Mariana Bogdanova

Cross‐national mentoring ngos in transition societies: Field research and developments in Bulgaria

Non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in societies undergoing socio‐economic transition are widely regarded as central to building a civil society that encourages democracy. At the moment, the Bulgarian civil society depends greatly on foreign funding whilst NGOs are unable to empower their beneficiaries in decision‐making. Given this reality, are cross‐national NGO partnerships able to strengthen organisations? What kinds of support are on offer, what kinds of (inter) dependency relations occur and to what extent do NGOs model their management practices on their mentor and with what results? This paper sets out to situate these questions in the context of a proposed theoretical construct, organizational mentoring, which occurs where national or local organisations have access to and support of well‐established NGOs abroad. The model is constructed on the findings of a qualitative case study conducted in Bulgaria on the development of a Bulgarian NGO and its relationship with a UK NGO. This is preceded by a discussion on selected literature reflecting the meaning of transition, change in societal values and organizational practices in Eastern Europe, and the development of voluntary sector organizations in transforming countries. The theoretical model proposed here is relevant in providing a systematic discussion on organizational change towards a more enlightened engagement between civil society organizations in cross‐national partnerships. Such discussion has implications for the development of hybrid forms of coexistence between Eastern and Western European partners reflected in their interdependent organizational practices.

Creating loops with value recovery: empirical study of fresh food supply chains

Abstract In an era of increased scarcity of resources and pollution, the concept of the circular economy is re-emerging to steer supply chains towards more sustainable business practices. The potential of value recovery provides opportunities for the creation of circular supply chains. Reverse flows and value recovery processes are scarcely studied in the context of fresh food supply chains. In this paper, we report findings from an empirical study of three fresh food supply chain networks by considering: product residual value, quantities available for recovery, value from recovery and markets for recovered products. We show that (1) financial value from recovery is a necessary condition for profitability of operations of any value recovery process in fresh food supply chains, but not for the occurrence of the corresponding loop itself; (2) reuse and remanufacturing loops likely feed into alternative markets, while recycling loops likely feed back into fresh food supply chains.