Search results

Climate change was identified as an urgent global problem that requires governments to unite their efforts to prepare for potential climate risks at the First World Climate Conference in 1979. This recognition led to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to assess the magnitude and timing of changes and estimate their impacts. The IPCC published its First Assessment Report in 1990, which became a basis for negotiations on a climate change convention under the United Nations General Assembly. Between February 1991 and May 1992, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change met five times under the auspices of the General Assembly, and the Convention text was adopted on May 9, 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where 154 states signed. The Convention entered into force on March 21, 1994. It has near universal membership with 194 Parties (member countries) having ratified (UNFCCC, 2006).

A shift from a medical model to a social model of including learners with disabilities has occurred over the past 25 years (Stella, Forlin, & Lan, 2007). This shift has impacted both preservice teacher preparation and in-service teacher professional development. This chapter utilizes a conceptual framework built on the work of Forlin and colleagues (Forlin, Loreman, Sharma, & Earle, 2009; Sharma, Forlin, Loreman, & Earle, 2006; Stella et al., 2007) to guide teacher preparation and professional development. This conceptual framework provides a model for (1) addressing attitudes and perceptions; (2) increasing knowledge of disability policies, laws, and evidence-based practices for providing instruction in inclusive settings; (3) and increasing experiences with individuals with disabilities, including experiences within inclusive settings. In addition, the framework incorporates aspects of the context within which inclusion is to occur. Implications include recommendations for teacher training and professional development to improve inclusive education for learners with LID.

As multinational corporations are becoming larger and more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to balance between the need for overall standardization in the multinational corporation (MNC) and the need for local responsiveness. In order to allow subsidiaries to react on challenges and opportunities within their local markets, they should be granted with a certain level of decision-making autonomy. However, this freedom can facilitate a misalignment of activities among the headquarters and its subsidiaries.

This study suggests that subsidiaries should be granted with the autonomy to pursue own activities. There should, however, be limits to their independence, which should be aligned through a dialogue between the headquarters and the subsidiary. This study finds a positive correlation between strategic and operational autonomy and subsidiary performance when these are combined with a strong intra-organizational network relationship. Furthermore, the study argues that within operational autonomy it is important to distinguish between everyday activities that do not need approval from headquarters, and activities that should be decided in collaboration between the headquarters and the subsidiary. Subsidiaries that are operating in technological complex markets should be granted with the autonomy to take advantage of inter-organizational network relationships in order to exploit local knowledge and capabilities. However, this poses the risk of the subsidiaries losing connectivity to the MNC. In order to reduce this risk, the headquarters should combine such initiatives with a strong collaboration with its subsidiaries.

By establishing a strong intra-organizational network relationship, autonomy can have a positive effect on subsidiary performance.

Language commonality and barriers are often taken as exogenous given variable and independent of the context; however in this chapter we investigate the factors determining perception of language barriers. As such we are responding to the question of when do managers perceive language barriers and which business contexts foster the perception of language barriers and which do not? Language serves different purposes and entails different communicative requirements depending on the context in which it is used. In addition, language has multiple dimensions and we argue that the different dimensions of language vary in their importance depending on the specific context, where the contextual variation in this case is related to the operation mode chosen in the foreign market. More specifically, we argue that language distance (relatedness in language) matters when the firms conduct business abroad through their own employees, while language incidence (accuracy in language) is critical when operating through a local agent. The different use of language implies a need for different language skills. The combination of the operation mode and the availability of people with the needed language skills will affect managers’ perception of language barriers. The hypotheses are tested on a large data set encompassing 390 multinational corporations headquartered in Finland, South Korea, New Zealand, and Sweden that have undertaken a business operation in a foreign country.

The purpose of this research is to understand how power relations in global value chains (GVCs) shape the upgrading of offshoring service providers (OSPs). More specifically, the chapter addresses two questions: (1) How power asymmetry in GVC shapes the upgrading prospects for OSPs? and (2) How OSPs manage the power asymmetry in GVC and upgrade to a more favorable position?

The context for this study is the software value chain. Drawing upon relational economic geography and GVC literature, we build an analytical framework based on three conceptual building blocks: client power, upgrading, and upgrading practices. Based on the analytical framework and in-depth interviews, we design a case study of one OSP in the Pakistani software industry, referred to as OSP#A.

The findings reveal that GVCs exercise a high level of power on OSPs. This power is exercised through enforcing certain conditions to participate and coordinate in GVCs. However, it is found that OSP#A is not passive recipient of these demands. Instead, it actively manages the power asymmetry through building practices to adapt and collaborate in GVCs and attain relational proximity.

The chapter highlights the significance of upgrading practices and conceptualizing upgrading as a process of improving relational power in GVCs by attaining relational proximity.

In this chapter, the authors present several current issues that are representative of chinks’ in the armor of university administration today. This study brings into attention the importance of philosophy, society, development and education that serve to strengthen the operational–development nexus in higher education institutions. The objectives are (i) to draw the attention of administrators to these “chinks” in the armor of university operations; (ii) to indicate how their resolution can strengthen the operations–development nexus; and (iii) to encourage continuous reflection on the background of better understandings of a philosophy of management, society, development and education.

Coalitions are informal and interdependent groups of actors operating within organizations, yet their effects in organizations are not widely understood. In this paper, we develop a model of coalition formation and functioning inside organizations. By extrapolating the behavioral intentions (i.e., altruistic or antagonistic) and compositional differences (i.e., supplementary or complementary) among these informal group structures, we classify coalitions into four forms (i.e., lobby, cartel, circle, and alliance), theorizing how each coalition form affects work role innovation, resource allocations, and work performance. Our conceptualization helps clarify previous theoretical inconsistencies and establish an agenda for the study of coalitions at work. Furthermore, this paper provides insights into the ways that coalitions support or impede the organization’s objectives.