Resource Policy (resource + policy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Book reviews Comptes rendus

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 4 2004
Article first published online: 9 JAN 200
Dream No Little Dreams: A Biography of the Douglas Government of Saskatchewan, 1944,1961. IPAC Series in Public Management and Governance By a.w. johnson, with the assistance of Rosemary Proctor. Federalism in the Forest: National Versus State Natural Resource Policy. American Governance & Public Policy Series By tomas m. koontz. Washington, D.C.: Georgetozorr University Press. Beyond Service: State Workers, Public Policy, and the Prospects for Democratic Administration. IPAC Series in Public Management and Governance By greg mcelligott. Toronto: University of Toronto Press The Regulators: Anonymous Power Brokers in American Politics By cindy skrzycki. New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. [source]


Quantifying spatial classification uncertainties of the historical Wisconsin landscape (USA)

ECOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2005
Janine Bolliger
Landscape feature can be classified by creating categories based on aggregation of spatially explicit information. However, many landscape features appear continuous rather than discrete. The aggregation process likely involves loss of information and introduces a variety of uncertainties whose degree and extent may differ spatially. Since landscape classifications have found wide application in e.g. natural resource policies or ecological research, assessments of spatial classification uncertainties are required. We present a quantitative framework to identify the degree of landscape continuity (fuzziness) and structure (categorization) based on fuzzy classification and offer measures to quantify uncertainties originating from aggregating features into categories. Fuzzy classification is a non-hierarchical, quantitative method of assessing class definitions using degrees of association between features and class. This results in classes which are well defined and compositionally distinct, as well as classes which are less clearly defined but which, to various degrees, share characteristics with some or all classes. The spatial variation in the degree of class definition on the landscape is used to assess classification uncertainties. The two aspects of uncertainty investigated are the degree of association of a feature with the overall class definitions (membership diffusion), and the class-specific degree of association of each pixel on the landscape with each class (membership saturation). Three classification scenarios, one fuzzy and one discrete, of the historical landscape of Wisconsin (USA) were compared for spatial classification uncertainties. Membership diffusion is highest in topographically heterogeneous environments, or areas characterized by many species occupying similar ecological niches. Classification uncertainties for individual classes show that differentiated species distributions can be identified, not only distribution centers. [source]


Similarity, Isomorphism or Duality?

BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2008
Recent Survey Evidence on the Human Resource Management Policies of Multinational Corporations
There is considerable debate as to the determinants of the human resource policies of human resource management: do they reflect national institutional or cultural realities, emerging common global practices, parent country effects or the dual effects of transnational and national realities? We use an extensive international database to explore these differences, assessing variations in a range of human resource practices. We find new evidence of national differences in the manner in which indigenous firms manage their people, but also evidence of a similarity in practice amongst multinational corporations. In other words, multinational corporations tend to manage their human resources in ways that are distinct from those of their host country; at the same time, country of origin effects seem relatively weak. Whilst there is some evidence of common global practices, sufficient diversity in practice persists to suggest that duality theories may provide the most appropriate explanation. [source]


Defining Political Community and Rights to Natural Resources in Botswana

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2009
Amy R. Poteete
ABSTRACT Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), once presented as the best way to protect common pool natural resources, now attracts a growing chorus of critiques that either question its underlying assumptions or emphasize problems related to institutional design. These critiques overlook connections between the definition of rights to natural resources and membership in political communities. The potential for competing definitions of political identity and rights across natural resources arises when property rights regimes differ across natural resources and these different systems of rights appeal to alternative definitions of community. In Botswana, the entangling of natural resource policy with identity politics contributed to a partial recentralization of CBNRM in 2007. [source]


Recognition of Indigenous Interests in Australian Water Resource Management, with Particular Reference to Environmental Flow Assessment

GEOGRAPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 3 2008
Sue Jackson
Australia's new national water policy represents a substantial change from the previous approach, because it recognises a potential need for allocations to meet particular indigenous requirements, which will have to be quantitatively defined in water allocation plans. However, indigenous values associated with rivers and water are presently poorly understood by decision-makers, and some are difficult to quantify or otherwise articulate in allocation decisions. This article describes the range of Australian indigenous values associated with water, and the way they have been defined in contemporary water resource policy and discourse. It argues that the heavy reliance of indigenous values on healthy river systems indicates that, theoretically at least, they are logically suited for consideration in environmental flow assessments. However, where indigenous interests have been considered for assessment planning purposes indigenous values have tended to be overlooked in a scientific process that leaves little room for different world views relating to nature, intangible environmental qualities and human relationships with river systems that are not readily amenable to quantification. There is often an implicit but untested assumption that indigenous interests will be protected through the provision of environmental flows to meet aquatic ecosystem requirements, but the South African and New Zealand approaches to environmental flow assessment, for example, demonstrate different riverine uses potentially can be accommodated. Debate with indigenous land-holders and experimentation will show how suited different environment flow assessment techniques are to addressing indigenous environmental philosophies and values. [source]


Nurses on the Move: A Global Overview

HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, Issue 3p2 2007
Mireille Kingma
Objective. To look at nurse migration flows in the light of national nursing workforce imbalances, examine factors that encourage or inhibit nurse mobility, and explore the potential benefits of circular migration. Principal Findings. The number of international migrants has doubled since 1970 and nurses are increasingly part of the migratory stream. Critical nursing shortages in industrialized countries are generating a demand that is fueling energetic international recruitment campaigns. Structural adjustments in the developing countries have created severe workforce imbalances and shortfalls often coexist with large numbers of unemployed health professionals. A nurse's motivation to migrate is multifactorial, not limited to financial incentives, and barriers exist that discourage or slow the migration process. The migration flows vary in direction and magnitude over time, responding to socioeconomic factors present in source and destination countries. The dearth of data on which to develop international health human resource policy remains. There is growing recognition, however, that migration will continue and that temporary migration will be a focus of attention in the years to come. Conclusions. Today's search for labor is a highly organized global hunt for talent that includes nurses. International migration is a symptom of the larger systemic problems that make nurses leave their jobs. Nurse mobility becomes a major issue only in a context of migrant exploitation or nursing shortage. Injecting migrant nurses into dysfunctional health systems,ones that are not capable of attracting and retaining staff domestically,will not solve the nursing shortage. [source]