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Several countries, such as South Africa and India, believe that intellectual property rights (IPRs), including patents, impede the efficient increase in vaccine production to inoculate the global population as they scramble to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Their proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to waive these pharmaceutical patents has been met with resistance from a few developed countries, who believe that the abrogation of IPRs is unnecessary, even during a pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact of a potential waiver of medical patents at the WTO versus the status quo of IPR laws in the global economy.

This study examines key arguments from economic and moral standpoints regarding the provisions of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement and other related international agreements and their validity based on the premise of the internalisation of positive externalities posed by vaccines.

The effectiveness of the TRIPS agreement in securing medical access is weak on account of the ability of profit-making multinationals to secure IP rights and on account of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral agreement that supports patent evergreening and a period of protection on test data which challenges the access to medicines and the fundamental human right to health.

This study examines international IPRs through the lens of human rights and proposes a new system that balances the two.

The purpose of this study is to address the limitations of traditional methods for managing intellectual property rights (IPRs) by proposing a blockchain-based solution. By leveraging blockchain technology and smart contracts, the aim is to create a comprehensive ecosystem that offers advantages such as reduced transaction costs, improved transparency, enhanced security and increased liquidity levels for IP assets.

This paper proposes using blockchain technology to manage intellectual property rights (IPRs) through a smart contract-based ecosystem. It outlines the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the blockchain to represent IPRs, with smart contracts automating interactions and encoding rules for various processes such as applications, licensing, transfers and royalty distribution. Governance mechanisms, such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), are employed to allow stakeholders to propose and vote on contract changes, ensuring adaptability. This approach aims to streamline IPR workflows, reduce transaction costs, improve transparency and enhance security.

The findings of this study suggest that implementing a blockchain-based ecosystem for managing intellectual property rights (IPRs) can lead to various benefits. These include reduced transaction costs, improved transparency, enhanced security, increased liquidity levels for IP assets and streamlined automated processes. The use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the blockchain allows for detailed management, valuation and trading of IPRs. Furthermore, simulation results demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of our proposed ecosystem, outperforming traditional IP management systems in terms of transaction speed and cost-effectiveness. These simulations highlight the practical viability of integrating blockchain technology into IP management workflows.

The practical implications of adopting this blockchain-based ecosystem for managing intellectual property rights (IPRs) are significant. By streamlining processes, reducing transaction costs and improving transparency and security, organizations can expedite the protection and commercialization of their IP assets. Additionally, the increased liquidity levels and accessibility of IP assets to investors and financiers can spur innovation and economic growth.

This paper contributes to the field by proposing a novel approach to managing intellectual property rights (IPRs) using blockchain technology and smart contracts. By leveraging non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the blockchain, the proposed ecosystem offers a more efficient and transparent way of managing IPRs, reducing reliance on costly and opaque traditional methods. The potential benefits include improved efficiency, transparency, security and collaboration in the management and commercialization of IPRs.

This article examines strategic management research across Latin America from 1990 to 2023, addressing four critical inquiries: the themes prevalent in strategic discussions, the leading countries in strategic management (SM) publications, the defining characteristics of strategic research in major Latin American economies and the reflection on whether Latin America is a region that generates or follows the knowledge of the Global North.

Utilizing co-occurrence analysis, this study maps the terrain of SM research in the region, analyzing 4,963 articles indexed in the Scopus database. The authors employed a co-occurrence analysis to map SM research in Latin America, analyzing 4,963 articles from the Scopus database.

Predominant themes include the theoretical underpinnings of strategy, sustainable development, innovation, tourism and international trade. Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Chile have emerged as leaders in research volume and thematic diversity, particularly in sustainable development and innovation.

By identifying patterns, behaviors and trends in SM research, the authors uncover methods and tools that, once contextualized for the region, can significantly enhance organizational performance.

This investigation is a pioneering effort, providing a focused analysis on SM research within Latin America. It highlights significant contributions since 1990 across the region's main economies. This study represents one of the first comprehensive mappings of this academic field within Latin America. This is the first article, to the authors’ knowledge, developed to map the intellectual structure of the SM field in Latin America through an analysis of co-occurrences, with emphasis on the region's main economies.

Human capital is acquired not only through formal education (e.g. general skills) but also through training at the workplace. Prior studies have ignored the role of government subsidies explicitly for on-the-job training, which may influence firm training decisions and firm innovation performance. Hence, the authors establish a comprehensive theoretical framework to consider these issues and fill these gaps.

Considering the Chinese manufacturing firms listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2017, the authors investigate the influence of training investment on innovation performance by illustrating the role of human capital updating in enhancing firm innovation. The authors also explore serval mechanisms on how training investment influences innovation performance.

The authors propose that training investment promotes firm innovation performance, whereas government training subsidies negatively moderate this relationship. The authors also reveal how technicists' involvement and corporate culture mediate the relationship between training investment and innovation performance.

This study provides policy implications for stimulating firm innovation by improving learning and absorption ability, strengthening cultural identity and implementing system norms. Effective policies should be adopted to provide subsidies for on-the-job training of enterprises, particularly for firms with technical executives and firms in diversified life-cycle.

This work contributes to the literature on the role of on-the-job training in promoting firm innovation and reveals the crowding-out effect of subsidies. This study also shows the heterogeneous effects of training investment on firm innovation.

The purpose of the this study is to discover the impact of practices of knowledge management, intellectual property protection and management innovation on entrepreneurial leadership, which in turn leads to sustainable growth in small and medium-sized enterprises.

The data was collected from 292 small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the USA using a cross-sectional survey. To evaluate the study hypotheses and analyse the data, structural equation modelling was used. SMART-PLS software was used for both confirmatory factor analysis and structural analysis.

The work has significantly contributed in revealing that knowledge management practices, management innovation and intellectual property protection have a substantial and constructive impact on entrepreneurial leadership, which in turn leads to sustainable growth in SMEs.

The study findings recommend that SMEs must focus on knowledge management practices, intellectual property protection and management innovation to nurture entrepreneurial leadership, which can lead to sustainable growth. SMEs can benefit from investing in knowledge management practices, protecting their intellectual property and innovating their management practices to achieve sustainable growth. Also, the absorptive capacity of an SME can help it to aggravate the impact of the above factors and lead them to sustainable growth faster.

The current work studies the association between knowledge management practices, intellectual property protection, management innovation, entrepreneurial leadership and sustainable growth in SMEs, thus contributing to the literature. The study provides insights into the factors that can nurture entrepreneurial leadership and contribute to sustainable growth in SMEs, which can inform policy and practice in the field of entrepreneurship.

Although digital transformation (DT) has emerged as an important phenomenon for both research and practices, the influences remain inconclusive and inadequate. The emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies further complicate the understanding and practices of DT while understudied yet. To address these concerns, this study takes a process perspective to empirically investigate when and how digital-intelligence transformation can improve firm performance, aiming to enrich the literature on digital-intelligence transformation and strategic information systems (IS) field.

Drawing on the dynamic capability view and business agility, we took a process perspective to conceptualize and empirically examine the influence of digital-intelligence transformation and the process characteristics. Taking a continuous panel dataset of listed Chinese firms covering 2007 to 2020, we investigated digital-intelligence transformation’s effect on firm performance and the moderating roles of three strategic aspects: pace, scope and rhythm.

This study found that digital-intelligence transformation positively affects firm performance and is moderated by the characteristics of transformation processes (i.e. pace, scope and rhythm). Specifically, the high-paced and rhythmic transformation processes facilitate the positive relationship, while the large scope undermines the benefits of transformation. These relationships hold across various endogeneity and heterogeneity analyses.

Our findings provide valuable implications for digital-intelligence transformation and strategic IS field. First, this study enriches existing literature on digital-intelligence transformation by empirically investigating the influence from a process perspective. Moreover, this study provides insights into a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of digital-intelligence transformation and the influences of AI. Finally, this study provides practical implications on how to make digital-intelligence transformation to benefit firm performance.

This study investigates the potential association between corporate digitization and disclosure quality, and how this relationship is moderated by non-state ownership and institutional environment.

Drawing on signaling theory and factors that affect disclosure quality, the authors developed a framework to study how corporate digitization is associated with disclosure quality. The proposed framework was empirically tested using a comprehensive analysis that integrated corporate-level data on digitalization, disclosure quality, and ownership structure, with regional-level data on the institutional environment. The authors employed linear panel regression models with fixed effects.

The authors found that corporate digitization is significantly and positively associated with higher disclosure quality. This positive association is particularly pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises compared to state-owned enterprises. Additionally, an improvement in the institutional environment strengthens the positive relationship between digitization and disclosure quality.

This work contributes to the literature on corporate digitization by empirically investigating its impact on disclosure quality. The study also extends previous research by considering the moderating roles of ownership structure and institutional environment on the digitization-disclosure quality relationship.

Financial institutions, including banks, have their responsibilities to contribute towards the preservation of the environment. Green banking is an emerging concept that involves eco-friendly initiatives by banks and although Mauritius lacks a comprehensive regulatory framework for green banking, there exists a few green regulations and guidelines. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to critically analyse the existing legal and regulatory framework on green banking in Mauritius. It is expected that this study will showcase the need for some more robust and proper green banking legal and regulatory framework in Mauritius.

To achieve the research objective, a black-letter analysis is used to analyse the existing regulatory framework in Mauritius. Moreover, a comparative analysis of the current legal frameworks on green banking in countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and the UK is carried out.

This study recommends the establishment of a guideline or legal framework for green banking, a Sustainable Finance Policy, a legal binding framework for issuance of bonds, adoption of a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure guideline, compulsory environmental reporting and disclosures and a green standard rating.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first literature on green banking laws, especially in the context of a developing country being Mauritius, and it is anticipated that the findings are of use not only to academics but also to the wider community in general.

The primary objective of this study aims to intensively explore the environment of Indonesian regulations and laws related to the Islamic banking system and micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) and unveil the restrictive laws and regulatory flaws that potentially hinder the Islamic banking institution and MSME industry in achieving financial inclusion and promoting sustainable growth.

This paper implements a qualitative method by implementing a multi-case study research strategy, both from the Islamic banking institutions and the MSME industries. The data were gathered primarily through an interview approach by adopting purposive uncontrolled quota sampling.

The findings of this paper reveal two essential issues: First, the regulatory imbalances and restrictions could demotivate and hinder the efforts of Islamic banks in providing access to finance for the MSME segment, hence, encumbering the achievement of the financial inclusion agenda from the Islamic banking industry. Second, the flaws in MSME registration and taxation might discourage the formal MSMEs from extending their business license and prevent the informal MSME units from registering their business. This issue would potentially lower their chance of accessing external financing from the formal financial institutions and participating in supportive government programmes due to the absence of proper legality.

Since this paper only observed six Islamic banks and 22 MSME units in urban and rural locations in Indonesia using a case study approach, the empirical findings and case discussions were limited to those respective Islamic banks and MSME participants.

By referring to the recommendations as presented in this paper, two critical policy implications could be expected from adopting the proposed recommendations, among others: By addressing the issues of the regulatory imbalance associated with the Islamic banking industry and introduce the deregulatory policies on profit and loss sharing (PLS) scheme implementation, this approach will motivate the Islamic banking industry in serving the MSME sector better and provide greater access to financial services, particularly in using the PLS financing schemes. By resolving the problems on MSME registration and taxation, this strategy will enhance the sustainability of the formal MSMEs’ operation and encourage the informal ones to register, hence, improving their inclusion into the formal financing services and government assistance programmes.

The present study attempts to address the literature shortcomings and helps to fill the gaps – both theoretical and empirical – by incorporating the multi-case study among Indonesian Islamic banks and MSMEs to extensively explore the Indonesia regulatory environment pertaining to the Islamic banking system (supply-side) and MSMEs (demand-side), and thoroughly investigates and reveals the restrictive laws and regulatory flaws that could potentially hinder the Islamic banking institutions and MSME industries in attaining financial inclusion and contributing to sustainable development.

Due to their particular nature, virtual assets (VA) are vulnerable to financial crimes such as money laundering and if the appropriate legal mechanisms are not established, this may result in the financial collapse of various economies. To this effect, best practices and standards have been published by some international organisations such as the Financial Action Task Force and IMF which are now domesticated in the national laws of several countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse the anti-money laundering (AML) legislative framework in the context of VA in three countries, namely, Mauritius, Japan and South Africa.

To achieve the research objective, the Mauritian AML laws in the context of VA were compared with the corresponding laws of some other countries, namely, Japan and South Africa. As such, a qualitative research method was adopted. In particular, the black letter approach was used to examine the relevant laws of these countries. A comparative analysis was conducted concerning the relevance of AML laws for each country when dealing with VA with the view of suggesting recommendations for Mauritian stakeholders to adopt to enhance the existing AML legal and regulatory framework.

The comparative study conducted has revealed that there are both similarities and divergences among the AML framework of the three countries further to which this research recommends that the Mauritian laws must be amended concerning the duration of information storage on VA, the definition of VA, advertisement by VA service providers and the electronic submission of annual reports. The Mauritian regulatory bodies also need to play a more active role in their joint collaboration to monitor suspicious VA transactions to combat money laundering.

At present, this study will be among the first academic writings on the efficiency of AML laws in the context of VA in Mauritius and also, because existing literature is quite scarce on assessing the adequacy of AML legislation in developing countries, this research aims at filling in the gap in literature. This study is carried out with the aim of combining a large amount of empirical, theoretical and factual information that can be of use to various stakeholders and not only to academics.