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As the land transport task, especially road is expected to increase significantly, by 2015, it would hardly be surprising that many policy makers will look to some form of urban transport environmental control long before this date. One method is via the introduction of a set of operational environmental hurdles. This is not a new concept. However, this paper proposes a new environmental initiative for urban transport operations. The scheme which is simple for both operators and regulators proposes an effective and meaningful operational rating system which reflects the efforts an operator may go to in their internal fleet environmental policies in purchasing equipment, daily workload planning, waste disposals policies etc.

The three tiered environmental operator performance rating scheme, the E-plus scheme has three levels of operator segmentation. A good basic auditable level of environmental compliance, an E rating, an excellent rating E plus, and an exceptional rating would be an E double plus. Probably no fleets currently in Australia would earn a double plus rating at this time.

Why should there be a road transport operator environmental rating scheme? Firstly as a measurable benchmark for the community and the fleet operators themselves. Secondly and a factor of growing importance is for the customers who are the buyers of freight services. Already customers are specifying in their tender requirements that transport operator environmental competencies and capabilities be listed. This may aid the selection of an operator for a specific task. For example; food sensitive freight handling may require specific food certification scheme adoption such as the HACCP classification system. Similarly an urban courier contract may specify, environmental credentials which sit under an ISO 14000 framework. However, what more specific operator differentiation criteria can be requested by the customer? The E plus system is being designed for this very purpose. In Australia some regulators and teaching centres have begun to take an interest in this transport operator framework.

Since the McKinsey Company first forecast, in 1994, that home shopping via the internet, would change our lives forever, there has been a continual concern that this demand would generate both more Business to Business (B2B) road transport trips, and a quantum leap in the Business to Consumer (B2C), householder delivery trips. This was also additional to the growth expected in most major capital cities over the next fifteen to twenty years.

Although there is much discussion as to when the internet began to generate, or most likely substitute existing business into either smaller B2B pulses to customers, or beginning the household e-Commerce deliveries, by 1998 the internet was generally accepted as having had an impact.

Recent research on immersive experiences in online environments for higher education has attributed a fundamental role to two distinct yet connected psychological phenomena: the feelings of being virtually present in the education environment, often simply called presence, and peak episodes of flow. The authors conceptually delimitate these two psychological facets of e-learners’ experiences and examine their interplay. The authors show how flow episodes are elicited by students’ sense of control over the online education environment, their attention being focussed on the learning tasks, and their feelings of being physically placed in the online education setting. Also, the interactivity created by the online education environment evokes an e-learner’s imagery, which in turn triggers presence feelings and episodes of flow. The authors further show that, although presence and flow are triggered by some common antecedents, they differ in the object of the individual’s immersion, and that presence feelings facilitate flow. Moreover, the authors provide practical recommendations for higher education institutions, policy makers and the academic and information and communication technology community involved in e-learning, to make sure e-learner experiences reach their fullest potential.

Both accounting professionals and accounting academics have noted the importance of communication skills for the career success of students. Further, the general consensus from the academic and practitioner literature is that these communication skills are an area in which many students could use improvement. One factor that has been shown to impact the improvement and development of these skills is communication apprehension.

In this chapter, we describe a combination of pedagogical methods we employed in tax classes at two universities to reduce written communication apprehension among students. More specifically, we draw ideas from communications research which suggest that increased writing opportunities, progressively increasing the weighting of the assignments, using models and examples for study and comparison, and trying to make feedback more effective may help to reduce written communication apprehension. We implemented this suggested approach by using a series of assignments that incorporated writing components.

Results suggest that writing apprehension reduced from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester. Further, the reduction in writing apprehension was even greater for those students who began the semester with high written communication apprehension. In addition, the results of the survey questions at the end of the semester suggest that the methods also improved students’ confidence in preparing tax-related written communication.

Pedestrian injuries and deaths should be viewed as a critical public health issue. The purpose of this chapter is to show how incorporating safety from traffic into broader efforts to increase walking and physical activity has the potential to have a significant health impact. In this chapter we provide an overview of pedestrian safety considerations having to do with population health and the built environment. The chapter is organised around a conceptual framework that highlights the multiple pathways through which safe walking environments can contribute to improved population health. We review the existing literature on pedestrian safety and public health. Pedestrian safety will remain a vexing challenge for public health and transportation professionals in the coming decades. But addressing this problem on multiple fronts and across multiple sectors is necessary to reduce injuries and fatalities and to unleash the full potential of walking to improve population health through increased physical activity. This chapter uniquely contributes a conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between the walking environment and public health.

The technological revolution is fundamentally changing our lifestyle, work, and communication. There is still no accurate information about the future of this great transformation, but one thing is quite clear: the speed of the transformations in terms of scale and complexity, like a storm, will go through all aspects of a society's life and change all the current paradigms. One of the expectations from the fourth industrial revolution will be the expansion of smart cities in accordance with sustainable development criteria. In order for a city to be truly smart and innovative, city officials must pay attention to elements such as renewable and clean energy such as the internet of things, smart networks, smart parking, and smart transportation. In another sense, there must be a balance between economy, environment, and society in order to build a strong, sustainable, and flexible smart city that will survive the test of time. Of course, based on the 7PS model, the dimensions of culture and education are very important and fundamental for high sustainability. Researchers and those involved in the implementation of smart cities have explained the main indicators to identify these cities, which include some of the following items: For example, smart building, environmental protection, smart garbage collection, digitization of all government affairs and administrative work, widespread use of smartphones and electronic devices, complete, convenient, and universal access to the internet, car sharing service and online taxi. Other important indicators include the intelligentization of the traffic system and urban planning, citizen participation, economic ecosystem, optimization in electricity, water and energy consumption, development of electric and electric public transportation fleet, quality control and management, and reduction of air pollution. In this chapter, the theory of i-Sustainability Plus and i-Comprehensive Strategic Urban Plan is introduced as the beating heart of the ubiquitous blue-green smart city design. In such urban areas, it is all about the combination of real life, virtual reality, and in addition the future of clean technologies. In general, it can be said that sustainable smart cities are a solution to combat the challenges of urbanization.

This study aims to investigate the dynamic capabilities of Indonesia’s local government internal auditors (LGIAs). LGIAs are the functional civil apparatus that is responsible for the main task of auditing local governments at the provincial, regency and municipal levels. Meanwhile, the LGIAs are also a spearhead in identifying and analysing errors, irregularities and fraudulent actions in the finance and development of local government.

The exploratory case study methodology was used, gathering insights from 18 individuals through interviews. In addition, the authors use a critical perspective of the LGIAs’ behaviours in enhancing their capabilities in compliance with the regulations. Moreover, the authors discuss the low motivation of LGIAs in terms of achievement in knowledge acquisition, a mechanistic curriculum creating a climate of low spirit, mental models in rooted ordinariness and behavioural anxiety in hierarchical systems of expertise.

This paper infers that the LGIAs reflect inertia in terms of capabilities because its curriculum, environment and organisation have pervasively changed the culture of the work environment. Consequently, although immorally convenient and practical, the LGIAs work with professional discipline and expedient behaviours. In addition, the LGIAs behave performativity, presenting task performances with undynamic capabilities. Lastly, these behaviours imply the need to enhance the LGIAs’ dynamic capabilities by structuring local governments’ adaptive environment. Hence, this adaptive environment, in turn, could facilitate LGIAs’ further being in high spirits in enhancing knowledge-based expertise.

This study firstly implies that the research findings indicate the need for environmental-, organisational- and curriculum-made transformations to change the capabilities and competencies of LGIAs in the future, facilitating them to increase assimilation-learning abilities. Furthermore, the research shows that mental models dominate LGIAs, resulting in low spirits and reluctance to develop their dynamic capabilities. The paper recommends creating a work culture where anxiety is not dominant and changing the flexibility of the professional structure for LGIAs so that they can be promoted from functional to structural officers.

LGIAs work in a cultural environment that is always structured to fulfil what the regulations require. So, this study’s first novelty is that it underlines the ordinary job practices of LGIAs and the low incentives to enhance their dynamic capabilities. Secondly, it is highlighted that the institution’s auspices do not facilitate LGIAs to advance their dynamic capabilities because of the static competency-based development curriculum. Thirdly, the research shows that the LGIAs are a civil apparatus whose employment system in Indonesia implies a no-dismissal culture and halo effect in measuring performance.