![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Decision theory
The 'Precautionary Principle' has sparked the central controversy over European and U.S. risk regulation. The Reality of Precaution is the most comprehensive study to go beyond precaution as an abstract principle and test its reality in practice. This groundbreaking resource combines detailed case studies of a wide array of risks to health, safety, environment and security; a broad quantitative analysis; and cross-cutting chapters on politics, law, and perceptions. The authors rebut the rhetoric of conflicting European and American approaches to risk, and show that the reality has been the selective application of precaution to particular risks on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as a constructive exchange of policy ideas toward 'better regulation.' The book offers a new view of precaution, regulatory reform, comparative analysis, and transatlantic relations.
Assessing the future is vital in informing public policy decisions. One of the most widespread approaches is the development of scenarios, which are alternative hypothetical futures. Research has indicated, however, that the reality of how professionals go about employing scenarios is often starkly at odds with the theory - a finding that has important ramifications for how the resulting images of the future should be interpreted. It also shows the need for rewriting and updating theory. This book, based on an intensive five year study of how experts actually go about assessing the future, provides a groundbreaking examination of foresighting in action. Obtained via ethnographic techniques, the results lay bare for the first time the real processes by which scenarios are made. It is also the first book to examine foresighting for public policy, which is so often overlooked in favour of business practice. From handling of discontinuity to historical determinism, the analysis reveals and explains why foresight is difficult and what the major pitfalls are. Each chapter ends with a toolkit of recommendations for practice. The book aims to help readers to reflect on their own practices of public-oriented foresight and thus to foster a deeper understanding of the key principles and challenges. Ultimately, this will lead to better informed decision making.
RIGOROUS DAP in the Early Years: From Theory to Practice provides teachers with a roadmap for teaching that helps children meet academic expectations and maintains focus on the appropriate development of the whole child. A construct of eleven practices, RIGOROUS DAP supplies teachers with strategies for 1) making instructional decisions that meet the needs of the individual child; 2) sustaining culturally relevant practices; 3) engaging stakeholders in conversations about educating young children for school success through practices that attend to their individual, sociocultural, and developmental needs; and 4) ensuring all children experience high-level learning and succeed in school. The eleven practices comprising the construct are: 1. Reaching all children 2. Integrating content areas 3. Growing as a community 4. Offering choices 5. Revisiting new content 6. Offering challenges 7. Understanding each learner 8. Seeing the whole child 9. Differentiating instruction 10. Assessing constantly 11. Pushing every child forward An academically rigorous learning environment allows all children to learn at high levels through hands-on learning experiences that address the whole child and connect to the child's world in and out of school. A developmentally appropriate learning environment considers the children's developmental, cognitive, social, emotional, linguistic, and physical development, as well as the sociocultural worlds in which they live.
The world is increasingly turbulent and complex, awash with disruptions, tipping points and knock-on effects exemplified by the implosion of financial markets and economies around the globe. This book is for business and organizational leaders who want and need to think through how best to deal with increasing turbulence, and with the complexity and uncertainty that come with it. The authors explain in clear language how future orientation and, specifically, modern scenario techniques help to address these conditions. They draw on examples from a wide variety of international settings and circumstances including large corporations, inter-governmental organizations, small firms and municipalities. Readers will be inspired to try out scenario approaches themselves to better address the turbulence that affects them and others with whom they work, live and do business. This second edition extends the use of scenarios planning and methods to tackle the risk and uncertainty of financial markets and the potentially massive impacts on businesses of all kinds, providing powerful tools to give far thinking executives an advantage in these turbulent times.
The establishment of the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) was the direct result of widespread concern that the complexity and interdependence of health, environmental, and technological risks facing the world was making the development and implementation of adequate risk governance strategies ever more difficult. This volume details the IRGC developed and proposed framework for risk governance and covers how it was peer reviewed as well as tested
Calculating Political Risk is rich and illuminating, and much more than a political science treatise. Althaus draws on diverse literature, extensive interviews and intriguing case studies to offer interdisciplinary, practical and nuanced insight. This book provides new perspectives and more precise language for making sense of a critical dimension of politics, policy-making and public management. Evert Lindquist, Director and Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria, Canada This powerful new book is the first ever examination of the hard edge of how political risk - something faced by all political actors innumerable times every day - is calculated and used in decision-making. It opens with an outline of the historical and linguistic origins of risk, the various disciplinary understandings of risk, the risk society concept, and how risk has come to be so prominent in the context of environmental disaster and terrorism. The book then defines political risk and looks at its manifestations in the public sector, from project to high-level political risk. It also looks at risk identification versus risk management and compares the concept of political risk with the private sector practice of risk management. Unique research findings from interviews with over 100 risk practitioners and politicians provide a detailed look at how political actors calculate political risk. Case study-based chapters look in-depth at neat and discrete examples: risk calculation in state development plans in Australia; political risk identification and management in the UK during the mad cow crisis; and US government risk calculation in the post-September 11 context. The final chapters draw together the experiences and lessons learned from the case studies and practitioner insights to formulate a better understanding of what political risk is and what its calculation means in political practice. The author shows how political risk calculation provides a fresh perspective on policy analysis and identifies how political risk is relevant to a broader understanding of politics and political science, as well as policy formulation and implementation on the ground.
Risks are everywhere in the business world. "Mastering Risk Modelling" provides the busy financial manager with useful tips andpractical templates for assessing, applying and modelling risk and uncertainty in Excel. The book is designed specifically to be of help to you if you don't have time to start from scratch - it will improve your abilities in Excel and give you a library of basic examples that you can use as a basis for further development. It covers: - Review of model design - Risk and uncertainty - Credit risk - Project finance - Financial analysis - Valuation - Options - Bonds - Equities - Value at risk - Simulation This second edition contains brand new chapters: - Revised models - More material on credit risk modelling e.g. portfolios, bankruptcy models - Shows dual 2003/2007 Excel key strokes - More theory especially on statistics in Excel - Basic statistics in Excel - tools and methods - Capacity to borrow and repay - Finding optimum mix of risk and return - Fixed income risk models - Visual Basic approach
This is a major, and deeply thoughtful, contribution to understanding uncertainty and risk. Our world and its unprecedented challenges need such ways of thinking! Much more than a set of contributions from different disciplines, this book leads you to explore your own way of perceiving your own area of work. An outstanding contribution that will stay on my shelves for many years. Dr Neil T. M. Hamilton, Director, WWF International Arctic Programme This collection of essays provides a unique and fascinating overview of perspectives on uncertainty and risk across a wide variety of disciplines. It is a valuable and accessible sourcebook for specialists and laypeople alike. Professor Renate Schubert, Head of the Institute for Environmental Decisions and Chair of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology This comprehensive collection of disciplinary perspectives on uncertainty is a definitive guide to contemporary insights into this Achilles heel of modernity and the endemic hubris of institutional science in its role as public authority. It gives firm foundations to the fundamental historic shift now underway in the world, towards normalizing acceptance of the immanent condition of ignorance and of its practical corollaries: contingency, uncontrol, and respect for difference. Brian Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University Bammer and Smithson have assembled a fascinating, important collection of papers on uncertainty and its management. The integrative nature of Uncertainty and Risk makes it a landmark in the intellectual history of this vital cross-disciplinary concept. George Cvetkovich, Director, Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University Uncertainty governs our lives. From the unknowns of living with the risks of terrorism to developing policies on genetically modified foods, or disaster planning for catastrophic climate change, how we conceptualize, evaluate and cope with uncertainty drives our actions and deployment of resources, decisions and priorities. In this thorough and wide-ranging volume, theoretical perspectives are drawn from art history, complexity science, economics, futures, history, law, philosophy, physics, psychology, statistics and theology. On a practical level, uncertainty is examined in emergency management, intelligence, law enforcement, music, policy and politics. Key problems that are a subject of focus are environmental management, communicable diseases and illicit drugs. Opening and closing sections of the book provide major conceptual strands in uncertainty thinking and develop an integrated view of the nature of uncertainty, uncertainty as a motivating or de-motivating force, and strategies for coping and managing under uncertainty.
Don't jump from problem to solution without first investigating root causes. This book helps you more accurately focus on school improvement issues, so you can avoid wasting precious time and resources. It is clearly written, contains lots of real examples, and is presented in a style and format designed for the non-expert. It will help you make decisions which will improve learning for all students.
This highly original book aims to broaden the discussion about risk, the management of risk and regulation, especially in the financial industry. By using terms of the philosopher Jacques Derrida, Peter Pelzer employs philosophical concepts to enrich the understanding of what risk is about and what is necessarily excluded in contemporary risk management.
Building on his highly original and always insightful earlier works on collective activity, in Origins of Collective Decision Making Andy Blunden turns his attention to the question of how groups make decisions. Examining three paradigms - Counsel, Majority, and Consensus based methods - Blunden discovers that each has unique ethical foundations, deeply rooted in the historical experiences of specific struggles.
Large landslides affect many mountain valleys in Europe. They are characterised by a low probability of evolution into a catastrophic event but can have very large impacts on population, infrastructures and the environment. This impact is becoming more and more pronounced due to increasing tourism and the construction of new roads and railways in mountainous areas. Methodologies for the assessment and mitigation of risks are therefore a major issue. Since very large slope movements are quite often directly or indirectly implicated in disasters, like landslides, secondary slides or debris flow, their early identification is essential to an adequate risk assessment of the zones involved. The assessment of risks due to large landslides in the alpine environment is the first activity carried out within the IMIRILAND Project. This project involves seven partners representing five European countries and is funded by the European Commission within the Fifth Framework Program (Research and Technological Development, Activities of a Generic Nature: the Fight against Major Natural and Technological Hazards). The objective of this cooperation is to develop risk management methodologies and mitigation strategies that can be applied at a European level as useful tools for administrators and land users. To this end, by means of a multidisciplinary approach the hazard analysis of some selected large landslides was examined with a particular focus on geological, geomorphological and geo-mechanical methods. In addition, vulnerability and risk analyses were carried out to enable the consideration of direct and indirect consequences, as well as technical and social impacts. The developed risk assessment procedure was critically examined through application to some selected landslides. Identification and Mitigation of Large Landslide Risks in Europe Advances in Risk Assessment presents the risk assessment procedure developed and the case studies that were performed within the framework of the IMIRILAND Project. It is edited by Arpa Piemonte, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Politecnico di Torino This book is intended for geotechnical engineers, engineering geologists, geomorphologists and planners who are involved in landslides and in assessing the stability of natural slopes."
Inside every mother is a fierce, resilient, intuitive woman who has the ability to tap into an indomitable mindset and create heroic outcomes--for her children, her family, her community and for herself--she is a Warrior Mom. In Warrior Mom, (previously published as Miracle Mindset), celebrity health expert and four-time New York Times bestselling author, JJ Virgin reveals how one life-altering event taught her to trust her instincts, pay attention to the details that matter and defy the odds--and she shares how you can too.In 2012, JJ Virgin was in a hospital room next to her sixteen-year-old son who was struck by a hit-and-run driver and left for dead. She was told by doctors that he wouldn't last through the night and to let him go. With every reason to give up, JJ chose instead to invest her energy into the hope that her son would not just survive, but thrive. In Warrior Mom, she shares the lessons that gave her the courage to overcome the worst moment of her life. During this difficult time, she learned valuable personal lessons that helped her rebuild her life and find success and purpose in herself, her work, and teach her sons and community how to face their own obstacles and trials. Lessons like "Don't Wish It Were Easier, Make Yourself Stronger" and "Your Limitations Will Become Your Life" will lead you to your own personal power and purpose, even when the deck seems stacked against you. With true stories from her life, her clients, and other well-known thought leaders, she can help you transform your mindset and your daily habits to endure the difficult battles that life sends your way. Insightful, personal, and completely relatable, this book proves that miracles are possible when you show up, remain positive, and do the work.
The question as to whether we are now entering a risk society has become a key debate in contemporary social theory. Risk and Technological Culture presents a critical discussion of the main theories of risk from Ulrich Becks foundational work to that of his contemporaries such as Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash and assesses the extent to which risk has impacted on modern societies. In this discussion van Loon demonstrates how new technologies are transforming the character of risk and examines the relationship between technological culture and society through substantive chapters on topics such as waste, emerging viruses, communication technologies and urban disorders. In so doing this innovative new book extends the debate to encompass theorists such as Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard.
Researchers studying decision making have traditionally studied the
phenomenon in the laboratory, with hypothetical decisions that may
or may not involve the decision maker's values, passions, or areas
of expertise. The assumption is that the findings of these
well-controlled laboratory studies will shed light on the important
decisions people make in their everyday lives. This book examines
that assumption.
Many decision problems in Operations Research are defined on temporal networks, that is, workflows of time-consuming tasks whose processing order is constrained by precedence relations. For example, temporal networks are used to model projects, computer applications, digital circuits and production processes. Optimization problems arise in temporal networks when a decision maker wishes to determine a temporal arrangement of the tasks and/or a resource assignment that optimizes some network characteristic (e.g. the time required to complete all tasks). The parameters of these optimization problems (e.g. the task durations) are typically unknown at the time the decision problem arises. This monograph investigates solution techniques for optimization problems in temporal networks that explicitly account for this parameter uncertainty. We study several formulations, each of which requires different information about the uncertain problem parameters.
Researchers studying decision making have traditionally studied the
phenomenon in the laboratory, with hypothetical decisions that may
or may not involve the decision maker's values, passions, or areas
of expertise. The assumption is that the findings of these
well-controlled laboratory studies will shed light on the important
decisions people make in their everyday lives. This book examines
that assumption.
This book discusses how human-centered principles and methods can be applied to improve the design of policies and projects to increase positive impacts for beneficiaries. The basic premise of human-centered design is to put beneficiaries at the heart of the design process. For policies and projects, a human-centered design approach can benefit people's lives by contributing to a deeper understanding of their challenges, aspirations, and dreams. Part 1 of the book discusses principles and methods for human-centered design and features real-world practical examples. Part 2 presents a case study on Indonesia's maritime sector to demonstrate the benefits.
The book constitutes a valuable guide to the implementation of the CNS/ATM system towards ensuring safe, efficient and orderly evolution of international air transport. It uses a pragmatic approach in addressing the major legal, institutional, technical, political and economic aspects underlying the Global Navigation Satellite System, which is expected to play a fundamental role in aviation safety and air navigation world-wide. The book also examines, through well-reasoned analysis and research, the various controversial and relevant issues which will dominate the system in the years to come. The author demonstrates a profound grasp of the subject-matter through a sustained absorption of technical, institutional and legal principles applying to this complex subject. This is brought to bear in the coherent structure and logical organisation of the chapters which makes the book an invaluable tool for the aviation community, scholars and national and international regulatory authorities. It will also be immensely useful for practitioners who work towards further development and implementation of the CNS/ATM system. There has been no comparable work previously published.
This book is a six part guide to the principalship. It covers topics including: -How to know who you are working with and how to explore their motivation. -Who are the informal leaders in your building and how to negotiate a principal's relationship with them. -How to evaluate your school staff and use them more effectively. -How to determine if your community is on your side or have already lined up for a showdown with you. This book leads principals through an examination of themselves and their motivation. It takes an unflinching look at the nature of today's principalship at all levels.
The goal of this book is to help business managers and academic
researchers understand the means-end perspective and the methods by
which it is used, and to demonstrate how to use the means-end
approach to develop better marketing and advertising strategy. The
authors discuss methodological issues regarding interviewing and
coding, present applications of the means-end approach to marketing
and advertising problems, and describe the conceptual foundations
of the means-end approach.
Stochastic games have an element of chance: the state of the next round is determined probabilistically depending upon players' actions and the current state. Successful players need to balance the need for short-term payoffs while ensuring future opportunities remain high. The various techniques needed to analyze these often highly non-trivial games are a showcase of attractive mathematics, including methods from probability, differential equations, algebra, and combinatorics. This book presents a course on the theory of stochastic games going from the basics through to topics of modern research, focusing on conceptual clarity over complete generality. Each of its chapters introduces a new mathematical tool - including contracting mappings, semi-algebraic sets, infinite orbits, and Ramsey's theorem, among others - before discussing the game-theoretic results they can be used to obtain. The author assumes no more than a basic undergraduate curriculum and illustrates the theory with numerous examples and exercises, with solutions available online. |
You may like...
Cross-Scale Coupling and Energy Transfer…
Yukitoshi Nishimura, Olga Verkhoglyadova, …
Paperback
R3,336
Discovery Miles 33 360
Ties that bind - Race and the politics…
Shannon Walsh, Jon Soske
Paperback
Petroleum Related Rock Mechanics, Volume…
Erling Fjaer, Rune Martin Holt, …
Paperback
R3,965
Discovery Miles 39 650
Annual Report of the Board of Regents of…
Smithsonian Institution
Hardcover
R900
Discovery Miles 9 000
|