Consumers think Green is not so cool
Source: IPPR
"Given the runaway popularity of the 10:10 campaign, which the Guardian is backing, it would be churlish to offer it anything but praise. By providing a meaningful, tangible and immediate focus for action, it has been a clear success in attracting the support of thousands of individuals, companies and other organisations that are concerned about climate change.
But just how widespread will its appeal be? In light of new research from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) published in its Consumer Power report, the 10:10 campaign may actually be failing to resonate with a large swath of mainstream consumers."

Squeezing more oil from the ground (journal article)
by Leonardo Maugeri
from Scientific American, October 2009, pp. 36-43
"Amid warnings of a possible"peak oil", advanced technologies offer ways to extract every last possible drop. Key concepts of tha article are: forecasts that global oil production will soon start to deciline and that most oil will be gone in a few decades may be overly pessimistic; thanks to advanced technologies wells will be able to extract half of the oil known to be underground, up from the current 35%; increased productivity could make oil last at least another century."
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E-government cluster boots up with $250k funding (journal article)
by Georgina Swan
from CIO Government, 10 September 2009
"A technology cluster aimed at supporting and strengthening government ICT industries in Australia will inject $150,000 into the industry in 2010, with a commitment for a further $100,000 per annum through to 2011-12.
The e-government cluster is a partnership between National ICT Australia (NICTA), the ACT government, several major international companies, ACT companies and other research organisations including the ANU.
It aims to develop technology that will enable governments to deliver better services, reduce costs and open up new opportunities for businesses. "

Water Utilities Cite Aging Equipment, Regulations, and Funding As Top Challenges. (journal article)
by Jay Landers
from Civil Engineering, September 2009
"The article presents a survey developed by the University of Cincinnati relative to the most formidable challenges facing U.S. drinking water and waste water utilities for the next 50 years. The survey includes 42 questions distributed to the members of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, National Association of Clean Water Agencies, and the National Association of Water Companies. It shows that the challenges include aging infrastructure and funding shortfalls."

The Oxford handbook of innovation [book]

Edited by Jan Fagerberg, David C. Mowery, Richard R. Nelson

"Looks at the creation of innovations, with particular focus on firms and networks .... Provides an account of the wider systematic setting influencing innovation and the role of institutions and organizations ... Explores some of the diversity in the working of innovation over time and across different sectors of the economy ... Focuses on the consequences of innovation with respect to economic growth, international competitiveness and employment." - cover.

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Abandoning Babylonian principles to rebuild our irrigation infrastructure (journal article)
by Iven Mareels
from ATSE Focus, August/September 2009
"The world's present water management is ... considered unsustainable because of the observed ecological deterioration of most of our natural water systems, but actually estimating the water resource that is readily and sustainably available for human activity is difficult. It is severely hampered by the paucity of quality data. Groundwater data in particular are scantily available. Australia reflects the world water situation well. Australia's water is already recognised as an activity-limiting resource that is further challenged by population growth and climate change: most of our urban communities are used to water restrictions; our farmers are subject to vastly reduced irrigation allocations; and our main river system, the Murray Darling, suffers severe environmental stress. In spite of this, our water infrastructure (like the rest of the world) is still largely fixated in the Deakin era, and our operational practices are definitely Sumerian/Babylonian in nature (although admittedly no longer temple-based) and suffer from low efficiency. This does not augur well for the future. "

Climate change scenarios: David Karoly (video)
Source: SlowTV / The Monthly
"In this talk, climate expert David Karoly lays out the likely future climate change scenarios - and how dependent they are on human actions now - while presenting the latest scientific findings on the earth's climate . Karoly is a professor in the University of Melbourne's school of earth sciences and a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. His work on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change brought him international recognition. "

Influence of research funding and science policy on university research performance: a comparison of five countries (journal article)
by Laura Himanen, Otto Auranen, Hanna-Mari Puuska, Mika Nieminen
from Science and Public Policy, Volume 36, Number 6, July 2009 , pp. 419-430(12)
"The ability of universities to efficiently produce high-standard knowledge has become an important goal in science policies of many developed countries. Thus, many countries nowadays steer universities based on performance monitoring and competition. This article analyzes the connection between the competitiveness of the university funding environment and research performance in five OECD countries in 1987-2006. Besides funding, other science policy factors are analyzed using the framework of four state steering models. Results indicate that the university funding environment has become more competitive in all the compared countries, but the extent and pace of this development varies. Countries also differ in relation to steering models but all have employed policy elements typical of at least two models. In terms of competitive funding environment and research performance, there is no straightforward relationship between the two. With reference to the state steering models, the most traditional model which emphasizes university independence from the state seems to be the most beneficial to research performance. "

The Politics of climate change [book]

Author: Anthony Giddens

"Climate change differs from any other problem that, as collective humanity, we face today. If it goes unchecked, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic for human life on earth. Yet for most people, and for many policy-makers too, it tends to be a 'back of the mind' issue. ... [This book] argues controversially, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change. Politics-as-usual won't allow us to deal with the problems we face, while the recipes of the main challenger to orthodox politics, the green movement, are flawed at source." - cover.

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What Local Policy Makers Should Know about Urban Road Charging: Lessons from Worldwide Experience (journal article)
By Daniel Albalate and Germè Bel
from Public Administration Review Vol 69 No 5 2009, pp. 962 - 974
"Congestion costs are emerging as one of the most important challenges faced by metropolitan planners and transport authorities in developed economies. In the United States, these costs were as high as $78 billion in 2005 and are growing as a result of rapid increases in travel delays. In order to solve the current and severe levels of congestion, the U.S. Department of Transportation has recently started a program to initiate congestion pricing in five metropolitan areas. In this context, it is important to identify factors that influence successful implementation, as well as the problems or difficulties associated with charging projects. The authors review, synthesize, and analyze worldwide experience with urban road charging in order to extract lessons for policy makers who are considering the implementation of congestion pricing projects and for those who are interested in the introduction of traffic management tools to regulate entrance to city centers. "

Defining regional research priorities: a new approach (journal article)
By Hariolf Grup, Sybille Hinze and Barbara Breitschopf
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36 No 7 Aug 2009, pp. 549-559
"This paper outlines a new approach to defining research priorities at a regional level. The methodical approach relies on a combination of bibliometric indicators and qualitative data and aims at the identification, selection and evaluation of medium-term relevant research fields. This type of analysis of quantitative and qualitative data contributes to what is called evidence-based policy making. By linking bibliometric information with questionnaire-based assessments by more than 480 scientists in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg (Germany), strategic research fields were pre-selected for potential policy action. Overall, the study shows that strategic decisions for shaping and advancing research processes demand not only methodical proficiency in bibliometrics but also a broad knowledge of the structure of the research landscape and forward thinking on a broad canvas."

Creativity: people, environment and culture, the key elements in its understanding and interpretation (journal article)
By Paulo C. De Miranda, Jose Aranha and Julia Zardo
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36, No 7 Aug 2009, pp. 523-535
"This paper discusses three aspects of entrepreneurship: people (innovators, entrepreneurs and amateurs) at the core of creative production who 'function' as agents of transformation; culture which helps to motivate people and create a value system (embedded contexts) and; the environment where innovations and entrepreneurial settings function as productive factors to stimulate more creativity. Looking from these three angles we present a triple helix for innovation related to creativity or the creative industry. Relying on a substantive report issued in 2008 by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, we explore aspects linked with the creative industries or the economies that form part of it. Despite differing views on the definition of the term 'creativity', the paper tries to analyse creative people as entrepreneurs, proposing a triadic approach to understand and interpret it, thus presenting our second, more consolidated, triple helix for creative entrepreneurship. We also draw on practical knowledge to discuss the core elements of our triple helix."

TECHNOLOGY CHOICE AND ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS IN A TRADE AND ENVIRONMENT CONTEXT (journal article)
By Akira Yakita
from Australian Economic Papers Vol 48 Iss 3 2009, pp. 270 - 279
"Assuming that an environmentally-friendly technology not only reduces pollution emissions but also strengthens the preference of consumers for goods produced with such a technology, we show that a legally stipulated choice of cleaner technologies, requiring resources and hence reducing output, can improve the welfare of the economy even when other economies do not choose such technologies, and that the driving force can be the terms-of-trade effect. Therefore, even a unilateral regulation on the choice of technology would be approved in the economy when the environmental awareness of consumers is sufficiently raised."

Measuring the value of knowledge management [book]

Author: Joanna Goodman

"Covers the what, why and how of KM measurement, drawing on the latest thinking from experts in the field ... Comprises a selection of best-practice examples of KM measurement in action with practical, up-to-date case studies from leading organisations that have successfully developed KM measurement programmes to demonstrate the outstanding benefits that they have achieved by investing in KM initiatives and activities." - summary.

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Kings of the road go green
by Phil McKenna
from New Scientist, Vol. 203, Issue 2721
"A concept vehicle called the Innovation Truck unveiled in April by Daimler Trucks North America is designed to show what is possible by tweaking a vehicle's aerodynamics. In wind tunnel tests it used 3 per cent less fuel than an unmodified truck - which rolled out across the entire US truck fleet would save about 4.3 billion litres of fuel annually. This translates into an annual cut in CO2 emissions of over 11 million tonnes.
More ambitious plans are afoot. Engineers and industry leaders at an RMI conference on freight-vehicle efficiency in April concluded that readily available and inexpensive technologies could boost efficiency by up to 23 per cent, and even doubling or tripling fuel efficiency might be within reach."

Urban Structure and Commuting in Australian Cities (journal article)
by Peter Rickwood and Garry Glazebrook
from Urban Policy and Research, Volume 27, No 2 June 2009, pp. 171-188
"Studies looking at the relationship between urban form and travel behaviour have generally considered spatial information at coarse metropolitan or local government area scales. We analyse ABS census data at the Collection District level for the metropolitan areas of the mainland Australian state capital cities, and at various spatial scales for an in-depth analysis of commuting in Sydney. The analyses suggest that the relationship between travel behaviour and urban form is complex, and that simple analyses of density alone are likely to overstate the effect of both metropolitan and neighbourhood scale population density on mode choice, but that these variables serve as useful proxies for more complex measures of urban structure."

Theory and Practice in Metropolitan Strategy: Situating Recent Australian Planning (journal article)
by Raymond Bunker and Glen Searle
from Urban Policy and Research, Volume 27 No 2 June 2009, pp. 101-116
"Over the last several years, metropolitan strategies have been produced for the five mainland state capital cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. The distinctive characteristics of Australian urban planning mean that they can be shown to reflect an Australian paradigm of planning. However, this paradigm is rewritten in different ways in each strategy reflecting the particular institutional circumstances and political culture of each state. In doing so there is some strong reaffirmation of this paradigm, but also indications of a more relational and transactive manner of planning adding further process to product. Here there is some resonance with recent developments in planning theory and to some extent in practice, largely in Europe. "

Transitions : pathways towards sustainable urban development in Australia [book]

Editor: Peter W. Newton

Sections include: Global and local forces re-shaping cities -- Demographic and settlement transitions -- Transitioning to resilient cities -- Transition to renewable energy -- Transition to integrated urban water systems -- Transitioning waste to resources -- Infrastructure and urban planning transitions -- Transitioning attitudes to sustainability -- Scenarios for the future.

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A blueprint for a safer planet : how to manage climate change and create a new era of progress and prosperity [book]

Author: Nicholas Stern

Argues "that what we now understand is sufficient to point us unequivocally to measured and structured policies that involve deep cuts in emissions, in efficient and equitable ways ... [and offers] a blueprint of how to build a safer planet, or how to manage climate change while creating a new era of growth and prosperity." - page 7.

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Emissions trading: a zero sum game? (article)
by Josh Fear
from Australia Institute, Online Opinion, 9 September 2009
"Some people, particularly firm believers in the Rudd Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, ascribe almost magical powers to emissions trading, believing it can transform the moral as well as the economic basis of our society. The assumption behind the government's policy is that an issue as complex as climate change issue can be addressed via one simple instrument. The CPRS relies on changes in price, to the exclusion of all other factors, to bring about changes in behaviour. While price is important, it is by no means the only determinant of behaviour. Just as critical is the intrinsic urge to act in one way rather than another due to habit, personality or even the desire to make a difference."

2080: Energy and society (speech)
by Ian Lowe
from SlowTV
"Ian Lowe speaks about the future of global energy supplies. As he puts it, our society's heavy reliance on oil and other fossil fuels makes us vulnerable for both economic and environmental reasons. Without substantial and immediate moves to find new energy sources, the dwindling oil supplies will have a massive impact on how we live - and in the meantime they are doing great environmental damage. "

Solar research wrap (article)
from EcoGeneration Sept/Oct 2009
"Solar researchers around the nation are developing new ways to harness the sun's energy that will increase efficiency and lower materials costs. From flexible lightweight solar cells for defence and security, to new power storage solutions, EcoGeneration takes a look at some of the major solar research programs from around Australia."

Enterprise value: governance of IT investments - getting started with value management (article)
from The IT Governance Institute
"This document forms part of the IT Governance Institute’s (ITGI’s) Val ITTM initiative, which is dedicated to helping enterprises optimise the realisation of value from IT investments. Drawing on the collective experience of a global team of practitioners and academics, existing and emerging practices and methodologies, and a rapidly growing body of research, the initiative has resulted in the development of the Val IT framework. This is a governance framework that consists of a set of guiding principles and a number of processes conforming to those principles that are further defined as a set of key management practices."

Work and the city [book]

Author: Frank Duffy

"Takes a hard look at the damage office development has done to the fabric and life of our cities" ... [and] "suggests ways to break out of this cycle and to develop offices in urban areas that bring benefits to both cities and the office users themselves." - cover.

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Managing without growth : slower by design, not disaster [book]

Author: Peter A. Victor

"Challenges the priority that rich countries continue to give to economic growth as an over-arching objective of economic policy. The challenge is based on a critical analysis of the literature on environmental and resource limits to growth, on the disconnect between higher incomes and happiness, and on the failure of economic growth to meet other key economic, social and environmental policy objectives." - from publisher.

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Oil Information 2009 [online]
International Energy Agency (IEA)

"The International Energy Agency's comprehensive annual reference book on current developments in oil supply and demand. The first part of this 2009 edition contains key data on world production, trade, prices and consumption of major oil product groups, with time series back to the early 1970s. The second part gives a more detailed and comprehensive picture of oil supply, demand, trade, production and consumption by end-user for each OECD country individually and for the OECD regions. Trade data are reported extensively by origin and destination."

Public support to private innovation in multi-level governance systems: an empirical investigation (journal article)
By Andrea Fernández-Ribas
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36 No 6 July 2009 , pp. 457-467
"This is an exploratory analysis of the distinct distributive nature of innovation programs by government levels. The research setting is a European region actively involved in regional, national, and supra-national (EU)-level programs. The results suggest that sub-national programs lead to changes in firms' attitudes towards product and process innovation. The impacts of national and supra-national programs are different: nationally supported firms are more likely to accelerate their path towards product (but not to process) innovations; supra-national supported businesses gain in greater sales due to incremental innovative products. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that lower levels of government could alleviate entry barriers into technological activities while upper-level programs improve the economic performance of pre-existing innovators."

The evolution of Norway's national innovation system (journal article)
By Jan Fagerberg, David C Mowery and Bart Verspagen
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36 No 6, July 2009 , pp. 431-444
"This paper analyses the co-evolution of science, technology and innovation policy and industrial structure in a small, open, resource-based economy (Norway). The contributions of the paper are threefold. First, it develops an evolutionary and historically oriented approach to the study of the development of these policies that may have wide applicability. Second, it focuses on a particular type of innovation, innovation in resource-based activities, that differs in many respects from the more commonly studied case of innovation in 'high-tech' industries. Third, the paper advances our understanding of the roles played by institutions and politics in innovation. Previous work on national systems of innovation has devoted little attention to these matters, possibly because much of this work examines 'snapshots' of various innovation systems at a specific point in time and lacks historical depth."

User and developer common knowledge: Effect on the success of information system development projects (journal article)
By Debbie Tesch
from International Journal of Project Management Vol. 27 Issue 7 Oct 2009, pp. 657-664
"Since Information Systems Development (ISD) project success is difficult to achieve and the literature has shown the relationship between IS developer skills and system success is mixed, this paper isolates and studies the knowledge shared by users and developers and its interaction with group solving practices that may lead to ISD project success. We evaluate developer’s knowledge of application domains and user knowledge of IS development along with the level of group problem solving among users and developers as related to the ultimate success of the project. A survey of 168 ISD professionals indicates that a combination of both user knowledge of IS development and IS developer knowledge of application domains had significant impact on successful project outcomes. The magnitude of this success is moderated by the level of group problem solving activities held by the project implementation teams. Up to a certain point, the more group problem solving interaction the more successful the project outcome. However, if knowledge redundancy is very high then exchange of knowledge is not so essential. "
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The Carbon Neutral Public Sector (journal article)
By Amanda Ball, Ian Mason, Suzana Grubnic and Phil Hughes
from Public Management Review Vol 11 Issue 5 Sept 2009, pp. 575 - 600
"This paper argues for research into the effectiveness of government strategies for a 'carbon neutral public sector'. We review initiatives in three OECD countries: New Zealand, Australia and the UK. In all jurisdictions, government agencies have consistently stressed 'leading by example' as a rationale for adoption. 'Direct mandate' by the Prime Minister (NZ); 'organic development' from wider central government sustainability initiatives (UK); and a more 'laissez faire' approach by Australian Federal and State Governments, were identified as the general pathways leading to implementation. Our assessment indicates: a lack of understanding of the implementation process for carbon neutrality; a need to identify and critically examine the 'offset threshold' at which mitigation efforts cease and offsetting is adopted; an absence of any evaluation of the 'leading by example' rationale; a lack of inter-country comparisons; a gap in understanding the relationship with economic and social aspects of sustainability; and a need to evaluate the utility of core government departments as the focus of carbon accounting. We urge colleagues to consider research in this area with a view to contributing to the interdisciplinary solutions which we believe are required."

Knowledge transfer processes in IT outsourcing relationships and their impact on shared knowledge and outsourcing performance (journal article)
By Stefan Blumenberg, Heinz-Theo Wagner and Daniel Beimborn
from International Journal of Information Management Vol. 29 Issue 5 Oct 2009, pp. 342-352
"What is the impact of specific knowledge-transfer processes on the level of shared knowledge and, in turn, on outsourcing performance in outsourcing relationships? Drawing on a series of case studies covering IT providers and banks, we investigate several applied knowledge-transfer processes dedicated to the transfer of explicit or tacit knowledge between outsourcing banks and their providers. We examine the differential influence of various types of knowledge transfer on shared knowledge between the parties and on the resulting outsourcing performance. Results depict the differential impact of various knowledge-transfer processes dedicated to the transfer of explicit, or tacit knowledge, respectively, on the development of shared knowledge. Interestingly, the combination of both knowledge-transfer processes dedicated to the transfer of explicit knowledge and those dedicated to the transfer of tacit knowledge proves to be most effective. Furthermore the results indicate that high levels of shared knowledge positively influence outsourcing performance. In addition to previous literature, we found transfer processes for explicit knowledge in an outsourcing context to consist of two dimensions: The content dimension, primarily focused on in literature, and the sender–receiver dimension of transfer processes which are rarely addressed in outsourcing literature. The content dimension embraces mechanisms such as trainings, SLAs and standards that define how content has to be interpreted, whereas the sender–receiver dimension of transfer processes of explicit knowledge defines explicit, documented interaction structures between parties."
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R&D, Value Chain Location and Firm Performance in the Global Electronics Industry (journal article)
by Namchul Shin; Kenneth L. Kraemer; Jason Dedrick
from Industry and Innovation, Vol 16 N0 3 June 2009, pp. 315 – 330
"In today's global electronics industry, innovation is carried out by various value chain participants, including brand-name manufacturers (sometimes called lead firms), contract manufacturers and component suppliers, but there is little understanding of who benefits most from innovation in such networks. This research examines empirically the relationship of R&D spending and location in the value chain (lead vs. non-lead firms) to firm performance in the global electronics industry by using the Electronic Business 300 data set for 2000-2005. Our results show that firms spending more on R&D have higher gross profits, but do not have higher return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA). There is a strong positive relationship between lead firms and performance as measured by gross profit, ROE and ROA, but the relationship between lead firms and gross profit becomes insignificant when the interaction term of R&D and lead firm is included in the analysis. Finally, lead firm status has a positive interaction effect on the relationship between R&D and gross profit. These findings suggest that the relationship of R&D to performance is mixed, but that lead firms can capture higher value (gross profit) from R&D than contract manufacturers and component suppliers. "

Organizing the Innovation Process: Complementarities in Innovation Networking (journal article)
by James H. Love and Stephen Roper
from Industry and Innovation, Vol 16 N0 3 June 2009
"This paper contributes to the developing literature on complementarities in organizational design. We test for the existence of complementarities in the use of external networking between stages of the innovation process in a sample of UK and German manufacturing plants. Our evidence suggests some differences between the UK and Germany in terms of the optimal combination of innovation activities in which to implement external networking. Broadly, there is more evidence of complementarities in the case of Germany, with the exception of the product engineering stage. By contrast, the UK exhibits generally strong evidence of substitutability in external networking in different stages, except between the identification of new products and product design and development stages. These findings suggest that previous studies indicating strong complementarity between internal and external knowledge sources have provided only part of the picture of the strategic dilemmas facing firms. "

Power, Culture, Economy: Indigenous Australians and Mining (e-book)
by Jon Altman and David Martin (Editors)
from CAEPR Monograph No. 30
This collection of papers focuses on three large, ongoing mining operations in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory under two statutory regimes—the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 and the Native Title Act 1993. The authors outline the institutional basis to greater industry involvement while describing and analysing the best practice principles that can be utilised both by companies and Indigenous community organisations.

The role of creative industries in industrial innovation (journal article)
by Kathrin Müller, Christian Rammer and Johannes Trüby
from Innovation Management Policy and Practice Vol 11 No 2 August 2009 p.148-
Contact the library for a copy of this article
"This paper analyses the role of creative industries in affecting an economy's innovation performance. Conducting a survey of more than 2,000 creative industry enterprises, we show that creative industries are among the most innovative sectors in the economy. They support innovation in a variety of other sectors through creative inputs, such as ideas for new products, supplementary products and services or marketing support for product innovations. They are also an important user of new technology and demand innovations from technology producers, particularly information and communication technologies. Own innovative activities are a key driver for supporting innovation. Creative industries are no homogenous sector, however. While software and advertising show the strongest links to industrial innovation, architecture and content providers contribute rather little.

Intelligent cities and globalisation of innovation networks [book]

Author: Nicos Komninos

"Asks key questions of the movement towards intelligent environments and cities, such as: What makes an intelligent city and how do we define it? What makes some cities and regions more efficient in developing knowledge, technologies and innovations? How important is the external under environment to the innovation performance of an organisation? How is innovation changing along with digitalisation and globalisation?" - cover.

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OECD biotechnology statistics 2009 [online]
Author: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
"Contains government survey data for 22 OECD countries and additional data for four nonmember countries. The survey data provide results on the number of biotechnology firms, business expenditures on R&D, biotechnology employment, and sales of biotechnology goods and services." - foreword.