Rapid changes in agricultural systems call for profound changes in agricultural research and extension practices. The Diagnosis, Design, Assessment, Training and Extension (DATE) approach was developed and applied to co-design Conservation Agriculture-based cropping systems in contrasted situations. DATE is a multi-scale, multi-stakeholder participatory approach that integrates scientific and local knowledge. It emerged in response to questions raised by and issues encountered in the design of innovative systems. A key feature of this approach is the high input of innovative systems which are often although not exclusively based on conservation agricultural practices. Prototyping of innovative cropping systems (ICSs) largely relies on a conceptual model of soil–plant–macrofauna–microorganism system functioning. By comparing the implementation of the DATE approach and conservation agriculture-based cropping systems in Madagascar, Lao PDR, and Cambodia, we show that: (i) the DATE approach is flexible enough to be adapted to local conditions; (ii) market conditions need to be taken into account in designing agricultural development scenarios; and (iii) the learning process during the transition to conservation agriculture requires time. The DATE approach not only enables the co-design of ICSs with farmers, but also incorporates training and extension dimensions. It feeds back practitioners’ questions to researchers, and provides a renewed and extended source of innovation to farmers.

The major focus of this research is to investigate whether environmental knowledge has any impact on organizational outcomes through an empirical investigation of 127 Spanish hospitality companies, using structural equation models. Our results show that environmental knowledge is an important determiner for developing organizational outcomes. However, this relationship is completed with just two related constructs: Firstly, the company's acquisition process plays a key role in managing the tension between the knowledge necessary to develop the appropriated environmental initiatives and current knowledge. Secondly, the company's distribution process also sheds light on tangible means for managers to enhance their company's outcomes through environmental knowledge.

This article analyses the competition strategies adopted by the Christian Democratic (DC) and post-Christian Democratic (post-DC) parties after the electoral reforms of 1993 and 2005. Four main aspects are considered: the significance of cultural (ideological and cognitive) factors in the DC's exit from the political stage; the need to adapt post-DC strategy to bipolarism and the nostalgia for an autonomous centre; the nature and geography of the post-DC vote; and the attitudes of the middle-level elites of the three principal post-DC parties (the DL, the UDEUR and the UDC) vis-à-vis the competitive and strategic decisions they had to make. The article reaches the following conclusions: the post-DC parties share the same cultural orientations and have similar politico-electoral characteristics (a confessional background, the relevance of patronage networks and personalistic vote mobilisation); all three parties adapted, in different ways and with different degrees of success, to the new structure of coalitional bipolarism in the decade 1996–2006; and both research data on the main post-DC parties’ national congress delegates and the evolution of their electoral strategies on the eve of the 2008 elections show that the post-Christian Democrats felt more at home in the centre-left alignment, together with the post-communist PDS-DS, than in the centre-right alignment led by Berlusconi.