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COVID-19 affected all global activities. The print media industry was one of the affected fields. This research investigates the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 brought to the Ethiopian newspapers. Political Economy of Media theory is used to analyse data obtained from documents and in-depth interviews with managers of two leading media houses; the government-owned Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) and the private Capital newspaper. The findings show that print media faced two key challenges. First, their circulation decreased due to the COVID-19 as a result of the economic recession. This was compounded by the second challenge, based on the fact that not only don’t these newspapers own printers, they also lack a established formal distribution infrastructure. As a result, they still had to pay highly for printing while selling copies at a reduced price. However, media hybridisation, innovative projects, and sponsored pages helped the newspapers stay on the market. This study recommends that newspaper publishers run their printing machines, expand the media technology, change the attitude of print journalists, and capacitate them to utilise media hybridisation as important solutions.

This chapter describes the results of an exploratory study that examined parents’ experiences with the law as they obtained funding for speech generating devices for their children with communication disabilities, either through public health insurance, private health insurance, or a public school. Exploring legal consciousness: Experiences of families seeking funding for assistive technologies for children with disabilities. Law, Policy, and Society Dissertations. Paper 17. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20000265). The study explored how parents engaged with the law and how their experiences and perceptions about the law compared to the formal law. This research was based on sociolegal theory, particularly the concept of legal consciousness, which examines how people think and act in relation to the law as a consequence of social interactions, and analyzes how law in action compares with the formal law. Sociolegal theory broadens the definition of law to include “the meanings, sources of authority, and cultural practices” (Ewick & Silbey, 1998, p. 22) as well as the formal law.

Similar to other sociolegal research, this study collected personal narratives of law using grounded theory methods to identify themes within those narratives. The narratives revealed that while parents expressed varieties of legal consciousness, there was one overarching theme: the law provided a framework for parents to envision rights, discuss rights, and claim rights. While few parents invoked formal legal mechanisms to solve grievances, the law created a rights consciousness among parents which empowered them to acknowledge and validate the notion of rights and entitlements.

In every industry there are resources. Some are moving, others more fixed; some are technical, others social. People working with the resources, for example, as buyers or sellers, or users or producers, may not make much notice of them. A product sells. A facility functions. The business relationship in which we make our money has “always” been there. However, some times this picture of order is disturbed. A user having purchased a product for decades may “suddenly” say to the producer that s/he does not appreciate the product. And a producer having received an order of a product that s/he thought was well known, may find it impossible to sell it. Such disturbances may be ignored. Or they can be used as a platform for development. In this study we investigate the latter option, theoretically and through real world data. Concerning theory we draw on the industrial network approach. We see industrial actors as part of (industrial) networks. In their activities actors use and produce resources. Moreover, the actors interact − bilaterally and multilaterally. This leads to development of resources and networks. Through “thick” descriptions of two cases we illustrate and try to understand the interactive character of resource development and how actors do business on features of resources. The cases are about a certain type of resource, a product − goat milk. The main message to industrial actors is that they should pay attention to that products can be co-created. Successful co-creation of products, moreover, may require development also of business relationships and their connections (“networking”).

This chapter reviews the status of Education For All (EFA) in China and identifies four gaps: between rural and urban residents, between residents of geographic regions, between ethnicity groups, and between the genders. It turns to examine the educational situation and interests of girls weighed down by the crushing burden of multiple disadvantages in “left-behind” Western China. Based on analysis of macro-level socio-economic and educational conditions, along with rich micro-level data on girls’ vigorous pursuit of education, the authors argue that the changing conditions of rural girls’ lives and their education can best be understood from a critical empowerment perspective. Summarizing the global discourse and cross national evidence on the benefits of girls’ education, the chapter and looks beyond a utilitarian perspective and argues for the cogency of a critical empowerment framework. Filled with telling stories and case studies of Han Chinese, Tibetan, and Muslim girls, this chapter proposes that prioritizing girls’ education in Western China is crucial and required for achieving the MDG of gender parity. Even though girls are often stranded by family financial conditions, their actions and ideas seeing education as their future reflect a changing gender identity and role in the family and society. The fieldwork suggests that educating girls promotes localized development, reduces dangerous levels of economic gaps and social instability, but also advances hard to measure effects: personal and civil empowerment, and sustainable, harmonious cultural change – as well as MDG.

This chapter provides research results from a study of contemporary leadership approaches (i.e., paternalistic, charismatic, transformational, aesthetic, authentic, and pragmatic leadership) in eight Chinese organizations. Data were collected from case studies in four private-owned enterprises (POEs) and four state-owned enterprises (SOEs) through both interviews and questionnaires. The main purpose of this chapter is to provide contextual analysis of these findings by applying the concept of field from Bourdieu's sociology. This research contributes to the leadership literature by generalizing Western leadership theories to the Chinese context as well as by giving an insight into contemporary leadership approaches in modern Chinese business by deeply contextualizing these leadership behaviors.

This study re-evaluates the criteria in the choice of exchange partners from the buyer’s and seller’s perspective within the context of inclusive tour production and reveals priorities to such criteria among the business actors, providing theoretical frameworks for a wider understanding of the criteria within a tourism context. The study is based on a study of cooperative relationships between European tour operators and Norwegian sub-suppliers. It deploys a qualitative research approach (personal interviews) inspired by grounded theory. The resultant data present critical three consideration embracing (1) market capacity (its ability to acquire customers), (2) purchase price and the attaching conditions and (3) confidence/reliability as criteria of selecting the exchange partners. Lastly nine future agendas are suggested in a bid to theory development.