Global Paradigm Shift Research Articles

Potential valorization of by-product materials from oil palm: A review of alternative and sustainable carbon sources for carbon-based nanomaterials synthesis

The crises in global energy and environmental degradation, combined with developing consumer demands have stimulated researchers’ interest in inexpensive, environmentally friendly functional materials. Based on a projected annual production of palm oil in Malaysia of over 15.4 million metric tons by 2020, it is estimated that about 46.6 tons of lignocellulosic wastes will be generated. Transforming these wastes into wealth could be integrated into a global paradigm shift towards sustainable development. Carbon-based nanomaterials including graphene, graphene oxide, carbon nanotubes, epoxy nanocomposites, porous carbon nanoparticles, and nanoactivated carbons-filled-epoxy nanocomposites have been produced from these by-product materials using methods such as vapour deposition, pyrolysis, hydrolysis, chemical composition, high energy ball milling, and solution casting. This review attempts to present the current developments on renewable carbon nanomaterials derived from oil palm-based precursors with some insights given on their potential applications as energy storage materials.

Encouraging Lifelong Learning: An Educator's Perspective on Teaching and Learning for the Nuclear Medicine Technologist.

The rapid influx of new technology and changing reimbursement and health care business models challenge nuclear medicine technology educators to reexamine the effectiveness of traditional teaching methods. As a generation of technologists can attest, the skill sets and competencies taught today will not be the requirements of tomorrow. The question arises, "How can educators prepare students and the profession for future knowledge capacity?" The concept of lifelong learning (LLL) emerged in the 1970s as a response to the global paradigm shift from an industrial society to a knowledge society. Given the current health care climate and the dynamic nature of the nuclear medicine technology profession, understanding and development of LLL assessment models may benefit both teacher and student learning. This article discusses the theoretic framework of LLL and social learning along with a sampling of teaching assessments. These assessments use a problem-based-learning approach that integrates the concepts of LLL into an accountability-driven social organization.

‘It was clear from the start that [SDS] was about a cost cutting agenda.’ Exploring disabled people’s early experiences of the introduction of Self-Directed Support in Scotland

The adoption of personalisation represents a global paradigm shift in the organisation of social care. However, such approaches have been criticised for failing to bring about transformative change. The passage of the Self-Directed Support (Scotland) Act (2013) was intended to bring about a significant change in the organisation of social care in Scotland, giving increased choice and control to new user groups. The implementation of the policy at a time of significant financial constraint for local government has cast doubt on this potential. This paper presents findings reflecting disabled peoples’ lived experience of this change during the early stages of implementation. Drawing on one-to-one qualitative interviews with disabled people living across the central belt of Scotland, this early snapshot suggests that the policy had not significantly increased choice and control for service users, and that austerity was leading to an erosion of gains made by existing Direct Payments users.

Axillary Management in Breast Cancer Patients: A Comprehensive Review of the Key Trials

Optimal regional management in breast cancer patients has yet to be established. In patients who are clinically node-negative, but sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB)-positive, the treatment paradigm has shifted toward the de-escalation of further axillary management. In patients with 2 or fewer positive sentinel nodes, the standard of practice has shifted away from complete axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) as a result of the ACOSOG Z0011 trial. The role of regional nodal irradiation (RNI) to the axilla, supraclavicular and internal mammary regions has also been investigated in the setting of positive SLNB in trials such as the MA20 and EORTC 22922. Having shown evidence of benefit in locoregional control, efforts are now focused on comparing ALND with RNI in patients with limited nodal disease. Results of early trials such as AMAROS suggest noninferiority of radiotherapy. In patients with node-positive or locally advanced disease, neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is often used to downsize or downstage the disease. The utility of SLNB after NAC has been investigated, with discordant results reported from a number of trials. Current trials in progress seek to validate the noninferiority of RNI compared with ALND in patients with limited nodal disease, or in some trials, the complete omission of further axillary management. There is a global paradigm shift toward de-escalation of axillary management on the basis of recent evidence suggesting lack of benefit from overaggressive treatment. In this review we aim to summarize the seminal trials addressing regional management in breast cancer to illustrate this fact.

The successes and challenges of implementing individualised funding and supports for disabled people: an Irish perspective

‘Individualised funding’, which is rooted in the Independent Living Movement, has formed part of a global paradigm shift in support services for disabled people. Against the backdrop of international experience, a political system aligned with the United Kingdom and emergent critics of individualised funding, this article presents findings from an evaluation of four pilot programmes in Ireland. Exemplified by independent-skills development and community integration, these initiatives have been welcomed as a progressive development beyond traditional service provision, with perceived improvements across a range of organisational, personal, health and social care domains. The article explores the importance of ‘natural supports’ and how overly protective behaviour may unintentionally act as a barrier to full implementation. The findings also indicate that unnecessarily complex systems can lead to individual burn-out. Furthermore, a national resource allocation system working in partnership with existing social care professionals and the wider community is recommended, as is learning from overly simplified, group-based ideologies.

Dracula or Frankenstein? The role of the international community in the 2014 Afghan presidential elections

The 2014 presidential elections in Afghanistan were a major test of internationally led democratisation efforts in that country since 2001. They took place at a time of uncertainty, when the international community was withdrawing from Afghanistan, and in the shadow of the fraud-ridden 2009 elections that had required international intervention to resolve. The author situates the international attempt to ensure successful 2014 elections within the wider global paradigm shift over the past decade from elections as a means of self-determination to elections as a means of generating and ensuring international security. The focus on security meant that when the 2014 election did generate a political crisis in Afghanistan that threatened to destabilise the country, the international community intervened heavily in a way that undermined the future prospects of democratisation in Afghanistan. As well as questioning this intervention, the author describes a general pattern of international involvement in Afghanistan that tended to undermine sovereignty, overlook the importance of generating consensus among Afghan political actors, and badly misjudge timelines required to implement logistical processes.

An Overview of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing: Ongoing Initiatives, Challenges, and a Roadmap for Future Research

We are in the midst of a major paradigm shift in how we manage radio spectrum. This paradigm shift is necessitated by the growth of wireless services of all types and the demand pressure imposed on limited spectrum resources under legacy management regimes. The shift is feasible because of advances in radio and networking technologies that make it possible to share spectrum dynamically in all possible dimensions—i.e., across frequencies, time, location, users, uses, and networks. Realizing the full potential of this shift to <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Dynamic Spectrum Sharing</i> will require the co-evolution of wireless technologies, markets, and regulatory policies; a process which is occurring on a global scale. This paper provides a current overview of major technological and regulatory reforms that are leading the way toward a global paradigm shift to more flexible, dynamic, market-based ways to manage and share radio spectrum resources. We focus on current efforts to implement database-driven approaches for managing the shared co-existence of users with heterogeneous access and interference protection rights, and discuss open research challenges.

Outsourcing the Corporate Governance Officer (Potential Business Model)

In the last decades, the legal industry has experienced a global paradigm shift in the delivery model for legal services. This new model, known as legal process outsourcing (LPO), transfers the work of attorneys, paralegals and other legal professionals to external vendors located domestically and overseas. Legal outsourcing (both onshore and offshore) is transforming law practice as law firms and corporate legal departments seek to minimize costs, increase flexibility and expand their in-house capabilities. In this new decade, we have to prepare, with the legal services outsourcing, that we will become more sophisticated, with higher value of legal work, at higher level of quality and speed, and dramatically lower cost. In the Article authors deal with the process of the transformation of legal service into a legal good and point on some dilemmas during that process. This paper argues that outsourcing ultimately will have a positive effect on the legal profession and development of the quality of legal services. In the second part of the paper authors also stress out some information about different possibilities, how to organize virtual law firms for low budget legal services in the Slovenian case and also include some information about the possibility how to organize corporate governance in companies through the corporate secretary as outsourcing, because the corporate secretary is the chief governance officer and provides leadership for the corporation to implement a high level of corporate governance.

Day Service Provision for People with Intellectual Disabilities: A Case Study Mapping15-Year Trends in Ireland.

Day services for people with intellectual disabilities are experiencing a global paradigm shift towards innovative person-centred models of care. This study maps changing trends in day service utilization to highlight how policy, emergent patterns and demographic trends influence service delivery. National intellectual disability data (1998-2013) were analysed using WINPEPI software and mapped using QGIS Geographic Information System. Statistically significant changes indicated fewer people availing of day services as a proportion of the general population; more males; fewer people aged <35; a doubling in person-centred plans; and an emerging urban/rural divide. Day services did not change substantially and often did not reflect demand. Emergent trends can inform future direction of disability services. Government funds should support individualized models, more adaptive to changing trends. National databases need flexibility to respond to policy and user demands. Future research should focus on day service utilization of younger people and the impact of rurality on service availability, utilization, quality and migration.

Biology-inspired microphysiological system approaches to solve the prediction dilemma of substance testing.

The recent advent of microphysiological systems - microfluidic biomimetic devices that aspire to emulate the biology of human tissues, organs and circulation in vitro - is envisaged to enable a global paradigm shift in drug development. An extraordinary US governmental initiative and various dedicated research programs in Europe and Asia have led recently to the first cutting-edge achievements of human single-organ and multi-organ engineering based on microphysiological systems. The expectation is that test systems established on this basis would model various disease stages, and predict toxicity, immunogenicity, ADME profiles and treatment efficacy prior to clinical testing. Consequently, this technology could significantly affect the way drug substances are developed in the future. Furthermore, microphysiological system-based assays may revolutionize our current global programs of prioritization of hazard characterization for any new substances to be used, for example, in agriculture, food, ecosystems or cosmetics, thus, replacing laboratory animal models used currently. Thirty-six experts from academia, industry and regulatory bodies present here the results of an intensive workshop (held in June 2015, Berlin, Germany). They review the status quo of microphysiological systems available today against industry needs, and assess the broad variety of approaches with fit-for-purpose potential in the drug development cycle. Feasible technical solutions to reach the next levels of human biology in vitro are proposed. Furthermore, key organ-on-a-chip case studies, as well as various national and international programs are highlighted. Finally, a roadmap into the future is outlined, to allow for more predictive and regulatory-accepted substance testing on a global scale.

Progress towards good-quality education for all in Turkey: a qualified success?

Drawing from a range of secondary data sources, this paper succinctly overviews patterns of access to good-quality education in Turkey over the last 15 years. It also maps the policy context within which issues of access, quality and equity are examined. As a result of effective supply and demand side strategies, enrolment ratios beyond the primary level have also risen, with the average lower secondary enrolment currently standing at over 90%, and gender disparity has also been achieved at this level. Yet, educational expansion was less successful in the least developed eastern and southeastern regions of Turkey, particularly for girls. Turkey has also given a higher priority to the quality of education, in line with this global paradigm shift towards learning. However, learning levels remain low and largely unequal across regions, ethno-linguistic groups and socio-economic status. School segregation widens inequalities based on students’ socio-economic status, which should be taken into account in the aftermath of the new education reforms.

From PISA to national branding: exploring Finnish education®

ABSTRACTSince the recent global paradigm shift in the governance of higher education toward business and marketing, internationally competitive education is increasingly considered as an asset for governments. Consequently, governments started to invest in education branding and marketing their educational systems. In Finland, national interest in education branding rose especially since the country's success in the programme for international student assessment studies created a positive reputation of its basic education. In this article, the authors investigate how this reputation is transformed into a general Finnish education brand, based upon Finland's official Country Brand Report (2010). The governmental discourse on Finnish education reveals a fusion of education and national branding, which is why the authors suggest to discuss the Finnish education brand as Finnish education®. The article provides an analysis of the elements constituting the brand and opens up a critical discussion on the ethics of branding education through cultural and national characteristics.

The influence of pharmacy and pharmacist characteristics on the secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.

A range of extended/enhanced pharmacy services (EPS) are increasingly being offered in community pharmacies following a global paradigm shift in professional pharmacy practice from a product-oriented focus to a patient-centered approach. A number of pharmacy/pharmacist characteristics have been reported to influence EPS provision. To investigate the association between EPS provision and community pharmacists' support in CVD secondary prevention and to identify pharmacy/pharmacist characteristics which predict EPS provision and CVD support. Setting Australian community pharmacies. Mail surveys to 1350 randomly selected pharmacies, stratified by state/territory, exploring professional activities provided to clients with CVD, characteristics of pharmacies (including EPS provision), and pharmacist characteristics. The survey data were analyzed using univariate analyses and multiple linear regression analysis. The level of community pharmacists' CVD support, determined by summing respondents' score for seven CVD support-related activities, and the pharmacies' level of involvement in EPS provision, determined by summing respondents' score for four types of EPS. EPS provision was then used as an independent variable in the regression analysis of CVD support. A response rate of 15.8% (209/1320) was obtained after three waves of the survey. Pharmacy documentation, a private area, Quality Care Pharmacy Program accreditation, number of pharmacists, and pharmacists' resource adequacy were predictors of EPS provision (adjusted R2 = 0.299, p < 0.001). The provision of CVD support was predicted by EPS provision (β = 0.290, p < 0.001), pharmacists' frequent contacts with general practitioners (β = 0.298, p < 0.001), and pharmacy documentation (β = 0.134, p = 0.033). The regression model of CVD support explained 34.2% of the variation (p < 0.001). Community pharmacists could contribute to CVD secondary prevention if they had frequent contacts with general practitioners and worked in pharmacies with a higher level of involvement in EPS provision. Of all influencing factors, documentation was a predictor of both EPS provision and CVD support, indicating the importance of documentation in supporting the management of chronic conditions.

Effect of company size on potential for REACH compliance and selection of safer chemicals

REACH represents a global paradigm shift in chemical regulation, and it has introduced a new, complex regulatory process to which chemical producers and users throughout supply chains must adapt. This paper presents results of survey research to illustrate whether and how the business members of a large Scandinavian trade organization understand and comply with REACH. It also explores how these businesses obtain information about the chemicals they use in their products, and whether they feel that the information they have is sufficient to meet their needs. In addition, the paper describes how business size affects these issues. The survey results show that, at the time of this study, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and a number of larger firms were unaware of REACH. Survey results consistently showed that the size of a company is an important factor in both understanding of and compliance with REACH, with respondents from large firms having a better grasp of REACH and its implications than smaller companies. An effective implementation of REACH will require, at the most basic level, more attention to educating EU companies, especially smaller ones, on how and why REACH applies to them. Survey respondents who were aware of REACH and its applicability to their firms also reported the types of support they needed in order to better understand and comply with the regulation, with nearly 40% of all respondents expressing a need for help with data systems or tools to manage REACH requirements and communicate REACH requirements to suppliers and customers. Many companies reported needing more information from their suppliers on chemical composition and related health impacts of materials and products. Ensuring that this information is readily available throughout supply chains is essential to reducing the negative impacts of chemicals and products on human health and the environment.

Learning and Teaching in the 21st Century: An Education Plan for the New Millennium Developed in British Columbia, Canada

This article describes how a ministry of education in Canada is responding to new developments in educational thinking related to 21st century learning and teaching. The authors identify challenges with 21st learning aspirations and explore opportunities for reconfiguring schools and education systems. The key competencies identified by the Education Plan of the British Columbia Ministry of Education may serve as a framework for a global paradigm shift in learning, with the potential to transform and personalize learning for all. Based on the foundational elements of 21st century core subjects, themes, and skills, the Education Plan proposes the need for personalized learning for every student, quality teaching and learning, flexibility and choice, high standards, and learning empowered by technology.

Market competition in health care markets in the Netherlands: some lessons for England?

This article seeks to establish what lessons might be available to the English health care sector following enactment of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 from the Dutch experience of introducing market competition into health care via a mandatory health insurance scheme implemented by for-profit insurance companies. The existence of the Beveridge NHS model in England, and a Bismarckian insurance system in The Netherlands perhaps suggest that a comparison of the two countries is at best limited, and reinforced by the different Enthoven-inspired competitive models each has adopted. However, we contend that there are positive and negative issues arising from introducing competition into health care-, e.g. concerns about equity and benefits of efficiencies-which go beyond national boundaries and different systems and reflect the global paradigm shift towards the use of market forces in previously non-market areas such as health. The article examines the situation in England following the HSCA 2012 and The Netherlands following the 2006 reforms before analysing two areas of common ground: the focus in both countries on competition on quality (as opposed to price) and integrated care, which is assuming ever greater significance. We suggest that our combined insights (as a health lawyer and competition lawyer respectively) coupled with a comparative approach create a novel contribution to current calls for a wider public debate about the real role of markets in health care over and above simple characterisation as a force for good or bad.

Author’s Response: 3.11 and the Fog of Politics

It has been almost three years since 3.11-36 months that have stretched out longest and most painfully for surviving victims. Many observers have spilled much ink trying to understand and evaluate what happened in Tohoku and what would mean for Japan and world. I am grateful to Asia Policy for assembling a group of thoughtful analysts to reflect on my early appraisal of catastrophe. I would like to use their assessments to revisit that understanding of 3.11 and its impact.As I wrote in book-and as Michio Muramatsu reminds us-a master narrative for 3.11 has yet to be written. Sheila Smith puts more directly. She wonders: Did really matter? One way to judge is by revisiting 3.11 from distance afforded by passage of additional time. How might my conclusions have been different if I had written book three years after catastrophe instead of just 18 months later? Which of dueling political entrepreneurs who tried to brand 3.11 catastrophe have been rewarded with policies that conform to their preferences? Has Japan really stayed course, or has embarked on a new one-either forward in a new direction or back to future?Andrew DeWit's apt characterization of the speed with which Japan's landscape was changing even as Samuels was writing about it is a good place to begin. He is correct to point to electric power revolution in Japan, to its acceleration after 3.11, and to its consonance with global paradigm shifts in energy. By shrinking and smartening, Japan's electric power sector seems to be catching up to rest of world's utilities, which had already begun adapting to disruptive technologies as well as to changing consumer, regulatory, and voter preferences even absent a 3.11-scale challenge.Japan's energy seems most prominent at local level. Following Masayoshi Son's lead, local governments are generating revenues by using post-3.11 feed-in tariff (FIT) to induce businesses to build large-scale renewable-power projects on vacant municipal land. Municipalities receive rent for land and additional tax revenue, while residents get clean, low-cost power and investors enjoy subsidized, low-risk returns. In fact, renewables increased by 25% in first year after FIT was enacted.Change in Japanese electric power sector-including a toughened regulatory authority and a shift away from utility-centric programs offered by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) toward micro-electric power companies-has proceeded despite utility companies' natural resistance to change, a resistance abetted in December 2012 when Japanese voters decisively ended hold of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) on governance. Although polls showed overwhelming opposition to nuclear power, voters returned Japan's most avidly pro-nuclear and pro-utility party, Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to power, and TEPCO shares rebounded immediately. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called DPJ's policy of zero nuclear power groundless, accelerated efforts to export nuclear plants, appointed nuclear power advocates to key cabinet posts, removed anti-nuclear members of Basic Energy Plan commission, and reduced FIT price for new investments in renewables. Although METI approved solar-power generation facilities with output capacity equivalent to about twenty nuclear reactors (22 gigawatts), only about one-tenth of newly approved facilities have actually started producing electricity.1 Structural change and renewable growth have been slowed by a loophole in FIT legislation, and some investors have abandoned their projects after encountering difficulty connecting to grid and gaining access to panels.2 Nonetheless, breakup of vertically integrated monopoly system is under formal discussion in METI councils. The creative destruction of hidebound utilities is finally coming to Japan, and Alexis Dudden may be right when she says that changes in sector may ultimately prove most profound. …

3.11 and Japan’s Shift to Smart, Distributed Power

Richard Samuels's book 3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan is, to date, the most authoritative English-language study of the impact of history's costliest natural and man-made disasters on Japan's political economy of energy and the implications for intergovernmental relations. The book uses a narrative approach, deftly outlining the institutional terrain prior to 3.11 and presenting the key actors and core arguments for a return to business as usual versus alternatives advanced by reformists. Samuels maps Japan's fights over energy and regional governance, providing a valuable resource for examining those linked conflicts in the larger context of accelerating global paradigm shifts in energy and the character of the city regions that consume the vast majority of it. In Japan, as is true elsewhere, energy is the fundamental economic sector. For decades predictable and taken for granted, energy is suddenly dynamic, with disruptive change being spurred in particular by communities' search for resilience and sustainability in the face of multiple crises.Samuels's considerable background in research and writing on Japanese energy and local government left him better prepared than most concerning what to pay attention to in the confusion following 3.11. He neither takes sides nor picks winners, save in betting on expanding opportunities for the local governments who star in his account (p. 197). This detachment allows Samuels to explicate the broad range of interests wanting to rebuild the disrupted status quo ante as well as the challengers who swiftly rose to prominence amid the chaos.His analysis shows us that prior to 3.11 Japanese energy policymaking was dominated by a centered on the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI); the utilities; the nuclear industry; cooperative political, business, media, and academic elites; and advocates in the communities hosting nuclear plants. Japan's power economy-the world's third-largest-featured the most profound monopolization of any developed country, not just in terms of generation and transmission assets, along with the rules governing them, but also via dense and dangerously complacent political and business alliances in the national capital and throughout the country. Compact and powerfully incentivized, the nuclear village had seized control over fiscal, regulatory, and other resources and had driven a nuclear energy paradigm into the core of Japanese policymaking. The dominant discourse, inscribed in energy, environmental, and economic-growth policy, depicted nuclear power as the cheapest, most reliable, and most realistic option, declaring it also to be completely safe as well as the bedrock of energy security. Prior to 3.11, Japan's nuclear program was thus set to expand from under a third of electrical power production to reach over half of the nation's power generation by 2030. In a country with scarce conventional energy resource endowments, oceans away from increasingly precarious and expensive fossil-fuel supplies, the governmentbacked nuclear paradigm possessed immense resources, credibility, and political momentum, enabling it to obfuscate a startling record of accidents, cover-ups, cost overruns, and other scandals.Samuels details how the shock of 3.11 shattered this structure of interests and its commanding narrative, delivering a particularly large blow to the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the world's largest private utility. The nuclear village continues to be eroded by public opposition to its vision, the already monumental and still-mounting costs of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdowns, and the spread of renewable and efficiency alternatives among local governments, households, businesses, and other rapidly multiplying prosumers (producers and consumers) of energy. Even the subsequent return of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), headed by an explicitly pro-nuclear prime minister, has yet to contain this momentum for an energy shift. …

A Survey-Based Vision for Restructuring Concrete Business in the New Residential Communities in Egypt

Due to its evolving technology and dynamic nature, a sizeable segment of the world’s construction market that used to partly rely on traditional site-mixed concrete (SMC) had almost completely shifted to ready-mixed concrete (RMC) several decades ago in the developed countries. Likewise, this targeted trend has been observed in developing countries. The Egyptian residential sector has also adopted some corrective changes in this direction in the last decade. Nevertheless, the vast majority of builders in the Egyptian market have continued to oppose to this global paradigm shift. The observed “cultural” resistance to change seems to be chiefly driven by the difference in the unit price of SMC and RMC, overlooking the latter’s superior characteristics and its added values that fundamentally overweigh this apparent difference in cost.This study aims at promoting the use of RMC over SMC for construction of new residential communities in Egypt. Proper business measures need to be implemented for the desired change in the culture of concrete market. A mixed (qualitative and quantitative) approach was used in this survey. A customized survey, comprised of a series of interviews with consultants/contractors in the field and a detailed questionnaire targeting practitioners (developers, contractors and end users), was conducted to gage market responsiveness to the desired change. The desired market shift towards RMC (targeted variable) hinges on generic variables: price, concrete quality and customer satisfaction, and market-specific variables: local concrete culture, perception of average customers, and permitting process.The survey revealed that professional participants, a small fraction of the local concrete market, are aware of the added values of utilizing RMC. The participation rate is clearly indicative of the absence of awareness of the numerous competitive advantages of using RMC in the Egyptian market. The resistance to change, unarguably, still hinges on the mistakenly believed difference in SMC and RMC unit prices, not the cost/benefit ratio.

Myths and realities in community management of common pool resources in Malawi: social stratification as a negative side-effect of social capital

Abstract In line with a global paradigm shift in the theory and practice of governance since the 1980s, state management of natural resources has increasingly been replaced by community management approaches. This shift is driven, in part, by the belief that local communities with strong social networks and norms (i.e., strong community social capital) can ably govern local resources. This paper examines the congruency between theoretical claims and empirical outcomes of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM), particularly in the presence of traditional social hierarchies that help maintain social norms (and hence community social capital), but also cause social stratification and inequitable allocation of natural resources. Results demonstrate that the contribution of community social capital to successful CBNRM depends not merely on the presence of community social capital, but also on the nature and degree of social stratification.