Throughout history, currencies or money have three different uses: means of exchange, unit of accounting, and store of wealth. People have used different types of currencies at different times throughout history. Commodity currencies represented items which are either mined from the Earth or produced by agriculture such as gold or salt. Fiat currencies are created by decree by a sovereign nation or groups of nations. Complementary currencies have been created by much smaller groups of people to solve problems which cannot be solved by commodity currencies or fiat currencies. For example, in times of economic depression when people attempt to hoard money (store wealth) there is often not enough currency to accommodate a means of exchange. With the advent of blockchains and crypto-currencies, it is now possible to easily create complementary currencies to attempt to solve problems which can not be solved using commodity currencies or fiat currencies. This paper discusses and compares two different architectures which are being used in two independent projects in South Africa to create complementary currencies by using the Ethereum blockchain and crypto-currency in order to encourage corporate excellence. It is important to note that this paper is not about the underlying success or failure of the complementary currencies created by the architectures. The paper is about the architectures themselves.
The stakes are high when engaging an external consultant to undertake Organisation Development (OD) work. Not only must an organisation bear the cost of consultancy fees, but the cost of poor advice or expertise could ultimately be much greater than this. With The National Audit Office report into spending on external consultants across UK central government (Oct 2010) noting that a number of departments had ânot been acting as intelligent customersâ, itâs time to provide internal practitioners with more guidance about how to effectively buy in external OD support.
The article probes into factors that determine processes of decentralization in managing the general education system. The study entails a review of pertinent literature and an analysis of the distribution of powers among entities managing the general education system in Lithuania. The study concludes that the education management system in Lithuania is gradually being decentralized and de-concentrated on the basis of the subsidiarity principle. A successful implementation of the decentralization reform requires the following two conditions: political support for proposed changes and the ability of those charged with carrying out the reform. An analysis of literature confirms that decentralization as a process is also a function of factors other than political will and capacity. These factors include trust (the extent of decentralization depends on the central governmentâs trust in the local government, and vice versa), financial troubles, path dependencies, international developments, etc. An analysis of the distribution of decision making powers in areas of financing and human resources demonstrates that there is a trend towards decentralization, albeit inconsistent due to obstacles on the level of centralized management. The article maintains that there has to be an adequate balance between centralization, which is necessary for the implementation of general national educational objectives, and decentralization, which allows teachers, schoolchildren, parents and the representatives of local communities to participate in education management.