A matter of entrepreneurial decisions: Dairibord Holdings Limited (DHL) in Zimbabwe

Synopsis: The case study focussed on the dairy sector in the southern African country of Zimbabwe. It offered an analysis of the management and business development approaches DHL employed in the country's dairy sector. The narrative detailed how DHL's commercial performance progressively declined overtime. Several factors including; operational inefficiencies, intensive competition, political, socio-economic issues, and natural disasters were attributable to its decline. To mitigate DHL's business development challenges, Antony and his top management's reprised "restructure, expand and diversify" strategy only achieved inconsistent commercial results. The scale and size of these results unequivocally necessitated radical entrepreneurial methods to turnaround its fortunes. It was indeed a matter of entrepreneurial decisions! Methodology: The case study utilized secondary analysis as its main strategy for generating relevant data. The rationale for adopting the principles of secondary analysis was to take advantage of quality archived data, public and readily available information concerning DHL's commercial performance. Setting up to undertake secondary analysis for the purpose of DHL's narrative was less-expensive, and it was less time consuming when compared to structured interviews and self-administered questionnaires. Hence, it was deemed appropriate for producing a narrative on a company whose archived financial reports and publicly available research information were accessible. Relevant course levels: DHL's narrative is relevant for students studying entrepreneurship, business management and international business at postgraduate and undergraduate levels. Theoretical basis: The multi-dimensional constructs of entrepreneurship and strategic management provided the theoretical basis for constructing a narrative about DHL's business activities in Zimbabwe's dairy sector. Particularly, the entrepreneurial decision-making paradigm offered some insight, direction and guidance in analysing the strategies Antony and his top management team applied in their planning and management at DHL. Equally, strategic management theories provided useful instructions for exploring business development issues in a rapidly changing business terrain that was presented by the dairy sector in Zimbabwe

Belief as Willingness to Bet

We investigate modal logics of high probability having two unary modal operators: an operator $K$ expressing probabilistic certainty and an operator $B$ expressing probability exceeding a fixed rational threshold $c\geq\frac 12$. Identifying knowledge with the former and belief with the latter, we may think of $c$ as the agent's betting threshold, which leads to the motto "belief is willingness to bet." The logic $\mathsf{KB.5}$ for $c=\frac 12$ has an $\mathsf{S5}$ $K$ modality along with a sub-normal $B$ modality that extends the minimal modal logic $\mathsf{EMND45}$ by way of four schemes relating $K$ and $B$, one of which is a complex scheme arising out of a theorem due to Scott. Lenzen was the first to use Scott's theorem to show that a version of this logic is sound and complete for the probability interpretation. We reformulate Lenzen's results and present them here in a modern and accessible form. In addition, we introduce a new epistemic neighborhood semantics that will be more familiar to modern modal logicians. Using Scott's theorem, we provide the Lenzen-derivative properties that must be imposed on finite epistemic neighborhood models so as to guarantee the existence of a probability measure respecting the neighborhood function in the appropriate way for threshold $c=\frac 12$. This yields a link between probabilistic and modal neighborhood semantics that we hope will be of use in future work on modal logics of qualitative probability. We leave open the question of which properties must be imposed on finite epistemic neighborhood models so as to guarantee existence of an appropriate probability measure for thresholds $c\neq\frac 12$.Comment: Removed date from v1 to avoid confusion on citation/reference, otherwise identical to v

Boundary anxieties and infrastructures of violence: Somali identity in post-Westgate Kenya

This article explores infrastructures of violence created by ongoing contestations around insecurity related to violent insurgency in Kenya. It draws on public discourses and policy responses emerging from the September 2013 terror attack at Westgate in Nairobi. In examining security policies developed to cordon off particular geographical sites and therefore construct Kenyan Somalis as the ‘other’, I argue that what is produced is a mobile security infrastructure. This mobility is evident in a move from a singular focus on physical security installations and visible security personnel, to less visible forms of security which rely on surveillance both by the state and citizens. I examine how security infrastructure discursively and through policy mobilise and redefine Somali1 masculinities as other and therefore dangerous

Before the Classroom. Translation as Internship

What are the problems that teaching encounters today? In what way today is teaching spoken of? The words that speak of the school today, which words are they and where do they come from? What rationality more generally informs them? The Essay tries to answer these questions by employing a critical-theoretical perspective. Starting from the presupposition that teaching has principally to do with the knowledges deposited in the disciplinary contents, the first step, following Lyotard, considers the conditions of knowledge in the more developed societies, examining in particular what knowledge is expected to be and who takes this decision. Then the Essay moves further critically examining the hegemonic advent of neo-liberalism and the paradigmatic horizon of connections and economical-political presuppositions that follows. The analysis continues by focusing on the words that characterize the Neo-Language that today insists on education and teaching, proposing the practice of a ‘foreignizing’ translation as a premise to rethink the emancipatory education

The project (management) discourse and its consequences: On vulnerability and unsustainability in project-based work

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. In this paper, we examine how the discourses related to project-based work and management are drawn upon in the organising of contemporary work, and the implications they have for project workers. We are interested in how project workers and projectified organisations become vulnerable to decline, decay and exhaustion and why they continue to participate in, and so sustain, projectification processes. The critical perspective taken here, in combination with our empirical material from the ICT sector, surfaces an irreversible decline of the coping capacity of project workers and draws attention to the addictive perception of resilience imposed on and internalised by them as a condition of success and longevity. Under those circumstances, resilience is made sense of and internalised as coping with vulnerability by letting some elements of life being destroyed; thus re-emerging as existentially vulnerable rather than avoiding or resisting the structures and processes that perpetuate vulnerability

Painted Tonsures and Potato-sellers: Priests, Passing and Survival in the Asturian Revolution

The Asturian revolutionary insurrection of 1934 saw the greatest outburst of anticlerical bloodletting in Spain for a century and prefigured the dramatic wave of anticlerical violence during the Spanish Civil War. Scholars have neglected, however, to study the experience of clerical survival. This article analyses how members of the clergy survived the insurrection through the prism of passing, concentrating on cleric's dress, gestures and revolutionary performances. It demonstrates the need to study survival processes, sheds new light on clerical identity, agency and existing cultural gulfs in 1930s' Spain, and underlines the contingency of violence in revolutionary contexts

La Passio del monje Jorge y la liturgia del martirio en la Córdoba del siglo X

This paper analyzes the Passio of George of Mar Sabas, contained in the Memoriale Sanctorum (c. 853 A. D.) by Eulogius of Córdoba. After analyzing George’s rhetoric and scriptural reference, the article argues that George’s life was modeled on Mozarabic liturgy, and that it reflected a charismatic flare directed not towards Muslim communities of Córdoba but against other Christian groups.El presente artículo analiza el martirologio la Passio de Jorge de Mar Sabas, según aparece en el Memoriale Sanctorum (c. 853 A. D.) de Eulogio de Córdoba. Después de analizar la referencia retórica y bíblica de Jorge, el artículo sostiene que la vida de Jorge se inspiró en la liturgia mozárabe, y que reflejaba una llamarada carismática dirigida no hacia las comunidades musulmanas de Córdoba sino contra otros grupos cristianos

Heavy genealogy: mapping the currents, contraflows and conflicts of the emergent field of metal studies, 1978-2010

What is metal studies? How can we define and characterize it? How has it emerged as a body of academic enquiry? What are its dominant disciplinary strands, theoretical concepts and preferred methodologies? Which studies have claimed most attention, defined the goals of scholarship, typical research strategies and values? How has the claim for the legitimacy or symbolic value of metal scholarship been achieved (if it has): over time and through gradual acceptance or through conflict and contestation? How can this process of formation, or strategy of legitimation, be mapped, examined and interrogated and which methods of historical, institutional and cultural analysis are best suited to this task? Working with the most complete bibliography to date of published research on heavy metal, music and culture (the MSBD), this article employs Foucault’s archaeological “method” to examine the institutional, cultural and political contexts and conflicts that inform the genealogy of this scholarship. Such analysis reveals a formative, largely negative account of heavy metal to be found in the “sociology of rock”; a large volume of psychology work, examining heavy metal music preference as an indicator of youth risk, deviance and delinquency; sociological work on youth and deviancy critical of the values of this research and its links to social policy and politics; culminating in the work of Weinstein and Walser, who advocate a perspective sympathetic to the values of heavy metal fans themselves. Following Bourdieu, I interpret such symbolic strategies as claims for expertise within the academic field that are high or low in symbolic capital to the extent they can attain disciplinary autonomy. I then go on to examine the most recent strands of research, within cultural studies and ethnomusicology, concerned with the global metal music diaspora, and consider to what extent such work is constitutive of a coherent subfield of metal studies that can be distinguished from earlier work and what the implications of this might be