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This chapter presents an exploration of the ways in which humanitarian non-government organisations (NGOs) and communities affected by the 2014 floods in Solomon Islands interpreted and responded to the disaster, identifying factors that assisted and constrained stakeholders in disaster response and recovery. The research investigates the extent to which communities were consulted and participated in NGO responses, and the factors which informed community–NGO relationships. A qualitative case study approach was used, employing interviews, focus groups and document analysis, guided by a reflexive discourse analysis and narrative inquiry approach, which places the focus of the study on the experiences of participants. Communities played very limited roles in NGO responses, especially non-dominant or marginalised sectors of society, such as youth, women and people with disabilities. Failure to respond appropriately to the differentiated needs of affected populations can exacerbate their risk of experiencing secondary disaster. The authors argue that there is a need to improve the inclusiveness of responses to disaster, engaging women, youth and people with disabilities in decision making in order to respond more appropriately to their needs.

Japanese regional banks have actively expanded their overseas business in emerging markets, and this topic is quite important for regional banks that have confronted severe business environments over the decades. An aging population suppresses long-term increases in loan demands, and stagnant economic conditions lead to lowered interest rates in the medium-term. Overseas business is a promising business field for regional banks, but recent developments have not been investigated in detail.

This chapter examines overseas investments using data from regional banks’ financial reports. Our sample comprises 44 regional banks without overseas branches, and a research period from FY2011 to FY2015. We demonstrate different overseas business patterns among regional banks. This investigation uses X-means clustering, which is nonhierarchical, as this method automatically presents an optimal number of clusters, and sorts regional banks into their appropriate clusters.

The X-means clustering method indicates five business patterns among regional banks. This also characterizes respective clusters and demonstrates that medium-sized banks actively develop security investments, which increases overseas business’s contributions to profits. Meanwhile, small banks cannot expand overseas investments, which differ from other banks. These banks must seek other business models to compensate for this decline in their earning power.

This chapter uses Goffman’s concept of total institutions in a comparative case study approach to explore the role of psychotropic drugs in the process of transinstitutionalization.

This chapter interprets psychotropic drug use across four institutionalized contexts in the United States: the active-duty U.S. military, nursing homes and long-term care facilities, state and federal prisons, and the child welfare system.

This chapter documents a major unintended consequence of transinstitutionalization – the questionable distribution of psychotropics among vulnerable populations. The patterns of psychotropic use we synthesize suggest that total institutions are engaging in ethically and medically questionable practices and that psychotropics are being used to serve the bureaucratic imperatives for social control in the era of transinstitutionalization.

Psychotropic prescribing practices require close surveillance and increased scrutiny in institutional settings in the United States. The flows of mentally ill people through a vast network of total institutions raises questions about the wisdom and unintended consequences of psychotropic distribution to vulnerable populations, despite health policy makers’ efforts regulating their distribution. Medical sociologists must examine trans-institutional power arrangements that converge around the mental health of vulnerable groups.

This is the first synthesis and interpretive review of psychotropic use patterns across institutional systems in the United States. This chapter will be of value to medical sociologists, mental health professionals and administrators, pharmacologists, health system pharmacists, and sociological theorists.

In recent years, the global economy has undergone major transformations involving the liberalization of markets for traditional goods, services, and capital flows. This has led to the emergence of a world financial market underpinned by digital platforms, innovative and the rapid growth of integrated digital platforms, integration, investment, economic growth, development, and the potential for poverty reduction, especially, in the Global South and, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa. The goal of this chapter is to investigate the increasing accessibility and relationship between digital (e-economy) financial integration and poverty alleviation since the era of structural adjustment programs in sub-Sahara Africa with Ghana as a case study. The emphasis is on the New Digital Economy (NDE) relative to new sources of data from mobile and ubiquitous Internet connectivity. The processes of digitalization and financial sector integration and inclusion become increasingly contestable, decomposable, and reconfigurable, and the capacity to innovate will be a key success factor in policies geared toward poverty alleviation. The multiple linear regression model and its estimation using ordinary least squares (OLS) is doubtless the most widely used tool in econometrics. It helps to estimate the relation between a dependent variable and a set of explanatory variables. An OLS model for macro data set relative to a regression model is applied to provide the empirical estimations of the increasing accessibility and the relationship between digital financial integration, investment, economic growth, development, and poverty alleviation.

This chapter examines the existing work on tangible user interfaces (TUIs) and focuses on tangible programming with the scope to enlighten the opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship in this particular domain.

In the first section, we start by presenting in short the history of TUIs and then focus on tangible programming presenting the different design approaches. Then we present the opportunities for innovation and guidelines for future products.

In the second section, we review the entrepreneurial activities that combine educational toys and TUIs.

The main finding of this chapter is that although TUI design and research are still in its infancy and more design guidelines and research are required to further bridge the digital and the physical world, the first signs of entrepreneurship promise a bright future.

Limitations arise from the fact that many companies keep many of their financial data confidential. Thus, it was impossible to include and validate all the information that we intended to present.

Initially, this chapter motivates and challenges scientist to find novel innovative solutions in the field. Then, reveals the entrepreneurial opportunities and potential customers. Finally, shows the funding sources and how tangible products are offered in the market.

We propose a new kind of toys that might alter and expand science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in education.

This chapter appears to be unique in the sense that is the first that reports simultaneously on TUIs, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

While mentoring plays an important role in Japanese working places, formal mentoring programs have only recently been introduced. This chapter provides an overview of the development of mentoring in Japan and presents a conceptual model to comprehend mentoring in Japan and beyond. The chapter begins with the illustration of how the characteristics of Japanese organizations and Japanese-style human resource management (HRM) promoted the naturally occurring informal mentoring in the Japanese workplace in early years. In response to the stagnating economy and declining demographics during the last few decades, many Japanese firms adopted Western-style HRM practices, including formal mentoring programs. We provide statistical data to demonstrate the widespread adoption of formal mentoring programs in recent years. We then report the results of the systematic review of the academic literature on mentoring in Japan, suggesting that research on mentoring in Japan is still in the early stage. Based on the historical overview, current data and the systematic review of the academic literature, we develop a conceptual model of how the socio-cultural and economic context as well as organizational characteristics influence the adoption of Japanese-style naturally occurring informal mentoring and/or Western-style formal mentoring practices. We conclude this chapter with practical and theoretical implications.

This chapter offers an account on the development and usage of a conceptual framework and instrument to examine authentic university academic care (AUAC) at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), a non-mainland Historical Black College and University. AUAC is an amalgamation of genuine human concerns and disciplined nurturing within university academic services. This chapter is a synthesis of literature review, data analysis, findings and discussion on AUAC. Data were collected from a convenient sample (n = 126) of UVI students’ responses. An exploratory quantitative research design was used. Exploratory factor analysis identified eight associated caring about academic caregiving criteria in all four-points on the university academic caring carescapes framework. Based on UVI students’ perceptions and a factor-score correlation analysis, academic caregiving of colleges/schools were observed to be the focal point of UVI’s AUAC. Furthermore, the strongest association was found between the academic caregiving of colleges/schools and faculty.

This chapter is a reflection on the digital mediation of death and dying in the COVID-19 pandemic from a critical political economy perspective. It asks: What is the role of the communication of death and dying in capitalist society? How has communication with dying loved ones changed in the COVID-19 pandemic? What roles have digital technologies and capitalism played in this context?

Building on foundational theoretical insights into the role of death and dying in capitalism, this essay presents some empirical studies of death and dying in society and the COVID-19 pandemic and interprets their findings from a Communication Studies perspective.

In capitalist societies, death and dying are taboo topics and are hidden, invisible and institutionalised. The COVID-19 pandemic had contradictory effects on the role of death in society. It is a human, cultural and societal universal that humans want to die in company with loved ones. The presented empirical studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. The wish to die in a social manner derives from humans' social and communicative nature. In capitalism, the reality of dying diverges from the ideal of dying. Capitalism hides, individualises, makes invisible and institutionalises death and dying.

The analysed studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. Building and going beyond the works of the political theorist and philosopher Achille Mbembe and the philosopher and sociologist Erich Fromm, the essay introduces the notion of capitalist necropower. It is shown how the COVID-19 pandemic in many cases destroyed the social and communicative nature of human beings and how capitalist necropower created unnecessary surplus deaths and formed the context of the digital mediation of communication with dying loved ones in the pandemic.