All societies collapse. The question is not if our current order will end, but what policies might delay the inevitable. To ask this question we have taken a longue duree and institutional theory perspective to investigate how another complex society, the Classic Maya, both succeeded to avoid collapse and yet centuries later failed to prevent their own doomsday. Integrating new highly detailed archaeological and palaeoecological data with institutional theory paradigms we develop case studies of managerial and policy responses just prior to the final Classic Maya collapse and one some 600 years earlier in which institutional entrepreneurship was used to avoid a collapse. We draw four policy directives from our case studies regarding (i) acceptance of potential imminent collapse, (ii) vulnerabilities now confronting our institutions and logics, (iii) the razor's edge of transformative institutional entrepreneurship, and (iv) the threats of "status-rivalry" spirals. We finally take the risky step of examining our contemporary situation. Here, we observe that two of our central institutions, democracy and capitalism have become our greatest weaknesses driving cycles of short-term decision making, hypercoherence, and inequality. We suggest that without significant yet very careful modification of institutions and logics this will lead our apogee into our collapse, as those central institutions may become destabilized and delegitimatized.

This article examines how a market shift toward high-end ('Third Wave') coffee creates tension between two producer models of economic engagement: cooperatives, with mechanisms that promote solidarity to minimize risks, and 'open' markets, with extraordinary rewards for those able to grow the highest quality coffees. Most Maya farmers value cooperative organization and yet a growing number are defecting, unable to forgo the premiums intermediaries offer for their best beans. This is a complicated moral and economic situation in which the Third Wave focus on single-origin coffees forces changes in relations of production that undermine the cooperative preferences of smallholding farmers.

In Chapter 13, Demarest and collaborators present evidence from the southwestern frontier Classic Maya port city of Cancuen that can help explain the nature of the southern lowlands’ economic decline by contrasting it with Cancuen’s late eighth century economic transformations and meteoric florescence; while other western Petén dynasties disintegrated, Cancuen flourished. One element of this apogee was the creation of new forms of monumental and ritual settings to recruit and maintain non-Maya economic exchange partners. This “innovation network” came to control critical routes and resources leading to changes in management, production, and economic power. However, as with many high-risk “innovation partnership networks,” success was truncated by abrupt network failure. Evaluation of this phenomenon by economists provides insights into ancient Maya economy and the role of monumentality in both its legitimation and transformation.

This chapter presents a critique of factors inhibiting progress in Maya economic studies, an introduction to approaches that avoid those pitfalls and examples of successful applications of strategic management theory and sociological organization studies. Some errors identified in current studies include shifts in terminology from relative to absolute; huge spatial and temporal frames of reference obscuring patterns and creating continuities, thus minimizing the degree of change; arguments unacceptable in logical and scientific discourse to criticize alternative interpretations, and other fallacies. Strategic management analysis can be applied to specific features of economies, avoiding such errors and overly broad typological concepts (e.g., “market economy,” “redistribution,” “barter,” “inalienable property”). Instead specific aspects of those and other parts of economies are studied as sets composed of variable elements each of which can be evaluated on relative scales. Successful recent applications to Maya economy are summarized, guiding to a vast literature in the sociology organization and of strategic management on “embeddedness,” manipulation of the “biographies of things,” “economic cultures,” “Trust,” innovation legitimation, vertical integration, institutional agency, and hopefully, providing a new direction in the study of Maya economies.

The literature on monetary giving has largely focused on the psychological mechanisms that underlie prosocial giving behaviors. Yet in practice giving is almost always done in response to a solicitation or "ask." In this paper we study solicitation strategy, providing evidence that the "ask" may alter the nature of an exchange relationship in a manner that favors recipients relative to giving situations in which the recipient is passive. We introduce a variant of the dictator game called the "begging game" in which an individual can ask for some or all of an amount of money bestowed upon another individual. Our results indicate that both the asked for and received amounts in the begging game are systematically higher than typically shown in dictator games, while asks of half yield the best result in expectation. When counter-offers are allowed, 87.5% ask for half or more of the total sum, with 80% receiving at least some money. Hence large asks are often not punished. Our combined results help quantify the "power of the ask."

Over the last years, we have noticed conflicting stories about the origins of the theory, development, and applications of LSP. To set the record straight, this article reviews the story of how LSP arose from the intersection of tedious strategy practices, engaging play, passionate scholars, open-minded executives, and the owner of LEGO Company.

In resource-limited settings, the choice between utilizing biomedical health services and/or traditional healers is critical to the success of the public health mission. In the literature, this choice has been predicted to be influenced by three major factors: knowledge about biomedical etiologies; cultural modernization; and rational choice. The current study investigated all three of these predicted determinants, applying data from a general household survey conducted in 2010 in Zambézia Province of Mozambique involving 1045 randomly sampled rural households. Overall, more respondents (N = 802) intended to continue to supplement their biomedical healthcare with traditional healer services in comparison with those intending to utilize biomedical care exclusively (N = 243). The findings strongly supported the predicted association between rational utility (measured as satisfaction with the quality of service and results from past care) with the future intention to continue to supplement or utilize biomedical care exclusively. Odds of moving away from supplementation increase by a factor of 2.5 if the respondent reported seeing their condition improve under government/private biomedical care. Odds of staying with supplementation increase by a factor 3.1 if the respondent was satisfied with traditional care and a factor of 16 if the condition had improved under traditional care. Modernization variables (education, income, religion, and Portuguese language skills) were relevant and provided a significant component of the best scientific model. Amount of biomedical knowledge was not a significant predictor of choice. There was a small effect on choice from knowing the limitations of biomedical care. The findings have implications for public healthcare promotion activities in areas where biomedical care is introduced as an alternative to traditional healing.

BACKGROUND:Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon and unidimensional measurements have proven inadequate to the challenge of assessing its dynamics. Dynamics between poverty and public health intervention is among the most difficult yet important problems faced in development. We sought to demonstrate how multidimensional poverty measures can be utilized in the evaluation of public health interventions; and to create geospatial maps of poverty deprivation to aid implementers in prioritizing program planning.METHODS:Survey teams interviewed a representative sample of 3,749 female heads of household in 259 enumeration areas across Zambézia in August-September 2010. We estimated a multidimensional poverty index, which can be disaggregated into context-specific indicators. We produced an MPI comprised of 3 dimensions and 11 weighted indicators selected from the survey. Households were identified as "poor" if were deprived in >33% of indicators. Our MPI is an adjusted headcount, calculated by multiplying the proportion identified as poor (headcount) and the poverty gap (average deprivation). Geospatial visualizations of poverty deprivation were created as a contextual baseline for future evaluation.RESULTS:In our rural (96%) and urban (4%) interviewees, the 33% deprivation cut-off suggested 58.2% of households were poor (29.3% of urban vs. 59.5% of rural). Among the poor, households experienced an average deprivation of 46%; thus the MPI/adjusted headcount is 0.27 ( = 0.58×0.46). Of households where a local language was the primary language, 58.6% were considered poor versus Portuguese-speaking households where 73.5% were considered non-poor. Living standard is the dominant deprivation, followed by health, and then education.CONCLUSIONS:Multidimensional poverty measurement can be integrated into program design for public health interventions, and geospatial visualization helps examine the impact of intervention deployment within the context of distinct poverty conditions. Both permit program implementers to focus resources and critically explore linkages between poverty and its social determinants, thus deriving useful findings for evidence-based planning.

Coffee production in Guatemala has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last twenty years. Changing tastes among northern consumers have driven new demand for high-quality Strictly Hard Bean coffees that are grown above 4,500 feet. As a result, many of the large, lower-altitude plantations long synonymous with coffee in Guatemala have abandoned production, moving into rubber, African palm, and other crops. At least 50,000 mostly smallholding farmers in the highlands have begun growing coffee to fill this market niche. Building on a capabilities approach to development, this article examines how smallholding Guatemalan producers' desires for a better future orient their engagement with this new market. Most of these small producers live in very modest circumstances with limited resources and opportunities. Yet, as they describe it, coffee represents an opportunity in a context of few opportunities, an imperfect means to a marginally better life.

In the capability approach to poverty, wellbeing is threatened by both deficits of wealth and deficits of agency. Sen describes that “unfreedom,” or low levels of agency, will suppress the wellbeing effects of higher levels of wealth. We introduce another condition, “frustrated freedom,” in which higher levels of agency belief can heighten the poverty effects of low levels of wealth. Presenting data from a study of female heads of household in rural Mozambique, we find that agency belief moderates the relationship between wealth and wellbeing, uncovering evidence of frustrated freedom.

BACKGROUND:Some aspects of HIV-related stigma have been shown to be a barrier to HIV services uptake and adherence to antiretroviral treatment (ART). Distinguishing which domains of stigma impact HIV services uptake can enhance the efficacy and efficiency of stigma-reduction interventions.METHODS:The relationships between use of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) services and two domains of community stigma identified through factor analysis, negative labeling/devaluation and social exclusion, were investigated among 3749 female heads of household. Data were from a general household survey conducted in rural Mozambique. Multivariable logistic regression outcomes were: lifetime VCT use, past-6-months VCT use and VCT endorsement.RESULTS:Thirteen percent (13%) of the participants reported lifetime VCT use, 10% reported past-6-months VCT use and 63% endorsed VCT. A 25-point decrease (from 50 to 25) in the score for negative labeling and devaluation stigma was associated with increased lifetime VCT use (adjusted OR: 1.6, 95% CI: 1.1-2.3) and past-6-months VCT use (adjusted OR: 1.6, 95% CI: 1.1-2.4). A decrease from 50 to 25-points in the score for social exclusion stigma was associated with 1.5 and 1.3-fold increase in odds for past-6-months VCT use and endorsing VCT use, respectively (p < 0.001 for both). Compared with never-testers, considerably high endorsement of VCT use was observed among testers who did not receive HIV test results (adjusted OR: 2.7, 95% CI: 1.6-4.6) and much higher among testers who received results (adjusted OR: 7.3, 95% CI: 4.9-11.0). Distance from health facilities was associated with lower VCT use, but not lower endorsement of VCT.CONCLUSIONS:VCT use and endorsement might differ by domains of stigma held by individuals in the community. Greater uptake and favorable disposition towards use of VCT services in rural settings might be achieved by addressing stigma via domain-specific interventions and by improving the proximity of services and the dissemination of HIV test results.

BACKGROUND:Increased HIV/AIDS knowledge and access to antiretroviral treatment (ART) have been hypothesized to decrease HIV stigma. However, stigma persists as a barrier to HIV services uptake. We studied the relationship between stigma, knowledge and attitudes towards HIV and its treatment, and confidence in the legal system (legal rights certitude).METHODS:We analyzed data from a household survey of 3749 randomly sampled female heads of households in 259 enumeration areas across 14 districts of Zambézia Province, Mozambique. The questionnaire included questions about beliefs, attitudes and behavior towards PLWHA, HIV transmission knowledge, treatment-related beliefs, and legal rights certitude. Factor analysis distinguished two stigma constructs: Negative labeling and devaluation (NLD) and social exclusion (SoE). Multivariable linear regression was used to determine the association between stigma, knowledge of HIV/AIDS, treatment-related beliefs, and legal rights certitude, while controlling for variance in socio-demographics.RESULTS:A 4-point increase in knowledge about HIV transmission was associated with more than a 3 unit decrease in NLD and SoE stigma scores (p<0.001). Given HIV transmission knowledge, a 25-point increase in legal rights certitude was associated with a 4.62 unit drop in NLD stigma (p<0.001); we did not detect an association between legal rights certitude and SoE stigma. Knowing at least one HIV positive person was associated with lower SoE (-3.17, 95% CI: -5.78, -0.56); no association with NLD (p = 0.1) was detected. ART efficacy belief was associated with higher NLD and lower SoE (2.90 increase and 6.94 decrease, respectively; p ≤ 0.001).CONCLUSION:Increasing knowledge about HIV transmission and access to ART are likely to reduce stigma, but neither of the two is a panacea. Raising community awareness of the legal rights of PLWHA might improve the efficacy of stigma reduction efforts. Strategies that focus on specific domains of stigma might be more effective than generic stigma reduction strategies.