Resources Autonomy Research Articles

Inequities in the green transition: anti-mining protests in the European periphery

Supposed green technological fixes to the climate crisis necessitate the mining of raw materials such as lithium en masse, spurring the proliferation of mining globally and the associated social and ecological harms. Major economies are engaged in a resource race for critical raw materials that are indispensable inputs for electric vehicles and digital technologies in the green transition and fourth industrial revolution (Kalantzakos, 2020; Kalantzakos et al, 2023). As this race materialises, so too has resistance and contestation on the proposed mining sites. This article engages with the critical literature on ecologically unequal exchanges (Hornborg, 1998; 2014; 2016) and extractivism (Acosta, 2013) to explore protracted civil society resistance to two lithium mining projects in rural and agrarian regions of Serbia and Portugal. The European Union is pursuing a dual agenda of decarbonising personal use transport and resource autonomy in an increasingly shifting geopolitical order; in turn a massive effort for onshoring mining activities is underway in Europe. The author argues that recent policy enactments by the European Union for onshore mining produces ecological and social harms in rural and agrarian areas and is illustrative of an unequal ecological and economic exchange. Agrarian and subsistence livelihoods are affected in pursuit of green technological solutions, highlighting the contradictory character of the green transition under capitalism and ultimately advocates for a degrowth position.

Unequal Autonomy: An Investigation of Individual and Societal Determinants of Individuals’ Sense of Autonomy in Europe

ABSTRACT This paper explores the social structure of individual autonomy in Europe. Drawing on the capability approach and human empowerment theory, it investigates how individuals’ sense of autonomy is structured by individual means and conversion factors as well as economic, cultural, and institutional context conditions. Using data from the European Social Survey and the European Quality of Life Survey, these relationships are analyzed for 107,070 individuals in 18 European countries and four points in time between 2006 and 2016. Multilevel analyses reveal financial security, health, and social connectedness as the most important drivers of individuals’ sense of autonomy. On the macro level, national wealth, civil liberties, and an emancipative value climate are all found to be positively linked to individuals’ sense of autonomy, albeit weakly. Considering the value individuals attach to leading an autonomous life and the beneficial effects autonomy has been shown to have on people’s well-being, these findings shed first light on the unequal distribution of autonomy and autonomy resources on the individual and macro levels. Concluding, the paper highlights the potential for future research and policy implications.

‘We Will Teach India Democracy’: Indigenous Voices in Constitution Making

ABSTRACT The framing of the Indian Constitution (1946-50) was a pivotal moment in the history of indigenous communities (colloquially adivasis, officially scheduled tribes) and their relationship with the state. This essay makes three interventions. First, I contest the prevailing emphasis in Indian history and sociology on seeing indigenous politics as primarily in opposition to state institutions and laws. Instead, drawing on representations from indigenous organisations to the Constituent Assembly (CA), I highlight an earlier trajectory of engagement with law-making and state institutions. Second, I show how tribes saw the making of the constitution as an opportunity to be recognised as both equal citizens and distinct communities and offered real alternatives in constitutional design and ideas of democracy. What is particularly interesting is how, despite the different constitutional histories of countries with indigenous populations, there is common core to the demand for ‘constitutional recognition’ involving cultural, political and resource autonomy. Third, through a close reading of CA and committee deliberations, I show how personalities, processes and contingencies and not abstract rational deliberations alone shaped constitutional design. Here, I add to the literature locating the ‘force of law’ in the procedural movement of files.

Exploring leadership in private ECEC in Chile: perspectives from the field

ABSTRACT This paper explores the leadership of ECEC principals in the private sector in Chile, which is barely investigated worldwide. In Chile,10% of children attending ECEC are enrolled in private centres. Following a tradition of qualitative research, a multiple case study was carried out, allowing the exploration of four private ECEC settings. Different techniques were used for data collection: semi-structured interviews with principals, ECEC teachers, teaching assistants, and parents. In addition, a shadowing technique was used to observe principals in their daily activities. Findings show three types of leadership practices: pedagogical leadership, leadership distribution and leadership practices with families, in addition to a note about resource autonomy. All those practices were highly influenced by the nurseries’ ownership status. Where principals were the owners of the nursery, much more autonomy for decision-making and resources was observed, together with a focus on pedagogical leadership. On this basis, we conclude that in the cases where the principals are not the nurseries’ owners, it is essential to promote spaces to lead the pedagogical experiences children will have and to take decisions. Also, parents and the community must have opportunities to reflect collaboratively about education, which is also a task better promoted by the principal through fostering a shared vision in the nursery.

Electricity Production and Sustainable Development: The Role of Renewable Energy Sources and Specific Socioeconomic Factors

An eco-friendly and sustainable power production system constitutes the cornerstone of every country’s strategic plan to tackle climate change and enhance energy resource autonomy. Carbon dioxide abatement in electricity generation, in addition to being a necessary condition for t “green” energy transition, can contribute greatly to cleaner industrial production and sustainable development. Emphasizing this key role of the power sector, the present research focuses on shedding light on the impact of renewable energy resources (RES), per capita gross domestic product (GDP), electricity gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) and urbanization in the CO2 intensity, and the sustainability level of electricity production. The analysis is based on a comprehensive dataset of 31 countries including 26 European countries, U.S.A., Japan, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand from 1995 until 2018. The econometric outcomes revealed the strong statistical significance of all variables and a plethora of causality relationships, upon which several policy suggestions are made. Interestingly, GDP per capita beyond a certain level can gradually become an aggravating factor for the electricity carbon footprint. Similarly, the vital role of RES in clean electricity production was confirmed as expected, yet surprisingly, this effect also appears to reverse after a certain percentage of total RES reliance. In contrast to urbanization, the electricity GFCF parameter is estimated to have an adverse effect on electricity CO2 intensity, indicating that the vast amount of new investments in the power sector concerns carbon-intensive technologies. Finally, a dynamic analysis is carried out, revealing to policy makers the necessary time frame after which the implementation of new energy policies can have the full impact on the carbon emissions of electricity generation.

Why Do Clientelist Brokers Go Rogue? Parties, Politicians, and Intermediaries in Mexico

Political scientists working on clientelism have become interested in the relationships between brokers and the politicians and parties for whom they work. In most of this research, brokers are seen as inherently disloyal and normally act against the interests of their patrons, unless monitoring efforts are enacted. In contrast, we argue that territorial brokers have strong incentives to construct long-term, dependent relationships with their patrons, which diminishes the likelihood of cheating, while their patrons also wish to maintain durable ties with brokers to hold an assured voter base. We argue that politicians prefer brokers who have a good reputation for providing their voters with goods and assuring their votes. Still, sometimes brokers go rogue and cheat on their bosses. This study, which is based on more than fifty in-depth interviews with both local politicians and brokers in Mexico City, examines the conditions under which brokers remain loyal and those that promote cheating. We identify two factors that explain this variation—electoral competitiveness and the level of resource autonomy between brokers and politicians. Non-autonomous brokers working under conditions of low competition tend to have high probabilities of remaining loyal, while independent brokers working under high competitiveness will often resort to cheating.

Late effects of cancer (treatment) and work ability: guidance by managers and professionals

BackgroundThe prevalence of the group of workers that had a cancer diagnosis in the past is growing. These workers may still be confronted with late effects of cancer (treatment) possibly affecting their work ability. As little is known about the guidance of this group, the aim of this study was to explore the experiences and ideas of managers and professionals about the guidance of these workers in the case of late effects of cancer (treatment). Given the positive associations with work ability of the job resources autonomy, social support by colleagues and an open organisational culture found in several quantitative studies, these job resources were also discussed. Further ideas about the influences of other factors and points of attention in the guidance of this group of workers were explored.MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with managers (n = 11) and professionals (n = 47). Data-collection was from November 2019 to June 2020. The data were coded and analysed using directed content analyses.ResultsThe late effects of cancer or cancer treatment discussed were physical problems, fatigue, cognitive problems, anxiety for cancer recurrence, and a different view of life. The self-employed have less options for guidance but may struggle with late effects affecting work ability in the same way as the salaried. Late effects may affect work ability and various approaches have been described. Autonomy, social support of colleagues and an open organisational culture were regarded as beneficial. It was indicated that interventions need to be tailor-made and created in dialogue with the worker.ConclusionsEspecially with respect to cognitive problems and fatigue, guidance sometimes turned out to be complicated. In general, the importance of psychological safety to be open about late effects that affect work ability was emphasized. Moreover, it is important to take the perspective of the worker as the starting point and explore the possibilities together with the worker. Autonomy is an important factor in general, and a factor that must always be monitored when adjustments in work are considered. There is a lot of experience, but there are still gaps in knowledge and opportunities for more knowledge sharing.

Identity Consistency as a Signal of Resource Autonomy in Acquisitions

Drawing on market signaling theory, this paper examines whether the market positively reacts to acquisitions when firms express a consistent organizational identity. We theorize that identity consistency signals a firm’s autonomy in utilizing resources to pursue economic profits. Such a market signal reduces investor perceived uncertainty in management activities and boosts market confidence in the capitalization of acquired resources. The signaling effect is also found to be stronger under a positive earnings surprise and a stable industry environment.

Flows in Agro-food Networks (FAN): An agent-based model to simulate local agricultural material flows

Agro-food networks are characterized by complex material exchanges among farms, processors, consumers, and waste managers involved in fertilization, food, feed and bioenergy production. Better coordination of material exchanges at the local scale can facilitate more efficient resource use. Here, we present a new agent-based model, “Flows in Agro-food Networks” (FAN), which simulates the processing and exchange of fertilizers, feed, food and wastes among farms and multiple upstream or downstream partners (feed and fertilizer suppliers, food industries, waste processors, and anaerobic digesters) in small farming regions. FAN includes a series of environmental indicators that can be used to assess alternative scenarios in terms of ecosystem services, nutrient cycling, and resource autonomy. We use a French case study to demonstrate FAN’s dynamics and to explore the sensitivity of key parameters. We show a strong influence of spatial distance between agents, their disposition to exchange, and their preference for specific materials on local agro-food network simulations. FAN is powerful theoretical tool to explore and assess opportunities for a circular economy in small farming regions and to unravel interactions between recycling, environmental performance and food production.

Institutional stress and job performance among hospital employees

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate if institutional stress is related to job performance among hospital employees, and if institutional stress is fully or partly mediated by motivational resources with regards to the relation with job performance.Design/methodology/approachA self-completion survey was distributed to four public hospitals in Norway, and had a response rate of 40% (N= 9,162). Structural equation modelling was conducted on two groups of hospital employees with (N= 795) and without (N= 8,367) managerial responsibilities.FindingsInstitutional stress was negatively related to job performance for hospital employees without managerial responsibilities. The motivational resources autonomy, competence development and social support partly mediated the relationship between institutional stress and job performance in the group of employees without managerial responsibilities. In the leader group, the motivational resources fully mediated the relationship between institutional stress and job performance. Social support from leaders had a non-significant influence on job performance in both groups.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation with this study is its cross-sectional design.Originality/valueThe study enables us to extend how work-related stress is related to job performance and the mediating role of the job resources autonomy, competence development and social support. The focus on productivity, and top management’s wish to improve hospital performance, may have unintended consequences, leading to a gap between managerial and clinical worldviews and understanding of goals, policies, values and prioritizing. This can lead to institutional stress. The findings of this study suggest that institutional stress has negative effects on hospital employees’ work motivation and job performance.

Gamification experience in the subject of descriptive geometry for architecture

The hasty changes in the curricula that have occurred in recent years in the School of Architecture of XXX have generated some problems in the subject of Descriptive Geometry that have been added to others that had been ongoing for many years. A Teaching Innovation Project (TIP) seeks to provide a solution to the problems raised with new methods of teaching inside and outside the classroom and greater interaction between the students and the professor. This way, geometry is no longer something abstract, unrelated to the professional practice of the architect. Thereby, it is intended to structure a new subject that provides students not only with graphic and spatial techniques but also with teamwork, cooperation, training, sufficiency and autonomy resources that help them in the development of their future career. In order to carry out this new methodology for teaching, a course based on gamification has been designed, which allows the students to focus on the subject from a more playful point of view with the aim of motivating and involving them. Based on a three-year experience of comparative work between the traditional and the proposed systems, the conclusions obtained with regards to the withdrawal rate, academic performance and perception of the teaching method are presented in this paper. The incorporation of techniques based on games had a motivating effect on the students, who discovered a way of learning by playing what they previously perceived as a tedious subject.

Determinants of Environmental Pollution in Provincial Areas in China

Environmental pollution has become an issue in China following rapid economic development, especially in transitioning parts of China. The government has made environmental protection part of the national agenda. A knowledge of what factors affect pollution will help make policy. The relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth has been widely studied. Most studies have tried to explain the relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth in China using just one province or national level data as the target of study. This paper investigated the relationship between urbanization level and air pollution based on province-level panel data over the time period from 2007 to 2014 in China. Two measures of pollution emissions are used in the empirical study: SO2 and soot. Most researchers link the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) that indicates an inverted U-shaped relationship. This study investigates the relationship between environmental pollution and development, as well as trade openness, urbanization level, energy consumption, expenditure on environmental protection, secondary industry, and local share of financial revenue by examining data for 30 provinces (covering all mainland province-level administrative units except Tibet) over eight years. The combination of cross-sectional and time series data allows for richer econometric model specifications and more accurate conclusions. The analysis found an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic development and air pollution is strongly verified in the case of SO2, supporting the EKC hypothesis, while soot had a U-shaped relationship. Urbanization level also had opposite relationships, negative for SO2 and positive for soot. Trade openness was associated with decreasing emissions for both pollutants. Electricity consumption was associated with increased emissions. Secondary industry had an unexpected effect of relating to decreased emissions of soot. Environmental expenditure was associated with decreases in both pollutants. Financial resource autonomy had a strong relationship with rising SO2 emissions but not with soot. There appears to be different processes involved in the two pollutants in spite of a number of common sources. The Chinese government at all levels has strong scope for addressing emissions of both pollutants investigated in the study.

Bastions of Tradition: The Ethnic Factor and Political Machines in Russian Regions

The regional machines created by the Russian governors in the mid-1990s turned out to be most effective in the ethnic republics. This phenomenon is supported by several facts, with the primary as follows: the density of the patronage networks among the rural ethnic minorities, and the economic heritage of the Soviet period and ethnical institutionalization. These factors allowed regional elites to integrate ethnic minorities into the clientelism structure to distribute symbolic and material benefits in exchange for their electoral support. However, at present, the federal authorities have considerably reduced the autonomy of the ethnic republics and deprived them of many ethnic preferences. Basing on the analysis of the electoral statistics from the Russian Presidential Election of 2018, this article researches the political consequences caused by the changed relationship between the center and the regions, as well as the changes in functioning of regional political machines in the circumstances where the governors’ institutional and resource autonomy has been reduced. The data analysis allowed for the discovery of the diversified electoral behavior of ethnic minorities in different republics. The reasons for the above diversification have been explained based on a comparative analysis of five case studies (the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Komi Republic, the Chuvash Republic, and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)).

Decommission in Petroleum Industry: Current Status, Future Trends and Policy Advices

A wave of global decommission is coming, with rising trends of resource autonomy and environmental awareness in resource countries. Decommission plan is a difficult decision for governments and oil companies. It is hard to keep balance between attracting investment and ensuring effective supervision. For Oil Companies, it is also tough to find exact timing between future abandonment cost and current profit. In this paper, we analyse the present situation and future trends of global decommission, and carry out key case studies. On this basis, we put forward suggestions from both government and enterprise levels.

Multi-criteria decision analysis of energy system transformation pathways: A case study for Switzerland

Two recent political decisions are expected to frame the development of the Swiss energy system in the coming decades: the nuclear phase-out and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target. To accomplish both of them, low-carbon technologies based on renewable energy and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) are expected to gain importance. The objective of the present work is to support prospective Swiss energy policy-making by providing a detailed sustainability analysis of possible energy system transformation pathways. For this purpose, the results of the scenario quantification with an energy system model are coupled with multi-criteria sustainability analysis. Two climate protection and one reference scenario are addressed, and the trade-offs between the scenarios are analysed based on a set of 12 interdisciplinary indicators. Implementing a stringent climate policy in Switzerland is associated with co-benefits such as less fossil resource use, less fatalities in severe accidents in the energy sector, less societal conflicts and higher resource autonomy. The availability and implementation of CCS allows for achieving the GHG emission reduction target at lower costs, but at the expense of a more fossil fuel-based energy system.

Decentralisation and Local Government Reforms in Africa: Challenges, Opportunities and the Way Forward

Strengthening local governments has emerged as a focus of decentralisation in developing countries. In Africa, a few attempts have been made to conceptualise decentralisation and/or to compare decentralisation and local policies across a group of countries. The paper builds on existing literature in examining characteristics of actors involved in decentralisation, democratisation processes, fiscal and resources autonomy and its implications on local government reforms in selected countries in Africa. There are commonalities and differences in local government reforms; however, the challenges to autonomous local government in Africa are linked to central governments' inability to decentralise power and fiscal autonomy in the name of national unity and stability. The paper concludes that there are obvious shortcomings in the implementation of local government reforms in Africa. Nonetheless, mistakes and setbacks should be used as learning opportunities to strengthen reform, rather than as excuses for adopting a closed system of government that is not autonomous, inclusive, transparent and accountable.

"Same Institutional Complexity, Yet Different Organizational Responses: A Study of U.S. Art Museums"

Despite the recent academic attention to institutional complexity and organizational responses, little is known about why organizations within the same institutional field perceive their complexity differently, and whether their organizational characteristics lead to different response options. I develop a theoretical framework to explain that organizations have different level of necessity to accommodate external constituencies, which then shapes different organizational responses. The framework suggests that organizations with middle- status, low resource autonomy, and a strong presence of a dominant stakeholder find higher level of necessity to conform to external constituencies. The empirical analysis utilizes a field of U.S. art museums where market and profession logics collide. Using data of over 780 exhibitions of 22 art museums from 2005 to 2012, I find that both the middle-status organizations and the organizations with low resource autonomy balance competing logics by focusing one logic in each activity (i.e., separation) rather than combining the two logics throughout their activities (i.e., combination). I also find that the organizations with a dominant stakeholder are more likely to gear toward their dominant stakeholders’ logic (i.e., deletion) instead of balancing the two logics in their institutional field when they have low resource-autonomy.

A Comparison between Shale Gas in China and Unconventional Fuel Development in the United States: Health, Water and Environmental Risks

China is appraised to have the world's largest exploitable reserves of shale gas, although several legal, regulatory, environmental and investment-related issues will likely restrain its scope. China's capacity to successfully face these hurdles and produce commercial shale gas will have a crucial impact on the regional gas market and on China’s energy mix, as Beijing strives to decrease reliance on imported oil and coal, while attempting to meet growing energy demand and maintain a certain level of resource autonomy. The development of the unconventional natural gas extractive industry will also endow China with further negotiating power to obtain more advantageous prices from Russia and future liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers. This paper, adopting a comparative perspective, underlines the trends learned from unconventional fuel development in the United States, emphasizing their potential application to the Chinese context in light of recently signed production-sharing contracts between qualified foreign investors and China. The wide range of regulatory and enforcement problems in this matter are accrued by an extremely limited liberalization of gas prices, lack of technological development, and political hurdles curbing the opening of resource extraction to private investors. These issues are exacerbated by concerns related to the risk of water pollution deriving from mismanaged drilling and fracturing, absence of adequate regulation framework and industry standards, entailing consequences on social stability and environmental degradation.

A study on the scalable flow model of web services choreography and orchestration based on dynamic workflow

The goal of choreography is to define accurately the sequence of interactions between cooperating web services and guarantee that changes of participating work flow still follow the definition of message exchange. According to the requirement of the municipal and the district petition business docking, and considering the characteristics of the dynamic workflow of petition letters processing and the interaction failure easily caused in the loose coupling environment of inter-process interaction and cooperation mismatches resulting from the participating resources autonomy, this article proposes a method of services choreography and orchestration based on the interaction protocol state machine, which controls the automatic advancement of the petition interaction protocols sequence according to the interaction rules. Ten months operation of this method in the municipal and the district petition businesses docking platform shows that it helps to shield the differences of different dynamic processes, tolerate interaction failures, and accordingly reduce the maintenance complexity.

Constructing a typology of H 2 in cities and regions : An international review

This paper primarily develops a seven-fold conceptual typology of place-based hydrogen initiatives. Through an international review of place-based hydrogen initiatives we reveal a plethora of projects, demonstrations, test-beds, ambitions and expectations at a wide range of spatial scales. We ask whether there is anything distinctive about how these different spatial scales attempt to develop the hydrogen economy. In particular, we seek to identify whether patterns emerge around the social interests involved at different scales of activity and the degree to which hydrogen links to different place-based agendas—political and resource autonomy, economy and employment. The paper addresses these questions and draws out a series of three key conclusions. First, there is wide ranging and significant diversity in the motivations for cities and regions to become involved in hydrogen economy developments—wider than conventional energy policy objectives. Second, there are still significant overlaps between different scales of action. Third, there is a tension between the more bounded concepts of using hydrogen to build self-reliance at a particular scale and those initiatives oriented around developing a more systemic technological system which is rolled out elsewhere. Finally, we argue that a key issue for further research is in understanding the social interests and institutions that attempt to both learn from across these activities at different scales and provide some sense of coordinated action between them. In our review the role of corporates—rather than national government—seems to be critical to such attempt to provide coordination across places and needs to be the focus of further research.