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Is there a secret recipe for economic growth?

No, there is no recipe, but we can extrapolate some pieces of advice from Adam Smith.

An economy can leave behind its “dull” stagnant state and grow when its markets expand, when the productivity of its workers increases thanks to high compensations, which are seen as incentives to work harder and when lobbying and cronyism are kept at bay. Luck plays a role too, but these three ingredients are necessary, even if not sufficient, for an economy to grow and thus be “cheerful.”

These three aspects – expansion of market, liberal compensation of workers and lobbying – especially combined, have often been underestimated in Smith’s understanding of the possible sources of economic growth.

Negative brand engagement represents a pervasive and persistent feature of interactivity in online contexts. Although existing research suggests that consumer negativity is potentially more impactful or detrimental to brands than its positive counterpart, few studies have examined negative brand-related cognitions, feelings and behaviours. Building on the concept of brand engagement, this study aims to operationalise negative online brand engagement.

This paper presents the results of nine studies that contributed to the development and validation of the proposed scale. Building on the concept of engagement, Studies 1–3 enhanced the construct conceptualisation and generated items. Study 4 involved validation with an academic expert panel. The process of measure operationalisation and validation with quantitative data was completed in Studies 5–8. Finally, the scale's nomological validity was assessed in Study 9.

The results confirm the multidimensional nature of negative online brand engagement. The validated instrument encompasses four dimensions (cognition, affection, online constructive behaviour and online destructive behaviour), captured by 17 items.

Progress in understanding and dealing with negative online brand engagement has been hampered by disagreements over conceptualisation and the absence of measures that capture the phenomenon. This work enhances managerial understanding of negativity fostering strategies that protect brand engagement and improve firm performance.

The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.

The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.

The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.

In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.

This paper explores the orchestration of digital innovation in Industry 4.0 organisations.

The study applies the activity theory to explorative multiple case studies. Observations of innovation activities in five business cases take place at two large international organisations.

The results underline five logics of action that drive digital innovation: (1) digital transformation, (2) technology translation, (3) catalyst agents, (4) digital thread and (5) empowerment. Further, the case study organisations highlight the importance of developing a sustainable culture capable of continuously adopting new technologies, processes and infrastructure that will allow the management of digital innovations.

The study empirically shows the motivations and challenges in orchestrating digital innovation in Industry 4.0 organisations.

Large classes pose challenges in managing different types of skills (e.g. maths, subject-specific knowledge, writing, confidence and communication), facilitating interactions, enabling active learning and providing timely feedback. This paper shares a design of a set of assessments for a large undergraduate economics course consisting of students from diverse cultural backgrounds. The benefits, challenges and learning experiences of students are analysed.

Students worked in groups to complete an assessment with several questions which would be useful as a revision for the individual assessment, the following week. Survey questionnaires with Likert-type questions and open-ended questions were used to analyse the learning and skill development that occurred because of the group work. Responses to the open-ended survey questions were coded and analysed by identifying the themes and categorising the various issues that emerged.

This assessment design developed group working skills, created opportunities to interact and enhanced learning. The analysis of the responses found that working with peers enabled the students to generate their own feedback, clear doubts and learn to solve problems. Effective communication, planning meetings and working around the diverse group members’ strengths and weaknesses are some graduate skills that are developed in this group assessment. The challenges were arranging meetings, finalising assessments, engagement of group members and unreliable technology. However, the students found ways to overcome these challenges.

This assessment design can be useful in higher education practice by introducing a mechanism for authentic collaborative practice. This paper adds to the literature on peer interactions and group work and enables effective learning at scale.

The purpose of this research is to systematically scrutinize the influence of macroeconomic determinants on trade openness, through the lens of various trade theories, with a particular focus on the economies of the GIPSI countries – Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

This study investigates the macroeconomic factors influencing trade openness in the GIPSI economies from 1995 to 2020. Methods include stepwise regression (SR) for model selection, Pedroni panel cointegration test and panel regression results. The analysis uses advanced panel regressions, including FMOLS, Panel OLS and FEM. The long-term dynamics were tested using Pedroni cointegration, while Granger causality testing was used to examine the causal direction between the trade openness ratio and trade determinant.

The results show both long-term and short-term relationships between trade openness and (1) foreign direct investment, (2) labor force participation rate, (3) trade reserves and (4) trade balance. The researchers also detected unidirectional and bidirectional causality relationships between trade openness and these four factors. The study also revealed that trade reserves (TR) emerge as the most influential determinant of trade openness, and per capita income does not exhibit economic significance concerning the trade openness of GIPSI economies.

This research is conducted within the context of the GIPSI nations (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy). As such, the outcomes may not be universally applicable to other economic systems due to the distinct institutional settings and governance structures across different economic groups. Future investigations may explore the relationship between trade openness and its determinants by incorporating different variables.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study investigating the theory that suggested trade drivers drive the trade openness of GIPSI countries context. By focusing on GIPSI countries, the study offers a unique perspective on the dynamics of trade openness in economies that have experienced financial crises and stringent austerity measures.

Project management scholars and practitioners have long debated how best to harness social interactions to optimise knowledge exchange and enhance stakeholder alignment and value. This study aims to assist project managers to understand and manage fuzziness and create enduring front-end value. It views the project life cycle as a potential source of co-created value. The paper uses a social capital lens to provide a deeper understanding of the project front-end; it uses a three-dimensional view (structural, relational, cognitive) to explore how stakeholder social capital can overcome front-end fuzziness to enhance decision-making and, thus, value creation.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior managers from teleconnections companies, which, when combined with secondary data, established the impact, nature and dimensions of social capital within a project management setting.

The research found that social capital can help to reduce complexity, uncertainty and equivocality in the early stages of projects, making them more clearly defined and thus helping to create greater stakeholder value in the later stages of the project. A surprising finding was that some project team members engaged in intentional equivocality to try to promote their own benefits rather than those of the organisation.

This paper reconceptualises the impact of social capital on stakeholder value creation in the front-end of projects. The paper contributes to a more holistic view of the front-end of project management, focusing social capital to reduce the sources of front-end fuzziness.

The World Bank-sponsored public financial management reforms attempt to instil fiscal discipline through techno-managerial packages. Taking Ghana's integrated financial management information system (IFMIS) as a case, this paper explores how and why local actors engaged in counter-conduct against these reforms.

Interviews, observations and documentary analyses on the operationalisation of IFMIS constitute this paper's empirical basis. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucauldian notions of governmentality and counter-conduct.

Empirics demonstrate how and why politicians and bureaucrats enacted ways of escaping, evading and subverting IFMIS's disciplinary regime. Politicians found the new accounting regime too constraining to their electoral and patronage politics and, therefore, enacted counter-conduct around the notion of political exigencies, creating expansionary fiscal conditions which the World Bank tried to mitigate through IFMIS. Perceiving the new regime as subverting their bureaucratic identity and influence, bureaucrats counter-conducted reforms through questioning, critiquing and rhetorical venting. Notably, the patronage politics of appropriating wealth and power underpins both these political and bureaucratic counter-conducts.

This study contributes to the critical accounting understanding of global public financial management reform failures by offering new empirical and theoretical insights as to how and why politicians and bureaucrats who are supposed to own and implement them nullify the global governmentality intentions of fiscal disciplining through subdued forms of resistance.

This study reduces carbon emission in logistics distribution to realize the low-carbon site optimization for a cold chain logistics distribution center problem.

This study involves cooling, commodity damage and carbon emissions and establishes the site selection model of low-carbon cold chain logistics distribution center aiming at minimizing total cost, and grey wolf optimization algorithm is used to improve the artificial fish swarm algorithm to solve a cold chain logistics distribution center problem.

The optimization results and stability of the improved algorithm are significantly improved and compared with other intelligent algorithms. The result is confirmed to use the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region site selection. This study reduces composite cost of cold chain logistics and reduces damage to environment to provide a new idea for developing cold chain logistics.

This study contributes to propose an optimization model of low-carbon cold chain logistics site by considering various factors affecting cold chain products and converting carbon emissions into costs. Prior studies are lacking to take carbon emissions into account in the logistics process. The main trend of current economic development is low-carbon and the logistics distribution is an energy consumption and high carbon emissions.

This paper aims to offer insight into how strategies within the accounting profession, which has been becoming more global, might be changed by the recent outbreak of the Second Cold War between the West and the Rest of the World.

We explore the strategies of those who called themselves “Confucian accountants” in China, a country which has recently discouraged its state-owned enterprises from using the services of the Big 4. We do this by employing qualitative research methods, including reflexive photo interviews, in which Big-4 accountants, recognised as the most Westernised accounting actors in China, and Confucian accountants are asked to take and explain photographs representing their professional lives. Bourdieu’s notions of “economy of practices” and “vision-of-division strategy” are drawn upon to understand who the Confucian accountants are and what they do strategically in their pursuit of a higher revenue stream and improved social standing in the Chinese social space.

The homegrown Confucian accountants share cultural-cognitive characteristics with neighbouring social actors, such as their clients and government officials, who have been inculcated with Confucianism and the state’s cultural confidence policy in pursuit of a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics”. Those accountants try to enhance their social standing and revenue stream by strategically demonstrating their difference from Big-4 accountants. For this purpose, they wear Confucian clothes, have Confucian props in their office, employ Confucian phrases in their everyday conversations, use Confucian business cards and construct and maintain guanxi with government officials and clients.

This paper is the first attempt to explore Confucian accountants’ strategies for increasing their revenue and social standing at the start of the Second Cold War.