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The use of socio-economic scenarios in small island developing states (SIDS) when assessing, and planning for, the impacts of global changes on national socioeconomic and environmental systems is still in its infancy. The research conducts a cross-scale foresight scenario exercise to produce regional scenarios and national storylines for Caribbean islands that are of “partial” consistency to the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and representative concentration pathways (RCPs) and shows how future socioeconomic and climatic changes can be applied to inform natural resource management decisions.

To develop the scenarios, the study uses a three-staged linking process using mixed methods to “triangulate” each technique to compensate for weaknesses of one method by introducing a complementary method at each stage. A participatory-expert stepwise approach with feedback loops is used and complemented with a climate sensitive tourism water demand model.

Four regional exploratory socio-economic scenarios were constructed that are partially consistent with global scenarios. In addition, national storylines for four island states were developed based on the regional scenarios. Using RCP 4.5 hotel water demand in Barbados is estimated under three of the regional scenarios based on compatibility. The results indicate there is a 17% difference between the highest and lowest estimated water demand, indicating the effect of varying socio-economic conditions on water demand.

The paper contributes to the literature by presenting regional socio-economic scenarios, specifically for SIDS, that are partially consistent with both global climatic RCPs and SSPs using a cross-scale approach. The scenarios are then used to demonstrate how future socio-economic pathways impact on freshwater demand.

Since the decline of export agriculture and the loss of trade preferences, most Caribbean countries have shifted their economies towards the provision of tourism services. Barbados, for example, receives more than two‐thirds of its foreign exchange earnings from tourism. The sustainability of tourism in the Caribbean can potentially be affected by climate change. This paper aims to address this issue.

This paper provides an assessment of the likely effects of climate change in the small state of Barbados and suggests some recommended adaptations. Climate change is expected to impact on temperature, rainfall and severe weather, sea levels and sea surface temperatures, biodiversity loss, and lead to erosion and seasonal shifts on the island.

The paper finds that, in relation to tourism demand, as travellers from source markets become more conscious of their carbon footprint and the implementation of green taxes, there might be some alteration in demand for long‐haul destinations such as Barbados. On the supply‐side, increased operating costs, due to higher insurance premiums (particularly for beachfront properties) and greater cooling costs, to name a few could all impact on the profitability of hotels in the island. As climate change impacts on the water table, there is also likely to be some competition for water resources for residential and tourism purposes.

The paper supplies useful information on sustainability of tourism in the Caribbean and the effects of climate change.

The water sector is set to continue to face severe challenges in meeting the financial requirements for maintaining, extending and upgrading new and ageing water systems in the face of growing water scarcity, stricter regulatory requirements and competition for capital. The gap between the required financing and the projected financing is said to be growing but there are no good estimates available. The purpose of this paper is to present a recent analysis of the investment requirements of the water sector in OECD countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China up to 2030, taking into account the likely impact of socio‐economic trends, internal politics, environmental challenges and technological change.

In order to estimate the required financing, present expenditures as a percentage of GDP were analysed. Estimates of projected annual GDP growth coupled with an evaluation of the impact of country specific socio‐economic, political, environmental and technological trends were used to derive projections for future investment needs.

The estimated level of infrastructure investment requirements to 2030 as determined by this study is considerably higher than had been expected and higher than for the energy, telecommunications and transport infrastructure sectors.

The findings have enormous implications in terms of the ability of service providers for their business models and in raising the necessary finances.

This is one of a very few studies to report on the potential scale of the overall future investment requirements of the water sector that has been undertaken. Previous works have focused mainly on sub‐sectoral goals such as meeting the Millennium Development Goals and so have under‐reported the scale of the financing problem.

This study aims to understand master’s students’ experiences of service-learning, following their participation in a workshop with local social innovators whose activities had contributed to combating poverty in East Africa and to determine how this participation affected work on the students’ theses. The authors also explored possible gender differences in this context.

The study was based on pretest–posttest mixed methods research design. Data were collected from master’s students within the social sciences and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, respectively, in Kenya and Uganda, via surveys and interviews before the workshop, immediately afterwards and six months later.

Students’ immediate experience was that the workshop contributed to increased critical awareness, adoption of transdisciplinary community-serving approaches and strengthened self-confidence. Six months later, most had related their projects to social problems (e.g. poverty) in their communities. Moreover, the results motivated integration of gender-sensitive curricula based on service-learning in East Africa.

Based on the results, the authors suggest a framework for gender-sensitive curriculum development that can stimulate service-learning in master’s students. Implementation of such a curriculum could eventually contribute to community development, including, e.g. poverty reduction.

Studies on service-learning are rare in Africa, especially in postgraduate education. Gender-sensitive studies on service-learning are generally scarce and the same holds for studies on encouraging STEM students to integrate social innovation into their thesis work. By combining these aspects, this study presents an original contribution to existing research.

The purpose is to inspire a more Bakhtinian perspective of conversations in change communication. Inspiration is drawn from Bakhtin and argue that change management has, for too long, focused on monologic implementation of predetermined change, i.e. how to develop the “best plot”. Change agents need to consider their anthropology are argued and ask themselves whether the people in their organizations are the objects of communication or subjects in communication. Furthermore, the argument about one's anthropology and one's espoused communication theory are intrinsically intertwined: how one communicates depends entirely on whether one views people as participating subjects in the process or as objects of the process.

Consensus‐as‐monologue and consensus‐as‐dialogue are distinguished. Under the former, the notion of a single speaker is emphasized (expectations of response are low). But under the latter, consensus becomes saturated with the self as the other (polemic, but born between people).

Change agents need to consider their anthropology are argued and ask themselves whether the people in their organizations are the objects of communication or subjects in communication.

Seeing conversation among people as a never‐ending process. A different perspective on participation – a perspective whereby one person's message joins with that of another and one person's meaning joins with that of another is offered.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the prominent cognitive biases that influence Lean practices in organisations that have a multi-cultural work environment which will aid the organisational managers and academics in enhancing the understanding of the human thought process and mitigate them suitably.

A multiple case study was conducted in organisations that were previously committed to Lean practices and had a multi-cultural work environment. This research was conducted on five companies based on 99 in-depth semi-structured interviews and seven process observations that sought to establish the system-wide cognitive biases present in a multi-cultural Lean environment.

The novel findings indicate that nine new biases influence Lean implementation and practices in a multi-cultural environment. This study also found strong connectivity between Lean practices and 45 previously identified biases that could affect positively or negatively the lean methodologies and their implementation. Biases were resilient enough that their influence on Lean in multi-cultural workplaces, even with transient populations, did not demonstrate cultural differentiation.

Like any qualitative research, constructivism and narrative analyses are subjected to understanding based on knowledge gained on the subject, and data may have been interpreted differently. Constructivist co-recreation of process scenarios based result limitations is therefore acknowledged. The interactive participation in exploring the knowledge sought after and interaction that could have a probable influence on the participant need to be acknowledged. However, the research design, multiple methods of data collection, generalisation based on data collection and analysis methods limit the effects of these and findings are reliable to a greater extent.

The results can provide an enhanced understanding of biases and insights into a new managerial approach to take remedial steps on biases’ influence on Lean practices that can result in improved productivity and well-being from a business process perspective. Understanding and mitigating the prominent biases can aid Lean manufacturing processes and support decision makers and line managers in improving lean methodologies’ effectiveness and productivity. The biases can be negated and used to implement decisions with ease. The influence of biases and the model could be used as a basis to counter implementation barriers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that connects the cognitive perspectives of Lean business processes in a multi-cultural environment to identify the cognitive biases that influence Lean practices in organisations that were previously committed to Lean practices. The novel findings indicate that nine new biases and 45 previously identified biases influence Lean implementation and practices in a multi-cultural environment. The second novelty of this study shows the connection between cognitive biases, Lean implementation and practices in multi-cultural business processes.