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Scalar terms, such as “local” and “global,” “big” and “small” are fundamental in how academics and practitioners make sense of and respond to grand challenges. Yet, scale is so taken-for-granted that we rarely question or critically reflect on the concept and how it is used. The aim of this paper is to identify scale as an important concept in research on grand challenges and to point out why taking scale for granted can be problematic. In particular, I suggest that to date most research on grand challenges sees scale as a fundamental ontological feature of the world. Yet, scalar categories and hierarchies are not as self-evident and given as they may seem. Moreover, taking scale as an ontological fixed category limits our ability to make sense of, theorize and respond to grand challenges. As an alternative, I suggest seeing scale as an epistemological frame that participants employ in their everyday practices to make sense of, navigate and develop solutions to grand challenges. The chapter concludes with a research agenda for studying scale as socially constructed in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the evolving interpretations of the Covid crisis and its impact on hospitality and tourism.

Scenario planning paper following Framework Foresight about the Covid pandemic and its impact on hospitality and tourism. Research input was gathered from research reports in different disciplines and discussions with an expert panel.

The paper argues that hypothesized recovery scenarios were founded on hope and inaccurate extrapolations, and that hospitality and tourism may head for permanently lower volumes.

The paper contributes to the debate on tourism resilience and hopeful visions of a sustainable restart.

Instead of just focusing on direct pandemic impact and that of governmental measures, a third variable of consumer confidence will be decisive, and more important than expected by many initially, in future scenarios for hospitality and tourism.

The proposed scenarios that were designed with executive level industry input have so far proven more realistic than prevalent views of a swift recovery.

There is a great reliance on fiscal incentives to sustain the automotive industry competitiveness due to several structural problems, among them the inefficiency of the supply chain. This paper aims to compare the supply chain structure of traditional automotive industry with the supply chains from South Korea and China. Based on strategic decision and transaction cost theory, this comparison seeks to exploit the factors that led to the inefficiency of automotive supply chains.

The authors used a qualitative approach and applied a multi-method research. They conducted semi-structured interviews with six executives from automakers representing the selected countries, carried individual meetings during one workshop and used secondary data from several sources.

Concepts identified in the research such as reliability, supply chain governance and automaker competencies led the authors to propose that the traditional automakers have higher transaction costs when compared to the new automakers due to the horizontal structure of their supply chain. While new competitors have vertical upstream supply chains, which indicates better profitability, traditional automotive industry is horizontal, depends on fewer Tier 1 suppliers and is disconnected from Tier 2, impacting negatively in the transaction costs and supply chain management.

This study suggests that automotive executives rethink the current upstream supply chain model by identifying the competencies required for their current and future competitiveness and implementing a vertical integration of these competencies.

This research exploited the inefficiency of supply chain as one of the explanations for the low competitiveness of the national automotive industry.

The purpose of this study is to focus deeply on the short term to explain the relative long-term evolution of the Argentinian economy in the long and the short term.

The study of the long-term evolution of the Argentine economy and identifying the moment in which it began to lose ground compared to other developed economies, such as Australia and Canada, constitutes the central axis of the historiography of this country. However, an additional problem presented by the Argentine economy is its high volatility. For this reason, the long term should be influenced by the short term, an issue that requires a more detailed study of the cyclical behavior and a deep analysis of the relationship between the long and the short term.

The results obtained point to a cyclical development that influences the long-term evolution and, therefore, explains Argentina’s convergence process with Australia and Canada. Frequent deep busts and short booms characterize the Argentine cycle, offsetting its long-term growth potential.

Although the long term has been profusely studied in Argentina, the short term has not been analyzed to the same extent, which is surprising given the extreme volatility of this economy (Prebisch, 1950). The studies performed on economic cycles have always been partial, disconnected from the long term and carried out without much technical rigor.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the official statement of the Fifth European Conference on Health-Promoting Schools.

The Fifth European Conference on Health-Promoting Schools was held on 20–22 November 2019 in Moscow, Russian Federation, with over 450 participants from 40 countries. A writing group was established to prepare a draft version of the statement before the conference. On the basis of an online and offline feedback process, the opinions of the participants were collected during the conference and included in the finalisation of the statement.

The final conference statement comprises six thematic categories (values and principles; environment, climate and health; schools as part of the wider community; non-communicable diseases (NCDs); evidence base; and digital media), with a total of 23 recommendations and calls for action.

The recommendations and calls for action reflect current challenges for Health Promoting Schools in Europe. They are addressed to all actors in governmental, non-governmental and other organisations at international, national and regional levels involved in health promotion in schools and are to be applied for the further development of the concept.