Analysis of the Performance of Microfinance Institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa

This chapter examines the performance of microfinance institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa through observations from different perspectives. It examined the effects of microfinance institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Relevant literature on the sustainability and outreach of microfinance institutions are also analysed in this chapter. Sub-Saharan Africa's future achievement of necessary economic growth is very likely to depend partly on its ability to develop its economic and financial sectors to be more inclusive of small and medium enterprises in a more comprehensive way. Currently, microfinance directly promotes the development of the intermediate financial sector in Africa, which is positively correlated with economic growth. Despite the worsening of the current industrial crisis, microfinance is seen as an essential developmental tool and continues to grow in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Model for assessing the impact of industrial crisis on the regional economy

The results of the analysis of the financial and economic condition of organizations of various types of economic activity are presented. A cognitive economic and mathematical model for assessing the impact of crisis phenomena in industry on the regional economy is proposed. The use of this model will increase the validity of anti–crisis management strategies in industry.

You Haven’t Seen the Last of Men

The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997) is much acclaimed as a comedy film. Yet, its screenplay is based on a serious context, contemporary of its shooting—the industrial crisis in the North of England—and deals with its societal effects—a major shift in gender roles and patterns. The real achievement of the male characters is that they resolve gender conflicts adopting cultural practices traditionally reserved for women, asserting their masculinity while posing as sex objects. At a time when men–women relationships are at the heart of debates in the Western World, this article seeks to demonstrate that the movie has a quasi-universal dimension by suggesting that, rather than a reversal of gender roles, a new kind of balance can emerge, with all its attendant “contradictions.”

Trends in media framing of industrial crises reporting: implication for media research in Nigeria

There has been a scholarly argument among media researchers on how best media analysts should study media perspectives on industrial crisis reporting with reference to research methods, theoretical perspectives and methods of data analysis. Content analysis and meta-analytical approach were employed to gather data from published scholarly articles and theses accessed online. One hundred and fifteen (115) studies were content analyzed, collated and identified based on those that focused their issues on media framing of labour crisis. Evidence from the studies analysed shows that the content analysis and in-depth interviews were predominantly adopted for media representations of industrial crisis, the mixed method research were adopted for data collection while media framing, agenda setting and the priming theories were mostly adopted by most of the studies. It is recommended that studies should employ critical discourse analysis to compliment researchers’ effort to examine how different ideological stances are mediated in the media to reflect social-political dominance, inequality and class struggle that characterize industrial crisis. Keywords: Industrial crisis reporting, Media framing, Research trends, Discourse analysis, Nigeria

The social desirability of offshoring: a Swiss consensus (1945–1975)

This article focuses on the evolution of the rhetoric and practice of corporate offshoring in Switzerland from the post-war economic boom to the industrial crisis in the mid-seventies. The virtue of a historical perspective on the issue of offshoring is to show how recent controversies have their roots in previous decades, suggesting the need to reassess recent debates about structural change in light of earlier experiences. Relying on the cultural and narrative perspective in business history, the article shows the emergence of an unexpected consensus about the legitimacy of corporate offshoring between employers, Swiss authorities and even Swiss labour unions after 1945. The explanation for that counter-intuitive alliance is found in the actors’ representations and discourse about what they considered to be excessive economic circumstances. Indeed, during this golden age of considerable economic expansion, demand exceeded supply and the Swiss firms constantly complained of labour shortages. Offshoring was therefore seen as a cure for the lack of workers within Switzerland and allowed multinational companies to focus on the most lucrative production activities. Swiss workers and unions shared this view, preferring some low-skill activities to be done outside the country rather than seeing the arrival of more foreign workers, who tended to be less unionised and who were accused of aggravating the housing shortage. In response, the Swiss authorities supported the offshoring process by providing some tariff favours to allow textile firms in particular to relocate their production abroad and to reimport it to Switzerland without paying taxes. Finally, the article shows how the consensus broke down after the economic downturn of the mid-70 s and how changing historical circumstances induced new diverging narratives about the social desirability of the offshoring phenomenon.

Climate Delusion: Hurricane Sandy, Sea Level Rise, and 1840s Catastrophism

The existential global threat of inundation of the world’s low-lying port cities necessitates a radical shift in the dominant climate framework of sustainability and resilience to include catastrophism. Scientists and social scientists of the industrial crisis decade of the 1840s, arguably the Anthropocene’s historical origin, offer a model for theorizing twenty-first century catastrophe in both geophysical and social terms, as in the case study of Hurricane Sandy presented here.