Land system change in Italy from 1884 to 2007: Analysing the North–South divergence on the basis of an integrated indicator framework

Over the past centuries, land systems in Italy experienced fundamental shifts, owing to the availability of new energy forms, population surges, and technological progress. The 20th century was characterized by massive productivity increases, accompanied by gradual land abandonment and the return of forest land. We here analyze 120 years of land system change in Italy, applying the human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) framework, a metric for socio-economic pressures on terrestrial ecosystems. HANPP allows integrating ecological with societal perspectives, by systematically quantifying (a) biomass harvest and (b) the difference between potential productivity of ecosystems and current productivity induced by land use processes, such as land conversion, or land degradation. Besides assessing national trends we calculated HANPP separately for the Italian North and South between 1934 and 2007, in order to scrutinize if high regional discrepancies in terms of natural and socio-economic preconditions translate into diverging land system trajectories. Our results show that national HANPP has been declining from 78% of natural productivity before WWII to 56% in 2007, indicating a declining land -use induced pressure on biomass flows over time. Simultaneously, biomass harvest increased by around 26% due to agricultural intensification, despite shrinking croplands. Although we found a significant difference between the Northern and Southern region in the absolute levels of several land use indicators related to biomass appropriation, the overarching trends of land system change were remarkably similar in both regions. This suggests that underlying drivers of land system change, such as policies aimed at land-use intensification and structural change were equally dominating land system trajectories in the North and South of Italy, not withstanding their socio-ecological divergences.     

Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration

We examine natural disasters and long‐run climatic factors as potential determinants of international migration, implementing a panel dataset of bilateral migration flows from 1960 to 2000. We find no direct effect of long‐run climatic factors on international migration across our entire sample. These results are robust when conditioning on origin‐country characteristics, when considering migrants returning home, and when accounting for the potential endogeneity of migrant networks. Rather, we find evidence of indirect effects of environmental factors operating through wages. We find that epidemics and miscellaneous incidents spur international migration, and there is strong evidence that natural disasters beget greater flows of migrants to urban environs.     

CEO继任模式与战略变革研究评述

CEO作为公司战略决策制定和执行的核心人物,其继任模式对战略变革的影响一直是学术界关注的热点课题。本文回顾CEO继任研究发展及CEO继任模式与战略变革关系的研究。     

Microfoundations of network exploration and exploitation capabilities in international opportunity recognition

While international entrepreneurship (IE) recognizes opportunity recognition (OR) as a central activity and the prominent role of network capabilities in OR, it is not informative as to how different network capabilities influence OR in international markets. We utilize dual network capability through the lens of exploration-exploitation to better understand how these two different capabilities influence the identification of international opportunities. Given that microfoundations perspective and prior experience in IE are under-developed and under-theorized, we explore founder’s prior experience as an essential microfoundation for the dual network capability. By employing structural equation modeling on a sample of 647 early internationalizing firms from a developing country, the study demonstrates that founders’ prior experience is a significant microfoundation of dual network capability in international OR. However, both exploration and exploitation capabilities fail to bring new opportunities in a changing market environment. A post-hoc analysis reveals that at a higher level of market change, younger firms benefit more from network exploration, whereas older firms achieve greater success when leveraging benefits from network exploitation. The study concludes with implications and future research avenues.     

Transdisciplinarity in land use science – A review of concepts,empirical findings and current practices

In the search for solutions to complex real-world problems, the benefits of transdisciplinary research (TDR) have been widely heralded. Land use science appears to be a designated field for TDR. However, to date, the additional expenses of TDR are accompanied by a so far not proved added value, and empirical findings are claimed to be scarce and dispersed over several disciplines and case studies.We reviewed 299 articles obtained from a structured literature search to (1) investigate the current differences between theory and practice, (2) identify empirical findings, and (3) ascertain the contributions of TDR to promoting sustainable land use management.Our results demonstrate that, in spite of an increasing conceptual consistency in the theoretical discussion of TDR, the implementation of TDR remains a substantial challenge, in part because of the gap between theory and practice. In addition, research on TDR is science and process centred. The benefits of TDR in addressing real-world problems within the field of land use remain unproven.     

Loss and damage: a critical discourse analysis of Parties’ positions in climate change negotiations

The years-long negotiations on loss and damage (L&D) associated with climate change impacts reached a milestone with the adoption of the Paris Agreement, sanctioning the permanence of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) created in 2013. The WIM aims at advancing knowledge gathering, coordination and support to address L&D associated with extreme and slow onset events in vulnerable developing countries (Decision 2/CP.19). Despite being among the most controversial issues to be recently treated in climate change negotiation, L&D has attracted little attention in the field of international relations. This paper aims at addressing this gap by reconstructing the emergence and evolution of the negotiating positions on L&D of developing and developed countries. It employs a critical discourse analytical approach and builds on Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework for critical discourse analysis, taking decision 2/CP.19 as the core communicative event. Consistently, the decision is analysed at three different levels: as a text (micro-scale); as a discursive practice (meso-scale); and as a social practice (macro-scale). The analysis makes use of a wide range of materials including previous decisions, High Level Segment statements and Parties submissions. It reconstructs Parties’ conflicting views on the positioning of L&D vis-à-vis the adaptation space (L&D as a part of, or as beyond adaptation) and the scientific, ethical and legal arguments employed to support these standpoints. It highlights, in particular, the strategic importance which the ‘compensation argument’ had in determining developing countries’ capacity to influence the UNFCCC process up to the inclusion of a specific article on L&D in the Paris Agreement. While calls for compensation might have lost momentum as a result of the Warsaw and Paris talks, the paper argues that their potential is far from exhausted. They in fact imply a more general request for climate justice which the UNFCCC has not yet addressed.     

Identifying and mapping the tourists⿿ perception of cultural ecosystem services: A case study from an Alpine region

Landscapes provide an array of services to society, from the provision of food and material, to the provision of cultural ecosystem services such as recreation, aesthetics or spirituality. Studies on cultural ecosystem services, however, remain rare and little is known about the spatial localisation of these services. In this study, we adopt and test a framework to identify and map the provision of cultural ecosystem services as perceived by tourists in an Alpine region, i.e. the region of South Tyrol in Italy. A photo-based questionnaire survey is combined with cartographical representations of landscape types to elicit hot and coldspot areas of cultural ecosystem service provision. We statistically test for influences of the land use type and the respondents' socio-demographic background on the tourists' perception of these services. The results show that different spatial patterns emerge for each of the investigated cultural ecosystem services depending on the distribution and extent of the landscape types to which they are related. In particular traditionally managed landscapes, small in extent and mainly scattered over large areas between 1000 and 2200 m a.s.l., are hotspot areas of aesthetic beauty, leisure activities and spirituality. In contrast, intensively managed landscapes, mainly located in the lowland plains of the study site, are considered to be more important for the provision of cultural heritage values. While the results suggest that land use type exerts the strongest influence upon tourists' perception, factors such as the respondents' perceived importance of the services, their gender, cultural background, environmental engagement and experience with the landscape play a significant but subordinate role. We conclude that the spatially explicit information about the provision of cultural ecosystem services can serve as a helpful basis for the design and further implementation of land use policies that acknowledge the high touristic value of traditionally used landscapes in mountain regions.     

Is green growth relevant for poor economies?

To be relevant to developing countries, green growth must be reconciled with the two key structural features of natural resource use and poverty in these countries. First, primary products account for the majority of their export earnings, and they are unable to diversify from primary production. Second, many economies have a substantial share of their rural population located on less favored agricultural land and in remote areas, thus encouraging “geographic” poverty traps. If green growth is to be a catalyst for economy-wide transformation and poverty alleviation in developing countries, then it must be accompanied by policies aimed directly at overcoming these two structural features. Policies and reforms should foster forward and backward linkages of primary production, enhance its integration with the rest of the economy, and improve opportunities for innovation and knowledge spillovers. Rural poverty, especially the persistent concentration of the rural poor on less favored agricultural lands and in remote areas, needs to be addressed by additional targeted policies and investments, and where necessary, policies to promote rural-urban migration.     

Making sense of new technology during organisational change

This article examines how employees interpret the use of various social media and web 2.0 technologies by managers of an organisation during a merger process. The article explores the way in which managers use technology to give sense to the merger process, the corresponding sensemaking of employees and also how employees make sense of the use of technology itself. The findings show that new media enables the sharing of emotional sense about organisational processes between managers and employees and places employees with different levels of involvement with the process and at different points in the organisational hierarchy on equal footing. In spite of this, employees view the use of technology negatively and feel mastered by the technology itself. In discussing these unintended consequences of the use of this technology, the article further discusses the paradoxes that emerge from using new technology to give sense during organisational change.