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Implementing blockchain in sustainable development goals (SDGs) and environmental, social and governance (ESG)-aligned infrastructure development involves intricate strategic factors. Despite technological advancements, a significant research gap persists, particularly in emerging economies. This study aims to address the challenges related to SDGs and ESG objectives during infrastructure delivery remain problematic, identifying and evaluating critical strategic factors for successful blockchain implementation.

This study employs a three-stage methodology. Initially, 13 strategic factors are identified through a literature review and validated by conducting semi-structured interviews with six experts. In the second stage, the data were collected from nine additional experts. In the final stage, the collected data undergoes analysis using interpretive structural modeling (ISM)–cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC), aiming to identify and evaluate the independent and dependent powers of strategic factors driving blockchain implementation in infrastructure development for SDGs and ESG objectives.

The study’s findings highlight three significant independent factors crucial for successfully integrating blockchain technology (BT) into infrastructure development for SDGs and ESG goals: data security (F4), identity management (F8) and supply chain management (F7). The study unravels these factors, hierarchical relationships and dependencies by applying the MICMAC and ISM techniques, emphasizing their interconnectedness.

This study highlights critical strategic factors for successful blockchain integration in SDG and ESG-aligned infrastructure development, offering insights for policymakers and practitioners while emphasizing the importance of training and infrastructure support in advancing sustainable practices.

The paper aims to provide a critical review of how variations in the conceptualization and contextualization of hate crime across US cities might impact how their individual law enforcement agencies collect hate crime data. Media reports and political discourses present hate crime as a prevalent problem in the USA. However, this representation of hate crime in the public sphere is not reflected in the relatively low national numbers of hate crimes published annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Drawing primarily on the national hate crime data for the period 2008–2018, this author conducted a secondary research study of the concept, context, extent and law enforcement collection of hate crime data in five cities in the USA.

This paper is a product of some of the findings of the study, which include the definition of hate crime at the federal, state and city levels and the contextualization of hate crimes at these levels. The findings show inconsistencies in how the five cities and associated law enforcement agencies conceptualize hate crime and in how they collect and report hate crime data at local and national levels.

Through its analysis of how five US cities and the associated law enforcement agencies interpret and respond to hate crime data collection, with recommendations of best practices for hate crime data collection by law enforcement agencies, the paper contributes to the academic and nonacademic debate on hate crime.

Cyberloafing is an organization-directed counterproductive work behavior (CWB). One stream of literature deems cyberloafing to be bad for organizations and their employees, while another suggests cyberloafing is a coping response to stressful work events. Our work contributes to the latter stream of literature. The key objective of our study is to examine whether cyberloafing could be a means to cope with a stressful work event-abusive supervision, and if yes, what mediating and boundary conditions are involved. For this investigation, the authors leveraged the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory which posits that individuals engage in CWB to cope with the negative affect generated by the stressors and that this relationship is moderated at the first stage by personality traits.

Using a multi-wave survey design, the authors collected data from 357 employees working in an Indian IT firm. Results revealed support for three out of the four hypotheses.

Based on the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory, the authors found that work-related negative affect fully mediated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing, and work locus of control (WLOC) moderated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and work-related negative affect. The authors did not find any evidence of a direct relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing. Also, the positive indirect relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing through work-related negative affect was moderated at the first stage by the WLOC such that the indirect effect was stronger (weaker) at high (low) levels of WLOC.

This work demonstrates that cyberloafing could be a way for employees to cope with their abusive supervisors.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies are encouraged to form supply chain collaborations (SCC) for better circular economy (CE) performance. Yet, the literature remains silent on SMEs’ susceptibility to opportunistic behaviors of supply chain (SC) partners. This study draws on the transaction cost theory (TCT) and the resource-based view (RBV) to investigate the impact of shirking on SCC and CE performance while exploring how circular economy entrepreneurship (CEE) can curb the impacts of shirking on SCC as well as drive technical capability (TC) to moderate the relationship between SCC and CE performance.

The TCT and RBV are used as a theoretical lens to investigate the direct, mediation and moderation effects tested via partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using survey data from 152 managers of SMEs in Nepal.

Contrary to past findings, the study results show that shirking, directly and indirectly, has a positive and significant impact on SCC and CE performance, respectively. The results also show that as CEE, which positively and significantly drives TC, moves from low to high levels, the effect of shirking on SCC dampens, and as TC moves from low to high levels, the effect of SCC on CE performance intensifies.

This study’s contribution lies in extending the shirking debate to the CE domain and also in identifying CEE and TC as potent means for SMEs in emerging economies to mitigate shirking impacts and induce SC partner commitments in CE-driven SCC. This study provides relevant theoretical and practical insights.

There is a renowned interest in adaptability as an important principle for achieving circularity in the built environment. Circular building adaptability (CBA) could enable long-term building utilisation and flexible use of space with limited material flows. This paper identifies and analyses design strategies facilitating CBA to propose a framework for enhancing the implementation of the concept.

Interviews were conducted with professionals experienced in circular building design to explore the questions “How do currently applied design strategies enable CBA?” and “How can CBA be implemented through a conceptual design framework?”. The interviews encircled multi-residential building examples to identify currently applied circular design strategies. The interviews were analysed through qualitative content analysis using CBA determinants as a coding framework.

The results show that all ten CBA determinants are supported by design strategies applied in current circular building design. However, some determinants are more supported than others, and design strategies are often employed without explicitly considering adaptability. The design strategies that enable adaptability offer long-term solutions requiring large-scale modifications rather than facilitating low-impact adaptation by dwelling occupants. The proposed conceptual design framework could aid architects in resolving these issues and implementing CBA in their circular building design.

This paper’s contribution to CBA is threefold. It demonstrates design strategies facilitating CBA, proposes a conceptual design framework to apply the concept and identifies the need for a more comprehensive application of available adaptability strategies.

Introduction: India has the 15th-largest domestic natural gas consumption (NGC), critical to sustainable economic growth. Promoting natural gas will have a crucial impact on production in all industries.

Purpose: This research gives an overview of NGC and gross domestic product (GDP) in India from 1990 to 2021 and investigates the association and nature of causality between NGC and GDP in India.

Methodology: For the years 1990 through 2021, we used annual statistics from the NGC and the GDP of India. Both research variables data have been taken from the World Bank Indicator.

Findings: There is no causality and correlation between natural gas and GDP in India.

Practical Implications: Based on the research, the Government of India can create different policies for substituting natural gas for other energy sources to have a healthier impact on a sustainable environment in the short and long term. In the future, researchers can work on environmental degradation and GDP.

The uptake of Design for Safety (DfS) practices in developing countries like Ghana has been limited. This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the barriers across regulatory, organizational, cultural and educational dimensions that restrict DfS assimilation in the Ghanaian construction sector. Identifying the key impediments can inform policy initiatives and industry efforts to facilitate safer construction.

A postpositive philosophy underpinned the quantitative research. Multi-stage research was used. A comprehensive questionnaire survey was designed and given to six industry experts to assess clarity, relevance and effectiveness after a thorough literature review. In all, 164 professionals were reached to take part in the study using purposive sampling and consequently snowballing. “Variables” were ranked using mean score ranking and normalization techniques; exploratory factor analysis was then used to group variables into clusters.

Emergent findings revealed four distinct clusters of challenges; Design Process and Communication Challenges; Regulatory and Expertise Limitations; Planning and Education Constraints; and Attitudinal and Perception Barriers. These findings help identify targeted solutions to overcome barriers including developing robust regulatory frameworks, promoting collaboration among stakeholders and cultivating a positive safety culture.

This study provides new insights into the integration of DfS in the context of the developing construction industry in Ghana. This study expands the knowledge base to drive further research in enhancing construction safety in developing countries. Practical recommendations for overcoming these challenges are proposed.

This study aims to explore the enabling and suppressing effects of leader affiliative and aggressive humor on employee knowledge sharing form the lens of emotional contagion process, which provides theoretical reference for the applications of different leader humor style, thereby enhancing employee knowledge sharing.

This study collected three waves of data and surveyed 379 employees in China. Regression analysis, bootstrapping and latent moderation structural equation were adopted to test the hypotheses.

Leader affiliative humor has a positive impact on employee knowledge sharing, whereas leader aggressive humor has a negative impact on employee knowledge sharing. Positive emotion plays a mediating role between leader affiliative humor and employee knowledge sharing, and negative emotion plays a mediating role between leader aggressive humor and employee knowledge sharing. Moreover, supervisor–subordinate Guanxi moderates the relationship between leader affiliative humor and positive emotion, and between leader aggressive humor and negative emotion, respectively.

This study not only adds to the knowledge sharing literature calling for the exploration of antecedents and mechanism of employee knowledge sharing, but also contributes to our comprehensive understanding of the suppressing and enabling effects of leader humor style on employee knowledge sharing. Besides, this study also unpacks the dual-path mechanism and boundary condition between leader humor style and employee knowledge sharing and augments the theoretical explanations of emotional contagion theory between leader humor style and employee knowledge sharing.

This paper aims to investigate the role of corporate governance on the bank profitability of Indian banks vis-à-vis South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations.

For the Corporate Governance Index, the authors examined board accountability, transparency and disclosure and audit committee, while Tobin’s Q, return on equity and return on assets are used to measure the bank’s profitability. The study used a two-stage analysis based on balanced panel data for robust findings. Sample of this study consists of 60 commercial banks from India and 60 banks from SAARC nations for the period of 2009–2021. This study used panel regression and a generalized method of moment approach using the CAMELS framework on banking industry-specific variables to determine their respective impacts.

The findings of this study suggest that board accountability is positive and significantly affects the profitability of banks as indicated by return on assets, return on equity and Tobin’s Q. In contrast, the audit committee has a positive and insignificant impact on return on assets, return on equity and Tobin’s Q, while transparency and disclosure have a negative and significant impact on these metrics. Furthermore, the country dummy result shows a significant positive impact on all the bank performance parameters, implying that Indian banks have the highest degree of convergence with corporate governance as compared to other SAARC nations.

This study provides insight to the regulators, policymakers and financial institutions to evaluate the role of corporate governance in emerging economies. However, the findings of the study should be interpreted with caution, as the results are sensitive to the disparity between India and other SAARC nations' government policies, climatic circumstances and cultural or religious traditions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to gauge the performance of Indian banks vis-à-vis SAARC nations using the CAMELS framework approach. Further, findings of this study suggest some novel evidence tying corporate governance quality with the profitability of banks among SAARC nations.