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Whether the price of oil is too high or too low depends on the point of reference being used. The industrialized countries want oil producing countries to think that the price is high, but today it is lower in real terms than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Meanwhile we cannot afford to overlook the reality that inequalities between the richest and poorest nations are deepening and the fact that the poorest people in the world are struggling for survival. In considering our future path, we need to fight for a world of equals. That means being tolerant of the views and beliefs of others, for example in differing concepts of democracy. At the same time it means accepting responsibility for problems which face everyone, for instance concerning the environment.

Venezuela ranks fifth in the world in oil proven reserves and has the largest accumulation of liquid fuel in the world. With its importance as an oil country, many countries including the U.S. have expressed concerns about Venezuela’s current economic and political situation. Using the popular SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats facing the country, are identified. The discussion and conclusions summarize the observations and address the relative tradeoffs within the country. Finally goals and policies appropriate for Venezuelan reform are presented.

Diane Davis has written a fine piece that seeks to reorient our scholarly gaze onto the dynamics of middle-class formation in the developing world. She writes, “…our research objective is not merely to study the appearance of an emergent or new middle class in the developing world, but to understand the implications of an increasingly heterogenous middle class” with more acute occupational and spatial cleavages (p. 14). Building political coalitions between the two main groupings of the middle class – public sector employees and small- and medium-sized industrial producers – which in the past had produced “socially inclusive development policy” faces new complications as the global economy could pit old middle-class corporatist populism and new middle-class neoliberalism against each other (pp. 16–17). Davis argues this intraclass cleavage is further intensified as the state in many developing world countries opts for decentralization and I would add as party politics becomes significantly less representative (see, e.g., Mainwaring, Maria Bejerano, & Pizzaro, 2006). New middle-class politics becomes less and less about “class” and more about civil society, both in organizational and discursive terms (pp. 24–25, 29–30). With political discourse shifting away from national politics per se toward local, more NIMBYist proclivities (p. 18), activism becomes more intense though dispersed, focusing on “issues of urban sustainability and livability” and through distinct modes of political engagement (p. 30). What Davis concludes therefore is that “middle class heterogeneity, as reinforced by the unequal distribution of new and old middle classes in urban built environmental, politico-institutional, and consumption spaces, manifests itself in new forms of inequality, democratic politics, and the decline of class activism” (p. 33). Future research would certainly benefit from a close inspection of urban issues as the crux of middle-class politics in the contemporary developing world.

The intention of this chapter is to review and test the degree to which organizational changes related to gender parity, adopted within Venezuela since 1999, have affected the C-level positions and Boards of Directors among banking institutions.

Through review and qualitative analysis of primary and secondary data, along with triangulation, given names were used as proxy to define gender among groups of individuals.

Evidence indicates that besides some parity in lower positions, middle management, and some C-level positions, at the Board of Director level, there remains a gender imbalance. Government-owned institutions show improved gender balance, but still there is a need for progress.

Coercive isomorphisms may be the most common explanation for organizational change; nevertheless, this is not necessarily the case unless there is clear law enforcement. Practitioners must analyze the underlying reasons that females may reach a C-level position, yet don’t reach the Board of Directors in the same proportion.

This research analyzes gender issues and composition among corporate governance bodies (Board of Directors and C-level positions) in Venezuela. It offers preliminary insights on gender imbalance within the upper echelon of Venezuelan banking institutions.

It was the oil crisis of the 1970s that brought OPEC to the world stage, and it is a new oil crisis that may be its downfall. For not only did the Caracas summit sideline the environment, it also neglected the pressing question of alternatives to fossil fuels.

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the current situation and the prospects of the food distribution system as a result of the State participation in this system by the state firms called Mercal and PDVal. As a mean to achieve this objective, it was necessary to review, as a starting point, the historical situation in which these Venezuelan state firms appeared. Next, the transformations in that distribution system are studied and an interpretation of the Mercal phenomenon is proposed. Furthermore, the potential implications and prospects of the State participation in food distribution to urban areas are explained. Finally, an analysis of the probable implications of this participation upon the Venezuelan agricultural and food sector was conducted.

This article evaluates contemporary Cuban economic policy and development prospects after a decade of market experimentation in a socialist context. An introductory historical review assesses the successes and failures of Cuban development policy in the 1970s and 1980s and describes the staggering dimensions of the economic crisis triggered by the abrupt disruption of Cuba's relations with the Soviet bloc in 1989–1991. The next section, “To the market in the 1990s,” examines Cuban efforts to stabilize the economy in the early 1990s while maintaining a strong social safety net. The historic policy shift toward limited market liberalization within a state-dominated economy is analyzed and the key market concessions described. The economic turnaround of the late 1990s and Cuban macroeconomic and industrial performance over the past decade are then examined. The final part of the article evaluates the coherence and sustainability of Cuba's emerging economic model and assesses prospects for the survival of some form of Cuban socialism.

Entrepreneurship; tourism and hospitality.

Junior or senior-level business students as well as graduate-level (MBA and/or EMBA) classes in entrepreneurship, small business management, strategic management, international business or international economics.

Cuban tour guides working for the communist Castro Government dream of working for themselves or leaving for the USA. Their story is contrasted by a visit to Cuba as told by a US business professor.

To compare entrepreneurship under capitalism that is slowly relaxing their communistic rules, to learn more about the island of Cuba and its potential for tourism and new venture creation, to understand the legal, social, political, historical and cultural barriers to entrepreneurship, to hypothesize or brainstorm potential new ventures for Cuba.

Teaching notes; photos also available upon request from the author.