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The purpose of this paper is to discuss policy-relevant findings regarding strategies for mainstreaming gender in achieving sustainable post-disaster reconstruction (PDR).

An exploratory case study was used to explore the implementation of gender mainstreaming strategies and the link to sustainable PDR. The Bantul and Sleman regencies of Yogyakarta province provide a unique site for researching PDR as they are located in a region that is more strongly affected by earthquakes than nearly any other in Indonesia. Data were collected through interviews with 17 key stakeholders and 26 beneficiaries who were involved during and after the earthquake. To support the interview findings, surveys involving 50 policy makers and 150 beneficiaries were conducted. Content analysis and t-statistics were used in analyzing the data.

Gender mainstreaming strategies within sustainable reconstruction should incorporate strategies for protecting against gender vulnerabilities and for promoting gender capacities. Both are fundamental to the achievement of sustainable PDR.

The paper establishes comprehensive strategies for mainstreaming gender under three pillars (i.e. economic, social and environmental) of sustainable development. The findings benefit relevant policy makers by improving the policy performance of gender mainstreaming in the affected communities in enhancing sustainable PDR.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the role of housing reconstruction projects in post conflict and post tsunami Sri Lanka, and to discuss their implications on conflict prevention.

Using four housing reconstruction projects in Batticaloa, Kilinochchi and Jaffna Districts, Sri Lanka, as case studies, and a novel methodological framework, the study explores the causal relations among the independent variables associated with housing reconstruction and dependent variables related to conflict prevention. The data, gathered from interviews and project reports, were analysed using propositions from a literature review, adopting a thematic analytical approach.

This study finds that reconstruction has created new forms of conflicts and tensions for the people who came to live in the newly constructed houses. The hostile relations that existed among different ethnic groups during the conflict were continued, and to some extent, exacerbated by the reconstruction undertaken after the war.

The study identifies causal relations among the independent variables associated with housing reconstruction and dependent variables related to conflict prevention, which can be used to inform physical reconstruction programmes after conflict.

The research presents a novel methodological framework. The results reveal concerns in housing and infrastructure development that have implications for future research and practice in post conflict environments.

We consider what happened in the initial reconstruction interventions following the 6 April 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila (Italy). Using the disaster risk reduction and resilience paradigm, we discuss the cognitive and interactional failures of top-down approaches, and we analyse the main constraints to enacting inclusive social learning and socially-sustainable transformation and building back better more resilient communities in post-disaster reconstruction.

Our evidence comes from participant observation, action anthropology and analytic auto-ethnography conducted during the reconstruction phase following the L'Aquila earthquake. Findings were triangulated with document analysis, media analysis and retrospective interviewing conducted in 2013 and 2017.

The shift from civil defence to civil protection did not bring any advance in disaster management and development practice in terms of DRR and resilience. The militaristic command-and-control approach, which is still in vogue among civil protection systems, means that local political leaders become the civil protection authorities in a disaster area. As in the L'Aquila case, this exacerbates local social and environmental risks and impacts, inhibits local communities from learning and restricts them from participating in post-disaster interventions.

Most previous commentary on disaster recovery and reconstruction following the L'Aquila earthquake has focussed on the top-down approach carried out by the national government and the Italian Department of Civil Protection (DCP). This paper is unique in that it sheds light on how the command-and-control approach was also implemented by local authority figures and on how this undermined building back better more resilient communities.

This study examines fisheries affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 to explore how the collectivism appears during the recovery process.

The author questions the context of collaboration after the disaster among independent small-scale fishers in Miyagi by conducting semistructured interviews with more than 50 local fishers with anthropological observations of boat fishing operations and using local documents and statistics.

The corresponding collaboration among the fishers after the disaster is not a mere “disaster utopia,” but is embedded in the socioecological context of fishing. Fishers have developed individual and group fishing. They have institutionalized competitive distribution for sedentary fish with low resource fluctuation, while outcome-equal distribution is adopted for migratory fish with high resource fluctuation. This forms a fishing continuum that connects competitive individualism with collectivism in the community, which has contributed to resilience for disaster recovery.

The balance between individualism and collectivism is decisively coordinated in socioecological contexts. The multifaceted resource strategy for maritime biodiversity that features family-based occupational differentiation in a community is crucial for disaster recovery of small-scale fishers.

The impact of disasters caused by natural hazards on people in affected communities is mediated by a whole range of circumstances such as the intensity of the disaster, type and nature of the community affected and the nature of loss and displacement. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the need to adopt a holistic or integrated approach to assessment of the process of disaster recovery, and to develop a multidimensional assessment framework.

The study is designed as a novel qualitative assessment of the recovery process using qualitative data collection techniques from a sample of communities affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami in Eastern and Southern Sri Lanka.

The outcomes of the interventions have varied widely depending on such factors as the nature of the community, the nature of the intervention and the mode of delivery for donor support. The surveyed communities are ranked in terms of the nature and extent of recovery.

The indices of recovery developed constitute a convenient tool of measurement of effectiveness and limitations of external interventions. The assessment used is multidimensional and socially inclusive.

The approach adopted is new to post-disaster recovery assessments and is useful for monitoring and evaluation of recovery processes. It also fits into the social accountability model as the assessment is based on community experience with the recovery process.

This paper examines the comparative corporate performance of logistics companies in Korea, China and Japan. Based on the annual data from the listed companies, the growth rate of Chinese companies has surpassed that of Korean and Japanese companies and has labeled China as the fastest growing economy. How ever, labor efficiency of Chinese firms when calculated by total revenue per employee is the lowest of the three countries. In addition, the profitability of Chinese multimodal logistics companies and sea transport companies is also lower than that of Korea and Japan.

Using Data Envelop Analysis(DEA), the primary results regarding corporate efficiency among Korean, Chinese and Japanese logistic companies are as follows: In the multimodal industries, Japanese firms have revealed the highest level of efficiency, with Korean firms coming in second, and Chinese firms ranking third with distinctly inferior performance. This trend has also been examined in the maritime industries, in which the efficiency levels have been deteriorating continuously. However, in the air transportation industry Chinese companies revealed the highest level of efficiency, which resulted from the business characteristics of the government supported conglomerate companies.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence-based policy recommendations for improving the implementation of universal service funds (USF) with a view to closing the digital divide in Africa.

The paper adopts a qualitative approach that draws examples from various African countries supported by 25 interviews from key stakeholders with hands-on experience and roles that shape telecommunications policy in Africa and other developing countries.

The study's findings point out that institutional voids which characterize several African countries inhibit the effectiveness of USF in African countries. The authors identify several institutional and organisational factors and explain how they negatively affect the performance of USF. The authors find that in order to overcome these obstacles, there is a need for a clear redefinition of Universal Access and Service (UAS) policies, restructuring the governance of USF, encouraging cross-sectoral collaborations, and bottom-up initiatives to bridge the digital divide in African countries.

The paper contributes to the underexplored USF literature by shedding light on the role of institutional factors in determining the success of USF. The paper thus complements and provides a different perspective on promoting digital inclusion in Africa from the viewpoint of institutional voids, bringing new insights into the existing literature on how to deal with an intractable area of UAS policy and the wider digital divide debate in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how public/private hybrid and ambiguous organizations played pivotal roles in a governmental programme of housing reconstruction following a major earthquake in central Italy in 2009. Venturing beyond the boundaries of institutional isomorphism and using a Foucauldian approach, the longitudinal analysis seeks to illuminate accounting and performance challenges and provide insights to the calculative techniques associated with evacuee housing.

In “act 1” this paper investigates the role of a consortium created during the recovery stage of the disaster to construct temporary housing. In “act 2” attention shifts to consortia established for the reconstruction of buildings in devastated communities. The total observation period is 11 years. 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 key-actors. A broad range of official documents was also consulted.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake a comprehensive reporting system was established to facilitate the construction of 19 new towns for 15,000 evacuees. The mix of accountants, engineers and architects who developed the system and a building prototype evidences the assembly of diverse calculative techniques by different experts and the de-territorialization of subject disciplines. During reconstruction technologies of government included the introduction of standardised systems and vocabularies that homogenised administrative procedures among diverse experts.

This paper provides academics and policymakers with insights to accounting, performance management and accountability in hybrid organizations in the largely unexplored realm of post-disaster evacuee housing. Further studies are needed to examine the politics of calculation in similar contexts.

This paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring the role played by individual experts working for hybrid organizations. Further, by exploring actual practices over an extended period of post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, the study highlights how experts intervened to solve problems at the meso-political level and at the micro-organizational level.

Housing interventions carried out in accordance with current regulations in the Old City of Aleppo, both before and after the Syrian war, are minor in comparison to those carried out without a license and illegally. This suggests current policies are inadequate and needs upgrading.

This article critically reviews current Syrian policies and their implementation on residential heritage in the Old City of Aleppo with the aim to identify gaps and propose directions for modifications. Next to a review of the text of official policies and implementation documents, the archive of the Directorate of the Old City has been consulted and license applications, presented in the period 2018–2022, have been examined. Moreover, interviews with decision-makers from academics and practice were conducted.

Major limitations of these policies and relative application procedures have been identified: these involve: legal/administrative, economic and social aspects.

The specific needs have been highlighted and some proposals for improvement made.

This paper aims to examine the effect of dividend regulation on cost stickiness (i.e. the asymmetric change in firm expense between sales increase and sales decrease) and explore the underlying mechanism.

Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the Guideline for Dividend Policy of Listed Companies issued by the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) in 2013, the authors employ a difference-in-difference model to investigate the impact of dividend regulation on cost stickiness.

The authors find that the cost stickiness of treatment group firms has decreased significantly when compared with control group firms after the dividend regulation. Moreover, this effect is more pronounced among firms in lower marketization regions, in lower competition industries and those with less analyst coverage and lower cash flow levels. Further analyses show that dividend regulation reduces the cost stickiness of firms by mitigating agency problems. Finally, the conclusion holds after several robust tests, including controlling for firm fixed effect, propensity score matching (PSM), placebo test and reconstruction of expense variable.

This paper confirms that dividend regulation serves an important role in corporate governance, which reduces firms' agency costs and thereby decreases cost stickiness. The conclusions shed light on the dividend policies of listed companies and capital market regulation in the future.