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This paper examines the impact of residents’ human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap, using China’s provincial panel data from 1997 to 2013. The results show that, at the national level as well as at the regional level, residents’ overall human capital investment inequality has a positive significant impact on the urban–rural income gap. In addition, the impact of overall human capital investment inequality increased monotonically from the eastern region inward to the western region. In terms of the relative impact of each component of human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap, migration investment inequality appears to have the greatest impact at the national level, whereas health investment inequality has the greatest impact on the urban–rural income gap in the eastern region, and education investment inequality exhibits the greatest impact in the central and western regions. We also investigate the impact of human capital investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap over different periods. The results show that residents’ overall human capital investment inequality had a positive impact on the urban–rural income gap in the period 1997–2008, but the impact rapidly shrunk in 2009–2013. Furthermore, the impact of residents’ health investment inequality on the urban–rural income gap shows a downward trend, and the impact of residents’ education investment inequality trended slightly upward from 1997 to 2008, and then rapidly shrunk in 2009–2013. Finally, the impact of residents’ migration investment inequality was only significant in 1997–2002.

The study examines organization citizenship behavior (OCB) as a mediating variable between instrumental work values (IWVs) and organizational performance; and group differences between family manager and nonfamily manager for integrated models in family hotels. Data were collected from 189 hotels (n = 921) ranging from budget to three-star family hotels in Ghana using questionnaire administered conveniently. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Work value positively influences OCB and organizational performance of family hotels. OCB mediates the relationship between work values and organizational performance. The study also found significant support for group differences between family and nonfamily firms for IWVs and mediating effect of OCB on the relationship between IWVs and performance.

The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has profoundly affected family and school life. Evidence demonstrates how pandemic-induced online learning and home confinement can influence family dynamics and, consequently, students’ mental health and quality of life. This chapter extends the literature by building upon the perspective of family systems theory and focusing the analysis on graduate students who are underrepresented in COVID-19 research. Drawing from an online survey among 337 graduate students enrolled in a state university in the Philippines during the second year of the pandemic, this study examines the three family relationship domains (cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict), their predictive relationships with life satisfaction, and the mediating role of mental well-being on these relationships. Findings indicate favorable levels of cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict in the family. Respondents’ age, sex assigned at birth, and marital status were significantly correlated with at least one domain of family relationship. Cohesion and expressiveness yielded significant positive predictive relationships on mental well-being and life satisfaction. Furthermore, findings indicate the partial mediation of mental well-being on the relationship between cohesion and life satisfaction and full mediation on expressiveness and life satisfaction.

In any time and space and under any circumstance, we find peasants are never passive actors in their livelihoods and rural development. Instead, they always create space for manoeuvre in order to make changes. This chapter analyses the innovative actions taken by the majority of rural inhabitants in rural areas during the overwhelming modernization process, so as to affirm that peasants are the main actors of rural development. It is they who have shaped the transformation of rural societies and the history. Through the analysis, this chapter concludes that rural development is not an objective, a blueprint nor a design. It is not the to-be-developed rear field in modernization. It is not the babysitter for cities, nor a rehearsal place for bureaucrats to testify their random thoughts. Rural development is what peasants do. The path they have chosen reveals scenery so different from modernization. If we regard development as a social change, or a cross with influential meanings, we could understand rural development as peasants’ victories over their predicament. Villages accommodate not only peasants, but without peasants villages would surely vanish. In this sense, the most important part in rural development or rural change is peasants – their conditions and their feelings.

The author explores the variety of ways in which sports brands have risen to prominence and how the development of particular activities and relationships, with athletes, fans, media and regulators, are designed to present them as authentic. This status is crucial given the cultural and emotional significance of sport alongside its ability to underpin forms of collective belonging. A range of examples, including Red Bull, Nike, Patagonia, Olympic skateboarding and Manchester United Football Club, are used to highlight these processes as well as the complexity of the contemporary social, cultural and political landscapes that such brands now operate in.

This chapter aims to investigate the relationship between levels of subsidiary autonomy and the performance of a subsidiary’s subunit (factory) in Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries in Thailand. We conducted ordinary least squares regression analysis based on a questionnaire survey of 50 Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries in Thailand and multiple case studies to investigate the causal relationship between subsidiary autonomy and factory performance. We have three main findings. First, the autonomy level of Japanese manufacturing subsidiaries is linked to the subsidiaries’ factories’ performance compared to factories in Japan, but not in other foreign countries. Second, high levels of subsidiary autonomy are negatively associated with factory performance. Third, there are two causal relationships: high factory performance leading to low subsidiary autonomy and high/low subsidiary autonomy leading to low/high factory performance. From this, we discussed whether the degree of resource centralization in the home country influences the relationship between the level of subsidiary autonomy and a subunit’s performance in the foreign subsidiary. Moreover, we discussed the possibility that the causal relationships between them are not necessarily direct causal relationships. We identified a new factor determining subsidiary autonomy and investigated the relationship between the subsidiary autonomy and performance of a subunit in the foreign subsidiary compared to the home country. Because this has not been discussed in previous studies, this chapter contributes to the study of headquarters–subsidiary relationships and gives guidelines to practitioners on managing subsidiary autonomy.

The current era is characterized by hyperturbulence, population growth, attention to food security, the need to identify sustainable strategies to reduce pollution and poverty, and the disparity between developed and undeveloped economies. These circumstances force a global paradigm shift based on sustainable practices and processes that put people and the environment at the core of each activity, contributing to sustainable, social, and economic development and promoting well-being in the community.

In this spirit, a strong impulse can derive from the practices of Green Technology, considered here as that set of processes aimed at eco-sustainability that acquire undisputed relevance, especially for emerging economies.

This chapter focuses on the role that Green technology practices exert in generating local well-being in the world's fifth-largest country: Brazil. Dynamic growth and effective social policies lifted millions of people out of poverty in the 2000s, even if socio-economic development varies widely across the country. Brazil is a leading global agricultural, minerals, and oil producer. The natural environment represents the primary source of Brazil's development that deserves to be protected and push firms and citizens to find new sustainable solutions based on green policies. Drawing inspiration from a Brazilian case study, this chapter proposes a set of building blocks that foster sustainable business practices in emerging countries.

The chapter is organized as follows: the first part introduces the concept of green technology practices; the second highlights the opportunities of green technologies; the third focuses on a single case study.