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This contribution conceptualizes the politicization of MNCs from outside – the processes by which MNCs become confronted with demands for regulation and engage in political contestation with other non-state actors. It compares two global industries, athletic footwear and toys, to show that the dynamics of politicization follow different trajectories, which are only partially to explain with structural differences across industry fields. If politicization leads to increasing political functioning of business or to a depoliticization of criticism depends to a great extend on the agency of business and their capacity to strategically counter mobilization, but also on the difficulties for activist to construct continuing collective action across a diverse range of cultural-institutional settings.

This exploratory study aims to contribute to theory extension regarding the unique factors that characterize performance evaluation in the public sector.

The chapter reviews the Public Sector and the Interpretation literatures and develops a framework that introduces the concept of interpretation asymmetries, and then uses two case studies and a survey applied to both South American and European public managers to illustrate and analyze propositions derived from the framework.

Public agencies and managers are not assessed by their activities and outcomes but by how the general public may come to interpret and perceive them. Public officers – besides getting their organizations’ job done – struggle to show the truth of their organizations and preserve their organizations’ legitimacy due to the conditions of interpretation asymmetry and the dynamics of politicization prevalent in the public domain.

This study was designed to be exploratory and fundamentally oriented to theory extension. As such, the findings and conclusions are tentative and require further research.

Governments, public officers, politicians, and researchers would benefit from going beyond usual considerations of information asymmetries and start paying attention to, understanding, and managing interpretation asymmetries.

This chapter contributes to the increasing research on the intersection of performance management and the public sector, and provides new concepts that enhance our understanding of the dynamics of assessment in environments prone to politicization. While prior research has been mainly focused on agent’s dysfunctional responses to performance measures, this chapter illustrates functional behaviors through which agents aim to increase the dimensionality and integrity of principals’ interpretations.

There has been much debate in the literature regarding whether political pressures are beneficial or detrimental to public agencies’ performance and outcomes. This chapter explores under what conditions, if any, do political pressures have any positive effects.

A survey methodology and multivariate regression models are applied to assess the relationship between political pressures and public agencies’ performance and outcomes, using data from South-America and Europe. The theoretical scope is developed drawing from the public sector, management control, and goal-setting literatures.

The effects of political pressures on public agencies’ performance and public officers’ job satisfaction are moderated by technical certainty. At low levels of technical certainty political pressures have negative effects while at high levels they have positive effects.

All limitations of survey research apply.

Governments, public officers, and politicians should take into account the dynamics described in this study so as to limit the negative effects of political pressures and take advantage of the positive ones.

This is the first study to suggest that the effects of political pressures on public agencies vary depending on the nature of the task public agencies perform. The results reported here bring a new perspective to the literature, helping to clarify prior conflicting results. In addition, the fact that results are consistent for South American and European public agencies suggests that these findings might be generalizable across cultural boundaries.

This paper aims to trace how emotion shapes the sense that is made of politics and how politicization can remake and re-mark emotion, giving it new meaning in context. This paper brings together theories of politicization and emotional configurations in learning to interrogate the role emotion plays in the learning of social justice activists.

Drawing on sociocultural learning perspectives, the paper traces politicization processes across the youth climate movement (using video-based interaction analysis) and the animal rights movement (using ethnographic interviews and participant observation).

Emotional configurations significantly impacted activists’ politicization in terms of what was learned conceptually, the kinds of practices – including emotional practices – that were taken up collectively, the epistemologies that framed social justice work, and the identities that were made salient in collective action. In turn, politicization reshaped how social justice activists made sense of emotion in the course of activist practice.

This study is valuable for theorizing social justice learning, so social movement facilitators and educators might design spaces where learning about gender, racialization, colonialism and/or human/more-than-human relations can thrive. By attending to emotional configurations, this study can help facilitate a design that supports and sustains learning for justice.

Emotion remains under-theorized and under-analyzed in the learning sciences, despite indications that emotion enables and constrains particular learning opportunities. This paper proposes new ways of understanding emotion and politicization as co-constitutive processes for learning scientists interested in politics and social justice.

The aim of the article is to elucidate the political factors which motivated Zimbabwe's land reform that was forcibly initiated by the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) government in 2000.

The research makes use of primary and secondary sources. The government of Zimbabwe parliamentary debates highlight the grievances raised by the people over land redistribution as early as 1980. The newspapers, internet and published material provide evidence pointing out to the political nature of the land reform.

It is apparent that the ZANU PF government was reluctant to address the land question despite the fact that many rural people were crowded in the reserves. It was in 2000 that ZANU PF awakened to its waning popularity after the referendum defeat which coincided with the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in 1999. Land reform was used as a political weapon to thwart the MDC as evidenced by the brutal suppression of MDC activities countrywide.

The research proves that the victimisation of MDC members in Zimbabwe has made opposition politics a disastrous game. Starting in 2000, ZANU PF embarked on a mission to thwart opposition activism and the effects were deeply felt. Paramilitary groups such as the Second Chimurenga war veterans, Border Gezi “youths” and ZANU PF supporters took the lead in torturing and killing real and alleged MDC supporters. The MDC retaliated but with very limited success.

The paper provides unique insights into the political motives which encouraged Zimbabwe's land reform programme. The implications for practice provided herein are useful for policy makers in the country.

The purpose of this paper is to explore two financial inclusion measures adopted within the local welfare context of the city of Milan, Italy, examining their functioning and underpinning representations. The aim is also to understand how such representations take concrete shape in the practices of local actors, and their implications for the opportunities and constraints regarding individuals' effective inclusion. To this end, this paper takes a wide-ranging look at the interplay between the rise of financial inclusion and the individualisation and responsibilisation models informing welfare policies, within the broader context of financialisation processes overall.

This paper draws on the sociology of public action approach and provides a qualitative analysis of two case studies, a social microcredit service and a financial education programme, based on direct observation and semi-structured interviews conducted with key policy actors.

This paper sheds light on the rationale behind two financial inclusion services and illustrates how the instruments involved incorporate and tend to reproduce, individualising logics that reduce the problem of financial exclusion, and the social and economic vulnerability which underlies it, to a matter of personal responsibility, thus fuelling depoliticising tendencies in public action. It also discusses the contradictions underlying financial inclusion instruments, showing how local actors negotiate views and strategies on the problems to be addressed.

The paper makes an original contribution to the field of sociology and social policy by focusing on two under-researched instruments of financial inclusion and improving understanding of the finance-welfare state nexus and of the contradictions underpinning attempts at financial inclusion of the most vulnerable.

The purpose of this paper is to inform the reader of some emerging trends in placemaking and digital destination management, while providing a conceptual background on shifts in architectural design.

The trend paper is based on a fundamental bibliographic view on evolutions in placemaking, from architectural design to spatial agency, integrated by and contextualized in tourism trends, however possibly anecdotal.

The trend paper identifies a fundamental shift from architectural processes to spatial agency as organizing principle for placemaking, discussing how digital tourism trends are formed or forming change in this.

The trend paper newly relates otherwise distant and unrelated fields, namely architectural design theory and tourism trends, by connecting at the level of IoT and IT digital technologies, exploring the impact and the mutual role played by its two constituencies.

This study aims to highlight and validate the importance of strategic procurement and its value to both public and private firms. This study discusses a collaborative private-public partnership (PPP), supply chain advisory committee (SCAC), established during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic to acquire personal protective equipment (PPE) and other critical supplies for a donation center in Toledo, Ohio, USA. This center serves the community and small businesses. This paper discusses the strategies, process and framework that were created to procure the needed items under a short lead time. The process of the partnership and outcomes are transferable and capable of being used by others to benefit society.

The case study methodology was used to investigate and summarize the actions and events of the SCAC. The case presented was tracked from the initial call to action from a local emergency response organization, Lucas County Emergency Operation Center (EOC), through the first six months of the committee’s work. Data collection was completed through a triangulation of sources.

The findings of this study reveal that public firms are vulnerable in a crisis. A crisis exposes the inequities in the supply chain and the need for public and private collaboration to use innovative procurement strategies. This study suggests that PPP procurement professionals benefit from working together. Both can learn from the limitations and benefits of collaborating.

This study offers a framework on how PPPs can be established to procure PPE during a crisis. This study has practical implications for private and public firms seeking to collaborate for the good of society.

The findings of the study reveal that public firms are vulnerable in a crisis, which exposes the inequities in their supply chains. Private-public partnership (PPP) procurement professionals mutually benefit from working together as both can learn from each whether it is procuring PPE during a crisis or seeking to team up for the good of society. Society benefits when these organizations share solutions to problems rather than compete against one another during a crisis-situation such as a global pandemic. Supplies get to those who need them the most and information flows amongst the organizations to ensure equity in the availability of the supplies.

This study contributes to the growing body of literature that argues that public procurement must be innovative and strategic to contribute to socially responsible solutions. Government regulations require public procurement to use competitive bidding for accountability, cost reduction and to reduce fraud. However, emergency situations require innovative procurement strategies. The use of innovative procurement strategies is typical in private procurement. During a crisis, supplier relationships, lead-time management and shared and transfer of knowledge must be leveraged to acquire critical items in a timely manner. A lack of innovative public procurement strategies constrains the public and small under resourced businesses, rendering them inoperable. This paper provides a case study of an effective PPP during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper highlights the strategies, process and framework for future research and collaborations.

Uncertainty, a state of unknowing linked to threats and opportunities, is a key characteristic of megaprojects, making it challenging for government officials and politicians to decide on their initiation. For them, implementation by the private sector adds an extra layer of complexity and uncertainty to megaproject planning. In this context, only a few studies have focussed on governing and the mobilization of uncertainty arguments in communication between government actors and private developers either in favour of or against megaprojects. The purpose of this article is to shed light on how private megaproject proposals progress towards political acceptance or rejection in public decision-making.

This process of public decision-making on private megaproject proposals is examined in the case of the Helsinki–Tallinn undersea rail tunnel. In line with the interpretive research tradition, the authors’ study draws on a qualitative methodology underpinned by social constructionism. The research process can be characterized as abductive.

The authors’ findings suggest that while public decision-making on megaprojects is a conflictual and dynamic process, some types of uncertainty are relatively more important in affecting the perceived feasibility of the projects in the eyes of public sector decision-makers.

This study contributes to the debate on uncertainty management in megaprojects, proposing a new type of uncertainty – uncertainty about privateness – which has not been explicitly visible thus far.