Fast developing technology offers many opportunities for innovation and optimization in the public domain. However this sector is bound to European directives on public procurement transposed into national law and therefore bound to the mandatory procurement of, among others, their assets. This legislation provides a limiting framework in which, after awarding the contract, little room for design adjustments is perceived to be left. As a result assets, especially with long-term procurement processes, are not in accordance with current technological development. The limited amount of literature on this subject provides mitigation in very specific cases, but no overview of flexibilities in the procurement process exists, which is therefore the objective of this research. The Dutch railway sector was used as context of this research and since most process design choices are made by the procurer, the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) [Dutch Railways].
First, the current process was mapped out using the functional modelling technique IDEF0 based on which a first identification of flexibilities was performed. Subsequently, a first version of a morphological chart (MC) was made. This is a product design tool, in this research used, tested and validated for institutional design, as a parallel research focus supporting the exploration of flexibilities. The MC was developed and validated on its content as well as its use as institutional design tool. Additionally, validated trends were identified in the combination of flexibility aspects, followed by the exploration of a future institutional design for the NS.
During this research four additional construction rules for the MC were found, being (1) within scope of action, (2) readability, (3) abstraction level and (4) informational value, for which a variety of practical solutions are suggested. These were adhered to in the developed MC and resulted in the validation of this tool to be useful as systematic, substantiated and concrete guidance in the discussion of process design.
Using these developed conditions for the MC enabled identification and representation of aspects enhancing flexibility, being split into three chapters being Product, Contract and Market Approach. Validated conceptual designs enhancing flexibility were created by combining different fragments of solutions into one conceptual design. Six of these were created, one being the “traditional” procurement, four were based on collaborative practices and the last was based on the product to be part of a network. These four conceptual designs based on collaboration focused on: a partnership for the separate development of innovation, international collaboration and supplier-procurer collaboration of a light and more extensive degree.
Applying this to the case of the NS shows that separate innovation and extensive collaboration are perceived to be most suitable as starting point of their future procurement design.
Altogether it can be concluded that commencing a shift from a vertical to a horizontal approach within the buyer-supplier interaction is essential, placing greater importance on formalizing the partnership rather than specifying precise outcomes. The required redesign for enhanced flexibility to intermediate design changes in public procurement processes can be obtained by using the developed MC as guidance for discussion on the process design...

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into Japan's life insurance sector marks a significant move towards data-centric precision, reflecting the nation's shift towards Society 5.0. In this domain, AI is revolutionizing decision-making processes and enhancing operational efficiency, with applications ranging from fraud detection in credit card systems to predictive underwriting. While AI offers notable benefits, it also introduces risks, including privacy breaches, algorithmic biases, and inadequate human supervision. To tackle these risks, the Japanese government has initiated guidelines for societal protection, but gaps remain in the insurance industry's implementation, especially in translating social norms into the industry's context to protect stakeholders' values.

The industry needs a guide for safely designing, developing, and deploying AI systems, considering stakeholders' perspectives. This guide fills two knowledge gaps: a framework for translating high-level values into Japanese life insurance industry requirements and an initial process for converting these high-level values into organizational guidelines.

An empirical study on predictive underwriting informed the research, identifying 13 values and four informal social institutions for the AI design process. It involved eight experts who defined 54 norms, which were later refined and categorized into process and assessment norms focusing on data and AI.

The result is ten design guidelines for AI system developers, which are validated by experts, addressing the full AI lifecycle. These guidelines contribute scientifically by introducing an initial process combining design for values with system safety concepts, reporting standardization, and AI governance frameworks.
Future research should replicate this process in various contexts, reevaluate the value framework with broader stakeholder inputs, investigate the dynamics between Japanese society and AI in more detail, and delve deeper into system theoretic hazards analysis. This approach promises to strengthen the value framework and process applicability in different organizational settings.

The integration of non-dispatchable renewable energy and the electrification of society pose significant challenges to maintaining grid stability and efficiency. Currently, balancing and redispatch services in the Dutch electricity market operate as two separate markets, each managed by the Transmission System Operator (TSO). However, this separation leads to inefficiencies such as conflicting price signals, competition for the same flexible capacity, and increased congestion. This thesis evaluates three new market design options aimed at integrating redispatch and balancing services: 1) Simultaneous co-optimization 2) Separate two-step optimization with net capacity use, and 3) Separate two-step optimization with gross capacity use. A simulation model was developed using a simplified small-scale electricity network, testing the impact of these market designs under different pricing approaches: Marginal Pricing (MP), Pay-As-Bid (PAB), and Locational Marginal Pricing (LMP). The results demonstrate that while co-optimization can reduce capacity requirements by 21%, up to 81% of this improvement can be achieved by integrating redispatch and balancing with net capacity usage, without co-optimization. The study concludes that net capacity usage offers a practical alternative to co-optimization, with significant cost and capacity improvements. Further research should explore the operational feasibility of these new designs and the impact of network scale on market performance.

Wind energy is deemed important in the Netherlands in sustainable energy transitions. While Commercial Wind Energy Project Developers (CWEPDs) bring professionalism, Local Energy Cooperatives (LECs) promote local renewable initiatives. The Dutch Klimaatakkoord aims for 50% community-owned renewable electricity, but real-world implementation of community involvement is unclear. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework helps understand 'rules-in-use' for decision-making. This study explores how LECs and CWEPDs interact with these rules, focusing on Dutch onshore wind farm projects. Using 14 case studies, the research compares organisational forms in project outcomes, employing interviews and written sources for data collection and statistical testing and QCA for analysis. Key findings include LECs completing projects faster and with fewer objections than CWEPDs and the importance of transparent information sharing. The study suggests policy and development implications, highlighting the need for more inclusive and transparent decision-making in wind energy projects.

The thesis identifies critical implementation barriers to collective battery storage on business parks in the Netherlands. Subsequently, using a mixed methods research approach, different assessment frameworks are applied to propose three policy interventions that can overcome the identified critical implementation barriers and stimulate the adoption of collective battery storage in the Netherlands.

As a result of decreasing competition within the procurement of large construction projects in the Dutch construction sector, the need arises to understand the mechanisms behind the competition. Especially how decisions by clients on the procurement of construction projects impact the number of competitors. When this is understood, clients can contribute to solving the problems in the construction market. In an attempt to supply clients with insights to impact the number of competitors, this thesis tries to answer the main research question "To what extent do client decisions in the procurement of construction projects in the Dutch construction sector affect the number of competitors?".

In an attempt to answer the question, it has been tried to create a model that predicts the number of competitors in the tender phase of construction projects. To be able to make predictions, data on factors that potentially affect the number of competitors is inserted in a regression analysis. Values are included that represent the variables project type, project value, project duration, client, contract type, market conditions, need for work, and tender method. The regression coefficients determined in this analysis can reveal how individual variables affect the predicted number of competitors. But the usability of these coefficients depends on the performance of the analysis set-up, i.e. the used regression model, chosen variables, and input data.

It turned out that the achieved prediction performances were unsatisfactory. The best-performing model reached a prediction accuracy of 44.9%, just 8.7% better than a constant guess. As a result, it is concluded that the relationship between the client factors and the number of competitors could not be quantified. Additional research on the predictability within the data affirmed that it would be hard to make any predictions. The Entropy and Mutual Information within the data, identifying the predictability, showed that the independent variables in the data could only solve approximately 30% of the 'chaos' within the distribution of the number of competitors.

The unsatisfactory model accuracies are an interesting result, given the fact that, for almost every factor considered influential on the number of competitors, a value has been included in the calculations. The question arises whether even a relation exists between client factors and the number of competitors. On top of that, the identified marginal relations pointed at the market conditions as most influential to the number of competitors. Further indicating that clients have a marginal effect on the competition within tenders. Therefore, it seems that clients are unable to solve the decreasing number of competitors in the construction industry.

In order to show the absence of a relation between the number of contractors and client factors, further research is necessary. It is yet impossible to prove this absence because improvements can still be made to the utilized data and methodology.

Background: We examine the incidence of medical tribunal decisions and disciplinary actions (DAs) against healthcare professionals (HCPs). In addition, we studied whether an intimate relationship between an HCP and patient as part of the medical tribunal decision is associated with an increased likelihood of disciplinary actions. Methods: We conducted a nationwide cohort analysis on the downloadable medical tribunal decisions from a medical disciplinary tribunal in the Netherlands from 2010 to 2017. Results: We found that 117 (2.8%) of the 4,046 medical tribunal decisions involved an alleged intimate relationship between an HCP and patient. In these medical tribunal decisions the likelihood of a disciplinary action was significantly increased (odds ratio [OR] 12.97, 95% Confidence Interval [95% CI] 7.11–23.64). In addition, we found that nurses and psychiatrists are more frequently accused of and receive disciplinary actions due to intimate relationships than other HCP groups. Conclusions: We found a limited number of medical tribunal decisions involving an intimate relationship. Especially given the total number of medical tribunal decisions and the number of yearly HCP-patient interactions, the number appears small. Furthermore, an alleged intimate relationship or inappropriate sexual conduct is associated with an increased likelihood of disciplinary action. Future research should obtain statistics on the number of intimate relationships that actually start between HCPs and patients.@en

We elicit distributional fairness ideals of impartial spectators using an incentivized experiment in a large and heterogeneous sample of the German population. We document several empirical facts: (i) egalitarianism is more popular than efficiency- and maxi-min ideals; (ii) females are more egalitarian than men; (iii) men are relatively more efficiency minded; (iv) left-leaning voters are more likely to be egalitarians, whereas right-leaning voters are more likely to be efficiency-minded; and (v) young and high-educated participants hold different fairness ideals than the rest of the population. Moreover, we show that fairness ideals predict preferences for redistribution and intervention by the government, as well as actual charitable giving, even after controlling for a range of covariates. This paper thus contributes to our understanding of the underpinnings of voting behavior and ideological preferences and to the literature that links laboratory measures and field behavior.@en

The United Kingdom’s 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) raised concerns that other countries would follow suit. This article examines how arguments about EU membership related to economic, cultural, political, and security and peace issues could influence how citizens would vote in EU membership referendums. Our two-wave survey experiment on a random sample of the German population and difference-in-differences analysis revealed that only fears of being outvoted in EU decision-making swayed German voters’ attitudes about EU membership, particularly voters with weaker EU support, little EU knowledge and low levels of political engagement. We therefore conclude that concerns about sovereignty loss can be drivers of Euroscepticism even in a country that has vast influence over EU decisions.@en