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Monash University’s latest Passive House showstopper throws out the rulebook

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BY   POPPY JOHNSTON   /  19 NOVEMBER 2020 The approach at Monash University’s latest Passive House building is about “embracing rather defending” the sun, allowing for a more circadian experience. “Passive House is typically about keeping the sun out. We were doing the opposite”, the architects say. The five-storey 23,000sqm Woodside Building for Technology and Design really puts the tired Passive House stereotype of a windowless box to rest. The building bears the Woodside name because the energy company plans to “support research opportunities within the building”, Monash Pro-Vice Chancellor (Academic) Kris Ryan told the  Architectural Record . [We look forward to holding Australia’s largest oil and gas company to that.] The building’s lofty steel frame in a rusty, Ironbark-inspired red, most notably has the long façade facing east to west – a departure from the usual north–south orientation used to control solar gain in many energy efficient buildings. This orientation allows the su

20 years European House Skopje

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This year the European House Skopje (EHS) celebrates 20 years of the foundation.  Throughout the years EHS established credibility for its target groups, partners, donors, institutions and the public in general.

How to Measure a Company’s Real Impact

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by   Ronald Cohen   and   George Serafeim September 03, 2020 Martin Barraud/Getty Images In recent years, most major international airlines have reported healthy profitability. But our calculations show this to be a mirage. In the case of Lufthansa and American Airlines, for example, accounting for their environmental costs of $2.3 and $4.8 billion respectively would make both companies unprofitable. What explains this discrepancy? To date, there has been no way for companies to account for their benefits and costs to society and the environment. We have been working to change that. Accounting for impact took a major step forward in July with our   publication of the cost of the environmental impact of 1,800 companies by the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative ( IWAI ) at Harvard Business School. Next year, the IWAI will publish the cost of product and employment impacts too, providing a complete picture of the impact companies create. The era of impact transparency has begun, and it i

Performance evaluation will not die, but it should Kevin R. Murphy

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  ns   Share on Abstract A wide range of systems for evaluating performance have been used in organisations, ranging from traditional annual performance appraisals to performance management systems built around informal, real‐time evaluations, and these systems almost always fail. Rather than continuing to make cosmetic adjustments to this system, organisations should consider dropping the practice of regularly evaluating the performance of each of their employees, focusing rather on the small subset of situations in which evaluations of performance and performance feedback are actually useful. Four barriers to successful performance evaluation are reviewed: (a) the distribution of performance, (b) the continuing failure to devise reliable and valid methods for obtaining judgments about performance, (c) the limited utility of performance feedback to employees, and (d) the limited utility of performance evaluations to organisations. In this paper, I propose ways of managing performance