The world of student associations, is not all what it seems to be. Here, like in the corporate boardroom, we find a world of personal ambition that drive unproductive acquisitions and other unwanted managerial behavior. Agency problems as studied by Jensen & Meckling (1976) and eloquently summarized by Gordon Gekko (1987) are major causes of the credit crisis of 2008.
DOCUMENT
Western societies are quickly becoming less coherent (Giddens, 1991). As a result it is increasingly unclear how individuals should act in a range of situations or how they may understand themselves. To a certain extent this development towards more diverse perspectives and a broader range of ways to act is a positive one, as cultures can only develop as they are confronted with different perspectives. A uniform culture would simply reach a standstill. That said, current society now demands of its citizens that they become increasingly self-reliant and by extension develop a capacity to be self-governing. On the labour market self-reliance and self-determination have been considered par for the course even longer. It is no surprise then that terms like self-direction, self-governing teams, employability and resilience are considered part of the standard repertoire of politicians and employers (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2017). Within the social sciences, an ability to be self-governing and self-reliant are terms that are associated with the concept “agency”. However, the latter is a fairly vague, multidimensional concept (Arthur, 2014) that refers to the ‘scope of action’ an individual has in a fluid society (Bauman, 2000). In this article we would like to explore the concept of ‘agency’ further whereby we focus on the role of imagination in enacting it. https://doi.org/10.1177/1038416218777832 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/
MULTIFILE
This article provides a nano (hyperlocal) view of climate change mitigation by viewing regenerative organizing through the eyes (as well as bodies and senses, etc.) of the households engaged in community-based energy projects. By showing what humans make up for in the largely absent relationship between nature and technology in these projects, we envision an incremental extension of the literature on community-based energy. The radically different contribution we aim to make is a tripartite imbrication that brings in natural agency alongside the human and the technical but specifies precisely how nano (smaller than micro) embodied practices afford mis- and realignments. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026619886841 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
MULTIFILE
Tourism has been a growing industry in Europe in the last decades till 2020. Numerous cities were suffering from too many visitors what resulted in problems regarding support (of inhabitants) and carrying capacity of the destination. Then COVID-19 changed the world and tourism collapsed. Now, two years after the pandemic, cities and regions need to develop new strategies to rebuild tourism. Cities where there is overtourism are facing an extra challenge: to find a good balance between visitors, communities and environment. Six cities and regions (Amsterdam (NL), Krakow (PL), Tallinn (EST), Andalucía/Sevilla (ES), Rome (IT) and Brasov (RO)) that (regularly) experience over-tourism have joined forces how to develop new policy strategies to better distribute tourism in time and space. The objective of the project is to improve the performance of the local-regional strategies and policies by strengthening their contribution to find balance in tourism with a focus on spreading tourism over a wider area, making use of the opportunities offered by the city and region. The project aims to strengthen the positive effects of tourism and to reduce the negative effects of tourism. Collaborative partnersAmsterdam Municipality, Metropolitan City of Rome, Brasov Metropolitan Agency for Sustainable Development, Ministry of Tourism Regeneration Justice and Local Administration Regional Government of Andalucía, Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Municipality of Krakow.