitability and performance. This study is conducted for the period between the years 2003 and 2018 across 34 public and private banks for empirical analysis. The authors examined the impact of investment in technology on the profitability using panel data analysis and evaluated the long-term effect of technology investment using the vector error correction model. This study found that there is a mixed effect of technology spend on the profitability and performance of Indian banks, where private sector banks are more aggressive in technology investment as compared to the public sector banks. This study recommends an optimal technology-related strategy to gain improved productivity for the banking business, that is, planned technology reserves, customer awareness campaigns about technology-enabled products, and robust employee–customer motivation policy.
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During the 2001 International Symposium on Forecasting in Atlanta, Peg Young approached me to inquire whether I would be interested in developing an output measure of the…
Abstract
During the 2001 International Symposium on Forecasting in Atlanta, Peg Young approached me to inquire whether I would be interested in developing an output measure of the transportation sector for the purpose of macroeconomic forecasting. At that time, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (US DOT) was interested in developing such a project in order for it to join the company of other federal agencies that produce monthly U.S economic indicators. During next two years with a research grant from US DOT at the University of Albany, SUNY, entitled “The Theoretical Development, Selection, and Testing of Economic Indicators for the Transportation Industry,” I developed the transportation services index (TSI) with the assistance of Herman Stekler as the consultant and graduate student Wenxiong Yao as the research assistant of the project. Needless to say, we had to make numerous visits to Washington to consult with DOT staff and for presentations. Identifying monthly indicators for different sectors of the transportation sector was difficult because transportation indicators had virtually disappeared from business cycle research since the early 1950s. The research project was completed in a year and during the summer of 2003. I went to US DOT headquarters in Washington DC with Wenxiong Yao to train its staff to produce the index on a monthly basis. On January 2, 2004, after ringing the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, the U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced the roll out of the TSI as a new economic indicator intended to measure the total freight and passenger activity in the U.S. economy. Six weeks later, the first monthly release of the TSI on March 10, 2004, marked the official beginning of the series that has been released and updated every month since then, and all reports are now available at http://www.bts.gov/xml/tsi/src/index.xml. The new indicator did not escape the media attention. On April 5, 2004, issue of Business Week, columnist James Mehring noted, “The index provides another sorely needed measure of the service sector. Services constitute about two-thirds of the economy, yet few government reports cover the…[It] should become a new crystal ball for economists and investors to peer into.” On March 15, 2010, the front page of Wall Street Journal reported the recent upward movement in the freight component of TSI, suggesting that the latest recession might have turned around.
The death of John F. Kennedy (JFK) was one of the most remarkable facts of the second half of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, it was reflected numerous times in popular…
Abstract
The death of John F. Kennedy (JFK) was one of the most remarkable facts of the second half of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, it was reflected numerous times in popular culture, including in popular music. In this chapter, I discuss songs published in the 1963–1968 period in which the image of JFK was represented as an idea, a cultural motif or a political myth created, transformed and maintained by artistic means. In song lyrics, a real person (who was a genuinely influential politician) was portrayed as a person who acquired a certain mythical status, stemming from JFK's charismatic features and augmented by his tragic death. Thus, separate from the real political career as the president, JFK serves as a kind of mythological structure used by several artists to generate meanings and mirror cultural iconography present in American culture.
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Larry W. Isaac, Daniel B. Cornfield and Dennis C. Dickerson
Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend…
Abstract
Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend sociological knowledge about how movements (sometimes) diffuse and amplify insurgent actions, that is, how movements move. We extend movement diffusion theory by drawing a conceptual analogue with military theory and practice applied to the case of the organized and highly disciplined nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We emphasize emplacement in a base-mission extension model whereby a movement base is built in a community establishing a social movement school for inculcating discipline and performative training in cadre who engage in insurgent operations extended from that base to outlying events and campaigns. Our data are drawn from secondary sources and semi-structured interviews conducted with participants of the Nashville civil rights movement. The analytic strategy employs a variant of the “extended case method,” where extension is constituted by movement agents following paths from base to outlying campaigns or events. Evidence shows that the Nashville movement established an exemplary local movement base that led to important changes in that city but also spawned traveling movement cadre who moved movement actions in an extensive series of pathways linking the Nashville base to events and campaigns across the southern theater of the civil rights movement. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications.
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This is a troubled age for democracy, but the nature of that trouble and why it is a problem for democracy is an open question, not easy to answer. Widespread wishing for…
Abstract
This is a troubled age for democracy, but the nature of that trouble and why it is a problem for democracy is an open question, not easy to answer. Widespread wishing for responsible leaders who respect democratic norms and pursue policies to benefit people and protect the vulnerable don’t help much. The issue goes well beyond library contexts, but it is important that those in libraries think through our role in democracy as well. Micro-targeting library-centric problems won’t be effective and don’t address the key issue of this volume. The author can only address the future if we recover an understanding of the present by building up an understanding of actually-existing democracy: (1) the scope must be narrowed to accomplish the task; (2) the characteristics of the retreat from democracy should be established; (3) core working assumptions and values – what libraries are about in this context – must be established; (4) actually-existing democracy should then be characterized; (5) the role of libraries in actually-existing democracy is then explored; (6) the source and character of the threat that is driving the retreat from democracy and cutting away at the core of library assumptions and values is analyzed; (7) the chapter concludes by forming a basis of supporting libraries by unpacking their contribution to building and rebuilding democratic culture: libraries are simultaneously less and more important than is understood.
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Hannah Cochran and Robert E. Worden
The objectives of this research were to examine how officer perspectives on body-worn cameras (BWCs) are patterned by broader occupational attitudes, and to analyze stability and…
Abstract
Purpose
The objectives of this research were to examine how officer perspectives on body-worn cameras (BWCs) are patterned by broader occupational attitudes, and to analyze stability and change in officers' attitudes toward BWCs before and after the deployment of the technology.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyze panel survey data on individual officers in the Albany (New York) Police Department (APD).
Findings
Pre-BWC deployment, officers varied in their occupational attitudes and BWC perspectives, and the officers' BWC outlooks bore relationships to several occupational attitudes. BWC outlooks were largely stable following deployment. Individual changes in BWC perspectives were related to officers' assignments and unrelated to officers' occupational attitudes.
Originality/value
The authors use panel survey data to test hypotheses about the effect of broad occupational attitudes on officers' receptivity to BWCs and to analyze change pre-/post-BWC deployment.