“Goldilocks” gender mix for maximal innovation likelihood at Indian firms

PurposeGender diversity is known to trigger creative and relationship conflicts alike, the former a boon for innovation and the latter a bane. This study aims to explore the possibility of a gender mix that is “just right” for balancing the intensities of varied forms of conflict to boost innovation in firms in India. Specifically, this paper investigated the presence of an optimal level of women as a percentage of the firm’s full-time permanent employees (Percent-Women) that maximized the firm’s likelihood of product innovation (Product–Innovation–Likelihood).Design/methodology/approachLogistic regression analyses of firm-level data of Indian establishments of varied sizes and industries from World Bank Enterprise Surveys 2014 was performed. Instrumental variable addressed the potential endogeneity of Percent-Women.FindingsThe analysis demonstrated an inverted U-shaped relationship between Product–Innovation–Likelihood and Percent-Women. Product–Innovation–Likelihood peaked when Percent-Women lay between 35% and 58%, i.e. when the firm was gender-balanced or close to it.Practical implicationsThe finding of an optimal level of female inclusion presents to firms a defined target of gender mix to be achieved, failing to which they may be limiting their innovation potential. It compels firms to view gender diversity as a business imperative with definite implications for their long-term performance.Social implicationsFor India, the demonstrated relationship between workplace gender diversity and innovation brings additional reason and urgency to public initiatives, such as female literacy, for boosting female economic engagement. Innovation can power the next stage of the Indian growth story by engaging the heretofore insufficiently tapped female worker.Originality/valueBy demonstrating an optimal degree of female inclusion at which innovation potential peaks, the study reconciled opposing theories of diversity-driven conflicts and went beyond the commonly observed simple linear relationship between female inclusion and innovation. Further, the paper focused on India, a major developing economy with a vast female populace and growing innovation ambitions but scarcely researched for gender diversity’s role in innovation.

Valuing Education: The role of soft power in Chinese engagement with Tonga

<p>The bilateral relationship between China and Tonga has existed for almost fifteen years, expanding from an initially limited scope to encompass trade, education, tourism, culture and defence. While China has rapidly expanded its official relationship with Tonga, this expansion has created tensions within Tongan society generated by fears of Chinese immigrants taking jobs and businesses. These tensions boiled over in 2006, as Tongans rioted in the capital Nuku’alofa against Chinese shopkeepers over perceived unfair competition. The aftermath of the Nuku’alofa riots has seen an increasing awareness from China of the need to educate Tongans to its presence in their country, and its goals on the world stage. This new awareness has resulted in China adopting a number of approaches to educate Tongans as part of its expanding engagement. Education has become a central plank of this new-found education campaign, with China introducing several programmes to expose Tongan students to its culture and values, including scholarships for tertiary students to study within China. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the correlation between China’s increasing political and economic engagement with Tonga, and the increasing use of education programmes such as scholarships to educate Tongans about China and its culture and values. To accomplish this, the political and economic ties between China and Tonga will be analysed, as will the soft power initiatives that China has undertaken. These will then be analysed to test whether or not the increase in soft power initiatives is due to the expansion of political and economic ties between the two countries. This will allow the use of soft power by China in Tonga to be compared to the trends evident in other South Pacific states, to determine whether Tonga is a unique case or whether China is undertaking these policies across the region.</p>

Valuing Education: The role of soft power in Chinese engagement with Tonga

<p>The bilateral relationship between China and Tonga has existed for almost fifteen years, expanding from an initially limited scope to encompass trade, education, tourism, culture and defence. While China has rapidly expanded its official relationship with Tonga, this expansion has created tensions within Tongan society generated by fears of Chinese immigrants taking jobs and businesses. These tensions boiled over in 2006, as Tongans rioted in the capital Nuku’alofa against Chinese shopkeepers over perceived unfair competition. The aftermath of the Nuku’alofa riots has seen an increasing awareness from China of the need to educate Tongans to its presence in their country, and its goals on the world stage. This new awareness has resulted in China adopting a number of approaches to educate Tongans as part of its expanding engagement. Education has become a central plank of this new-found education campaign, with China introducing several programmes to expose Tongan students to its culture and values, including scholarships for tertiary students to study within China. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the correlation between China’s increasing political and economic engagement with Tonga, and the increasing use of education programmes such as scholarships to educate Tongans about China and its culture and values. To accomplish this, the political and economic ties between China and Tonga will be analysed, as will the soft power initiatives that China has undertaken. These will then be analysed to test whether or not the increase in soft power initiatives is due to the expansion of political and economic ties between the two countries. This will allow the use of soft power by China in Tonga to be compared to the trends evident in other South Pacific states, to determine whether Tonga is a unique case or whether China is undertaking these policies across the region.</p>

Votes, Votes, Votes: Explaining the Long Road to Emigrant Enfranchisement in Ireland

Enfranchisement of emigrant citizens living outside their home states has been a notable trend in recent decades. While emigrant voting rights are viewed by some as an important part of the wave of suffrage reforms that began in the 1970s, for others they are a contested development that rupture the essence of democracy by breaking the link between citizenship and residence. This article connects insights from the emigrant voting literature with historical institutionalism to argue that the longstanding avoidance of emigrant enfranchisement in the Republic of Ireland was overcome during the Great Recession because of an economic imperative, the need for greater investment from the emigrant community. Diaspora campaigners explicitly linked economic engagement with political rights and the pathway to the policy reform was set. The government gave a commitment in 2017 to hold a referendum to implement the emigrant franchise reform and it is scheduled for 2022, having been initially delayed by the Covid 19 pandemic.

Economic Interdependence Since COVID-19: China and South Asia

In the backdrop of COVID-19-induced geo-political backlash against China, the article makes an assessment of the nature of economic interdependence of South Asian nations with China. Though COVID-19-induced lockdown led to a decline in trade with China, it recovered quickly in subsequent months. In the case of India, even after imposing restrictive measures, trade with China was found to bounce back indicating to a greater dependence on China. Further, asymmetry in economic engagement with China could be observed for several of the South Asian nations. Chinese investment in the region remained muted during the pandemic. However, strategic involvement in South Asia by China, and other powers, increased considerably which has been manifested by her provisioning of economic incentives and COVID-19-related aid. In the light of increasing strategic influence, South Asian countries desirous of benefitting from foreign trade and investment in their respective economies will need to encourage free and fair competition rather than towing geo-political lines so that sustainable economic gains can be made, which will require strengthening of various market supporting institutions in the respective economies. India’s economic strategy will also assume significance in boosting confidence and increasing the level of integration within South Asia.

A tale of two contact-tracing apps – comparing Australia’s CovidSafe and New Zealand’s NZ Covid Tracer

Purpose The Australian and New Zealand governments have released smartphone-based apps to complement contact tracing in the event that they face a resurgence of COVID-19 infections. The apps form part of both countries’ policies to support a return to social and economic engagement following extended lockdowns. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which the two approaches are fit for purpose and compare their functional characteristics. Design/methodology/approach Using process mapping and analysis, this paper evaluates the potential of the two apps to improve the performance of existing contact tracing systems across a range of efficiency and effectiveness criteria with an emphasis on the framework proposed by Verrall (2020). Findings The Bluetooth-based Australian app appears likely to assist that country’s contact tracing system to perform more efficiently and effectively in the event of a resurgence of the virus and should increase confidence in re-engagement. The New Zealand QR code-based app, however, is not well-aligned with these objectives. Its interaction with a range of other regulations and obligations, combined with the inconvenience it imposes on its users, is likely to militate against its use. Bluetooth-based apps based on interactions between individuals likely better support these population-based objectives than QR code-based location-specific apps. Originality/value This paper provides an original and extensive analysis of the functionality and effectiveness of Australia and New Zealand’s official contact-tracing apps.

The Economics of Buddhism

The economics of Buddhism brings to the fore a conundrum with which Buddhists have had to contend since the time of the Buddha: how should Buddhists engage in economic activity in order to provide for their individual lifestyles and the Buddhist monasteries that support Buddhism? The widespread image of a monk or nun sitting deep in meditation in a cave may exemplify a religion that values nonattachment to materiality and disengagement with economic action. However, when looking more closely at how Buddhist monastics maintain these austere lifestyles, one sees a complex Buddhist economic engagement throughout the history of Buddhism. The economics of Buddhism examines how Buddhists must necessarily engage in economic relations not only to support their lifestyles, but also to establish and expand Buddhist institutions across the world. A large part of Buddhist economic engagement involves an economy of merit. Buddhists have been dependent on dāna, a system of donation and sponsorship, that has aided the building and expansion of Buddhism since the time of the Buddha. This merit-based economy involves a system of exchange in which virtuous actions such as generosity are rewarded with an accumulation of merit (puñña), leading to beneficial circumstances in this life or the next life to come. Based on this system of exchange, monks and nuns receive remuneration from the lay community for their services. It is due to this merit economy that monks and nuns have been able to pursue a monastic lifestyle and monasteries have been built, some of which have become economic epicenters for the surrounding community. Historically, large monasteries across Asia have acquired large plots of land, accumulated large storehouses of grains and goods, and engaged in various other economic endeavors, such as lending money, running businesses, hiring laborers, and so forth. In order to maintain these at times very large Buddhist institutions that have supported monks and nuns, and in essence the survival of Buddhism, this system of exchange—money for merit—has been a crucial aspect of Buddhism. Since the time of the Buddha, the spread and survival of Buddhism has been reliant on economic exchanges and the economic environment of the time. This is very much the case in the early 21st century, with the spread of global capitalism affecting how Buddhist images, goods, and services have been adopted and altered in new environments. For example, with changing economic conditions and the rise of the consumer society, Buddhist monasteries have found new sources of income, such as through tourism. Global sentiments regarding Buddhism as primarily positive, furthermore, have led to the proliferation of Buddhist-inspired objects for sale in the mass consumer society. Instead of seeing Buddhist economic engagement as a paradox, or hypocrisy even, when looking closely at how Buddhism and economic relations are necessarily entwined, one sees a complex relationship that provides the basis for the survival and spread of Buddhism worldwide.

Conceptualising subjectivities and rationalities in understanding gendered violence: Processes of social and cultural change

International development policy and programming that is geared towards women’s empowerment through reversing normalization around gendered violence tends to focus either on social norm change (in line with much social science research) or, more commonly, on increasing women’s paid work. In this article, we argue that neither exclusive focus on social norm/mindset change nor on women’s economic engagement can come to grips with what sustains or may end violence. This is because such approaches cannot unpack the intersectional and dynamic interaction of social relationships, power, institutions and environmental dimensions that shape perceptions, attitudes and behaviours. We suggest that Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, combined with a concept of collective agency, pushes us to focus on the dynamics of the different spheres and types of relationships that sustain violence and can help us to untangle them. Drawing on data from Myanmar and Nepal, we argue that understanding the complexity of how different forms of violence feed from each other and link to symbolic, structural and behavioural dimensions is critical alongside a clearer idea of how collective agency can facilitate change.

Biblical witness and economy in the writings of Klaus Nürnberger

Given the purpose of this special edition, to consider theologically the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in this contribution, the writings of one of the important yet under-appreciated South African figures in thinking from biblical theology on matters of economics, Klaus Nürnberger, are taken into review. The relationship between (1) biblical witness and (2) faith and (3) deeds stands central in Nürnberger’s theological framework. His interdisciplinarity has lasting validity because he takes seriously the disciplines involved, such as historical Bible scholarship, economic theory, social theory and the like. By his own reckoning, it is partly because of this kind of interdisciplinarity that Nürnberger’s contributions on this topic had in a sense been marginalised. For this reason too, it is important in a new era to review sympathetically and appropriate critically the significant contributions of Nürnberger on the biblical witness to economic engagement.Contribution: This research article, as a part of this themed collection, considers theologically the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution with a review of Nürnberger’s contributions on the biblical witness to economic engagement. Nürnberger’s interdisciplinarity in his contributions helps set the direction for future engagements in the dawning post-secular era.