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Purpose: This chapter analyzes the gender/sexuality/race system through which the Argentine Army was constructed as the representative of the nation and guardian of its essential values. I will focus on the challenges faced because of the implementation of gender policies by the Ministry of Defense from a rights-based perspective in the institutional matrix of the military, structured through gender and race hierarchies.

Design/methodology/approach: This chapter is based on findings obtained through my experience as a member of the Gender Policy Council for Defense (GPC), from its creation in 2007 to the present, and my fieldwork on the Argentine Armed Forces.

Findings: The resistance to the implementation of gender policies in large part stems from the defiance of the “national ideal” – incarnated by the Argentine Army – constructed upon gender and race inequalities.

Research limitations/implications: Gender inequalities have generally been excluded and ignored in political analysis and in the study of nations and nationalism. For this reason, it is difficult to recover the missing links of history and give women’s lives and gender relations the importance they deserve in analyses of power. The chapter contributes to this task.

Practical and social implications: The resistance to the implementation of the policies sponsored by the GPC of the Ministry of Defense should be evaluated from a gender and ethnoracial perspective.

Originality/value: Research on women in the Argentine Armed Forces is still limited.

Current motivation theory and research face serious theoretical, methodological, and practical challenges. One central challenge is the fact that research has focused mainly on motivation for traditional achievement tasks such as graded assignments and normative educational trajectories. Arguably, current motivation theory and research may be inadequate to characterize adaptive motivation in the uncertain, changing, and unpredictable environments of the twenty-first century. How might motivation researchers conceptualize students’ motivation in such dynamic and complex contexts? How can motivational research inform educators, administrators, and policymakers in designing curricula, pedagogy, and evaluation and accountability systems to prepare students for such a world? In the current chapter, we address these challenges with a perspective on motivation as a complex dynamic system (CDS) that is based in the person’s identity. We begin with a brief review of the challenges to the current prevalent approach to motivation research, highlighting the need for a new paradigm. We then review assumptions of the CDSs approach that render it useful for understanding motivation in continuously changing and unpredictable environments. We then present a CDS conceptual model of identity and motivation that incorporates constructs and processes from a variety of identity and motivational theories – the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI). We follow with a conceptualization of the characteristics of the identity-motivation system most adaptive for growth in changing and unpredictable environments. We end by considering the implications of this perspective for motivational theory and research and for educational practice and policy.

François Perroux was an economist of strong convictions and fruitful ideas. His belief, which was also shared by other eminent development economists of his time, that backwardness was not a fate is entirely reflected in his development pole theory, which has a prominent place within the regional development theory. This implies that his theory was highly influential, as evidenced by the fact that strategies based on development poles were implemented around the world, in both developed and developing countries. Although these strategies took different forms, largely depending on the specific contexts in which they were applied, there was a common factor in all of them, which was the importance of the direct use of large-scale investment resources to generate the hoped-for structural changes through accelerated economic growth. Looking carefully at the Italian and Brazilian cases, it should be noted that the development pole strategies had, in addition to the use of heavy investment resources already mentioned, some common characteristics, such as: the focus of attention directed toward the backward regions, specifically the Mezzogiorno region in Italy and the Amazon region in Brazil; the fight against regional disparities within both countries through structural change and the strengthening of backward regional economies as an underlying reason; and the active participation of the State in the drawing up and implementation processes of development poles. This chapter aims at comparing the development pole strategies in Italy and Brazil, highlighting similarities and differences of these experiences in triggering the long-awaited regional development.

Rosa Luxemburg is not an under-consumptionist stressing the tendency to stagnation, it is rather an under-investment perspective: the effective demand crisis results from the disequilibria determined by a vibrant capitalist accumulation, and stems from production rather than circulation. To show this, the chapter deals with three dimensions of Rosa Luxemburg's economic thought. First, how Luxemburg's approach in her 1913 book is related with some of her prior writings, especially Social Reform or Revolution? and the Introduction to Political Economy. Second, the re-reading that Luxemburg herself provided of her own argument in terms of a macro-monetary circuit model like the one we read in her Anti-Critique. Third and last, in which sense Marx's monetary labour theory of value was for her the essential starting point, which cannot be just set aside. This last point will be preceded by a détour, the critical consideration of some key papers by Kalecki on capitalism and reform, including his late paper with Kowalik on the ‘crucial reform’. The chapter concludes with some hints pointing towards an interpretation of capitalism and its recurring crises where exploitation and effective demand are both essential in accounting for the ascent and collapses of different forms of capitalism itself.

The purpose of the chapter is to determine the perspective directions of improving the process of decision-making in business systems by the example of modern Russia.

The scientific and methodological platform of this research is the Russian model of decision-making in modern business systems. For determining the perspective directions of improvement of the process of decision-making in business systems according to this model, the methods of systemic and problem analysis, modeling, and formalization are used.

It is shown by the example of modern Russia that perspectives of improving the process of decision-making in business systems are connected not to usage of alternative regional models of this process but to modernization of own models by usage of new organizational tools and innovational technologies. The perspective directions of improving the process of decision-making in business systems of modern Russia include development of systemic feedback and marketing with the help of outsource, increase of flexibility of organizational structure with the help of mediation, and usage of means of authomatization of managerial decisions with the help of intellectual technologies.

The compiled improved Russian model of decision-making in a modern business system showed the advantages of practical implementation of the offered perspective directions, connected to the most complete solution of the problem and implementation of possibilities of the business system, accelerated practical implementation of managerial decisions, and reduced the load on business managers. The presented example of improving the Russian model of managerial decisions in modern business systems reflects the possibilities and perspectives of improving other regional models.

Purpose – This chapter explores the relationship between religious affiliation and wealth ownership focusing on generational differences.

Methodology – I use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Health and Retirement Study to create descriptive statistics and regression analyses of the association between religious affiliation in childhood and adulthood for people of two cohorts.

Findings – This chapter shows that there are important patterns by religious affiliation in total net worth, real assets, and asset allocation across generations. My findings are consistent with past work on religion and wealth ownership showing that Jews, mainline Protestants, and white Catholics tend to have higher total wealth than other groups. In addition, I find that black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, and conservative Protestants tend to have relatively low wealth, consistent with research on religion, race/ethnicity, and wealth. My findings also show that these patterns are relatively robust across generations.

Research implications – The findings are relevant to research on inequality, wealth accumulation and saving, life course processes, and the effect of religion on stratification outcomes.

Originality/Value – This research shows how religious affiliation and wealth are related across generations.