Kate Parizeau and Josh Lepawsky
– This paper aims to investigate by what means and to what ends waste, its materiality and its symbolic meanings are legally regulated in built environments.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate by what means and to what ends waste, its materiality and its symbolic meanings are legally regulated in built environments.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors investigate the entanglement of law and the built environment through an analysis of waste-related legal case studies in the Canadian context. They investigate a notable Supreme Court case and three examples of Canadian cities’ by-laws and municipal regulations (particularly regarding informal recycling practices). They mobilize what Valverde calls the work of jurisdiction in their analysis.
Findings
The authors argue that the regulation of waste and wasting behaviours is meant to discipline relationships between citizens and governments in the built environment (e.g. mitigating nuisance, facilitating service provision and public health, making individuals more visible and legible in the eyes of the law and controlling and capturing material flows). They find that jurisdiction is used as a flexible and malleable legal medium in the interactions between law and the built environment. Thus, the material treatment of waste may invoke notions of constraint, freedom, citizenship, governance and cognate concepts and practices as they are performed in and through built environments. Waste storage containers appear to operate as black holes in that they evacuate property rights from the spaces that waste regularly occupies.
Originality/value
There is scant scholarly attention paid to legal orderings of waste in built environments. This analysis reveals the particular ways that legal interventions serve to construct notions of the public good and the public sphere through orderings of waste (an inherently indeterminate object).
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The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms manage the front end of new product development projects where packaging forms a core part of the product itself. Within the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms manage the front end of new product development projects where packaging forms a core part of the product itself. Within the fast-moving consumer goods industry, innovation provides opportunities to create packaging that forms an integrated part of the product offering. The authors refer to these as packaging-integrated-products. This study conceptualises three levels of integration and investigates how they impact upon the management of the front end.
Design/methodology/approach
The study consisted of a two-phase design. This involved a preliminary study with key informants, followed by a multiple case study design, which examines product development projects with differing extents of packaging integration.
Findings
The results identify nine different new product opportunities. The authors also present 11 propositions that reveal the key characteristics of the front end of packaging-integrated development projects, as well as the project management requirements to capture the opportunities they present.
Research limitations/implications
Initial insights into a number of unique front-end project management characteristics required to deliver different project types form an area for further research to better understand product packaging integration. The propositions presented guide the way forward for future studies.
Practical implications
The findings provide marketers with new understanding of three types of new product opportunities presented by packaging integration and demonstrate what is required to capture the opportunities they present in the front end of product development.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to extant studies of packaging development in the marketing literature, which have previously failed to capture the high levels of integration between packaging and the product. The authors present a new conceptual approach to understanding integration and subsequently uncover how the opportunities it presents can be captured.
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Simon Biggs, Chris Phillipson, Rebecca Leach and Annemarie Money
This paper provides a critical assessment of academic and policy approaches to population ageing with an emphasis on the baby boomer cohort and constructions of late‐life…
Abstract
This paper provides a critical assessment of academic and policy approaches to population ageing with an emphasis on the baby boomer cohort and constructions of late‐life identity. It is suggested that policy towards an ageing population has shifted in focus, away from particular social hazards and towards an attempt to re‐engineer the meaning of legitimate ageing and social participation in later life. Three themes are identified: constructing the baby boomers as a force for social change, a downward drift of the age associated with ‘older people’ and a shift away from defining ageing identities through consumption, back towards work and production. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for future social and public policy.
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Marta Kowalczuk-Walędziak, Hanna Kędzierska and Alicja Korzeniecka-bondar
This chapter aims to explore Polish experiences of school-to-school collaboration (SSC): a mosaic of dynamic interplay between history, culture, politics, economics, and…
Abstract
This chapter aims to explore Polish experiences of school-to-school collaboration (SSC): a mosaic of dynamic interplay between history, culture, politics, economics, and education. Starting with a diagnosis of Poland’s education system as ‘fatalist’ via the lens of the cohesion/regulation matrix, this chapter reveals the complex nature of SSC in this country, which is underpinned by conflicting logics: the decentralized education system, the state’s desire for control over that system’s key mechanisms, and the heavily capitalistic influence of neoliberal pressures. Then, drawing on data from available policy reports and legal acts, as well as the authors’ own research experiences, this chapter offers some insights on promising policy developments and examples of good practices in SSC at national and international levels. Furthermore, this chapter identifies possible barriers that block the full utilization of the potential inherent in collaboration between schools. These include formal/legal barriers (e.g. lack of policies regulating the collaboration between schools, unstable education policy after 1989, and competition between schools) and normative/cultural barriers (e.g. lack of long-standing tradition and experience of cooperation between schools, the bureaucratic school management model, and lack of cooperation skills among the main stakeholders). This chapter concludes with a discussion of some key lessons for policy and practice in tangibly harnessing the potential of SSC as a means of addressing current education challenges in Poland.
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Rebecca Leach, Chris Phillipson, Simon Biggs and Annemarie Money
The ‘baby‐boom’ generation has emerged as a significant group in debates focusing on population change. The demographic context concerns the increase in the birth rate across…
Abstract
The ‘baby‐boom’ generation has emerged as a significant group in debates focusing on population change. The demographic context concerns the increase in the birth rate across industrialised countries from the mid‐1940s through to the mid‐1960s. From a sociological perspective, boomers have been viewed as a group with distinctive experiences that set them apart from previous generations. In the UK context, however, there have been relatively few detailed studies of the characteristics of the boomer generation and, in particular, that of first‐wave boomers (born between 1945 and 1954) now entering retirement. This article draws on a research project exploring changes in consumption and identity affecting this cohort. The paper reviews some of the key social and demographic changes affecting this group, highlighting a mixture of continuities and discontinuities over previous cohorts. The article concludes with an assessment of the value of sociological research for furthering understanding of the baby‐boomer generation.
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Christophe Schinckus, Canh Phuc Nguyen and Felicia Hui Ling Chong
Given the growing importance of cryptocurrencies and the technique called “SegWit” that allows to compile more transactions in a mined block, the electricity consumed per block…
Abstract
Purpose
Given the growing importance of cryptocurrencies and the technique called “SegWit” that allows to compile more transactions in a mined block, the electricity consumed per block might potentially decrease. The purpose of this study is to consider that the difficulty to mine a block might be a better indicator of the Bitcoin\Ether’s electricity consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
This study applies the vector error correction model to investigate data related to primary energy consumption and electricity production, supply and consumption for Bitcoin and Ether hashrates from 2016M1 to 2021M5.
Findings
The hashrate (difficulty of solving the cryptographic problem related to the validation of a transaction) is found to have a positive cointegration with energy and electricity consumption. Despite the launch of the Segregation Witness (SegWit) mechanism allowing blocks to handle a higher number of transactions per block, this Bitcoin and Ether growing need in electricity has significantly been increasing since October 2019.
Originality/value
The major contribution of this study is to investigate a more relevant indicator, namely, hashrate (computational difficulty to solve cryptographic enigma associated with cryptocurrencies-related transaction). The approach of this study can be justified by the fact that there exists a technical solution consisting in increasing the number of transactions per blocks so that less electricity might be required to validate a transaction.