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This paper examines the role of libraries and information services, in promoting the ‘open society’ espoused by Karl Popper and George Soros. After a brief discussion of the nature of an ‘open society ’, the paper covers the role played by provision of knowledge and information, of new technology, particularly the Internet, and of critical thinking and digital literacy in the development of this form of society. Conclusions are drawn for the role of libraries and librarians, with seven general principles suggested.

I dedicate half of the book to establishing the theoretical basis of a Southern green criminology as a science that contests ecological discrimination. My political premise for such a theoretical design is that a Southern green criminology must seek to scientifically uncover the harmful practices that make the South victim to ecological discrimination. I use another five chapters to analyse the culturist and speciesist practices that create ecological discrimination against the diverse components of the earth system. In this concluding chapter, inspired by the interactions I have had with members of more than 20 Colombian Indigenous communities and my students, I formulate an everyday Southern green criminology practice for countering ecological discrimination – a critical pedagogy through Southern green criminology seedbeds.

In the Western world the voices calling for a secular society have grown ever louder over the last three centuries. This paper seeks to return to one of the founders of modernity for guidance. Adam Smith advocated globalization on economic and moral grounds.Design/methodology/approach – A discussion focusing on those calling for a secular society and, in addition to these normative advocates, various social scientists have propounded the “secularization thesis”; after analysing history from a purportedly positive view, they have argued that “modernization” leads to a secular society. Recently globalization has been seen as another cause of secularization. At the same time, the revival of various religions has cast doubt on these claims.Findings – Smith did not see secularization as an inevitable consequence of globalization. Further, despite his awareness of the arguments of the advocates of secular society (and contrary to some commentators like Minowitz), he rejected their advice. For him, a secular community was neither a necessary nor a desirable consequence of globalization.Originality/value – Provides a viewpoint on some of Adam Smith's thoughts and ideas.

The aim of this chapter is to outline the research methodology for the study. Section 3.2 will discuss how a positive stakeholder theory can be formulated against the contrasting philosophies of moral universals and moral relativism. The aim of this section is to explain how stakeholder claims such as employee health and safety and environmental protection represent moral universals (fundamental ethical norms) and how differences in their perceived importance have less to do with claims of moral relativism and more to do with economic and social advancement, which can thwart the fulfilment of stakeholder objectives. The conflicting philosophies can hinder a normative approach to stakeholder theory in an international context and highlight the importance of a positive theory of the firm that can explain and predict stakeholder development in different contexts.

Quality management practices have recently flourished across the globe. In this research we review and integrate the literature by identifying and organizing significant research findings, and develop a conceptual model of the relationships between international environmental conditions (e.g. socio‐cultural, political‐legal, economic, and educational factors) and dimensions of quality management (e.g. strategic quality planning, customer focus and satisfaction, human resource development and management, information and analysis, management of process quality, and quality and operational results). The model developed here helps us move beyond examining the differences in quality practices across countries to an understanding of why such differences occur, and helps practitioners gain a better perspective on how quality management techniques can be adopted in different regions around the world.

To date, limited studies have examined the country-specific social institutions to explain the informal entrepreneurial activities of women, particularly, within the context of the Middle East. This research paper attempts to close this gap through identifying the contextual and personal factors of domestic informal female entrepreneurs (DIFE) within the context of Turkey as a representative case of the Middle East region. The chapter takes national culture as the external context to identify the informal institutions that shape women's informal entrepreneurial activities and uses the Globe Project cultural dimensions to describe the sociocultural context. The qualitative research presented here was conducted with 38 DIFEs who participated in an EU-funded project in Turkey.

The profile of the informal domestic female entrepreneur reflects a middle-aged woman, married with children, literate with a low-level education and a necessity-type entrepreneur at the beginning who gradually evolves into a pull-type sociocultural entrepreneur in time. The findings show that, the perceived sociocultural environment can be categorized as a socially supportive culture – SSC (Hayton and Cacciotti, 2013, p. 713) which is one of the facilitators of informal entrepreneurial activities and creates a fertile and socially legitimized ground for the informal commercial activities of women in Turkey.

This article discusses the information needs of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the types of information required and how the development of a world‐wide network, using the Internet, linking national societies and delegations will facilitate the dissemination of this information. The role of the Federation's Information Resource Centre in accessing relevant information and making it available is also discussed.

In this article we will report the results of a study that measured the degree to which cynicism and alienation, together with some related dimensions, were found among American women. The results of this study strongly suggest that, if cynicism and alienation are taken into account, many marketers may be positioning their offerings to reach only a minority of American women, perhaps as few as one‐third. We will also, therefore, discuss the larger marketing ramifications of these findings.

This work centers on the study of the image of universities, with the aims of explaining the process of image forming by means of its different components, both in its cognitive and affective dimensions and of analyzing its relationship with the students’ satisfaction with the university. The results of the empirical work carried out on a representative sample of 6,775 students studying at a Spanish university demonstrate that the cognitive component of image is an antecedent of the affective component. In turn, both of those components influence the forming of the overall image of the university and the cognitive, affective and overall images statistically and significantly influence the students’ satisfaction with the university.