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The purpose of this research is to conduct a literature review on the evolution, antecedents, and outcomes of luxury consumption (LC). To accomplish our goal, we used a combination of bibliometrics and systematic approaches to review 165 articles published between 1998 and 2019. The investigation revealed that the evolution of LC is mostly driven by consumer motivation and is influenced by cultural and psychological variables. Furthermore, we explored the aforementioned antecedents of LC along four major axes. Antecedents related to (1) individual characteristics, (2) brand components, (3) cultural and social values, and (4) organizational strategies. Furthermore, based on the outcomes of LC, we found two categories (individual traits and social values). The chapter concludes by proposing a broader research agenda for the future.

Professional touching behavior (PTB), defined as intentional touching behavior that occurs between organizational members and that falls within the boundaries of appropriateness and professionalism in the workplace, is prevalent in organizations. Scholars from multiple disciplines, including human resources researchers, have acknowledged the importance of physical contact for facilitating interpersonal communication and relationship-building. However, PTB may not only elicit positive reactions from those who receive it but also negative reactions as well, with implications for social dynamics in organizations. PTB can, on the one hand, fulfill employees’ desires for interpersonal connection; at the same time, such physical contact at work can represent a threat to employees’ health. To explain the nature and implications of these divergent effects of receiving PTB, the authors draw upon sociometer theory and behavioral immune system (BIS) theory to model the emotional, cognitive, and physiological processes via which, and the conditions under which, receiving such behavior will result in socially functional responses and prompt subsequent prosocial behavior, and when PTB will be perceived as a health risk and prompt withdrawal behavior. The theoretical framework of this chapter expands our conceptual understanding of the consequences of interpersonal physical contact at work and has important human resources management (HRM) implications for organizational managers.

The Ba River catchment and delta on the island of Viti Levu, Fiji, supports a wealth of livelihoods and is populated by diverse communities who are living with an increased frequency and intensity of hydro-meteorological hazards (floods, cyclones and droughts). Participatory mapping as part of focus group discussions is a tool that can be used to elucidate communities’ understanding of the differing impacts of multiple hazards, as well as the strategies used to prepare and respond to different hazards. In this chapter, the authors present the results of qualitative research undertaken with members of three communities along the Ba River, from the Nausori highlands to the coastal mangroves, with a particular focus on recent floods (2009, 2012) and Tropical Cyclone Winston (2016). The communities draw on a wide range of livelihood strategies from fishing and agriculture to tourism and outside work. Natural hazard events vary in their impact on these livelihood strategies across the landscape and seascape, so that community members can adjust their activities accordingly. The temporal ‘signatures’ of ongoing impacts are also variable across communities and resources. The results suggest that taking a broad, landscape (and seascape) approach to understanding how communities draw livelihoods is valuable in informing effective and inclusive adaptation strategies for environmental change. Furthermore, documenting how the landscape is used in a mapped output may be a valuable tool for future social impact assessment for resource extraction activities.

The aim of the chapter is to examine whether the challenges to administering the EU outlined by Les Metcalfe in his famous article, ‘After 1992, can the Commission manage Europe?’ have now been met. Metcalfe not only identified a ‘management deficit’ in the implementation of the single market programme arising from an oversight among policy makers, but highlighted a neglect of the administrative dimension of European integration among scholars.

The chapter draws on primary and secondary literature to track developments in respect of the three elements identified by Metcalfe: the small size of the European Commission, its poor internal coordination and weak leadership; the responsiveness of administrative bodies in the member states to the need for inter-organizational coordination; and the network-building and management capacity of the Commission.

Despite changes, such as further enlargement, agencification at national and EU levels, and the expansion of EU competencies that have exacerbated the management challenge confronting the EU, there have been significant developments that have closed the deficit. First, the Commission has become far better integrated, coordination upgraded, and leadership strengthened. Second, through networking, cooptation and other strategies the Commission has sought to assure the effective implementation and enforcement of the single market rules. Third, member state governments, ministries and agencies have sought to cultivate networked relations that have increased the manageability of EU administration.

To the knowledge of this author, this is the first attempt to revisit Metcalfe’s diagnosis and to review the extent to which the management deficit he identified has been addressed subsequently.

The chapter has implications for how inter-organizational coordination within the EU administrative system could be improved.

The chapter bears on the administrative capacity of the EU to deliver the policies decided by EU policy makers.

As well as offering an assessment of the extent to which progress has been made in addressing the management deficit identified by Les Metcalfe in his classic article, this chapter conceptualizes the EU administration as an entity that encompasses both EU institutions and administrative bodies in the member states. It advances the concept of the EU as a multi-level administration.

In this chapter, we will be describing the situation of minority groups in the labour market and in organizations in Québec and Canada. We will be focussing mainly on the situation of women and ethnocultural minorities. First, we will present a statistical picture of their situation. Second, we will explore in more depth the situation of two ethnocultural groups – the Maghrebians and the French – in Québec, ¹ to demonstrate the complexity of the situation of minority groups that cannot be portrayed by statistics alone. Then, third, we will examine some tensions specific to Western societies that have an impact on the dynamics of culturally diverse enterprises. This assessment will show that even though much progress has been made, especially for women, there is still much to do to ensure full equality and greater fairness between minority and majority groups in Québec and Canada. Furthermore, by means of a more qualitative analysis of the situation of these two ethnocultural groups, we will see that statistics do not tell the whole story.

By employing the GMM and SVAR models in this paper, the effects that bond prices, equity prices, gold prices, and domestic credit have on housing prices were analyzed, using data from 2002q4 to 2015q1 for the ASEAN + 2 countries. The GMM results indicated the significant effects of equity prices and gold prices on housing prices and insignificant effects of bond prices and demotic credit on housing prices in selected Asian countries. Furthermore, findings show that worldwide economic crisis has negative impacts on housing prices in Asian countries. Moreover, Impulse response results indicated that housing prices respond simultaneously and positively to equity prices in all countries except Malaysia and Singapore. Likewise, Variance deposition findings demonstrate the importance of gold prices in fluctuation of housing prices in Malaysia and China especially in the long term.

This chapter considers financial instability as a phenomenon endogenous to the functioning of capitalism. Consequently, it seeks to identify the main sources and different forms of the latter in financialised capitalism. According to Keynes, capital assets prices are conceived as the expression of financial conventions. It is, therefore, important to distinguish between the returns expected by company directors, bankers, holders of equity titles, risk-takers and, in contrast, risk-averse holders of debt securities. Minsky enriches the analysis by attributing a decisive role to the leverage effect, at the origin of an accumulation of financial weaknesses in the balance sheets of non-financial agents during the expansion phases preceding financial crises. Regulation theory leads to the introduction of a distinction between the financial accelerator and the leverage effect. The first establishes a procyclical relationship at the macroeconomic level between the price of capital assets and the debt ratio of non-financial agents; the second acts at the microeconomic level through shareholder corporate governance, which determines the institutional conditions inciting firm directors to integrate shareholder expectations into their return forecasts. The empirical analysis identifies three forms of financial instability in financialised capitalism: the long-term financial cycle governed by the debt ratio of non-financial agents; the business cycle governed by the impact of stock prices on investment; and the short-term or even very short-term expected return revisions of financial actors. Its originality is to show that these three forms of instability acquire different characteristics depending on the national economy considered.