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The case, while acknowledging the difficulty of managing a family business in view of the accompanying human issues, emphasizes that sound business practices and procedures, and clarity with regard to the goal, remain the key; a firm is a complex, interconnected system and management needs a systems viewpoint; and technology can only support underlying business processes if there is clarity with respect to these.

SomPack had survived low-cost Asian competition starting the mid-1990s, a revolt by some extended family to try and bring it down with the help of a competitor, the Turkish banking crisis of 2001, and the global economic crisis of 2008 all the while watching its suppliers, competitors and customers collapse. A focus on cost-cutting and internal discipline by the successor, who had been promoted to CEO in 2004, had exacerbated internal discontent somewhat and had led to issues with production planning, but everyone understood that times were tough. Several large customers who had left were asked to return because the alternatives had been worse. By 2012, SomPack was considering expansion into new products in collaboration with its international partners. Then one day, in July 2013, it suddenly collapsed. Could the entire approach have been wrong? What should management have done instead?

Undergraduate, graduate business management.

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CSS 7: Management Science.

The Ba River catchment and delta on the island of Viti Levu, Fiji, supports a wealth of livelihoods and is populated by diverse communities who are living with an increased frequency and intensity of hydro-meteorological hazards (floods, cyclones and droughts). Participatory mapping as part of focus group discussions is a tool that can be used to elucidate communities’ understanding of the differing impacts of multiple hazards, as well as the strategies used to prepare and respond to different hazards. In this chapter, the authors present the results of qualitative research undertaken with members of three communities along the Ba River, from the Nausori highlands to the coastal mangroves, with a particular focus on recent floods (2009, 2012) and Tropical Cyclone Winston (2016). The communities draw on a wide range of livelihood strategies from fishing and agriculture to tourism and outside work. Natural hazard events vary in their impact on these livelihood strategies across the landscape and seascape, so that community members can adjust their activities accordingly. The temporal ‘signatures’ of ongoing impacts are also variable across communities and resources. The results suggest that taking a broad, landscape (and seascape) approach to understanding how communities draw livelihoods is valuable in informing effective and inclusive adaptation strategies for environmental change. Furthermore, documenting how the landscape is used in a mapped output may be a valuable tool for future social impact assessment for resource extraction activities.

This article presents the results of a survey of 250 Canadian male consumers. In this study consumer judgements of products made in both highly and newly industrializing countries were obtained in a multi‐attribute and multidimensional context. The results show that younger and less affluent respondents react more favorably towards products made in newly industrializing East Asian countries. The country‐of‐origin image of East Asian countries is less negative for products that generate a medium level of involvement (e.g., a VCR). This negative image of East Asian countries is attenuated by providing other product‐related information to consumers such as brand name and warranty. East Asian countries are perceived more negatively as countries of design than as countries of parts and assembly. In comparison with products made in highly developed countries, products made in East Asia are perceived to be poorer in terms of performance, quality and originality but more economical.

In this chapter, I revisit an important debate about dalit feminism that took place in the pages of the Economic and Political Weekly, a leading publication in India, from 1995 to 2000 (Datar, 1999; Guru, 1995; Rege, 1998, 2000). Reexamining this debate in the context of contemporary dalit and savarna feminist activism, I show that while the debate was key in making visible (1) the heretofore unmarked savarna nature of autonomous feminism and (2) the male domination of dalit politics, in the decades following the debate, dalit politics remains primarily male, and autonomous feminism while cognizant of and in conversation with dalit feminism is not necessarily transformed by dalit standpoint. Further, dalit feminism itself while visible nationally and transnationally has focused at home largely on “difference,” from savarna feminism without adequately addressing the differences among dalit subjectivities in neoliberal India, limiting the possibilities of radical, coalitional politics.

The main purpose of this research is to investigate factors influencing rural women entrepreneurship development and sustainable rural livelihoods in Manicaland province of Zimbabwe.

A quantitative research was conducted in Manicaland province in Zimbabwe. Data were collected through structured questionnaires from 400 women entrepreneurs in various sectors. The participants were in vegetable vending, operating clothing flea markets and cross border trading. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents. Structural equation modeling in SmartPLS version 3 was used to test the research hypotheses.

The study established that women entrepreneurship is driven by financial factors, positive environmental factors, positive psychological factors as well as positive sociological factors for a sustainable rural livelihood.

It is clear that if the discovered challenges are not addressed, sustainability of women entrepreneurship will remain a dream.

The study came up with strategies for improving women entrepreneurship activities. Future research can be done in other areas of provinces to avoid generalization challenges.

Many challenges hinder the sustainability of women entrepreneurship. Major impediments to women entrepreneurship comprises inadequate support from government schemes, patriarchal societal structure of the community, lack of relevant entrepreneurial knowledge to manage businesses, lack of collateral security to access funding, time limitation or role conflict to balance family pressures and business.

The study recommends proper entrepreneurship education and training, supportive government schemes and access to network affiliation/connection to sustain women entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to study Indian aspects of policy convergence in the context of budgetary linkage of two nationalized flagship programs – Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and Integrated Watershed Management Program (IWMP). Therefore, in lieu of inter-departmental convergences; issues related to water resource development of Jharkhand’s (India) rain-fed areas were addressed.

Centered on policy convergence strategy, present study applied comprehensive review and analysis approach for formulation of research base. A conceptual framework was thus designed for analytical purposes and therefore advancing toward conjectural knowledge base.

Application of inter-departmental policy convergence strategy suggested ample opportunities for optimal water resource development. Presence of abundant wage labor, rich indigenous water management techniques, tested replicable models, under-harvested rainwater potential, etc., appeared as catalysts of policy convergence. Yet, State’s lack of inter-departmental coordination and grass-root institutional framework will continually challenge policy convergences in absence of good governance.

An initiative of Indian government; MGNREGA has received international attention due to its wider coverage including natural resource management, besides guaranteed wage employment. Targeted at freshwater management discourse of Jharkhand; present paper reviewed prospective inter-departmental policy convergence strategy within various arena of MGNREGA, by exploring associated scopes and challenges. Similarly for cost effectiveness, related to maintenance and lift-irrigation demands of rain-fed area development; the present study suggested optimum utilization of inter-departmental funding linkages for development of sustainable water resources.

This study quantified companies' views on the COVID-19 pandemic with sentiment analysis of US public companies' disclosures. The study aims to provide timely insights to shareholders, investors and consumers by exploring sentiment trends and changes in the industry and the relationship with stock price indices.

From more than 50,000 Form 10-K and Form 10-Q published between 2020 and 2021, over one million texts related to the COVID-19 pandemic were extracted. Applying the FinBERT fine-tuned for this study, the texts were classified into positive, negative and neutral sentiments. The correlations between sentiment trends, differences in sentiment distribution by industry and stock price indices were investigated by statistically testing the changes and distribution of quantified sentiments.

First, there were quantitative changes in texts related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the US companies' disclosures. In addition, the changes in the trend of positive and negative sentiments were found. Second, industry patterns of positive and negative sentiment changes were similar, but no similarities were found in neutral sentiments. Third, in analyzing the relationship between the representative US stock indices and the sentiment trends, the results indicated a positive relationship with positive sentiments and a negative relationship with negative sentiments.

Performing sentiment analysis on formal documents like Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, this study was differentiated from previous studies by revealing the quantitative changes of sentiment implied in the documents and the trend over time. Moreover, an appropriate data preprocessing procedure and analysis method were presented for the time-series analysis of the SEC filings.

This study aims to integrate the perspective of consumer social responsibility with the theory of planned behavior to explore the impact of environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) initiatives on intention to buy environmentally friendly products among Vietnamese consumers. Also, the moderating role of gender on the associations of antecedents and green purchase intention is tested in this study.

The data of 823 consumers using the tool of the mall-intercept survey recruited from several big cities in Vietnam. Cronbach’s alpha and confirmatory factor analysis has been used to test the reliability and validity of scales; then, structural equation modeling and PROCESS approach was used to test the fitness of the research model, formulated hypotheses and the indirect associations.

This study presented that ECSR initiatives were strongly and positively correlated with attitude towards green products, subjective norms, perceived behavioral and green purchase intention. Perceived behavioral control was found to be a partial mediator in the link between ECSR initiatives and intention to engage in pro-environmental consumption while the meditating roles of attitude towards green products and subjective norms in this linkage were not statistically significant. Additionally, this study illustrated that the impacts of subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and ECSR initiatives on green purchase intention were stronger for females than males.

This study provides several useful insights for policymakers and administrators to foster pro-environmental behavior of consumers as well as to inspire corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of firms.

Even though there is a growing interest in investigating the impacts of CSR activities on consumers’ purchase behaviors, there is a lack of studies considering the aspect of consumer social responsibility on their sustainable consumption behavior. There is a need to enrich one’s knowledge about the effect of ECSR initiatives on consumer’ green purchase intention.