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Both Bolivia and Uruguay broke ranks with the global drug prohibition regime by introducing novel drug policies. State control of the production and supply of coca and cannabis represents a clear departure from both the spirit and the letter of the international drug conventions. Although, the rationale, processes and outcomes of policy change were distinctive in many regards, this chapter posits that there are conceptual resemblances. In both countries, the leadership of a charismatic and idiosyncratic president has to be considered. Furthermore, in both countries, mobilisation and activism were also decisive. Lastly, in both countries novel drug policy responded to specific problems that decision-makers faced. Approaching drug policy reforms in Bolivia and Uruguay in terms of personal leadership, mobilisation and policy problems provides a useful analytical first-cut to assess the continuity and change in drug policy observable elsewhere. Additionally, scrutinising the reasons and motivations for undertaking drug policy reform also allows to better understand each country’s behaviour on the international stage.

This paper has two purposes. One is to examine the ways mentally disabled children were disciplined and cared for in Berlin, Germany/Prussia, at the end of the 19th century, by considering the way the architecture of the asylum affected the practices within it. The second purpose is to examine the manner in which the practices at the Dalldorf Asylum, especially the administrative paperwork, fabricated and stabilized the medico-pedagogical category of “feeble-mindedness”.

This paper engages with reflections on asylum architecture and its connection to disciplining bodies as shown in Disability History and linking these insights to recent scholarship from the field of Science and Technology Studies on the fabrication of knowledge through observation. Drawing on microhistory as methodology it examines the fabrication of “feeble-mindedness” with and within the Dalldorf Asylum, focusing on architecture and design as well as administrative practices.

The analysis of the asylum's architecture reveals how certain ideas of hygiene and control derived from 19th century psychiatry, along with personal attentiveness and individualized learning were incorporated into the building, creating the notion of a “feeble-minded child” as being simultaneously dangerous and in danger. The paper further shows how the professionals involved were struggling with diagnosing these children, further showcasing that the space as well as the categorization of children, oscillating between psychiatry and pedagogy, has to be understood as contested.

This paper engages findings on the disciplining structures organizing everyday life within the asylum with concepts of fabricating knowledge as central to science studies. The Dalldorf Asylum, the earliest state-funded asylum for mentally disabled children in Germany and largely understudied, is used as the main research object. A microhistorical approach allows to make visible the intricate yet mundane practices involved in stabilizing the category of “feeble-mindedness”.

Since the 1950s, and the steadily growing mobility of people and production (economic activity) as a result of the shift to road traffic, especially in North America, suburban areas have grown rapidly as residential areas and places of (post-industrial) economic activity (Hoffmann-Axthelm, 1998). People moved from ‘the country’ and, especially, the established central cities to the more spacious and cheap to develop peripheral locations. In Europe, differences have emerged on the basis of established planning law and thus availability of land for development, and of historic legacies in the relationship between ‘city’ and ‘country’. Thus, for instance, while in Germany cities were distinctly separate from their surrounding areas in legal terms and land ownership, in Italy, cities have been viewed as ‘owning’ or controlling the surrounding areas to the extent that these are subservient to the cities’ developmental needs (Heitkamp, 1998).

The transition to omnichannel retail is the recognized future of retail, which uses digital technologies (e.g. augmented reality shopping assistants) to enhance the customer shopping experience. However, retailers struggle with the implementation of such technologies in brick-and-mortar stores. Against this background, the present study investigates the impact of a smartphone-based augmented reality shopping assistant application, which uses personalized recommendations and explainable artificial intelligence features on customer shopping experiences.

The authors follow a design science research approach to develop a shopping assistant application artifact, evaluated by means of an online experiment (n = 252), providing both qualitative and quantitative data.

Results indicate a positive impact of the augmented reality shopping assistant application on customers' perception of brick-and-mortar shopping experiences. Based on the empirical insights this study also identifies possible improvements of the artifact.

This study's assessment is limited to an online evaluation approach. Therefore, future studies should test actual usage of the technology in brick-and-mortar stores. Contrary to the suggestions of established theories (i.e. technology acceptance model, uses and gratification theory), this study shows that an increase of shopping experience does not always convert into an increase in the intention to purchase or to visit a brick-and-mortar store. Additionally, this study provides novel design principles and ideas for crafting augmented reality shopping assistant applications that can be used by future researchers to create advanced versions of such applications.

This paper demonstrates that a shopping assistant artifact provides a good opportunity to enhance users' shopping experience on their path-to-purchase, as it can support customers by providing rich information (e.g. explainable recommendations) for decision-making along the customer shopping journey.

This paper shows that smartphone-based augmented reality shopping assistant applications have the potential to increase the competitive power of brick-and-mortar retailers.

This study develops a sequential process model to address how to improve firm performance by responding to external stakeholder pressures in service contexts.

The model posits that external stakeholder pressures affect firm performance through organizational learning, green creativity and environmental performance. Data from 219 service firms are utilized to test the hypotheses. A sequential mediation approach is adopted to analyze the model.

Results reveal (1) organizational learning mediates the effects of government, customer and supplier pressures on firm performance, (2) environmental performance mediates the effect of customer pressure on firm performance, (3) organizational learning and green creativity serially mediate the effects of the three stakeholder pressures on firm performance and (4) the three external stakeholder pressures enhance firm performance through organizational learning, green creativity and environmental performance in a sequential manner.

This study originally contributes to the service literature by providing a sequential process lens to address how to improve performance by responding to external stakeholder pressures.