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Drawing upon research on the initiatives of Canadian mining companies, this paper examines private efforts in the mining sector to promote acceptable standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper asks how important emerging global CSR norms have been in influencing the adoption of CSR policies. Sustainable development is a universally accepted principle of environmental protection, and serves as an important indicator of the influence of global CSR norms on mining companies. Most mining companies have embraced the concept of sustainable development to frame their CSR policies. Emerging global CSR norms have thereby set the macro‐level context in which CSR policies have been adopted and evolved at the micro level.

The purpose of this paper is to explore one broad question: what do information, information processes, information services, as well as information systems and technology have to do with the spiritual?

The task is accomplished by conducting a literature review of 31 refereed texts in information studies. The paper proceeds by inspecting the manifestation of spirituality in information sources, generic information processes, as well as specific information processes: conceptualizing, seeking, processing, using, storing, describing and providing information.

A total of 11 relationships between information phenomena and the spiritual are discovered. Based on these, a definition of spiritual information is put forth. There are also some descriptive statistics on the corpus as a whole.

The results are susceptible to limitations imposed by the reviewed studies themselves. Errors of interpretation were a possibility. The article suggests many directions for further research in the context of the spiritual, and discusses how to view spirituality in information science.

Practical implications are only mentioned here and there, because research implications are of primary concern in the investigation.

This paper is the first to synthesize information research in the spiritual domain. Beyond the subject area, the article demonstrates how to classify information processes, and conduct a context‐centric literature review in the field of information studies.

The “Battle in Seattle” has been credited with giving birth to a new, more radical phase in transnational social movement organizing; yet evidence suggests it may be misleading to speak of “global” social movements. In Seattle in 1999, the contribution of transnational movement organizations was quite modest compared with that of conventional, nationally based interest groups that focused on local resource mobilization and ideational preparation. This suggests that the basis of the new “global” social movements may be the well-established process of resource mobilization by which organized interest groups provide support for local activist communities.

Development has always been a global project. Since its inception, the construction of the development industry has been a project of ‘first’ and ‘third’ worlds, the ‘developed’ and the ‘under-developed’, the ‘north’ and the ‘south’ – one defined against the other. As Crush (1995, p. 5) states, “this industry is itself implicated in the operation of networks of power and domination that, in the twentieth century, have come to encompass the entire globe”. As development is a global project, it is necessary for us to think about the ways in which development actors, structures and dynamics operate at a global level. One of the more remarkable aspects of the development industry is the rise of networks in general, and of transnational advocacy networks (TANs) in particular. Networks have altered the development industry landscape, with development agencies and organisations utilising the network form.

This chapter reviews the extent of influence new regionalism has had on the development of the education sector in South Asia. The history of South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) development, and its regional state-supported initiative, the South Asian University, reflect a multitude of local challenges to effective regionalization for cross-national educational development. The chapter describes and distinguishes the various forms of regional efforts for cooperation and integration among government actors, nongovernmental organizations, and local activist groups and forums, to chart certain key regional efforts to consolidate intraregionalism as well as establish interregional relations of educational development and policy with countries of sub-Saharan African region. It utilizes the transnational advocacy networks framework to understand and interpret diverse manifestations of interregional cooperation between nonstate partners in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper aims to investigate the moderating role of top management team (TMT) longevity on the TMT diversity‐firm performance relationship.

The paper presents results from a quantitative longitudinal study of 59 TMTs in German companies in different industries.

For age diversity, dominant educational background diversity, and diversity in dominant industry experience, the curvilinear moderating effect of TMT longevity on the TMT diversity–firm performance relationship is confirmed. However, for organizational tenure diversity, the form of the moderating effect is contrary to expectations (being u‐shaped).

In line with previous studies, the results were sensitive to the performance measures in use. Furthermore, the results should not be generalized since they may be sensitive to the sector under study and the small sample size.

First, a curvilinear moderating effect of TMT longevity on the TMT diversity‐firm performance relationship is investigated for the first time. Second, although the selected diversity dimensions have been investigated in previous TMT studies, they are examined simultaneously for the first time. Third, this study analyzes TMTs of large and medium‐sized German corporations operating in a variety of sectors. Fourth, relating demographic data on TMTs collected in 2004 to performance data for the years 2004 to 2007, the present paper presents one of the few longitudinal studies in the context of TMT diversity.

This study examines the moderating effect of international involvement on the relationship between two dimensions of managerial tenure and firm performance. Data for 89 Fortune 500 firms of varying levels of international involvement were gathered and analyzed. The results of the empirical examination provided significant support for the moderating effect of internationalization on the relationship between top management team tenure and firm performance. In general, in firms with relatively higher levels of foreign involvement, teams with higher organizational tenure and lower job tenure realized superior performance outcomes.

As the US-China conflict intensifies, the United States is pursuing a ‘decoupling’ strategy to build a new world trade order, arguing that the current World Trade Organization (WTO) system does not properly regulate China's non-market economic system. The WTO provides special and differentiated treatment (S&DT) for developing countries. The United States argues that China should give up its developing country (DC) status. Sufficient research on the DC status and S&DT has not been conducted as a means of resolving the US-China conflict. Decoupling means the collapse of the global supply chain (GSC), which will bring substantial shock to the global economy and a catastrophe for China. This paper examines the re-classification of DC status and S&DT in the context of US-China conflict and seeks an approach for China to avoid decoupling and coexist with the United States. It would be an optimal way for China to revive the WTO first and to improve its economic system through negotiations under the WTO.

As recent events in the Middle East and North Africa suggest, nonviolent revolutionary movements may represent an oppressed population's most promising path to ridding itself of an authoritarian regime. But as the diverging experiences of Tunisia and Egypt on the one hand, and Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen on the other suggest, nonviolent victory is never a foregone conclusion. This chapter seeks to contribute to our understanding of nonviolent revolutionary success through an analysis of one of the world's first nonviolent revolutions, that of Iran in 1977–1979. Based on historical evidence, I argue that friendly international relations between the United States and Iran is a key factor in explaining both the revolutionaries’ preference for nonviolent tactics and the government's inability to repress the movement. Jimmy Carter's human rights framework served as an important incentive for revolutionaries to remain nonviolent while ensuring that state repression of unarmed protesters would come at a political price high enough to discourage the government from resorting to overwhelming violence.

At global fora which discuss the regulation of international migration the Philippine government is typically hailed a “good practice example” for its institutional as well as legal framework and proactive interest in the welfare of its citizens. The Philippine history of migration policy making is indeed shaped by a shift from “exporting workers” to an increasingly comprehensive rights-sensitive approach that addresses most aspects of migration: the regulation of recruitment agencies, pre-migration training, insurance systems, overseas voting rights, consular services, social rights of the left behind, and re-integration of returned migrants. This state of affairs, however, has not always been like that and is largely the result of activism by the vibrant migrant rights movement in the Philippines which reaches across the world. The case of the Philippine also shows mixed approaches to government-social movement relations, characterized by both pressure politics and critical engagement.

Considerable gaps and loopholes remain in this web of rights-based policy aspects. Structural weaknesses are major problems that need to be addressed if labor migration is to evolve into a truly choice-driven economic decision. Still, comparatively and historically speaking, the Philippines have come a long way. The combined effects of leadership from below and leadership from above had led to some concrete results – even if far from perfect – in the betterment of many migrants’ lives.