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The aim of this paper is to explore and discuss the causative factors of the current financial crisis from an Islamic perspective. This paper also examines Islamic finance as an alternative financial system and a potential long‐term solution to financial instability.

The paper provides descriptive, analytical and comparative analyses.

The paper offers insights into the causes of the current international financial crisis. It highlights an alternative and a solution to this dilemma in the form of Islamic finance and stresses the stability of the Islamic finance system.

The findings presented in this paper can be used by policy makers, regulators and practitioners in both the Islamic and conventional financial sector as they provides insights into factors that can insulate the market from future crisis. However, to expect a wholesale transformation to an Islamic financial system is idealistic.

This paper contributes to the understanding of Islamic finance principles and its value as a solution to the current and any future financial crises. A highly original conceptual idea is used in the metaphorical comparison to the Tower of Babel. The findings of this research will be of interest to western and Islamic financial practitioners, policy makers and academicians.

The third sector is a producer of trust and positive social interactions, while the mafias destroy trust and social norms. Confiscation of assets and reusing confiscated assets are important tools from an economic and symbolic point of view for contrasting the mafias and promoting a sustainable and fair economy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of the third sector for reusing confiscated assets.

The paper is based on a theoretical analysis of why a third sector role is utilized for reusing confiscated assets, thus focusing on the economic, social and cultural dimensions. Italian legislation and data are presented for showing the relevant and innovative role of the third sector for reusing confiscated assets. A case study of the city of Forlì, based in Northern Italy, is presented and is of particular interest because it is a part of Italy that does not have a historical presence of the mafias. The University of Bologna is now a partner of the project through the Observatory of Legality. Five hectares of confiscated, urban land have been given to two social cooperatives for organic agriculture and social gardening, which are managed by disadvantaged people working in the cooperatives.

The case study offers useful implications for other national and international situations. The results support that the third sector can be an effective partner in managing and restoring the goods to their community.

A suggested focus on a European framework toward a more integrated approach for reusing confiscated assets.

An opportunity for policy decisions to be made toward a stronger approach for reusing confiscated assets via the third sector and civil society actors, starting from positive cases, such as the Forlì case study.

Possibility of a stronger civic engagement for reusing confiscated assets previously owned by mafias.

Scaling up from a pioneering activity to a large-scale network of social enterprises and partnerships could make the difference.

This paper explores the perceptions and experiences of women and men who work as informal waste collectors in four different cities. The purpose of this paper is to map out how and to what extent occupational, political-legal, economic and social dynamics are experienced differently by gender in a highly vulnerable segment of the urban informal economy, and explore gender differences in these workers’ coping strategies and the levels of action they develop to protect their livelihoods.

The analysis is based on a mixed methods study which combined a quantitative survey of informal workers with a qualitative participatory methodology. Study participants were drawn from a purposive sample of informal workers who belong to, or are affiliated with, membership-based workers’ organisations. The sample consists of waste pickers (n=614) from Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Bogotá, Colombia; Durban, South Africa; and Nakuru, Kenya.

The data show that despite significant differences between women and men upon entry into (informal) employment, their perceptions of key drivers and impacts are largely similar, with the exception of concerns around various types of physical security among women. They also indicate that levels of action among men and women waste pickers are only moderately influenced by gender, but are strongly influenced by the degree of organisation in the sector and the symbolic assets held by workers. The findings also illustrate the way in which gendered power dynamics operate within the informal recycling sector and how different levels of sector organisation and development often contribute to opportunities for collective action and, in turn, a reduction in gendered vulnerabilities.

The study offers a new policy angle which connects the level of sector organisation and development with the levels of action taken by informal workers in adapting to different types of shocks, as well as what this means in terms of gender empowerment.

The cultural industries consist of those organizations that design, produce, and distribute products that appeal to aesthetic or expressive tastes more than to the utilitarian aspects of customer needs such as films, books, building designs, fashion, and music (Peterson & Berger, 1975, 1996; Hirsch, 1972, 2000; Lampel, Lant, & Shamsie, 2000). Less widely acknowledged, but as critical, cultural industries also create products that serve important symbolic functions such as capturing, refracting, and legitimating societal knowledge and values. For example, educational publishers influence what concepts and theories are promoted to students by the books they publish. Architects shape the sensibilities of interactions at work, home, and play by their choice of technologies, space design, and material resources. Music producers discover and promote vocal artists whose lyrics shape our understandings of age, gender, and ethnicity. Because of the societal impact of these symbolic functions, cultural industries have continued to interest both popular writers and sociologists alike.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the tourist landscape as represented in Turisme de Barcelona’s YouTube tourism promotional videos, looking at the landscape’s tangible locations, symbolic and tourist assets and the protagonists in an effort to interpret its storytelling in an overtourism context.

The mixed methodology is based on a visual content analysis of promotional videos posted on the official Barcelona tourism YouTube channel. Quantitative data analysis about the assets and their localization was completed with a qualitative assessment of the way these assets are displayed to unveil the narrative they convey.

The results highlight that Barcelona’s projected image is mainly based on tangible heritage (especially monuments), its recognizable cityscape and its eno-gastronomic assets. This rather conventional image is geographically concentrated on the neighborhoods perceived as tourist neighborhoods.

This analysis provides a critical reflection of the actual strategy of destination management organizations and the storytelling they transmit. The findings can help to orientate their future actions and provide a method of analysis that can be repeated for other destinations.

This paper sheds new light on the use of urban landscapes in nonstatic images both as a narrative subject and as a tangible tourist space in promotional discourse.

The purpose of this paper is to question extant categorizations of organization and to introduce the concept of the hypermodern organization. In so doing, it aims to contribute to the understanding of the hypermodern organization by means of a case study of the accelerated appearance and disappearance of Enron.

Consideration is given in the paper to organization and its various forms, namely, the premodern, the modern and the postmodern organization. The hypermodern organization is then introduced and elaborated upon. To demonstrate the contemporary relevance of the hypermodern organization the increasing speed of both the appearance and disappearance of Enron is reviewed. The contribution of an increase in velocity to the disintegration of the hypermodern organization of Enron is considered.

Existing approaches to organizations and organizational change in the main fail to recognize the context and impact of hypermodernity. To address this, the paper introduces and develops the concept of the hypermodern organization. The relevance of the hypermodern organization to an appreciation of organization and organizational change is demonstrated through an analysis of the accelerated appearance and disappearance of Enron.

The paper introduces a new conception of organization and organizational change. Further research is necessary to verify and build on the findings.

The paper contributes to the understanding of organizations and organizational change. It argues that the information and consumer‐driven societies of the advanced countries are characterized by hypermodernity. Existing approaches to organizations and organizational change essentially disregard the significance and impact of the hypermodern organization. The paper suggests that one of the results of the hypermodern organization is the accelerated appearance and disappearance of business organizations.

In recent years, most Organisation for Economic and Cooperation Development (OECD) countries have brought in important reforms into their public accounting systems with the objective of both improving public service management and increasing the transparency and accountability of governments. Reforms of government accounting share a common direction towards the implementation of accrual-based accounting systems. In this context, this paper presents the situation of local government accounting systems in European countries with the aim of showing the degree of uniformity/ heterogeneity that currently exists among the countries considered and why differences persist nowadays, trying to classify countries into groups according to accounting practice. Results show that three groups of countries can be identified: the first continues using the cash basis; in the second, an accrual or modified accrual basis is used for financial accounting but the cash basis still persists in the budgetary system; in the third, an accrual or modified accrual basis is used both in budget and in financial accounting.

Purpose – The financial crisis has exposed a behavioral paradox: although asset managers are putting significant effort into meeting institutional pressures to demonstrate transparency and responsible behavior, their actual investment behaviors seem to remain inconsistent with responsible ownership. We seek to understand asset managers’ motivations to use externally defined environment, social, and governance (ESG) information to engage in sustainable investment.

Methodology/approach – We draw on insights from the sensemaking literature, as well as institutional, behavioral, and cognitive theories to shed new light on asset managers’ motivations to demonstrate conformance with ESG criteria.

Findings – The more asset managers demonstrate conformance, the less likely they are to make an effort to integrate sustainability and long-term, return-making concerns in their investment behaviors. As a result of the organization’s decoupling strategy, asset managers who are obliged to justify responsible behavior tend to have a limited sense of responsibility for encouraging long-term changes in corporate behavior.

Practical implications – We argue that calls for greater transparency in investment decisions under the guise of demonstrating conformance to ESG information requirements will not lead to more sustainable investment behavior.

Originality/value – This chapter challenges the assumption in the sustainable investment literature that the common use of ESG criteria enables investors to pressure and empower companies in the long term.

The intervention that is taking place in Mouraria falls into urban revitalization policies targeting territories in the inner city and relating the requalification of public space to socio-economic development as well as cultural promotion in order to attract new audiences, namely tourists. It intends to redefine the strong symbolic load of these places in order to help to position the city on the international scene as a destination to visit. These transformations involve different actors and various strategies and in this sense, the line of research aims to understand the position that the different local groups adopt as well as which conflicts and alliances are formed in the urban space marked by a tangle of distinct dynamics.