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In various settings (e.g., political elections, marketing campaigns), competing groups attempt to disseminate messages that promote different viewpoints. Moreover, these groups often differ substantially in the resources they have available for promotion, which may generate inequities in the reach of their messages. With a series of computer simulations, the author investigates the role that social network structure plays in perpetuating or mitigating the inequalities in reach brought about by asymmetric access to resources. The author models such asymmetric access by varying the number of "seeds” available to disseminators (i.e., places in the social network from where their messages begin spreading). The author finds that long ties – links that connect otherwise distant regions of a social network – help to decrease the disparities in dissemination brought about by asymmetric access to seeds. The author shows that this finding generalizes to different assumptions about the proportion of long ties present, the seeding asymmetry, and the rate that messages spread, and argues that information and communication technologies like Facebook and Twitter can foster dissemination equality by prioritizing interactions across long ties.

International security is a constant threat to the pursuit of economic optimum. In the traditional economic analysis history, states are seen as agents in constant search for power, which leads to the emergence of conflicts of interests. The modern concept of security can be defined as the economic study of all the risks of short, medium and long term on the functioning of economic and social life. It can be divided into four sublevels: individual security, national security, international security and global security. The adoption of an enlarged approach to international security by integrating economic and environmental conditions highlights the expression of new collective priorities. Today, theories of security take into account the economic, human and social relationships, societal priorities and the balance of power in the international system. Human security implies a multi-disciplinary analysis, including human rights, state organisation, international relations and strategic studies. Security and sustainable development are deeply interconnected, which involves bearable production conditions for the environment in the long term, the end of extreme poverty, the creation of social stability and the rejection of discrimination.

This study aims to identify enablers of belief and ethics-based marketing practices, establish relationships among the factors and present them in a hierarchical model to derive critical insights. This paper emphasizes interpretations of the in-depth interviews to decipher the market pervasiveness of the evolved model.

In-depth interviews were conducted with individuals and small groups of informed and elite respondents pursuing marketing guided explicitly by ethics and led by belief. The interview data further corroborated with the related literature contributed to specific factors. Finally, interpretive structural modeling has been implemented step by step to develop a systematic model for enablers.

This paper contributes a structural relationship of morality and ethics, strengthening faith and belief through philosophical understanding, which traverses into the actions related to societal benefits with the support of market opportunity development while bringing in value, enhancing the demand in return and establishing market pervasiveness. The crux of this paper is that the foundation of belief will reduce the hierarchy of other related factors while strengthening their interdependencies with equity to contribute to the development of the pervasiveness of the market for such organizations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study exploring and examining the enablers contributing to belief and ethics-based organizations’ pervasiveness along with their interrelationships. The initial intrigue that led to the inquiry was evidence of the market pervasiveness of such organizations’ products and services across various streams.

The recent wave of protests on courts and fields all over the world has brought increased attention to the potential of sport to address social justice. Basketball in particular has been the subject of both celebration and outrage. Building off the theorizing of sport as a contested space, we examine the work of three artists/artist collectives; Abigail Smithson, Maria Molteni and New Craft Artists in Action, and Noah Cohan and John Early of Whereas Hoops, who have all directly engaged with the basketball court as a site filled with cultural meaning and struggle. All three of the respective bodies of work were developed in the past 10 years and emerge from the heightened social and racial tension of the time, as well as the increasingly apparent link between sports, politics, and race within our larger society. Examining the work reveals the importance of the basketball court as a site simultaneously of celebration, play, surveillance, policing, community, history, cultural exchange, and racialization. We explore the potential for artists to engage with and transform sport spaces through an edited group interview, giving the artists the chance to reflect on their practices as well as the limitations of working as an activist and artist in the realm of sports in their own words. Through conversation, the chapter focuses not just on finished pieces of art but also on the process of making the work in the ever familiar and culturally rich environment of the basketball court.

A food security indicator for technology impact assessment is needed that can be constructed with available data, is comparable over time and space, and represents the multiple dimensions of food security.

In this chapter, we review some commonly used food security indicators, analyze the extent to which these indicators satisfy key criteria, and introduce a food security indicator constructed for use in an economic impact assessment and that exhibits a number of desirable properties.

This income-based indicator is similar to a consumption-based poverty indicator, utilizing an estimate of the income required to purchase a food “basket” that meets nutritional requirements and comparing the food security income requirement to a household’s per capita income.

The applicability of the indicator is illustrated with an analysis of the impacts of legume inoculation technology developed for smallholder farms in Tanzania and other parts of Africa. We conclude with a discussion of suggested improvements for food security indicators used for technology impact assessment.

This article explores how social actors negotiate the competing logics they face as a result of their work in organizations subject to institutional complexity. In particular, I theoretically focus on the unique characteristics associated with societal institutional logics, such as religion, family, and the state. Empirically, I analyze religious mutual funds (Catholic, Muslim, and Protestant) in the United States that dwell at the intersection of the competing logics of religion and finance. Through interviews with 31 people who work at religious mutual funds (or fund producers) and content analysis of religious mutual fund material, I focus on the symbolic boundary work that religious fund producers engage in. I find examples of boundary blurring and boundary building and suggest institutional complexity that involves at least one societal logic is especially likely to foster both modes of boundary work. This, I propose, leads to an increased likelihood of enduring institutional complexity.

Poor health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is one of the important issues in the health sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL in Tehran city, Iran.

In total, 562 adults were included in this cross-sectional study. The cluster sampling method was used for data collection from May to June, 2016 in Tehran city, Iran. Data on HRQoL, using EuroQol 5-dimensions questionnaire, and data on socio-economic and demographic variables were gathered. Convenience regression method was performed to measure the concentration index (CI). Decomposition analysis was performed to determine the contribution of variables on socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL. All analyses were performed by Stata v.14.

The prevalence of poor HRQoL was 28.3 percent. The value of CI for “poor HRQoL” was −0.299 (95% confidence interval: −0.402 to −0.195). Socio-economic status (SES) was the largest contributor to socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL (69.44 percent of inequality was explained by SES). Age, obesity and race had a positive contribution to socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL among the participants. Nonetheless, sex and smoking intensity had a negative contribution to inequality in poor HRQoL.

There is little evidence about the prevalence of poor HRQoL in insured people. This study provided new evidence in this area through the investigation of socio-economic inequality in poor HRQoL and its determinants among people with health insurance in Iran using decomposition analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the multinational oil companies’ (MOCs) corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the global memorandum of understanding (GMoU) on development of enterprising rural women as custodians of seed, food and traditional knowledge for climate change resilience in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 768 rural women respondents were sampled across the rural areas of the Niger Delta region in Nigeria.

The results from the use of a combined propensity score matching and logit model indicated that the meagre interventions of MOCs’ CSR targeted at the empowerment of rural women as custodians of seed, food and traditional knowledge for climate change resilience recorded significant success in improving the role of women in agricultural production, especially in women’s involvement across value chains.

This suggests that any increase in the MOCs’ CSR targeted at increasing rural women’s access to seed preservation facilities, food processing facilities and extension systems that impact a strong body of knowledge and expertise that can be used in climate change mitigation, disaster reduction and adaptation strategies will enhance women’s responsibilities in households and communities as stewards of natural and household resources and will position them well to contribute to livelihood strategies adapted to changing environmental realities.

This implies that MOCs’ GMoUs’ policies and practices should enhance women’s participation, value and recognize women’s knowledge and enable women as well as men farmers to participate in the decision-making process in agriculture, food production and land governance, as women need to be acknowledged and supported as the primary producers of food in the region, able to both cultivate healthy food and climate change resilience through small-scale agro-ecological farming system.

This research contributes to gender debate in agriculture from a CSR perspective in developing countries and explains the rational for demands for social projects by host communities. It concludes that business has an obligation to help solve problems of public concern.

Price discovery and spillover effect are prominent indicators in the commodity futures market to protect the interest of consumers, farmers and to hedge sharp price fluctuations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the price discovery and volatility spillover in Indian agriculture spot and futures commodity markets.

This study uses Granger causality, vector error correction model (VECM) and exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (EGARCH) to examines the price discovery and spillover effects for nine most liquid agricultural commodities in spot and futures markets traded on National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX).

The VECM results show that price discovery exists in all the nine commodities with futures market leading the spot in case of six commodities, namely soybean seed, coriander, turmeric, castor seed, guar seed and chana. Whereas in case of three commodities (cotton seed, rape mustard seed and jeera), price discovery takes place in the spot market. The Granger causality tests indicate that futures markets have stronger ability to predict spot prices. Supporting these, the results from EGARCH volatility test reveal that there exist mutual spillover effects on futures and spot markets. Thus, it could be inferred that futures market is more efficient in price discovery of agricultural commodities in India.

These results can help the market participants to benefit by hedging out the uncertainty and the policymakers to design futures contracts to improve the efficiency of the agricultural commodity derivatives market.

The findings provide fresh view on lead–lag relationship between future and spot prices using the latest data confirming that futures market indeed is dominant in price discovery.

There are very few studies that have explored the efficiency of the agricultural commodity spot and futures markets in India using both price discovery and volatility spillover in a detailed manner, especially at the individual agriculture commodity level.

This chapter critically analyses the current participation of Indigenous Australian students in higher education and identifies new directions for seeding success and enabling Indigenous students to flourish in higher education contexts.

Statistical reports, government reports and the scholarly literature were analysed to elucidate the nature of participation of Indigenous students in higher education, identify strategies that are succeeding, identify issues that need addressing and explicate potentially potent ways forward.

The findings have important implications for theory, research and practice. The results of this study demonstrate, that while increasing numbers of Indigenous Australian students are accessing higher education, they still are not participating at a rate commensurate with their representation in the Australian population. The findings also suggest new ways to enable Indigenous Australians to not only succeed in higher education, but flourish.

The findings imply that more needs to be done to seed success in increasing the numbers of Indigenous Australian students in higher education to be representative of the population and ensuring participation in higher education enables Indigenous students to succeed and flourish. The findings also imply that there is a dire need for further research to identify key drivers of success.

The study supports the need for increasing the number of Indigenous Australians participating in higher education and enhancing higher education strategies to enable Indigenous students to succeed and flourish.

Enhancing the participation of Indigenous students in higher education internationally can help to contribute to the well-being of individuals, Indigenous communities and nations.

This chapter provides an up to date analysis of the nature of Indigenous Australian participation in higher education and identifies potentially potent new ways forward to seed success that have international implications.