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Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

In this chapter the potential to use water-based Trombe walls to provide heated water for building applications during the summer months is investigated. Design Builder software is used to model a simple single-story building with a south-facing Trombe wall. The effects of using different thermal storage mediums within the Trombe wall on building heating loads during the winter and building cooling loads during the summer are modeled. The amount of thermal energy stored and temperature of water within the thermal storage medium during hot weather conditions were also simulated. On a sunny day on Toronto, Canada, the average temperature of the water in a Trombe wall integrated into a single-story building can reach ∼57°C, which is high enough to provide for the main hot water usages in buildings. Furthermore, the amount of water heated is three times greater than that required in an average household in Canada. The results from this work suggest that water-based Trombe walls have great potential to enhance the flexibility and utility of Trombe walls by providing heated water for building applications during summer months, without compromising performance during winter months.

This chapter explores the opportunities and challenges for Western firms that wish to engage in manufacturing operations in Iran, and particularly in the automotive industry. Although Iran has a long and fruitful history of embracing foreign investment, collaboration with foreign firms suffered in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The imposition of UN sanctions in 2012, following the disagreements between Iran and leading Western powers over Iran’s nuclear policy, has resulted in a further exodus of foreign manufacturers from Iran, hurting the production quality, adoption of up-to-date technology and alignment to international standards for manufacturing, such as vehicle safety and engine emissions in Iran.

The removal of sanctions, contingent on the success of nuclear negotiations between Iran and leading world powers, could provide Iran with an opportunity to recommence manufacturing collaboration with Western firms. The case of the automotive industry discussed in this chapter indicates some of the challenges that Iran is likely to face if it once again wants to become a player in international markets.

In the strategic management literature, two mechanisms have been proposed to explain how managers generate economic rents: resource selection, and capability building. Resource selection is a Ricardian perspective where the productivity of resources are heterogeneously distributed among firms (Peteraf, 1993; Wernerfelt, 1984), and managers outsmart the factor markets by selecting resources based on their future values (Barney, 1986). The alternative Schumpeterian perspective is capability building, a mechanism that depends on deployment of resources to affect a desired end (Amit & Shoemaker, 1993; Mahoney, 1995). While capability building requires that managers develop a capacity to manage firm specific tangible and intangible processes, the resource selection mechanism demands managers to accurately assess expectations about the future value of resources.