Making Waves: Media's Potential for Girls in the Global South

There are around 600 million adolescent girls living in developing countries. Doubly marginalised because oftheir gender and age, many live a bleak existence -- excluded from access to basic public services, unable to shape the decisions that affect their lives and vulnerable to violence at home and on the street. Their voices often go unheard.Slowly, this is beginning to change. Over the past two decades girls have become a growing priority for the international development community. Investing in their health education and employment prospects is nowwidely considered to have an important ripple effect on other development outcomes such as economic growth and social equality. As a result, development assistance programmes that support girls' empowerment are now seen by many as not just the "right" thing to do, but a necessity Less well understood is where media fits into this equation The interplay between media and gender norms has long been recognised and a substantial literature explores how media affects girls in the Global North But against a backdrop of rapidly changing media landscapes -- characterised by increasing competition for audiences sensationalism and expanding access to new technologies -- the role that media plays in girls' lives in the Global South demands further examination.Drawing on expert interviews as well as insights from the media and development literature, this policy briefing seeks to fill this gap. It argues that media -- whether traditional or online -- matters a great deal in the lives of girls in the developing world. It matters because it has the ability to be harmful to girls' interests and self-esteem, and it matters because it can also be so effective in playing a positive role in girls' lives. Specifically, media can influence girls' aspirations and behaviours around their health and livelihoods open the door to greater participation in society and ensure that girls' issues move higher up the public agenda. If challenges around media access and control and the extent to which media organisations value girls as part of their audience, are addressed head on, media can play a vital role in helping to advance the wellbeing of adolescent girls in regions of the world where their interests have traditionally been most neglected

Identification and description of relationships between actors involved in crop diversification experiences across Europe

Agriculture can benefit from crop diversification to facilitate its transition to more sustainable agrifood systems. However, these practices remain rare in Europe. One major barrier is the existence of sociotechnical lock-ins. To clarify the dynamics at work, we analyzed the relationships between actors involved in 23 crop diversification experiences across 11 European countries. The novelty of this paper lies in the systemic analysis of the network of actors involved in crop diversification experiences. Using data from qualitative interviews and cognitive mapping approaches, we identify and describe the role of actors and the key relationships in crop diversification and detect relationships that are currently missing. Our study shows that in the different European countries, similar relationships act as levers or barriers to crop diversification, with farmers and researchers playing a crucial role. The most important cognitive factors that influence the choice of farmers to diversify are environmental and health concerns and the desire to make profit and innovate. We relate the cognitive factors to organizational, technical, economic, and political factors and suggest levers for crop diversification based on successful crop diversification experiences

Co-constructing a new framework for evaluating social innovation in marginalized rural areas

The EU funded H2020 project \u2018Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas\u2019 (SIMRA; www.simra-h2020.eu) has the overall objective of advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation. This paper outlines the process for co- developing an evaluation framework with stakeholders, drawn from across Europe and the Mediterranean area, in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development. Preliminary results show the importance of integrating process and outcome-oriented evaluations, and implementing participatory approaches in evaluation practice. They also raise critical issues related to the comparability of primary data in diverse regional contexts and highlight the need for mixed methods approaches in evaluation

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT POLICY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE AMERICAN STATES

The American states routinely adopt various economic development policies but those policies do not always contribute to economic growth in the state. Scholars identify several reasons to explain why the policies do not always work. First, policies that do not address market demand; rather, provide economic incentives to bring inward industrial investments do not contribute to economic growth because the cost it takes to create jobs by such industrial recruitments is too high. Second, policies that are adopted out of inertia chosen from traditionally practiced policies do not work because they are not evaluated for their effectiveness in terms of meeting the current and future market demand. Third, policies that are adopted because neighboring or ideologically congruent states adopt them do not work because the appropriateness of a particular policy may not be the same in the pioneer and the follower states. These reasons imply that economic development policies that are not new enough to meet the current market demand, that are not helpful to promoting in-state entrepreneurship, that are designed to help out-of-state firms in extending their branch-plants, and that are inappropriate in terms of the home conditions can be ineffective for economic growth. I conduct empirical testing to examine these four expectations and the results suggest that innovative economic development policies, entrepreneurial policies, and policies that are congruent to the state’s industrial strength lead to economic growth, but policies that are meant for industrial recruitments lead to leakage from the state’s economy

Factors that influence debt financing of municipal owned entities: a case study of the city of Johannesburg

This quantitative research was conducted to examine factors that have an influence on the debt financing of MoEs for the CoJ. It is quite evident from previous literatures that there has been a plethora of research undertaken on debt financing. Despite this, there has been very limited, or no, study conducted in South Africa especially on MoEs. The main objective of the study was to determine the factors that influence the debt financing of MoEs. To achieve this, both descriptive and correlational research designs were used, as well as panel data regression models. Data was collected from 13 MoEs under the CoJ from 2011 to 2015; moreover, secondary data was used as the main sources and extracted from the integrated annual reports. The study tested hypotheses on independent variables. The results show that profitability has a significant negative relationship with debt financing. On the other hand, the results revealed that coefficients such as interest rate (insignificant) size (insignificant), economic growth (significant), age (insignificant) and business risk (significant) have a positive association with debt financing. Results further show that borrowing was consistent throughout the study period, with MoEs relying more on short-term debt than on long-term debt. The study also concluded that during the period of the study, some entities were technically insolvent while others were at high risk of being liquidated. The findings are expected to contribute to the body of knowledge and play a pivotal role in Municipal Finance Management Act, no 56 of 2003 of National Treasury policy and decision making with regard to Local Government Municipal Finance Management Act 56 of 2003, particularly in relation to the parent municipality as well as its entities. More research needs to be conducted to investigate factors that influence investment decisions of MoEs/SOEs in South Africa and compare the various types of debt financing using larger sample size over a longer period.College of Accounting SciencesM. Phil. (Accounting Sciences

The Elements of Big Data Value

This open access book presents the foundations of the Big Data research and innovation ecosystem and the associated enablers that facilitate delivering value from data for business and society. It provides insights into the key elements for research and innovation, technical architectures, business models, skills, and best practices to support the creation of data-driven solutions and organizations. The book is a compilation of selected high-quality chapters covering best practices, technologies, experiences, and practical recommendations on research and innovation for big data. The contributions are grouped into four parts: · Part I: Ecosystem Elements of Big Data Value focuses on establishing the big data value ecosystem using a holistic approach to make it attractive and valuable to all stakeholders. · Part II: Research and Innovation Elements of Big Data Value details the key technical and capability challenges to be addressed for delivering big data value. · Part III: Business, Policy, and Societal Elements of Big Data Value investigates the need to make more efficient use of big data and understanding that data is an asset that has significant potential for the economy and society. · Part IV: Emerging Elements of Big Data Value explores the critical elements to maximizing the future potential of big data value. Overall, readers are provided with insights which can support them in creating data-driven solutions, organizations, and productive data ecosystems. The material represents the results of a collective effort undertaken by the European data community as part of the Big Data Value Public-Private Partnership (PPP) between the European Commission and the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) to boost data-driven digital transformation

Project Risk Assessment and Corporate Behavior: Creating Knowledge for Sustainable Business

In a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous), organizations, in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, must learn to mitigate risk and prioritize performance and innovation. In the last decade, as a way to respond to market demands, projects emerge as a way for organizations to implement their strategic objectives in order to respond to a need, opportunity, or threat in an efficient way. This e-book includes a collection of 11 papers that discuss theoretical approaches and case studies, focused on a combined effect between Project Risk Assessment and corporate behaviour in order to support the sustainability and business resilience in a competitive environment. The e-book will be of particular interest to entrepreneurs, researchers, and policymakers

What a difference a workplace makes. A scientometric analysis on the relationship between job crafting and healthy organizations' factors

Introduction: The transformations that have affected the labour market in recent years have required companies to adapt to fast changes and to keep the pace of global competition. Consequently, workers have been confronted with multiple challenging demands: they have been required to develop flexibility in their jobs and to work faster and better, often with evident costs in terms of performance and their workplace well-being. Given these evidence, as also shown by some of the most recent developments in the field of Positive Work and Organizational Psychology, healthy organizations are those organizations that could resist to these challenges, because they engage in creating an environment that can promote employees’ health and safety, maximising performance. Yet, healthy organizations support positive organizational behaviors through a coherent culture, a positive climate, and good practices. Healthy organizations might also create the conditions to encourage workers to perform job crafting behaviors, meant as proactive individual behaviours aimed at modifying job demands in order to adjust them to personal needs, motivations and talents, thus maximising well-being and performance. Objective: The aim of the study was to overview the state of the art of the debate about the relationship between job crafting and healthy organizations’ factors by performing a scientometric analysis of job crafting. Therefore, the study was aimed to emphasize performances of countries, journals and authors, highlighting the dominant perspectives on the topic. Method: The starting point of the analysis was data recovery from the Scopus database using the term “job crafting” as search criterion within the title, abstract or keywords of the documents retrieved. The analysis was carried out with two softwares, R and VOSviewer, in order to investigate the growth of interest on the topic over the years, the scientific production of countries, journals and authors, the social structure of collaborative network, and the network of keywords. Results: 375 documents about job crafting were retrieved, showing a growing number of publications in recent years, with a preponderance of productions and citations in USA and Netherlands (where the construct was proposed and validated). Cluster analysis performed on the most frequently used keywords showed three main groups, each of them theoretical linked to workplace health: stimulus factors; Job Demands-Resources Model; health dimensions. Discussion: The present bibliometric analysis showed an increasing scientific interest toward job crafting and the importance of specific papers (that opened the two main perspective about it) for the whole research line. Through the cluster analysis of keywords network, it was underlined the relevance of constructs that promote healthy organizations in the scientific production on job craftin

Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review

Within the context of the Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe) research scope, this literature review investigates the current trends, advantages, disadvantages, problems and solutions, opportunities and barriers in Open Access Publishing (OAP), and in particular Open Access (OA) academic publishing. This study is intended to scope and evaluate current theory and practice concerning models for OAP and engage with intellectual, legal and economic perspectives on OAP. It is also aimed at mapping the field of academic publishing in the UK and abroad, drawing specifically upon the experiences of CREATe industry partners as well as other initiatives such as SSRN, open source software, and Creative Commons. As a final critical goal, this scoping study will identify any meaningful gaps in the relevant literature with a view to developing further research questions. The results of this scoping exercise will then be presented to relevant industry and academic partners at a workshop intended to assist in further developing the critical research questions pertinent to OAP