This handbook presents a systematic overview of approaches to, diversity, and problems involved in interdisciplinary rating methodologies. Historically, the purpose of ratings is to achieve information transparency regarding a given body’s activities, whether in the field of finance, banking, or sports for example. This book focuses on commonly used rating methods in three important fields: finance, sports, and the social sector. In the world of finance, investment decisions are largely shaped by how positively or negatively economies or financial instruments are rated. Ratings have thus become a basis of trust for investors. Similarly, sports evaluation and funding are largely based on core ratings. From local communities to groups of nations, public investment and funding are also dependent on how these bodies are continuously rated against expected performance targets. As such, ratings need to reflect the consensus of all stakeholders on selected aspects of the work and how to evaluate their success. The public should also have the opportunity to participate in this process. The authors examine current rating approaches from a variety of proposals that are closest to the public consensus, analyzing the rating models and summarizing the methods of their construction. This handbook offers a valuable reference guide for managers, analysts, economists, business informatics specialists, and researchers alike.

This book weaves together voices of faculty, residents, mentors, administrators, community organizers, and students who have lived together in a third space urban teacher residency program in Newark as they reinvent math and science teaching and teacher education through the lens of inquiry. Each chapter includes narratives from multiple perspectives as well as tools we have used within the program to support and build change, providing readers with both real cases of how an urban teacher residency can impact school systems, and concrete tools and examples to help the reader understand and replicate aspects of the process. Capturing both the successes but also the tensions and challenges, we offer a kaleidoscopic view of the rich, complex, and multi-layered ways in which multiple stakeholders work together to make enduring educational change in urban schools. Our third space NMUTR has been a fragile utopian enterprise, one that has relied on a shared commitment of all involved, and a deep sense of hope that working collaboratively has the potential, even if not perfect, to make a difference.

This is the first book tackling the topic of world suffering. It compiles in one place the ideas, perspectives, and findings of researchers from around the world who pioneered research-based understanding of human suffering. Some chapters use the paradigm of ‘quality of life’ to explore ways to enhance knowledge on suffering. Other chapters show how concepts and knowledge from suffering research can benefit studies on quality of life. By bringing together in one volume, ideas and research experience from the best minds and leading researchers in the fields of pain, suffering, poverty, deprivation, disability and quality of life (including well-being and happiness), this volume advances social science solutions to a number of major threads of research, most notably suffering. As a whole, the volume advances the fields of suffering and deprivation by suggesting a working typology of suffering and by pointing out the major paradigms for relief of suffering, such as humanitarianism, human rights, caring, and healing. This volume provides a wealth of insights about the interaction between suffering and quality of life, the most up-to-date characterization of worldwide suffering, and a grasp of the implications of these data for local and global policy on health and social well-being.

An examination of differences in how the world's democracies address a variety of issues involving free expression.

We speak of being 'free' to speak our minds, free to go to college, free to move about; we can be cancer-free, debt-free, worry-free, or free from doubt. The concept of freedom (and relatedly the notion of liberty) is ubiquitous but not everyone agrees what the term means, and the philosophical analysis of freedom that has grown over the last two decades has revealed it to be a complex notion whose meaning is dependent on the context. The Oxford Handbook of Freedom will crystallize this work and craft the first wide-ranging analysis of freedom in all its dimensions: legal, cultural, religious, economic, political, and psychological. This volume includes 28 new essays by well regarded philosophers, as well some historians and political theorists, in order to reflect the breadth of the topic. This handbook covers both current scholarship as well as historical trends, with an overall eye to how current ideas on freedom developed. The volume is divided into six sections: conceptual frames (framing the overall debates about freedom), historical frames (freedom in key historical periods, from the ancients onward), institutional frames (freedom and the law), cultural frames (mutual expectations on our 'right' to be free), economic frames (freedom and the market), and lastly psychological frames (free will in philosophy and psychology).

Is it possible, in the complex modern world, to have a government ‘by the people’? Does, for example, digital technology help us to bring the reality closer to the ideal? Or does it actually make the ideal unattainable? The volume brings together conceptual historians, philosophers, political theorists and sociologists to discuss the criticisms and crises of democracy with fresh approaches to the idea of democracy, democratic theory, democratic institutions, trust and distrust, populism, and advancement of technologies in Western societies.

This book answers how mortality and morality figure and intertwine in the life and death of nations - both in theory and in practice.

Success in today's globalized business environment requires deep knowledge of varied areas, and the willingness to engage in commerce not just across geographic areas, but cross-culturally and environmentally as well. Doing Business in Latin America offers an in-depth look at a complex region, integrating practitioners’ and scholars’ ideas to examine business conducted in Latin America through the lens of international business and globalization. The book introduces, discusses, and explains in detail the historical, economic, cultural, political, and technological impacts of globalization and business conduct in Latin American countries. It also considers the contemporary business environment of the area, looking at how current country and regional factors have affected the process of starting and operating businesses. Finally, it looks forward to the emerging trends that portend the future of business in these countries. With its combination of contemporary analysis and historical discussion, this book is a vital tool to all scholars and practitioners with an interest in the opportunities offered by the current Latin American business environment.

Using comparative qualitative methodology, this book examines three Chinese societies, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China, as specific cases of democratic, hybrid and authoritarian regimes, presenting the theoretical underpinnings of civic education in contexts other than liberal democracy. It highlights on the concept of ‘good citizens’ in these three regime contexts and explores how these concepts are reflected in civic education and perceived by students in the three societies. The book focuses on three levels of comparison to ensure that all relevant issues can be identified: Level 1: regime “type”; Level 2: curriculum and policy formulations; Level 3: students’ personal experiences. These three levels are linked with each other and form a continuous process of civic education implementation in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China.

Taking a comparative approach, this book considers the ways in which political regimes have changed since the Arab Spring. It addresses a series of questions about political change in the context of the revolutions, upheavals and protests that have taken place in North Africa and the Arab Middle East since December 2010, and looks at the various processes have been underway in the region: democratisation (Tunisia), failed democratic transitions (Egypt, Libya and Yemen), political liberalisation (Morocco) and increased authoritarianism (Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria). In other countries, in contrast to these changes, the authoritarian regimes remain intact (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Arab United Emirates.