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The purpose of this paper is to study the uneven geographies of corruption on the African continent. Corruption is an entrenched part of African political culture. However, the degree and impacts of corruption vary widely across the continent, ranging from failed states such as Somalia to the region’s bright spot Botswana. This paper first defines corruption and discusses its causes and effects. It then delves into the specifics of African corruption, including its causes and effects such as patrimonial political cultures, clientelism and the role of natural resource exports.

The study uses data from Transparency International to assess African corruption empirically and geographically, and links its levels of severity using correlations to gross domestic product per capita, literacy, income inequality and freedom of the media.

The major findings are that while the vast majority of the continent’s one billion people live under very corrupt regimes, the impacts of corruption on economic growth are questionable. Few geographic studies of corruption exist.

The paper’s novelty stems in part from being the first to explore African corruption from a spatial perspective, illustrating its widely varying contexts and consequences.

The hegemony of the Republican right and the global triumph of neoliberalism comprise the two central political questions of the contemporary age. Progressive intellectuals seem to be at a loss as to how to explain these intertwined themes. Why has the war waged by the American ruling class, at home and abroad, been received so enthusiastically among many in the U.S. and faced so little opposition internationally? What can history tell us about the triumph of the Right? These papers shed light on three aspects of the American empire, pointing to the ways in which the domestic and the foreign are entangled in powerful and complex ways.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the scholarly historical literature about Wal‐Mart and its relationship to the emergence of a retail service economy in the USA.

The review examines book‐length studies or collections of essays on Wal‐Mart. It highlights the developments that historians have linked to Wal‐Mart, and seeks to demonstrate both the progression of this historiography and the value of studying Wal‐Mart.

This young and relatively small historiography has developed quickly in recent years. Work in the last five years suggests that when historians use Wal‐Mart as a case study or template corporation, they can learn much about the development, nature, and trajectory of the postindustrial service economy and American political culture.

This is the first review essay of historical writing about Wal‐Mart. It will be useful to scholars curious about what has been written and what remains to be written about America's largest private employer and retailer, and the potential of such analysis for further insight into post‐1945 American society, economy, and culture.

The purpose of this article is to provide organized, synthesized information related to initiatives throughout the world based on knowledge‐based development (KBD) such as knowledge cities (KCs), knowledge regions, and knowledge countries. A first search was conducted using the Internet and specialized databases under the keywords “knowledge cities”. The information compiled led to other related keywords which branched out the search. All resulting information was then collated and integrated into a number of categories all unified under the field of knowledge‐based development. A compilation of information on the topic “knowledge cities” and other topics related to knowledge‐based development. The information is presented in eight sections: a glossary of KC‐related terms, a list of knowledge‐based development initiatives, a list of associations and organizations related to the topic, a list of urban KBD‐related value dimensions and their indicators, a list of international rankings, a list of special editions on KCs, a bibliography, and a directory of related sites on the Internet. This effort resulted in a public service available at the World Wide Web. The information included in this compilation is limited mainly to public domain information available throughout Internet in both English and Spanish, as well as in selected databases.

In early April 2004, a group of social scientists gathered at Florida State University, for an interdisciplinary conference on “Globalization and the Sedimentation of the Cold War.”¹ The papers and discussions centered around the following question: Has the configuration of business–labor–government relations that took hold in the West after World War II – during the so-called “Cold War” – become “sedimented” in ways that delimit the possible scope of choices and actions decision-makers in key institutions and organizations can make and engage in. Has it done so in a manner that resembles an underlying program which remains concealed from sight – perhaps more so, as time goes by? If we should need to answer this question in the affirmative, this program would predetermine both the confines of strategies institutions and organizations can pursue in their efforts to confront emerging challenges, and the nature of the results those strategies produce. While the configuration, as it took shape in western democratic societies – especially in North America and Western Europe, but also in Japan – was historically specific, it produced a condition that appears to perpetuate patterns established during, and characteristic of, the Cold War – beyond the official end of the Cold War. By implication, decision-makers in politics, business, and the policy apparatus would presume the prevalence of patterns that were endemic to the Cold War constellation of business, labor, and government, along with corresponding definitions of the functions and responsibilities of government, as integral to the design of early twenty-first century societies. Put differently, in the absence of a definite break with the political and economic patterns that took hold during the Cold War, the latter will remain as a central feature and organizing principle, continuing to define the perimeter of choices we perceive, the nature of goals we pursue, and the types of means we both employ and deploy.

This paper aims to investigate the factor analysis for balanced scorecard (BSC) as measuring competitive advantage of infrastructure assets of owned state ports in Indonesia: Pelindo IV, Makassar, Indonesia.

This investigation adopts an explanatory and an exploratory qualitative case study method to analyze the effectiveness of BSC over the strategy management processes. For data collection, the researchers have used semi-structured interviews, direct observation and document collection. Data collection was made during a six-month period, which allowed gaining of deep knowledge on the culture and management methods used in alpha. Other data collected refer to the company’s documentation and reporting of online media publications. Detailed interview data are the main data sources, which allow obtaining of a detailed and holistic understanding of the experience, opinions and attitudes of the interviewees. Interviews focus on asset management to determine the relationship between various factors. This study adopts ideal BSC principle (four perspectives) to develop strategic map for infrastructure asset of Pelindo IV. Analysis tools using factor analysis for the indicators (financial, customer, learning-growth and internal process) measure the competitive advantages. The data for factor analysis from the perception of each stakeholder using questionnaire are collected.

The competitive advantages of Pelindo IV depend on 81.2 per cent from financial perspective, customer perspective, internal process perspective and learning perspective, and 18.2 per cent from the other factor. The result of measurement model of competitive advantage in Figure 2 is significantly (p-value < 0.05) measured by financial perspective performance, customer perspective performance, internal process perspective performance and learning perspective performance. On the basis of the highest coefficient loading factor, it can be shown that the most powerful competitive advantages are measured by learning perspective. The high value of competitive advantage of Pelindo IV, Makassar, Indonesia, is especially seen from the learning perspective performance. The order result of BSC for measuring the competitive advantages is as follows: learning perspective performance, financial perspective performance, customer perspective performance and internal process perspective performance.

Originality of this study looks at the following three points: first, the measurement competitive advantages. Previous studies used measurements of cost leadership strategy, differential strategy and focus strategy as competitive advantages measuring (Porter, 1985; Warf and Stutz, 2007; Clulow et al., 2003). This study uses BSCs with four indicators (financial perspective result, customer perspective result, internal process perspective result and learning perspective). Second, on the other hand, several studies have investigated the BSCs as performance measurement (Ozturk and Coskun, 2014; Malgwi and Dahiru, 2014; Binden et al., 2014). Third, this study uses the factor analysis to measure the competitive advantage by BSCs, which is different from the previous study analysis.