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Although the theory of cumulative causation posits a “saturation point” at which all members of a rural community who are potential transnational migrants will have migrated, in the case of dynamic out-migration centers, this saturation point may never be reached. This is because growth centers – the growth often having been propelled by wages and remittances of prior migrants – attract in-migrants from poorer, less dynamic, surrounding ranchos that eventually become incorporated in transnational migration networks of the more dynamic rancho. It is also due to intermarriage as well as friendship and ritual kinship ties between members of the core rancho and surrounding ranchos.

The student will examine from a systemic perspective qualitative information from a company to propose improvements to its business model.

After working for more than 10 years with a global company, in January 2006 the Guadalajara-based jewelry SME, Divine Jewelry Co. (DJC), was facing liquidity problems, overstock and a debt from a bank loan, among others. The planned expansion of DJC, a family business founded in 1980, had resulted in just the opposite. Daniel, the owner and CEO of DJC, was determined to reverse the company's precarious situation as soon as possible. Some of the questions he asked himself centered on what actions he should take to pay off liabilities and try to survive in the industry his business had held a place in for 25 years. Daniel wondered whether, to pay off debts and have sufficient liquidity to have working capital and move forward, it would be enough to make efforts to recover those clients they had stopped serving, along with getting new ones. In addition, he thought it was necessary to formulate a plan to use the remaining proceeds from the sale of the property if they had to dispose of it. The case is about analyzing the strategic management of a company, specifically its business model, considering the context of its industry. The case also illustrates the problems that arise from focusing on serving a single client.

The case “Divine Jewelry Co: From Expansion to Survival” has been designed to be used by university students in initial management or strategic management courses on the following topics: Business modelsPorter's Five Forces ModelFormulation of strategies

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS11: Strategy.

As has been widely recognized in the literature, the post‐war economic boom which drew to a close by the early 1970s has been followed by an intense period of industrial restructuring characterized by marked instability in all three major spheres of economic activity: production, distribution, and finance. This process has taken place both at the global level and at the level of national economies (Cardenas, 1990). It reflects a profound change in the mode of capitalist accumulation. Prior to the current round of restructuring, accumulation was taken to be principally the inward‐oriented task of each nation's own economy. Now, it seems that successful capital accumulation (i.e. development) depends most upon a nation's competitive integration into the world market for goods and services (Garrido, 1995). The present mode of accumulation implies an opening of national economies to international trade in commodities and capital, both among the advanced industrial nations and between the industrialized and the newly‐industrializing countries. This has generated a heightened degree of competition among countries and among firms, given that the easy movement of capital, goods, and services has allowed for real competition to emerge among dispersed places around the globe based upon their comparative financial and productive advantages.

A corrosion study of the intra‐uterine device, “TCu 380 A”, was made using cyclic voltammetry (CV), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical microscopy (OM). Blood plasma, whole blood and artificial uterine fluid were used as corrosive media in order to establish a comparative scheme of the corrosion behaviour of copper in the device. In summary, the results obtained were not only similar to work reported previously, but also provided complementary data for a better understanding of the corrosion problem.

The paper examines 15 years of basic educational reform in Mexico directed at improving scholastic performance, equity and education for all (EFA), through mainly administrative measures, particularly decentralization. Taking a critical policy studies approach informed by anthropological examination of local educational processes, this chapter takes issue with scholarship that sees educational reforms in LDC's as the product of “decision makers” and the school reality as a deficit to be filled by “policy”. This perspective mirrors the characteristically top down approach of the very reform process it is supposed to be analyzing. The approach taken in this paper treats school district persons and institutions as active agents in their own right. More specifically the paper will argue that Mexican reforms toward EFA have been unable to transcend the very corporatist–personalistic structures it avowedly sought to reform. It has thus been largely ineffective in mobilizing forces for change, the goodwill, creativity and initiative of educators so important to its avowed aim of improving student scholastic performance. However, isolated examples of innovative uses of spaces opened by the reform offer ideas about how to reorient the reform in more productive directions.

The objective of this work is to determine the relationship between human capital and artisanal innovation. Nowadays, in Tonalá Jalisco, artisanal pieces are produced in an innovative way, either by using ceramic or any variant of the mud technique, but a substantial part of the business is what makes innovative business thinking possible. The Intellectus Model, created by Eduardo Bueno in 2011, is used as a reference, distinguishing intellectual capital in three types of capital. But for the purpose of this study, we have only analyzed the relationship of human capital with respect to artisanal innovation. The study was conducted in 2018 on 73 craft economic units. Using the Pearson chi-square technique and applying the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program, the qualitative relationship between innovation and human capital was analyzed. The result shows a positive relationship between human capital and innovation.

In the case of migration to new destinations where the immigration stream from a particular locale is of little historical depth, it can be asked what people make up ego's adaptation network. It is argued here that networks of reciprocal exchange fortified by the creation of compadrazgo relationships (ritual kinship ties) provide the new immigrant with economic and affective benefits.

This paper aims at a better understanding of contemporary women’s relationship paths and their reasoning behind them. Qualitative interviews with 48 rural and urban women from Western Mexico were conducted and analyzed using a thematic approach and data discussed from a feminist, gender approach and late modernity approach. Findings reveal civil and religious marriages were the paths two-third of women followed to start a family and that women living in permanent and alternating cohabitation did not seek to marry. Women held ambivalent views on marital life and poorer and less-educated women, particularly urban participants, had no choice but to marry. Findings on reasoning reveal a more complex and diverse reality than previous sociodemographic studies have portrayed, where pragmatism and social order were the main causes for marrying and cohabitation. Narratives show premarital sex and the symbolism of marriage and family are changing. A comparative approach between contexts of study, age groups, civil status, and social strata enriched and strengthened the discussion of the findings. The results were contrasted with existing Mexican literature from different fields. A larger qualitative study is needed to broaden the scope of the findings made by this study, whilst large-scale studies should consider either the use of mixed approaches or the inclusion of items that allow them to identify the elements of social and cultural change. The study could help to demystify women’s attitudes toward marriage, sex, and love; a field currently sprinkled with western romantic love values and gender-driven idealizations. This paper might be of interest for social demographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians conducting research on these themes from feminist and gender perspectives.