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Rural Markets (rural + market)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	33%

Selected Abstracts

Health Care Information Technology in Rural America: Electronic Medical Record Adoption Status in Meeting the National Agenda

THE JOURNAL OF RURAL HEALTH, Issue 2 2008
James A. Bahensky MS
ABSTRACT:,Continuing is a national political drive for investments in health care information technology (HIT) that will allow the transformation of health care for quality improvement and cost reduction. Despite several initiatives by the federal government to spur this development, HIT implementation has been limited, particularly in the rural market. The status of technology use in the transformation effort is reviewed by examining electronic medical records (EMRs), analyzing the existing rural environment, identifying barriers and factors affecting their development and implementation, and recommending needed steps to make this transformation occur, particularly in rural communities. A review of the literature for HIT in rural settings indicates that very little progress has been made in the adoption and use of HIT in rural America. Financial barriers and a large number of HIT vendors offering different solutions present significant risks to rural health care providers wanting to invest in HIT. Although evidence in the literature has demonstrated benefits of adopting HIT such as EMRs, important technical, policy, organizational, and financial barriers still exist that prevent the implementation of these systems in rural settings. To expedite the spread of HIT in rural America, federal and state governments along with private payers, who are important beneficiaries of HIT, must make difficult decisions as to who pays for the investment in this technology, along with driving standards, simplifying approaches for reductions in risk, and creating a workable operational plan. [source]

Risky Business: Economic Uncertainty, Market Reforms and Female Livelihoods in Northeast Ghana

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2000
Brenda Chalfin
This article examines the implications of economic uncertainty for rural markets and the livelihoods of female traders. It does so through a case study of a community in northern Ghana caught in the throes of a structural adjustment-driven privatization initiative. In order to fully comprehend the nature of the economic uncertainties in which rural economic actors are enmeshed and the manner in which they resist, engage or engender these conditions, two theoretical lenses are interposed. One, focusing on structural dissolution and an overall process of rural, and especially female, disempowerment, is drawn from recent approaches to African political economy. The other, gleaned from the field of economic anthropology, attends to the agency and knowledge of rural entrepreneurs in the face of unstable and imperfect market conditions. By bringing together these different analytic traditions, the critical significance of uncertainty within the complex process of rural economic transformation and reproduction becomes evident. Rather than functioning as a diagnostic of economic crisis and insecurity, uncertainty can be a strategic resource integral to the constitution of markets, livelihoods and economic coalitions. Such a perspective, privileging the institutional potentials of local social practice, makes apparent the forceful role played by female traders in the structuring of rural marketing systems even in the face of externally-induced and sometimes dramatic shifts in material conditions. [source]

Voluntary simplicity: an exploration of market interactions

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSUMER STUDIES, Issue 2 2009
Deirdre Shaw
Abstract Voluntary simplicity is often considered to be a sustainable lifestyle phenomenon buttressed by environment-friendly consumption practices. Voluntary simplicity is shaped by the individual as well as the society, and marketplace interactions often impact voluntarily simplified approaches to consumption. Pertinent, therefore, is a consideration of how voluntary simplifiers negotiate the tensions between marketplace interactions and decisions (not) to consume, as the exploration of interactions between consumption and non-consumption choices has relevant implications for the advancement of sustainable consumption. Specifically, we seek to answer the following question: how have voluntary simplifiers in a rural context negotiated the relationship between voluntary simplicity and market-based (non-) consumption? This paper reports on a study of 28 rural voluntary simplifiers to explore the intersections between voluntary simplicity and rural markets. Findings highlight the convoluted nature and the multiple manifestations of voluntary simplicity, while the rural context allows an exploration of such tensions in relation to individual voluntary simplicity, local economy, supermarkets, fair trade and consumer culture. [source]

Community Social Responsibility and Its Consequences for Family Business Performance,

JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2008
Linda S. Niehm
Family-centered businesses may have unique perspectives of socially responsible behavior due to family involvement and ties to the community. This research explored the antecedents and consequences of community social responsibility (CSR) for family firms operating in small and rural markets. Using a national sample from the 2000 wave of the National Family Business Survey (NFBS), researchers profiled family business operators' (n = 221) to determine if their CSR orientation contributed to family business performance. Enlightened self interest and social capital perspectives provide a framework for elaborating the role of CSR in sustaining family businesses in changing small communities. Results indicate that three dimensions, commitment to the community, community support, and sense of community, account for 43 percent of the variation in family business operators' CSR. Size of the business was significantly related to family firms' ability to give and receive community support. Further, commitment to the community was found to significantly explain perceived family business performance while community support explained financial performance. Findings suggest that socially responsible business behaviors can indeed contribute to the sustainability of family businesses in small rural communities. [source]

Private tax collection,remnant of the past or a way forward?

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2006
Evidence from rural Uganda
Abstract This article examines the growing role and impacts of private tax collection under fiscal decentralisation in Uganda. Based on evidence from six rural councils, three aspects of privatised tax collection are examined: (i) the impact on the nature of fiscal corruption; (ii) the problem of overzealous collection; and (iii) the challenge of assessing revenue potentials. While possibly meeting short-term demands for local revenue growth and stability, the present form of private tax collection appears to transform the nature of fiscal corruption by reducing corruption at collection point and transferring the problem into the district administration. Moreover, while the charge of overzealousness permeates historical and theoretical work on privatised tax collection, the Ugandan experience casts doubt on its general validity. Instead, perverse distributional effects are the most likely cause of deteriorating state-citizen relations in rural Uganda. Finally, the article considers the merit of the prediction of private collection as a preferred contractual choice for certain indirect taxes, suggesting that problems of asymmetric information in assessing the revenue yields of most rural markets are exaggerated. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Work on the Edge: Enterprise and Employment between City and Countryside

ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 3-4 2002
Robyn Eversole
An interest in the microenterprise finance movement's proposals to increase income and employment in poor local economies led to this study of a Latin American barrio marginal in miniature. The article explores the main income-generating activities of Upper Barrio Japón residents and their adult children, and their use of the plentiful microenterprise finance services on offer in the city of Sucre, Bolivia. The article concludes that microenterprise, often at very small scale, is an important economic strategy for many local residents, but that casual labour and long-distance migration is often more important for young people. Local microenterprises cross urban, suburban and rural markets, but tend to focus on small scale activity: rustic production and retail commerce. Children study, but are entering a very circumscribed range of occupations, with little representation in the professions or skilled trades. Finally, local people use microenterprise finance services, but only sparingly; the ingredients for economic transformation would appear to be elsewhere. [source]