Search results

After unsuccessful attempts of South African governments to carry out a land reform that distributes farmland more justly, this study aims to undertake a stronger segmentation of potential beneficiaries for a better targeting of future reforms.

A theoretical model has been developed along the axes of cultural innovation and aspirations that identifies the segment of current smallholders who would most likely relocate to become commercial farmers in the future. A survey among smallholders in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa confirms the approach.

A number of indicators can be identified, particularly for cultural innovation, that predict willingness to relocate to a region where commercial farms can be managed.

The importance of cultural innovation has been neglected both in theoretical frameworks and in practical concepts of land reform.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2018-0226

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory that is sufficiently adapted to sector competitiveness. The case of greenhouse vegetable production in The Netherlands and Switzerland is used to explain differences in sector competitiveness.

Interviews focusing on the fields of spatial planning, labor, energy supply, and market organization were carried out with stakeholders and producers in both countries and evaluated by Grounded Theory.

The work shows that the flexibility not only of producers, but also of the whole institutional framework in The Netherlands exceeds the flexibility on the Swiss side by far, which may be an important factor for explaining differences in competitiveness.

The result that it is a basic difference in flexibility and adaptability that determines sector competitiveness is valid for the vegetable sector. It should be examined whether similar patterns can be found in other sectors.

The competitiveness discussion is transferred to a new economic level, namely the economic sector. Likewise, new answers are found in looking for explanations for differences in competitiveness.

The Industry 4.0 revolution (I4.0) brings significant transformations in the travel and tourism industry. Advanced technologies like virtual reality, automation and robotics have paved the way for ‘seamless travel’. The educators are also under pressure to upgrade the curriculum to impart such skills among students, but suitable teaching methods shall also be required. Such practices include event-based education, interdisciplinary collaboration, teamwork, presentation skills and many other adaptative techniques. Hackathons, an essential part of ‘event-based education’, can support the I4.0 paradigm for Industry and academia. This study analyses six hackathons organised by Industry and academic institutions to explore how they contributed to solving the Industry's problems and imparting I4.0 skills among students.

The chapter addresses the issue of contemporary public space. In the urban setting, social groups form different publics that become mutually inter-visible in public spaces: relational arenas, in which it is possible to learn living with strangers, recognizing the right to the city for all people. In contemporary city, some theories argue that we would assist to the crisis of public space. Indeed, the forming of a public realm is more difficult, because social groups build separate and self-segregating routes, and urban public spaces are increasingly privatized, controlled, and reorganized to be more compatible with the global city, the city-users, and the hypermobile upper classes.

Shifting the attention to Sala Borsa (a public library in the centre of Bologna), the authors argue that the changes in the socio-spatial morphology of contemporary cities do not prevent the forming of a public arena, accessible also to the marginal groups, as the homeless. Because of its centrality, its free access, its innovative and multimedia environment, Sala Borsa is a crowded, lively, and symbolic public space. In this public library, social groups appropriate different spaces and times through the production of porous boundaries. Nevertheless, the identity of public-library-user taken once in Sala Borsa produces an inclusive regime of inter-visibility, where also homeless people are present.

TV changes in several disciplines concurrently: from analogue to digital, from scheduled broadcasts to on‐demand TV on the internet, from a lean‐back (passive) to a lean‐forward (active) media, from straight watching to the consumption of content connected to additional services, from the sole TV viewer to the viewer being part in social networks and communities regarding to the TV content, etc. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the adaptation of design and realization of TV program formats to the changes that happen to television. In addition, the paper would like find out how to support the design of interactions, dynamic narrations and content types as well as the role of the internet within these processes and this application area.

Currently, there exist many approaches towards the development of social, collaborative, and interactive TV program formats and systems. Within the scope of this paper, the authors present latest case studies and example program formats for each case. The paper examines them concerning their interaction possibilities and architecture as well as the influence and utilization of the web. Finally, the paper provides a simple categorization according to the narration character, content, and interactivity types of the listed TV program formats.

Caused by the collaborative and interactive characteristic of the web, a big influence of the web concerning the hardware‐ and content‐sided development of TV is discovered. Nevertheless, the web's potential is absolutely not exploited in this area, neither to give more dynamic to the narration, nor to appreciate the content type or the interactivity. Finally, the paper identifies a high effort, occurrence and development in the interactivity, in contrary to the narration characteristic and content types.

Only one representative, example TV program format enabling interactions by the viewer for each case in the paper, has been chosen. The authors make no claim to be complete, in covering all genres, possibilities of interaction or TV program formats existing for the field of interactive/social/collaborative TV.

This paper presents an extension of a previous paper presented at the MoMM2009.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the research related to “the interplay between accounting and the state, politics, and local authorities in the broad government and administration of food for sustainability of populations” (Sargiacomo et al., 2016). Considering contemporary examples and investigating the genealogy of an 18th-century reform of fishery management (the New Plan), the authors explore the role played by accounting and calculative practices when local authorities intervene using forms of discipline based on control systems that acted on commons (fish), people and space.

This paper is historically grounded on archival research on a fish provisioning case during the 18th century in Ancona, an Italian town on the Adriatic coast. The investigation adopts an approach focussed on the use of disciplinary methods in the terms highlighted by Foucault. This perspective offers a lens capable of revealing the key role of accounting in a period when discipline became “general formulas of domination” (Foucault, 1977) and the Papal States were looking for food provisioning solutions (Foucault, 2007). The study highlights similarities with contemporary fishery management.

The paper shows that governability of fishery in a commons' logic is not limited by the properties of the good, but rather “it is achieved through the objects and instruments that are deployed to make it possible” (Johnsen, 2014, p. 429). It reveals forms assumed by economic calculation in different eras and their contribution in the art of governing realised by the state (Hoskin and Macve, 2016). The study unveils how accounting effectively operates using “naming and counting” activities (Ezzamel and Hoskin, 2002) based on a system of documents and accounting registers; these have a pivotal role in redefining fishery management and in keeping goods (fish) and people (fishermen) under control. The investigation also highlights the importance of properly quantifying data in fishery management, confirming the literature on the topic (Beddington et al., 2007, p. 1713). In contemporary situations, data refer to quantifying the fish stock in the sea and the consequent estimation of fish catch. In the historical investigation, although environmental protection was not an issue, quantification refers to the fish that entered the town of Ancona, whose estimation was the result of a new calculative approach adopted by local authorities facing fish needs. In addition, it offers early evidence of organised and rational-based control mechanisms that were the result of Enlightened ideas emerging in the Papal States context.

Despite the fact that fish represent a fundamental good for governments to act on in response to a population's needs, there has been no attention paid to how governmental authorities have used disciplinary mechanisms to intervene in fishery management or the role played by accounting. This study's novelty is its investigation of fishery, using Foucauldian disciplinary methods to understand accounting's contribution in fishery governance. In addition, this investigation permits to unveil the role of accounting to support one of the main principles of the governance of commons that is represented by the congruence between rules and local conditions (Fennell, 2011, p. 11; Ostrom, 1990, p. 92).

This study aims to examine the relationship between female directors and bank risk. In particular, whether such a relationship varies across sound or unsound banks and with or without a critical mass of female directors is tested.

Using a sample of 215 listed banks from 40 countries over the period 2008–2016, this study carries out panel data analyses and tests all the model specifications on four different measures of risk (common equity ratio, leverage, NPLs ratio and price volatility).

The findings show that increasing the number of female directors does not reduce bank risk when banks are unsound. When banks are sound, female directors have a significant and positive role in reducing risk, only until reaching a critical mass of women.

This study provides useful corporate governance indications for policymakers and practitioners. Advantages of gender diversity on boards are recognized especially in sound banks, but increasing the number of women directors beyond the critical mass may not lead to lower risk. In fact, ethical or legal pressures aimed at increasing gender diversity on boards (i.e. soft or hard gender quotas) may cause undesired effects on bank risk, especially if female directors are not chosen on merit and skills. Moreover, gender-balanced boards, namely, with a “dual critical mass,” seem to assure more effective decision-making processes.

This study provides empirical evidence on female board members and risk minimization, differentiating between sound or unsound banks. Furthermore, this study contributes to the literature on the critical mass of women on the board of directors by testing this theory for these two categories of banks.