Thesis Title: Towards a sustainable
Bangkok: an assessment of Bangkok's transport, energy and land use
options.
Chamlong Poboon Supervisor: Prof. Peter Newman
- Theoretical overview on sustainable development &
sustainable cities
- Bangkok perspective (socio-economic, urbanisation,
biophysical environment)
- Bangkok's transport, energy and land use
- Resolutions on bangkok transportation problem
- The comparison between the Bangkok study and the global
cities study
- The ecologically sustainable development parameter check-
list
- The models for change
- Models evaluation
- Conclusion and policy implications.
Thesis Title: Politics of Electronics
Control Technologies
Peter McMahon Supervisor: Dr Ian Barns
This study is concerned with the relationship between
technological systems and political processes. It focuses on
control systems, more specifically electronic control systems
(information processing and communications). The study explores
the developing lines between control technology and social
institutions forms, notably government, the military, and large
corporations. The key theme is the increasing integrations of
social processes over larger areas (regional-national-global)
over time due to the development of control technologies, and
the major political aspects of this trend. [back]
Thesis Title: Environmental Ethics and
Planning Education
Wendy Sarkissian Supervisor: Prof. Peter Newman
I am exploring the potential for teaching environmental ethics
to planning students and practitioners. After some exploration,
I have realised that a focus on ecological literacy alone will
not change how town planners behave with respect to the natural
world. Developing approaches which encourage them (us) to find
a place for Nature in our hearts, to care genuinely for this
planet is the focus of this thesis. A year spent living in
primitive conditions in the tropical Australian bush has
generated a wide array of insights for professional education.
This experience is currently being analysed. The key appears to
be about compassion. Recent comparative research on the
teaching of environmental ethics to planning students in the
USA and Canada will be used in a cross-cultural study of
planning education, comparing Australia and Canada.
Thesis Title: Sustainable Urban Water
Systems
Mike Mouritz (1996) Supervisor: Prof. Peter Newman
The link between urban land-use planning and urban water planning
and management within the context of ecologically sustainable
development; including the link between water consumption and land
use, integrated approaches to stormwater and groundwater management
in land use planning, and the implications for land use and water
planning of emerging technologies. [back]
A Multidisciplinary Study of Factors Leading
to Off-shore Manufacture of Australian Inventions: The Case of the
'Orbital Combustion Process' Engine.
Karen Manley (1994)
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the factors which lead to off-shore
manufacture of Australian inventions. It establishes this
phenomenon as a problem, both in terms of its incidence in the
post-war period, and in the strategic importance of innovative
activity to economic growth. The thesis utilises a case study
approach and concentrates on the experiences of one company, the
Orbital Engine Corporation (Orbital). In 1989 Ralph Sarich,
inventor of the Orbital Combustion Process (OCP) engine and founder
of Orbital, signed an agreement with the Michigan state government
to manufacture the engine in the United States of America (USA), in
preference to several alternative sites in Australia and overseas.
This occurred in the context of Orbital actively pursuing
assistance from the Australian government to secure local
production. The research question is: Why did Orbital decide to
manufacture its engine invention off-shore? A multi-disciplinary
approach to this question is adopted. Three different conceptual
frameworks are employed: industrial organisation theory, market
failure theory and policy network theory. The analysis is not
structured around a pre-existing hypothesis; instead, the aim is to
generate potential explanations for more rigorous testing by
subsequent researchers.
The thesis concludes that, in terms of industrial organisation
theory, the decision to manufacture OCP engines off-shore was a
function of the poor quality of the Australian industrial context
and the failure by those seeking assistance from the Commonwealth
government to stress Orbital's status as an exemplary enterprise in
Australian industry. Market failure theory indicated that offshore
production of the OCP engine was made more likely by the suboptimal
operation of the price mechanism, the neglect of market failure
arguments by those supporting local production of the engine and
'government failure'. Policy network theory explained Orbital's
decision as the result of: ineffective employment of negotiation
tactics by proponents of the engine's domestic manufacture; and the
chaotic nature of negotiations which allowed certain personal and
ideological prejudices to dominate the issue resolution process.
It is shown that some or all of these explanations underlie a
number of other examples where Australian inventions have been
manufactured offshore. In commenting on policy implications, the
thesis points to the economic potential of the Orbital invention
and the value of interventionist industry policy. The thesis
identifies a number of actions which might be taken to lower the
incidence of foreign manufacture of Australian inventions. Further
research is necessary to determine the relative importance of the
various factors which are identified as leading to offshore
production. In addition, there remains a particularly crucial need
to improve the social efficiency of existing cost-benefit
techniques employed by government policy-makers and commercial
analysts.[back]
The Role of Science in the Nature
Conservation Policies of Western Australia.
Odile Pouliquen-Young (1995)
Abstract
The thesis examines the role that conservation science and
scientists have played and should play in the development of the
nature conservation strategies of the State of Western Australia.
The first part of the thesis is devoted to an historical analysis
of the main conservation strategy in place in the State: the
creation of nature conservation reserves. It is noted that the
reserve selection process, from the 1950s onwards, was greatly
influenced by the outstanding contribution of a few conservation
scientists. These personalities were instrumental in the
development of a scientifically-based system of reserves for the
State. However, the government's belated response to pressures of
economic development, and their worthless land approach to reserve
creation together mean that the scientifically-based selection
criteria have been compromised by social and political
considerations. The conservation-through-reserve strategy has thus
been an opportunistic process which has led to the creation of a
large but disjunct system of reserves, and which has not halted the
loss of biodiversity. The strategy has also resulted in the
creation of a centralised administrative organisation to try to
manage this vast system of reserves, within which conservation
research has been internalised. Three case studies reveal in more
detail how the social and scientific frameworks of reserve creation
have become more complex and their assumptions more politically
contested.
Given the limits of the conservation-through-reserve strategy in
contributing to the conservation of biodiversity, the second part
of the thesis focuses on the design of a relevant conservation
science which would address the concept of ecologically sustainable
development. Conservation biology provides a strong internal
knowledge structure, especially when it enlarges its traditional
interests in population and community processes to the scale of the
landscape. Among the ethical frameworks which seek to value nature,
the land ethic provides a clear ethical basis in which to ground a
conservation practice drawing from the concept of sustainable
development. Finally, conservation biology needs to develop a sound
political ethos, and in particular it needs to direct some of its
efforts into the development of community science, rather than
relying solely on a traditional scientific framework. General
Systems Approach to Industry Level Analysis - Applied to the Wool
Processing Industry in Australia. [back]
General Systems Approach to Industry Level
Analysis - Applied to the Wool Processing Industry in
Australia
Allen Nash (1995)
Abstract
Both private-sector strategic planners and public-sector industry
policy analysts have the need for a systematic approach to
industry-level analysis to provide a basis for strategic and policy
interventions in industry. Currently a systematic attempt at
industry-level analysis requires the simultaneous use of a plethora
of techniques such as Porter's five forces for competitive
analysis, value chain analysis for cost structure and other aspects
of competitive analysis, network approaches to examine
inter-organisational transactions, as well as population ecology to
examine population dynamics. Building scenarios of possible
consequences of significant strategic moves involves modelling the
industry or strategic group through a mix of techniques that do not
necessarily synergise to form a consistent basis for modelling.
This thesis develops a general-systems-based method for
industry-level strategic and policy analysis. The theoretical
framework adopted is primarily from general systems theory and
strategic policy analysis, with some reference to system dynamics,
and industry and technology policy. The aim of the approach is to
allow a comprehensive qualitative model of the industry or
strategic group to be developed based on representing three
subsystems: the social subsystem, the information subsystem, and
the technical subsystem. The theory developed is then applied to
the textile industry through detailed comparisons of the industry
in four different countries to test and refine the method. The
perspective provided is primarily for an Australian business policy
audience. The conclusions of this study highlight how the method
succeeds in providing an improved approach to strategic industry
analysis by identifying a comprehensive set of significant factors
all of which any one present method would not have recognised. [back]
![[ Murdoch University logo and link to homepage ]](/images/header/cs/logo/mu_logo_lhs_45.gif){kind=logo}
