Search results

The prevalence of anti-EU integration and anti-immigration rhetoric across the continent, the increased presence of Eurosceptic parties in the European Parliament, and most importantly Brexit suggest that the European Union is having an existential crisis. This chapter debates the role of the EU citizenship regime on this crisis, by resting its central thesis that there is a fundamental mismatch between the way that EU citizenship is at present derived from Member State citizenship, and the transnational affinity of the EU citizenry that is invited by the internal market and migration. As a remedy, the chapter projects a supranational EU citizenship regime that coexists with the current EU citizenship regime. Focussing on the social and political imperatives, the chapter brings forward tangible policy recommendations for the proposed EU citizenship regime and expounds how it can be an effective policy instrument for the EU’s internal and external struggles.

To explore the extent to which generosity, as instructed by culture, performs both a formative and a filtering role in the consumers’ service experience.

The critical realism paradigm, a multi‐method/discipline approach is adopted. The research focuses on the Taiwanese consumer as a case and uses qualitative research techniques to model their consumption.

The most significant contribution this paper makes is informing understanding of the cognitive processes Taiwanese consumers engage in when determining their quality evaluation. The results lend further support to the existence of a relationship between culture and service quality evaluation.

The paper has consequences at a macro level for global strategy formulation and at a micro level for service quality measurement.

This paper contributes to the growing body of evidence lending support to the existence of a relationship between culture and service quality evaluation. The conceptual foundation is laid for further measure development.

This chapter considers how social capital is evolving in the era of globalization today especially under COVID-19 pandemic conditions globally. Definitions of social capital have varied: some broad others narrow. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, currently has a broad research project on social capital. These researchers have defined social capital as comprising four key areas. These areas are:

• Personal relationships, referring to the structure of people’s social networks.

• Depth and breadth of social network support available to each person in their networks.

• Civic engagement activities such as volunteering and community action.

• Beliefs, attitudes, and action frames of reference such as trust and cooperative norms, of reciprocity.

Personal relationships, referring to the structure of people’s social networks.

Depth and breadth of social network support available to each person in their networks.

Civic engagement activities such as volunteering and community action.

Beliefs, attitudes, and action frames of reference such as trust and cooperative norms, of reciprocity.

Thus, there are tacit as well as explicit aspects of social capital though some of these may seldom if ever be articulated and delineated for others.

As Claridge (2020) indicates, there are distinct, but dynamically interrelated, levels of social capital. These levels range between the micro- or individual level. That is personal “habitus” – which Bourdieu (1977) describes as a person’s “taken-for-granted” – ways of being, thinking, and reacting to events and to other people. Then, the next level above the individual is the meso-level, which is “how things are done here amongst us,” that is, the level of a group’s social capital (such as a team, or an organizational or local community level). Lastly, and wider still, the top level is the macro- or cultural-societal structural level of the nation.

The social capital systems in any location encompasses sets of acceptable or culturally legitimated behavioral norms and rules of engagement between community members which include types of greetings, forms of cooperation, communications, and signaling between diverse members. Thus, social capital may be present in the tacit, or unspoken/taken-for-granted assumptions as much as in explicit or formalized codes of behavior. The forms of social interactions at each of the levels may have norms for specific types communication and address in particular sets of circumstances such as social gatherings at home or in public or when attending communal gatherings or ceremonial occasions, or between people of different social status. Social capital generates trust and social cohesion and some level of cultural and attitudinal consensus and interest, which in turn delivers a stable environment for the local community or larger society, business, or the economy.

• (1)

  Social capital is the development of relationships that help contribute to a more efficient production of goods and services as there is embedded trust, embodied in practice, that is, in behaviors regarded as trustworthy and socially helpful.

• (2)

  There are three types of social capital at each level of interaction – bonding, bridging, and linking. Bridging and linking are similar though they operate in different directions socially. Bonding social capital describes the connections between people in similar social levels or groups of people who share the same characteristic norms and beliefs, whereas linking social capital facilitates connects between different groups.

• (3)

  Social capital can therefore make or break businesses, especially small businesses or start-ups as those with the right kind and amount of social capital, such as good connections and contacts in the trade or profession, can usually thrive as they are able to get work done more quickly, effectively, and efficiently. Conversely, a lack of social capital denoting some distrust between groups can undermine social stability.

Social capital is the development of relationships that help contribute to a more efficient production of goods and services as there is embedded trust, embodied in practice, that is, in behaviors regarded as trustworthy and socially helpful.

There are three types of social capital at each level of interaction – bonding, bridging, and linking. Bridging and linking are similar though they operate in different directions socially. Bonding social capital describes the connections between people in similar social levels or groups of people who share the same characteristic norms and beliefs, whereas linking social capital facilitates connects between different groups.

Social capital can therefore make or break businesses, especially small businesses or start-ups as those with the right kind and amount of social capital, such as good connections and contacts in the trade or profession, can usually thrive as they are able to get work done more quickly, effectively, and efficiently. Conversely, a lack of social capital denoting some distrust between groups can undermine social stability.

The meso- or macro-levels of bridging type social capital ensures acceptance of established social roles locally and linking forms of social capital boost levels of acceptance of other roles such as those of leaders and followers.

All three forms of social capital and the three levels are not mutually exclusive but instead are mutually inclusive and interrelated. That is, they co-evolve, each impacting the other while dynamically interacting with the social capital anchored as it is emerging from the complex and interwoven fields of tacit and explicit norms of social interaction underpinning each of the levels of interaction over time.

This is an essay that will be misinterpreted. Before I even mention genocidal rights, I want to make clear what my argument is not. First, my argument is not that genocide has not happened or does not continue to happen. Second, I will not suggest that genocide is not a serious crime. Finally, I will not try to develop a theory of victimhood – to challenge the centrality of the victim in discussions of genocide. Rather, my interest here will be the uncomfortably intimate relationship between genocidal violence on the one hand and the elaboration of civil, sovereign, and human rights on the other.

The impact of the cognitive and demographic characteristics of top management teams (TMTs) on the strategic assets acquisition performance in organizations is evaluated. The evaluation measure is relative efficiency in converting generic inputs into valuable strategic assets using data envelopment analysis. Of the 12 TMT characteristics evaluated about three were statistically significant, and four were inconclusive. The study was performed on firms in the domestic airline industry.

Looks at the effects reduction in Local Government spending has had on race initiatives in the multi‐racial library service. Notes that multi racial librarians will be required to work two days a week at designated service points therefore diluting the service they provide. Concludes that a service for black and ethnic minority communities may be forced to depend on income from the very communities it was created to serve.

Begins with the premiss that we are living through an epochal change from the modern to the postmodern era and that marketing organizations have to reconsider their conceptions of the market, the consumer and marketing practice accordingly. Following a brief discussion of the themes of postmodernity, explores some of the key assumptions of modern marketing that are challenged by the transformation to postmodernity. Finally, presents the implications of postmodern culture for marketing, arguing that consumers are not driven by needs but have needs which are driven by external forces, that consumers have become customizers, that marketing organizations′ offerings will increasingly become processes rather than finished products, and that consumers who will increasingly become integrated into the production systems will have to be conceptualized as producers. Concludes by re‐emphasizing that marketing and post‐modernity are greatly intertwined, arguing that consumers are not driven by needs but have needs which are driven by external forces.

Past predictions of convergence between American capitalism and the Soviet planned economy optimistically assumed that advanced industrial society must also become democratic and pragmatic in its choice of economic policies. The Soviets had to become more capitalist. All such predictions proved only partially correct. Russia did become capitalist after a hugely destructive collapse, which obliterated the democratic demands of the 1960s in deindustrialization and enormous inequalities. Only ideological prejudices, reinforced in 1989, prevent most observers from seeing that America and Russia did in fact converge in a similar pattern of socioeconomic crisis. The outcomes of their crisis sequences could seem different in 2012, but these might not be the final outcomes.

The geopolitical phenomenon commonly known as ‘France-Africa’ (Gourévitch 1997) is the fruit of the historical and political relations that France as a colonizing power has maintained and continues to maintain to this day with its former colonies in Africa. Before the colonial period, Africa was originally made up of autonomous political entities (states). ¹ The current mapping of African states is the result of the European political will expressed at the Berlin Conference held from 15 November 1884 to 26 February 1885. ²