Dealing with Russia: Towards a coherent Belgian policy. Egmont Paper No. 109 3 December 2020.

Belgo-Russia relations are mired in paradox. For several years, the relationship between the Russian Federation on the one hand and the EU and NATO on the other has been characterized by mistrust. As a founding member of these multilateral organisations, Belgium has been a full part of the decision-making process that has formulated a hardening stance towards the Russian Federation. Yet on a bilateral level, Belgium pragmatically upholds what is left of commercial cooperation and cultural exchanges. In order to deal with this paradox, Belgium should formulate a more coherent approach towards Russia that focuses on protecting its own values and European security whilst nonetheless maintaining dialogue and engaging the Russian Federation. This requires the new Belgium government to engage in a delicate balancing act that can be articulated in the forthcoming National Security Strategy, in the Belgian positions in the EU and NATO, and in the bilateral relationship with Moscow. This Egmont Paper aspires to provide both analytical background and novel ideas which can be used to such a purpose

Were the first Bantu speakers south of the rainforest farmers? A first assessment of the linguistic evidence

Popular belief has it that the Bantu Expansion was a farming/language dispersal. However, there is neither conclusive archaeological nor linguistic evidence to substantiate this hypothesis, especially not for the initial spread in West-Central Africa. In this chapter we consider lexical reconstructions for both domesticated and wild plants in Proto-West-Coastal Bantu associated with the first Bantu speech communities south of the rainforest about 2500 years ago. The possibility to reconstruct terms for five different crops, i.e. pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), okra (Hibiscus/Abelmoschus esculentus), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) and plantain (Musa spp.), indicates that by that time Bantu speakers did know how to cultivate plants. At the same time, they still strongly depended on the plant resources that could be collected in their natural environment, as is evidenced by a preliminary assessment of reconstructible names for wild plants. Agriculture in Central Africa was indeed “a slow revolution”, as the late Jan Vansina once proposed, and certainly not the principal motor behind the early Bantu Expansion

The co-creation of a retail Innovation: shoppers and the early supermarket in Britain

Authors' draft of article, also available on University of Surrey's e-prints repository. Final version published by Oxford University Press and available online at http://es.oxfordjournals.org/In this paper we examine shoppers’ reactions to the development of early supermarket retailing in post-war Britain. Positioning our discussion in relation to multi-disciplinary contributions on the role of consumers in innovation, we argue that more attention needs to be given to the shopper’s input in the debate on retail innovation, including the supermarket. New oral history data drawn from a nationwide survey is presented in support of our arguments. Shoppers’ contributions to the supermarket innovation are shown to be multi-faceted in nature, incorporating processes of co-production and value creation; processes that were altere

Exploring leadership in multi-sectoral partnerships

This article explores some critical aspects of leadership in the context of multi-sectoral partnerships. It focuses on leadership in practice and asks the question, `How do managers experience and perceive leadership in such partnerships?' The study contributes to the debate on whether leadership in a multi-sectoral partnership context differs from that within a single organization. It is based on the accounts of practising managers working in complex partnerships. The article highlights a number of leadership challenges faced by those working in multi-sectoral partnerships. Partnership practitioners were clear that leadership in partnerships was more complex than in single organizations. However, it was more difficult for them to agree a consensus on the essential nature of leadership in partnership. We suggest that a first-, second- and third-person approach might be a way of better interpreting leadership in the context of partnerships