Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of the rural revitalization strategy, from the perspective of the fundamental functions that should be served by China’s rural areas in the implementation of this strategy.

Theoretical and comparative analyses of the functional relationship between China’s rural development and urban development, between China’s agricultural development and industrialization and that between China’s traditional culture and rural development today are conducted to identify the fundamental functions that should be performed well by China’s rural areas in the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy.

Three fundamental functions of China’s rural areas are identified: first, the function of ensuring national food security and the supply of important agricultural products; second, the function of providing effective ecological barriers, a good eco-environment and high-quality ecological products; third, the function of inheriting the extraordinary traditional Chinese culture.

This paper is the first to systematically summarize the fundamental functions China’s rural areas should perform during the process of rural revitalization.

The purpose of this paper is to gain more insight into the relationship between off‐farm employment of rural households and water‐saving investments and irrigation water use in rural China.

Data from a survey held among 317 households in Minle County, Zhangye City, Gansu Province, covering the year 2007, are used for a probit analysis explaining investments in land leveling and for an ordinary least squares regression explaining irrigation water use per mu.

Off‐farm employment is not significantly related to investments in land leveling, but is negatively associated with water use per mu. In addition, the paper finds that the share of migrant students in a household is positively related to investments in land leveling. The results indicate the presence of major factor market imperfections in the research area, and confirm that the new economics of labor migration (NELM) approach is more relevant for analyzing off‐farm employment and agricultural production in China than neoclassical economic theory.

The paper expands the NELM approach towards the analysis of water‐saving investments and water use. In addition, it distinguishes migrant students as an important category that should be taken into account in analyzing farm household decisions making.

This paper aims to explore the mediating effect of organizational support for innovation and moderating impact of supervisory support on how rewards shape employee creativity among rural healthcare employees, a group with few resources and considerable expectations.

Using a regression-based moderated path analysis, the authors tested the hypotheses with healthcare employee survey data from a large Southern rural hospital in the USA.

The empirical results suggest organizational support for innovation mediates the influence of rewards on employee creativity. In addition, the indirect effect of rewards on employee creativity via organizational support for innovation is moderated by supervisory support, such that the indirect effect is more pronounced at high levels of supervisory support than at low levels of supervisory support.

This study contributes to the organizational support and creativity literature by exploring the indirect relations of rewards on employee creativity through organizational support for innovation, and the moderating role of supervisory support in such relations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, if, similar to other management initiatives, new public management may be a repackaging of already existent concepts. Emerging in the 1970s and 1980s as an innovative way to manage public sector elements, new public management affected both the ownership and management of public sector companies, services and utilities. Minimal research has been undertaken previously, using historic archival sources of public entities, to explore if elements of the concept originated prior to the 1970s.

This research draws on archival records from a publicly owned electricity company, covering about three decades from 1946, during which a large investment project was undertaken by the company. This study draws on key tenets of what is today called new public management, examining prior research to ascertain if similar elements were present in the case organisation.

When reviewing the progress of the investment project, many of the key elements of new public management emerged, even during the early part of the project.

There is little historical research on the origins of new public management, and the findings here suggest that it may not be entirely new. While this does not at all invalidate existing research, it suggests that new public management may be to an extent a repackaging of previously extant techniques. This opens up possibilities for future historic research in terms of how and why it was repackaged, and also what was/was not repackaged.

The Sertão, located in the Northeastern region of Brazil, is the most populous semi-arid region in the world. The region also faces the highest rates of poverty, food insecurity and climate risks in this country. Basic economic activities, such as extensive livestock and dairy farming, tend to be mainly affected by the increasing temperatures and recurrent droughts taking place in the past decades. This paper aims to analyze farmers’ responses to climatic variability in the Sertão.

Analyses are based on farm-level data of the Agricultural Census 2006 and on historical climate data gathered by meteorological stations. The climate impacts and the effectiveness of adaptive strategies are compared between three groups of farms, which discriminate different levels of social and environmental vulnerability. Four production functions are modeled (milk, cattle, goat and sheep) accounting for sample selectivity bias.

In response to increasing temperatures, farmers tend to shift their activities mainly to cattle and dairy farming. But the overall productivity tends to reduce with the recurrence of droughts. Decreasing precipitation affects mainly the production of milk of smallholder family farmers and the cattle herd of non-family farmers.

Analyses do not account for short- and medium-run productive impacts of extreme droughts, which usually have devastating socioeconomic effects in the region.

Smallholder family farmers are the most vulnerable group who deserve more social and technical intervention, as they lack basic social and technological resources that can greatly improve their productivities and overcome the impacts of decreasing precipitation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical, cultural, and social significance and the role in landscapes of Lithuanian villages with churches and to formulate the hypothetical framework for their revitalization and consequent sustainable development of country's rural landscape.

The methodology of the research encompassed the desktop study (analysis of literature, archival data, maps, and statistical data) and the analyses on site (observation, measurements, and recording in photographs of buildings and urban structures).

The findings of the research include the analysis of the historical development of country's rural settlements with the religious function, formulation of the notion of the contemporary village with church, identification of the contemporary network of country's villages with churches and analysis of their current socioeconomic and sociocultural situation and the role in rural landscape. The results of the analyses were used formulating the hypothetical framework for the revitalization of the villages with churches and the sustainable development of the rural landscape.

The analysis of literature demonstrated that Lithuanian villages with churches and their significance for the sustainable development of country's rural landscape are paradoxically neglected subjects. Meanwhile, the foreign experience has demonstrated that historic rural settlements, including the settlements with the religious function, are important not only as separate cultural assets but also can play an important role in the identity, viability, and the sustainable development of rural landscapes. Thus the findings of the research demonstrating the peculiarities and potential of Lithuanian villages with churches can be used in the fields of heritage preservation, landscape management, and rural development.

The purpose of this research is to identify some determinants of rural‐urban disparity in the implementation of decentralised educational management programmes in Nigeria.

The study examines how political leadership's disposition to decentralised educational management, allocation of funds and physical facilities established for decentralised educational management programmes differ in rural, suburban and urban communitites of Nigeria. Employing a survey design, the study uses national survey data on educational statistics and planning of the Federal Ministry of Statistics, in addition to the administration of questionnaires to 200 key stakeholders in educational management. Sampled groups included political leaders, policy makers in educational administration, traditional rulers, women leaders, leaders of different unions and the youths.

Data collected were analysed using comparative means and findings show that several facts are responsible for the reported disparity between rural, suburban and urban communities in the implementation of educational decentralization programmes. These factors ranged from inequitable distribution of physical facilities, to poor leadership disposition, to decentralised educational management functions.

The implication of the findings from this study is that in spite of the rhetorics of universalisation of educational developments, national policies and attitude towards implementation of decentralised management reform programmes is still low, particularly in rural and suburban communities.

Hopefully, findings from this study would provide practical solutions to existing disparity between rural, suburban and urban communities in the implementation of educational decentralization programmes in Nigeria, since some of the impending factors for current disparity have been identified in this study.

With the urbanization development in China, natural ecological environment and ecological environments in rural areas have been affected. Therefore, the characteristics and classification of rural greenway were analyzed on the basis of eco economic model theory, the resources of ecological, cultural, recreational and industrial greenway planning were evaluated, and the structure characteristics of rural greenway network are analyzed. A mathematical model of space superposition analysis is constructed. Taking SunYea town of Feixian county in Shandong as the object, starting from the green road network space, greenway system, service facilities, transfer system and identification system and other aspects, the construction of the rural greenway was carefully planned. Practice has proved that rural greenway planning research has improved the scientific nature of the allocation of resources, and has a certain exemplary role for the construction of rural greenway network in similar areas.

This paper aims to analyze the status of infrastructure, workforce and basic amenities at public health-care facilities in rural India and draw a comparison with its urban counterparts.

Rural Health Statistics data and National Sample Survey Office Report for the period 2019–10 were used to analyze lower-level public health facilities, namely, subcenters, primary health centers and community health centers (CHCs). Selected tracer indicators under World Health Organization’s (WHO) Service Availability and Readiness Assessment (SARA) mechanism such as health center density, core health workforce density and basic amenities were used to carry out the analysis. The extent of facility coverage was measured using the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) guidelines and the proportion of facilities satisfying the Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) was measured to assess the service provision quality in rural public health-care facilities.

Results indicated that the density of public health centers is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. Almost all public health-care facilities lack basic amenities in rural areas. Working positions for health specialists in CHCs barely meet the total requirement. Almost all of the public health facilities functioning in rural areas do not meet the IPHS norms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present paper is the first initiative to assess the status of rural public health-care facilities on the national level using WHO’s SARA indicators as well as NRHM and IPHS guidelines. The study is significant in terms of policy input for achieving universal health coverage in India.

Rural resilience plays an important role in maintaining rural stability and people's living standards in the face of risks and unexpected challenges. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the concept and mechanism of rural resilience and discuss how rural resilience is measured and to propose ways to improve rural resilience.

Literature review of the theoretical interpretations and empirical studies of rural resilience are conducted in the paper.

Resilience acts in the process as rural communities respond to risks and disturbances so as to maintain system stability and minimize the loss. Rural resilience consists of the capacity of resistance, adaptation and transformation. Promoting multifunctional transformation, exercising bottom-up planning and enhancing social capital are proposed to improve rural resilience.

The study of the paper makes comprehensive review of rural resilience in the context of rural interaction with the changing external environment. The study contributes to the understanding of rural evolution and helps to initiate feasible ways to achieve rural revival.