Crisis in the Case of Catastrophe in Natural System - Assignment Example

Topic 13 10. Should water be considered as merit good or a normal good? The term merit goods means that goods and service that the people will be considering as birthright, just because they are part of this society. This has been considered as birthright by everyone irrespective of the purchasing power they have. There is no hard and fast rule that stipulates that good that comes under the merit good should be declared free and that does not mean that the people who does not have the ability to pay will not be left out. The generally accepted merit goods are education and drinking water. There is more controversy when it comes to accepting adequate housing and basic health care as merit goods. There is difference of merit goods from public goods like defense, the legal system .The reason for being like that is because merit goods can be privately produced and accounted for. The other basic notion is that education has to be public or private. Water will be provided to the people wither by public or private source and it is usually considered as paying electricity bill. Merit goods need not be produced by public sector for it to be considered as merit goods and these are some of the basic dilemma that will come with classification of merit goods. There will be dilemma on how the consumers should be paying for goods that are classified as merit goods? There will be also dilemma when it comes to the question of production of merit goods under the public or in private sector by taking public funds. The role of merit goods if it becomes too inclusive will mean that the role of the government will be expanding and the role of the private sector will be shrinking. (Economic brief )There will be an increase of tax to pay for the merit goods. The unique characteristics of water are that it is a resource that is unique in production and consumption. Water has been considered as essential for distinct needs and the determinant of demand will vary according to use. For drinking water the quality is of very important and that means contaminated water will be causing disease and even death. Water quality then in that case becomes merit good because some diseases like cholera will be caused by the poor drinking water. Thomas Sterner has stated that water has been generally considered as free good and that has led to the scarcity of water by using excessively and that has led to the shortage of water due to inadequate pricing. When the merit good principle apply to the water, and that means no can be excluded from the benefits and providing clean water is the logical example. Topic 16,8 Duit, A. and Galaz, V has said that there have been unexpected epidemics, the shift in catastrophic shift in the natural system, the economic crisis has been across the national borders has meant that a there is change in the policy of government. There are many governments who still fail to have a disaster management system in place and that will lead to faulty implementation of polices when a disaster occur. The disaster can be in the form of natural disaster like Tsunami and storm like Katrina as said by Burby, R.J. There will be certain implications of climate change that will be discussed by the policy makers in government. The climate changes can be described as slow and gradual as it can affect the environment policy of governments. The local governance policies has the power to reduce the hazard like treating bad water before it is distributed, reduce the physical risks that can arise out of bad quality building and infrastructure, reduce the exposure to dangerous chemicals like pollution control, occupational health and safety. The possibility of governance in respect to change can be understood by the natural system, where there should be legislation to control the emissions that affect the climate. The limitations are that there is still trouble in implementing the law universally as the countries may be having different legislation for preventing the pollution. The possibility of governance will be there to include the people in environment protection and this law will be limited by the fact that when implementing, it can change the definition as the real beneficiaries of the project may be kept out of the law. There will different schemes like the self government, public and private participation that will be affecting the policy making of governments. The social factors that can induce change will be the cultural factors like more people are travelling and staying in new countries for work and that can induce change in the policy making of government so that new people are accommodated in the new context. The limitations of the governance will be understood better when the governments will be slow in responding to the change in the legal process that can inflict more severe damage on the image of the country. There has been limitation on the government when it comes to take strong measures against the economic slowdown that has been happening globally. The policies would have started in one country and would have spread globally like the starting of financial crisis started with the collapse of banks in United States of America and spreading globally. The government policy has been limited by the fact that there has been lot of job loss and that means many persons have lost the job globally. There has been issue of out sourcing issues like more jobs being given to developing countries and the government has been forced to tax more outsourcing jobs like done in United States of America. The limitation of the policy of government can be understood by the war policy on terrorists and that has meant that economic spending on the security has increased globally and the possibility is that there should be more sharing of information. Topic 17, Question no 22. Meredith Edwards has said that participatory governance can be also called as active participation. The government of Queensland has been using the participatory planning for Indigenous settlements. This has been done as a measure to improve the infrastructure and service delivery. The aim of the participatory planning has been to improve the technical and economic condition of Queensland. The other aim has been to improve or achieve social development goals. The main social development goals that has been planned to achieve was empowerment, capacity building, community control and ownership. The participatory planning had not been able to achieve full rated success and this can be attributed to the misunderstandings that have developed between the practice of participatory planning and the working that has been in local governance. The participatory model of planning has to be integrated more into the local governance to achieve success. The development of participatory planning has been due to the fact that planning has been on a top-to-down based and this has been program based and there has been imposition of government agendas without any participation on the part of beneficiary. By the term participatory planning what is implied is that there is more participation of beneficiary in the process. The participatory planning has been seeking social outcome in the form of ownership, empowerment, community control and autonomy. The issues that will arise when going forward with participatory management process is how to solve the accountability problem as there will be vertical accountability to government and horizontal accountability to the people. The participatory management will be done in such a way that the government processes are reshaped and there will be clear definition of roles and responsibility to the whole process. The participatory management process will be good enough for aligning the organizational structures and there will be more autonomy for decision makers when they are participating in sensitive issues. The public sector institutions and framework will be redesigned in participatory framework in such a way that it will be more interactive in frame work for participatory management to take place. The government will be dealing with Indigenous communities in participatory planning. The main problem that will arise is due to the fact that there will be deep divide between the structures and the process that has been obtained to gather the results and the process that will be used to ensure that accountability as there is already an Indigenous government in process. To ensure the success of participatory planning in Indigenous community there should be collaborative arrangement. There should be a cultural match in meeting the objective of participatory management in Indigenous community. The approach should be changed from the attitude of we are from the part of government and we have come to Indigenous community to make sure that we are engaging you I the decision making process. There should be skill enough to engage the non government process with the decision making and there should be a concrete effort of building of relationship in Indigenous community to ensure the success of participatory governance. Topic 18,Question no 24 Dawn Iacobucci has stated that companies that are more skilful in the management of customer participation and customer interaction will improve the patron service. This means that if a theatre performance is watched by an audience that is knoweldegable, then the review may be good enough to improve. That is the motto behind the participation of customer in the business and service process and that can influence the nature of production. Stamatis has said that the customers will be sharing the setting but will be influencing the nature of production in separate manner like the family tour person on a vacation in a hotel will have different preference with a business customer to hotel. Stamatis has also added that means the privacy of the room will be different and there will be different needs for the customer. The customer has definitely influenced the nature of production and that can be seen in the automobile segment. The younger generation who has more purchasing power has influenced the automobile sector to produce more cars that suits the younger age and that will be more racy in nature and maybe having fuel consumption. The other development that has been made on this sector is the faster development cycle of new variants and new models and there has been a constant flow of new product innovations of the existing models that has been forced by the customer. There will be less waiting time for the customers in getting new cars has meant that the companies are facing or forced to make strategy that suits the customer more. There was more implementation of newer production plans like just in time and that means also the supply chain has evolved. The forcing of customer to have green vehicles or with good emission has meant that environment friendly cars are on a roll and this trend has been seen in the case of mobile companies also. Wheelwright has said that the forcing of customer in the nature of production can be seen in the operating system in Computer as more customers are forcing the operating system to be loaded with effective system that can stop the system to be affected by virus, spam message. That has meant that Internet Explorer new variant has been loaded with antivirus phishing system that blocks the affected sites, and Google has been announcing the new operating system that has promised the faster opening of web sites. It also is promising additional features like faster booting ,more security against malware, no need to install separate software for virus detection, will be supporting more of web based applications. All these features have been installed on the customer preference and this is a real example of how the customer can force the nature of production. The customer preference will be in implementation in the insurance sector and the financial sector. The customer does have less time to spend on the bank and that has forced the banks to come out with variants like internet banking, ATM, credit banking and other features like faster retrieval of cash and updating of the account details. The need of customer to send cash abroad has meant the arrival of transferring money or exchanging money very fast. References Burby, R.J.,2006, "Hurricane Katrina and the paradoxes of government disaster policy: bringing about wise governmental decisions for hazardous areas," Annals American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. 604, quoted in Levina, Jacob, Ramos and Ortiz, 2007. Dawn Iacobucci,2000,"Guideline and implications”, Handbook of services marketing & management,27 Duit, A. and Galaz, V. 2008, "Abrupt changes require new government thinking",Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 311—335 Economic brief,” Merit Goods, A policy Dilemma”, viewed on July 24,2009, retrieved from http://www.strom.clemson.edu/teams/ced/econ/5-2No16.pdf Meredith Edwards ,2008,"Participatory Governance and the Indigenous Agenda: From Rhetoric to Reality”, viewed on July 24,2009,retrieved from http://cpd.org.au/article/participatory-governance-and-indigenous-agenda-rhetoric-reality Stamatis,2003,"Benchmarking ",Six Sigma and Beyond: Design for Six Sigma,54 Thomas Sterner,2003,"water",Policy instruments for environmental and natural resource management ,346 Wheelwright,2009,"Managing innovation in information technology”, The product development challenge,117. Read More