Buyer and Seller Differences in Business‐to‐Business Negotiations

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to examine the differences between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics in face‐to‐face business‐to‐business (B2B) negotiations and second, to explore how negotiators' professed negotiation styles influence buyers' and sellers' use of tactics. The methodology is a multiple case study analysis of eighteen negotiators representing twelve companies in six real‐life buyer–seller negotiations in B2B settings analyzed using qualitative research methods, including both comparative analysis and frequency analysis. We found some difference between buyers' and sellers' use of negotiation tactics, which suggests this question deserves further empirical study. Buyers' and sellers' use of specific tactics differs according to which overall strategy the negotiators chose, and sellers generally use a greater number of negotiation tactics than buyers. The findings challenge previous findings that suggest that B2B negotiations are collaborative and that negotiators communicate in a collaborative manner. The findings also increase our understanding of buyers' and sellers' variable use of tactics in the course of everyday practice as well as the interplay between negotiation tactics and strategies.     

Islam–science relation from the perspective of post-revolutionary Iranian religious intellectuals

Throughout Islamic history, various arguments have been raised by Muslim scholars concerning how the Quran and scientific knowledge are related to one another. This paper seeks to examine how contemporary Iranian religious intellectuals (rowshanfekrān-e-dīnī) have dealt with the question of the compatibility or incompatibility between Islam and science. In particular, the paper focuses on the writings of two of the most significant reformers of the post-revolutionary era, namely Abdolkarim Soroush and Muhammad Mujtahed Shabestari, concerning the relation between science and religion. The paper also examines the extent to which the ideas of these two thinkers about the relation between Islam and science reflect those of pre-modern and modern Muslim scholars. To do so, I first examine various pre-modern and modern discourses within the Islamic tradition about Islam–science relation as well as the scientific exegesis of the Quran, and then investigate the extent to which Soroush’s and Shabestari’s perspectives are related to such discourses. The central argument of the paper is that the theories proposed by Soroush and Shabestari significantly differ from the views of those modern and pre-modern Muslim scholars who attempt to argue in favour of the dichotomous view that Islam is either compatible or incompatible with scientific knowledge.     

Challenges of research in rural poverty: lessons from large field surveys

This practical note highlights lessons learnt during the data collection of two large field surveys as part of the ongoing “Sindh Union Council and Economic Strengthening Support” (SUCCESS) programme in southern Pakistan. The experience is discussed in terms of language barriers, the educational status of households, dealing with people’s expectations and non-cooperation, and the weather conditions. The note also highlights the practice of public sharing of data in real-time to improve the design and implementation of future surveys, especially those measuring poverty and quality of life.     

EU–Russian Relations and Turkey's Role as an Energy Corridor

This article analyses the impact of EU–Russian relations on Turkey's role as a corridor for the transit of energy supplies to Europe. While the European Union (EU) has inherent leverage in its collective purchase of most Russian gas exports, market power has shifted in Russia's favour. Russian efforts to build new pipelines and widen downstream access have stimulated EU interest in diversifying energy imports and transit routes. In this sense, the EU has recognised Turkey's potential value as a secure and independent route for importing non-Russian energy supplies, which may in turn have an impact on Turkey's EU accession process.     

Padmaśrī’s Nāgarasarvasva and the World of Medieval Kāmaśāstra

This essay introduces a special issue on the history of kāmaśāstra in medieval India. It briefly reviews the secondary scholarship on the subject from the publication of the first translations of the genre at the end of the nineteenth century. It highlights the relatively unexplored history of later kāmaśāstra, and stresses the need for contexualized and detailed studies of the many kāmaśāstra treatises produced in the second millennium CE. The introduction, and the essays that follow, also argue for an expanded interpretive framework for the genre, moving beyond ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality,’ to a more widely defined notion of a ‘kāma world’, in which sensual pleasure is understood as being deeply enmeshed with aesthetic, ethical and cosmopolitan cultures.     

Learning from the Katrina Crisis: A Global and International Perspective with Implications for Future Crisis Management

The study of crisis and emergency management—or mismanagement—during Hurricane Katrina will continue to proliferate in the near future. This article presents a global and international perspective on Katrina as a case of "grand failure" in crisis and emergency management, with lessons and implications for future crisis management. Benefiting from empirical data collected from international interviews, the essay presents a theoretical analysis of emergency governance and crisis management, discusses a detailed global perspective on Katrina crisis management as "management and leadership crisis," offers a number of key lessons learned from Katrina, and draws policy and administrative recommendations for future crisis and emergency management through a theory of "surprise management" that is adaptive, collaborative, and citizen engaging and draws on chaos and complexity theories to cope with hyper-uncertainties and unknowns.