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This study aims to demonstrate how critical realism (CR) can be used in spirituality at work (SAW) research and to provide a practical example of CR in SAW research.

CR is a philosophical meta-theory that allows the stratification of spirituality into different levels of reality, advocates for research methods matching the ontology of the level investigated and provides complementary methods of exploring this phenomenon’s causal power in social contexts. The authors present a study where CR was used to explain how and why SAW influences ethics in organisational contexts.

The results demonstrate that CR provides a useful approach to bridging the positivist-interpretivist difference in SAW research. Moreover, a CR approach helped explain the underlying conditions and causal mechanisms that power SAW to influence ethical decision-making and behaviour in the workplace.

While CR has been applied in the management literature, negligible SAW research has used this approach. That which exists is either conceptual or does not discuss methods of data analysis, or describe how critical realist concepts resulted in their findings. This paper addresses that lacuna. CR also provides value, as an alternative approach to SAW research, in that it allows the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods as complementary, not confrontational methods while providing a more integrated and deeper view of SAW and its effects.

This paper provides a reflection about the usefulness of the concept of social entrepreneurship to Portuguese third sector organizations (TSOs) with the purpose of understanding the paths undertaken by the latter. Departing from a theoretical synthesis inspired by different approaches to social entrepreneurship, the purpose of this paper is to offer an operative view of the concept in light of the problematics of social innovation and organizational innovation.

The empirical analysis focuses on the intervention models and management models of these organizations. It uses a sequential methodological approach that combines extensive and intensive analyses.

The author has concluded that Portuguese TSOs show a fragile form of social entrepreneurship. This includes, among others, state dependency both in terms of models of financial management and the definition and regulation of activities, recipients and social intervention. This leads the author to claim, even though cautiously, that management models influence intervention models.

The originality of this paper lies on the use of an analytic framework that offers an eclectic approach to social entrepreneurship. This approach goes beyond some hidden contradictions between Anglo-Saxon schools of thought, namely, the earned income school of thought, and the school of social innovation, as well as the European perspective on social enterprises, and the Latin-American school of solidarity economy. These schools have been reconciled for the purposes of this analysis, which attempts to operationalize the notion of social entrepreneurship in the Portuguese TSOs.

This research reports on how influence processes (IP) impact on the implementation effectiveness of information technology (IT) projects. Drawing on an innovation perspective that elevate the interplay of factors related to innovations framing, innovations environment and innovation attributes, the study focused on IT projects based in Africa that are generally classified as “challenged” due to the conditions in the environment. The purpose of this paper is to assess how IP related to innovation framing, innovation environment and innovation attributes can be used to determine implementation effectiveness.

Using a interpretive approach, a case study of institutions under a partnership that has been implementing various educational technologies in five African countries formed the sample. In all, 25 interviews of top-management representatives, project leaders and user representatives were conducted between 2012 and 2013 to assess the implementation effectiveness of these projects. Theoretical thematic analysis, based on a deductive approach, was employed to analyse the data.

The results show that a majority of these development-oriented projects are “mandated failures” characterized by high framing, a bad internal environment and typically negative innovation attributes. That typically, the institutions engage symbolically in such innovations initiatives which are regarded as “show” projects. Such behaviour can be construed to be a pattern of cynical technology adoption linked to the appeasement of external stakeholders. In addition, participation in initiatives was largely symbolic and is considered as a mere demonstration of a modern organization that is technologically aware, yet the requisite innovation environment is lacking for effective appropriation of the technology. Third, mandated failures result in low morale of employees, who regard themselves as pawns in the process which make them grudgingly participate in the implementation process.

These findings have implications for managing innovations in such challenged environments: the first proposition is that projects in challenged environment for innovation adopting organizations need to be considered as technology transfer projects. Second, the innovation environment and attributes can only be improved during implementation of the conditions related to absorptive capacity of the organization and the individual are addressed.

The research reported in this paper, provides an empirical determination of the concept of implementation effectiveness by using three constructs of innovations framing, environment and attributes. On the basis of the empirical findings, an original contribution is claimed, especially in “challenged” IT project environments where the concept of success if fluid and outcomes uncertain.

The paper, while having a cursory examination of ethnic minority business development in Newcastle‐u‐Tyne, examines issues that businesses further south have long since experienced and overcome as a result of a heavy concentration of support networks and institutions (Srinivasan, 1992). The main issues of the paper centre around the reluctance of ethnic minority business owners, particularly those from South Asia, to utilise Government agency support in the development and expansion of their businesses.

Using an original product level database, this article analyzes the nature and dynamics of Swiss specializations during the “first globalization” (1850–1913). I study the comparative advantages, as well as the evolution of the trade structure, in order to understand economic performance differences between Switzerland and France. Despite differences in terms of market size, some common trends are identified. I also argue that Switzerland's skilled labor force, along with an intelligent choice of economic policy, allowed this country to adapt its specialization structure to global demand and enjoy rapid economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to compare technical efficiency and metatechnology ratios (MTR) in three production systems confronted with different technological and resource endowments in Bangladesh to identify the suitable production systems for increasing productivity.

The primary data collected by authors from 180 dairy farmers were sampled and modeled in a stochastic metafrontier framework due to its ability to estimate and compare the efficiency of firms among various groups with possibly different group-specific technologies and heterogeneous production environments.

The empirical results show that farms from intensive system were closer to their production frontier than extensive and traditional system. Regarding productivity differences among systems, the MTR is by far highest for intensive, indicating the technological advantage of this system over others two systems. The estimation of farm-specific inefficiency model revealed that farmers’ access to extension and credit services are assumed to be significant determinants in reducing inefficiency.

This study concludes that the ability of the farmers to increase productivity vary depending on the production systems due to variation in resource endowments and access to various inputs and support services. Thus, improving productivity depends on effective policy design on harmonizing access to resources and delivery of extension and credit services.

The empirical analysis of data representing different production endowments by stochastic metafrontier make it possible to identify the efficiency level as well as technology gap, thus, ways to identify the possible policy options reducing those gaps and improving productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether, of China's food and agriculture (agri-food) export, the trade relationships along the extensive margin can transform into short-term ones, and further convert into long-term ones along the intensive margin with survival and maintenance, especially, under what kind of conditions these transformation realize successfully, and what the factors are and how they impact on the length of the trade relationships duration.

The paper comprises three stages: decomposing China's agricultural export data (1999-2008) into highly disaggregated three distinct parts; with the Kaplan-Meier (KM) nonparametric estimation, discovering the practical source of stable and long-term export growth, and the threshold at which the short-run trade relationships deriving from newly established ones convert into long-run ones successfully; by semi parametric estimation through Cox proportional hazard model, preliminarily examining the possible impact of different factors on the trade relationship's hazard rate and duration.

The paper reveals that China agri-food trade pattern at the product level is surprisingly dynamic with newly established trade relations being more likely to fail. While the frequent volatilities of short-term relations at the extensive margin could be used to evaluate the source of short-term export growth especially and effectively, the pattern of negative dependence together with the threshold effect of duration indicates, only when these short-term relations live longer than four years will they substantially contribute to a stable and prolonged export growth. Simultaneously, trade duration significantly correlates to importing country's development status, region it belongs to, product processing degree, export experience and geographical space between trading partners.

To avoid the likelihood of misleading when estimating quantitatively the source of long-term export growth, researchers should be cautious in accurately evaluating the impacts of all possible factors on the two trade margins' performances, which is beyond the scope of this paper though, and a matter of ongoing work on the research agenda.

The study presents a set of important policy implications. Now that turnovers along the extensive margin have little impact on long-term China agri-food export growth, it turns out that improving export survival would result in significantly higher and stable export growth.

By distinguishing the survival of trade relationship channels from their deepening, the discoveries in the paper are crucial to understand the different role the intensive and extensive margins play in China agri-food export growth. The diversified hazard rates of export relations in different duration intervals suggest that the constant hazard rate assumption in Melitz and Bernard et al. is in some sense not appropriate.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of data aggregation and farm‐level crop acreage on the level of natural hedge, i.e. the level of price‐yield correlations, which is an important issue in risk modeling and management.

Swiss FADN data for five crops covering the period 2002‐2009 are used to estimate price‐yield correlations at the farm‐ as well as on an aggregated level. Tobit regressions are used to estimate empirical relationships between the level of natural hedge and the underlying crop acreage.

Price‐yield correlations differ significantly between farm‐ and aggregated‐level. More specifically, the natural hedge observed at the farm‐level is much smaller, i.e. correlations are closer to zero. Taking correlations from aggregated levels thus leads to an underestimation of farm‐level revenue variability. Furthermore, it is found that larger farms have a stronger natural hedge. For instance, a 1 percent increase in area under maize and intensive barley leads to a change in the correlation by −0.02 and −0.08, respectively.

The natural hedge is often approximated with correlations observed at more aggregated levels, e.g. the county level. The results show that this implies errors in risk assessment and modeling as well as insurance applications. Thus, farm‐level estimates should be used. The here presented relationship between price‐yield correlations and farm‐level crop acreage can be used to derive better information on levels of the natural hedge.

Even though the effects of data aggregation on price‐yield correlations have been discussed in earlier research, this paper is the first to also account for on‐farm effects of underlying crop acreage on levels of natural hedge. It is found that this simple relationship can be useful in risk management and modeling applications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of gravity variables and trade costs on China's export margins.

Following the structural gravity model with firm heterogeneity, the paper measures the extensive margins and intensive margins of China's export across 46 export destinations and estimates the linkage between export margins and its potential determinants.

The empirical results confirm the gravity relationship hold for bilateral trade and export margins. Furthermore, trade costs have different influence on extensive margins and intensive margins as the structural gravity model with firm heterogeneity expected. The paper also shows the rapid growth of China's export is mainly along the intensive margins which are increasing in fixed cost for export.

The paper contributes to the measurements of China's export margins and the empirical research on effects of trade liberalization on China's foreign trade.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.