Environmental Injustice in Argentina: Struggles against Genetically Modified Soy

This paper explores the unequal distribution of the environmental and social costs and benefits of the genetically modified (GM) soy model in Argentina and its impact on grievance formation and the emergence of contestation. In the 1990s, Argentina transitioned into a neoliberal agro‐industrial model based on producing GM soy for export. Though celebrated as a success, the expansion of GM soy monocultures has brought widespread socio‐ecological disruption. Various social actors have started to mobilize against the resulting environmental injustice. I focus on the peasant–indigenous movement in the north of the country, which is struggling for land rights, and the movements against agrochemical spraying in the central Pampas region. These groups, which are relatively powerless to control resources where they live, and that experience little or no benefit from GM soy production, nevertheless bear most of its social and ecological costs. These struggles link environmental and social well‐being, becoming struggles for ecological sustainability as well as social justice and equity.     

Poisoned,Dispossessed and Excluded: A Critique of the Neoliberal Soy Regime in Paraguay

This paper challenges the recent hailing of agricultural biotechnology as a panacea for food insecurity and rural poverty in countries of the global South. Based on an empirical investigation of the neoliberal soy regime in Paraguay, I document how the profound transformation of this country's agricultural mode of production over the past two decades, spurred by the neoliberal restructuring of agriculture and the biorevolution, has jeopardized rural livelihoods. In particular, I demonstrate how the transgenic soyization of Paraguay's agriculture has led to an increased concentration of landholdings, as well as the displacement and disempowerment of peasants and rural labourers who have been rendered surplus to the requirements of agribusiness capital. At the same time, the consolidation of this new agro‐industrial model has fostered a growing dependence on agrochemicals that compromise environmental quality and human health. Thus, I argue, a development policy based on industrial monocropping of genetically modified (GM) soy is inappropriate, unsustainable and unethical.     

International Accreditations as Drivers of Business School Quality Improvement

Business schools are under pressure to implement continuous improvement and quality assurance processes to remain competitive in a globalized higher education market. Drivers for quality improvement include external, environmental pressures, regulatory bodies such as governments, and, increasingly, voluntary accreditation agencies such as AACSB and EFMD. A case study based on French management schools is presented to demonstrate this impact, and globally, management education is shown to have benefited from specific accreditation standards. Future challenges include the risk of standardization and institutional isomorphism, research relevance and quality, and the consequences of globalization on accreditation criteria.     

Students’ Perception of International Business Curriculum: An Explorative Study—Case of Lebanon

Economic development depends on business education for a thriving and secure society. A skilled workforce that can create, innovate, and increase business opportunities fosters an environment of prosperity that provides jobs and enhances the quality of life among its citizens. This article examines the environment, content, and delivery of business education in Lebanon. It analyzes curriculum content and the students' perceptions of the value and applicability of the curriculum. It also explores the shift in emphasis toward an international perspective in curricula and its importance for the academicians as well as practitioners to understand the methods, techniques, and activities that are being used to prepare the future business workforce. This study presents ideas and perspectives about how business and international curricula in Lebanon are perceived. Data for this article were collected in Lebanon and reflects the students' perspective on its international business curriculum.     

Culture,Change, and Cascading Damage at a United Way

After a long‐standing pattern of failures, suburban United Way of McCall County (UWMC) underwent two traumatic years of market share loss, unsuccessful re‐branding, and ineffective community re‐positioning. The ensuing domino effect damage changed UWMC from an aspiring “leadership center” into a shrinking organization outsourcing central functions and abandoning new programs. Its losses of donations, cuts to partner agencies, staff reduction, and impending take‐over exemplify United Way of America's quandary as this once‐powerful monopoly breaks up into a handful of merged mega‐metropolitan areas and smaller, struggling affiliates. United Way's systemic failures have been further accelerated by its corrupt cultural allegiances and its historic refusal to advocate on behalf of its once‐removed impoverished client base.     

Life Insurance in Nigeria: An Application of the Theory of Reasoned Action to Consumers' Attitudes and Purchase Intention

This paper is concerned with consumers' attitudes towards purchase of life insurance in Nigeria. There is considerable unexploited potential for the life insurance market in Nigeria. However, due to lack of confidence based on continuous negative experiences, consumers tend not to buy. Data was gathered from 240 non-users of life insurance at Abuja, the federal capital city, using structured questionnaires based on the Theory of Reasoned Action; and questions were related to issues of non-consumption of life insurance. The findings show that increased level of consumer consciousness and lack of welfare benefits are encouraging growth factors for the life insurance market in Nigeria. Since the purchase intention towards life insurance is determined by normative factors, the recommendation is that the initial point of contact for marketing communications regarding the purchase of life insurance should be family and friends.     

How do standard setters define materiality and why does it matter?

Material information is a core aspect of a firm's governance and reporting activities. If corporate information is material, then the firm has a responsibility to disclose it. Currently, firms must judge information as material largely based on a confusing set of standard setters’ definitions. I analyze the particular conditions laid out by each standard setter and explain the ethical implications that result from materiality judgments made by firms using these varied standards. Importantly, this analysis underscores that regulators, firms, and researchers alike must consider the impact of these implications on the fiduciary duty and promise-keeping that firms make as well as the potential for unfairness and financial harm to others’ welfare that could result.     

United States–Cuba Agricultural Relations and Agrarian Questions

In the wake of Cuba's far‐reaching, halting economic reforms, geopolitical rapprochement and trade openings with the United States (US) offer opportunities and risks for Cuban small‐scale farmers and agrarian cooperatives: pressures, paradoxes and potential abound. Meanwhile, on the margins, agro‐ecologically oriented tours bring admiring US students, farmers and agrarian advocates. Cubans concur that the country must solve key problems in its agricultural sector to overcome the contradictions of its agri‐food model, and that this entails more exchange with the US – but in what capacity and on what terms? The current crossroads begs the classic agrarian question, even as it updates it. Having experienced and survived the promises and disasters of both capitalist and communist agricultural economies, Cuban farmers expand the original ‘peasant’ protagonist. As they navigate new non‐state markets and recent re‐entrenchment of state control of prices, Cuban farmers and cooperatives struggle to avoid monopolizing tendencies of unfettered capitalist as well as communist agricultural economies – both of which have historically been ecologically damaging. US agribusiness courts Cuba, but not as mere unidirectional capture: Cubans are inviting and leveraging trade to end the embargo, which is increasingly being modified altogether. Key Cuban agrarian principles of resilience and cooperativismo have persisted through capitalist and communist crises: could they influence prospects for agro‐industrial hegemony from the North?      

IS THERE A CONFLICT BETWEEN COMMERCIAL GAIN AND CONCERN FOR THE POOR? EVIDENCE FROM PRIVATE SCHOOLS FOR THE POOR IN INDIA AND NIGERIA

In many developing countries, private unaided schools are serving the poor in large numbers. Some commentators view their presence as undesirable - in particular assuming that there is a conflict between'commercial gain' and 'concern for the poor'. We show one way in which there is no conflict - the private unaided schools offer free or concessionary places to the poorest of the poor. Using data from a random sample of schools in Hyderabad, India, and a smaller sample in Makoko, Nigeria, we show that such places range from 10–20% of all places offered.     

中国与国际秩序的再思考:一种政治社会学的视角

借鉴政治社会学有关抗争艺术的理论模式,作者尝试对中国在西方主导的国际秩序中的战略行为和思维做了新的理论概括。中国在单极体系下的抗争艺术可以分为两个层面:作为战略行为在现有秩序中的依法抗争以及作为战略思维对现有秩序进行反思的日常抗争。重新思考中国与国际秩序的关系,应该超越维持现状和修正主义二分法。中国学习和接受既有国际规范只是社会化的一个方面,中国如何影响国际规范的演变则是社会化过程中尚待理论化的另一方面。中国正积极探索未来国际秩序的若干模式,其中,协商秩序作为一种国际秩序的理想模式具有重要的理论和实践意义。