Can Business Development Services practitioners learn from theories of innovation and services marketing?

Business Development Services (BDS) programmes have become big business for international donors and NGOs. Focusing on small enterprises in developing countries, the current BDS approach assumes that the development of commercial markets is the key to success. Yet many of these programmes continue to have a limited impact. A review of modern theories of innovation and services marketing management suggests that this may be because current BDS support practice reflects a rather limited understanding of how new markets actually develop. Drawing on the insights that these theories offer, the authors suggest that BDS practice should develop a more evolutionary approach, recognising that service innovations develop through active, on-going interaction between suppliers and customers. The article concludes with practical policy guidelines and a discussion about tools that could help BDS to adopt this more successful approach.     

The Role of UNEP and UNDP in Multilateral Environmental Agreements

This study examines the role of the UN’s programmes for environment and development (UNEP and UNDP) in the genesis and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). This is set in the wider context of the changing dominant focus of the international agenda, from ‘environment’ at the Stockholm Conference in 1972, to ‘environment and development’ at Rio in 1992, and ‚sustainable development’ in Johannesburg in 2002. UNDP is a development organisation strongly rooted in its country office network. Its role is becoming increasingly normative however, particularly since 2002 when UNDP opted to root most of its activities on the Millennium Development Goals. UNEP, as an environmental organisation has been successful at catalysing MEAs at the global and regional level; but without a significant increase in its budget over 30 years, its capacity has been spread very thinly. Many of the institutional arrangements for MEAs have effectively become independent of UNEP resulting in a very loosely and sometimes poorly coordinated network. Two case studies are used to illustrate the current institutional arrangements: UNEP’s Regional Seas Conventions and Protocols, and the Convention for Biological Diversity. These illustrate the fragmentation of current institutions, the need for strengthened technical and scientific support, the importance of addressing problems at their root causes and the need to increase the devolution of global governance to the regional level. Satisfying the identified needs requires actions within the remit of both UNEP and UNDP. It is argued that current institutional arrangements have not kept pace with the requirements of evolving policy. As part of a reform process, one option may be to merge the two programmes into a single structure that conserves and strengthens vital technical functions but enables a balanced and integrated approach to sustainable development.     

A pilot study of the effects of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist therapy on brain activation pattern in a man with pedophilia

Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, such as leuprorelin, are recommended in the patients with pedophilia at highest risk of offending. However, the cerebral mechanisms of the effects of these testosterone-decreasing drugs are poorly known. This study aimed to identify changes caused by leuprorelin in a pedophilic patient's brain responses to pictures representing children. Clinical, endocrine, and fMRI investigations were done of a man with pedophilia before leuprorelin therapy and 5 months into leuprorelin therapy. Patient was compared with an age-matched healthy control also assessed 5 months apart. Before therapy, pictures of boys elicited activation in the left calcarine fissure, left insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and left cerebellar vermis. Five months into therapy, all the above-mentioned activations had disappeared. No such activations and, consequently, no such decreases occurred in the healthy control. The results of this pilot study suggest that leuprorelin decreased activity in regions known to mediate the perceptual, motivational, and affective responses to visual sexual stimuli.     

Does Separation or Divorce Make any Difference? An Interactional Perspective on Intimate Partner Violence with Focus on Marital Status

This article reports a study of the impact of marital status on interactional aspects of intimate partner violence (IPV) among help-seeking women. Are there differences among marital status groups concerning (a) other sociodemographic variables, (b) IPV categories, (c) interactional IPV variables, and (d) perception and interpretation of IPV? A representative sample of 157 women recruited from family counseling, the police, and shelters were interviewed. There was no significant sociodemographic difference among the marital status groups. There were no significant differences pertaining to IPV categories, neither for IPV severity, injury, duration, frequency, mortal danger, and regularity, nor for physical, psychological, or sexual IPV. However, multivariate logistic regression showed that post-separation women were significantly more likely to have (a) had longer duration since the last psychological and sexual IPV episode, (2) reported the physical IPV to be more predictable, and (3) used more active coping strategies against physical IPV. However, our research was not able to determine if perception and interpretation predict actual leaving behavior, or vice versa, or how the victim’s subjective perception and interpretation of the IPV changes over time.     

Child Discipline Practices in Kosovo: Attitudes and Sociodemographic Correlates

Journal of Family Violence - Empirical evidence on the use of disciplinary practices across low- and middle-income countries remains limited and impedes the development of prevention practices....     

From ethnic exclusion to terrorism? The case of radical Basque nationalism

ABSTRACT

This article reflects upon the beginnings and development of radical Basque nationalism in light of its ethnic exclusion criteria. We argue that the existence of a tradition of “strong” alterity does not necessarily lead to the appearance of tendencies favoring the use of violence to confront the other. Without rejecting the importance of a discourse of hate proceeding from the past, such tendencies are due more to a combination of the historical context and individual and group decisions. It is important to bear this in mind to underscore the responsibilities of those who were not satisfied with constructing the image of a despicable enemy, but instead decided to employ violence to solve the problem that the latter might cause.     

Debating rape jokes vs. rape culture: framing and counter-framing misogynistic comedy

ABSTRACT

Humor controversies can simultaneously reveal and obscure relations of power, as well as the rhetorical/political nature of jokes. US comedian Daniel Tosh ignited one such controversy in July 2012 when he directed a rape joke toward a female audience member during a live performance in Hollywood, CA. This paper consists of a two-part analysis of this humor controversy. First, we examine a televised debate following this incident, between a comedian and feminist, to map the dominant framing and counter-framing of rape jokes. We contend these positions are representative of two frames that repeatedly surface in response to controversial sexist humor: a dominant patriarchal frame and an oppositional feminist counter-frame. Second, we analyze the saliency of these two frames among college students to observe the way individual interpretations resonate with, challenge, and complicate those frames. In light of our findings, we argue the dominant framing/interpretation of rape jokes reinforce patriarchal and free-market ideologies, and deny real-world implications of misogynistic humor, particularly when comedians/audiences defend such jokes as harmless fun.