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This paper aims to help understand how community-based social entrepreneurs experience world-class “performance excellence” models and to explore the core values that enable social enterprises to become high-performance organizations.

Underpinned by Mindsponge processes, the proposed conceptual framework critiques the Baldrige criteria for performance excellence (BCPE) model in a global south context. The mixed-methods study fosters an in-depth analysis. First, it validates the BCPE mechanism in community-based social enterprises (CBSEs) before identifying the significant core values and concepts of BCPE that influence CBSEs to achieve high performance.

The BCPE, adapted from global north corporate principles and applied at a community level, can significantly develop global south organization performance excellence. Five core values and concepts from the 11 fundamental beliefs in driving performance excellence were found to support performance excellence in CBSE management. These values and concepts are “customer-focused excellence,” “social responsibility,” “systems perspective,” “visionary leadership” and “focus on success.”

First, factors influencing performance excellence are not limited to the core values elements discussed. Future research may clarify factors extracted from the “Process” category of BCPE to explore further how CBSEs can enhance their performance in a different formation path. Second, this study only considered the Thai-Phuan community in Pho Tak village, Nong Khai, Thailand, to represent as a single case study. However, different, clustered or contrasting CBSEs in other regions remain open for further exploration to enrich the knowledge of “performance excellence” in a community organization. Finally, a longitudinal study would be a welcome addition.

The following must be considered. First is setting a clear direction: the organization’s vision and mission, by purposeful design, should ensure that CBSE managers are leading by example and demonstrating the importance of social and environmental value creation. Second is developing institutional culture: fundamental core values focused predominantly on “customer-focused excellence” and “social responsibility” encourage collaboration by “working together to drive success”. Third is developing integrated management system: CBSEs need to ensure that the management systems can collaborate and complement each component to create performance excellence. Fourth is creating a learning organization: CBSEs need to create a culture of continuous learning through data collection, measurement, analysis and modification.

This study clarifies that the implementation of BCPE is crucial to the establishment of performance excellence at both macro- and micro-level organizations. According to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the fundamental drivers of BCPE are the same for all types of organizations and in all sectors, whether in the private sector, education, health care or government (Blazey and Grizzell, 2021). By applying the Baldrige excellence model at the community level, this study found that CBSE can similarly strive for excellence and improved performance. This can lead to strengthened services, increased productivity and enhanced quality of life for the community.

This study provides a novel viewpoint on the Baldrige paradigm. Expressly, BCPE is compatible with global south community-based organizations to enhance performance excellence. Its essential contribution demonstrates that Baldrige model concepts are more widespread within smaller and underdeveloped territories than imagined. The recent (post-study) inclusion of “Community” as an independent sector in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards validates the research findings and recommendations proposed by this study.

This paper aims to purposely place community and its stakeholders at the forefront of an investigation of positive and negative social, economic and environmental impacts of the sharing economy in the specific context of Airbnb by drawing upon the triple bottom line (TBL) framework of sustainability.

A qualitative enquiry through a “scoping approach” with the search of relevant electronic databases identified a range of conceptual and empirical studies in the period from 2008 to 2018 informing a profile focussed on the triple bottom line impacts.

The criteria limited search yielded 23 focal articles, which investigated or discussed Airbnb impacts on local communities. Analysis of these articles informed a three-pillar tabulation of positive and negative impacts, which are presented against four key stakeholder groupings.

The study is exploratory, and further research, especially confirmatory research, is recommended.

The study’s value extends to praxis. Guided by findings, real-time planning and policy-making are already underway within the authors’ community. Additionally, an extension project, as requested by the community, is now investigating direct traditional accommodation provider impacts.

Understanding of the social issues concerning Airbnb and indeed, the wider sharing economy, is broadened through identified need for further social impact research.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to apply a “scoping approach” to holistically illuminate the positive and negative impacts of Airbnb at the micro-level in each of the three domains of sustainability. The research methodology is shown to be effective, with positive community impact, and will easily adapt to other destinations grappling with policy decisions.

This paper aims to examine the impact of six possible foreign direct investment (FDI) spillover channels on the total factor productivity (TFP) of Chinese agricultural enterprises and investigate the moderating role of absorptive capacity (technological acumen) on TFP spillover effects.

Based on data from 118 agricultural and related Chinese industries, the authors employ a multithreshold regression model to empirically analyze the impact of FDI on the TFP of agricultural enterprises and the threshold effect of absorptive capacity. To overcome potential endogeneity problems, the authors select the FDI stock of corresponding USA industries and the industrial access policy index as instrumental variables and re-estimate the model.

The results suggest foreign-invested agricultural enterprises are more likely to benefit from FDI, while the “aggregate” FDI spillover effect is negative for domestic agricultural enterprises. However, once threshold effects are introduced, the authors find firms “close to” (“far from”) the technological frontier experience statistically significant positive (negative) spillover effects. Similar results are obtained for virtually all FDI spillover channels for firms in both upstream and downstream industries. FDI spillovers, when they occur, can be a two-edged sword – benefiting some firms at the expense of others.

The authors introduce six FDI spillover channels to examine the impact of FDI on the productivity of foreign-invested and domestic agricultural enterprises. Moreover, the authors analyze the threshold effect of firms' absorptive capacity. These findings can help formulate foreign investment introduction policies based on the characteristics of agricultural enterprises with different ownership structures. These results are also beneficial for agricultural enterprises to better exploit FDI spillover effects and improve their productivity.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the recent changes in the role played by Africa as a traditional natural resources supplier for the world economy in a multipolar context. We highlight, on the one hand, how Africa remains a prominent supplier of critical minerals needed for information and communication technologies (ICT), including platinum, vanadium, coltan, chromium, manganese, zirconium, etc., and how the boomerang effect results in Africa also importing electronic waste. On the other hand, we show how the BRICS’ growth model, based on a very intensive use of natural resources acquired through international trade, is now being fuelled by Africa too. BRICS countries (especially China and India) are making foreign direct investments in Africa using their state companies to ensure the supply of natural resources under favourable economic terms. Thus, Africa appears as a disputed territory between the old domination of the advanced capitalist countries and emerging powers like the BRICS. However, this should not mask the fact that the European Union and North America are still the dominant foreign powers in the continent. Finally, we discuss which scenarios are open to further this multipolar moment, particularly in the wake of the great crisis.

Data from sophisticated portable heart‐rate monitors and “work diaries” were used to relate in Mintzberg's “nature of managerial work” to physiological stress in a small sample of working principals. Subjects were categorised by years of experience, Type A and Type B personality, and were “shadowed” for three complete work days in their schools doing regular activities to learn what management functions were stressful. Principals were found to be working under extreme stress (a few at catastrophically high levels), for long hours, and that certain managerial activities were more physiologically stressful than others. Implications for training, deployment and the use of bio‐feedback techniques are discussed.

Indigenous governance systems in Africa provide a nuanced approach to the various philosophies that underpin governance structures through a spiritual perspective. In this chapter we debunk colonial narratives of Africa's dependence on colonial constructs of governance. We begin by highlighting the decentralized and centralized Indigenous governance frameworks practiced by different African communities. Communities with decentralized systems such as the Acholi, Luo, Keiyo, amongst others, were well organized at the local level, with the Council of Elders, Chief Priests, and Moral Elders and Chiefs carrying out various functions that ensured the community remained stable and prosperous. In centralized communities, the king had authority over their boundaries. The key aspects that stood out and ensured stability within the centralized systems included community representation, participation in governance, and checks and balances that provided proper societal growth as exemplified by the Bunyoro-Kitara and the Ashanti kingdoms. Even though the governance systems were quite different, the governance mechanisms had similar pillars, features, and principles anchored by humanism, communism, and the spiritual nature of governance amongst the African peoples. We concur that the Indigenous governance system allowed citizens, empires, and kingdoms to flourish. We conclude that African people can further develop the capacity to manage their ideas, resources, and opportunities for sustainable development, through Indigenous governance mechanisms and knowledge systems. We argue that African societies need to legally integrate the Indigenous governance systems in the current prevalent western governance model, create canters for researching Indigenous knowledge at the institutions of higher learning, and that civil society should play a role in ensuring accountability in governance systems.

Race scholars often refer to the colonization of Indigenous peoples in the Americas and the enslavement of Africans as a founding moment in the making of today's racial hierarchies. Yet their narrative of this initial moment often mischaracterizes early European states, erases Indigenous and African states, and naturalizes racial group belonging. Such practices are counterproductive to the antiracist project. Following the lead of decolonial scholarship, much recent work by historians has sought to recover and reconstruct the institutions, social structures, and agency of African and Indigenous peoples, as well as revisit assumptions about European power, institutions, and agency in their historical encounters with their continental “others.” I highlight the potential of this approach for sociologists of “race” by narrating two significant historical events in the making of the modern Atlantic world: the conquest of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire, and the transatlantic enslavement of subjects of the kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo (in today's Angola) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I analyze how particular European, Indigenous, and African actors made decisions in the context of their own and others' historically situated and dynamic political and social structures. I read these historical events through the lens of decolonial scholarship, and sociological literatures on group-making, state formation, and the emergence of capitalism, to make sense of the violent social process that led to the breakup of African, Indigenous, and European political and social structures and the making of colonial and racially hierarchical social structures in the Atlantic world.

Discusses the risk‐return profile of property investment. Reports on a telephone survey of financial institutions concerning property investment. Comments on the survey results. Concludes that property investment is still regarded as a long‐term, low‐risk asset. Cautions that unitized property has a limited appeal.

In recent decades, it has become clear that the major economic, political, and social problems in the world require contemporary development research to examine intersections of race and class in the global economy. Theorists in the Black Radical Tradition (BRT) were the first to develop and advance a powerful research agenda that integrated race–class analyses of capitalist development. However, over time, progressive waves of research streams in development studies have successively stripped these concepts from their analyses. Post-1950s, class analyses of development overlapped with some important features of the BRT, but removed race. Post-1990s, ethnicity-based analyses of development excised both race and class. In this chapter, I discuss what we learn about capitalist development using the integrated race–class analyses of the BRT, and how jettisoning these concepts weakens our understanding of the political economy of development. To remedy our current knowledge gaps, I call for applying insights of the BRT to our analyses of the development trajectories of nations.

Three distinctive domains of inquiry in comparative and international education (CIE) point to epistemic fault lines that simultaneously enable and disable the possibilities for social transformation in the cultural ecologies that demarcate, but also entangle, the so-called Global South and the North. Historically, these domains of inquiry – language/multilingualism, education, and development – engage arenas in which ideas about wellbeing, social arrangements, and the politics of knowledge (and of power) are constantly constructed, contested, and renegotiated. This analysis pinpoints some of the discursive technologies, which guarantee that active scholarly innovations and differentiation proceed in ways that ultimately leave intact the territorialized regionalizations of development differences. It reflects on ongoing fieldwork from the South to highlight three spheres of social control, and struggle, illustrative of the coloniality of difference and the expanding institutionalization of learning (as schooling) in an era of global interventionism. These loci – the sources of knowledge traditions, the sites of its enactment, and the power of knowledge transactions – represent overlapping activation points through which education interventions both stimulate and stultify social transformations. Specifically, the sources, sites, and power of knowledge offer empirical and discursive tools for historiographic reconsideration of the role of linguistic diversity and education in social change processes, and, crucially, for shifting critical focus from merely the occidentality of contemporary education traditions to the universalism of its social imaginaries. In this critical reading of new understandings of language(s) as invention, therefore, lies analytic opportunities for rethinking epistemic dilemmas in linking education and “development” in CIE scholarship.