The management of hazardous and toxic waste projects in Asia (especially that related to intractable chemicals) has had a less than acceptable performance profile during the last 20 years. There have been numerous documented cases of management and systems failures in intractable chemical recovery projects, despite the establishment of global conventions designed to avoid such problems. A research programme was undertaken with the aim of producing a management model for companies to help prevent such failures in the future. The research began in the field with an exploration of management culture and its impact on project management. This involved multiple visits to five Asian countries and interviewing people involved in intractable waste management at both strategic and operational levels and reviewing project records. Personnel in government departments, particularly the competent authority , were interviewed to gain insights into the applied management culture within the five countries studied. The various international conventions or regulations regarding hazardous waste and its management, were researched for their interdependence and effectiveness. The research concentrated on the Management Plans or Environmental Management Systems that reside within these conventions in order to establish a benchmark of expectation concerning standards of management and organisation that would be required of a member state to discharge its obligations under the conventions. This work involved the author attending several meetings and conferences of the parties to the UNEP Basel Convention, as well as attendance at many Technical Working Groups over several years. Complexity theory and uncertainty theory, along with emergent theory and innovation adoption theory were researched. The outcome of this research clearly suggested that a multidimensional matrix-based approach could be successful in providing companies with a strategic management model that, if applied, could enable them to manage large scale intractable projects effectively in compliance with the conventions. The hypothesis of this work is that Duncan s matrix model can be reverse applied to the external environmental elements and components, combined with the mutual adaptation model (i.e.: technology/organisational mutual adaptation), therefore establishing an integrated multidimensional model of adaptation. The mutual adaptation approach was subsequently used to frame a series of questions that formed the basis of four field surveys. These surveys were applied at different times over a five year period, covering ten projects in China and Taiwan, and involving interviews with a total of 100 executives, who were asked a total of 96 questions across the four surveys, resulting in 9600 responses. The first two surveys were conducted close together in time with the third and fourth later in the process and thus could be considered retrospective. The respondents included project managers, engineers, technicians, company accountants, marketing managers and site leaders. The data collected validated the hypothesis and established that complexity management was an element of those companies that successfully adopted external technology and systems and in fact were also engaged in reversing the technology back to the originators. The data also indicated that those companies not engaging in complexity management were not reversing technology adoption. An integrated mutual adaptation model was developed from the characterisation matrices and consequently a two-dimensional model of singularity. The final singularity model can be applied at an organisation s strategic level, so as to provide an organisational capacity for compliance with environmentally sound management practices as demanded by the international hazardous waste conventions.
During television's first fifty years -- long before cable networks, Hulu, Netflix, and the like -- families would gather around their television sets nightly to watch entertaining shows such as I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, M*A*S*H, The Beverly Hillbillies, Fantasy Island, and The Rockford Files. Many of the stars of these beloved shows have passed away, but their presence remains intact -- not only through their television show performances, which are still viewed and appreciated today, but also through stories they told in interviews over the years. Seasoned journalists and authors James Bawden and Ron Miller have captured provocative and entertaining interviews with important figures from TV's first fifty years. These thirty-nine interviews, selected from conversations conducted from 1971--1998, present a fascinating glimpse of some of television's most influential performers. Featured are exclusive interviews with major stars (including Donna Reed, James Garner, and Ricardo Montalban), icons of comedy (including Lucille Ball, George Burns, and Milton Berle), TV hosts (including Dick Clark and Ed Sullivan), and notable musical entertainers (such as Glen Campbell, Mary Martin, and Lawrence Welk). Each chapter of this volume explores the subject's television work -- with detailed behind-the-scenes disclosures -- and includes additional information about the subject's performances in film and on stage.
James Bawden: Seeing the way people behave when they're around you, is it still fun being Cary Grant? Cary Grant: I don't like to disappoint people. Because he's a completely made-up character and I'm playing a part. It's a part I've been playing a long time, but no way am I really Cary Grant. A friend told me once, "I always wanted to be Cary Grant." And I said, "So did I."—from the book In Conversations with Classic Film Stars, retired journalists James Bawden and Ron Miller present an astonishing collection of rare interviews with the greatest celebrities of Hollywood's golden age. Conducted over the course of more than fifty years, they recount intimate conversations with some of the most famous leading men and women of the era, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joseph Cotten, Cary Grant, Gloria Swanson, Joan Fontaine, Loretta Young, Kirk Douglas, and many more. Each interview takes readers behind the scenes with some of cinema's most iconic stars. The actors convey unforgettable stories, from Maureen O'Hara discussing Charles Laughton's request that she change her last name, to Bob Hope candidly commenting on the presidential honors bestowed upon him. Humorous, enlightening, and poignant, Conversations with Classic Film Stars is essential reading for anyone who loves classic movies.
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