Small and Medium Enterprises in Mexico and the Craft Beer Sector in Baja California: Dynamic Capabilities, Culture, and Innovation

This article studies how Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) operating in emerging economies implement adaptative strategies to respond to constant changes in demand and global uncertainties, such as those stemming from the current SARS-COV2 pandemic. In this study the knowledge management capabilities used by SMEs in the craft beer sector in a region of northern Mexico are the focus of analysis. The objective is to present the competitive capabilities that craft beer sector has demonstrated in Baja California region and how small companies compete with the national industrial brewery and survive. Sources are data from a sample of companies and interviews with brewery owners, with which the analysis approaches, also, the Baja California business environment. The article highlights the routes of creativity, innovation, and symbolic capital of the companies in the region, and uses ideas from dynamic capabilities and knowledge management theoretical frameworks, to understand the craft brewery milieu. The conclusions in this article include the confirmation about the usefulness of these analytical frameworks based in the capabilities approach and the territorial knowledge. Also, the description of the existence of a complex Baja Californian milieu, where a multimodal scheme of craft beer characterized by different places of distribution and types of beer container, food-districts, at Mexicali, Tijuana, and Ensenada and a second generation of entrepreneur groups leading local business, is identified.

The Capabilities Approach and the Concepts of Self-Determination, Legal Competence and Human Dignity in Social Services for Older People

In this chapter, the tension between self-determination and human dignity in the Swedish legal system of social care for older people is analysed with help of the capabilities approach. The core focus of this approach is the individual person’s capability to make decisions. Also important is a supportive societal system that enables the realisation of self-determination, specifically for individuals who are not fully capable of making arrangements for themselves. The capabilities approach emphasises the responsibility of the State and can be used to analyse the impact of legal and political obligations for nation-states, and to balance the increased focus on self-determination and the quest for increased capabilities among older people. In the context of a dismantled welfare state, a one-sided focus on individual autonomy might turn out to be a double-edged sword, leaving the individual with self-determination but no (or insufficient) available care to decide about. In this chapter, the underlying principles of practical decisions are theoretically explored and reflected upon. Of specific relevance is human dignity (in addition to enhancing individual freedom), normativity (a set of fundamental capabilities is identified) and the central role of the nation-state (as the responsible political subject for the achievement of minimum thresholds for all capabilities).

The effect of the concept of individual agency on the estimation of health among different agecohorts

The understanding of determinants of health in health policy and health promotion has shifted from a traditional focus on lifestyle (nutrition, exercises, addiction), toward a richer multidimensional approach. This shift has been strongly influenced by a body of research in the human capabilities’ approach, which emphasizes the role of person’s agency, freedom, and opportunities. Using survey data on 18–52 years old Lithuanian representatives, this paper explores the relationship between personal agency and subjective health perception as well as how it varies depending on the age and post-materialistic values. Human agency refers to the capability of an individual to control personal destiny and make choices to fulfill goals set autonomously (A. Giddens). The results show that agency is important factor of subjective health perception in Lithuania. The fact that capabilities that measure agency are aligned with subjective health measures support the view of human development as an integral process.

Breaking the Silence about the Animals We Eat

Some 77 billion terrestrial animals are reared for human consumption globally every year. The moral implications of killing animals for food and the material conditions of these animals in intensive animal agriculture have seldom been discussed in children’s literature. The purpose of this article is to examine how these socially and culturally maintained silences are broken in two Nordic children’s picturebooks, Swedish Älskade lilla gris (Dear Little Pig, 1982) by Ulf Nilsson and Eva Eriksson and Finnish Kinkkulin jouluyllätys (Little Ham’s Christmas Surprise, 2010) by Teija Rekola and Timo Kästämä. The books’ pig protagonists are determined not to die, embodying the dualistic status inherent in the animality of farmed animals; they are subjects and objects, living beings and food-to-become. Further, this article explores the representation of the inherent value of so-called farmed animals and how it can be narrated-to-exist by concepts gleaned from Western animal rights philosophy, especially the capabilities approach by Martha Nussbaum. In the two books, inherent value is expressed in significantly different modes. Älskade lilla gris discusses multispecies families, autonomous animality, and emancipation, whereas Kinkkulin jouluyllätys uses a more traditional mode involving an anthropomorphic animal story, idyllic setting, and humanized subjectivity. Analysis focuses on the representation of nonhuman individuality, agency, sentience, animality, and interaction with humans. Both books present active and sentient individuals with varying degrees of animality. One celebrates its protagonist’s pighood but also contrasts it with the confined conditions of an animal industrial complex. The other employs a human-like pig protagonist on the run from his slaughterer and whose pighood is limited to his appearance and intended use.

Creating Conditions for Student Success: Social justice perspectives from a South African university

The various chapters of this book have brilliantly provided perspectives on creating conditions for success in higher education from a wide variety of stakeholders within a university environment. The rich content comes from varying fields of study as well as academic development and student affairs directorates within the institution. This is what is exciting about the book. The diversity of focus in chapters makes the book relevant to anyone with interest in higher education matters. From the opening to the closing chapter, students are making a contribution on what the university has done or is doing for them to succeed or what it should consider doing to improve its service to students. This touches on every environment that students find themselves in a university setting, from residences, to the classroom to commuter or off-campus students. The book’s extended use of the capabilities approach and critical social theories has enabled it to provide nuances on not only the success of students, but, more importantly, about how the higher education environment can transform itself to practices relevant for the sector today. The various research studies in this book can benefit similar university contexts nationally and internationally.