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Place-based, social studies teaching and learning has the potential to foster engaged citizens connected and committed to improving their communities. This study explored the research question, “In what ways do classroom and field-based experiences prepare teacher candidates (TCs) to make connections between place-based education and elementary social studies education?”

This qualitative case study examined how elementary TCs learned about, researched, curated and created place-based social studies educational resources related to community sites. Data collection included TCs’ Pre- and Post-Course Reflections as well as Self-Evaluations, which were analyzed using an inductive approach and multiple rounds of concept coding. Several themes emerged through data analysis.

The authors organized their findings around three themes: connections (i.e. place becomes personal), immersion (i.e. learning about place to learning in place) and bridge building (i.e. local as classroom). The classroom and field-based experiences in the elementary social studies methods course informed the ways in which TCs learned about and connected to the concept of place, experienced place in a specific place (i.e. downtown Statesboro, Georgia), and reflected upon the myriad ways that they could utilize place in their future elementary social studies classrooms.

TCs (as well as in-service teachers and teacher educators) must become more informed, connected and committed to places within their local communities in order to consider them as resources for elementary social studies teaching and learning.

Information technology (IT) personnels’ technical, business and behavioral skills are critical enablers for generating IT value. In an increasingly digitalized working environment where non-IT employees participate in digital innovations, a focus on IT personnels’ skills only doesn’t meet researchers’ need for a framework to study digital skills and managers’ need to address digital skills challenges across an enterprise’s workforce. Nevertheless, the digital skills topic is complicated by conceptual ambiguity and a lack of theoretically derived and empirically validated model. The purpose of this study is to address this problem.

Theoretically, this study draws on human capital (HC) and resource-based view (RBV) theories. Empirically, it follows mixed method combining interviews and a survey.

The digital skills construct is a multidimensional second order reflective construct. While its development is influenced by an organization’s commitment and exposure to digitalization, it influences the value organizations obtain from digitalization.

This study conceptualizes the digital skills construct, identifying technology agnostic subdimensions that are meaningful beyond a particular digital domain [information and communication technology (ICT), information, Internet, Inter of Things (IoT)] and establishing a valid measure. Other researchers can improve both the indicators of the existing four conceptually distinct and managerially recognizable workplace digital skills dimensions as well as testing new ones.

Managers can use the instrument to assess the extent to which their non-IT workforces are equipped with digital skills and get strategic insights for specific interventions such as upskilling or buying in skills.

The main theoretical contribution of the paper is the conceptualization and validation of the digital skills construct for the non-IT workforce. Furthermore, we provide a theoretical framework to explain the factors that could influence the development of digital skills and demonstrate the impact that digital skills have on selected digitalization value indicators. This contribution provides the foundation for investigating the drivers, outcomes and the relationship of digital skills to other constructs such as digital transformation, innovation and firm performance.

This study aims to explore gender performance in entrepreneurial pitching. Understanding pitching as a social practice, the authors argue that pitch content and body gestures contain gender-based norms and practices. The authors focus on early-stage ventures and the hegemonic masculinities and femininities that are performed in entrepreneurial pitches. The main research question is as follows: How is gender performed in entrepreneurial pitching?

The authors carried out the study with the post-structuralist feminist approach. The authors collected and analyzed nine online pitches with the reflexive thematic method to depict hegemonic masculinities and femininities performed at the pitch.

The authors found that heroic and breadwinner masculinities are dominant in pitching. Both male and female founders perform hegemonic masculinities. Entrepreneurs are expected to be assertive but empathetic people. Finally, there are connections between what entrepreneurs do and what investors ask, indicating the iteration of gender performance and expectations.

While the online setting helps the authors to collect data during the pandemic, it limits the observation of the place, space and interactions between the judges/investors and the entrepreneurs. As a result, the linguistic and gesture communication of the investors in the pitch was not discussed in full-length in this paper. Also, as the authors observed, people would come to the pitch knowing what they should perform and how they should interact. Therefore, the preparation of the pitch as a study context could provide rich details on how gender norms and stereotypes influence people's interactions and their entrepreneurial identity. Lastly, the study has a methodological limitation. The authors did not include aspects of space in the analysis. It is mainly due to the variety of settings that the pitching sessions that the data set had.

For social practices and policies, the results indicate barriers to finance for women entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs are rewarded when they perform entrepreneurial hegemonic masculinities with a touch of emphasized femininities. Eventually, if women entrepreneurs do not perform correctly as investors expect them to, they will face barriers to acquiring finance. It is important to acknowledge how certain gendered biases might be (re)constructed and (re)produced through entrepreneurial activities, in which pitching is one of them.

Practitioners could utilize research findings to understand how gender stereotypes exist not only on the pitch stage but also before and after the pitch, such as the choice of business idea and pitch training. In other words, it is necessary to create a more enabling environment for women entrepreneurs, such as customizing the accelerator program so that all business ideas receive relevant support from experts. On a macro level, the study has shown that seemingly gender-equal societies do not practically translate into higher participation of women in entrepreneurship.

For theoretical contributions, the study enhances the discussion that entrepreneurship is gendered; women and men entrepreneurs need to perform certain hegemonic traits to be legitimated as founders. The authors also address various pitching practices that shape pitch performance by including both textual and semiotic data in the study. This study provides social implications on the awareness of gendered norms and the design of entrepreneurial pitching.

This paper aims to address two fundamental questions: (1) How has Bahrain's industrial policy evolved during the 21st century? and (2) what factors contribute to this evolution?

Utilizing secondary data, this paper identifies key decision-makers responsible for economic policy in Bahrain and delineates the evolution of Bahrain's industrial policy throughout the 21st century. Subsequently, it employs a series of interviews with elite civil servants engaged in the formulation and implementation of Bahrain's economic policies to understand the reasons behind the observed changes.

Since assuming the role of Crown Prince in 1999, Sh. Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa has been the key economic decision-maker in Bahrain. During the 21st century, Bahrain has shifted away from decisions closely aligned with the Washington Consensus towards those more in line with classical industrial policy. Interviews reveal that the private sector's underperformance in job creation, coupled with fiscal pressures, has driven this departure from the Washington Consensus. Moreover, the early successes of the interventionist Saudi Vision 2030 and Bahrain's own success in technocratically managing the COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated this transition.

Insights into the determinants of Bahrain's industrial policy can guide policymakers in refining future strategies. Recognizing the positive role of intellectual developments in academic economics literature becomes crucial for informed decision-making.

This paper fills a gap in the existing literature by providing answers to its research questions, particularly considering the significant changes witnessed in Bahrain's industrial policy post-pandemic.

Digital transformation is a foundational change in how firms operate and deliver value to customers by using digital technologies to create new business opportunities. The purpose of this study is to offer a conceptual framework by reorganizing the elements of digital transformation, including resources, technology, capabilities and performance, into a workable process and investigating how firms integrate these resources, build new capabilities and transform them into enhanced performance.

This framework builds three blocks: resource integration, organizational capabilities and outcomes, exploring the impact of resource integration on outcomes through organizational capabilities. For resource integration, this study adopts a resource-based view (RBV) and service-dominant logic (SDL) to integrate organizational resources, including information technology (IT)-based resources, which play a role in moderating the effect of resource integration. Moreover, the author argues that firms’ capabilities have two levels: higher-order capabilities and lower-order capabilities, which will convert these resources through the capabilities into organizational performance.

This framework is built to understand the process of digital transformation and its antecedents for firms’ performance in business environments. Drawing on RBV, it provides a more holistic perspective that has been linked to resource integration, organizational capabilities and outcomes at the firm level. In this way, the theoretical basis for diminishing implicitness associated with the current perspective of digital transformation can be strengthened.

This paper offers a coherent discussion of digital transformation and explains the process of digital transformation, thus advancing prior work. The major contribution is connecting the process of digital transformation through which firms integrate resources, i.e. digital technologies and valuable, rare, inimitable and nonsubstitutable (VRIN) and nonVRIN resources as well, to build organizational dynamic capabilities based on RBV and SDL.

This study aims to test the validity of the Rajan theory in South Africa and other selected emerging markets (Chile, Peru and Brazil) during the period 1975–2019.

In this study, the researchers used time-series data to estimate a Bayesian Vector Autoregression (BVAR) model with hierarchical priors. The BVAR technique has the advantage of being able to accommodate a wide cross-section of variables without running out of degrees of freedom. It is also able to deal with dense parameterization by imposing structure on model coefficients via prior information and optimal choice of the degree of formativeness.

The results for all countries except Peru confirmed the Rajan hypotheses, indicating that inequality contributes to high indebtedness, resulting in financial fragility. However, for Peru, this study finds it contradicts the theory. This study controlled for monetary policy shock and found the results differing country-specific.

The findings suggest that an escalating level of inequality leads to financial fragility, which implies that policymakers ought to be cautious of excessive inequality when endeavouring to contain the risk of financial fragility, by implementing sound structural reform policies that aim to attract investments consistent with job creation, development and growth in these countries. Policymakers should also be cautious when implementing policy tools (redistributive policies, a sound monetary policy), as they seem to increase the risk of excessive credit growth and financial fragility, and they need to treat income inequality as an important factor relevant to macroeconomic aggregates and financial fragility.

Prior research suggests that collaboration is key to sustainable community development and environmental management, and peer-to-peer learning (P2PL) may facilitate community building and collaborative learning skills. This study aims to examine the effect of P2PL on the enhancement of environmental management and sustainable development skills, community building and social capital (i.e. connectedness) and understanding of course learning objectives.

Quantitative and qualitative longitudinal survey data was collected in a sustainable development focused course offered at a large American public university that uses P2PL to explicitly facilitate community building and collaborative skills. Safety precautions and changing locational course offerings due to the COVID-19 pandemic in years 2020, 2021 and 2022 provided an opportunity to evaluate the impact of P2PL on these skills during both virtual and in-person formats. Additionally, this study compared in-course student evaluations with students taking other sustainable development-related courses with collaborative learning aspects to understand the wider effectiveness of this course structure.

This study finds that course format (virtual vs in-person) overall made no difference in either connectedness or conceptual understandings, and that students in both formats felt more connected to others than students taking other courses with P2PL. Scaffolding P2PL and supplemental peer support can yield improved connectedness and learning among students taking environmental coursework.

Sustainable development requires group collaboration and partnership building skills. Issues are consistently raised about the challenges to teaching these skills in higher education. The students and instructors in this research study identify P2PL strategies to address these challenges for in-person and virtual classroom settings.

Employee recognition systems are ubiquitous in organizations (WorldatWork, 2019) and have positive effects on work outcomes (e.g. Stajkovic and Luthans, 2001). However, psychologically meaningful recognition relies on the recognition giver being motivated to observe and recognize coworkers. Crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic may impact recognition giving in varying ways, yet little research considers this possibility.

This longitudinal field study examined the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on recognition and acknowledgment giving among frontline and nonfrontline healthcare workers at daily and aggregated levels. We tested the relationships between publicly available daily indicators of COVID-19 and objectively measured daily recognition and acknowledgment giving within a web-based platform.

We found that the amount of daily recognition giving was no different during the crisis compared to the year before, but fewer employees gave recognition, and significantly more recognition was given on days when COVID-19 indicators were relatively high. In contrast, the amount of acknowledgment giving was significantly lower in frontline staff and significantly higher in nonfrontline staff during the pandemic than before, but on a daily-level, acknowledgment was unrelated to COVID-19 indicators.

Our results suggest that organizational crises may at once inhibit and stimulate employee recognition and acknowledgment.

Our research is the first to empirically demonstrate that situational factors associated with a crisis can impact recognition giving behavior, and they do so in ways consistent with ostensibly contradictory theories.

Drawing on social exchange literature, this study explores the mediating role of affective commitment between employees' assessments of contract breaches and opportunistic silence, along with the invigorating effect of hostile attribution bias.

We tested the hypotheses using multi-wave data collected from employees working in higher education institutions in Pakistan.

Perceived contract breaches elicit intentional, selfish and retaliatory motives of silence, largely because employees lack emotional attachments to their organization. This mechanism is more prominent among employees who tend to blame others and perceive them as antagonistic even when they are not.

For human resource managers, this investigation highlights a crucial feature – affective commitment – by which employees' perceptions of psychological contract breaches facilitate opportunistic silence. Our results suggest that this process is more likely to intensify when employees have distorted thinking, motivating them to attribute the worst motives to their employer's actions.

Perceived contract breaches within universities can have far-reaching societal consequences, affecting trust, reputation, economic stability, and the overall quality and accessibility of education and research. Addressing and preventing such breaches is essential to maintaining the positive societal role of universities.

This study provides novel insights into the process that underlies the connection between perceived contract breach and opportunistic silence by revealing the hitherto overlooked role of employees' hostile attribution bias, which renders them more susceptible to experiencing unfavorable forms of social exchange.

The authors' work aims to identify the employer-specific drivers of the college (or university) wage gap, which has been identified as one of the major determinants of the dynamics of overall wage and income inequality in the past decades. The authors focus on three employer-level features that can be associated with asymmetries in the employment relation orientation adopted for college and non-college-educated employees: (1) size, (2) the share of standard employment and (3) the pervasiveness of incentive pay schemes.

The authors' establishment-level analysis (data from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (BSWS), 2005–2018) focusses on Japan, an economy characterised by many unique economic and institutional features relevant to the aims of the authors' analysis. The authors use an adjusted measure of firm-specific college wage premium, which is not biased by confounding individual and establishment-level factors and reflects unobservable characteristics of employees that determine the payment of a premium. The authors' empirical methods account for the complexity of the relationships they investigate, and the authors test their baseline outcomes with econometric approaches (propensity score methods) able to address crucial identification issues related to endogeneity and reverse causality.

The authors' findings indicate that larger establishment size, a larger share of regular workers and more pervasive implementation of IPSs for college workers tend to increase the college wage gap once all observable workers, job and establishment characteristics are controlled for. This evidence corroborates the authors' hypotheses that a larger establishment size, a higher share of regular workers and a more developed set-up of performance pay schemes for college workers are associated with a better capacity of employers to attract and keep highly educated employees with unobservable characteristics that justify a wage premium above average market levels. The authors provide empirical evidence on how three relevant establishment-level characteristics shape the heterogeneity of the (adjusted) college wage observed across organisations.

The authors' contribution to the existing knowledge is threefold. First, the authors combine the economics and management/organisation literature to develop new insights that underpin the authors' testable empirical hypotheses. This enables the authors to shed light on employer-level drivers of wage differentials (size, workforce composition, implementation of performance-pay schemes) related to many structural, institutional and strategic dimensions. The second contribution lies in the authors' measure of the “adjusted” college wage gap, which is calculated on the component of individual wages that differs between observationally identical workers in the same establishment. As such, the metric captures unobservable workers' characteristics that can generate a wage premium/penalty. Third, the authors provide empirical evidence on how three relevant establishment-level characteristics shape the heterogeneity of the (adjusted) college wage observed across organisations.