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This chapter presents a critique of the so-called peace process through military action within the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict. There is a need to study this problem from the psychological, developmental, and humanitarian point of view. This chapter analyses the deep-rooted seeds of the problem, its historical background, its various domestic and international angles and perceptions, and the international angles as well as regional implications of the Sri Lankan Tamil insurgency. The nature of the problem, the effect of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka on regional security, and the militarily remedization of the problem by Sri Lankan government and its result are focused on here.

Finally, the study identifies the contemporary role of diaspora communities as a severe hindrance to a lasting peace in the country. Thus, the analysis concludes that lasting peace in the island is possible only through the promotion of a genuine liberal democracy, from both within and without. Suggestions for future peace, stability, and development have been put forward.

JoAnn Wypijewski, reflecting on the experience of workers laid off from General Electric’s (GE) Bloomington, Indiana refrigerator plant, as GE announced profits of $12.7 billion, and the relocation of half the production to Celaya, Mexico, asks: What will it take to match fire with fire at GE, not just in Bloomington but everywhere? Twenty years ago, Jack Welch openly articulated a strategy for taking the company to where it is today. The GE unions never developed a parallel strategy, and 100,000 lost jobs later, most of them still haven’t shed their faith in what the AFL-CIO likes to call “high-road capitalism.” During the 2000 national contract talks, Robert Thayer, the Machinists’ representative to the CBC, was trying to convince the company to agree not to interfere in future unionization drives, arguing that a “contract is a partnership, not a hindrance.” To which the company coolly asserted, “GE has never been neutral and doesn’t intend to be neutral” (Wypijewski, 2001, p. 22).GE has become an icon of global capital mobility and union avoidance. However, GE’s current capacities can be traced back to a long term, explicit strategy of corporate reorganization initiated in the 1940s. At that time GE was a vertically integrated manufacturing conglomerate, based in a series of huge, northern U.S. plants, organized at extremely high density by the left and militant UE. In the sixty years since, GE has transformed itself into a networked and globalized conglomerate, whose manufacturing capacity has been relocated endlessly, first into smaller U.S. greenfield sites and then increasingly overseas, decimating U.S. union density, and replacing UE with a patchwork of AFL-CIO affiliates that have embraced a far more conservative and limited vision of unionism. U.S. labor has been unable to halt this transformation.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

Over the last 30 years, despite immense and increasing expenditures by the federal government for disaster preparedness and relief, both catastrophic and chronic losses from natural hazards have continued to increase at an alarming pace. Although earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes account for the largest portion of these natural hazard losses, wildfire increasingly represents significant disaster losses of well over a billion dollars annually. There is considerable concern that losses from wildfires will only increase in the U.S. as some of the highest growth rates in the nation, both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan types of growth, are projected to continue in states with extensive wildland fire hazard areas. The land development patterns associated with that growth are problematic because so much of the development in the last 30 years (and that is still occurring) is not being steered away from the highest wildfire hazard settings, nor are adequate steps being taken to ensure that when development occurs in high wildfire hazard zones appropriate mitigation is used to reduce the vulnerability of people and property to loss. Fortunately, those anticipated future wildfire losses have a great potential to be reduced provided state and local governments take the initiative to create partnerships to ensure “safer” and “smarter” patterns of land development occur in and near wildland–urban interface areas. This chapter explores wildfire mitigation planning as an integral component of “safe smart growth” for wildland–urban interface communities.

Purpose: A sophisticated network of interconnected supply chains serves as the central organising principle for most of the manufacturing serving the global economy. Right from computers and vehicles to life-saving pharmaceuticals and food is made possible by the supply web. The final goods part of a supply chain may include thousands of components from various global regions. These supply chains have been refined to achieve the highest speed and efficiency.

Methodology: This study includes a sample of 127 firms that have been in business for at least 15 years and are familiar with business dynamics. The authors anticipate how climate risks, common in global supply networks, will evolve over the next several decades. This study examines the vulnerability of nine commercial value chains to climatic disasters. Also, it explores company and value chain vulnerabilities, financial losses, and adaptation or strategic methods to increase resilience.

Findings: Companies must plan forward in terms of locations by retaining operational facilities while running new operations in less risky places. Without change, supply networks will become unstable and dangerous shortly. Using their climate objectives, businesses must decarbonise their supply chains. Businesses should connect with suppliers longer-term. The quality and dependability of a company’s suppliers affect its success and safety. Future-focussed corporations are already engaging their suppliers on health, safety, and environmental issues.

Significance: The typology may be helpful to executives as they make decisions about the strategic option(s) they wish to pick to address climate change. These decisions can also be influenced by the insights provided by the research about the present status of operations of other firms from different sectors all over the globe.

This chapter combines new and emerging perspectives on career mentoring in the workplace and its role in failed leadership practice from instigated incivility to manipulative mentoring. While numerous scholarly and practitioner-based works on the topic of mentoring, few have offered the perspective of leaders who facilitate failed mentoring dynamics and its effect on employee subgroups, such as millennials. Based on leadership research, theory, and first-hand experience, this author will share through anecdotal evidence, with a diversity-theme focus on women and millennials, a group that comprises 58 million individuals currently working in corporate positions in the United States (Toosei, 2008) As more millennials join the workplace, professional mentoring plays a significant role in their progress. This research reveals the role that career mentoring can play, when harnessed incorrectly, as a hindrance to the promise and potential of entry-level employees, particularly millennials. The author’s perspective frames this chapter in personal narrative, as she recounts her tale as a Black, female academician and practitioner upon whose own professional trajectory the story of failed mentorship will be loosely based.

The concept of productive/unproductive work is relevant for better understanding the current capitalist economy. As the contradiction between production and the appropriation of surplus value by financial capital becomes more pronounced as it expands, it exerts intense pressure on the appropriation and redistribution of the surplus value. It puts different factions of capital into growing conflict with each other and defines the boundaries of the current geopolitical map of power. The maximization of profits in the productive sector carries on until the possibilities of greater profits are exhausted and the rationale of the capitalist system of exploitation becomes virtually meaningless. The current level of technology with Artificial Intelligence eliminates at the same time any technical impediment to planning an economy. It also has the potential to create the objective conditions for making the move to the most democratic forms of participation in planning.

Comedy and parody in rock and metal music have been around since the genre's inception. The Italian comedic music genre known as rock demenziale employs the use of nonsense and surrealism which turns conventions upside down. The demenziale has also attracted a slew of bands that employ this humour within the heavy metal genre, most famous of which is the Roman band Nanowar of Steel. With their jabs at Manowar and power metal bands, they place mundane activities and characters into the grandiose medievalist and fantasy worlds commonly used by those bands to the point of absurdity. However, with humour being deeply culture-specific, jokes that draw from a country's pop culture and makes extensive use of puns may be lost to an audience not familiar with that culture. Nanowar of Steel's unique position of having songs written in seven languages, primarily English and Italian, allows us to take a deeper look at how language and humour interfaces with the local and global metal scenes.

This chapter provides an updated review of research examining the relationship between occupational stressors and job performance. We begin by presenting an eight-category taxonomy of workplace stressors and we then review theories that explain the relationships between workplace stressors and job performance. The subsequent literature review is divided into two sections. In the first section, we present a summary of Jex's (1998) review of research on the job stress–job performance relationship. In the second section, we provide an updated review of the literature, which includes studies that have been published since 1998. In this review, we evaluate how well the contemporary research has dealt with weaknesses and limitations previously identified in the literature, we identify and evaluate current trends, and we offer recommendations and directions for future research.