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In April 2007, Banco Compartamos of Mexico held a public offering of its stock in which insiders sold 30 percent of their holdings. The sale was over-subscribed by 13 times, and Compartamos was soon worth $1.6 billion (for details of the story, see Rosenberg, 2007; Malkin, 2008; Accion International, 2007). A month before the offering, the Economist (2007) had written: “Compartamos may not be the biggest bank in Mexico, but it could be the most important.” Compartamos’ claim to importance stems from its clients – not from their elite status, but from the opposite. The bank describes them as low-income women, taking loans to support tiny enterprises like neighborhood shops or tortilla-making businesses. The loans the women seek are small – typically hundreds of dollars rather than many thousands – and the bank requires no collateral. It is a version of “microfinance,” the idea associated with Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, winners of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. For Yunus, microfinance can unleash the productivity of cash-starved entrepreneurs and raise their incomes above poverty lines. It is a vision of poverty reduction that centers on self-help rather than direct income redistribution.

Julie Abrams, President, Microfinance Analytics, has been a consultant to the microfinance industry for 15 years. She has authored or co-authored 16 publications on microfinance topics including international financial institution funding, foreign investment, MFI debt default, foreign exchange risk, an e-course on financial risk management, capital structure, profitability, financial performance, and MFI appraisals. Julie has been on the review panel and jury for CGAP's Financial Transparency Awards. She currently serves as an advisor for Research and Analysis to the International Association of Microfinance Investors (IAMFI) and is a member of the Calvert Foundation's External International Investment Committee, including reviews of MicroPlace and all syndicated lending. She began working in microfinance in 1985 with Women's World Banking. Julie was a fellow at the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies, where she earned an MBA from the Wharton School and an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and holds a BA in Economics from Oberlin College.

The microfinance industry (MFI) has crossed the threshold into a period of tremendous growth. This growth was significantly accelerated by media attention to the industry during the United Nations Year of Microcredit in 2005 and the awarding of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize to Grameen Bank founder Mohammed Yunus, as well as the interest of high-profile donors and investors, including eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Despite the promise for international development, despite the proven track record of exceptional loan repayment rates, and despite the development of competitive markets in countries like Bolivia, Peru and Bangladesh or the global expansion of microfinance access to tens of millions of new clients, little research has explored the impact this expansion has had on global poverty and economic and social development, in general.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

Rural farmers’ access to farm credit in Nigeria has been very low, which affects farm performance, and credit providers have blamed for the problem in the sector. While this general perception persists the fact may be the case of credit demand, rather than just the risk-averse attitudes of credit providers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate significant factors influencing farmers’ credit demand to ensure efficient credit provision.

The research adopted mixed methods for an in-depth investigation into the problem. There were 216 research participants split into equal halves of men and women from six local government areas of Nasarawa State. Data collection methods employed structured interviews, focus group discussions, close/open-ended and key informant interviews. Analytical tools involved descriptive statistics, the logit and multinomial logit models to determine participants’ socio-economic characteristics, sources of credit, access, factors influencing credit demand generally and from the various sources of credit identified.

Findings reveal only 47.6 per cent of the participants accessed credit, with fewer women accessing than men. The most accessed forms of credit are from the semi-formal sources, with more men accessing from formal sources and more women from non-formal sources. Factors having significant influence on credit demand generally are education, group membership and household size. And from formal, semi-formal and non-formal credit sources are education, information on sources of credit, deposits, household size and marital status; education, deposits, group membership, household size, flock size; and education, group membership, and gender from the non-formal credit providers, respectively.

Due to time constraint, this study data were collected concurrently with both quantitative and qualitative methods and did not allow for the interrogation of findings from one method with the other. In addition, the research categorised the agency of women based on marital status only as single or married and did not interrogate the agency of women further, this may be a limitation as some of the female participants are from polygamous homes.

Unlike the current concentration of Nigerian research of this kind with quantitative methods alone, this research contributes particularly to Nigerian research output and experience by triangulating both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore farmers sources of credit, access and factors determining access to credit in the study area.

Winston Churchill once wrote: ‘It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.’ An educated man would, no doubt, remember that passage from his reading of Churchill's My early life. I culled it from a dictionary of quotations.

A Joint Committee representing both Houses of Parliament, on July 4th, considered, under the chairmanship of Lord Muir‐Mackenzie, the Food and Drugs (Adulteration) Bill, which embodies in consolidated form the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts. The Bill is the first consolidation of these Acts, which date from 1875. Sir Frederick Liddell, Parliamentary counsel, who was accompanied by Mr. J. N. Beckett, of the Ministry of Health, was examined. He said the language of the sections had been harmonised. It was pointed out by members of the Committee that several things were not included in the consolidating Bill. The Chairman said it was a matter for consideration whether it was not for the Minister to say what were the limits of the proposed consolidations. The Minister was entitled to bring in whatever Bill he thought he would. The witness said he thought the Minister would accept the views of the Committee. Sir Henry Slesser, K.C., said, if there was any difficulty about these things, he would rather have the Bill in its present form. It was pointed out that the matters dealt with in a consolidated form did not include, for instance, horseflesh.—The Chairman said there was an unfortunate ambiguity in some of the old Acts. One or two of these matters were left alone for fear of introducing further ambiguity as to intention when they were being considered by the Courts. “Butter fat” and “milk fat” were considered the same thing, so the Committee adopted the phrase “Butter fat derived from milk.” Bread, tea, coffee, chicory, as well as horseflesh, are not mentioned specifically in the Bill, as these were left over for further consideration. It was suggested that all obsolete statutes should be included in a separate clause of the Bill. It was decided to obtain the views of the Minister on this and other points. Provisions are included in the Bill placing restrictions on mixing food and drugs with other ingredients, and giving protection from liability where articles are properly labelled, and there are restrictions on the importation of agricultural and other produce. One of the schedules makes special provisions as to milk. It is laid down that where a sample of milk is procured from a purveyor of milk, he shall, on being required to do so by the person by whom the sample is taken, state the name and address of the seller or consignor from whom he received the milk.

Purpose – This chapter considers the social politics of H5N1 (“avian influenza”), the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, and the response to it within the context of the history of pandemic influenzas and the continuing need for robust preventative public health systems more generally. In particular, the author considers how the borders between nations, species, and individuals are thrown into relief and called into question by influenza outbreaks and their management.

Methodology/approach – This work relies on literature review, media research, and critical and interpretative sociological methods.

Findings – While panic surrounding new and potentially highly virulent influenza strains is reasonable, such panic is not sustainable and belies the fact that every year presents the danger of a pandemic. This chapter argues that, if public health systems only respond to immediate panic and fail to consider how quickly airborne diseases can cross all sorts of borders, they do not attend to the real need for far-seeing, long-term, internationally collaborative disease prevention and disaster preparedness.

Contribution to the field – The author offers a critical and wellness- and prevention-oriented perspective on what priorities should be emphasized in the rapidly growing fields of disaster studies and disaster preparedness, which, by their nature, tend to be crisis oriented and focused on the micro-term, with planning done on a case-by-case basis. Such a narrow focus can render preventative health systems inflexible and unable to rise to the challenge of a disease that can spread easily through casual contact.

Most past research on formal mentoring has investigated its antecedents, outcomes and benefits with little attention given to what goes on inside the dyadic relationship. The purpose of this paper is to explore the types of mentor and mentee behaviours that are perceived as critical factors contributing to either a positive or negative mentoring experience for the mentee and the mentor.

Concrete examples of “effective” and “ineffective” mentor and mentee behaviour were collected from the research participants using Flanagan's Critical Incident Technique (CIT). The obtained CIT data were analyzed using forms of open and axial coding. Variants of content analysis were then used for conducting a series of subsequent comparative analyses.

From a total of 187 coded critical incidents the study identified 11 positive and four negative behavioural criteria of mentoring effectiveness as perceived from the mentee perspective, and nine positive and three negative behavioural criteria of mentoring effectiveness as perceived from the mentor perspective. Comparisons against “theoretical” and “best practice” models and taxonomies of positive and negative mentoring reveal varying degrees of overlap and commonality.

There are two main limitations. First, the number of research participants was at the bottom end of the typical sample range for qualitative research, which means the collection of critical incidents did not reach the point of data saturation. Second, the study explored the “start‐up” and “ongoing” phases of the mentoring lifecycle but not the “end” phase.

The findings provide new insights into mentor and mentee behavioural effectiveness within formal mentoring relationships, and thereby add to a sparse empirical knowledge base in this substantially neglected area of mentoring research. Also, they provide a foundation against which to compare and contrast future empirical research that may be conducted on perceived effective and ineffective mentor and mentee behaviours within formal mentoring relationships.