Inclusive recovery planning for incremental systemic change: A methodology,early outcomes,and limitations from the Falkland Islands' Covid-19 recovery planning experience

Crises do not affect populations equally but expose and exacerbate long-standing vulnerabilities and inequalities. Recovery language such as ‘build back better’, or ‘bounce forward’ has been criticised for neglecting underlying inequalities. This paper reports on the process and early outcomes of an inclusive Community Recovery Planning process for the Falkland Islands, in response to Covid-19. The Falkland Islands is home to a complex community, with close ties and short power distances (due to its small size and remoteness), with differences institutionalised in citizenship statuses and entitlements, and shaped by geopolitical tensions. We aimed to use the ‘pandemic as a portal’, seeking out previously ‘less heard’ voices, to make visible previously hidden impacts, and initiate incremental systemic change to tackle them. Community Impact Assessments evidenced specific areas of vulnerability (e.g., housing and income insecurity) and inequalities, largely shaped by differing citizenship status. In tandem with other government currents, the Community Recovery Planning process has contributed to progressive policy changes in Equalities legislation and Income Support. We offer this paper as a demonstration of our methodology for inclusive recovery planning that could be adapted elsewhere. We argue that the inclusion of previously unheard voices contributed to incremental systemic change to reduce inequalities.     

Organizational unlearning: A risky food safety strategy?

Strategically unlearning specific knowledge, behaviors, and practices facilitates product and process innovation, business model evolution, and new market opportunities and is essential to meet emergent supply chain and customer requirements. Indeed, addressing societal concerns such as climate change and net zero means elements of contemporary practice in food supply chains need to be unlearned to ensure new practices are adopted. However, unlearning is a risky process if crucial knowledge is lost, for example, if knowledge is situated in the supply base not the organization itself, or there is insufficient organizational food safety knowledge generation, curation, and management when new practices/processes are designed and implemented. An exploratory, critical review of management and food safety academic and gray literature is undertaken that aims to consider the cycle of unlearning, learning, and relearning in food organizations and supply chains with particular emphasis on organizational innovation, inertia, and the impact on food safety management systems and food safety performance. Findings demonstrate it is critical with food safety practices, such as duration date coding or refrigeration practices, that organizations “unlearn” in a way that does not increase organizational, food safety, or public health risk. This paper contributes to extant literature by highlighting the organizational vulnerabilities that can arise when strategically unlearning to promote sustainability in a food supply context. Mitigating such organizational, food safety, and public health risk means organizations must simultaneously drive unlearning, learning, and relearning as a dynamic integrated knowledge acquisition and management approach. The research implications are of value to academics, business managers, and wider industry.     

Solid-State Catalytic Hydrogen Sponge Effects in BaInO2.5 Epitaxial Films

Gas sponges capable of absorbing, storing, and releasing ions in a reversible manner are in high demand for advanced electronics, energy devices, and sensors. Here, it is shown that brownmillerite BaInO_2.5 epitaxial films exhibit the capability to act as solid-state catalytic hydrogen sponges at a remarkably low temperature (≈100 °C). Compared to sintered pellets with random crystallographic orientations and many defects, BaInO_2.5 epitaxial films give three orders of magnitude higher conductivity of hydrogen ions, which can be linked to the presence of well-ordered 1D channels and lack of grain boundaries and other defects. Using scanning transmission electron microscopy, it is shown that hydrogen ions can be stored near InO₄ tetrahedral layers of brownmillerite without destroying the parent framework. The high performance and reproducibility of the BaInO_2.5 epitaxial films coupled with ultralow power consumption make them ideal candidates for neuromorphic devices and beyond.     

Group processes and interoperability: A longitudinal case study analysis of the UK's civil contingency response to Covid-19

Our case study explored a Local Resilience Forum's (LRF) civil contingency response to COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. We undertook 19 semistructured ethnographic longitudinal interviews, between March 25, 2020 and February 17, 2021, with a Director of a Civil Contingencies Unit and a Chief Fire Officer who both played key roles within their LRF. Within these interviews, we focused on their strategic level decision-making and how their relationship with national government impacted on local processes and outcomes. Using a form of grounded theory, our data describe the chronological evolution of an increasingly effective localized approach toward outbreak control and a growing resilience in dealing with concurrent emergency incidents. However, we also highlight how national government organizations imposed central control on aspects of the response in ways that undermined or misaligned with local preparedness. Thus, during emergencies, central governments can undermine the principle of subsidiarity and damage the ways in which LRFs can help scaffold local resilience. Our work contributes to the theoretical understanding of the social psychological factors that can shape the behaviour of responder agencies during a prolonged crisis. In particular, the implications of our analysis for advancing our conceptual understanding of strategic decision-making during emergencies are discussed.