Lagging behind in suburbia: Suburban versus urban newcomers’ employment settlement service outcomes in Metro Vancouver,Canada

Suburbanization is reshaping the context of immigrant settlement in Canada. Newcomer immigrants are increasingly settling initially in suburban communities as opposed to traditional receiving neighborhoods in urban centers. However, the quality of settlement services for newcomers to suburban neighborhoods has lagged behind, creating a mismatch between newcomer settlement patterns and service provision. As settlement patterns are recognized as significant determinants of employment success for newcomers and employment achievement is a key theme of integration, this study compares suburban and urban newcomers’ satisfaction with employment settlement services, associated financial experiences and coping mechanisms. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with 43 newcomer immigrants in Vancouver and three surrounding suburbs, we argue that suburban newcomers experience more difficulties with employment services from settlement service agencies than do urban newcomers. Subsequent unemployment may contribute to suburban settlers experiencing greater difficulty paying their monthly bills than do urban immigrants.     

The impact of social power and influence on the implementation of innovation strategies: A case study of a UK mega infrastructure construction project

Influence plays a key role in reaching consensus among multiple actors involved in project-based decision-making processes. While prior literature devotes considerable attention to describing influence, little attention has been paid to influence at the individual level of the strategic project manager within the context of megaprojects. This research intended to fill this knowledge gap by identifying and describing the influence strategies that a strategic project manager applies when implementing innovation strategies on megaprojects. A qualitative case study was used to examine the complex social processes involved in a major UK capital investment programme. The findings underline a critical subset of influence strategies, notably higher-management support, inspirational appeal and bargaining. The study proposes a utilitarian structure of social power comprising selective, supportive and executory power bases.     

A case study of the impact of integrated project governances on PPP project performance

Under the new normal state, the PPP project will play a more and more important role in the social and economic development of China. To improve the performance of PPP project management, it is necessary to implement integrated project governances. Firstly, according to the index system of two kinds of PPP projects governances (Contract Governance and Relationship Governance) and PPP project management performance determined by theoretical analysis, the DDX project is selected as the analysis object. After identifying the case, this paper explains the basic information and preliminary work of the case. Then, the three contents of contract governance, relationship governance and project performance are analyzed comprehensively. Case studies show that all of these two governance modes have positive effects on project management performance. However, due to the lack of information in the case, the validity of the conclusion also needs to be verified again.     

应用型本科院校国际化人才培养模式研究——以三明学院为例

国际通识教育课程项目是由教育部下属留学服务中心审批,在通识教育理念的基础上培养人才的国际化办学项目。三明学院作为应用型本科院校,以培养有特色应用技术型人才为目标,积极推进人才培养模式改革。结合三明学院的实际情况,从课程设置、教师资源、授课方式、教学质量保障体系和第二课堂等方面,对国际通识教育课程项目的国际化人才培养模式进行研究,希望能够为应用型本科院校创新人才培养模式提供经验。     

EU post-accession Polish migrants trajectories and their settlement practices in Scotland

The presence and the apparent permanence of post-accession EU migrants in the UK is of significant interest to both academics and politicians. Studies have debated whether migration from new accession countries to the UK mark a new type of migration often described as ‘liquid’ and ‘open ended’, or whether these migrants will settle in the new destination countries. Based on a qualitative study of Poles who have lived in Scotland for at least six years, we observed four typologies of what we call migrants’ settling practices: (1) stayers, (2) over-stayers, (3) circular and transnational migrants and (4) economic migrants. The findings from this study demonstrate that Polish migrants do not have fixed ideas about the duration of their migration (in terms of a sense of permanence) but instead focus on diverse links, anchors or attachments in Scotland and Poland in describing their settling practices. Thus, the main contribution the article makes is to present an in-depth understanding of what settlement means from the perspective of migrants themselves. This paper concludes by providing a short comment on implications of the outcome of the Referendum on EU membership ‘Brexit’ in June 2016 on Polish migrants settling practices.     

An evaluation of stakeholder capacity in the implementation of millenium village primary school meal project

The paper focused on evaluation of stakeholder capacity to implement the millennium village primary school meal project in Kenya. The study which was anchored on the stakeholder theory as well as the Context Input Process Product (CIPP) model of evaluation used mixed methods research design with ex-post facto and case study as its two research elements. The mixed methods was adopted because when both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used in a single study, the strengths of both produce a research synergy in which the collective benefits are greater than what is obtained from either approach when used alone. A sample size of 186 participants was selected from seven (7) primary schools using stratified random sampling. The participants selected purposively included pupils, teachers, head teachers, parents, Area Education Officer (AEO) and project staff. Data was collected using questionnaires, face to face interview guide, Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and document analysis guide. The study findings indicated that the project was implemented with great success as indicated by stakeholders’ capacity to understand project objectives, their involvement in project planning and implementation and their positive attitude towards the project. This has contribute to poverty reduction in the community through the project and sustainable approaches for project implementation.     

一个“成功"游牧民定居工程背后的资源困境

游牧民定居工程被视为改变牧区靠天养牧、加速牧区现代化和城镇化的重要举措而广泛实施。 游牧民定居工程迅速且深刻地改变着草原牧区的自然、社会及经济形态,同时也改变了人与自然资源之间的互动关系及作用时空尺度。 在“成功冶的定居点,牧民生活水平大幅提高,且对天然草场的利用减少;但是,对比相邻的村庄发现,其“成功冶的关键在于有足够的外部资源输入,包括草场、农田和地下水等。 而从区域的生态环境来看,这种“成功冶模式并不符合当地干旱地区的生态特征,有可能造成更大范围内的生态破坏。 因此,游牧民定居工程应该从区域生态特征出发,对类似“成功冶模板的推广更加谨慎。     

全球化团队的敏捷开发模式

敏捷开发是软件项目的一个概念框架，能够帮助开发团队快速响应需求的变化并且能够很好地控制成本和风险。它是一种以人为核心、迭代、循序渐进的开发方法。Serum是一个应用广泛的迭代增量过程进行软件开发的敏捷开发方法。在全球化的背景下，存在很多全球化的开发团队，他们在不断探索全球化敏捷开发的模式。文章最后给出的HP的全球化团队敏捷开发模式，能够帮助大家更好地认识敏捷开发。     

Setting tolerance limits for statistical project control using earned value management

Project control has been a research topic since decades that attracts both academics and practitioners. Project control systems indicate the direction of change in preliminary planning variables compared with actual performance. In case their current project performance deviates from the planned performance, a warning is indicated by the system in order to take corrective actions.Earned value management/earned schedule (EVM/ES) systems have played a central role in project control, and provide straightforward key performance metrics that measure the deviations between planned and actual performance in terms of time and cost. In this paper, a new statistical project control procedure sets tolerance limits to improve the discriminative power between progress situations that are either statistically likely or less likely to occur under the project baseline schedule. In this research, the tolerance limits are derived from subjective estimates for the activity durations of the project. Using the existing and commonly known EVM/ES metrics, the resulting project control charts will have an improved ability to trigger actions when variation in a project׳s progress exceeds certain predefined thresholdsA computational experiment has been set up to test the ability of these statistical project control charts to discriminate between variations that are either acceptable or unacceptable in the duration of the individual activities. The computational experiments compare the use of statistical tolerance limits with traditional earned value management thresholds and validate their power to report warning signals when projects tend to deviate significantly from the baseline schedule.