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As CEO of not-for-profit adoption agency The Cradle, Julie Tye had taken the organization from the brink of dissolution in 1992 to a position of financial stability and health by 2007. One of the innovative steps Tye took in 2002 was to introduce an online learning venture that provided education for families preparing to adopt. The Cradle launched Adoption Learning Partners (ALP), using donated funds and government grants when possible and subsidizing the rest. The income generated by ALP grew from zero in 2002 to approximately $50,000 per month in 2007. But ALP's major market (parents preparing to adopt internationally) was forecasted to decline 50% over the next three years; the Web site was outdated; and new competitors were entering the market. ALP had built a reputation as a pioneer in adoption e-learning by providing high-quality, effective online courses. But without the infusion of at least $400,000, ALP risked losing its leadership position and, possibly, its viability. ALP needed a significant investment of time, talent, and funding. Tye had an MBA, a keen business sense, and fourteen years of experience in healthcare administration and the social services field. Even with her leadership, did The Cradle have the appetite to take on such a demanding strategy? In the end, would it be worth the investment?

Students will: learn quantitative techniques for valuing a social enterprise, which includes both economic and social value; learn alternative legal structures available to social enterprises and evaluate which structures make sense relative to various capital structures; and identify sources of capital available to social enterprises and evaluate their appropriate usage.

To consider transnational aspects linked to the social production of adoptable children in a Brazilian setting.

Looks at legislation and media reports, giving particular attention to how, during the 1990s, vigorous campaigns in favor of plenary adoption by Brazilian nationals implied the near‐total silencing of alternative forms of childcare such as foster care, and how recent circumstances are reversing this trend.

Argues that an apparently straightforward conflict between poverty‐stricken families and the state authorities that strip them of parental rights is in fact a highly political issue involving innumerous overseas as well as national influences. National childcare policies that encourage certain childcare options and eliminate others emerge as much from scandals in the media, “consumer demands” by adoptive parents, and philanthropic support as from the more apparent global trends in child welfare legislation.

The findings challenge the view that childcare is a consensual issue with all fronts working for the “child's best interest”. Rather, in this paper, the issue is revealed as a political matter of conflicting interests between unequal categories of caretakers.

This paper has direct relevance for international legislation on child adoption policy.

This paper furnishes a “view from below” on international adoption, putting in question principles that are normally accepted as obvious in international legislation on child rights.

The practice of transracial adoption often triggers strong emotions, effecting views on its ethical validity, both from individuals who are pro transracial adoption and those who strongly resist transracial adoption. This chapter will consider transracial adoption of children of African-Caribbean origin and its psychological impact along a continuum of psychological wellbeing, psychological adjustment and aspects of mental health. The chapter will draw on literature from the USA and, where available, from the UK.

One of the earliest publications on transracial adoption by Grow and Shapiro (1974) explored the psychological adjustment of African-American children placed within white American families. This study along with later studies (Silverman & Feigelman, 1981) concluded that the children were adjusting well in placement. Further early research appeared to suggest that transracial placements have little negative impact on issues of self-esteem, racial or self-identity or intellectual development (Curtis, 1996; Hayes, 1993; Hollingsworth, 1997, 1998; McRoy, 1994; Simon, Altstein & Melli, 1994; Vrogeh, 1997).

The undermining impact on mental health for transracial adoptees appears to be an argument related to the disconnect between the child’s developing racial identity and lack of preparation for racism and the cultural and ethnic group social devaluation likely to be experienced in a white racist society. The impact of loss of ethnic identity is said to be a key issue in the research on transracial adoption. Ethnic identity is the connection or recognition that one is a member of a specific ethnic or racial group and coming to adopt those associated characteristics into the group associated cultural and historical connections into oneself identity (Rotheram & Phinney, 1987). The establishment of a secure and accurate racial identity is said to be a protective factor in psychological adjustment. This chapter will explore issues and narratives related to this argument.

Service use between six and 11 years of age is reported for children adopted from Romania into UK families, and compared with that for children adopted within the UK before six months of age. Between six and 11, there had been only one adoption breakdown, and about one in ten couples experienced a marital breakdown. Apart from continuing concerns over hepatitis B carrier status in a small number of children, physical health problems were not a prominent feature. By contrast, nearly one‐third of the children from Romania placed in UK families after the age of six months received mental health services provision ‐ a rate far higher than the 11 to 15% in the groups adopted before the age of six months. Such provision was strongly related to research assessments of mental health problems and largely concerned syndromes that were relatively specific to institutional deprivation (quasi‐autism, disinhibited attachment and inattention/overactivity). There were similar differences between the UK adoptees and the adoptees from Romania entering the UK after six months of age in major special educational provision and, again, the findings showed that the provision was in accord with research assessments of scholastic achievement. The between group differences for lesser special educational provision were much smaller and there was some tendency for the early adopted groups to receive such provision for lesser degrees of scholastic problems than the children adopted from Romania who entered the UK after six months of age. The policy and practice implications of the findings are briefly discussed.

Adoption practice is originally designed as a live-saving option for some category of children. In recent times, this purpose has been challenged by several social, biological and cultural exigencies. Hence, a notable morphing of the practice to satisfying adopters’ need has been observed, however, requiring further interrogations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Data were collected through sessions of interviews with six adoption officials (social workers), four orphanage managers, three legal practitioners and 13 prospective and successful adopters, across three selected states.

The study records contemporary adoption practices as mostly a management strategy for infertility by bringing to fore diverse narratives that reveal adoption as now primarily construed, subconsciously implemented and ultimately serving in many ways as the social security mechanism for adopters than for securing the children who are to be adopted.

This by implication results in poor adoptive parent–child bonding, disservice and maltreatments in diverse ways.

This study heralds the “rebranded” security benefits of adoption and enlarges the scope and genres of social security implications of child adoption in the contemporary Nigerian society.

The purpose of this article is to discuss open access to scholarly indexing/abstracting information.

Discusses open access to scholarly indexing/abstracting information.

Open access versions of the traditional ready reference tools cannot always substitute for the commercial, subscription‐based indexing/abstracting databases, but they can complement them.

The paper offers insights into scholarly indexing/abstracting.

Popularly viewed as a humanitarian issue that transcends not only geopolitical boundaries of nationality but also sociopolitical borders of race, the ways in which transnational adoption reflects the racialization of children are often ignored. Because adoption is not a random process of family building but rather a purposive endeavor that involves the multiple dynamics of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and disability, it is important to recognize how trends in transnational adoption intersect with shifting racial structure. This paper aims to examine visas issued to orphans entering the USA from 1990‐2005, international programs offered by US adoption agencies, and juxtaposes these with policies governing adoption in sending countries to illustrate how transnational adoption mirrors these emerging racial categories.

Using the tripartite racial framework argued to characterize the shifting US racial structure, the author located adoptions in the top 20 sending countries to the USA for the past 16 years within this framework to assess how patterns of transnational adoption reflect the shifting US racial structure. To try to assess the extent to which adoptive parent “demand” intersects with agency programs and the policies of other countries, the author also performed a content analysis of an online adoption directory with 236 private adoption agencies (120 of which maintained (international adoption programs) and US Department of State data on adoption policies of the top 20 sending countries.

Transnational adoption patterns for the past 16 years lend support to the argument of a shifting racial structure and mirror the tripartite system described by Bonilla‐Silva. For the past 16 years the majority of adoptions have been either from the White or Honorary White categories whereas 20 per cent of adoptions have been from the Collective Black category. While policies of sending countries no doubt factor into which programs are offered by US private agencies, Department of State information suggests that the restrictiveness of countries’ adoption policies cannot by itself explain which countries are in the top 20. A significant part of this reciprocal process must include a focus on “demand” to explain who gets adopted. Data on transnational patterns of adoption illustrate all too clearly which children are preferred, aligning with the emerging Latin American‐like racial hierarchy in the USA.

To the author's knowledge, this application has not been attempted nor has anyone considered adoption (domestic or transnational) as another social indicator of intimacy (albeit for a relatively small segment of the population).

The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology for evaluating the progress of individual countries worldwide in their adoption of electronic government (e‐government) with the rapid advance in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Recognising the multi‐dimensional nature of the progress evaluation and comparison process, this paper formulates the inter‐country performance evaluation process in e‐government adoption as a multi‐criteria analysis problem and presents an objective multi‐criteria approach for solving the problem in an effective and straightforward manner.

Several indicators (criteria) for measuring the progress of individual countries for adopting e‐government have been reviewed, and existing approaches for carrying out inter‐country comparison on e‐government have been analysed. The need for the use of an objective approach for addressing the inter‐country comparison problem is discussed. This leads to the development of an objective multi‐criteria approach for effectively solving the problem in a straightforward and effective manner. The proposed objective approach is based on the concept of information entropy which is emitted from e‐government criteria used for determining the objective weights of the e‐government criteria. The principle of ideal solutions is used for effectively incorporating the objective criteria weights into the process of calculating the overall performance index for each country. As a result, an unbiased overall ranking of individual countries on e‐government can be obtained.

With the use of an example in the paper, the proposed approach is proved to be of practical use for addressing the inter‐country comparison problem on the progress of individual countries in their adoption of e‐government. The proposed approach is not only able to provide an objective view of the relative progress of those countries concerned but also pinpoint the areas that these countries can further improve to lift their overall profile worldwide on the adoption of e‐government.

The methodology developed can be used as a decision‐making tool to support various levels of government and consultancy organizations worldwide in their effort to evaluate the adoption of ICTs in the government sector so that effective decisions can be made for enhancing and improving the use of the technology for more efficient and effective government.

The advantages of the proposed approach for addressing the inter‐country comparison problem on e‐government are the capacity of the proposed approach for adequately handling the multi‐dimensional nature of the inter‐country comparison problem and the provision of an objective view of the overall performance of those countries in the process of evaluating the progress of these countries in their adoption of e‐government. In addition the application of the approach can also help those countries pinpoint the areas that they can further invest their effort for further improvement.

There is abundant research on surrogacy; however, migration scholars have not addressed surrogacy-driven migration. Policies related to surrogacy and surrogacy-led migration are under-researched. The paper argues that surrogacy-led migration or fertility/reproductive migration constitutes a significant part of mainstream migration. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the policy dilemmas in various countries.

A total of 9 surrogate mothers (4 from India; 2 from Thailand, 2 from Indonesia and 1 from Nepal) and 8 commissioning parents (2 from Japan; 4 from Europe; 1 from the USA; 1 from Australia) and 2 doctors (1 from India and 1 from Thailand) selected on snowball basis were interviewed between 2014 and 2016 by using a checklist.

The deficiency and inconsistency of laws regarding surrogacy facilitated the growth of the surrogacy market. Therefore, a uniform policy would help to define and improve the surrogacy and surrogacy-led migration management.

This paper demonstrates the interplay of surrogacy and mainstream migration. This is a fresh addition to the study of migration.

The purpose of this study is to investigate if non-US/non-Canada (international) equity listings in the Canadian stock exchanges increased with the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Canada. A question of interest is whether the adoption of common global accounting standards (IFRS) was beneficial in attracting international firms to the Canadian exchanges.

The authors use difference-in-difference ordinary least square methodology to conduct inter-country (between Canada and the USA) and intra-country (between the Toronto Stock Exchange [TSX] and the TSX Venture Exchange [TSXV]) tests to investigate whether there is increased listings of international firms on Canada’s exchanges associated with mandatory adoption of IFRS in Canada compared to such listings in the American exchanges.

The authors did not find evidence of a relative increase in listings by international firms on the TSX and the TSXV after Canadian adoption of IFRS, but they did find that listings by international firms on the TSX, Canada’s primary exchange, increased when the authors include the year before mandatory Canadian adoption as part of the IFRS adoption period. The authors also find that international listings from outside the North American, European and Australasian regions increased on the TSXV, consistent with IFRS adoption making the smaller Canadian exchange more attractive to listers from these regions.

With the increasing use of IFRS throughout the world, US regulators, the US Congress and other capital market participants seek to understand the costs and benefits of potential IFRS adoption in the USA. The authors contribute to this debate by examining the effect of Canada’s adoption of IFRS on growth in international stock listings in the Canadian stock exchanges.