Search results

Municipalities seek new opportunities for co-producing services in rural areas. One potential partner is community-based social enterprises (CBSEs). However, whilst service co-production through CBSEs obscures the traditional roles of actors, it may lead to a legitimation crisis in local service provision. In this paper, the ways CBSEs are legitimised as service providers in rural areas are addressed from the CBSE and municipality perspectives.

Empirical data combine interviews with CBSE representatives and open-ended national survey responses from municipality decision-makers. The data analysis is based on a qualitative content analysis to examine legitimation arguments.

Results show that unestablished legitimacy and un-institutionalised support structures for co-production models build mistrust between CBSEs and municipalities, which prevents the parties from seeing the benefits of cooperation in service production.

The research focusses on the legitimation of CBSEs in service co-production in rural areas. As legitimation seems to be a context-specific process, future research is needed regarding other contexts.

Municipalities interested in the co-production of services might benefit from establishing a collaborative and responsive (rural) service policy forum that would institutionalise new models of co-production and enable better design and governance of service provision.

Results will give new theoretical and practical insights into the importance of legitimacy in the development of service co-production relationships.

Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong Region are undergoing transformations because of increasing engagement in international trade, alongside economic growth, dietary change and urbanisation. Food systems approaches are often used to understand these kinds of transformation processes, with particular strengths in linking social, economic and environmental dimensions of food at multiple scales. We argue that while the food systems approach strives to provide a comprehensive understanding of food production, consumption and environmental drivers, it is less well equipped to shed light on the role of actors, knowledge and power in transformation processes and on the divergent impacts and outcomes of these processes for different actors. We suggest that an approach that uses food systems as heuristics but complements it with attention to actors, knowledge and power improves our understanding of transformations such as those underway in the Mekong Region. The key transformations in the region include the emergence of regional food markets and vertically integrated supply chains that control increasing share of the market, increase in contract farming particularly in the peripheries of the region, replacement of crops cultivated for human consumption with corn grown for animal feed. These transformations are increasingly marginalising small-scale farmers, while at the same time, many other farmers increasingly pursue non-agricultural livelihoods. Food consumption is also changing, with integrated supply chains controlling substantial part of the mass market. Our analysis highlights that theoretical innovations grounded in political economy, agrarian change, development studies and rural livelihoods can help to increase theoretical depth of inquiries to accommodate the increasingly global dimensions of food. As a result, we map out a future research agenda to unpack the dynamic food system interactions and to unveil the social, economic and environmental impacts of these rapid transformations. We identify policy and managerial implications coupled with sustainable pathways for change.

This study aims to elucidate the quantitative and qualitative differences in employment development between German districts. Building on ideas from competitive development and resource-based theory, the paper particularly seeks to explain enduring East-West differences between rural regions by two different forms of competitive advantage: cost leadership and quality differentiation.

This study follows a two-step empirical approach: First, an extended shift-share regression is conducted to analyze employment development in Western and Eastern German districts between 2007 and 2016. Second, the competitive share effect and other individual terms of the shift-share model are further examined in additional regressions using regional economic characteristics as exogenous variables.

The findings suggest that the above-average employment growth of the rural districts in the West is owed to the successful exploitation of experience in manufacturing that has been gathered by firms in the past 100 years or so. While their strategy is largely based on advanced and specialized resources and an innovation-driven differentiation strategy, the relatively weak employment development of Eastern rural districts might be explained by a lack of comparable long-term experiences and the related need to focus on the exploitation of basic and general resources and, accordingly, on the efficiency-based strategy of cost leadership.

This study offers an in-depth empirical analysis of how the competitive share effect, i.e. region-specific resources beyond industry structure, contributes to regional employment development. The analysis reveals that quantitative differences in rural employment development are closely related to qualitatively different levels of input factors and different regimes of competitiveness.

This study aims to draw observations on the current status and potentials of the Philippines as a farm tourism destination and identify the underlying factors that inhibit farm tourism development. It intends to gauge the challenges that Filipino farmers face in diversifying farms and operating farm sites and uses these challenges in crafting strategies and policies for relevant stakeholders. It also provides Philippine farm tourism literature to address the limitations of references in the topic.

The study adopts an exploratory type of inquiry method and secondary data collection from various sources, such as published journal articles, news articles and reports, to gain insights and relevant information on farm tourism. The study also uses a threats, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths analysis approach to develop competitive farm tourism strategies.

The Philippines, with vast agricultural land, has the necessary base for farm tourism, and the enactment of the Farm Tourism Development Act of 2016 bridges this potential. With low agricultural outputs, the country draws relevance for farm tourism as a farm diversification strategy to supplement income in rural communities. While having these potentials, crucial initiatives in physical characteristics, product development, education and training, management and entrepreneurship, marketing and customer relations and government support must be implemented. Farmers' lack of skills, training and capital investment potential to convert their farms into farm tourism sites serves as the major drawback. Thus, developing entrepreneurial and hospitality skills is crucial.

This work presents a historical narrative of initiatives and measures of the Philippine farm tourism sector. It also provides a holistic discussion and in-depth analysis of the current state, potentials, strategies and forward insights for farm tourism development.

The results of this study have significant policy implications for charting a new course toward enhancing agricultural productivity among Chinese farmers.

By establishing a rural household decision-making model based on the transfer market of farmland operation rights, this paper systematically analyzes the effects of land transfer-in and land transfer-out on the productivity (per labor income) of rural households. The authors conducted basic regression analysis and robustness tests using propensity score-matching and proxy variable approaches based on the micro survey data from rural households in 30 counties in 21 provinces/municipalities/autonomous regions in 2013.

After the completion of land transfer, the total productivity of rural households transferring in lands will increase with an increase in the agricultural productivity; the total productivity of rural households transferring out land will increase due to a rise in non-agricultural productivity and the absolute total productivity of rural households not involved in land transfer will remain unchanged.

Unlike previous literature, this paper discusses the impacts of land transfer-in and transfer-out on total productivity, agricultural productivity and non-agricultural productivity among various rural households (i.e. those transferring in land, transferring out land or which are self-sufficient).

The purpose of the study was to determine the major criteria for a credible integrated development planning (IDP) process in Mbombela municipality, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa.

The study utilizes a combination of sequential exploratory and explanatory mixed methods. About 120 key informants participated in the structured questionnaire, and a further seven interviews were conducted as elite interviews. Four multistakeholder workshop sessions with up to sixty-six participants each were conducted.

To strengthen the integrated planning in local government, the study recommended “stakeholder participation and ownership,” “leadership and accountability,” “impact and outcome-based focus,” “a compact value chain” and “monitoring and evaluation.”

The IDP process is a tactical planning gadget designed to achieve transformation and introduce new systems of governance. IDPs currently tend to lack standard criteria to measure their performance in promoting public leadership and responding to community needs, which is a major challenge in many municipalities across South Africa. Since its introduction in 2000 to fast-track service delivery, concerns have been raised about why there are still constant protests alleged to be caused by poor service delivery.

This study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of adolescent’s experiences of individual school social work counselling in Swedish elementary schools.

The study encompasses interviews with 16 adolescents about their experiences of individual counselling with school social workers (SSWs). The data was analysed using conventional content analysis.

The main result was the adolescents’ desire “to navigate to shore” to speak freely about their whole lives with a professional SSW and find a “ safe haven,” […] where a trusting professional cared for and comforted them in counselling. The counselling contact contributed to increased knowledge about oneself. The results reveal the importance of the SSWs paying attention and listening to the adolescents’ narratives. The creation of a coherent life narrative enables to finally end counselling and “Cast off.”

The results highlight the importance of Swedish SSWs focusing on individual counselling sessions with adolescents to provide a setting for growth.

This study examines the role of technology as a driver of sustainable tourism perceptions among Generation Z.

The work considers the perspective of locals in Pakistan and uses a multi-method, multiphase embedded research design approach.

The research findings demonstrated that technology has a positive correlation with the environmental, socio-cultural and economic dimensions of sustainable tourism perception among Generation Z. Therefore, technology could be considered a dimension of sustainable tourism perception for locals, but perceptions differ significantly depending on the size of the city of the participant. The results of the experimental design phase that utilized picture stimuli demonstrated a linear relationship between technology and sustainability and enhanced their definition and implementation for developing countries.

This research diverges from most past research on these topics by focusing on Generation Z, for whom digital media and technology play a crucial role and for whom these technologies are positively correlated with sustainability and its overall perception. Implications for policies and practices for emerging country governments are provided.

Compared to younger and older generation migrants, middle-aged migrants in the diaspora seem to be more conflicted regarding their belonging. This paper aims to explore how middle-aged migrants in the diaspora define themselves in space and time.

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork done among Malawian migrants (herein referred to as Lydiatians) settled at Lydiate informal settlement in peri-urban Zimbabwe.

The paper reveals that, while younger migrants have a “radical transnational stance”, and older migrants regard their place of settlement as their final home, middle-aged migrants prefer to maintain a “strategic dual sense of place” regarding their place of settlement in the diaspora. These middle-aged migrants can be entrepreneurs considering their current settlement as a strategic place for petty commodity trading or those who find informal settlements to provide needed opportunities for cheap housing as the migrants pursue work in the nearby towns.

The paper offers a deeper understanding of how middle-aged migrants navigate their sense of place and contribute to host nations by functioning as key resources, dynamizing local economies through entrepreneurial activities and labour provision for various industries. The implications of this research should encourage states to positively interact with migrants, leveraging their potential for societal and economic development.

The finding that migrants in the diaspora have a dual, strategic view of their settlements is fascinating, if not new. Before this, scholars presented migrants as transnational figures, successively moving to a better place, which finally becomes home. However, the data presented in this paper suggests that this characterization associating migrants with maintaining a “stable, sedentary, bounded and fixed perception of home” is oversimplified. This is because migrants can sometimes continue to cherish the idea of informal settlements in the diaspora as home, just as the migrants also entertain the nearby established towns as useful places in their life.