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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of non‐violent protest (satyagraha) in a multinational automobile plant in India that has suffered from considerable employee relations problems.

The paper employs a case study of a Japanese‐owned company using data obtained from 30 personal interviews and from internet media sources.

It is found that workers initially pursued their protests through satyagraha‐style methods before taking on a more violent posture when company management refused to accept any notion of jointly seeking a new harmony. The reasons for these developments are explored.

The paper has implications for the manner in which scholars and practitioners view the respective roles, significance, and management of satyagraha and non‐satyagraha protest in Indian companies.

The importance of satyagraha in Indian employee relations is under‐researched in comparison with other factors, and is especially significant for culturally‐unaware multinational companies in successfully understanding and managing protest in the workplace context.

“No climate change, no climate refugees”. On the basis of this theme, this paper aims to propose a method for undertaking the responsibility for climate refugees literally uprooted by liable climate polluting countries. It also considers the historical past, culture, geopolitics, imposed wars, economic oppression and fragile governance to understand the holistic scenario of vulnerability to climate change.

This paper is organized around three distinct aspects of dealing with extreme climatic events – vulnerability as part of making the preparedness and response process fragile (past), climate change as a hazard driver (present) and rehabilitating the climate refugees (future). Bangladesh is used as an example that represents a top victim country to climatic extreme events from many countries with similar baseline characteristics. The top 20 countries accounting for approximately 82 per cent of the total global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are considered for model development by analysing the parameters – per capita CO₂ emissions, ecological footprint, gross national income and human development index.

Results suggest that under present circumstances, Australia and the USA each should take responsibility of 10 per cent each of the overall global share of climate refugees, followed by Canada and Saudi Arabia (9 per cent each), South Korea (7 per cent) and Russia, Germany and Japan (6 per cent each). As there is no international convention for protecting climate refugees yet, the victims either end up in detention camps or are refused shelter in safer places or countries. There is a dire need to address the climate refugee crisis as these people face greater political risks.

This paper provides a critical overview of accommodating the climate refugees (those who have no means for bouncing back) by the liable countries. It proposes an innovative method by considering the status of climate pollution, resource consumption, economy and human development rankings to address the problem by bringing humanitarian justice to the ultimate climate refugees.

The chapter examines and challenges the assumed necessity of a linkage between remembered series of exchanges, amicable social relations, and prestige found in the work of Marcel Mauss and many subsequent theorists of reciprocity and gift exchange.

The chapter uses the nearly 500 year history of the giving and taking of the Koh-i-noor Diamond by rulers of South and Central Asia, commencing with Babur, the first Mughal emperor, and ending with Queen Victoria, which includes some gift giving and much taking by force, to explore what happens when only two of the three elements Mauss assumed central to understanding gift exchange are present.

Based on a review of the historical material, the chapter demonstrates that though historical narratives or memories of exchanges were central to enhancing the prestige of the parties to the exchange and the diamond itself, that process could and did occur in the absence of any on-going amicable social relations, including in situations in which exchange or transfer of the diamond were coerced and nothing was given in return to the dispossessed former owner of the gem.

By suggesting an alternative configuration of the factors necessary for the association of exchange and prestige, the chapter provides the opportunity to reconsider assumptions common in the literature on gift exchange and further enhance our understanding of this central element of social theory.

The East India Company can lay claim to being the world’s first company whose operations involved systematic organization of multiple countries. It was a pioneer and innovator: it was one of the first companies to offer limited liability to its shareholders; it laid the foundations of the British empire; it spawned Company Man; it developed its own ‘university’. It was a trader, merchant, mercenary, military force and civil administrator; a pioneer bureaucracy as well as being a lean operation. Using an analytic lens drawn from contemporary discussion on MNCs the article reviews the role of the East India Company over its life and draws parallels with contemporary MNCs.

This paper uses the case of the English East India Company to consider the impact of colonialization on patterns of trade. The East India Company went through a commercial and a colonial period in Asia and therefore provides a rare case in which fixed national effects are held constant while the degree of colonialism varies. We use this variation to consider the impact of colonial institutions on the degree of concentration in overseas trade. We find that the onset of colonialism is linked to increasing inequality in the distribution of traffic across ports. This finding is significant because of the relationship between overseas trade and the potential for long-term economic development: the development trajectories of the individual ports were likely to have been affected by these different rates of trade. Our findings also highlight how the negotiation between political and commercial goals in early modern trade and imperialism produced different macro-structural outcomes for global trade patterns.

This study aims to explore the role of the Indian merchant class in 19th-century colonial India in addressing the social concerns of disability. Specifically, it addresses why and how business engaged with disability in colonial India.

This study’s methodology entailed historiographical approach and archival investigation of official correspondence and letters of business people in 19th-century colonial India.

Using institutional theory, the study’s findings indicate that guided by philanthropic and ethical motives, Indian businesses, while recognizing the normative and cognitive challenges, accepted the regulative institutional pressures of colonial India and adopted an involved and humane approach. This manifested in the construction of asylums and the setting up of bequeaths and charitable funds for people with disability (PwD). The principal institutional drivers in making of the asylums and the creation of benevolent charities were religion, social practices, caste-based expectations, exposure to Western education and Victorian and Protestantism ideologies, the emergence of colonial notions of health, hygiene and medicine, carefully crafted socio-political and economic policies of the British Raj and the social aspirations of the native merchant class.

In contrast to the 20th-century rights-based movement of the West, which gave birth to the global term of “disability,” a collective representation of different types of disabilities, this paper locates that cloaked in individual forms of sickness, the identity of PwD in 19th-century colonial India appeared under varied fragmented labels such as those of leper, lunatic, blind and infirm. This paper broadens the understanding of how philanthropic business response to disability provided social acceptability and credibility to business people as benevolent members of society. While parallelly, for PwD, it reinforced social marginalization and the need for institutionalization, propagating perceptions of unfortunate and helpless members of society.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore how commercial hospitality has contributed to the development of urban areas in relation to commerce, hospitality, religious and imperial patronage in early modern, Safavid Iran (c. seventeenth century). Second, to combine material culture research methods in an analytical framework for future use.

Data were collected during 27 site visits over three years to 14 caravanserai six bazaar complexes. A material culture methodology is proposed, designed and implemented, supplemented by analysis of textual sources.

The form and function of caravanserai at Zein‐i Edin broadly reflect the form and function of desert caravanserai common in much of the Islamic world. However, the complex within the Qaysariyya Bazaar in Isfahan reflects the convergence of specific dynastic, geopolitical and economic issues facing seventeenth century Safavid Iran shaping both urban form and commercial focus. These are consolidation of the Safavid dynasty, rivalry with the Ottoman Empire and the vital importance of trade with Mughal India.

The research is limited by its specific contextual scope but invites further investigation in analogous contexts across this milieu as well as further implementation of the material culture methods it adopts to both historical and contemporary commercial contexts.

The paper explores, for the first time the development of commercial hospitality in early modern Iran and invites further consideration of the development of capitalism outside of Eurocentric teleologies. Furthermore, it presents a new and explicit methodological framework for using material culture as a means of enquiry.

The main aim of this paper is to analyze judicial system of Bangladesh, which comprises all courts and tribunals that performs the delicate task of ensuring rule of law in the society. The paper depicts the history and evolution of the judicial system in Bangladesh from ancient period to present day.

The study is qualitative in nature and based on secondary sources of materials like books, journal articles, government orders, rules, acts, newspaper reports, etc. Relevant literature has also been collected through internet browsing.

The major findings of this paper are: there is a well‐organized court system in Bangladesh which is in fact the replica of the system introduced by British rulers and it is widely accepted in the original Constitution of Bangladesh. The ancient judicial system was not based on rule of law rather on caprice and caste consideration. The executive branch of government always attempts to control the judiciary through different mechanisms, which include the appointment, tenure and discipline of judges from ancient period. Therefore, the independence of judiciary is vulnerable from ancient time to present day and even after separation of the judiciary from the executive (November 2007) the interference of the executive over the judiciary is still continuing.

This paper opens a new window for the policy makers and concerned authorities to take necessary steps for overcoming the existing limitations of judiciary.

The paper will be of interest to legal practitioners, policy makers, members of civil society, and those in the field of judicial system in Bangladesh and some other British colonial common law countries.