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Commenting on the Mexican Revolution in 1938, Trotsky argued that the country might achieve “national independence,” understood as a break with dependency relations. Whether this might occur depended – Trotsky continued – on “international factors.” Though not engaging with Mexico, Antonio Gramsci made a similar theoretical point. It is hence from this perspective that this chapter analyses the Mexican Revolution, asking whether it led to a break in dependency relations and the attainment of “national independence” or what I refer to as “relative geopolitical autonomy.” Presenting a framework of analysis largely based on the work of Gramsci that highlights its continuity with the thought of Marx, the chapter will answer negatively to this question. The chapter starts from the idea that Porfirio Díaz’s regime was unable to adapt the economic structure (still pre-capitalist) to the complex superstructures (capitalist), that is, to realize an historic bloc. It would be this job that the emergent Mexican bourgeoisie sought to finish. However, the situation is complicated by the powerful emergence of social movements from below, constituted largely by landless peasants, and to a lesser extent, the industrial proletariat. I will therefore argue that the revolution has been both “passive” and “bounded.” The term passive revolution will be applied to the last phase of the revolution as the emerging bourgeoisie successfully coopted the demands of the popular masses thereby “passivizing” them. But crucially, the revolution was also “bounded” because international factors, and especially US influence, played a conditioning role throughout the revolutionary process. At the same time, it would be the very “passive” nature of the revolution that would contribute to the reproduction of relations of dependency. Hence the chapter concludes that the period Trotsky commented upon (the Cárdenas period) is the highest level of “independence” Mexico achieved, only to decrease again over the years.

Based on a review of multiple literatures, a comprehensive content domain of essential intercultural competencies for effective global leaders is presented. This domain is then used to guide the development of the Global Competencies Inventory (GCI), a 160-item self-report measure that assesses the degree to which individuals possess the intercultural competencies that are associated with global leader effectiveness. Using sample sizes ranging from several hundred to nearly 9,000 subjects, evidence from several studies is presented showing the GCI to have convergent validity, predictive validity, and freedom from demographic and ethnic subgroup biases. Implications for theory and future research are also discussed.

The problem of model mixing in time series, for which the interest lies in the estimation of stochastic volatility, is addressed using the approach known as Mixture-of-Experts (ME). Specifically, this work proposes a ME model where the experts are defined through ARCH, GARCH and EGARCH structures. Estimates of the predictive distribution of volatilities are obtained using a full Bayesian approach. The methodology is illustrated with an analysis of a section of US dollar/German mark exchange rates and a study of the Mexican stock market index using the Dow Jones Industrial index as a covariate.

Even more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination toward a number of groups in employment settings in the United States, workplace discrimination remains a persistent problem in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive review and analysis of contemporary theory and evidence on the nature, causes, and consequences of discrimination before synthesizing potential methods for its reduction. We note the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship and highlight meaningful future directions. In so doing, we hope to both inform and inspire organizational and scholarly efforts to understand and eliminate workplace discrimination.

Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.

Recent research on immersive experiences in online environments for higher education has attributed a fundamental role to two distinct yet connected psychological phenomena: the feelings of being virtually present in the education environment, often simply called presence, and peak episodes of flow. The authors conceptually delimitate these two psychological facets of e-learners’ experiences and examine their interplay. The authors show how flow episodes are elicited by students’ sense of control over the online education environment, their attention being focussed on the learning tasks, and their feelings of being physically placed in the online education setting. Also, the interactivity created by the online education environment evokes an e-learner’s imagery, which in turn triggers presence feelings and episodes of flow. The authors further show that, although presence and flow are triggered by some common antecedents, they differ in the object of the individual’s immersion, and that presence feelings facilitate flow. Moreover, the authors provide practical recommendations for higher education institutions, policy makers and the academic and information and communication technology community involved in e-learning, to make sure e-learner experiences reach their fullest potential.

This chapter introduces the specifics of spirituality-centric management practices in service and operation focused industries. Strategic management practices are often challenged by the human factor of businesses. Consequently, businesses often waver with the fulfillment of their strategic goals and face harmful repercussions. Subsequently, strategic leadership plays a crucial role in the advancement of incorporating spirituality in the workplace and cultivating a perception of the spiritual domain at the individual, team, and organizational levels. To succeed, organizations need to overcome the challenges pertaining their members' retainment and wellness. This is because members often act on their emotional, moral, and ethical concerns that are pillared by their spirituality-centric views on colleagues and management. As the overarching term, workplace spirituality has been linked with organizational learning, togetherness, sense of nurturement, and interpersonal fulfillment with tasks and often coincidences with managerial application of strategic approaches. For the synthesis of service focused businesses, authors exemplify studies within tourism and hospitality industries.

This paper documents the case of La Verde, a producer cooperative in Andalusia, Southern Spain, whose members grow and sell organic fruit and vegetables. Fieldwork data reveal a range of assessments and practices with respect to just price. Historical experiences of working as day laborers, with little access to cash or other resources informs the members’ radical political views on money, prices, and markets. These ideas modulate exchanges at the local level, and in their political networks. However, working their own land and selling a prized product allows them to generate good market returns from private shopkeepers in cities. The paper proposes that for a price to be considered just, criteria for commensuration, or equivalence between a price and the perceived value of an object must adhere, but adjudications about this vary according to the relationship between exchangers. Rather than an objective just price, the paper considers assessments and judgments about the relation between prices and justice to be contextually defined, contested, and negotiated.