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The aim of the chapter is to examine whether the challenges to administering the EU outlined by Les Metcalfe in his famous article, ‘After 1992, can the Commission manage Europe?’ have now been met. Metcalfe not only identified a ‘management deficit’ in the implementation of the single market programme arising from an oversight among policy makers, but highlighted a neglect of the administrative dimension of European integration among scholars.

The chapter draws on primary and secondary literature to track developments in respect of the three elements identified by Metcalfe: the small size of the European Commission, its poor internal coordination and weak leadership; the responsiveness of administrative bodies in the member states to the need for inter-organizational coordination; and the network-building and management capacity of the Commission.

Despite changes, such as further enlargement, agencification at national and EU levels, and the expansion of EU competencies that have exacerbated the management challenge confronting the EU, there have been significant developments that have closed the deficit. First, the Commission has become far better integrated, coordination upgraded, and leadership strengthened. Second, through networking, cooptation and other strategies the Commission has sought to assure the effective implementation and enforcement of the single market rules. Third, member state governments, ministries and agencies have sought to cultivate networked relations that have increased the manageability of EU administration.

To the knowledge of this author, this is the first attempt to revisit Metcalfe’s diagnosis and to review the extent to which the management deficit he identified has been addressed subsequently.

The chapter has implications for how inter-organizational coordination within the EU administrative system could be improved.

The chapter bears on the administrative capacity of the EU to deliver the policies decided by EU policy makers.

As well as offering an assessment of the extent to which progress has been made in addressing the management deficit identified by Les Metcalfe in his classic article, this chapter conceptualizes the EU administration as an entity that encompasses both EU institutions and administrative bodies in the member states. It advances the concept of the EU as a multi-level administration.

Since decentralization gives local levels of government greater autonomy to make their own decisions, it is important to have leaders who can acquit themselves well and lead their jurisdictions well in decision-making and implementation. In some instances decentralization is associated with perceptions of reduced government performance and increased corruption. When leaders fail, extensive criticism is frequently voiced against government and bureaucracies, often involving complaints of rigid red-tape, inefficiency, corruption, lack of flexibility and negative attitudes toward change, restricting social progress, and insufficiently ensuring economic growth. Still, we find evidence that good performance is possible in the matter of decentralization. One such instance is found in Indonesia’s city, Surabaya. During the past decade, the city transformed itself from a hot and dry city into a green, cool, and comfortable place to live that is frequently acknowledged for its government performance. The mayor’s personal leadership style is popularly described as leading with integrity and with the heart. With integrity, she has made anti-corruption a major tenet of her leadership goals. Meanwhile, in regard to leading with the heart, she has embraced “feminine” leadership styles that emphasizes cooperation, participation by many, information sharing, reliance on interpersonal skills, and sensitivity to other’s feelings and perspectives. She also adopts “motherly” and “parental” approaches such as when admonishing others. These styles are consistent with the modern leadership theory around collaborative governance and what is expected or believed to be appropriate for leaders in Indonesia.

Unique among European Union (EU) economic governance entities and multilateral banks, the European Investment Bank (EIB) possesses a dual nature, as an EU body and a bank. The EIB has been ever evolving to adapt to policy and market developments and to reflect the geo-economic landscape. In 2019, in association with the EU's Green Deal, the bank announced its metamorphosis into a “Climate Bank,” ending its fossil fuel lending after 2021. Additionaly, upon the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its attendant health and economy crisis, EU decision-makers have solicited the bank to support both urgent needs for tackling and countering the spread of the disease and the post-pandemic economic recovery. Nevertheless, devastated economic actors in need of assistance fall within many sectors, including some less green ones.

This article is grounded on agency theory for developing a generic stakeholder framework, which is then subsequently applied in investigating the EIB, in interaction with its main stakeholders.

This article investigates the EIB stakeholders in pursuing these two seemingly contradictory objectives of exclusively restricting its activity to green funding and expanding its action for achieving a broad impact in the real economy. By exploring this tension, the article argues that by prioritizing the post-COVID restart, the EIB risks to deviate from its strict green commitment.

The analysis of the EIB's divergent stakeholder stances demonstrates some ambivalence in future EIB activity in an effort to equipoise climate finance with a post-pandemic boost. The same ambivalence might equally occur with other major economic governance actors. The stakeholder framework developed and applied in the case of the EIB can be useful for studying also the stakeholder dynamics of other organizations.

The analysis demonstrates a tension between selective climate-related funding for “building back better” and the need for a wide broaching of countercyclical stimulus, with implications for economic and social actors alike.

The approach is novel, as it develops a new analytical framework for understanding stakeholder dynamics and tests it empirically on the EIB. This constitutes the first study of EIB stakeholder management.

This paper aims to address the issue of matching controlled vocabulary on agroforestry from knowledge organization systems (KOS) and incorporating these terms in DITA markup. The paper has been selected for an extended version from MTSR'11.

After a general description of the steps taken to harmonize controlled vocabulary on agroforestry, a general discussion of related work enriching documents and matching controlled vocabularies as well as details on managing controlled vocabulary in DITA are provided.

The paper identifies a number of practical and theoretical issues in matching controlled vocabulary from different sources, e.g. the complexity of addressing inconsistencies and incompatibilities between systems, and came across a number of approaches to semantically enrich documents, such as semantic‐document approach, facet classification, and integrating metadata and markup in documents.

Ways of incorporating controlled vocabularies into DITA markup are presented that can be drawn upon to guide future work in this area.

No previous work has reflected on the actual experience used to enrich DITA markup, especially with reference to the agrorestry domain.

Analysis of Philippine society has largely turned on the collectivist/individualist binary. Taking off from this dualism and from the notion and practice of siblingship (Aguilar, 2013). This chapter looks at two contemporary Filipino family films – Kung Ayaw Mo, Huwag Mo! (If You Don’t Want, So Be It) and Four Sisters and a Wedding. These films articulate and resolve the tensions, ambivalences, and conflicts between self and family, autonomy and dependence, and individualism and collectivism. This chapter also shows how the collectivism–individualism binary has broader political resonance, touches on the relationship between family and democracy, and proposes the family as a complementary point from which to theorize democracy in the Philippines.

There is a desire to improve economies as a way to solve social inequities while simultaneously addressing the issue of sustainability. Young and Tilley developed a model that describes a sustainability entrepreneur. The purpose of this paper is to apply the model in the Philippine setting to determine if there exists a special entrepreneur who looks beyond profit motivations, considers social inequities, and looks towards future generations.

The paper used the narrative approach in learning more about the motivations and sustainability practices of two Filipino entrepreneurs. The objective was not to compare the practices of both but to match it with the 12 elements of the sustainability entrepreneur model of Young and Tilley.

The concept of sustainability entrepreneurship is unknown to the two entrepreneurs. Yet, both engaged in sustainable business practices, meant to improve living conditions of marginalized groups. However, while they have actually helped communities to take better control of their livelihood, they have not yet consciously imbibed the element of futurity.

The paper attempts to further the model of Young and Tilley. However, since the measurement of sustainable entrepreneurship is not definitive, the researcher used pseudo-measures.

Informing entrepreneurs of the value of sustainability entrepreneurship, may lead to more for-profit enterprises to consider the effects of their business practices on the future of marginalized group and the environment.

There is no publication yet that has applied the Young and Tilley model. This paper shows that the model may have practical implications for entrepreneurs.

Covid-19 forced the entire global education system to adapt to the new circumstances. This chapter continues the worldwide discussion on how student learning on courses and programs that were moved partially online due to remote teaching and learning in higher education institutions (HEI) during the Covid-19 pandemic was assured and what opportunities this has brought to higher education. Although there is a tendency in the theoretical literature to focus on the problems, difficulties, and challenges associated with the transition to remote learning in higher education during the pandemic, this study suggests that, contrary to the common belief, students actually identify a great number of positive issues associated with remote learning. The findings of this study highlight that students see both personal benefits and challenges in remote learning. Overall, students are satisfied with the quality of the remote teaching and learning process, and students’ positive assessment of the quality of their studies’ organization increased with age. Stability and routine were important for the students in the study process. These ensure that the study process continues uninterrupted and thus that results can be achieved. The results of this study bring us to the conclusion that the Covid-19 pandemic could be used to speed up changes in HEIs around the globe to find better and more student-centered and innovative solutions in teaching and learning in the future.