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The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) in development. The paper focuses on the role that IK and local cultural values play in the process of development. Currently, knowledge, information, science and technology used in development are produced in developed countries without heed being paid to their impact on the local environment. IK, although often short‐shirted, establishes a harmonious relationship between the social system and the environment in any given developing countries. Access to global knowledge is vital for supporting IK as well as for sustaining development.

The purpose of this paper is to assess and evaluate the role of information and communication technologies as a proposed solution to reduce poverty in the Arab countries and therefore achieve sustainable development.

In this article, the authors have taken a somewhat extensive review of the different aspects of ICTs in DCs with particular focus on Arab countries. Given the current poor conditions and isolation of Arab countries from the rest of the world, a number of fundamental research questions are addressed.

Empowering nations with ICTs could increase productivity, promote human development, create knowledge, disseminate information and reduce poverty.

The paper highlights the importance of building ICTs capacity for both promoting human development and enhancing capabilities of people to participate in the economy.

This chapter discusses the positioning of Belarus in the international context of socioeconomic development based on an assessment of the country's dynamics in world rankings. The country's presence in the recognized world rankings and its holding high positions in them is an obvious advantage for achieving a favorable investment image. Ratings characterize the country's comparative position at the international level in a number of areas: from credit capacity to human capital development.

There has been analyzed the position of the Republic of Belarus in several recognized international comparisons, such as Human Development Index, Doing Business, ICT Development Index, Global Innovation Index, Sustainable Development Goals Index, Corruption Perceptions Index, Rule of Law Index, Worldwide Governance Indicators, and others.

However, Belarus is not yet participating in the international competitiveness assessment through such popular international ratings as Global Competitiveness Index and Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. The research findings show that the strongest aspects of the socioeconomic development of Belarus are in place due to the high educational level of the human capital development, gender equality, and the implementation of the UN sustainable development goals. The analysis also shows that the weaknesses of institutional environment and public administration do not enable the full implementation of the planned goals of socioeconomic development.

Integration between the different components of development is a major aspiration of the 2030 agenda, but the efforts of firms that intend to contribute simultaneously to multiple development trajectories may be hindered by trade-offs that occur between the different sustainable development goals (SDGs) and targets. At the same time, synergies may also materialize and reinforce firm’s contribution. This chapter analyzes the effects of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and other foreign investors on two different targets of SDG 7, namely access of population to modern energy systems, chiefly electricity, and the use of carbon-free and renewable energy sources in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, and the authors investigate whether foreign investors experience trade-offs and synergies in their contributions. A two-equation growth model of households’ access to electricity and carbon factor is estimated by employing a panel dataset that covers 15 SSA countries and foreign direct investment (FDI) from 82 origin countries over the 2005–2011 period. The findings reveal that foreign investors are subject to a trade-off in their effects, because when they foster access to electricity they are also likely to spur carbon factor increases, and vice versa, depending on the economic development of host and home countries. Nevertheless, electrification and carbon factor reduction are shown to be linked by a system-level synergy. The results have implications for the design of MNEs attraction measures and energy policy in recipient countries.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the nexus between financial inclusion and human development for countries belonging to different income groups during 2009–2019, and whether this relation differs across these groups.

The paper constructs an index of financial inclusion (IFI) for different income group countries employing dynamic panel data models estimated by generalized method of moments (GMM) to analyse the relation between financial inclusion and human development.

Financial inclusion in low and lower-middle-income countries has higher effect on human development than in high and upper-middle income countries.

The study examines the effect of IFI on the human development index (HDI) at the aggregate level. Future research can tackle the IFI effect on every component of HDI and other aspects of financial inclusion could be incorporated like financial technology.

The originality lies in constructing an index for financial inclusion using the most recent data for a wide range of countries, in addition to examining the impact of financial inclusion on the human development levels of different income groups allowing for more accurate analysis tackling the differences in terms of adopted policies across various income groups; unlike other studies that are carried out on a one country basis or only across one or two country groups that do not allow for comparison across various groups of countries.

This study aims to identify the countries’ innovation factors that are determinant for them to achieve higher levels of development. In addition, the research identified which of these factors should be prioritized so the countries can move up in the rank of the most competitive.

The study used the indicators of innovation and the stage of development of 137 countries proposed by the Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum and techniques of multivariate data analysis.

The results indicated that all the factors tested are determinant to lead the countries throughout their stages of development. The research highlights that the factors “Quality of scientific research institutions” and “Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) patent applications” should be equally prioritized for the countries’ development.

The results suggested that the factors Capacity for Innovation, Quality of Scientific Research Institutions, Company Spending on Research and Development (R&D), University–Industry Collaboration in R&D, Government Procurement of Advanced Technology Products, Availability of Scientists and Engineers and PCT Patent Applications are decisive for positioning countries in terms of their stage of development and should be part of their public policy and enterprises’ strategic planning.

The findings show that countries should prioritize the factors Quality of Scientific Research Institutions and PCT Patent Applications, as these factors, when acting together, predict the evolution to higher stages of development.

Innovation is a fundamental element for developing countries’ development. For instance, the innovation process should be integral to a country’s development plan for it to achieve high standard socio-economic development. For this reason, the global development agenda in the contemporary era underline innovation as a crucial issue to be addressed within development assistance programs. The Global North as traditional donors predominantly contend that innovation should be supported by high private sector development (PSD), and therefore, emphasizes this agenda to be delivered through their foreign aid schemes. However, this character differs considerably as compared to new emerging donors with insufficient PSD capacity, such as Indonesia. This paper aims to examine Indonesia’s technical assistance (TAC) to Timor-Leste and scrutinizes whether or not it supports the innovation development of the receiving country.

This study used a qualitative method by conducting a literature review, document tracing and depth interview with Indonesia’s South–South Cooperation National Coordinating Team.

Based on this study, it can be proven that Indonesia’s TAC has the ability to support innovation development in Timor-Leste as a least developed country. This is because Indonesia’s TAC is directed toward knowledge sharing and technology transfer that are needed by Timor-Leste. Other supporting conditions, such as similarity in the process of development, shared principles and solidarity ties among developing countries, have also created a more decent environment for aid delivery. Thus, aid initiatives among developing countries must remain to be supported as key to attain mutual progress and collective self-reliance.

This study shows that Indonesia as an emerging economic has the capability to support innovation development of other developing countries. It was a new area of study but has a lot of potential to be explored such as effectiveness and interests.

This paper aims to use the eclectic paradigm as a broad organizing framework to bring together two somewhat parallel international business (IB) literatures, one on the development effects of multinational enterprise activity and the other on the internationalization of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs). The author does so to better understand how outward foreign investment shapes economic development in firms’ home countries.

Considering that the characteristics of foreign investment by EMNEs likely differ from that of their developed economy counterparts and that such characteristics may have unique development consequences, the author revisits one of IB’s overarching theories to rethink how ownership, location and internalization advantages take shape and stimulate diverse development outcomes.

My narrative review and conceptual analysis indicate that the eclectic paradigm is a valuable framework that can be used to shed light on underexplored phenomena and thereby inform important policy debates. The analysis suggests that unique characteristics of EMNE investment simultaneously have positive and negative development consequences in their home countries.

The author sets out a research agenda that revolves around six propositions that separately relate one of these three distinct characteristics of EMNE investment to two development outcomes, namely, spillovers and direct effects on home-country employment. My propositions suggest that important policy dilemmas potentially apply, in that each of the three characteristics positively affects one of the aspects of development, but negatively the other.

My research agenda presents international business scholars with new opportunities to build on a history of policymaking impact, now geared toward resolving society’s grand challenge of underdevelopment.

Although previous research has examined the role of franchising for the economic development of countries, no empirical study to date has investigated the importance of franchising for social, infrastructural, and institutional development. The authors address this research gap by applying research results from the field of sustainable entrepreneurship and highlight that franchising has a positive impact on economic, social, institutional and infrastructural development.

This study uses a fixed-effects model on a panel dataset for 2006–2015 from 49 countries to test the hypothesis that franchising positively influences various dimensions of country development such as economic social institutional and infrastructural development.

The findings highlight that franchising has a positive impact on the economic, social, infrastructural, and institutional development of a country. Specifically, the results show that the earlier and the more franchising systems enter a country, the stronger the positive impact of franchising on the country's economic, social, institutional, and infrastructural development.

This study has several limitations that provide directions for further research. First, the empirical investigation is limited by the characteristics of the data, which are composed of information from 49 countries (covering a period of 10 years). Because franchising is not recognized as a form of entrepreneurial governance in many emerging and developing countries, the available information is mainly provided by the franchise associations in the various countries. Hence, there is a need to collect additional data in each country and to include additional countries. Second, although the authors included developed and developing countries in the analysis, the authors could not differentiate between developed and developing countries when testing the hypotheses, because the database was not sufficiently complete. Third, future studies should analyze the causality issue between franchising and development more closely. The role of franchising in development may be changing depending on different unobserved country factors, economic sector characteristics, or development stages.

What are the practical implications of this study for the role of franchising in the development of emerging and developing economies? Because public policy in emerging and developing countries suffers from a lack of financial resources to improve the social, infrastructural and institutional environment, entrepreneurs, such as franchisors who expand into these countries, play an important role for these countries' development. In addition to their entrepreneurial role of exploring and exploiting profit opportunities, they are social, institutional, and political entrepreneurs who may positively influence country development (Schaltegger and Wagner, 2011; Shepard and Patzelt, 2011). Specifically, the findings highlight that countries with an older franchise sector (more years of franchise experience) may realize first-mover advantages and hence larger positive spillover effects on their economic, social, institutional and infrastructural development than countries with a younger franchise sector. Hence, governments of emerging and developing countries have the opportunity and responsibility to reduce potential market entry barriers and provide additional incentives for franchise systems in order to trigger these positive spillover effects. The authors expect that the spillover effects from the franchise sector on the economic, institutional, social and infrastructural development of a country are stronger in emerging and developing countries than in developed countries.

Previous research has focused on the impact of franchising on the economic development of a country, such as its growth of gross domestic product (GDP), employment, business skills, innovation and technology transfer. This study extends the existing literature by going beyond the impact of franchising on economic development: the results show that franchising as an entrepreneurial activity offers opportunities for economic, social, institutional, and infrastructural development, all of which are particularly important for emerging and developing economies. The findings of this study contribute to the international franchise and development economics literature by offering a better understanding of the impact of franchising on country development.