1,273 research outputs found

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial

    Digital Innovations for a Circular Plastic Economy in Africa

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    Plastic pollution is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century that requires innovative and varied solutions. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, this book brings together interdisciplinary, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder perspectives exploring challenges and opportunities for utilising digital innovations to manage and accelerate the transition to a circular plastic economy (CPE). This book is organised into three sections bringing together discussion of environmental conditions, operational dimensions and country case studies of digital transformation towards the circular plastic economy. It explores the environment for digitisation in the circular economy, bringing together perspectives from practitioners in academia, innovation, policy, civil society and government agencies. The book also highlights specific country case studies in relation to the development and implementation of different innovative ideas to drive the circular plastic economy across the three sub-Saharan African regions. Finally, the book interrogates the policy dimensions and practitioner perspectives towards a digitally enabled circular plastic economy. Written for a wide range of readers across academia, policy and practice, including researchers, students, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), digital entrepreneurs, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies, policymakers and public officials, this book offers unique insights into complex, multilayered issues relating to the production and management of plastic waste and highlights how digital innovations can drive the transition to the circular plastic economy in Africa. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license

    Europe\u27s Digital Constitution

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    This Article uncovers the fundamental values underlying the European Union’s expansive set of digital regulations, which in aggregate can be viewed as Europe’s “digital constitution.” This constitution engrains Europe’s human-centric, rights-preserving, democracy-enhancing, and redistributive vision for the digital economy into binding law. This vision stands in stark contrast to the United States, which has traditionally placed its faith in markets and tech companies’ self-regulation. As a result, American tech companies today are regulated primarily by Brussels and not by Washington. By highlighting the distinctiveness and the global reach of the European digital constitution, this Article challenges the common narrative that portrays the European Union as a powerless bystander in a digital world dominated by the United States and China. By offering both a normative defense and a nuanced criticism of Europe’s digital constitution, the Article contributes to ongoing scholarly debates on whether digital regulation compromises innovation and technological progress and whether governments or tech companies take precedence in governing digital societies. It also asks whether the United States should welcome EU regulation of U.S. tech companies as exerting a positive externality protecting the digital rights of American citizens or resent it as imposing a negative externality that compromises the U.S. government’s democratic right to regulate — or refrain from regulating—its own tech companies. This Article also examines whether Europe’s digital constitution is fit for the current era of tech wars and geopolitical conflict or if the pursuit of European “digital sovereignty” ought to be woven into its tenets — even if such an evolution would risk veering Europe towards digital protectionism and further enshrining techno-nationalism as a global norm

    Private Equity: Antecedents, Outcomes, Mediators, and Moderators

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    As private equity’s financial heft and influence on the business landscape has intensified, so too has scholarly interest in the phenomenon. We review recent progress in private equity research, with a focus on the private equity industry’s later-stage buyout segment. To synthesize and integrate current findings, we construct a framework that encompasses not only antecedents and outcomes of private equity’s activities, but also mediators and moderators of the relationships that drive these outcomes. Based upon the gaps and learning opportunities that are surfaced by this framework, we develop recommendations for future private equity research. The proposed research agenda is particularly germane to management scholars, whose theories and perspectives have thus far been productively, yet relatively sparingly, applied in private equity research

    Linking Leadership, Investment Strategy and Competence to Organizational Performance with special reference to post-M&A firms

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    M&A is an important research topic in the areas of strategic management, organization development, leadership, management of change, and corporate culture. There are seminal works with solid empirical evidence of effective M&A strategic planning, leadership, competence, and effective cultural integration as success factors for realizing M&A strategic goals. However, managing the entire M&A strategic planning and execution process holistically with synergistic integration of the three domains that the 3H framework (Yu, 2019) advocates has not been studied. With due respect to the significance of the previous studies on single or couples of key independent variables, it appears that they have offered some necessary yet not sufficient conditions for securing effective M&A strategic planning and execution. It is envisaged that this study will help illuminate the holistic management approach in this important research topic. For this study, the main research problem statement is “M&A strategy, leadership and employee competence have a direct impact on the merged organizational performance. However, in order to realize the intended M&A synergies, it is hypothesized that the acquirer has to adopt a holistic approach to manage all these three constructs effectively and efficiently.” This study provides a holistic view of the key factors affecting the performance of post-M&A performance. The findings of the study have been used to develop a 3H-M&A framework and model which link Leadership, Strategy and Competence to post-M&A organizational performance

    Essays on digitalization among small and medium-sized firms : Complementary and contingent approaches

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    This dissertation explains how and under what circumstances the operational performance of small and medium-sized (SME) firms is most likely to benefit from digitalization. This topic will be examined by combining the resource-based view (RBV) and contingency theory, that is, using the contingency RBV, which remains relatively rarely used in current research. The perspective permits an examination of the impact of various resources and capabilities in the presence of situational factors. The dissertation consists of five papers dealing with digitalization in SMEs operating in various areas. The research relies on two surveys involving Finnish SMEs from manufacturing industries, the first of which provides cross-sectional data. Together the two datasets provide the longitudinal data informing the dissertation. The research shows that the contingency RBV provides a comprehensive framework that can assist in examining how and in what circumstances SMEs can benefit from digitalization, that benefit being measured from an operational improvement perspective. Previous research on SMEs is limited, so the first result of this thesis involves testing a theoretical framework for SMEs in the context of their digitalization. The research results show that the benefits of digitalization for operational performance arise through two different mechanisms, and digitalization alone does not affect the firm's success. The effect of digitalization on SMEs’ operational performance emerges from the complementarity between digitalization and firms’ organizational attributes, factors, or resources that enhance performance. The second mechanism relates to environmental and situational factors and shows that both the firm's internal and external environment determine the level of the impact of digitalization. Among Finnish SMEs, digitalization produces value in the form of improved operational performance when digitalization, resources, and capabilities bolster each other in internal and external environments conducive to digitalization.Tässä väitöskirjassa selvitetään miten ja missä tilanteessa pienet ja keskisuuret (pk) yritykset pystyvät todennäköisemmin hyötymään digitalisoitumisestaan operatiivisen suorituskyvyn näkökulmasta. Aihetta tarkastellaan yhdistämällä resurssi- ja tilannetekijäteoria eli tässä työssä hyödynnetään tilanteista resurssiteoriaa, joka on nykyisessä tutkimuskentässä vielä varsin rajallisesti käytetty. Näkökulman mukaan erilaisten resurssien ja kyvykkyyksien vaikutusta voidaan tarkastella tilannetekijöiden ollessa läsnä. Väitöskirja muodostuu viidestä artikkelista, joissa käsitellään yritysten digitalisoitumista. Väitöskirjassa käyte¬tään kahta eri kyselytutkimusta, joihin suomalaiset valmistavan teollisuuden pk-yritykset ovat osallistuneet. Ensimmäinen aineisto on poikkileikkausaineisto ja aineistot yhdessä muodostavat toisen, pitkittäisen, aineiston. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että tilanteinen resurssiteoria muodostaa kattavan viitekehyksen, jonka perusteella voidaan lähestyä sitä, miten ja missä tilanteissa pk-yritykset pystyvät hyötymään digitalisoitumisesta parantuneen operatiivisen suorituskyvyn näkökulmasta. Aikaisempi pk-yrityksiin keskittynyt tutkimus on ollut vähäistä, joten tämän väitöskirjan ensimmäisenä tuloksena voidaan pitää teoreettisen viitekehyksen testaamista nimenomaan pienillä ja keskisuurilla yrityksillä niiden digitalisoitumisen kontekstissa. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että digitalisoitumisen hyöty operationaaliseen suoriutumiseen syntyy kahden erilaisen mekanismin kautta eli digitalisoituminen ei yksin vaikuta yrityksen menestymiseen. Ensimmäinen mekanismi muodostuu niin kutsutusta täydentävästä suhteesta, joka tarkoittaa sitä, että yrityksen digitalisoituminen vaikuttaa yrityksen muihin resursseihin ja kyvykkyyksiin vahvistavasti, ja yhdessä digitaaliset tekijät yrityksen resurssien ja kyvykkyyksien kanssa parantavat yrityksen suoriutumista. Toinen mekanismi liittyy kontingenssivaikutukseen, jossa tilannetekijät vaikuttavat yritysten digitalisoitumisesta syntyvään hyötyyn. Tulokset osoittavat, että mikäli yrityksen sisäinen ympäristö on suotuisa yrityksen digitalisoitumiseen, sillä on positiivisia vaikutuksia digitalisoitumisesta saatavaan hyötyyn. Tulosten mukaan myös ulkoinen ympäristö vaikuttaa yrityksen digitalisoitumisesta saatavaan hyötyyn. Suomalaisten pk-yritysten digitalisoituminen tuottaa yrityksille arvoa parantuneena operatiivisena suorituskykynä silloin, kun yritysten digitalisoituminen ja resurssit sekä kyvykkyydet vahvistavat toisiaan digitalisoitumiselle suotuisassa sisäisessä ja ulkoisessa ympäristössä.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

    Exploring the effects of socio-emotional wealth and family social capital on family firm growth and innovation – a comparative study.

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    The concepts of socio-emotional wealth (SEW) and family social capital (FSC) have been extensively used by previous researchers to understand how family firms operate and how this affects their business or innovation performance. However, the overall findings of previous research on the influence of SEW and FSC on family firms are mixed, and little research has been done that examines this influence in the context of different cultures and business environments. It was evident from the study of literature that the existing research, although very promising, is still in its infancy. Existing theory was deemed to be inadequate to answer the questions we have because it holds diverging views on many of the subjects of this study. It was thus decided that this exploratory study would further research existing theories, in order to produce new ideas and hypotheses. It is imperative to fill this gap since family firms of all sizes play a crucial role in the economies of most countries, providing many jobs and contributing to their GDP. Research into the role of SEW and FSC in contributing to or hindering family firm performance is important in providing an enhanced understanding of how to improve business growth in individual firms and in the family firms sector, taken as a whole. This qualitative study investigates the influence of socio-emotional wealth and family social capital on business growth and innovation, based on interviews with samples of Pakistani-owned family firms in Pakistan and in the United Kingdom. The purpose is twofold: first to provide an enhanced qualitative understanding of how national culture and business setting may influence the ways in which socio-emotional wealth and family social capital contribute to or hinder business growth and innovation in family firms, and second to investigate how these overlapping concepts might be used in a complementary way in future research. The interviews of respondents, both in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, gave insights not only into how these family businesses operated and performed, but also about the participants’ understanding of FSC and SEW. The findings demonstrate a number of routes socio-emotional wealth and family social capital have taken to influence business growth and innovation activity in these family firms, and confirm the importance of acknowledging national culture, as well as the business environment in which family firms operate, when investigating their behaviour and performance. They also reveal many overlaps between the concepts of socio-emotional wealth and family social capital when investigating this sample of Pakistani-owned family firms. It is concluded that these concepts can be refined and modified for use as complementary research tools in future studies of family firms, emerging from different national cultures. By building on the theoretical and practical findings of the current study, such future studies might help generate an expanded body of evidence about family firms that will help overcome some of the historically mixed research findings and provide clearer guidance to help family firms improve their business and innovation performance

    Regulating competition in the digital network industry: A proposal for progressive ecosystem regulation

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    The digital sector is a cornerstone of the modern economy, and regulating digital enterprises can be considered the new frontier for regulators and competition authorities. To capture and address the competitive dynamics of digital markets we need to rethink our (competition) laws and regulatory strategies. The thesis develops new approaches to regulating digital markets by viewing them as part of a network industry. By combining insights from our experiences with existing regulation in telecommunications with insights from economics literature and management theory, the thesis concludes by proposing a new regulatory framework called ‘progressive ecosystem regulation’. The thesis is divided in three parts and has three key findings or contributions. The first part explains why digital platforms such as Google’s search engine, Meta’s social media platforms and Amazon’s Marketplace are prone to monopolization. Here, the thesis develops a theory of ‘digital natural monopoly’, which explains why competition in digital platform markets is likely to lead to concentration by its very nature.The second part of the thesis puts forward that competition in digital markets persists, even if there is monopoly in a market. Here, the thesis develops a conceptual framework for competition between digital ecosystems, which consists of group of actors and products. Digital enterprises compete to carve out a part of the digital network industry where they can exert control, and their strong position in a platform market can be used offensively or defensively to steer competition between ecosystems. The thesis then sets out four phases of ecosystem competition, which helps to explain when competition in the digital network industry is healthy and when it is likely to become problematic.The third and final part of the thesis brings together these findings and draws lessons from our experiences of regulating the network industry for telecommunications. Based on the insights developed in the thesis it puts forward a proposal for ‘progressive ecosystem regulation’. The purpose of this regulation is to protect and empower entrants from large digital ecosystems so that they can develop new products and innovate disruptively. This regulatory framework would create three regulatory pools: a heavily regulated, lightly regulated and entrant pool. The layered regulatory framework allows regulators to adjust who receives protection under the regulation and who faces the burdens relatively quickly, so that the regulatory framework reflects the fast pace of innovation and changing nature of digital markets. With this proposal, the thesis challenges and enriches our existing notions on regulation and specifically how we should regulate digital markets
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