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When and how did modern rankings emerge? This paper aims to answer that question by taking a closer look at the history of American baseball. In the 1870s, baseball was the first team sport to introduce a competitive system, the league, that determined the champion based on teams’ overall number of wins and losses. The in-depth analysis of the baseball discourse from the 1850s to the 1870s shows that leagues were introduced as a solution to a specific problem: how to identify deserving champions that had proved their ability again and again over the course of a season. The rising awareness of this problem was due to a shift in the baseball discourse of the 1860s, which established a new, statistical understanding of athletic achievement that demanded consistency of performance together with an acceptance that even champions lose a game once in a while. Rankings and other statistics, based on constant scoring of individual plays and increasingly sophisticated methods, helped institutionalize this new understanding of achievement and, in so doing, made the introduction of the league system possible. Moreover, the league system proved to be dependent on rankings – in the form of league tables – that made it possible to observe and experience the championship race, making rankings an essential element of modern competitive sports. Given that today’s rankings apply similar ideas of achievement to other fields (e.g., the “excellence” of universities), the story draws attention to the history of a specific imaginary of achievement that transcends the field of sports and should be studied more widely to understand the institutionalization of rankings in other fields.

This chapter presents a discussion and an analysis of the literature on nationalization of international business. National governments have justified the expropriation and nationalization of the operations of foreign multinational in their jurisdiction based on the social responsibilities as welfare providers, and safeguarding the short- and long-term interest of their citizens.

There are multiple studies that show the processes and impacts of nationalizations and privatizations (also called denationalizations) worldwide. This chapter analyses specific cases to the light of existing international business literature and proposes prepositions for future studies.

This chapter presents an analysis where theories of internationalization could be used to analyze specific advantages of States and domestic investors when assuming ownership of operations of international business in their national territory.

The context, processes, and consequences of nationalization of foreign firms historically, economically, and politically have generally a correlation either with political changes, and macroeconomic scenarios related to scarcity and uncertainty in the international market of extractive industries, or with nationalistic political views in national governments.

This conceptual chapter explores the role of embodiment in phenomenological experience of lived time, and the implications it may hold for studying consumption.

Conceptual chapter.

We argue that though consumer research scholars have become increasingly cognizant of the embodied foundation of temporal experience, the relation between embodied experience of time and consumption activity still remains under-theorized and researched. Through a phenomenological perspective we are able to understand the consumer as temporally directed toward the world where value is realized emergently through embodiment of affordances.

We build an existing work in consumer research to open up a possibility for a phenomenological experience of consumption that is, to a great extent, precognitive, temporal, and based on the ability to experience lived time.

Purpose – Dairy has been the backbone of agriculture in regional Norway, and the processing of milk has been dominated by co-operatives owned by milk farmers. During the social democratic order (1945–1979), productivist agriculture thrived, while a more multifunctional agriculture was developed after 1980. As a measure against overproduction, a quota system was introduced in 1983. The purpose of this study is to see if there are signs of a neo-productivism revival after climate change and other global shocks, like the food crisis, featured prominently on the political agenda.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter reviews the radical structural changes in Norwegian dairy production since the early 1960s, which reduced the number of milk farms radically from 148,000 in 1959 to almost 16,000 in 2009. According to the Agricultural Agreement between the Norwegian government and the farmers' organisations, the co-operatives are given an important semi-public role as market-price regulators and stock keepers. This Norwegian system may be described as a classical regulated dairy regime. The Norwegian dairy regime has been through several deregulations and re-regulations over the last 20 years, partly forced by internal pressures and partly inspired by liberalisation tendencies abroad.

Findings – After mid-1990s, there has been an increase in the number of joint dairy farms, where individual ownership of land is maintained while herds, buildings and machinery are merged. Three thousand six hundred thirty dairy farmers are now participating in 1,510 joint farming firms, producing 29 per cent of the milk in Norway. This rapid growth of joint farming is transforming the dairy sector in Norway. Analysis has shown that its evolution is closely tied to farmer socio-economic demands, including social benefits, such as increased leisure time, and security during illness. While there has been pressure to increase productivity, the food crisis changed attitudes, making the current policy of import tariffs and subsidies easier to defend.

Originality/value – This chapter shows that neo-liberalism in Norway was not pursued as far as in most other OECD countries, although some deregulation was taking place. Norwegian agricultural policies are still regulating the sector to a substantial degree, with the annual Agricultural Agreement negotiations serving as a centrepiece. Norway has ambitious climate goals, and by 2020 greenhouse gases emissions should be reduced to 30 per cent of the 1990 rate. A further goal is that Norway will be carbon neutral by 2030. As part of the implementation of its climate policy, a White Paper on agriculture and climate change was put forward in May 2009. For Norwegian food production as a whole, a change towards more grazing at the expense of crops would improve carbon storage and reduce the overall use of fertiliser. Such a shift in land use would benefit the dairy sector, in part because of easier access to domestically grown cow feed.