The Spirit Of Industry And Improvement

The notion of improvement permeated social and political discourse in colonial Canadian society. From agriculture to building roads and mills to defining correct habits and behaviour, Nova Scotia's improvers embraced the ideals of innovation and progress and promoted modern programs of government.

The notion of improvement permeated social and political discourse in colonial Canadian society. From agriculture to building roads and mills to defining correct habits and behaviour, Nova Scotia's improvers embraced the ideals of innovation and progress and promoted modern programs of government. Daniel Samson moves Nova Scotia and rural Canada from the colonial margins to the heart of a modernizing society, showing how the countryside functioned as a centre of change and innovation. He connects a fascinating spectrum of sites, actors, and strategies and links settlement, farm-building, rural market formation, and early industrialization to the heterogeneous strategies of families and state actors, the rural poor, and rural elites. The Spirit of Industry and Improvement presents the first-ever overview of rural colonial Nova Scotia and provides compelling insights into the formation of modern liberal practices of government and self-government in British North America.

This book documents the experiences, development, and prospects of the construction industry in numerous developing countries. It will provide a strong base of reference for countries looking to improve their construction industries as part of their wider economic development programme. The opening chapter presents a strategic overview of the contents of the book, and each country-specific chapter is structured to consider the legal and policy frameworks, administrative infrastructure and procedures, and implementation mechanisms, as well as the experiences, current activities, and future plans and programmes with respect to construction industry development in each country. The concluding chapter looks forward and considers the implications of future trends for the construction industries in developing countries and the actions which will be required to address them. Chapters cover: India, Singapore, Chile, South Africa, Tanzania, Malaysia, Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Indonesia, China, Croatia, and Eswatini. Readers will learn about the wealth of comparable stories from global coverage from the detailed country-specific cases. Building on important scholarly works in the field, this book is essential reading for academics, researchers, and policy makers in built environments, economics, construction management, infrastructure management, and the wider construction industry.

Discover the power of KAIZEN to make lasting and powerful change in your organization “Maurer uses his knowledge of the brain and human psychology to show what I have promoted for the past three decades—that continuous improvement is built on the foundation of people courageously using their creativity. Kaizen is much more than a world-class management practice; it is a technique to remove fear from our mind’s mind, enabling us to take small steps to better things. The process of change starts with awareness and desire in our minds and then leads to action and change in the physical world. Readers of this book will surely fi nd new ideas and encouragement to make improvements in personal health, performance at work, and their own well-being.” —Masaaki Imai, Chariman, Kaizen Institute KAIZEN: The Small-Step Step Solution for You and Your Company Today’s businesses love the idea of revolutionary, immediate change. But major “disruptive” efforts often fail because radical change sets off alarms in our brains and shuts down our power to think clearly and creatively. There is, however, a more effective path to change. Change that is lasting and powerful. Change that begins with one small step . . . It’s The Spirit of Kaizen—a proven system for implementing small, incremental steps that can have a big impact in reaching your goals. This step-by-step guide from renowned psychologist and consultant Dr. Robert Maurer shows you how to: Lower costs—by offering little rewards Raise quality—by reducing mistakes Manage difficult people— one step at a time Boost morale and productivity— in five minutes a day Implement big ideas—through small but steady actions Sell more—in less time Filled with practical tips and ready-to-use tools for managers, innovators, and entrepreneurs, The Spirit of Kaizen is the essential handbook for a changing world. You’ll learn how to think outside the suggestion box, remove mental blindfolds, manage stress with one-minute exercises, and handle rising health-care costs. You’ll discover the “small step” secrets for dealing with all kinds of people, from tough bosses and listless workers to stubborn clients and fussy customers. These simple but powerful techniques can be applied to almost any workplace situation, especially when you’re trying to navigate the stormy waters of radical change, high-pressure deadlines, and cutthroat competition. These are the same methods of small, continual improvement that have been tested by the largest companies, such as Boeing, Toyota, and the U.S. Navy—methods that will work for you, too. No matter how big the obstacle or how big the dream, The Spirit of Kaizen has a small-step solution to help you succeed.

An examination of clean technology entrepreneurship finds that “green capitalism” is more capitalist than green. Entrepreneurs and investors in the green economy have encouraged a vision of addressing climate change with new technologies. In Planetary Improvement, Jesse Goldstein examines the cleantech entrepreneurial community in order to understand the limitations of environmental transformation within a capitalist system. Reporting on a series of investment pitches by cleantech entrepreneurs in New York City, Goldstein describes investor-friendly visions of incremental improvements to the industrial status quo that are hardly transformational. He explores a new “green spirit of capitalism,” a discourse of planetary improvement, that aims to “save the planet” by looking for “non-disruptive disruptions,” technologies that deliver “solutions” without changing much of what causes the underlying problems in the first place. Goldstein charts the rise of business environmentalism over the last half of the twentieth century and examines cleantech's unspoken assumptions of continuing cheap and abundant energy. Recounting the sometimes conflicting motivations of cleantech entrepreneurs and investors, he argues that the cleantech innovation ecosystem and its Schumpetarian dynamic of creative destruction are built around attempts to control creativity by demanding that transformational aspirations give way to short-term financial concerns. As a result, capitalist imperatives capture and stifle visions of sociotechnical possibility and transformation. Finally, he calls for a green spirit that goes beyond capitalism, in which sociotechnical experimentation is able to break free from the narrow bonds and relative privilege of cleantech entrepreneurs and the investors that control their fate.

Includes list of members, 1882-1902 and proceedings of the annual meetings and various supplements.