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The purpose of this paper is to explore the meanings and business practices of four Southern Fair Trade enterprises (SFTEs).

The paper is based on research with four SFTEs in Bangladesh, taking an ethnographic approach with qualitative methodologies such as semi‐structured interviews, recorded meetings, informal discussions, analysis of grey literature, and observation with managers, staff, field workers and artisans of the organisations.

The meanings of Fair Trade are located in personal, family, business and national understandings of fairness and development. Such meanings inform the business practices of the SFTEs, used to achieve both commercial success and social goals, confirming the role of SFTEs in creating and maintaining ideals of fairer trade.

There is a need for more research on Fair Trade from the perspective of SFTEs.

The research draws attention to the key roles and business practices of the SFTE, increasing the understanding of what happens in the name of Fair Trade, and also provides lessons for other socially responsible enterprises.

The research highlights the importance of Southern meanings and practices, which should be included in the conceptualisation of Fair Trade, thus facilitating both informed debate and understanding the possibilities for the promotion and extension of fairer trade.

This research is unusual in concentrating on the central role played by the SFTE, particularly in the handicraft sector and with businesses rather than cooperatives. The business practices and decisions of SFTEs are often hidden in representations of Fair Trade.

The purpose of this article is to examine, appraise and highlight the significance of promoting innovation in aid of industrial development.

A comprehensive range of published literature is critiqued first to understand why industrial development constitutes a major objective of a country's economic strategy and government policy. Then, through a theoretical review of industrial policy works, relevant issues (e.g. how efficient industrial development sustains economic growth) are highlighted for discussion. For instance, the importance of private sector‐led industrial development and the need to adopt a primary focus on innovation‐driven industrial policy.

By drawing lessons from the developed world, the article explains why industrial policy‐making must address the pursuit of innovation as a prime mover of economic development; and further outlines the role of government in innovation‐driven industrial policy. As a case study, evolutionary perspectives of Singapore's industrialisation process are elaborated to illustrate a government's role in industrial policy‐making.

Future research could provide better guidance to address new emergent challenges of industrial policy‐making.

The discussion on industrial policy issues raised in this article is expected to be of interest to policy makers, industry planners, academic researchers and business practitioners.

This article offers insights into effective industrial policy‐making for developing nations that may help to transform their economies.

Economic development of a nation depends on the growth and development of its economic entities such as business organizations. In order for an organization to succeed and grow, it has to maintain a technological edge in this competitive global business environment. This can be accomplished either through technological innovation or through technological acquisition and adaptation. The innovated or acquired technology is then transferred to different units of the organization, located at different geographical locations. These transfer, implementation, and use phenomena are crucial for total organizational success and growth.

The paper develops a model for enhancing R&D productivity for Indian public funded laboratories. The paper utilizes the productivity data of five Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratories for analysis and to form the constructs of the model.

The weighted average method was employed for analyzing the rankings of survey respondents pertaining to the significant measures enhancing R&D involvement of researchers and significant non-R&D jobs. The authors have proposed a model of productivity. Various individual, organizational and environmental constructs related to the researchers working in the CSIR laboratories have been outlined that can enhance R&D productivity of researchers in Indian R&D laboratories. Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to find the predictability of the productivity model.

The organizational factors have a crucial role in enhancing the R&D outputs of CSIR laboratories. The R&D productivity of researchers can be improved through implementing the constructs of the proposed model of productivity.

The R&D productivity model can be adapted by the R&D laboratories to enhance researchers’ R&D involvement, increased R&D outputs and achieving self-sustenance in long run.

The R&D laboratories can initiate exercises to explore the most relevant factors and measures to enhance R&D productivity of their researchers. The constructs of the model can function as a guideline to introduce the most preferable research policies in the laboratory for overall mutual growth of laboratory and the researchers.

Hardly any studies have been found that have focused on finding the measures of enhancing R&D involvement of researchers and the influence of significant time-intensive jobs on researchers’ productivity.

Criteria of skills and their schemata have evolved out of historical social practices. Interpretation of social events is guided and constrained by the prevailing rationality which itself reflects the dominant constellation of power. Hence, some argued that informal provision of skills delivery is the base of business growth. Upon the success of informal provision, institutional counterpart unethically grabs the market, kicking off the earlier. Evidences arguably confirmed that the institutional provision of skills delivery contributes to rapid business growth. Business growth is indeed important but not at the cost of exploitation of ethics which is the central focus of this study.

Given the differentiated nature of research questions, multiple techniques are used to collect the data. However, this research adopts the norms of qualitative methods. Both secondary and primary data are used. While secondary data are collected through document reviews, primary data are collected via interviews. In total, 12 industries are sampled and equally distributed into two sectors (manufacturing and services).

Findings show that the professional positions in the manufacturing industries at their inception phase were occupied by non-university graduates who received neither informal trainings nor on-the-job trainings. Over the time, university graduates started capturing the market. This has forced the non-university graduates to accrue a diploma from the universities in order to retain. Those who failed to obtain a university diploma are compelled to leave the sector. In fact, professional positions in service industries at the inception phase were mainly occupied by the university graduates who did not study the relevant subjects from the universities but received training from the informal provision. Later, universities started offering these programmes.

A few studies have been published in the area of manufacturing industries especially on garments sector. None covers the paradigm transformation of skills (human capital theory) in garments. The authors also failed to locate a comparative study that maps the contribution of different provisions of skills providers and their paradigm transformations occurred within manufacturing and service industries. Therefore, this project explores the contribution of informal and institutional provisions of skills delivery for the inception and growth of industries by comparing between manufacturing and service industries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the value of diversity in business in Kazakhstan, analysing the possible opportunities, benefits and, if any, negatives or downsides for companies that diversity can bring.

Focus groups and interviews.

The position of women and minorities were uncovered. The findings also show how open are the Kazakhstani people to foreigners and to what extent are foreigners accepted in Kazakhstan.

Though supplemented with interviews, more focus groups may be applied. The study has been limited to Almaty, the most diverse city in Kazakhstan. Perhaps it would have different results if it had been conducted in other major cities.

Allows a survey of the possible opportunities/benefits and threats/costs of diversity that may be reaped by the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Provides continuing perspectives on the issue of diversity, which is one of the globalisation impacts or waves affecting organizations.

This paper intends to explore the measure for aligning the goals of researchers toward achieving organizational R&D targets. The paper also explores the significance and ordering of R&D outputs and the factors that influence generation of R&D outputs, from the perspective of researchers working in the Indian public sector organizations.

Data were collected in five Indian R&D laboratories, and weighted average method Spearman correlation coefficient and rank regression were utilized for the analysis.

The findings indicated that various groups of researchers prefer to target different R&D outputs and not all the factors are considered as equally significant in influencing the generation of R&D outputs. Further, the R&D organization should include preferred real factors while policy making for achieving collaborative efforts toward fulfilling organizational objectives. The set of selected R&D outputs and influencing factors were also ordered according to the average rankings given by the researchers.

The findings can help R&D managers to identify the expectations of the researchers and include their preferences in R&D Planning. The study could be extended to a larger dataset of researchers working in other government as well as private R&D organizations.

Hardly any studies were found that explored the preferences of researchers with respect to R&D outputs and influencing factors with respect to the Indian public sector R&D laboratories.

This research explores the role of innovativeness and involvement constructs and associated attitudinal and behavioural traits, in profiling customers in dynamic markets. Customer behaviour in the Irish cheese market was investigated, with a particular focus on the dynamic “speciality cheese” product category. A greater percentage of speciality cheese customers were found to be innovative within the cheese domain compared with non‐buyers. The speciality cheese customers also displayed higher levels of enduring involvement than the non‐speciality cheese customer. Reported attitudes reinforced these psychological traits. Speciality cheese customers had a broader knowledge of cheese products than non‐buyers and also indicated a preference for a greater number of cheeses. The behaviour of speciality cheese customers in the marketplace reflected these attitudes and tendencies. They shopped in a wide variety of retail outlets, spent more money on cheeses, and consumed a variety of cheeses. They are typically aware of a number of cheese brands and are not brand loyal, but compare and often buy different brands.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of the determinants of farmer participation in value addition through cassava processing in Nigeria.

This study employs the probit model to analyse the determinants of farmer participation in value addition whereas the Tobit model is used to investigate the determinants of the extent of producer’s involvement in value addition using a data set of 400 cassava farmers drawn from the Oyo State of Nigeria.

The findings further indicate that among other factors, human capital factors including farmer age and location variable tend to reduce farmer participation in value addition through processing whereas experience and record keeping promote farmer participation in cassava processing. Institutional variables, notably membership of farmer association, extension access and credit access, enhance farmer participation in value addition. Finally, ownership of a radio set, a television set and access to electricity strengthen the value-adding capacity of farmers.

This study only considers the determinants of producers’ participation in cassava processing but does not explicitly analyse the impact of value addition on their profit margin. This issue would form a basis for future research to enhance knowledge in the extant literature.

The study suggests that if the value-adding capacity of farmers is strengthened, rural economy is likely to be improved upon through the proliferation of rural food processing enterprises.

Despite the relevance of developing food value chains in Africa and integrating farmers in them, there are limited studies on promoting value addition among farmers. This study contributes to narrowing this knowledge gap.

This research aims to understand how competencies for supply chain professionals are developed and how they can affect the manager's performance, especially the manager's resilience in times of significant supply chain disruptions.

A research model was developed based on a comprehensive literature survey in the area of individual competencies grounded in the knowledge-based view of the firm. We tested our research model using a quantitative, survey-based study with a sample of 175 Pakistani supply chain managers. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The analysis identified corporate training and knowledge sharing as the main antecedents of supply chain professional's competencies. It also showed that these competencies result in higher performance in the form manager's resilience and job performance.

This study provides a valuable framework for organisations to focus on skill-developing training and promoting a knowledge-sharing culture among employees to achieve desired performance levels.

This study is unique as no prior research studied such a comprehensive model of antecedents and consequences of supply chain professionals' competencies.