Feminist Ecological Economics and Sustainability

Synopsis New developments in feminist ecological economics and ecofeminist economics are contributing to the search for theories and policy approaches to move economies toward sustainability. This paper summarizes work by ecofeminists and feminist ecological economists which is relevant to the sustainability challenge and its implications for the discipline of economics. Both democracy and lower material throughputs are generally seen as basic principles of economic sustainability. Feminist theorists and feminist ecological economists offer many important insights into the conundrum of how to make a democratic and equity-enhancing transition to an economy based on less material throughput. These flow from feminist research on unpaid work and caring labor, provisioning, development, valuation, social reproduction, non-monetized exchange relationships, local economies, redistribution, citizenship, equity-enhancing political institutions, and labor time, as well as creative modeling approaches and activism-based theorizing.      

Money as Social Exergy

Synopsis It has been proposed that open thermodynamic systems will act to dissipate available energy gradients by self-organizing into coherent structures that, with time, evolve and develop into nested hierarchies – panarchies – that adapt to internal and external changes according to a characteristic adaptive cycle. This paper seeks to apply these ideas in the purely societal realm by investigating the role of money in economic systems. Money represents the value embodied in goods; a value that is separate from the exact nature of those goods. We suggest that money thereby liberates the ‘free value’ of economic desire and that this free value has properties analogous to energy. The result is the self-organization of structures and systems (‘econosystems’) that dissipate this ‘free value’. Econosystems act at different scales, and nested levels of econosystems form a panarchy, having effects that can be observed. In particular, it appears that money facilitates the creation of relationships between econosystem actors, increasing the connectedness of the econosystems that envelop those actors. We have identified a phenomenon whereby freed social value (i.e. money) can aggregate, or pool, at a larger econosystem scale in structures such as banks. These pools act as gradients that actors at the neighborhood scale can exploit for self-organization in the econosystem. Thus, econosystem actors appear to be freed from thermodynamic constraints by using money as a means of self-organization. However, because of these pools of aggregated social exergy, connectedness is increased at the larger scale of the econosystem. The potential consequence of this dynamic is that money may act to push larger scale econosystems toward a state of heightened vulnerability to collapse, while freeing smaller scale actors from apparent constraints. In this way, we propose that money acts to skew information feedback loops between econosystem actors and larger scale structures such as economies and ecosystems.      

应急物流网络弹性初探

首先,从弹性的定义和内涵出发,结合应急物流的特性,可以把应急物流网络弹性分成柔性、可靠性来研究。通过对这两种属性的研究,总结出弹性的概念和内涵,找出影响应急物流网络弹性的规律。接着,分别研究了这两种属性的概念及度量方法,并针对应急物流特性提出了参考的度量方法,这为应急物流网络弹性研究作好了铺垫。最后,根据应急物流网络性质,提出了一些应急物流网络弹性的研究方向和方法。     

A quality function deployment approach to improve maritime supply chain resilience

Being international and involving numerous organizations as the basic nature, maritime supply chains are exposed to various natural and man-made risks. This paper aims to develop an original quality function deployment approach to enhance maritime supply chain resilience, taking both customer requirements and maritime risks into consideration. The empirical analysis is carried out through in-depth studies of three major shipping lines and their respective major shippers. The top three resilience measures are contingency plan, monitoring and maintenance, and supply chain relationship management. The study also unveils the relatively low visibility and integration in maritime supply chains.     

Community resilience to long-term tourism decline and rejuvenation: a literature review and conceptual model

Studied for decades in disciplines such as ecology, psychology, engineering and sociology ‘resilience’ can be defined as a system's ability to withstand and respond to change. The tourism literature has embraced the concept of community resilience by harnessing concepts of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. Many of these studies have focused on the tourism system's ability to respond to short-term disasters and hazards. With the growth of resilience studies in tourism, it is timely to take stock of the core premise of resilience as it is applied to tourism and to identify key gaps in current research. Consequently, this research aims to identify the core concepts of community resilience, with a focus on its application within tourism. The findings reveal that many studies have been conceptual, although there are an increasing number of empirical studies underpinned by resilience theory. Therefore, a conceptual model is presented to broaden existing resilience research and to guide future research into community resilience to tourism decline and rejuvenation.     

Kenya's focus on urban vulnerability and resilience in the midst of urban transitions in Nairobi

ABSTRACT

Addressing urban vulnerability requires an understanding of the underlying determinants of resilience for individuals, households, communities and institutions – to withstand shocks, to adapt and to change. Analysing urban resilience utilises the results of five rounds of the Indicator Development for Surveillance of Urban Emergencies surveys conducted in three informal settlements of Nairobi. Results show a significant deterioration in food security and household hunger in marginalised urban populations, with other deprivations including insecurity, negative coping behaviour and inadequate access to water and sanitation. Within slum populations, there was a significant variation in income and expenditure (p?<?0.05) with lowest income quintiles spending over 100% of their income on food. Significant gender disparities have been shown in lowest income quintiles, with female breadwinners earning 62% compared with male breadwinners (p?<?0.05). Recommendations from this analysis include establishing thresholds for vulnerability and concrete dimensions for measuring resilience that can initiate and guide related interventions.     

Tie the knot: building stronger consumers’ attachment toward a brand

Extant research has promoted the importance and seeking to establish a deeper understanding of brand loyalty. However, it still remains elusive and uncertain. A study with more than 1,500 CEOs worldwide believes that creating a bond with consumers and continuing to learn how to strengthen the bond are essential for realizing strategies and delivering on shareholder expectations. Not surprisingly, firms and researchers are seeking ways to build a stronger connection with consumers, because such attachment acts as a key requisite in a firm’s success. Consequently, understanding how marketers can intensify the attachment is important. This article offers a framework for building stronger consumers’ attachment and testing it based on a survey of 432 participants. Four factors are deemed to be important: ideal self-congruence, sensory experience, responsiveness, and CSR beliefs. Attachment influences loyalty and resilience to negative information. Additionally, attachment fully mediates ideal self-congruence and responsiveness to loyalty, as well as ideal self-congruence and sensory experience to resilience to negative information.     

基于SPA的广东省区域经济脆弱性及障碍因素研究

运用集对分析法（SPA）从经济敏感性和应对性角度对广东省21个地级市经济脆弱性进行测度。研究表明：珠三角地区普遍具有较高应对性,但敏感性差别较大,其中深圳、中山、佛山因敏感性较低,经济表现出低脆弱性,而广州、东莞和珠海因敏感性较高,落入中等脆弱性区域。从广东欠发达地区看,东西两翼处于中等及较高脆弱性区域;山区普遍具有高敏感性和低应对性,其经济脆弱性最高。根据障碍因素分析,珠三角最主要障碍因素有R＆D经费/GDP、劳动生产率、消费率等,欠发达地区主要障碍因素是人均GDP、财政收入/GDP等。     

公共部门员工自我效能、职业生涯复原力对职业生涯满意度的影响--基于职业生涯韧性中介效应的实证检验

基于整体和系统的角度,本文构建了职业生涯自我效能、职业生涯复原力、职业生涯韧性与职业生涯满意度关系的整合概念模型,并运用经验数据给予了实证检验。研究结果表明,公共部门员工职业生涯自我效能、职业生涯复原力、职业生涯韧性对职业生涯满意度具有显著的正向影响机制,公共部门员工职业生涯韧性对职业生涯自我效能与职业生涯满意度及职业生涯复原力与职业生涯满意度之间的关系具有中介效应。     

The Political Economy of Addressing the Climate Crisis in the Earth System: Undermining Perverse Resilience

The Earth system is a complex adaptive system, characterised by non-linear change and with significant capacity for surprise. In times of systemic crisis, such as dangerous anthropogenic climate change, perverse resilience (for example the structural power of fossil fuel interests in the global economy) can threaten overall Earth system stability. Critical political economic analysis recognises climate change as a threat with significant political economic characteristics and implications. However, key dimensions of climate change as a globally coherent phenomenon, including the important implications of Earth system dynamism and non-linear change, can remain unrecognised, mischaracterised or underestimated. In contrast, resilience approaches describe social-ecological systems but neglect the significance of norms and power relations in human societies. This article builds theory by linking key concepts – hegemony and resilience – from neo-Gramscian political economic analysis and resilience approaches to social-ecological systems. Our objective is to generate a new conceptual framework to improve understanding of the role of politics in social-ecological systems. We use climate change and its mitigation to demonstrate the new framework's potential.