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In this chapter, the authors present a theoretical framework to not only better understand the wicked nature of the Airbnb phenomenon but also, using case examples from around the world, to illustrate how governments have attempted to mitigate Airbnb’s negative impacts.

Analysing the sharing economy, specifically the Airbnb platform, through the lens of Karl Polanyi’s Double Movement Theory, brings growing tension between markets and society into sharp relief. In the ensuing sections of this chapter, the authors will then adopt a ‘wicked problem’ perspective to provide some analytical insights into how governments across the world have attempted to respond to this wicked policy problem and explore different policy responses and regulatory frameworks in greater depth. Through the review of exemplary cases from around the world, considerable variation in governance and policy responses could be identified.

Embeddedness has gained prominence in entrepreneurship studies. However, the notion that the embeddedness metaphor relates to “market” structures prevails in studies in the area. Entrepreneurship scholars still know little about whether entrepreneurs are eventually embedded in other structures whose relationships go beyond the restricted dimension of the interested actor’s assumption. This study aims to propose investigating the social structures in which a specific type of entrepreneurship, the religious one, is embedded.

The research was qualitative, using interviews as an evidence collection instrument. A total of 17 entrepreneur-pastors responsible for business churches in Brazil and eight parishioners took part in the study.

Religious entrepreneurs are embedded in market structures, corroborating a perspective that associates embeddedness with the utilitarian notion. At the same time, entrepreneurs are embedded in two other social structures: reciprocity and redistribution.

This article emphasizes the relevance of going beyond the predominant perspective associated with the utilitarian and rationalized understanding of embeddedness in relationship networks.

This study makes essential contributions. Initially, it attests to the utilitarian perspective of Granovetter’s embeddedness while suggesting incorporating two other dimensions into the metaphor. By highlighting this, this article stresses the need to reinterpret the metaphor of embeddedness and how entrepreneurship scholars use it. Further, by emphasizing the need to consider embeddedness in networks beyond its still utilitarian perspective, this paper highlights unexplored opportunities for entrepreneurship scholars.

This paper is a proposal to provide for the poor – those earning insufficient incomes to satisfy their needs and the unemployed – by enabling them to acquire dividend-paying (and voting) shares in the companies that produce the goods and services consumed in society. It will be accomplished by: (1) establishing a mortgage loan at birth for every newborn child; (2) the loans will be taken out by each of the major producing companies (plus start-ups) in the names of the children as firms do their annual planning; (3) the amount of the loan will be increased annually when the companies plan for succeeding years; (4) a portfolio of new assets – stocks and bonds – in the companies will be purchased with the funds from the mortgage loan; (5) the loan will be repaid over a period of years from the dividends paid by the companies. Once redeemed, the assets, and their future earnings, will belong to the person in whose name the mortgage loan was established. Should the program include all newborns, rich and poor in the name of fairness, when today's cohort reaches maturity, every member of society will be a shareholder in a variety of wealth producing companies that pay regular dividends. The proposal will not require funds from the government and no additional taxes will have to be raised.

Research indicates a long historical connection between racism and nationalist ideologies. This connection has been highlighted in the resurgence of exclusionary nationalism in recent years, across many multicultural societies. This chapter discusses the notions of race, ethnicity and nation, and critically examines how racism shapes contemporary manifestations of nationalist discourse across the world. It explores the historical role of settler-colonialism, imperial expansions and the capitalist development in shaping the racial/ethnic aspect of nationalist development. Moreover, it provides an analysis of the interconnections between the racialisation of minorities, exclusionary ideologies and the consolidation of ethno-nationalist tropes. This chapter further considers the impact of demographic changes in reinforcing anti-migrant exclusionary sentiments. This is examined in connection with emerging nativist discourse, exploring how xenophobic racism has shaped and is shaped by nostalgic nationalism based on the sanitisation of the legacies of Empire and colonialism.

It is widely agreed that transformation processes that are triggered by crisis events can challenge conventional behavioural norms and stimulate new ideas and innovations that can assist in the preparations for future challenges. This impetus for transformation processes not only applies to the COVID-19 pandemic, but has also been seen in many other instances, such as the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 or the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which have sparked significant socio-political change processes often with a global reach. The multitude of wicked tourism policy problems discussed in our book often occur in parallel, are of growing complexities, are often not well understood and indistinguishable from one another and exert pressure on the resilience of vulnerable political, economic and community-based systems. These circumstances often present as tipping points which can trigger necessary long-term transformations. However, this process of long-term change must be well planned and strategically implemented. Thus, future transformative destination management should be built on a holistic approach, underpinned by adaptive political leadership in which tourism is not only seen as a driver for economic growth and employment, but as a strategy which successfully integrates social, cultural and ecological goals.

Using the theoretical framework of the substantive economy, this study aims to point out the main aspects of the substantive mode of operation that help the integration of disadvantaged people while at the same time shedding light on the barriers that hinder economically efficient functioning in a market economy.

Research focuses on Hungarian rural work integration social cooperatives, which are engaged in producing activity by the employment of disadvantaged people. In the research, mixed methods were applied: results of a questionnaire survey covering 102 cooperatives, as well as 20 semi-structured interviews and experiences from the field. A total of 17 indicators were used to explore the substantive operational features, promoting mechanisms and problems in the following areas: organisational goals and outcomes; integrating roles and functions; productive functions; and the embeddedness of cooperatives.

As for results, substantive operational mechanisms and tools that support the integration of disadvantaged people have been identified such as mentoring, social incentives, the ability to create local value or the expansion of local community services. At the same time, several barriers have been detected that make it difficult to operate economically, such as cooperatives being a stepping stone for workers, excessive product heterogeneity or the lack of vertically structured bridging relationships.

The value of the study is to counterpoint the mechanisms promoting social purposes of work-integration social cooperatives and the obstacles to their long-term sustainability within the framework of the substantive economy, to better understand their functioning and the less quantifiable factors of their performance.

This paper takes the manufacturing cluster supply chain as the research object and explores the evaluation and enhancement strategy of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy. The purpose of this study was to (1) analyze the mechanism of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy; (2) construct manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation model; (3) algorithm realization of manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation and (4) propose manufacturing cluster-based supply chain synergy enhancement strategy.

Breaking through the limitations of traditional manufacturing cluster supply chain synergy evaluation, we take horizontal synergy and vertical synergy as coupled synergy subsystems, use the complex system synergy model to explore the horizontal synergy between core enterprises and cluster enterprises and the vertical synergy of supply chain enterprises and use the coupling coordination model to construct the coupled synergy evaluation model of manufacturing cluster supply chain, which is an innovation of the evaluation perspective of previous cluster supply chain synergy and also an enrichment and supplementation of the evaluation methodology. This is not only the innovation of the evaluation perspective but also the enrichment and supplementation of the evaluation method.

Using Python software to conduct empirical analysis on the evaluation model, the research shows that the horizontal and vertical synergies of the manufacturing cluster supply chain interact with each other and jointly affect the coupling synergy. On this basis, targeted strategies are proposed to enhance the synergy of the manufacturing cluster supply chain.

This study takes manufacturers, suppliers and sellers in the three-level supply chain as the research object and does not consider the synergistic evaluation between distributors and consumers in the supply chain, which can be further explored in this direction in the future.

Advanced manufacturing clusters, as the main force of manufacturing development, and the synergistic development of supply chain are one of the important driving forces for the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry. As a new type of network organization coupling industrial clusters and supply chains, cluster supply chain is conducive not only to improving the competitiveness of cluster supply chains but also to upgrading cluster supply chains through horizontal synergy within the cluster and vertical synergy in the supply chain.

Research can help accelerate the transformation and upgrading of clustered supply chains in the manufacturing industry, promote high-quality development of the manufacturing industry and accelerate the rise of the global value chain position of the manufacturing industry.

(1) Innovation of research perspective. Starting from two perspectives of horizontal synergy and vertical synergy, we take a core enterprise in the cluster supply chain as the starting point, horizontally explore the main enterprises of the cluster as the research object of horizontal synergy, vertically explore the upstream and downstream enterprises of the supply chain as the research object of vertical synergy and explore the coupling synergy of cluster supply chain as two subsystems, which provides new perspectives of evaluation of the degree of synergy and synergy evaluation. (2) Innovation of research content. Nine manufacturing clusters are selected as research samples, and through data collection and model analysis, it is verified that the evaluation model and implementation algorithm designed in this paper have strong practicability, which not only provides methodological reference for the evaluation of manufacturing cluster-type supply chain synergy but also reduces the loss caused by the instability of clusters and supply chains and then provides a theoretical basis for improving the overall performance of cluster-type supply chains.

Research on underbanked and unbanked populations has tended to focus on rural borrowers. Lenders to this disadvantaged population are often seen as loan sharks preying on the disadvantaged or as corporate capitalists using micro loans to financialize the developing world. Building on the concept that money has social meaning and that it both creates and maintains significant local relationships, we explore the lending practices of a small gray-market financier in urban Bangkok. While most anthropology research is borrower-focused, we detail the processes and cultural understandings of making loans, collections, trust, and personal relationships of a lender in a Bangkok neighborhood. From her perspective, lending is perceived as a community service that no other institution provides to the under/unbanked in her neighborhood. Marking a divergence from prior development research, which emphasizes the high interest rates of informal lenders, the difficulties faced by borrowers in rural areas, the gendered relationships and hierarchies developed and sustained via lending, this article highlights the lending-side practices of informal loans and the limited ability to move from the liminal space of the gray-market lending business.