This book addresses the nexus of issues exploring governance structures and mechanisms in public service organizations, thus contributing to the development of disciplines that focus on public management. It goes beyond the state of the art by addressing a number of specific issues in a more systematic fashion. The book’s interdisciplinary focus is a particularly valuable asset, as its topic is situated at the crossroads of a number of fields, including public management, business administration, corporate governance, policy studies, political science, sociology, and third sector studies, all of which offer important perspectives and are important for the development of public management and public services. The book covers more than Italy and Norway and focuses specifically on public service organizations, addressing more aspects of their governance structures and mechanisms than any other book available today. The unique presentation of features related to the governance and management of different actors (state-owned enterprises, local public utilities, ministries, municipalities, citizens, etc.), involved at different levels in the production and provision of public services, makes it possible to compare and contrast these different perspectives and opens new avenues of theoretical collaboration and development.

Designed to make life easier for most network designers, whether they are a manager with technical background, work with standardization, the architecture of implementers’ solutions to standards, product design (constructing the software and hardware parts of operator networks), system testing, and for operators responsible for the configuration and maintenance of a network. Develops modeling as a basic principle for producing specifications turns design from being document driven to model-driven. In the context of this book, however, the only model type that is discussed is the information model that describes the purpose, structure, and behavior of a network. Presents an added-value modeling language that called AMLn (Abstract Modeling Language, network view), which is the first and, so far, the only attempt to create a modeling language for network systems.

International mobility is not a new concept as people have moved throughout history, voluntarily and forcibly, for personal, familial, economic, political, and professional reasons. Yet, the mobility of technical talent in the global economy is relatively new, largely voluntary, structurally determined by market forces, and influenced by immigration policies. With over a decade’s worth of extensive research in India, Japan, Finland, and Singapore, this book provides an alternative understanding of how capitalism functions at the global level by specifically analyzing the international movement of technical professionals between India and Japan. There are three factors that inform this study: the services transition away from manufacturing, the movement of technical professionals in the world economy, and the demographic crisis facing Japan. The dynamics of changing capitalism are examined by theorizing the emergence of the services sector in the USA and Japan, analyzing the pronounced social inequality in India that is the basis for the global supply of highly skilled technical professionals, and providing considerable empirical data on the flows of professionals to these two countries to indicate Japan’s institutional inflexibility in accommodating foreign talent. The author anticipates that Japanese industry will shed some of its institutional rigidity due to the pressures of competition and the scarcity of technical professionals. Providing a wealth of information on the topic of international mobility, this book is an essential addition for scholars and students in the field of International Development, Business Studies, Asian Studies, Migration Studies, and Political Economy.

Traditionally the process of design has concentrated on the construction phase itself, with the primary objective being to optimise efficiency and minimise costs during development and construction. With the move towards a more sustainable development comes the need for this short-term approach to be expanded to encompass the entire service life of the structure. This book describes how to optimise the service life of structures, through an optimum integrated life cycle design process. Sustainability and material performance issues are detailed. Integrated Life Cycle Design of Structures provides a comprehensive account of this rapidly emerging field. It is essential reading for civil and structural engineers, designers, architects, contractors, and clients.

In the recent years the number of industrial parks has grown rapidly worldwide driven by economic policies and industrial restructuring. The high resource consumption and prices as well as stringent environmental policies and laws have pushed the strategic importance of efficient resources management. Due to the proximity of companies, industrial parks offer potential for the development of interorganizational resource exchanges, in terms of energy and waste, infrastructure sharing and joint services. Utilizing this potential enhances the resource efficiency and added value of companies while often reducing their environmental impacts. Efficient management of resources in industrial parks requires an appropriate management concept. However, the research and literature on the management of industrial parks is very limited. As a solution the author introduces the concept for integrated resources management. The theoretical status quo of the concept is studied from the perspective of industrial ecology with the conclusion that the approach lacks a strategic management dimension. To tackle the problem, the author draws upon the strategic management and organizational theories as well as the approaches of network and environmental management. The empirical insights into the concept are sought by analyzing applied practices to network and resources management in industrial parks. The case studies comprise representative examples of successful industrial restructuring from Germany such as DOW ValuePark(R) and Chemical Industrial Park Marl and showcases of China's economic policy such as Shanghai Chemical Industry Park and Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area. A reader will find in this book a sound theoretical framework to accommodate further research and practical decision support to manage resource problems characterized by conflicting stakeholder interests.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS '97, held in Seattle, Washington, USA, in August 1997. The 39 full papers presented were carefully selected and revised for inclusion in the volume. Also included are 9 abstracts of conceptual graphs tools. The papers are organized in sections on knowledge representation, knowledge modeling, formal concept analysis, formal reasoning, applications of conceptual graphs, and conceptual graphs tools. This book competently documents the progress achieved in the area since the predecessor conference ICCS '96, the proceedings of which have been published as LNAI 1115.