Search results

This article suggests that given the fulfilment of a number of preconditions Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) may be attractive instruments for countries in Africa seeking to improve the quality and competitiveness of their services base, particularly the so-called infrastructure services. This article builds, in addition to a selective review of the vast literature on PPPs, on first-hand practical experience on the ground and a number of pilot projects. This methodological approach provides a non-exhaustive PPP mapping in Africa, which in turn leads to a discussion of some of the challenges and risks to PPPs in Africa. It also covers a discussion of the recent trends in the approach to improving the enabling environment upon which are based a few policy recommendations, respectively: establishing an institutional framework for PPPs; designing a realistic and efficient strategy for enabling environment improvement; and finally moving from national-level initiatives to intergovernmental initiatives. This article takes the position that a series of pitfalls and shortcomings, many of which are associated with the enabling institutional environment and the governance framework, need to be addressed if PPPs are to deliver their full potential in Africa. It is believed that the national and intergovernmental PPP initiatives could lend significant support to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Africa. In addition to the reviewing and discussing primarily the most recent literature on PPPs, the main value addition of our chapter brings to the literature is derived from the presentation of recent PPP cases, which draw directly from the authors own practical experience on the ground.

The pandemic had a huge negative impact globally on small and micro firms, particularly on cultural enterprises, making it imperative for them to create strategic solutions for sustainable business models and customer relationships. This chapter studies the digital interventions employed by the micro cultural enterprises in the Japanese Onsens (Hot baths) sector during the pandemic period in Japan. Using the theoretical lenses of service dominant logic and value creation, the study extracts four prominent value creation processes from the analysis of the employed secondary data. The study underlines the importance of collaboration between a firm's internal and external resources, their creative use of operant resources, and a robust customer orientation leading to creative digitalization. The results of the study show how cultural enterprises can rethink customer service in the cultural and creative sector. It also draws attention to the need for more robust policies and support systems that can encourage global cultural enterprises to develop sustainable business models.

This chapter relies on comparative case analysis to examine how and why particular social entrepreneurs in a higher Asian middle income economy broke new grounds in private higher education. The study provides arguments as to why these private higher education entrepreneurs, when viewed inclusively, are social entrepreneurs. Findings from the study suggest that social entrepreneurs distinctively used prior insights from their working experiences to harness the financial power of local capital to fund the scaling up of their social ventures while simultaneously engaging with the country’s economic and social challenges.

Our children may learn about the heroes of the past.

Our task is to make ourselves architects of the future.

The twenty-first century confronts society with challenges that will determine the future of humanity and the planet. Such challenges defy traditional analysis. Paralyzed by the inadequacy of our standard logic, on which much of traditional scholarship relies, we search for meaningful and effective understandings that can guide us – understandings that seem inherently wise and just, and not simply empirically confirmable. Few of us question the need for wisdom, yet to date, academic scholarship has failed to address the role that it plays, and could play, in supporting international organizational processes capable of addressing the world’s most demanding societal challenges.² This chapter explores the nature of pragmatic wisdom – wisdom that incorporates both profound understanding and action. It uses the founding of an international development initiative, Uniterra, to highlight the need for and influence of wisdom in international organizational processes and outcomes. Uniterra’s core structure and central process involve partnering – forming networks of non-hierarchical relationships. The chapter therefore investigates the wisdom needed to create and maintain global partnerships. Given the chapter’s focus on pragmatic wisdom, it also explores the concepts of hope and courage, for without hope and courage, wisdom could never move beyond conceptualization to action. The writing style purposely differs from that of most scholarly articles. Beyond presenting a specific case, the writing offers readers the opportunity to experience wisdom via indigenous proverbs from a wide range of the world’s more pragmatic wisdom traditions. So as not to interrupt readers’ appreciation of the proverbs or reduce their impact or meaning merely to the underlying logical constructs, the chapter uses endnotes rather than more traditional text references.

In Weberian scholarship, conventional wisdom views the corruption of the modern rational-legal bureaucratic state by local patrimonialisms as an endemic feature in non-Western postcolonial state formation. The resultant neopatrimonial state is often blamed for the social, political, and economic ills plaguing these societies. This essay challenges conventional wisdom and argues that neopatrimonialism is a process of hybrid state formation that has its origins in the cultural politics of colonial state building. This is achieved by drawing on a comparative study of British Malaya and the American Philippines, which offers contrastive trajectories of colonialism and state formation in Southeast Asia.

Because of the precariousness of state power due to local resistance and class conflicts, colonial state building involved the deepening of patron–client relations for political control and of rational-legal bureaucracy for social development. In the process, local political relations were marked and displaced as traditional patrimonialisms distinguished from the new modern center. Through native elite collaborators and paternal-populist discourses, new patron–client relations were institutionalized to connect the colonial state to the native periphery. However, colonial officials with different political beliefs and ethnographic world views in the center competed over native policy and generated cyclical crises between patron-clientelist excess and bureaucratic entrepreneurship.

Instead of the prevailing view that postcolonial states are condemned to their colonial design, and that authoritarian rule favors economic development, my study shows that non-Western state formation is non-linear and follows a cyclical pattern between predation and developmentalism, the excesses of which could be moderated.

The COVID-19 pandemic was particularly challenging for developing countries because of pre-existing poverty and severe inequality. Governments tended to set public safety as a primary goal, but it could not be their singular goal. Broadband was an important feature of any policy solution. Business lockdowns, school closures, and social distancing led to an unprecedented acceleration in the demand for broadband. But the government restrictions on social and economic interactions made it difficult to maintain and expand broadband networks. Governments might have let markets work out this challenge of escalating demand and increasing costs of supply, but few did. Governments quickly grew to believe that it would need cooperative relationships among multiple government agencies and private businesses to answer what appeared to be a broadband shortage. Regulatory controls over broadband providers were quickly suspended in favour of developing common goals and coordinated efforts. These approaches proved effective, although citizens continued to suffer from the pandemic.

Cultural consumption is the study of the motivation for the consumption of, and experiences related to factors such as lifestyle, soft skills, landscapes, traditions, professions, history and nature etc. Innovative approaches in experiential marketing such as customization, service diversification and cultural assimilation for strengthening customer relationships are recommended strategic approaches for supporting business growth and development. In recent times the pandemic situation in Japan resulted in a 93% decline in inbound tourism (JNTO, 2020). To support customer trust and relationship Japanese resorts such as Onsens and Ryokans embarked on innovative experiential marketing strategies to continue customer relationship while also dealing with the official prescribed restrictions for preventing the spread of infection. This chapter explores the innovative experiential marketing adopted by Japanese resorts and contributes to the identified need for more knowledge in the area. A multiple case approach was adopted and information from 12 resorts was obtained through secondary data. Results identify five innovative marketing approaches that were used by the Japanese resorts studied in this research. The chapter contributes theoretically in relating cultural consumption to experiential marketing in COVID-19 times, opens discussion for policy implications and aims to provide some inspiration to other firms in the business of tourism related to cultural consumption.

This study examines the relationship between institutional investors and director remuneration in Malaysia against an important institutional backdrop of political connection. Our panel analysis of 434 firms from 1999 to 2003 finds a negative relationship between institutional ownership and director remuneration suggesting the effectiveness of institutional monitoring. Although we find no evidence to suggest a politically determined remuneration scheme, the negative relationship between institutional ownership and remuneration becomes less in politically connected firms. This suggests that political connections mitigate institutional monitoring in relationship-based economies.