Material power and normative conflict in global and local agrifood governance: The lessons of ‘Golden Rice’ in India

This special section aims to investigate the interaction of global and local forces in shaping agrifood governance. It starts from the recognition that a multitude of actors and norms shape today’s agrifood system. The resulting opaqueness of the systems makes it extremely difficult to understand and explain processes and outcomes of agrifood governance. Given the sustainability challenges facing the agrifood system, improvements in our understanding of what the interaction of global and local actors and norms means on the ground are urgently needed, however. The section, therefore, analyses agrifood governance in India across a selected group of cases. It does so by employing a systematic framework emphasizing the material and ideational dimensions of power and their interaction. The section has chosen India as the setting in which to analyze this interaction due to the crucial role the food demand and supply of this rising power plays in today’s agrifood system. This article provides the special sections’ analytical framework, which uses the interplay of material and ideational dimensions of power as a focal lens. In addition, the article applies this framework to an empirical study of the political conflict around GMO foods in India, specifically the case of ‘Golden Rice’.     

Career mentoring in context: A multilevel study on differentiated career mentoring and career mentoring climate

This study explores how supervisor career mentoring contributes to contemporary organizational career development, which strives to foster employees' promotability while strengthening their intention to stay. Specifically, we focus on the implications of career mentoring in team contexts. Applying a multilevel framework, we distinguish between individual‐level differentiated mentoring (i.e., an employee's mentoring perceptions as compared to those of other team members) and group‐level career mentoring climate (i.e., the average perception across all group members). In a workplace setting, we collected data from vocational job starters (N ranged from 230 to 290) and their company supervisors (N ranged from 56 to 68). We find that career mentoring climate positively relates to promotability, more so than differentiated career mentoring. Both career mentoring climate and differentiated career mentoring are positively related to the intention to stay. At the individual level, this relationship is mediated by job satisfaction. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of differentiated and group‐level mentoring.     

NPO branding: preliminary lessons from major players

• Are nonprofits (NPOs) exhibiting the brand orientation believed to be critical to successful outcomes? To answer this question, we investigate the brand orientation and brand management of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), American Red Cross (ARC), and The Salvation Army to assess the implementation of brand concepts in two different locations within the USA compared to each agency's central body. Despite the support of some propositions, there exists inconsistent evidence of strong brand management in the organizations studied. The variation of brand visuals, missions, and taglines indicates that good structure, policy, and guidelines are not enough. There must be true brand orientation, which includes oversight of consistent application of all brand constructs to achieve organizational goals. This study provides a framework upon which future in‐depth empirical research may be based. The authors outline these next steps as a foundation for enhancing the study and practice of brand management in NPOs.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Microenterprises and multiple bank relationships: The case of professionals

The present paper focuses on professionals as a special group of microenterprises. It explains their characteristics and financial relationships, using data from a survey conducted in Germany in 2002. Consistent with the theory of asymmetric information and relationship lending, we find that these firms maintain a small number of bank relationships, which increases in firm size and age. They tend to choose multiple banking relationships to overcome credit rationing and finance larger loans. Credit risk and the structure of the banking market do not seem to matter.     

Why volunteer teaching tourism? Empirical evidence from China

Volunteer teaching tourism, as a particular type of volunteer tourism supported by China government, has become an effective supplement to and acceleration for education development in the regions of China where education resources are limited. The motivation and experience of volunteers have a direct impact on the healthy and sustainable development of volunteer teaching tourism. This study therefore aims to identify motivation of Chinese youth participating in volunteer teaching tourism in China, and the relationships between motivation, satisfaction, and behavioral intention are further examined. Empirical results show that in addition to the six motives advanced by Clary et al. (1998), two unique motives are further identified: love of children and desire to travel. Among these eight motives, three have significant effects on post-trip satisfaction, and post-trip satisfaction further influences behavioral intention. The implications benefit both organizational and governmental bodies who seek to develop both national and international volunteer teaching tourism.     

Transportation rates, market structure and the production-location decision : A note

This note examines the effects of market structure on production and location decisions of an oligopolistic firm. It shows that if transportation rates are a function of quantity shipped and distance traveled, a linearly homogeneous production function is not sufficient to ensure independence between the optimum location and market structure unless (i) the elasticities of transportation rates with respect to quantity shipped are constant and identical, and (ii) the ratios of marginal products to the marginal transportation costs are equal for each input. This results is significantly different from Hwang and Mai's in the constant transportation rates case.