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This study aims to examine the research output on digital divide from 2001 to 2020 and measure the qualitative and quantitative growth of literature during the stated period by using required bibliometric measures for identifying the types of documents, yearly growth, country productivity, citation network of collaborative countries, authorship pattern, top authors, cocitation networks and assorted facets.

Web of Science database was used to retrieve the required data for this study. Keeping the objectives of this study in mind, the keyword “Digital Divide” was used as the search term. Moreover, the retrieved data were limited from the year 2001 to 2020 for two decades. A total of 5,518 publications were filtered and focused for subsequent facet-wise analysis and interpretation. Required bibliometric indicators like types of documents, yearly growth, authorship pattern, degree of collaboration (DC), country productivity, h-index and citation impact were used to study various dimensions of publication trends. VOSviewer software was used to visualize the authorship network, bibliographic coupling and keyword occurrences.

This study finds a total of 5,518 publications on the topic digital divide contributed by 14,277 authors from 130 countries across the world published through 2,843 source titles in 13 global languages during the past two decades (2001–2020). The annual growth of publications (AGP) on the topic digital divide shows 38.43% AGP globally. Journal articles have been identified as the preferred type of document with 73.11% of the literature. The DC indicates a healthy trend of collaborative research with a mean value of 0.70. The USA is the table topper with the contribution of 1,933(35.03%) publications and 77 h-index and James J., from Tilburg University, The Netherlands, is identified as top amongst the most productive authors with the highest number of 34 publications (h-index 14).

This study restricts its scope on research productivity to the theme “digital divide” regarding authorship pattern, DC, most productive authors, most productive countries, most published sources and other key facets. This study exclusively refers to the Web of Science database in retrieving the required data. Moreover, this study takes global research into account with no geographical or language limitations and comprehends literature on digital divide for two decades ranging from the years 2001 to 2020.

Teachers and research scholars interested in bibliometric studies can benefit from insights into the scholarly documents published on the topic digital divide from 2001 to 2020.

This study yields some interesting findings on published literature on the digital divide during the past two decades relating to the most striking contributions, highly cited journals, the most prolific authors, country productivity, keyword cooccurrence and assorted parameters.

The purpose of this qualitative, single-case study was to explore the development of Jamaica’s maritime education and training (MET) curriculum within the local education context. In this research, the story of the development and sustainability of the local MET curriculum in its 40-year journey from 1980 to present (post 2020), as communicated by various maritime stakeholders and archival documents, is chronicled.

The study utilized a qualitative orientation and was an embedded single-case study in its design. The entire local MET institution community and those legislatively and operationally allied to its sustained viability constituted the general population of this study. Non-probability sampling techniques were used to arrive at a maximum variation sample. Three sources of data were used in this study: individual interviews, focus group discussions and documents.

The Jamaican (local) MET curriculum was the brainchild of local perspicacity that was empowered by international benevolence. It was developed to satisfy market demands that existed at the time of its inception. These market requirements of the maritime industry are what impacted the development of the local MET curriculum over four decades. Several other factors led to the sustained viability of the local MET curriculum. These included the ability of the local MET curriculum to meet direct market needs and maintain its fitness for purpose.

It is the view of the researcher that the findings of this study were limited by the fact that the voices of current students and employers from the four decades of the curriculum's existence are not represented in this initial study. The perspectives from these two sources would have broadened the description presented in this study.

This research has shown that specialized higher education (HE) institutions are better served in their business when they maintain a symbiotic relationship with the industry for which they are producing graduates.

The treatment of HE as a service industry has gained traction globally. This would suggest that ‘product placement' in specialized HE is important to the growth, development and longevity of that course of study within the society in which it exists.

There is a dearth of national research on Jamaica's four-decades-old MET curriculum and the elements that lend to the sustained viability of same. This discussion of sustainability of the MET curriculum will benefit maritime educators and policymakers, who must continue to hone this curriculum so that it is fit for purpose. The study will also identify some of the elements of a sustainable, specialized HE curriculum. The elements identified herein can serve as exemplars and conceptual starting points for other contexts where the discussion of the sustainability of curriculum needs to be had.

Lean manufacturing (LM) concepts have been widely adopted in diverse industrial sectors. However, no literature review focusing on case studies describing LM implementation is available. Case studies represent the actual implementation and provide secondary data for further analysis. This study aims to review the same to understand the pathways of LM implementation. In addition, it aims to analyse other related review questions, such as how implementing LM impacts manufacturing capabilities and the maturity level of manufacturing organisations that implemented LM, to name a few.

A literature review of case studies that discuss the implementation of LM during the last decade (from 2010 to 2020) is carried out. These studies were synthesised, and content analyses were performed to reveal critical insights.

The implementation pattern of LM significantly varies across manufacturing organisations. The findings show simultaneous improvement in manufacturing capabilities. Towards the end of the last decade, organisations implemented LM with radio frequency identification, e-kanban, simulation, etc.

Reviewing the case studies documenting LM implementation to comprehend the various nuances is a novel attempt. Furthermore, potential future research directions are identified for advancing the research in the domain of LM.

With the growth and profound influence of technology on our life, it is important to address the ethical issues inherent to the development and deployment of technology. Researchers and practitioners submit the need to inspect: how technology and ethics interact, how ethical principles regulate technology and what could be the probable future course of action to execute techno-ethical practices in a socio-technical discourse effectively. To address the thoughts related to techno-ethics, the authors of the present study conducted exploratory research to understand the trend and relevance of technology ethics since its inception.

The study collected over 679 documents for the period 1990–2022 from the Scopus database. A quantitative approach of bibliometric analysis was conducted to study the pattern of authorship, publications, citations, prominent journals and contributors in the subject area. VOS viewer software was utilized to visualize and map academic performance in techno-ethics.

The findings revealed that the concept of techno-ethics is an emerging field and requires more investigation to harness its relevance with everchanging technology development. The data revealed substantial growth in the field of techno-ethics in humanities, social science and management domain in the last two decades. Also, most of the prominent cited references and documents in the database tend to cover the theme of Artificial Intelligence, Big data, computer ethics, morality, decision-making, IT ethics, human rights, responsibility and privacy.

The article provides a comprehensive overview of scientific production and main research trends in techno-ethics until 2022. The study is a pioneer in expanding the academic productivity and performance of embedding ethics in technology.

This study aims to further develop the CLC stage/path’s identification model that distinguishes between path’s emergence (emergence stage), path’s development (growth stage), path’s sustainment (maturity stage), path’s decline (decline stage) and path’s transformation (renewal stage), and by applying it, define the current stage/path of the Demarcated Douro Region (DDR) cluster. The Port wine industry, which is the dominant industry of the DDR cluster, is at the maturity/decline stage – is the same for the cluster itself?

It is a case study with a longitudinal perspective based on the analysis of the dynamics of the parameters of cluster evolution using available secondary sources (cluster identity/brand; number of firms; number of employees; network; innovation; policies and regulations; and external markets – exports), especially addressing the past decade, that represent the stage of maturity/decline of the cluster’s dominant Port wine industry.

The conclusion is that since the 1990s the Demarcated Douro Region has gone through a “path transformation” where during the following 20 years new “anchors” for the cluster were gradually introduced, such as Doc Douro Wines, new forms of consumption of Port wine, tourism and olive oil. Since 2010 the cluster has entered a growth stage/(new) path’s development, where these “anchors” are in steady growth. The Douro brand is becoming more internationally recognized and established, the number of firms and employees is increasing, the network is restructuring with the creation of cluster-specific official institutions, innovation is especially reflected with increasing heterogeneity through diversification of the clusters into new activities and regulations and policies are supportive for expansion – all these parameters are indicating the rise of the new cycle for the cluster. Thus, the DDR cluster represents an attractive business environment and requires attention from regional policymakers to support the cluster’s development. Especially institutions have been highlighted as internal factors driving clusters growth, European integration as an external factor and firms’ strategies of diversification and internationalization as an appropriate de-locking mechanism for new path’s development.

This research contributes to the CLC theory by further developing and applying a CLC stage/path identification model. It provides a better understanding of the dynamics of the DDR cluster that diverge from its dominant industry life cycle, which is relevant for regional policies and firms’ strategies. This study has its limitations. It provides an exploratory application of the theoretical framework proposed, and consequently, no general conclusions are possible yet. More empirical studies with different clusters in different stages are necessary to test the framework.

These findings are useful to policymakers when designing their policies for cluster development but also for clusters’ entities and actors when making their strategic decisions as it allows based on the verification of the established parameter of CLC to identify its current stage/path of development.

The paper presents a theoretically grounded model for CLC identification and for the first time to the best of the authors’ knowledge applies it to a cluster case – the DDR cluster. This case applies the proposed model and illustrates its usefulness. The model provides the tools for a better understanding of cluster dynamics.

This article provides an overview and analysis of 50 years of European policies, actions, and challenges to align its higher education and research, as well as lessons learned from this for similar initiatives elsewhere.

The study builds on a comprehensive overview and study of policy documents and scholarly literature to identify by decade the main policies and actions and the related challenges towards a European Higher Education and Research Area.

The findings make clear the key rationales, challenges, shifts and lessons to be learned from 50-year European policies for the alignment of higher education.

Its value lies in the historical overview and analysis of current initiatives, in particular the European Universities Initiative (EUI), to provide a historical and geographical context, which might give insight for similar initiatives elsewhere.

This paper aims to evaluate the construction supply chain (CSC) by examining its relationships with various key areas and its development, identifying gaps and outlining potential future research directions that affect the implementation of CSC standards during the timeframe of the United Nations’ “Decade of Action” plans in the past two decades.

This paper reports on a systematic literature review with bibliometric analysis that investigates publications from around the world on various aspects of CSC. These aspects include research methodology/data collection technique, inquiry mode, country-specific research, focused areas of study, the research aims and publication periods.

The findings of the study reveal that information technology, information sharing, collaboration, performance measurement and CSC configuration have received considerable attention and analysis. However, financial management, supply chain resilience, logistics, vendor managed inventory and rural CSC have been identified as significant areas that require further investigation since limited attention has been given to them in the existing literature.

CSC is a very dominant topic in the current study, but there are some limitations to it. Scopus and Web of Science databases were used to conduct the study. A future study can therefore consider papers related to other databases. As the focus was specifically dedicated to construction material SC only, the papers associated with SCs of labours and equipment have been eradicated.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first structured and systematic literature review that identifies the issues related to the CSC during the timeframe of the United Nations’ “Decade of Action” plans and proposes future research directions to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of CSC.

Over the past years, business strategies have been designed to improve ‘firms' financial and non-financial performances and achieve sustainable development, leading to corporate sustainability. This article is a bibliometric analysis of two decades of the relationship between corporate sustainability and firm performance, identifying the research focus and the gaps for future research.

The bibliometric review of corporate sustainability and performance research is between January 2004 and June 2023. As per the Web of Science database, the theme's research commenced around 2004, growing gradually till 2023. Five hundred thirty-nine published articles by peer-reviewed ABDC-indexed A and A* journals in English have been reviewed. The bibliometrix package in R software is used with VOSviewer for the bibliometric analysis.

The study's findings indicate a lack of research on the theme from developed and underdeveloped nations. Further, the analysis reveals five clusters of research: (1) business sustainability, (2) corporate sustainability reporting, (3) corporate sustainability, strategy, and innovation, (4) stakeholder and corporate sustainability, and e) corporate sustainability assessment.

The future research areas proposed are on two major themes, namely, corporate sustainability and organizational competitive advantage, including sub-themes such as “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and financial performance” and “greenhouse-gas emissions” and “market orientations,” respectively. There is a need for more research in developing markets, a comprehensive definition of corporate sustainability, and further exploration of the theme linking strategy and innovation.

This study aims to investigate whether Brazilian companies have increased their reporting on biodiversity within the past decade and whether reporting practices are linked to the government's stance on environmental protection, media coverage and industry biodiversity risk.

Using content analysis and ordinary least squares regression models, the authors examine sustainability reports from Brazilian listed and non-listed companies from 2010 to 2020.

This study’s empirical analysis indicates that companies have decreased their reporting on biodiversity over the decade. Findings suggest that biodiversity reporting is associated with the level of scrutiny from external constituents, such as industry biodiversity and the president's own public policy agenda and partially by media coverage.

The literature seems to lack an understanding of how political factors may drive social and environmental reporting practices, especially biodiversity reporting. This study addresses this issue by examining the relationship between the government's stance on environmental protection. By focusing on biodiversity reporting in an emerging country like Brazil, this study also generates insights into a highly impactful yet under-researched context.

The aim of this paper is to discuss a selection of policy strategies, regional initiatives and market approaches to uncover the realities of twenty-first-century building energy performance. A position that market-based approaches, human influence and policy interventions are part of an ecosystem of building energy performance is presented.

An exploratory search of secondary sources spanning the last three decades was conducted. Both peer-reviewed and grey literature were included to capture a broader understanding of the discourse in literature. Research questions guided the literature search, and a data extraction tool was designed to categorise the literature. The primary limitation of this study is that only a few applications could be discussed in a condensed format.

Several challenges about the current status quo of building energy performance were identified and summarised as follows. (1) Inconsistencies in measurement and verification protocols, (2) Impacts of market approaches, (3) National policy priorities that are at variance with regional targets and (4) Ambiguous reporting on environmental impacts of energy efficiency (EE) technologies.

The practical implications of the findings in this paper for practice and research are that as part of the building energy performance ecosystem, national responses through government interventions must become adaptive to keep up with the fast-paced energy sector and social trends. Simultaneously, before market-based approaches overcome the messiness of socio-economic dynamics, institutional conditions and cultural nuances, they ought to transparently address environmental impacts and the infringement of several SDGs before they can become viable solutions to building energy performance.

This paper presents building energy performance as an ecosystem comprising human influence, market-based approaches and policy interventions which form interdependent parts of the whole. However, evidence in the literature shows that these aspects are usually investigated separately. By presenting them as an ecosystem, this paper contributes to the discourse by advocating the need to re-align building energy performance to socio-economic-political dynamics and contextually viable solutions.