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This paper explores the difference between societal cultural practices (the way societal culture is perceived to be, or “as is”) and cultural values (the way societal culture “should be”) using the GLOBE project’s (House et al, 2004) published data and findings from 62 societies. The difference between cultural practices and values is referred to as ‘cultural differentiation’. The paper suggests that cultural differentiation can be an indicator for potential for societal change. GLOBE’s overall data as well as those for selected countries are examined. The latter is done by focusing on several developed countries from Europe and several developing societies from the Middle East and by measuring and comparing their cultural differentiation scores and their potential for and patterns of change. The implications of this approach to cultural differentiation for societal change and for leadership and organizational practices across cultures are discussed

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Many authors, Bradley (2006), Banerjee (2007), Mohan (2008) and Sen (1999) among others, argue that the participatory approach in the development projects of a non-governmental organization, NGO, is more effective and sustainable than the externally imposed expert-driven approach. According to this research stream, the participatory approach promotes self-respect, dignity, inclusiveness, and empowerment of people involved in the project and, simultaneously, it improves the external local environment for the NGO. The key point of this paper is that adopting only the participatory approach may not be optimal, as this approach involves costs to learn about local culture, values and attitudes, and to design and implement feasible participatory development practices. Accordingly, an economically sensible and sustainable strategy for the NGO will be to use a mixture of both approaches. In this paper, the optimal level of participatory approach is theoretically derived and numerically illustrated.

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Based on the secondary sources and interviews, this paper gives an account of hartal and similar political activities, examining the economic and social impacts of such activities on the economy of Bangladesh and the management of the companies in that country. As hartal and associated activities are not well defined in literature, this study begins by giving a brief definition and description of those activities. The findings of the study suggest that these activities are organized to ensure freedom of assembly, expression of opinion, and political rights by raising protests against certain government actions and policies. However, in reality, and especially during the last two decades, much of these activities have been used as a vindictive movement against the political party in the helm of the regime. The study also found that hartal and similar activities have resulted in colossal economic losses of work, working hours, business management, industrial output, business capital, property, and human life, as well as visible and non-visible social losses, such as human distress, loss of human life, uncertainly, chaos, hatred, disunity among people, and erosion of the national image. Finally, this study found that people engaged in economic activities dislike such political activities, considering them as unnecessary evils, and want political parties to work on creating alternative, peaceful action programs. The paper finally gives some suggestions to solve the problem of hartal and relieve the miseries that come along with it.

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The booming of international trade since 1980 has resulted in the sharp economic growth of Taiwan. It is therefore important to understand the influential factors and their impacts on Taiwan’s international trade and export. This research adopts multiple regression method to identify the respective influential macroeconomic variables affecting the export values of Taiwan to the U.S. before and after 2008 financial crisis. It also analyzes the correlations among these macroeconomic variables. The results of this research indicate that, the first lag period of: (1) Taiwan industrial production index, (2) exchange rate of U.S. dollar to New Taiwan dollar, (3) US Interbank real call loan rate, and (4) U.S. industrial production index are influential macroeconomic variables affecting export values of Taiwan to the U.S. before 2008 financial crisis. After 2008 financial crisis, the influential macroeconomic factors are the first lag period of (1) exchange rate of U.S. dollar to New Taiwan dollar, (2) Taiwan’s industrial production index, (3) Mainland China’s consumer price index yearly increment, and (4) Taiwan’swholesale price index yearly increment (excluding service).