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Aboriginal people across Australia have diverse practices, beliefs and knowledges based on thousands of generations of managing and protecting their lands (Country). The intimate relationship Aboriginal people have with their Country is explored in this chapter because such knowledge is important for building insight into the relationship between social and ecological systems. Often in research Aboriginal views have been marginalised from discussions focused on their lands to the detriment of ecosystems and human health. This chapter aims to understand if such marginalisation is evident in Western human–nature relationship discourses.

This chapter provides a critical literature review which examines whether Aboriginal people’s diverse understanding of their ecosystems have been incorporated into human–nature theories using the biophilia hypothesis as a starting point. Other concepts explored include solastalgia, topophilia and place.

Critiques of these terminologies in the context of Aboriginal people’s connection to Country are limited but such incorporation is viewed in the chapter as a possible mechanism for better understanding human’s connection to nature. The review identified that Aboriginal people’s relationship to Country seems to be underrepresented in the human–nature theory literature.

This chapter emphasises that the integration of Aboriginal perspectives into research, ecological management and policy can provide better insight into the interrelationships between social and ecological systems.

Spirituality is a foundational concept within African indigenous communities. Spirituality informs the socio-cultural, political, environmental and economic operating systems within these communities. It is perceived as a strength, but with the systemic debasement of the African indigenous spirituality, many systems informed by spirituality have been impacted in various ways, including the ethno-medical livelihood practices.

This chapter is based on a study that used an exploratory ethnographic case study approach with qualitative methods of data collection to explore the understanding of spirituality and its influence on well-being. The study context is Bomvanaland, in the Eastern Province of South Africa. The people of this area are called ‘amaBomvane’. The study is positioned within the social justice, constructivist interpretivist paradigm, combining Resilience theory (Mertens, 2009) with Ubuntu (an African indigenous framework), which is an African moral philosophical framework, as the influencing frameworks of the study. The study outcomes posit a practice of ethno-medical spirituality that is foundational to the identity and culture of the people who come from this area. This practice is embedded in Ubuntu, supporting resilience and well-being that carry the potential to positively influence their economies.

Studies on trajectory and trends of democratic growth frequently dominate scholarly debates. These studies are led by two distinct points of view. On the one hand, scholars believe that the prevalence of democracy is inevitable and thus marks an era of prosperity and of human rights. Such an era is dominated by the cultural values of independence, individuality, and freedom (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005) and leads to the end of the world's history and the end of the last man (Fukuyama, 1992; Mandelbaum, 2008). A contrasting point of view, on the other hand, is expressed by scholars who studied the crises of modern liberal democracies believing that democracies are failing and hence, the time of worldwide democratization is coming to an end (Mouffle, d’Angerville, 1994, The private life of Louise XIV. Cited in Thomas, Vagueness in law and language the concept of despotism. Oxford: Oxford University Press). This study adds to the ongoing debate by determining which of the trends prevails worldwide across the past two centuries and especially in the beginning of the 21st century. Moreover, it sheds light on existing knowledge about democratic paths and trends by suggesting that a comprehensive investigation of democratization processes requires both regional and worldwide analyses, and investigations of historical events and regional characteristic effects are more beneficial for long-term longitudinal studies.

In recent years, the concept of cultural intelligence has attracted increased interest among scholars and practitioners in global leadership research. This chapter aims to contribute to the understanding of the impact of Experiential Learning Theory on the development of cultural intelligence in global leaders. It proposes a model that addresses the relationship between four modes of experiential learning and four facets of cultural intelligence; and hypothesizes that learning styles exercise a moderating effect on the relationship between international experience and cultural intelligence. Managerial implications for global talent selection and leadership development are also proposed based on the model.

There is no argument among serious researchers that a mongoloid stock first colonized the New World from Asia. Nor is there controversy about the fact that these continental pioneers used the Bering Land Bridge that then connected the Asian Far East with Alaska.– Gerald F. Shields, et al.American Journal of Genetics (1992)

Purpose – We build a theoretical lens that draws on an emerging theory of positive work relationships to examine whether constructive emotional expressions in work relationships influence changes in individuals' affective commitment to their organization.

Design/methodology/approach – Using longitudinal data collected from full-time employees, we employed a latent-difference-score (LDS) approach to examine whether changes in emotional carrying capacity could account for changes in organizational commitment.

Findings – The findings support this hypothesis and suggest a new perspective on the ways in which a change in relationship capacity may create changes in people's commitment to an organization.

Research limitations – The main limitation concerns the use of self-report, albeit time-lagged, data.

Practical implications – Developing higher levels of employee affective commitment is a key challenge for many organizations. Our study can help managers in recognizing the importance of building a relational space in which employees are able to express emotions frequently and openly, as well as engaging with other employees in listening to their emotional experiences and responding in a constructive manner.

Originality/value – This study contributes to an emergent body of literature that adopts a positive psychology lens to the study of employee experiences at work, by investigating the capacity to express emotions in general and its influence on people's affective commitment to the organization.

Male identity and motor-mobility are deeply intertwined across much of the globe but nowhere is this relationship more strongly in evidence than in Africa. On the African continent, road transport work has always appeared, in essence, to be a masculinist domain: it is almost always men who are seen driving commercial vehicles, regulating loading activities in the lorry and bus parks (and now the motorcycle stages), undertaking roadside repairs, vulcanising tyres, and even serving fuel. This does not mean that women are entirely absent from the sector, but their place is commonly peripheral – constrained at least in part by hegemonic norms of femininity that shape women’s self-understandings. They typically supply cooked food, alcohol and sex to male road workers, or take on back-breaking work in the lowliest – and lowest paid – of porterage roles, head-loading goods along the road, carrying materials when assisting men making and mending roads, or loading vehicles. From time to time, women have aspired to infiltrate more lucrative areas of the sector, especially through ownership of commercial vehicles, but their closer engagement with the oily nuts and bolts of the road business remains rare.

This chapter draws on a wide range of published and grey literature and some personal ethnographic research from a diversity of African countries and contexts to examine women’s efforts at engagement in the sector. The discussion spans women’s employment in road transport services (porterage, ticket-selling, taxis, buses, Bus Rapid Transit [BRT] and commercial trucks) and the road construction that supports transport service operations (engineering, planning, contracting, and labouring). The authors pay particular attention to the factors that so often continue to impede women’s progress in these arenas. The concluding section first references COVID-19 and its detrimental impacts on women transport workers’ jobs, then considers the potential for overcoming current barriers and promoting a more central space for women in transport operations, a development that could provide significant benefits across the sector.

John Dunning’s Eclectic Model, introduced in 1976 (Dunning, 1977) and refined by him several times since then (1988, 1993), is a key contribution to the separation of international business studies (IBS) from international economics and trade theory and to the development of global strategy. Dunning’s proposed model was preceded by Stephen Hymer’s (1960) application of industrial organization economics to the study of international trade and investment, and Ray Vernon’s (1966) definition of an international product lifecycle, both critical steps for IBS away from macro-economic trade theory. He was contemporaneous with the work of McManus (1972) and Buckley and Casson (1976) that introduced Coasian economics to the study of international markets and multinational firms. He was also working at the same time that Stopford and Wells (1971) began the work that led to much of the modeling of global industries at Harvard University. These and related works were important to the development of IBS. However, these other models tended to take a narrowly defined perspective and therefore to examine only a part of the rapidly expanding phenomenon of the global firm. They also tended toward industry-level analysis. Dunning’s Eclectic Model, however, by its inclusive nature, opened up the study of multinational firms to broader influences from organizational studies and business strategy. Its strong grounding in economic theory provided a basis for further development and for the integration of strategic models based on similar theories, while its focus on firm-level characteristics provided opportunities to incorporate new ideas from organizational studies into the study of international strategy. For this reason, I see it as the key theoretical model in the process of turning IBS from a mix of macro-level theoretical approaches to national differences and case-based analysis of industry effects into theoretically grounded studies of business organizations functioning in extra-national markets. While Dunning himself makes the point that the Eclectic Model is aimed at the study of multinational firms (1988), not at evaluating individual firm decisions, it does provide a framework for both descriptive and normative studies of individual firms. This shift in emphasis brought much new insight to the study of international business and added considerable richness to developing theory in strategic management and other business disciplines. It has also led to the incorporation of IBS into most business disciplines and a concomitant decline in the study of international business as a separate area for scholarly endeavor – a sometimes disconcerting example of the law of unintended effects.