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This paper responds to Keith Tribe's provocative Journal of Economic Literature article, “Adam Smith: Critical Theorist?” There Tribe argued that most people most of the time grossly misread Smith, due, among other things, to their quite inadequate appreciation of Smith's linguistic, social, moral, and theological context. Against Tribe, the paper argues that Smith can profitably be read as both an eighteenth-century moralist and a twenty-first century critic. Smith can be a source of inspiration, wisdom and profundity for contemporary economists. Moreover, Smith can be successfully employed by modern economists to change, deepen, and broaden contemporary economic theory.

Purpose – This chapter explains what is known about international homicide trends, highlights gaps in existing literature, and proposes avenues for future research that will expand understanding about international homicide.

Design/methodology/approach – We review extant literature on international homicide trends, and draw on data from the World Health Organization from 1990 to 2015 to identify patterns in contemporary international homicide trends.

Findings – We demonstrate evidence of an international homicide drop across most regions around the world. Nonetheless, the homicide decline is not a global event as several countries – particularly countries with high homicide rates – did not experience reductions in homicide during this period. The key question remains as to what the causes of changes in international homicide rates are and why many countries experience very similar reductions in homicide while a few experienced increasing violence. We propose potential explanations and suggest areas for future research.

Originality/value – This chapter documents an international homicide decline occurring between 1990 and 2015. We also demonstrate that homicide trends are likely influenced by factors beyond local phenomena and domestic policies since homicide rates largely track together for regions throughout the world. Accordingly, the chapter suggests potential avenues for future research that can help better explain this trend.

With increasing globalization and mass migration, nations around the world are facing new levels and new types of diversity. On one hand, increased diversity has prompted global attention to issues of human rights and related discourses of cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and cross-cultural tolerance. On the other hand, flows of diversity are sometimes linked to renewed nationalisms and xenophobia, and educational actors engage in new “bordering and ordering” processes (Robertson, 2011). Amidst these shifts, schools continue to be sites where complex global debates about diversity and national belonging play out in localized, “everyday” ways. In the quotidian activities of classrooms around the world, educators are expected to promote equality, build national unity, increase intergroup tolerance, and foster peace. Yet schools are inextricably linked to their sociopolitical contexts, and often reflect the exclusion, inequality, stratification, and xenophobia that exist outside of school walls. Scholars of Comparative and International Education (CIE) are uniquely positioned to examine how these complex dynamics of nation building and intergroup relations are negotiated in local-level curriculum, language practices, and pedagogical approaches. By comparing such dynamics on local, national, and global levels, scholars can interrogate how global discourses of human rights, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism play out in different contexts – and how such discourses are circulated, adapted, resisted, and appropriated by global and local actors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the origin of economics as a separate science.

A very comprehensive approach is presented for determining the origin of economics as a science. Three kinds of inter‐related issues are discussed: how to interpret and evaluate earlier, particularly ancient, writings, the specification of the requirements for declaring economics as a science and the definition, scope and methodology of economics.

Application of the most stringent requirements for declaring economics as a separate science to Kautilya's Arthashastra validated A.K. Sen's claim that it is the first book on economics.

According to Kautilya, economics is a separate science but not independent of other disciplines and particularly of ethics. Whereas, most of the current research ignores this inter‐dependence and consequently does not fully capture reality.

It implies that the inter‐dependence between economics and other disciplines should be encouraged and vigorously explored.

It validates Redman's assertion, “The history of economics as a science is, in my view, still waiting to be properly written”.

Religion and philosophy satisfy the basic human needs of understanding, belonging, and finding meaning. They provide tranquility of mind and satisfy the desire to be loved and lovable. However, they present their own failings and can counter each other in positive and negative ways, that threaten the communities of beliefs they form and their interactions. An appropriate institutional framework can control the fanaticism and sectarianism that can come with established religion and philosophy.

The agricultural sector is a critical component of global economic development, and its significance has grown significantly in recent years. The risks associated with agriculture and the behaviors of farmers in handling these risks are becoming increasingly important, given the sector’s increasing dependence worldwide. Various activities related to agriculture are vulnerable to multiple risks, which can have severe consequences for farmers’ livelihoods. The purpose of this systematic review is to present a comprehensive analysis of the sources of risk faced by farmers and their choices in adopting risk management strategies worldwide.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol was utilized to select relevant literature, and a total of 102 studies were analyzed. Through the use of Venn diagrams and graphical methods, the authors provide a transparent overview of the risks faced by farmers and the adoption of risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

From the analysis, the authors found that, in terms of risk management strategies, diversification, reserve credit and accumulated assets are frequently used in developing countries, while developed countries tend to rely on future/forward contracts, crop insurance and hedging. Diversification is the most widely used risk management strategy across both developed and developing countries. Our study also highlights the different perceptions of weather-related risks among growers in developed and developing countries.

This systematic review provides valuable insights into the risks associated with agriculture and farmers' strategies in managing these risks, which could inform policy decisions and promote sustainable agricultural practices. For instance, understanding the individualistic nature of farmers' risk perception and the varying risk sources and management strategies depending on the locality and provide assistance to the farmers accordingly.

The paper explains how farmers behave during uncertainty in terms of risk perception and their decision to adopt risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

Provides an introduction to corporate identity management; gives an overview of the private banking sector both in the UK and overseas and, using a case study focusing on the private bankers Adam and Co., describes the elements forming that bank’s corporate identity. These elements were history; key incidents; and service quality. The latter was found to be the most likely contributor to that bank’s identity. Argues that bank managers, in addition to asking the questions What is our business?, and what is our image? , should ask, What is our identity?

The ideology of the New Right draws many of its foundational concepts from the work of Adam Smith. This appropriation and vulgarization of Smith′s work constitutes a major injustice to this seminally important theorist. In particular, the moral underpinnings of Smith′s project are often ignored, as are his insights on the potential dysfunctions and pathologies a capitalist society might foster. Most critiques of capitalism are launched from a Marxian‐based perspective. Finds, however, that by examining post‐Rogernomics New Zealand in light of the potential dysfunctions identified by Smith, the father of capitalism himself proves to be the most trenchant critic of the current order.

In this chapter, the authors review talent management in the research university sector, business schools in particular. The authors adopt an “exclusive” perspective on talent management, assuming that some scholars contribute disproportionately to organizational performance. The authors identify two particular groups of scholars likely to be the target of exclusive talent management practices in business schools: (i) faculty on a tenure track career path and (ii) “star” tenured faculty with exceptionally strong track records. Focusing on these current and potential future “stars,” the authors review and discuss talent management practices related to talent identification, recruitment and selection, performance management, talent development, benefits and rewards, and tenure, promotion, and retention. In the extant literature, these topics have been mostly examined in the general university environment and less so in the business school context. This is somewhat problematic given that business schools have their own special characteristics. Moreover, some of the reviewed topics – especially talent development – have received only marginal scholarly interest thus far. Based on this literature review, and by drawing on their own experience working in different roles in academia, the authors highlight some of the gaps in the current body of knowledge and propose an agenda for future research.

European rural development programmes are driving multi-actor interactive innovation initiatives and alliances to create an environment in which innovation acts as a tool for accelerating rural development processes. In Europe, where rural areas are facing many challenges, identifying which challenges, difficulties, obstacles or risk factors that interactive innovation projects have had to face in rural areas while being planned and set up would be interesting. The objective of this research work was to, therefore, identify and analyse the risk factors of 200 rural projects and initiatives that were selected as case studies from the whole of Europe.

The employed methodology consisted in conducting interviews to subsequently perform statistical independence analyses of the qualitative variables characterising the found projects and risk factors.

The findings indicated that most of the risks that rural projects and initiatives faced were related to the social domain which was, in turn, the fundamental pillar of interactive innovation. Dependence was found between social risk factors appearing and the innovation type carried out; the risk factors corresponding to the political–legal risks category and the project or initiative coordinating country; and the economic–technical risks category and the initiatives' geographic magnitude.

This paper exposes the main risks identified within various rural innovation initiatives and projects around Europe. For this purpose, a statistical analysis of independence was performed, allowing us to generate reliable and accurate results of the main risks associated with certain descriptive characteristics (coordinating region, domain, innovation type, gender balance and geographic magnitude) of the initiatives studied.