Planning for retail change: a survey of municipal governments in Washington State

Effectively managing retail is essential for municipalities in terms of meeting land use planning goals, developing revenue sources through taxation, furthering economic growth and providing access to goods and services for residents. In 2013, a survey was conducted to examine the retail planning practices of all the 110 small- and medium-sized municipalities in Washington State. The online survey addressed data collection and analysis, land use, retail recruitment, inter-jurisdictional cooperation and evaluation. A large majority of respondents had retail planning goals in their comprehensive plans, yet only 30% dedicated staff for implementation. Jurisdictions would benefit from regional retail planning (especially in light of changes underway from e-commerce), yet the state tax structure places municipalities in competition.     

A lost family-planning regime in eighteenth-century Ceylon

Based on Dutch colonial registers (thombos), this paper reconstructs fertility for two districts in Ceylon, 1756–68. It overcomes challenges in data quality by establishing the outer bounds of plausible estimates in a series of scenarios. Among these, total fertility rates (TFRs) averaged 5.5 in one district, but only 2.7 in the other. These figures exclude the victims of infanticide, a custom noted in European travelogues between about 1660 and 1820. Sex ratios among children differed depending on the number of older siblings, and overall, 27?per cent of girls are missing in one district and 57?per cent in the other. There was little significant variation either in the TFR or the sex ratio by socio-economic status, suggesting that poverty was not a key factor in motivating infanticides. Instead, we argue that at least parts of Ceylon had a forward-looking culture of family planning in the eighteenth century, which was lost in subsequent decades.     

Backward capacity-filtering for electronics Fabs

In electronics Fabs such as semiconductor Fabs and liquid crystal display (LCD) Fabs, which are capital-intensive, finite-capacity planning is critical to achieving full-capacity production and on-time production. However, existing finite-capacity planning methods do not adequately reflect the actual capacity profiles of an electronics Fab. In this paper, we propose a new Fab-level capacity-filtering procedure to generate finite-capacity plan: a backward capacity-filtering procedure for generating finite-capacity release plan. When developing the Fab-level filtering procedures, we use stage-level capacity-filtering algorithms as a key building block. In this study, we enhance the previous capacity-filtering algorithms proposed by one of the authors in order to facilitate the practical requirements of electronics Fabs. We apply the proposed capacity-filtering method to a modern LCD–TFT Fab in Korea. Performance analyses demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to existing methods.     

金融知识差异与我国家庭财富积累

通过应用中国城市家庭消费金融调研数据,本文系统的实证检验了改进后的金融知识指标、经济学专业、金融学专业以及家庭理财规划等因素对家庭各项财富积累的影响,并通过使用合适的工具变量进行两阶段估计,验证了这种正向影响的稳健性。此外,实证结果中家庭理财规划以及理财规划时间跨度的正向边际效应表明,理财规划可能是金融知识差异影响家庭财富积累的重要机制。研究结论有利于更准确地理解居民金融知识差异对于家庭福利,特别是退休福利的影响。     

Does performance management affect nurses’ well-being?

AimThis article focuses on employee performance-management practices in the healthcare sector. We specifically aim to contribute to a better understanding of the impact of employee performance-management practices on affective well-being of nurses in hospitals. Theory suggests that the features of employee-performance management (planning and evaluation of individual performances) predict affective well-being (in this study: job satisfaction and affective commitment).MethodsPerformance-management planning and evaluation and affective well-being were drawn from a survey of nurses at a Flemish hospital. Separate estimations were performed for different aspects of affective well-being.ResultsPerformance planning has a negative effect on job satisfaction of nurses. Both vertical alignment and satisfaction with the employee performance-management system increase the affective well-being of nurses; however, the impact of vertical alignment differs for different aspects of affective well-being (i.e. job satisfaction and affective commitment).ConclusionPerformance-management planning and evaluation of nurses are associated with attitudinal outcomes. The results indicate that employee performance-management features have different impacts on different aspects of well-being.     

对区域高等教育战略规划的若干思考--基于《加利福尼亚州高等教育总体规划（1960-1975）》的分析

《加利福尼亚州高等教育总体规划（1960—1975）》是区域高等教育战略规划领域的成功范例，规划内容通过州宪法性效力、州法律法规性效力以及行业约定性效力三种形式发挥作用。准确把握关键问题、秉持院校自治理念、深入开展调研等做法值得借鉴。我国区域高等教育机遇与挑战并存，教育规划应当坚持治理理念、以人为本理念和系统论理念，对区域高校定位作出合理预期与安排，引导区域高等教育健康和谐发展。     

Disentangling the Governance Configurations of Strategic Spatial Plan-Making in European Urban Regions

This paper is aimed at assessing and disentangling how territorial governance configurations influence contemporary practices in strategic plan-making in 14 European urban regions. The findings allow us to distinguish three dominant practices: i) plan-making shaped by consensus building and multilevel government cooperation; ii) plan-making shaped by the involvement of profit-oriented actors and negotiations, and iii) plan-making shaped by consolidated planning practice. To truly grasp plan-making practice, it is necessary to scrutinize who rules and who is ruled while negotiations are unfolding, as well as the extent to which private actors’ interests influence how spatial development goals and strategies are defined.     

Does trust increase willingness to pay higher taxes to help the needy?

The article studies the causal effect of trust on the willingness to pay higher taxes to help the needy in a sample of 29 countries of Eastern and Southern Europe, and the former Soviet Union and Mongolia. It is hypothesized that interpersonal trust leads to a greater willingness to pay taxes to help the needy since (i) trust increases the likelihood of helping strangers; (ii) trust fosters solidarity and cooperation when working to solve common problems in society; and (iii) trust reduces suspicion with respect to the perceived misuse of redistributed money. Three key findings are that the more people trust each other, the more they are ready to support the welfare state; the effect of trust on welfare state support holds even in a contextual environment characterized by rather lower levels of trust and relatively underdeveloped systems of redistribution; and higher individual‐level trust fosters tax morale and helps deter tax evasion.     

Strategic Planning for Support Services for Children with a Parent or Close Relative in Prison

It has long been recognized that children with a parent or close relative in prison are more likely to experience educational difficulties, emotional distress, family breakdown and a substantial reduction in family income (Boswell 2002; Smith et al. 2007; Morgan et al. 2013b; Morgan and Gill 2013). Consequently, children with a parent in prison are more likely to require support from statutory services, especially education and social care. However, statutory support for this group of children is sparse, and children of prisoners tend not to be identified as a priority group. The demand on local authorities to spend their limited budgets wisely means tough decisions have to be made. These decisions are not taken in a vacuum: they are taken in a context of local need, consumer representation, central and local politics; underpinned by the values and attitudes of individual members as well as by the ethos or culture of the local authority itself. In this article we apply Axford's typology (2009) of the different cultures which underpin local authority service provision to data from a research study carried out in 2011 in one local authority which explored support provision in schools for children of prisoners. We examine the contradictions and gaps within the local authority's attempts to synergize the different modules of service delivery into a coherent pattern of provision, and we explore how changes in strategic culture might lead to improvements being made in terms of service delivery to this group of ‘vulnerable’ children.     

政府旅游开发方式评析——以土耳其为例

提起旅游,人们脑海里首先浮现的必然是"阳光与海滩"。土耳其是地中海地区的一个主要国家,在历史、文化、自然风光、美食、民俗等方面都具有巨大潜力,并且土耳其人民也非常热情友善。土耳其拥有21世纪的游客所寻求的异国风情。为使土耳其的这种潜力在继续服务于旅游业的同时保持其延续性,就需要认真的自省与科学的研究和规划。旅游业对于一国的社会福利和经济发展有着举足轻重的影响,但也存在毁灭当地资源的可能。理性运用旅游资产、增加游客数量和提高旅游收入,这些都可以通过有效的旅游规划来实现。在此问题上,中央政府、地方政府和非政府组织在相互协作的框架下各司其职显得至关重要。本文通过揭示当前土耳其旅游业的现状,对中央和地方政府扮演的角色做出评析,希望从国家管理的风格和方式角度出发,使土耳其的旅游规划和政策取得实际效果。