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The recent emergence of Chinese digital platform firms, whose size rivals that of the US platform giants, has attracted much popular interest. Given the size and increasing technical sophistication of these firms, there has been increasing interest in whether they have developed sufficient capacities and resources to become global-class competitors for the reigning US platform giants. The authors assembled a database of all overseas operations of the Chinese platform firms. Nine of them have foreign operations, with Tencent and Alibaba being the most important offshore investors. The authors describe the globalization patterns of these firms and analyze the strengths and obstacles to their globalization. Their globalization has proceeded on a number of vectors: first, these firms, with a few exceptions, when they have global strategies, have largely invested in firms with useful technology or content. One common strategy has been to follow Chinese customers abroad. Second, Chinese firms have made equity investments in a number of foreign Internet firms. And yet, in nearly all foreign markets, Chinese websites and apps still trail the US firms in market share and salience. Finally, Chinese investments are concentrated in proximate countries. Chinese platform firms, while having some state-of-the-art technologies, have a far smaller foreign presence than their US competitors do. Finally, the authors consider the implications of their research for discussions of whether emerging nation multinational firms require new theories for explaining their globalization.

This chapter adds to the volume by providing a first-hand account, discussion, and reflection on our experience of coming in as outside “experts” from Australia to develop courses for universities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This chapter provides a comparative analysis of two cases illustrating and discussing cross-cultural collaborations for curriculum development for an Industrial Design (ID) program and an interdisciplinary design program in the Middle East, namely the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This chapter aims to provide a better understanding of Quality Assurance (QA) processes and the purpose of curriculum development for employability and entrepreneurship in the MENA region. To meet this aim, we describe the planning processes for the development of the new curricula and the evolution of the programs. We reflect on the differences and similarities of QA frameworks, and their interpretation and use by the universities in the KSA, the UAE, and Australia. We compare the processes and outcomes around specialization versus inter- and transdisciplinarity, as well as around employability in traditional industry versus education for entrepreneurship and future jobs. We observed significant differences between the two recipient MENA countries, and between them and Australia. These related to the understanding and foci of the graduate attributes; the understanding and implementation of course development processes; and the responsibility of provision and oversight of QA oversight in each country. In closing the chapter, we share important learnings through our reflections.

The burnt-out Grenfell tower is a symbol of trauma and sacrificed lives. The brutalist block as a technology of trauma, viewed through its mediated depictions, reveals its condemned predicament between slippages in bureaucracy and governance. Through the formal enquiry into the disaster, the Grenfell victims' trauma is revived, replayed and contained within an archive in which victimhood is captured in a number of stages. The charred remains of the tower as a chronotrope of trauma and of lives cut short yields readings into the politics of social housing, gentrification and social displacement. The testimonials from Grenfell are temporally elongated both through the public review but also in the traces of victims' narratives left on social media in real time through flesh witnessing and as an online repository of death narratives. As a tower of trauma and as the forensic evidence of a disaster, Grenfell is part of the iconography of the ‘blackened’ and their necroaesthetics.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Purpose: This chapter examines alternative education programs available for Myanmarese migrant youth in Thailand, what these young migrants expect of education, and how these migrant learning centers (MLCs) can help provide more opportunities for migrants.

Methods: This study draws from the data collected through two stages of qualitative research undertaken in Mae Sot, a town that borders Myawaddy, Myanmar in Thailand. Stage one consisted of ethnographic research with the local Myanmarese diaspora when I worked as a volunteer at a community-based organization. In stage two, a series of interviews were conducted with eight faculty members and twenty students enrolled in the secondary school level or vocational training program of three local MLCs.

Findings: The main finding is that even with both inclusive education policies and alternative education options in place, there is still a missing link between the educational attainment of Myanmarese migrant youth and their future prospects. While Thai public education seems to be a pathway to more future opportunities in the host country, it can be a trap when migrant youth cannot make good use of their learned knowledge and Thai language skills in the future due to their irregular status. In contrast with Thai public schools, MLCs offer more than simply education. They also provide scholarship, employment and social welfare assistance to serve the varying needs of young migrants.

Originality: The case of Myanmarese migrants presents a unique study in which the gap between students’ educational attainment and future prospects cannot necessarily be bridged even with a valid work visa scheme in place. Some Myanmarese migrants are displaced individuals who fled from civil wars and without any identification documents. The legal systems enforced by nation-states, such as Thailand, that rely on identification documents to control the flow of population still lack the capacity to adequately address the educational needs and employment opportunities of individuals with irregular status.

We propose that the ambiguity of discourse around a category – rather than being problematic – improves the longevity of that category. This is especially true in the creative industries. Using methods and theories drawn from sociology and art history, we tested this thesis using swing as a case study. Based on three years of archival research we found 70 co-existing definitions of swing and 89 different uses of the term. These multiple meanings enabled various understandings to come in and out of focus over time, contributing to swing’s longevity. Our findings extend to other categories within the creative industries.

The work of Henri Lefebvre Rhythmanalysis, Space, Time and Everyday Life (2004) is generally known as the original proposer of rhythmanalysis, inspired by the last chapter of Gaston Bachelard's book La dialectique de la durée (1963), entitled ‘Rhythmanalysis’. Nevertheless, it was the Portuguese philosopher Lúcio Pinheiro dos Santos who developed the notion of rhythmanalysis. In this chapter I address this episode of the genealogy of rhythmanalysis aiming to contribute to a broader understanding of its context of origin. I also present fragments of a rhythmanalysis exercise developed in Caminito, Buenos Aires, as part of my research in the field of art studies. Following a pre-Platonic notion of rhythm (Benveniste, 1966), I draw on those fragments as much as on the reflexive confrontation of rhythmanalysis with feminist and ch'ixi epistemologies (e.g., Haraway, 1988; Rivera, 2018) in order to propose what I come to call rhuthmanalysis.