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Purpose: This purpose of this chapter is to present several theories of financial inclusion. Financial inclusion is the ease of access to, and the availability of, basic financial services to all members of the population. Financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs in a responsible and sustainable way. Financial inclusion practices vary from country to country, and there is need to identify the underlying principles or propositions that can explain the observed variation in financial inclusion practices. These set of principles or propositions are called theories.

Methods: The chapter uses conceptual discussions to formulate alternative theories of financial inclusion.

Findings: The study shows that financial inclusion theories are explanations for observed financial inclusion practices. It also shows that the ideas and perspectives on financial inclusion can be grouped into theories to facilitate meaningful discussions in the literature.

Originality/value: Currently, there are no observed or elaborate theories of financial inclusion in the policy or academic literature. This chapter is the first attempt to develop theories of financial inclusion. The theories are intended to be useful to researchers, academics and practitioners. The resulting contributions to theory development are useful to the problem-solving process in the global financial inclusion agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how to build and implement information and communication technology (i.e. ICT) to help vulnerable people when significant social, cultural and economic barriers exist between the stakeholders.

The authors followed an action research approach to design and implement a mobile health hypertension education application to help India's most vulnerable populations. The authors used interpretive analysis, guided by the sustainable livelihoods framework, to uncover key findings.

Successfully implementing information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) requires understanding that all stakeholders (i.e. donors, facilitators and the beneficiaries) have important assets to contribute. Facilitators play an important role in connecting donors to the beneficiaries and fostering cultural humility in donors so that the donors will understand the role beneficiaries play in success. Stakeholders may use the ICT4D in unintended ways that both improve the people's health and increase some beneficiaries' financial livelihood.

This research expands the definition of information systems success when implementing ICT4D in resource-constrained environments. Success is more than creating an mHealth app that was easy for beneficiaries to use and where they learned based on a pre- and post-test statistical analysis. Success involved development in all the stakeholders impacted by the social innovation collaboration. For the beneficiary community, success included getting screened for noncommunicable diseases as a first step toward treatment. For the facilitator, success involved more resources for their community health program. Amongst the donors, success was a change in perspective and learning cultural humility.

Although universities encourage faculty to work in interdisciplinary research teams to address serious world problems, university researchers may have to exert considerable effort to secure contracts, approvals and payments. Unfortunately, universities may not reward this effort to build ICT4D and continue to evaluate faculty based on journal publications. When universities undertake social innovation collaborations, administrators should ensure responsive and flexible university processes as well as appropriate academic reward structures are in place. This need is heightened when collaborations involve international partners with limited resources and time needed to build relationships and understanding across cultures.

This study discovered the importance of fostering cultural humility as a way of avoiding potential conflicts that may arise from cultural and power differences. Cultural humility moves the focus of donor-beneficiary relationships away from getting comfortable with “them” to taking actions that develop relationships and address vulnerabilities (Fisher-Borne et al., 2015). This research shows how the facilitator helped the donor develop cultural humility by involving the donor in various initiatives with the beneficiary community including allowing the donor to live in a dormitory at the hospital, work in an urban slum and visit health screening campus.

This study (1) extends the ICT4D literature by incorporating cultural humility into the sustainable livelihoods framework, (2) provides a contextual understanding of developing cultural humility in ICT4D projects with a complex group of stakeholders and (3) describes how facilitators become a catalyst for change and a bridge to the community. The culturally humble approach suggests revising the livelihood framework to eliminate words like “the poor” to describe beneficiaries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of gender on the organizational commitments of managers in community-based organizations.

A total of 327 managers in community-based organizations were asked about their work attitudes. LISREL analysis was performed. The dependent variable was the intention to withdraw from the organization. The questionnaires were mailed to the sampled population. In all, 202 questionnaires were returned, representing a 62 percent response rate.

Findings show that for women, job involvement was related to affective organizational commitment and to career commitment, but not to continuance organizational commitment. The current research offers an alternative path structure to that of Randall and Cote’s (1991) original model, which does not relate job involvement to continuance organizational commitment. As for men, the author found a significant relationship between job involvement, career commitment, and affective organizational commitment. Hence, men’s work attitudes in this study are consistent with those elicited in the original research model. Regarding the factors influencing withdrawal intentions among women, the author found that career commitment influenced the initial intention to withdraw from the organization and thinking of quitting. The author also found that affective organizational commitment influenced initial intention to withdraw, thinking of quitting, and search intentions. Among men, there was a significant relationship between job involvement, career commitment, and affective organizational commitment.

Future research should use multiple informants for assessing the model as well as a longitudinal design. Another potential avenue of research is to examine whether the findings hold true across professions and sectors.

The findings are important for community-based organizations because they are not-for-profit organizations; therefore, the provision of good service to the community is based on managers’ high levels of commitment. In addition, results could assist managers in developing a policy to bolster adequate work attitudes by considering the differences between men and women, in order to retain high-quality workers in the organization.

The social contribution of this study derives from the demographic differences found between men and women, and according to the literature that supports the inclusion of different genders, cultures, and social groups in community-based organizations.

The findings are important for community-based organizations because they are not-for-profit organizations and therefore good service to the community is based on high commitment of managers.

As the regulatory authorities for registering, monitoring and controlling milk hygiene, metropolitan municipalities (metros) and district municipalities (DMs) should boast sufficient resources and systems to properly support the compliance of milk with legislative prescriptions and health standards. This paper aims to assess the availability and efficient management of resources for environmental health services (EHS), as well as the approach followed by local government (metropolitan and district municipalities as well as provincial health departments) in allocating available resources to monitor and control the informal milk‐producing sector in South Africa.

A structured questionnaire survey was conducted, targeting the cohort of municipal health service (MHS) managers (n=52) at the various metros and DMs in South Africa. Questions focused on physical and human resource management as well as the approach followed by MHS towards milk hygiene control.

At the time of the survey it was determined that resources (financial, human and to a lesser extent transport) available for MHS to effectively monitor, control and support the informal milk‐producing sector, were insufficient. Although food control enjoys high priority in MHS, activities such as sampling, premises inspections, and health and hygiene education at milking parlours, are predominantly performed on an ad hoc basis. This approach impacts negatively on the management of available resources and the effectiveness of interventions, leading to a need for national and provincial governments, industry and relevant associations to support and strengthen the capacity of municipalities to optimally exercise their powers and perform their functions.

The importance of the paper lies in its quantification and description of the current MHS situation in South Africa and thereby, via quantifiable results it makes an appeal to regulatory bodies towards channelling and effective management of resources by applying project management principles and skills.

This chapter explores processes of stratification in reproductive healthcare and considers the ways in which mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion shape reproductive opportunities and experiences. First, I consider the process of “selective inclusion” among sexual minority women. This examination questions the schisms that exist within the sexual minority population in regard to their visibility and legibility in medical, scientific, and public health discourses and constructions of reproductive health. The second process I examine is that of “exclusionary inclusion” among substance using pregnant women who have been collectively deemed “bad breeders” by medical and state authorities and whose reproduction is explicitly monitored, regulated, and criminalized. The final process I discuss is “side-stepping inclusion” which describes the healthcare and consumer decisions of women who circumvent medicalized childbirth experiences by employing the services of a midwife for their pregnancy and birth care. This chapter examines how medicalization, biomedicalization, and de-medicalization dynamically work together to expand and delimit inclusionary processes, emphasizing the spectral and interconnected quality of these processes. By exploring various processes of inclusion that shape reproductive experiences of these disparate and differentially marginalized populations, this chapter provides a conceptual and critical meditation on the ways in which “respectable reproduction” is deployed in reproductive care. In considering these processes of inclusion and the ways in which they are co-produced by medical discourses and practices, scholars may more clearly grasp some fundamental mechanisms of stratification in reproductive healthcare and knowledge production.

Describes how recent technological developments have changed the way that information is stored, managed and accessed. The impact of the Internet has created a need for public libraries to realign their position in the information marketplace. Addresses the challenges facing the library director in creating and selling the multidimensional library of the future, setting out ideas on the skills that will be required in terms of marketing, fund‐raising, and gaining staff commitment to the changes. Critical to this is the mix of physical and virtual, the idea of the library and the reality of the library. In future, public libraries will need integrated services, use of technology, and the right leadership.

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO), despite being a critical organization member responsible for ensuring quality of financial reporting, audit and compliance, is under-researched. Grouped as a member of top management teams (TMS) in studies, factors influencing decision making in this group rely on static measures of characteristics without regard for dynamic and longitudinal influences of career trajectories and industry occupational group memberships. The relationship between the high-tech industry as a site of notable reported internal control (IC) weakness and influences on CFOs requires closer examination. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study draws together the upper echelons theory and occupational communities (OCs) to explore the impact of shared values and behavioral norms from different sources on executive decision making. Internal and external sources of OC are proposed and their influence on activities with respect to corporate IC is tested. The sample of 1,573 firm/year observations includes high-tech firms listed on major US exchanges was developed using data from five distinct databases. Executives’ biographic information was manually collected.

Results indicate that senior financial executives belong not only to their firm and its culture but also to OCs that extend beyond the firm. Membership in professional credential granting occupational groups has less impact on effective IC than experience in the high-tech industry. In combination, multiple OCs show evidence of compound and counteracting effects on IC. The OC that arises in the high-tech industry makes a measurable positive difference in the quality of IC in sample firms, in contrast with the OC among credentialed accounting and financial professionals.

This quantitative study of OC reveals the differential impact of different sources of OC and contributes to the literature on TMS a new framework for examining decision making. OC is typically studied through qualitative methods and, thus, potential exists to further explore the specific nature and dynamics of the OCs identified in this study.

The study highlights the role of broad affiliations and networks among senior financial executives which may have bearing on their ability to effectively manage IC. The role of these networks may also partially explain instances of CFO failure and thus dismissal. Knowledge of the role of OC may help boards of directors in the selection and promotion of senior financial officers of the firm.

The paper offers a different perspective on professional accounting expertise in one specific industry where incidence of IC weakness is high relative to other industries. Study results expand recent research on TMS to include sociological impacts of cohort groups. Despite generally weaker IC in the high-tech sector, this study demonstrates the value of exploring group membership within the industry as an important predictor of behavior. The result is a new perspective to CFO decision making which illustrates the relevance of OCs among upper echelons. The implications of findings for CFO recruitment and promotion are borne out in recent instances of senior financial executive failure in the sector.

The purpose of this paper is to document a unique, holistic approach to skills development which succeeds on a number of levels.

The project's objectives are achieved through a structured “Community Project Challenge” programme, led by Echelon's consultants. This programme involves staff from Festival Housing Group who, in turn, involve pupils from local schools.

The Echelon/Festival Housing Group approach to developing skills experientially has impressive benefits to individuals, the organisation, local schools and even a school in Africa.

This programme provides: the practical managerial/supervisory knowledge and skills required to operate a Housing Association effectively and efficiently; opportunities for Years 10 and 11 pupils at secondary school to not only learn practical skills but also to gain work experience; job and career opportunities for school leavers; and opportunities for using these skills in corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects.

This paper describes a unique – and highly successful – approach to skills development which works on a number of levels: providing management/supervisory skills development for Festival Housing Group staff; property maintenance skills for school pupils, careers opportunities for these pupils and provides CSR benefits through putting these skills to use in the developing world (Kenya).