All over the world scientists agree that entrepreneurship plays a significant role for the sustainable development and well-being of society. New business creation is undoubtedly one of the most relevant aspects for the economic growth, social development and competitiveness of countries (Wennekers, Thurik, 1999; Wennekers et al., 2005; Audretsch, Keilbach, 2004; Stel et al., 2005). Entrepreneurship can stimulate economy with the dynamism on macro level, future job creation and innovation. Positive entrepreneurial attitudes are generally linked to higher business start-up rates, but in the end – actual entrepreneurial actions (owning or co-owning) reveal the state of entrepreneurship in particular country. Therefore the aim of this paper is to analyse the state of entrepreneurial attitudes in 2009 – 2012 in Middle East region.Empirical data analysis is based on representative quantitative Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Adult Population Surveys and it includes countries like Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, UAE, and Yemen. Data analysis shows that entrepreneurship in this region is interpreted as very desirable career choice. Despite this fact, not so many individuals have entrepreneurial intentions or/ and some of them also fear to fail, which could be interpreted as one of the deterrent factors for starting a new business.
The simultaneous effects of today’s population growth and climate change are endangering the world’s vulnerable resources. Oyster reefs, which provide vital ecological services, have an estimated 85% loss from historical levels worldwide. This loss threatens the sustainability of current high-intensity industrial oyster harvesting practices. Fortunately, a deeper time perspective on oyster harvesting provides insight to policy options for sustaining the industry into the distant future. During the 19th century, Cedar Key, Florida was among the largest oyster exporters in the U.S. Two-thousand years earlier, the area was teeming with aboriginal communities that harvested oysters and collected the inedible remains in huge mounds and middens. One such site, Shell Mound, just north of Cedar Key, is a 7-m-tall, 200-m-wide shell ring that was erected in only a couple of centuries. This construction followed a period of another 2,000 years during which oysters were routinely collected and consumed in large quantities. With such large-scale harvesting over four millennia, native people employed a strategy of resiliency to sustain their maritime economies. With case material from parallel native experiences in the Chesapeake region, I illustrate how oyster harvesting was diversified to include wider catchments and less selectivity through time. While these data suggest that native shellfishers experienced downturns in local production, niche expansion and diversification enabled recovery of local oyster beds and supported, in the long-term, sustained settlement without disruption in occupation or economy. The methods employed in the Chesapeake study can be used to examine long-term oyster harvesting in the Cedar Key region, an area that is currently suffering decreasing yields due to climate change, diminished water quality, and underregulated harvesting. Although contemporary ecological studies provide short-term assessments of changes in oyster populations, an understanding of multicentury exploitation, such as what can be offered by archaeological data, is crucial for successfully creating a long-term future in sustainable oyster exploitation.
Sustainable Development (SD) is a very commonly used phrase in the political agenda of all European countries and in the bussiness agenda of many corporations. SD as it has been defined my the Brundland report, is not a luxury anymore, it has become a necessity for our planet to keep its existence as we know it. It is necessary to apply various policy decision tools in order to reach the required objectives on all the three pillars of sustainable development, i.e. environment, economy, society. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of those tools necessary to make the right policy decisions concerning the environmental part of sustainable development. Since LCA takes into consideration the whole life cycle of a product, it could also be used not only as a tool but also as a way of thinking, leading to playing a very important role in strategy orientation. The development of new products, the operation of existing processes, the operation of the public and the private sectors, need LCA to reach decisions that will have a minimum or no impacr to the environment. The objective of this work is to show the importance of LCA and its necessity for all policy decisions.
The aim of this paper is to describe an international student project as a referential methodology for sustainable tourism education. Sustainable tourism is widely accepted and advocated as a tool for sustainable development of local communities by international organizations and scientific community (Castellani and Sala, 2010). It has the potential of contributing to local development while protecting natural environment and preserving cultural heritage. In spite of this potential, there are serious obstacles in sustainable tourism development, some of which include inadequate policy framework and an accompanying institutional structure to support stakeholder involvement. Removal of these obstacles seems to require human resources that can assume effective leadership in sustainable development. The purpose of the international student project described in this paper is to develop and implement an educational methodology to fulfill this need. This international student project, which is a joint student project of the Department of Tourism Administration at Bogazici University and School of Tourism and Hospitality Management at San Diego State University, took place in August 2013 in the study setting of Kastomonu, Turkey. Kastamonu is one of the areas designated for tourism development according to Tourism Strategy 2023 Report of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. In this project students have worked on developing a Sustainability Guide to help the community of Kastamonu to implement sustainable tourism development. In developing this guide, students were asked to evaluate whether residents of Kastamonu community can achieve sustainability through tourism development. In this guide assessment of sustainability is based on The Happiness Initiative, a US program, currently being coordinated by Sustainable Seattle. This Happiness initiative measures the level of welfare and development in a community along nine dimensions, namely Environment and Nature; Good Government; Material Well-being; Psychological Well being, Physical Health; Time and Work-Life Balance; Social Vitality and Connection; Education; and Arts and Culture. Students have worked in mixed groups of four and followed a program that enabled them to make observations on each of the above mentioned dimensioned dimensions. At the end of the program, they made presentations to a group of local stakeholders. The impact of this educational methodology on the leadership qualities for sustainable tourism development, a survey instrument was administered both before and after the project implementation. The Global Citizenship Scale developed by Morais and Ogden (2011) was used in this survey instrument. The results indicate a change in global citizenship score of the students along some dimensions of this score, as well as their conceptions about sustainable tourism development. An educational project with specific aims that incorporate dimensions contributing to sustainability seems to offer an innovative approach in generating the qualities supporting effective leadership for sustainable tourism development.
The water sector has experienced numerous failures in projects aiming at sustainable development and has seen some, but less numerous, examples of successes. However, the most striking observation is the near universal failure to learn from these examples. Somehow, scientists and managers have allowed the indications of new approaches and opportunities go undetected because they did not fit with their mindsets or perceptual apparatus.We discuss some of the mental frames that have hampered the progress towards sustainable development by creating confusion and inconsistency in the interpretation of sustainable development concepts. We analyze where these frames come from, who is promoting or defending them, and what can be done to change these frames in ways that are more in line with the basic tenets of sustainable development. We conclude that most sustainability initiatives have failed because the environment and development were not properly brought together. The “environment” is where we live and “development” is what we all do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are unseparable (Our Common Future). Thus, there is a need to draw on diverse disciplinary perspectives and to cut across sectoral boundaries to counter the monovalent approaches that have dominated mainstream enquiry and practice. To that end, we discuss how systems analysis can help produce adequate mental models and enabling frameworks for process changes. These frameworks should define general objectives and means of verification of progress without specifying uniform approaches and activities. Systems analysis is also a methodology that can help make sure that problems posed are adequately defined and dismiss biased goal formulations stemming from twisted frames imposed by dominant actors or “solution-oriented approaches.
In the light of the increasing constraints imposed on human affairs and ambitions by the limits of our ecological support systems, the concept of sustainable development has undergone substantial revisions. In fact, many programs and plans that were advocated under the banner of sustainable development hardly qualify as either sustainable or even as development in any rigorous sense (Lautensach & Lautensach 2013). This finding is supported by the observation that the bioproductive areas of many of the world’s least ‘developed’ countries still exceed their ecological footprints (Lautensach & Lautensach 2010). In other words, unlike almost all of the world’s richer countries, they still operate within the realm of sustainability. The widely shared humanistic concern for the well-being of future generations elevates sustainability to a prime goal among our national and global aspirations. Countries that operate sustainably need to ensure that they remain in that realm, and others should endeavour to reach it. In this paper we focus on the former of those propositions and suggest some general policy directions that would help ‘developing’ countries retain their relatively sustainable status while improving the well-being and human security of their citizens. Preventive health care, subsistence agriculture, fertility reduction, and restrictions on foreign investments are discussed as possible means. Policies that are to be avoided include development schemes that increase market dependence and the ratio of footprint over capacity. As prerequisites we suggest counter hegemonic solidarity, democratic consensus, and holistic education. Lautensach, A. & S. Lautensach. 2013. Why ‘Sustainable Development’ is Often Neither: A Constructive Critique. Challenges in Sustainability 1(1): 3-15. http://librelloph.com/challengesinsustainability/article/view/cis-1.1.3 Lautensach, S. & A. Lautensach. 2010. Prioritising the Variables Affecting Human Security in South-East Asia. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies.Vol. 3 (2): 194-210. http://www.seas.at/wp-content/plugins/download-monitor/download.php?id=40
In the knowledge age work related self-directing learners are very valued in their respective organisations. This intellectual capital allows organisations to be more flexible, sustainable and to maintain its competitive edge in a turbulent economic environment. Literature review shows that self-directed learning is the foundation for the knowledge age. Therefore well-conceived implementation of self- directed learning is crucial for the strategic development and success of organisations in the 21st century. It is reasoned that work related self-directed learning is the most important and effective way to develop management competencies. Therefore is essential that managers move quickly to welcome change, but at the same time it requires from them to embrace a self-directed learning mind-set. Self-directed learning constitutes the most important way of acquiring and developing sustainable competencies at work. It yields sustained behavioural change and provides hope that people can develop the competencies that matter most for outstanding performance. Therefore the research question in this paper investigates whether Russian managers' management competencies correlate with work related self-directed learning. Empirical data were collected according to quantitative research methodology. Descriptive statistics, correlation, factor analysis and regression were used for statistical data analysis. Results showed that Russian managers are very keen self-learners, but it failed to show statistically significant correlation between their management competencies and self-directed learning. Directions for future research were proposed.
Modern plant production systems are faced to numerous challenges, for example, they have to satisfy the growing food necessity with moderate environmental damage and to produce quality product with profit. The support of the food needs cannot be solved by giving up the chemicals. Many new or rediscovered technologies have appeared against the harmful effects of the chemicalization of the agricultural production without yield loss or with yield similarity (for example ecological, mid-tech farming and precision farming technologies). Precision farming technology should not be considered as only a modern plant production technology or only a new agro-management tool. In our opinion the precision farming technology is achieved only when the results of electronic and IT equipment are realized and can be differentiated in the variable rate treatments zone-by-zone. The biggest problem with the precision farming technology according to our opinion is that the possible advantages and disadvantages of the technology highly depend on the professional knowledge and attitude of the manager and the staff. Between the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 the own data collection was made for examining the knowledge about the precision farming technology among Hungarian farmers producing field crops. Some interviewed farmers have used precision farming technology for years, some have planned to adopt this technology and some have heard about the technology but does not want to use it. Adaptation of precision farming technology may bring both advantages and disadvantages. According to the scientific literature sources the most important advantage of precision farming technology is the decreasing of the negative environmental impacts. In the survey, non-precision farmers placed this advantage in the 1st place, according to the precision farming planners it was in the 2nd place, while according to the precision farmers this impact was only on the 8th place. Furthermore we examined the opinion of the farmers about the changes in percentages of operational cost, herbicide cost, fertilizer cost and human resource cost resulted by the adaptation of precision farming technology compared to the conventional technology. I used the box-plot analysis for this examination. In summary the biggest cost saving were in the fertilizer cost and herbicide cost according to the opinion of precision farmers.
This research provides a systematic basis for thinking about a global, as opposed to individual, fishery collapse through both empirical and theoretical review of the evidence for and against thinking about fisheries as a global complex system. One central question is whether or not global fisheries can be described as a panarchy, or a hierarchy of complex systems. The literature reviewed indicate that we can conceptualize fisheries this way, and therefore the world fisheries theoretically can be expected to work through the four cycles, including collapse, and the direction of world fish catch are in decline. Such decline implies that the population curve of global fisheries may be in nearing a tipping point. The stakes are obviously high because fish provide a very important source of food, but wild fishery catch is not expected to keep up with demand threatening the world's poor food security (Godfray et al., 2010, Kent, 1997, Pauly et al., 2005). One analysis in ICES Journal of Marine Science, explains that the production of fish must increase by 50% to meet expected demands for food (Pauly and Palomares, 2005), though affluent countries have been able to and will continue to be able to (to lesser and lesser degrees) substitute lost local fisheries for imports(Pauly et al., 2005, Jacques, 2006). Of course, fish are also a vital source of revenue and jobs in direct landings that value between $80-$85 billion annually (Willman et al., 2008); and, economic impact beyond just landings including indirect and induced economic impact, world fisheries produce $225 to $240 billion annually (Dyck and Sumaila, 2010)-- even though over half of the landed value is lost due to mismanagement(Arnason, 2011). Finally, fish and fishing play a crucial role in human meaning and culture and have done so since the very old coastal cultures (Jacques, 2009). The notions here are explicitly inter-disciplinary and are carried out under the auspices of "social oceanography"—or the study of integrated social-marine systems(Jacques, 2010). This interdisciplinarity is essential for the question at hand because the direction of the world's fisheries are deeply tied to the biophysical conditions of the ocean and fish, and the behavior and context of human activity—and not just fishing.
The United States is among the most food secure countries in the world, so much so that US citizens face the opposite problem of obesity and related diseases to having too many calories. Yet, there are surprising vulnerabilities to US food security embedded in the political economic structure of agribusiness-government-consumer chain, not to mention critical ecological vulnerabilities. Political economic vulnerabilities include the asymmetrical distribution of 1) simple calories and 2) critical nutritional components to calories where "food deserts" and "food swamps" exist among communities where children may have their only meal at school. This meal is subsidized through the US Department of Agriculture and supplied by a very few large corporate interests and stabilized by legislative support for heavily processed food rich in fat. This corporate-legislative-agency iron triangle in US food politics favors high yield productivity, simplification and homogeneity, and still results in food insecurity for more than 49 million people. This paper analyzes the "choke points" in the US Food system that sheds light on the overall global food system inasmuch as both the food that the US produces and the political economy it has exported are globally important. Chokepoints include water use, monoculture, oligopolistic corporate agents, climate change, and inequality. Each are explained as mechanisms that create food security vulnerabilities both for the US and any country or system that adopts the US model.
