Sustainability After Project Completion: Evidence from the GEF

This chapter examines the extent to which completed GEF projects are sustainable and the factors affecting sustainability. We considered only those projects that were covered through postcompletion evaluation at least 2 years after implementation completion, and where the evaluation reports provided adequate information related to observed sustainability during the postcompletion period. We assessed 62 projects to meet the selection criteria, then completed a desk review of the postcompletion evaluation reports and other relevant documents for these projects to assess the extent to which the project outcome was sustainable.We found that the projects covered through postcompletion evaluations were generally sustainable, with the sustainability outlook deteriorating for some projects while improving for others. The incidence of the catalytic processes that enhance sustainability—sustaining, mainstreaming, replication, scaling-up, and market change—was higher at postcompletion evaluation, as the passage of time allows long-term project outcomes to manifest. At the project level, we observed these catalytic processes in a wider set of activities at postcompletion evaluation than at implementation completion. Factors such as financial support for follow-up, political support, follow-up by and capacities of the executing agency, stakeholder buy-in, and project design seem to play a crucial role in determining project sustainability.

Challenges and Trends of Agile

Rapidly increasing of requirements of business pushed researchers to define new approaches and methodologies to meet marketing needs. Agile methodology has been created and replaced the traditional-driven development methods that focus on soliciting, documenting a complete set of requirements, and take a long time comparing to market change. On the other hand, customers need to be closer to the development process and collaborate with team development. Despite agile advantages, introducing new tools, coordination, and collaboration concepts, some challenges still need to be discussed and improved. These challenges relate to achieve balanced IT service development process in the organization. As a result, new trends have been created to facilitate new changes in software development. This chapter will study agile methodologies and different challenges with suggested solutions generated from agile philosophy itself.

Market legitimation in countercultural market change

Drawing on concepts of institutional work, legitimacy, and institutional logics, we investigate why countercultural markets experience institutional change and the actions institutional work market actors perform to inform institutional logics and ensure the legitimacy of countercultural markets. Although previous research suggests market changes and disruption, little attention has been paid to markets that originate from different institutional backgrounds, changes in the market experience in relation to its legitimization, and institutional work to attain legitimacy. The case of indie music in South Korea illustrates the evolution of a cultural market from the introduction of its ethos, the crisis caused by legitimacy pressures, and the transformation of the market. Using data gathered through in-depth interviews with indie labels and music consumers in South Korea, and archival sources, our research illuminates the source of market struggle and theorizes approaches that market actors perform to overcome the struggle.

Independent or Dependent? European Labour Statistics and Their (In)ability to Identify Forms of Dependency in Self-employment

In the studies on labour market change and transformation of employment relations, the growth of new forms of self-employment, including platform work, has raised a broad debate about how to define, classify, and analyse the wide range of positions within the heterogeneous category of self-employed workers. This article analyses the emergent methodologies used in European comparative labour statistics to identify forms of dependency in self-employment. Using the 6th wave of the 2015 European Working Condition Survey and the 2017 ad hoc module on self-employment from the European Labour Force Survey, this article discusses how the representation of dependent self-employment changes by adopting a different operationalization of economic and operational dependency. Findings show how different indicators of dependency change the representation of self-employment in different economic sectors, affecting our understanding of the transformation of working arrangements within self-employment and the boundaries between employment and self-employment.

Strategic Process of Recovery and Development of the Romanian Economy

The sequence of rapid transformations from a material resource-based society to a society based on intelligence and creativity demonstrates the need to accept, integrate and implement knowledge-based management in any organization, regardless of its status. Major changes, both globally and nationally, oblige us to reflect carefully on the diversity of requirements and to identify the best strategies for the recovery of the Romanian economy. A critical assessment of the situation of Romanian organizations in all fields of activity, compared to changes at international level, will lead to the approach of new strategies and rapid measures for the recovery and development of the economy, with a view to maintaining the pace of competitiveness, with the major players in the international market. Change and economic evolution mean intelligence, information and creativity. The external environment is a competitive, and in need of survival. It depends on the social, legal, economic evolution, the technologies and services used, but also on the adaptation to evolutionary changes in order to resist the competitive market. We must be aware, however, that each country has its peculiarities, and I am referring here to the mentality, customs, but also to the relief, demographic state, national and human resources that Romania has. We're looking to keep up to date with the new research on the respective domain. The research of the literature, in order to identify the most effective and affordable strategies for the recovery of the Romanian economy, are extremely beneficial, but we must have the capacity to adapt them to the existing reality both nationally and globally.

Technology, market change and the privatisation of communications in Britain

Purpose What are the trade-offs between public and private ownership in the business and how does this impact industries responsible for providing and offering services on critical national infrastructure? The privatisation of British Telecom (BT), the UK telecommunications provider that was initially part of the British Post Office, is used to explore this question. By broadening the business perspective beyond the political goals and economic consequences of privatisation; this study aims to approach management history provides new perspectives of the benefits and challenges offered by both public and private ownership. Design/methodology/approach To fulfil its purpose, this paper examines how the UK telecommunications incumbent proactively adapted from being an organisation shaped by its unique position within the public sector, to one embracing the challenges offered by the private sector. The analysis is synthesised by linking an understanding of the customer’s requirements, services and technology with surveys of the secondary literature, supported where applicable by archival material, combining perspectives from authors both within the organisation and external to it. Sources include specialist and more general academic material and contemporary and reflective publications from practising engineers and managers; supplemented by material held at the BT Archives and the Guildhall Library in London. It links the debate on ownership to the evolution of the market under study and provides a balanced view across the business, its market, competition and technology. Findings The arguments surrounding public or private ownership, are complex, in particular, it is difficult to separate effects due to liberalisation and privatisation. Whilst the former provided the impetus for beneficial change, the latter reduced the level of detrimental entanglement with government policy and enabled the technology and structural changes that took the market forward. Originality/value A new and balanced view of the privatisation of BT is taken, with an emphasis on how the company needed to change to thrive in a liberalised market, noting how technological change both required organisational change and enabled it. In contrast to many studies, the emphasis is on what was driving the organisation rather than the policy of privatisation and its effectiveness.

Development Strategy of a Car Manufacturing Company in the Russian Car Market at the example of Sollers PJSC

The article analyses the dynamics of development of the Russian market of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles, investigates the strategy and competitive advantages of Sollers group of companies, which is successfully operating despite volatility of development of the Russian car market, as well as the need for a radical renewal of the model range of the company’s cars, the presence of excess production capacity and the departure from Russia of three foreign partners of Sollers group of companies in joint ventures: Fiat, SsangYong and Ford. Particular attention in the article is paid to Ford, a joint venture partner with Sollers PJSC, which left the Russian domestic market in 2019. This event, which had a negative impact on partners and clients of the company, was caused by severalcircumstances. Besides, the article identifies the main directions of development of joint ventures Mazda Sollers and Ford Sollers (in terms of Ford Transit minibus, the only locally manufactured Ford model) and the possibility of expanding their export potential, including due to export of engines, spare parts and components.The article pays close attention to introduction of new technologies in Sollers PJSC and other companies, development of digitalisation in development and production of new models, creation of its own telematics platform that allows to connect a car to the Internet and control it remotely, including starting the engine.The author examines in detail a new consumption model in the car market associated with refusal of buyers to own a car and with emerging choice of new services regarding subscription and exchange of cars, their development in foreign and domestic markets, as well as offers the analysis of successes and failures of foreign automakers in providing subscription services.The main purpose of the article is to study the strategy of Sollers PJSC in the domestic and foreign markets, auxiliary purposes refer to the analysis of the domestic market, change in the consumption model and provision of new services, study of reasons for departure of foreign partners of the company.

When to choose market foreclosure and vertical mergers with substitutable final products

PurposeBased on the idea of part standardisation and product differentiation in lean management, this paper answers the question when integrate firms should choose market foreclosure to maximise profits by studying a two-tier supply chain, which contains three types of firms: suppliers, manufacturers and integrated firms. Moreover, the effect of the substitutability between final products and the competition among firms in the supply chain would be investigated from the perspective of dynamic analysis.Design/methodology/approachConsidering the decision order of integrated firms and manufacturers in the downstream of the supply chain, the authors build three competition models. In each model, integrated firms compete with manufacturers in Bertrand–Nash fashion. And, suppliers compete with each other in Cournot fashion, so do integrated firms and manufacturers. The authors further discuss how the competitive relationship between firms affect the equilibrium result.FindingsNumerical analysis reveals that under other conditions unchanged, the increased competition between downstream firms leads to the rise in the willingness of selling parts for integrated firms, while the increase in the number of suppliers has the opposite effect. In addition, due to the market change before and after the vertical merger, it may lead to the transition from profitable to unprofitable for the vertical merger.Originality/valueThis paper provides a theoretical analysis and managerial implication for integrated firms' market foreclosure decision. From the perspective of dynamic analysis, this paper demonstrates the result of vertical mergers and provides an explanation for the failure of vertical mergers.

The “glocalisation” of Istanbul's retail property market

PurposeThe continuation of globalisation and liberalisation processes has prompted the restructuring of many national and local property markets. The research examines the evolution of Istanbul's retail property market to identify how global and local agents engage with one another to produce a unique “glocalized” outcome.Design/methodology/approachThe morphogenetic approach is adapted and applied to analyse the dynamics of market change. The focus is on the character and behaviour of national and international market actors and how they interact with the wider political economy. The research uses a combination of elite interviews, document analysis and corporate case studies to obtain empirical evidence.FindingsThe liberalisation of the Turkish economy heralded the entry of the first international companies into Istanbul's retail property market in the 1990s. International involvement expanded rapidly after 2004, accelerating the process of market re-structuring. However, while the number of global buy-outs increased, the expansion of local property companies–and the establishment of some international/national corporate partnerships–was even more marked. This resulted in a “glocalised” market with a strong and distinctive local culture.Originality/valueIstanbul has been a major centre of trade for millenia. This is the first substantive analysis of the recent restructuring of the city's retail property market. Previous research on market maturity and market evolution has paid limited attention to the dynamics of change. The paper describes the use of a process-based theoretical framework (morphogenesis) that was explicitly designed to analyse structural shifts in socio-economic conditions through an examination of the characteristics and behaviours of the actors involved.

Conceptualizing contemporary markets: Introduction to the special issue

Contemporary markets are evolving in numerous ways that affect their structure, dynamics and consequences. Yet while the concept of the market is central to comparative, international and global political economy, there exists no concerted body of literature dedicated to debating and articulating different conceptions of the market and that critically self-reflects on how these empirical transformations are intersecting with the central theoretical concerns of political economy: power, contestation and change. This special issue enriches the debate by looking to decentre the concept of the market from its traditional home in mainstream neoclassical/liberal political economy. Western-centric conceptualizations of the market based on a minimal atomistic classical definition have dominated international economic discourses but it is becoming increasingly clear that different understandings of markets and the functions they serve are crystalizing between market stakeholders at the global level. This special issue addresses these concerns via the historicization of the concept of the market, the development and refinement of the concept of the market, as well as the decentring of the concept of the market via empirical studies of global market change informed by an awareness of the political, economic, social and cultural embeddedness of markets. In so doing, the special issue leverages the insights of global political economy and cognate disciplines to achieve richer insights into the analytical potential of the concept of the market.