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Tourism is an important economic activity, and a significant contributor to employment, growth and sustainable development for most of the predominantly small island developing states of the Caribbean. Community-based tourism, given its intuitively natural alignment with the interests and greater inclusiveness of local actors and communities, is considered to be an important contributor to sustainable tourism. This study aims to evaluate the potential for digital technologies to amplify the distinctiveness, enhance service delivery and ultimately contribute to the sustainability of community tourism contexts.

The research uses a form of participatory action research that involves active collaboration between researchers and practitioners. The authors propose a framework approach for implementing smart community initiatives within a community tourism context.

The human-centered, participatory framework approach described in this research can help to empower community tourism by providing increased visibility and enhanced service delivery for small operators. These outcomes can become important contributions to enhancing inclusive and sustainable development and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable local communities – a key outcome for sustainable development goal 11 – sustainable cities and communities.

The research is ongoing with the value outcomes still emerging. The empirical domain is confined to a single geographical context, so the findings and insights may not be generalizable.

Beyond the emerging research insights, the project produced specific digital artifacts such as geospatial data and technology platforms; and process outcomes such as training, capacity-building and empowerment of community members. In particular, youth trained to create and maintain the digital infrastructure (community mapping) provide an important local capability that can be re-purposed for other types of field-based data collection activities, thus providing alternative economic opportunities.

The map-based information and digital content are localized to a specific geographical context, using data mapped by local actors, who possess the best local knowledge about what the community has to offer. The approach and supporting technologies can be readily replicated into other communities.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an agile approach to academic analytics that is currently being applied on one of the campuses of a leading higher educational institution in the Caribbean. This agile approach enables the rapid development of a strategic analytics roadmap and proof-of-concept analytics applications for the institution.

The approach was developed using Design Science which involves the development and rigorous evaluation of an artifact. The agile approach is the artifact and the design evaluation was done using the observational method of primary cases studies where the artifact is studied in depth in a business environment, in this case this was a leading higher educational institution in the Caribbean.

The final output, the roadmap, highlights the importance of a balanced portfolio of analytics initiatives, relevant and tailored to the institution’s specific context that includes technology and applications projects, as well as capacity building, organizational structures and policy initiatives.

The approach that was used and the specific techniques proposed can be extended by other researchers and in so doing will increase the body of research as it relates to agile analytics.

The approach will be beneficial to educational institutions that are considering how best to harness the strategic value of its data. The analytics roadmap will allow the institution to be clear about the path they should take to maximize their investments in analytics initiatives.

A number of existing well-accepted research techniques have been synthesized in the development and application of this agile approach. The approach and final roadmap consider the institution’s readiness for and understanding of what is involved in analytics before investing significant resources in its adoption.

This chapter introduces gender-related issues in the context of the South Pacific and agricultural development and research for development initiatives. National governments and donor organisations commonly invest in improving rural livelihoods by addressing agriculture and food security issues, and increasingly prioritise and even mandate gender integration/mainstreaming objectives within such initiatives. Despite substantial investments, there are few accounts of how integrating gender and gender mainstreaming in agriculture has been approached in practice in the South Pacific. Additionally, there is scarce attention to the benefits that a gender perspective has secured for women and men.

We outline the ways in which agriculture continues to underpin South Pacific economies and livelihoods; discuss gender mainstreaming/integration in agricultural development activities and debates that define its theory and practice; and highlight how the concepts of custom and intersectionality are important considerations in this field. The final part of the chapter provides an overview of the book structure which includes two introductory and contextualising chapters, six case study chapters, and a synthesis chapter of the key learnings, commonalities and challenges identified across the six case studies.

Integrating gender equality objectives was one of the development objectives, along with economic development, food security and poverty/hardship alleviation of the featured rural community-based development project. In this case study, the rural development project was structured around women and men who were community leaders; those elected as town and village officers and those who held high positions in schools or within the government. In the first stage of the project, local committees were initiated by these leaders, which comprised equal numbers of women and men, to manage the project and facilitate training and skill development. Although there was much focus on creating the opportunity for women and men to equally contribute to leading and benefitting from the project, what was not considered was the gendered nature of the implementing partner institutions and the impact that would have on the project. By using gendered stakeholder analysis at two points in the project lifecycle, we take a closer look at the implementing organisations and view the turning over of power between actors on the project through a gender lens.

The purpose of this study is to measure the technical efficiency of 20 Algerian insurance companies from 2016 to 2020, by using slacks-based measure (slacks-based measure [SBM] data envelopment analysis [DEA]) model. This research aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of this companies' efficiency, taking into account both the desirable and undesirable outputs.

The study uses a nonoriented, SBM model with the assumption of constant returns to scale to estimate the technical efficiency of commercial insurance companies over a five-year period. The inputs used are labor expense, agent expense and investments, while the outputs included are gross premiums and investment income as desirable outputs and gross claims as undesirable output.

Among 20 insurance companies evaluated, only 5 companies consistently achieved technical efficiency during the study period (Caisse Nationale de Mutualité Agricole [CNMA], MACIR, CARDIF, MUTUALISTE and AGLIC); so they represent the best practices in the Algerian insurance sector, with overall average of the technical efficiency is 81%. However, the reference sets analysis showed that CNMA and AGLIC had high robustness. Also, the results demonstrate the impact of ignoring the undesirable outputs on the accuracy of the assessment.

The sample of the study consists of the active insurance companies in Algeria, based on the Annual Insurance Reports of Algeria; there are 20 companies as shown in the table. The data are taken from the annual reports of insurance companies during the 2020 period, issued by the Algerian Ministry of Finance.

The challenge for insurance company is how to find a balance between reducing claims paid and simultaneously improving the quality of insurance services. In fact, it is observed that studies evaluating their efficiency ignore claims in the analysis process. Therefore, the study highlights the importance of considering undesirable outputs within the DEA framework; this allows for a more accurate assessment of the company's performance and helps in improvement. Furthermore, although the insurance sector plays a crucial role, it has not received enough research attention compared to other financial sectors, especially in Arab and developing countries.

The literature on efficiency assessment in the insurance companies shows a lack of addressing undesirable outputs (such as claims) within the DEA framework; so this study aims at bridging this research gap. Also, the study provides an overview of the efficiency of Algerian insurance companies.

Ideas regarding the basic character of humanity assume importance wherever people interact with one another — from the family to the political state, to the business enterprise. These conceptions, ranging from pessimism to optimism, from notions that evil, predatory competition on the one hand to goodness, co‐ operation and virtue on the other characterise the intrinsic disposition of people, derive from the culture to which the individual belongs, moulding his values and conditioning his behaviour. They not only affect the quality of human relations present in any collectivity, but exercise critical influence on the theories and practices of social control. The understanding of a range of social parameters is considerably enhanced when viewed from the perspective of prevailing cultural ideas about human nature itself.

This compilation of over 500 United States Government bibliographies is the second annual supplement to BIBLIOGRAPHY OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIES 1968–1973 (Pierian Press). Due to the Government Printing Office backlog during 1974, many 1973 and 1974 titles are included in this 1975 Supplement, which should have appeared earlier.