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The purpose of this paper is to estimate the domestic agriculture’s contribution to food security in the case of missing imports of food and feed to the food supplies of the country.

This paper uses the Decision Support System for food Security Strategy and Supply Management (DSS-ESSA) to simulate whether a country with as low a level of self-sufficiency (around 60 per cent) as Switzerland would theoretically be capable of supplying its own population with a sufficient quantity of domestically produced food. The authors try to estimate the short-term and long-term impacts of the missing imports of food and feed on the energy supply in Switzerland.

Findings are summarised as follows. Starting with the long-term impact, the results show that in the long-term an energy supply of 2,340 kcal/person/day would be possible if the appropriate available cultivated area and optimised production existed. However, in the short-time, the potential and the time required to adapt and expand agricultural production depends primarily on the crop-rotation land available and on the existing infrastructure.

In the present version of DSS-ESSA no economic and environmental module has been integrated.

The current model version has been funded by the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture and aims at supporting Swiss policy-makers to guide changes. Numerous additional data such as technical production contexts are regularly checked by experts.

Although the importance of climate change is generally acknowledged, its impacts are often not taken into account explicitly when planning development projects. This being due to limited resources, among others, this paper aims to propose a simple and low-cost approach to assess the viability of human activities under climate change.

Many human activities are feasible only within a narrow range of climatic conditions. Comparing such “climate corridors” with future climate projections provides an intuitive yet quantitative means for assessing needs for, and the viability of, adaptation activities under climate change.

The approach was tested within development projects in Pakistan, Peru and Tajikistan. The approach was shown to work well for forestry and agriculture, indicating positive/negative prospects for wheat in two districts in Pakistan, temperature constraints for maize in Peru and widening elevation ranges for walnut trees in Tajikistan.

Climate corridor analyses feed into the preparation of Local Adaptation Plans of Action in Pakistan.

The simplicity and robustness of climate corridor analysis allow for efficient analysis and communication of climate change impacts. It works when data availability is limited, but it can as well accommodate a wide range of complexities. It has proven to be an effective vehicle for mainstreaming climate change into adaptation planning.

Research on the effectiveness of organizational change initiatives tends to focus primarily on the positive benefits of organizational change including improved financial performance. Rarely are negative outcomes examined, such as financial losses resulting from change initiatives. However, negative outcomes are possible, common, and understudied. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organizational change and financial loss.

The research used a database of insurance losses from a global reinsurance company over a 30-year period. Each loss event was examined to determine the cause of the loss, the amount of loss, and type of organizational change if any that preceded the loss.

The results indicate that losses attributed to the organization and its employees are preceded by an organizational change initiative more often than not. In particular, the occurrence of losses attributable to the organization and its employees were preceded more often by organizational changes involving mergers, acquisitions and changes to ownership, changes involving downsizing, changes involving restructuring, but not changes to reporting relationships.

This research represents one of the few studies to examine financial loss from a wide variety of different types of organizational change and the only that has examined these questions using data from insurance losses. Findings support the growing theoretical movement focussing on the risks of organizational change.

Previous research assumes that economic development is the key to increasing the food supply and alleviating child malnutrition. However, economic development alone does not promise that income is distributed fairly, nor does it guarantee that other human needs will be fulfilled. What has been missing from cross-national research is an analysis of how gender inequality shapes women’s abilities to effectively maintain food security. The current study contributes to this literature by exploring the multidimensional effects of women’s empowerment on child stunting and wasting.

Pooling data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the World Bank, the analysis estimates a series of multi-level models that examine the country-level influences on malnutrition, while also accounting for household and maternal characteristics that affect food security at the individual level.

Results suggest that improvements in women’s education, control over reproduction, representation in national politics, and life expectancy correspond to improvements in child malnutrition. Notably, the effects of gender inequality are comparable to or larger than those of economic development. The multi-level modeling technique illustrates how social forces that are larger than the individual shape the chances of experiencing food insecurity.

Cross-national data are limited in scope and cannot prove causality. Further research is also needed to better understand the process by which women wield advances in rights and empowerment to affect food security.

If policymakers want to facilitate food security in poor countries, they should not disregard the potential of policies that will promote more equitable rights for women.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

In innovation networks, SMEs' capability to innovate is both enhanced and restricted by more powerful or better positioned partners. The purpose of this article is to ask how managers of processing SME suppliers in Italian and Swiss food innovation networks experience their relationships with innovation network partners and how they configure modes of interaction with them.

A series of problem centered interviews with managers of six Swiss and five Italian food sector SMEs was conducted.

Findings describe how SME managers in the two regions perceive the nature of interaction as well as benefits and disadvantages resulting from asymmetric relationships within networked innovation process. Differences in the perception frame and their impact on behavior in innovation networks are analyzed.

The data are only valid for the food sector in the two regional markets. Furthermore, this paper only displays the perspective of managers of first and second processing food SME suppliers. Additional data should be gathered on the perspective of other network partners as well as on real‐time communication between them.

The findings suggest that active cooperation with especially customers in innovation networks supports innovation opportunities of processing food SME suppliers.

Scholars so far have comprehensively deduced potential advantages and problems resulting from asymmetries in power and positioning of partners for knowledge sharing in innovation networks but have not yet investigated its specifics. Particularly, empirical work on the perspective of managers from processing SME suppliers on innovation related cooperation with their partners in the value chain on networked innovation is yet almost scant.

This paper is about the effects of unemployment on consumption behaviour through “job security” in Switzerland. Based on a behavioural model of consumption the paper establishes the links between job security and consumption empirically. In a second step, perceived “job security” as reported in the Swiss Consumer Survey is then connected with the labour market. The paper finds that the record high level of unemployment since 1991 has mainly caused the observed deterioration of the perceived “job security”. Two different scenarios of unemployment rates are then developed to show the quantitative effects unemployment had on perceived “job security” and finally through this measure of consumer confidence on consumption expenditures. In conclusion the unusually high number of unemployed have acted as a psychological shock to change the subjective assessment of “job security” to such a degree that significant changes in consumer behaviour have resulted.

The discourse about agriculture within Switzerland’s and Germany’s public is to be compared in order to obtain an idea about the impact of the different agricultural systems. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

After a brief description of agricultural systems and policies in Germany and Switzerland, the discourse among the general public in the two countries in internet newsrooms and message boards is analyzed. The subjects of discussions are compared, and selected sequences are analyzed using objective hermeneutics.

Results indicate that, in Germany, agriculture is largely perceived as a black box where food safety is a crucial issue. Although food safety also is discussed in Switzerland, Swiss discussants focus more on changes that should be implemented in agricultural production and policy systems.

The quantitative and qualitative evaluation of newsrooms and message boards reveals important insights, particularly in a comparative setting.

A small-structured agriculture may contribute to generate trust in the reliability of food safety among consumers.

The discourse on German and Swiss internet platforms on agricultural issues reveals significant differences which shows that such an analysis allows important insights.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

The virtual organization is upon us, or so we are led to believe. No longer will we have to worry about finding enough space for so many workstations, as people will be sitting in cyberspace waiting either to send or receive their next communication. It will not matter where in the universe someone is, provided that they can communicate. People will be working in physical isolation, but this does not matter as they can, yes you’ve guessed it, communicate! There is no doubting that communicating is good and absolutely necessary, but it is quality of communication which is needed, not just any old garbled message. Are standards of communication deteriorating? The media by which we are sending messages are improving, of that there is little doubt, but it is the content and usefulness of this content which must be brought to question.