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The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

The Supreme Court's recent cross burning case – Virginia v. Black (2003) – saw dueling historical narratives. Justice O’Connor, writing for the majority, painted a history in which the Klan often burned crosses to intimidate, but also did so for other, “expressive” reasons. Justice Thomas, in dissent, related a history in which the burning cross never speaks. Interestingly, O’Connor and Thomas used many of the same historical sources. How did they reach such different results? While both O’Connor and Thomas interpreted (and stretched) the historical sources in different directions, their dispute ultimately turned on their diverging doctrinal views.

Increasing diversity in higher education (HE) – or widening participation (WP) – is now a concern worldwide (Billingham in this volume, Chapter 1; Bowes, Thomas, Peck, & Nathwani, 2013; Shah, Bennett, & Southgate, 2016). However, we all know that access to HE is not sufficient; access needs to be accompanied by success – staying on the course, gaining a good degree and securing graduate-level employment. In this chapter, it is argued that in order to equalise student outcomes a ‘whole institution approach’ (WIA) is required. Evidence is drawn from two studies (each led by the author): one focussing on improving student retention and success in HE, which concluded that a WIA is required (Thomas, Hill, O’ Mahony, & Yorke, 2017, pp. 133–135). The second commissioned by the Office for Fair Access to better understand a WIA to WP (Thomas, 2017). The chapter discusses three key findings: the importance of both cultural and structural change; the role of evidence and the need for a deliberate process of change. These findings are illustrated with examples.

Disability as a consequential social characteristic has not drawn sociologists’ contemporary attention in the way that race, class, gender, and sexuality have. In order to understand why, it is instructive to analyze how disability has been framed since the inception of the American Sociological Society, now known as the American Sociological Association.

Our findings are based on an intensive, systematic, and comprehensive content analysis of 10 years of the Proceedings from the American Sociology Society’s Annual Meetings, 1906–1915.

Three key themes emerged from the content analysis of the proceedings of the first 10 years of the papers delivered at the Annual Meetings (1906–1915). First, people with disabilities were largely invisible in those papers. Second, influenced strongly by a social reform agenda which stressed progress and the powerful eugenics movement of the time, those early presenters who addressed people with disabilities in their papers vilified them. Third, their denigration was met largely with silence in the printed commentary which followed in the proceedings.

In order to understand the present limited attention to disability, researchers need to know the historical context.

Although there have been a number of thoughtful books, edited volumes and review essays exploring the history of the discipline of sociology, none of them have attended to the history of disability within the field. This paper contributes to that historical understanding.

The final chapter of this volume brings together the key debates from this book and situates them within an ever-developing policy landscape. It argues that the themes this volume raises around the two competing uses of ‘business’, both figurative and literal, continue to drive developments in widening participation (WP). It draws together threads around the figurative usage of business to consider the ways in which the ideology of marketisation has impacted the sector to date and continues to shape policies in this area. Considering the more literal ways in which WP has become the ‘business’ of the sector, this chapter draws together threads from across the second part of this book, which examined how higher education providers (HEPs), further education colleges, new providers and third sector WP organisations all enact WP as part of their ‘business as usual’. This chapter concludes with a summary of changes to the market structure introduced since the Higher Education Research Act (HERA, 2017), such as the levelling up White Paper (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 2022), the Department for Education (DfE, 2022a) higher education policy statement and Office for Students (OfS) regulatory consultations (OfS, 2022b), and questions whether these represent minor tweaks to a recently embedded policy environment or indeed render much of the 2017 settlement redundant. Whether these are considered as continuity or change, in the final analysis, they suggest that there remain tensions among those responsible for the executive/ideological policy direction, with corresponding knock-on effects elsewhere on the enactment staircase. What remains clear, however, is that the contradictions inherent in the dual imperative – the human capital needs of the country juxtaposed against a desire for a more socially just society – remain unresolved while a ‘level playing field’ market order is layered over such a steep institutional hierarchy.