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Peacebuilding is often premised on international intervention in post-conflict situations. This epilogue extends the concept to address preventative peacebuilding in pre-conflict societies. Social movement organizations that spring from democratically oriented movements can either reproduce dominant and dominating leadership styles, or they can cultivate democratizing leadership (Klein, 2016) by developing democratic practices, structures, and cultures within and between organizations. Democratizing leadership promotes leadership as a verb more than a noun: as the operation of power in relationship between people, rather than as positional power grounded in an authority figure. In democratizing leadership, democratic decision-making is preceded by the development of individual and collective voice and followed by responsible collective action. In addition to these processes, democratic values are also essential, including: freedom (differentiated from autonomy), justice (procedural, social, and restorative justice), and equity (more than equality), which underlie structural processes and inform practices. When social movement organizations find creative tension between ad hoc leadership and the tendency toward bureaucratization, they can cultivate a democratic culture through organizational practices and structures for preventative peacebuilding work. Leadership in such organizations recognizes and utilizes creative conflict to sustain agonistic pluralism and promote conflictual consensus (Mouffe, 2013). This epilogue provides examples of democratizing leadership from social movement organizations, including: In the Heart of the Beast Theater, Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, Neighborhood Leadership Program, and the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs, that illustrate how democratizing leadership can be developed in pre-conflict preventative peacebuilding organizations by integrating democratic practices, structures, and cultures.

Conflicts, especially when they turn into civil war or genocide, have irreversible consequences for people. The impact is not only economic as shown by several quantitative studies, but also social and ethical since it deeply affects the mind and behaviour of both current and future generations. The main issue is, therefore, to avoid the eruption of such conflicts, in both pre and post‐conflict situations, by implementing preventive approaches. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Even if macro‐analyses bring up a series of objective causal factors to explain the reasons of uprisings and conflicts, we insist on the importance of people's micro‐attitudes when confronted by such events. The freedom of the agent to react appropriately in order to generate peace, and his responsibility towards the other, become nowadays essential and have to be improved by appropriate innovative education programmes.

Learning to live together and to behave with esteem and confidence, can contribute substantially to the peace‐keeping or peace‐building processes, especially in pre and post‐conflict situations. Such specific capabilities connect to the “life skills” education programme and could bring vital new opportunities.

However, the economic or political causes of societal failure may still remain, at the macro‐level, and jeopardise these opportunities, with the risk of transforming these positive capabilities into negative behaviour. Therefore, implementing in addition a social precautionary principle and appropriate investigation tools such as observatories and sentinel sites may be required to monitor such risks.

The paper offers insights into the following issue: to what extend and under which conditions will micro‐level measures effectively contribute to peace‐keeping, in the case of pre‐conflict situations, and to peace‐restoring in the case of post‐conflict contexts.

This study determines the relationship between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their support providers during three phases: pre-conflict environment, during conflict environment, and the post-conflict (uncertain) environment with the reference to institutional theory in the northwest region of Pakistan where there is ongoing unrest between the authorities and the insurgents.

Using a qualitative approach, a total of 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted, 19 with the owner-managers of small manufacturing firms and 4 from small business support providers in the region.

The authors theorise the changing role of support agencies as differing institutional gaps, while conflict is destructive for SMEs and support agencies; paradoxically the crisis results in stronger relationships between the support providers and SMEs which was weaker in the pre-conflict environment. Such stronger relationship enhanced the cognitive pillar of institutional theory where entrepreneurship is supported by various groups including government agencies and SMEs to alleviate unemployment in the region which is one of the potential reasons of terrorism in the country.

The study may have value for policymakers who need to know more about how small businesses and support providers develop a support network in difficult regions and give a comprehensive framework to other conflictual regions who face similar circumstances.

This research contributes to the previous literature in several ways. First, the study reveals the impact of conflict environment on small businesses and support providers where a little research has been undertaken. Second, the study shows the support mechanism in three different intervals pre-conflict, during the conflict and post-conflict and how the Talibanization in the region has a positive impact by strengthening the support structure among small businesses and support providers. Finally, the study contributes to the growing body of literature on entrepreneurship in conflict environments.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the existing research on the intersection between war and international business (IB) and to map out a future research agenda.

Drawing on corporate examples and extant literature within IB, political science and international relations, the paper provides an introduction to the main concepts of war, a review of the IB research on war and provides a critical future research agenda.

The review of the multiple strands of war-related research in IB generally reveals an understudied area. Among other biases, prior research has focused on inter-state wars and has relatively unexplored foreign direct investment (FDI) and non-FDI within civil wars. Furthermore, previous studies offer little attention to how IB and multinational companies contribute to the emergence and development of wars.

The paper develops an analytical and critical research agenda for future research to examine the relationship between war and IB. This includes a set of questions for each of the three major phases of war: pre-conflict, armed violence and post-conflict. To the best of my knowledge, this has not been done before in the context of IB research.

The economic effects of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka are multifarious. A discussion of the economic effects of ethnic conflict could encompass the opportunity cost of the war (i.e., the foregone income due to the war at micro- and macro-levels), the economic impact of the military expenditures (on both sides of the war), financing mechanisms (both national and international) of the rebel movement, and the impact of economic sanctions on rebel territory. It should be noted that the economic effects of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is a relatively under-researched area (Arunatilake, Jayasuriya, & Kelegama, 2000; Goonetileke, 1998; Grobar & Gnanaselvam, 1993; Gunatilleke et al., 2001; Kelegama, 1999; O’Sullivan, 1994, 1997, 2001; Rankaduwa & Cooray, 1999; Ravano, 2001; Richardson & de Samarasinghe, 1991; Ross & Samaranayake, 1986; Seabright, 1986).

To provide a new way of conceptualizing the leader's role in managing conflict for increased task and social outcomes in culturally heterogeneous workgroups (CHWs).

The objectives of the paper can be met by hypothesizing the proposed relationships and testing them quantitatively using multiple regression.

Finds that the effect of conflict in CHWs depends, in part, on the way the parties concerned manage it, and in particular the group leader.

The major limitation of the current research is that it is theoretical. Future research will now need to test the propositions put forward in this paper.

The paper conceptually identified some skills and behaviors that are pertinent to effective leadership in culturally heterogeneous workgroups.

The model presented in the paper and the research emanating from it should assist in training leaders for these workgroups.

Capacity building in fragile and post‐conflict situations is specially challenging for policy makers in that it represents a situation that needs to be carefully managed. Understanding the dynamic link between capacity building and conflict requires understanding the nature and determinants of conflicts, their duration, intensity and the modalities for their cessation and post‐conflict reconstruction. This study attempted to do that from systemic or theoretical perspective. A major common theme that runs across the literature is that post‐conflict recovery and sustainable development and the associated capacity building exercise in Africa need to have the following four feature: (1) first a broad development planning framework with a fairly long‐time horizon and an overarching objective of poverty reduction; (2) second, social policy‐making in such countries is expected to be distinct from non‐conflict countries. This signals the need to articulate country specific policies and (3) third, intervention in such states requires a high volume of aid flows and (4) forth it need to be preceded by deeper understanding of African societies by donors. This study by outlining such basic issues from theoretical perspective resorted to an outline of three core areas of capacity building that are needed in post‐conflict and fragile states: capacity building to address immediate needs of post‐conflict states, capacity building to address the core economic and political causes of conflict, as well as, capacity building to address issues of finance and financial sector reconstruction. Each of these aspects is discussed in detail in the study. The study underscores the need to view and understand capacity building exercise as part and parcel of a broad developmental problem which requires broader developmental solutions.

Considering the importance of Russia and Ukraine in agriculture, the authors quantify the potential impact of the Russia–Ukraine conflict on food output, trade, prices and food security for the world.

The authors mainly use the quantitative and structural multi-country and multi-sector general equilibrium trade model to analyze the potential impacts of the conflict on the global food trade pattern and security.

First, the authors found that the conflict would lead to soaring agricultural prices, decreasing trade volume and severe food insecurity especially for countries that rely heavily on grain imports from Ukraine and Russia, such as Egypt and Turkey. Second, major production countries such as the United States and Canada may even benefit from the conflict. Third, restrictions on upstream energy and fertilizer will amplify the negative effects of food insecurity.

This study analyzed the effect of Russia–Ukraine conflict on global food security based on sector linkages and the quantitative general equilibrium trade framework. With a clearer demonstration of the influence about the inherent mechanism based on fewer parameters compared with traditional Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) models, the authors showed integrated impacts of the conflict on food output, trade, prices and welfare across sectors and countries.

Fragile states (FS) are often neglected and categorized as “aid orphans”. In extreme circumstances, they are loaded with aid beyond their absorptive capacity. However, whether they receive little or too much, there is a compelling imperative to coordinate aid aimed at capacity development effectively. In an ever shrinking pot of funds from donors mainly due to the current global economic downturn, it is extremely important to coordinate and harmonise aid delivery. FS cannot afford to waste any money trapped under rubble of multi‐donor aid bureaucracy. Due to the multidimensional nature of fragility, we draw on case studies and interdisciplinary insights from Authority‐Legitimacy‐Capacity (ALC), Country Development Framework (CDF) and other models and frameworks of donor coordination. A number of asymmetries (e.g. technical, cultural and, financial) between donors and recipients need to be addressed. Donors can harmonise their respective Africa strategies reports and give priority to infrastructure instead of focusing exclusively on the social agenda as in the past. FS should fight the local culture of corruption, avoid fungibility, protect vulnerable groups in society, focus on reintegration as well as demobilizing ex‐combatants with employment provisions. Donors should not give mixed signals to recipients and need to be flexible in their operational procedures. Finally, we discuss the implications of key emerging issues that threaten or facilitate sustainable reconstruction, development and poverty reduction in post‐conflict environments.

Following the Arab Spring turmoil, Middle East and North African (MENA) countries’ overall instability has significantly increased which resulted in the decrease of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the research on determinants of FDI inflows to the MENA region by examining the relationship between state fragility and FDI.

A panel data analysis was conducted to study the impact of Fragile States Index (FSI) and its components, namely economic, social and political/military state fragility, on FDI inflows to seven MENA countries situated in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) region over the period 2006-2016.

The results show that the increase of political state fragility deters FDI inflows to SEMED countries. By contrast, their economic and social state fragilities are insignificant for FDI. This could be explained by the fact that investors are usually attracted by government stability and a strong investment profile.

Given the fact that previous research has not yet validated FSI as a new FDI determinant, the results should be interpreted with some caution. It may also be worth examining the impact of FSI on FDI by industry sector in future studies.

The results reveal that FSI could help MNEs investing in the MENA region assess and better manage the economic, social and political/military risks they face.

This study introduces a new FDI determinant and stresses the importance of state fragility in attracting FDI.