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The study reveals how the role of the largest cities – regional capitals in the urban settlement system – and the economy of the country changed during the period of social and economic transformations at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The object of the study is the largest cities with a population of over 1 million people, the administrative centers of the regions. Unlike Moscow and St. Petersburg, these are administrative centers or “capitals” of large territories that have the status of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation. The authors emphasize the special role of cities – regional capitals in post-socialist and developing countries – where there are significant and rapid changes in the distribution of functions between the center and the regions. At the same time, cities – regional capitals – are not considered as isolated objects, but as elements of a national settlement system, the leaders among Russian second-tier cities. The common features of the evolution of the largest regional capitals, the continuity of the factors of city formation, are revealed. Considerable attention is paid to assessing the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union for the development of the urban settlement system. It was concluded that the “compensatory” nature of the accelerated growth of the largest regional capitals in post-Soviet Russia. “Compensatory” growth is considered as a form of adaptation of the urban settlement system to the weakening of links between its essential links. A methodical approach is proposed that allows a comparative analysis of the role of the largest regional capitals and the capital of the state in the economy of the country. In the process of testing it, an assessment was made of population dynamics, as well as key economic indicators, such as the volume of products shipped, retail turnover, investments, the volume of work in the construction of major regional pages, as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg. The evaluation results allowed the classification of the largest regional capitals in terms of their role in the economic development of the country, as well as in terms of the extent of the gap between the indicators; on the one hand, the largest regional capitals, and on the other, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Does a village’s location in a regional economic system predict the extent to which close interpersonal relationships are based on socioeconomic similarity? A comparison of sample social networks of four frontier villages in northwest Ecuador showed that village centrality influences the dominant types of social relationships and, thus, the differential tendencies for socioeconomic differentiation. Compared to residents in peripheral villages, those in central ones were more likely to name individuals of their own class and to note mutual relations in their social networks.

The authors model heterogeneity of inflation expectations across Indian households using the Inflation Expectations Survey of Households data set. Using Carroll-type epidemiological models and pooled cross sectional analyses, the authors find that women, homemakers, older people and Tier 2 and 3 city dwellers tend to have higher inflation expectations compared to their counterparts. In the epidemiological model-based analysis, these very cohorts display higher speed of adjustment to news. Overall higher relative adjustment speeds point to the significance of central bank communications.

Following critiques of shareholder capitalism and calls for reform of the corporation, employee-owned firms have attracted public and government attention in the UK and elsewhere, based on the view that these alternative organizations serve a broader public purpose. However, despite attempts to broaden the measures for evaluating organizations and take seriously the social effects of business decisions, we lack a holistic framework for evaluating this public purpose that addresses aspirations like participation, democracy, equality, solidarity, and strong community relations alongside financial resilience and profitability. This study proposes that a solution can be found in Selznick’s concept of “moral community.” Selznick argued that community, conceived as a response to the perceived unravelling of the social fabric, plays a vital role in countering the excesses of capitalism. Using this as a yardstick to evaluate employee ownership (EO) in the UK, the author argues that the EO organizational field is indeed an embodiment of a moral community. It successfully infuses a broad range of social values into economic pursuits, nurtures an inclusive sense of the “common good,” and mitigates the alienation resulting from an increasingly marketized society. At the same time, the EO moral community does not reject capitalism as such, aspiring to connect with and reform existing political, financial, and legal structures as opposed to positioning its own institutions as an alternative to them. There are, therefore, limits to the challenge that the EO community levels against the current socioeconomic order.

The environmental impact of energy supply is growing which has a significant impact on regional and global environmental issues. As a solution for this, both developed and developing nations paying attention to convert their energy productivity by using renewable energy like wind and solar energy. Sri Lankan government also aims to obtain the full amount of electricity required from local renewable sources by the year 2050 under the project called “sooryabala sangramaya” (the battle for solar energy). Currently, Sri Lanka’s power generation sector is heavily dependent on imported fuels, such as petroleum and coal, resulting in growing detrimental impacts on the country’s sustainable socioeconomic development. With the growing market of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology, Sri Lanka is turning its attention towards generating the total amount of electricity required from solar power by promoting the installation of arrays of PV panels on the rooftops of households, religious places, hotels, commercial establishments and industries. It also aims to deploy solar PV for sustainable rural development, mainly focused on uplifting people living in remote areas in the country. This chapter discusses how Sri Lanka has initiated a rooftop solar PV adoption program to lessen imported fuels’ socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Moreover, this case demonstrates that the adoption of rooftop solar PV brings many socioeconomic benefits to its consumers.

This chapter presents a case study involving a socio-economic Organizational Development (OD) project carried out in a European subsidiary of a large multinational corporation traded on the New York Stock Exchange. This research case study, one of the 1,854 socio-economic interventions undertaken by the ISEOR research center, was chosen for its good illustration of the OD engineering process. It connects the dots between OD and financial performance, between immediate results and the creation of potential. We look at some of the tools and methods, such as overhauling loss and profit accounts and balance sheets with an eye on socio-economic balance, to illustrate socioeconomic tools at work and how they help enhance compatibility between the objectives of all stakeholders, including shareholders. With this case study, we also set out to provide food for thought on the contribution of socio-economic OD to the construction of socially responsible capitalism (Savall et al., 2015).

In a multicase qualitative study, inclusive school leaders attempted to move their schools from the excessive use of suspension; they employed positive behavioral intervention and support (PBIS) as an alternative they thought would be therapeutic rather than punitive. However, the PBIS system traded a disciplinary system of control for a medicalized system of restoring order. Unwanted behavior came to be defined as evidence of possible behavioral disability. Hence, the PBIS system exchanged one deficit identity of “disorderly” student for another of “disordered” student, subsuming other considerations of race, class, and gender identity. Following the study’s findings, this chapter proposes more liberatory practices for PBIS that interrupt dominant culture discourses of normal behavior and power, and hold promise for establishing justice, rather than simply reinstating order.