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Despite the boom corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability are enjoying nowadays in the agendas of both small and big companies, we still have difficulties in providing a clear definition of the concept of sustainability. There is no consensus on the criteria to be used to define and enhance responsible management that creates sustainable development.

After a systematic revision of the literature, authors have been mapping the limits of the research already done at different levels, dimensions, and horizons, so we do have a 360° map of the research on sustainability. Future developments are also explored to enrich and align the diverse approaches demanded to define this wide, complex, and by now, equivocal concept and the conclusions reveal the many gaps not yet covered in the research field, signposting key issues for further work.

Peer-reviewed indexable journals have expanded in recent decades as a result, in part, of the value given to research productivity (measured through citations). Latin American journals have grown prompted by the open access (OA) movement, the emergence of regional repositories/indexes, and policies linking institutional rankings and faculty salaries/promotions to indexed publications. This study’s aim was to map the ways Chilean, Colombian, and Venezuelan universities support journal publication. This qualitative study uses Margison and Rhoades’ (2002) Glonacal Agency Heuristic to describe factors that shape higher education (i.e., global, national, and local dimensions), adding university as unit of analysis. Semi-structured in-depth interviews from a previous study, current institutional documents, and websites of 12 major universities from Chile, Venezuela, and Colombia conformed the data of the study. Besides the most prestigious global indexes (Web of Science and Scopus) three regional repositories/indexes, Latindex, SciELO, and RedALyC, have played an important role as countries link faculty salaries/promotions and university ranking systems to publications included in one or more of these services. Latindex collaborates with national science and technology agencies, SciELO has country chapters based at universities (Colombia and Venezuela), and RedALyC works with individual institutions and journals. At the national level, Chile has mechanisms to provide funding for the publication and/or upgrade of journals and incentives to institutions for publications in indexed journals. Colombia’s journal evaluation system Publindex links articles in indexed journals to salary increases in public universities, standard that is also used by private institutions to grant monetary incentives to faculty for publications. Venezuela used to have a funding and publication incentive system that was discontinued in the last decade. Latin American journals are mainly published by universities. Institutions in this study have implemented strategies to support journals such as institutional repositories, discontinuation of print journals, technology support for OA publication, and funding mechanisms.

Administrative reforms in Argentina have followed an irregular trajectory as a result of the penetration of patronage in the state apparatus. Extensive politicization has impeded the development of a univocal and stable civil service at the national level.

In this context, the goal of this chapter is to analyze the characteristics of the federal civil service in its interaction with actors and institutions of the political system during the 2004–2014 period. The study reveals two main findings: (1) a diversity of bureaucratic formats coexist in the country, both formally and informally; and (2) the relationships between the administration and the political system vary according to the predominant bureaucratic format.

The purpose of this study was to explore the innovative and proactive practices adopted by subsistence businesses under the COVID-19 health contingency. Evidence of the current situation and the contingency practices that businesses have implemented in dealing with the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was collected through a literature review of secondary information sources: bibliographic and hemerographic, as well as in-depth interviews with five owners of artisanal and agricultural subsistence businesses.

Faced with uncertainty, artisanal and agricultural subsistence businesses have adopted innovative and proactive survival practices. The closure of markets, the absence of tourism, the suspension of non-essential activities, the lack of mobility and transportation, and the closure of access in rural communities are some of the realities these businesses are experiencing. Subsistence businesses in marginalised areas are a long way from accessing information technologies for online sales and home deliveries, which are implemented by most businesses in urban areas. In contrast, they revert to ancestral marketing practices such as bartering and low prices to earn an income for family food. Despite the loss of over 50% of subsistence businesses in urban and semi-urban areas, online sales through social media and websites, socially responsible initiatives, along with government support programmes, have helped others stay in business.

This chapter provides an overview of the internal airline market in the Maghreb and examines the determinants of intra-Maghreb air traffic flows. Most accounts of recent developments in the air transport markets in Africa have focused on the Continent as a whole and to some extent on Eastern and Southern African countries. Previous analysis of air transportation in the Maghreb has involved origins and destinations outside of the region. The analysis of domestic and intra-Maghreb traffic shows that the greatest share of traffic is concentrated on routes linking capital cities and commercial centers. Most intra-Maghreb flights are indirect, with some domestic and intraregional flights transferring through European airports. Here, a gravity equation is used to estimate the volume of traffic between Maghreb countries in relation to a wide set of factors. The results suggest that key determinants of air intra-Maghreb air traffic demand are generally in line with findings in other markets, including those involving GDP, fares, conflicts, visa openness, trade, and the quality of airline services.

Responding to local, regional and international demands and initiatives, the government of Ecuador has rolled out an innovative program Sistema Integral de Tecnologías para la Escuela y la Comunidad (SíTEC) to place information, and communication technologies (ICTs) into the hands of students, teachers, and other educational institutions. SíTEC draws upon several elements of social entrepreneurship and has successfully reached some of the most regionally remote and culturally diverse communities in the country. The SíTEC program is emblematic of many of the criteria set forth regarding social entrepreneurship including the vision of leadership, the focus on a social mission and the importance of innovation in partnership and resource allocation. This study looks at survey and interview data from the Shiña community teachers and school leaders to determine the effects of the SíTEC program and the availability and use of ICTs in schools, SíTEC has equipped public schools with computers, projectors, digital boards, and Internet. Additionally, SíTEC organizes training courses on ICTs for public school teachers and provides schools with educational software available in Spanish, Kichwa, Shuar, and English. While there is still much work to be done, SíTEC and the associated partnerships and programs are beginning to have impact in their specified outcomes. Creative partnerships developed within the Ministry of Education, Office of Bilingual Education, Shiña community have allowed for communication and exchange of knowledge and resources across multiple partners. This chapter explores SíTEC as an innovative government-based program that meets targeted social outcomes in ICTs and education.

In almost 100 years of Colombian cinema, very few productions have had action-oriented narratives at the core of the film, as this cinema has chiefly developed around mainstream genres of melodrama and popular comedy. Rather than a cinematic end, ‘action’ has worked more as a specific means, mainly through thrillers, for directors to represent, question, and denounce the Colombian armed conflict – a central national issue for over 70 years. Whilst such films have tended to showcase male heroes, some recent productions subvert this tradition, and echo aspects of contemporary action cinema in Hollywood, where female representations problematise the perpetuated male image of the action hero.

This chapter examines contemporary Colombian films that offer hybrid images of female warriors who are (anti)heroic or disruptive, within the conventions of the action genre and within the dominant patriarchal discourse of Colombian narrative cinema, concentrating on Rosario Tijeras (Maillé, 2005) and La Sargento Matacho (González, 2017). Following research on Colombian cinema, context and conflict, this chapter highlights how female characters subsist in the public sphere, taking an active part in illegal armed organisations. It also questions how these representations may promote typologies of female emancipations (victimisers, anti-heroines, hybrid tomboys and war fighters), articulating key notions of emancipation. Ultimately, this chapter reiterates how postmodern representations of the female body subvert classic features of the Hollywood action cinema, by offering inaugural images of tough women within the Colombian/Hispanic popular culture and contexts, by examining particular sequences through Creed's multiple views on the female multi-faceted representations in cinema and Tasker's ample theory on action women and bodies.

This chapter offers a survey of education development in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), and how the different crises have changed the global dynamics in education. This chapter first gives an overview of the regional context and the history of education in the region, followed by a discussion of the education developments in the region as shaped by the economic growth of high-income countries and the political upheavals in low-income countries. MENA states have made huge investments in their educational systems through implementing major changes in the education policies and introducing initiatives to improve the quality of education in their countries. However, the educational system in the region has not reaped the benefits of these reforms as it has not met the desired goals. The quality of students’ learning is very low as reflected in the poor rating by international assessments such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS. Structural educational reforms to foster citizenship and civic responsibility are urgently needed. Good governance of the education systems of the MENA countries, a critical thinking skills-based curriculum and strong market-oriented skills and vocational training programs are necessary for MENA to become economically competitive and reliably democratic.