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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members want to efficiently promote the flow of commodities and personnel within its service areas under given limited resources. Based on panel data from 2007 to 2014, this study applies the output-oriented data envelopment analysis method and focuses on the disaggregated output efficiencies of 42 ASEAN airports. Results show that the international airports of ASEAN members have significantly better output efficiency for passenger and movement output than regional airports. This work provides a relatively fair perspective in evaluating ASEAN’s airport operating efficiency. It helps policymakers measure the frontier forward or backward shift of an airport over the research period, in order to reveal the characteristics of airport efficiency and to present a new interpretation along with managerial implications.

In order to elaborate the concept of resources (a key component of the well-established resource-based theory of the firm) this paper concentrates on exploring and elaborating the associated concept of competences, in particular distinctive and core competences. This exploration includes an examination of the extant literature, alongside and in parallel with, an extensive body of action research undertaken over 15 years and with 44 top management teams engaged in strategy making. As such the concepts are scrutinized both in terms of their theoretical underpinnings as well as their impact on practice. The research reinforces the view that distinctiveness emerges most powerfully from the identification (or creation) of unique bundles or combinations of competences and that effective and meaningful core competences can be identified from understanding and refining the links between competences and organizational goals. The resultant conceptualization of the systemic competence/goals structure emerges from the interaction of theory and practice.

Cultural perceptions of the zombie have shifted dramatically in the twenty-first century. No longer only associated with anxiety and fear, zombie fiction often appeals to pleasure. One source of pleasure comes from ludification, the process whereby game-like principals and gameful elements shape non-game activities. Increasingly, print fiction borrows from games and uses ludic elements to shape narratives. As such, it has become embedded in convergence culture, a dynamic media ecology where top down processes compete with bottom up processes. This chapter argues that ludified zombie fiction brings this media ecology into sharp relief, revealing ways that gamification and ludification are just as apt to reinforce capitalist processes of commodification and neo-liberal ideologies of power as they are to dismantle them. Through a close reading of three contemporary zombie fictions, this chapter exposes tensions and contradictions in ludification. The dead body of the zombie, the nihilistic landscape of the post-zombie apocalypse and the futility of human endeavour in the face of walking death are all elements of genre that undercut the gamified pursuit of external utility-oriented goals. The chapter explores these knotty ethical and ideological problems, not only considering the zombie apocalypse as a gameful space for rethinking social organisation, but also recognising it as a platform for the promotion of neo-liberal ideologies that perpetuate existing power inequalities through coercive disciplinary regimes.

Support for child rights is widespread, and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified treaty ever. Surprisingly, however, we find that child rights discourse is not integrated as a core element of mobilization around either the eradication of female genital cutting practices or the provision of free primary education. Analyzing history and the content of child rights claims related to these issues, we unpack this puzzle. In the process, we illuminate the constraints on mobilizing strategies in general and some difficulties inherent in using child rights discourse in particular.

In this chapter, the development of financial sustainability and resilience in Swedish local governments is analysed. We analyse four Swedish municipalities, where we have interviewed top managers and co-workers. As a complement, we have examined the municipalities’ strategic plans, budget documents and annual reports. We also contextualise this analysis with other findings from local government research during this time, as well as with central government initiatives. In summary, we examine why Swedish municipalities in general remained strong after the financial crisis by showing how they strengthened their anticipatory and coping capacities over time – something that, in the cases of this chapter, was achieved before the 2008/2009 crisis in response to previous crises, rather than because of it. We also show that this is not the only reason. As Swedish finances were comparatively stable, and the problems of the banking sector relatively small, the financial shocks to the municipalities could be overcome relatively easily.