Ronny Rowert – författare

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Economics - International Economic Relations, grade: 1,3, University of Freiburg (Institut fur Volkswirtschaftslehre und Finanzwissenschaft I), course: The Economics and Politics of Global Agriculture and Trade, language: English, abstract: Between 2005 and 2008 the prices of most major cereals almost doubled or tripled, causing violent food riots all over the world. World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick emphasised in mid-April 2008, at the peak of the price surge, that "e;a doubling of food prices over the last three years could potentially push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty"e; (WB 2008). This price rise took place in a very short period of time and especially the rapid increase between January 2007 and April 2008 (and the immediate decline afterwards) needed an explanation. A lot of rash statements were made meanwhile and immediately after the food crisis, coming from the media, politicians and lobbies. Most of the non-academic commentaries lacked differentiation and evidence in the attempt to explain the reasons and factors which caused the price spike. Western policy makers insisted on explaining that the developing and emerging countries themselves were responsible for increasing prices due to poor agricultural policies and changing eating habits in developing nations as argued by German Chancellor Merkel (Reuters 2008). The media and different pro-poor lobby groups used biofuels or speculation as scapegoats for the entire price rise while the academic literature discussed the weight of these factors and added others like global economic growth, higher energy prices, declining stocks, adverse weather events and decline in agricultural investment (Elliot 2008). This paper aims to summarise the scale of influence that different factors had during the price surge, dealing especially with biofuels as a possible major cause of the crisis. Therefore, it is necessary to first examine the characteristics of the price surge. Secondly, the role of every single suspicious factor will be evaluated, and finally, the reasons behind the appearance of the most important factor will be investigated.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, University of Auckland (Management and International Business), course: Contemporary Issues in Organizations, language: English, abstract: The global business world experiences dramatic developments, shifts and challenges since the end of the last century. Factors such as international competition, knowledge-based production, technological changes, advances in IT, and deregulation play an increasingly important role. Hence, conventional organizational concepts and structures of the 'old economy' come under growing pressure due to insufficient capabilities to deal with these landslide changes. Traditional organizational structrues, most prominently the classical bureaucracy with its conventional formalized and hierarchical form, are displaced by new organizational forms. More horizontal relationships, with partners (internal or external) being only focused on core competencies, take the place of old vertically structured hierarchies. More interactive communication approaches, both vertically and horizontally, can be observed. More decentralized management concepts lead to incentive-based and increasingly autonomous project teams (Clegg, Kornberger, & Pitsis, 2005). According to one of the most renowned management theorists Henry Mintzberg (1981), for every specific configuration of an organization s environment and its tasks, particular organizational structures fit best. Therefore, one could expect that new organizational forms are best capable of dealing with prevailling challenges such as innovation. This essay aims to analyse the case of virtual organizations and the way they might shape, and/or derail the processes and outcomes of innovation.

Literature Review from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,7, University of Auckland (Centre for Development Studies), course: Contemporary Theories of International Development, language: English, abstract: The field of development studies has seen an endless coming and going of various new paradigms in the latter half of the 20th century. They all claimed to be highly innovative, stirring hope that, after all the dissatisfactory experiences prior to their emergence, the big problems of developing countries can finally be solved. A vast body of major theory on development emerged since the 1940s, such as Modernisation theory, Dependency theory, World-Systems theory, and Neoliberalism with its strucural adjustment programms (Chant & McIlwaine, 2009). In the early to mid-1990s, an outraged collection of texts, highly critical of all those conventional development approaches, emerged. In contrast to former controversies, these writings were novel in the way that they casted "e;a serious doubt not only on the feasibility but on the very desirability of development"e; itself (Escobar, 2000, p. 11), making use of newly revised poststructuralist and discursive approaches. This way of criticism became known as post-development. According to McGregor (2009, p.2), the "e;most influential and widely read text however"e; was Escobar's (1995) Encountering Development: The Naking and Unmaking of the Third World. This article aims to review this book and is divided into three parts. The first section provides a brief summary of the text, followed by an analysis dealing with major potential contradictions and their relative insignificance, closing with the final part by highlighting the huge and unique impact the book had in the field of development studies and especially in the branch of post-development theory.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,3, University of Auckland (Centre for Development Studies), course: Contemporary Theories of International Development, language: English, abstract: Only few recent ideas have generated as much enthusiasm for poverty alleviation in countries of the southern hemisphere as the idea of microfinance. It promises both the provision of costeffective banking services to poor households and lifting people out of poverty through microenterprise development and self employment (Murdoch, 1998). Success stories, such as the granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in 2006, are being broadcasted around the world. Although evidence for the role of microfinance in poverty alleviation remains highly contested, especially due to recent media coverage about suicides among borrowers (Biswas, 2010), advocates of these programs still insist on its continuation. Marguerite Robinson, author of The Microfinance Revolution, states that, despite ups and downs and some setbacks, it seems like the idea of sustainable finance for the poor is here to stay (MCS, 2001, p. 5). By having successfully established the key tenet that an estimated 2.7 billion poor people worldwide are in need of access to formal financial services (World Bank, 2011), the industry s practices are almost exclusively criticized by positivist approaches without questioning its underlying assumptions. Due to its hegemonic appearance, it is reasonable to state that microfinance is everywhere (Roy, 2010, p. 22). This essay aims to question the concept of microfinance itself as being common sense. By adopting a poststructuralist attitude, it is possible to uncover and expose these reigning assumptions (Agarwal, 1996). In this sense, this analysis attempts to reveal this example of establishment of truth (Foucault, 1975, p. 184) because we not only govern others and ourselves according to these powerful truths but truth is also produced through the way we govern others and ourselves (Dean, 2010). The first section provides a brief overview of the extent to which microfinance has entered the global stage and afterwards, it tries to contextualize this idea within the emergence of advanced liberal government and millennialdevelopment. The subsequent section aims to show the hegemonic features of microfinance, especially through the control of knowledge through the CGAP initiative, before continuing with an in-depth study of different contradictions of empowerment as a major feature of microfinance. The final part summarizes the results by highlighting the mechanisms through which microfinance governs its recipients.