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Microbusinesses are better able to assist many disadvantaged groups in finding employment and breaking the cycle of poverty because they require less initial capital and employ a large number of poor people in developing economies. Women run and own the majority of micro-businesses in urban Ethiopia. This study aims to investigate women’s microbusiness participation decisions and the effect on poverty in the Wolaita zone southern Ethiopia.

A cross-sectional study was carried out using a mixed-methods research approach. A total of 384 women who owned micro-businesses were chosen using a systematic random sampling technique, while 36 women were purposefully chosen for qualitative data analysis. Data were gathered through survey questionnaires, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The collected data were analyzed by using a propensity score matching technique as well as contextual analysis.

The study discovered that women’s participation in registered micro-businesses had a higher and more beneficial impact on their food, non-food and overall consumer spending than women’s participation in unregistered microbusinesses, which helped to reduce poverty. Besides, overall women’s participation in micro-business increased their decision-making power and enabled them to provide resources for their families food and non-food consumption, with registered micro-business participants reaping the greatest benefits.

This research focused on the effects of women’s micro-entrepreneurship on poverty in low-income communities. Rather than providing food, clothing and/or other aid to women in disadvantaged communities, the authors asserted that assisting women and their micro-businesses allows them to be self-sufficient in terms of food and clothing as a long-term solution to poverty reduction. As a result, policymakers can use our findings to gain a better understanding of how women’s micro-entrepreneurship affects poverty reduction, allowing them to develop more effective anti-poverty initiatives. This study’s findings are novel and add to the body of knowledge in Ethiopia and the sub-Saharan African region.

Health is a human right and a fundamental building block of sustainable development, economic prosperity and poverty reduction. To realize people’s right to health, evaluating the situation of the right and its determinants is necessary. This paper aims to analyze Iran’s conduct in realizing its population’s right to health.

A qualitative case study design involving a structured review of relevant laws, policy documents, reports and academic literature was undertaken. The data were collected from electronic databases and the official Web pages of the United Nations (UN) and Iran’s Government and analyzed by a framework suggested by the UN.

Iran’s law and policies intend to combat health inequalities and to provide an adequate standard of living for everyone, particularly disadvantaged groups and individuals. However, not all laws and policies protecting disadvantaged groups are adequately implemented. There are disparities in health status and access to health care among different socio-economic groups. International economic sanctions and government policies decreased people’s ability to access the necessities of life including health care. Moreover, social determinants of health, such as cultural beliefs regarding women’s rights have not been addressed sufficiently in the country’s laws.

This study includes a broad range of subjects and provides an overview of the health-care system of Iran. However, more detail is needed to describe every aspect of the right to health. It was not feasible to address them all in this paper and needs more research. In addition, as with the majority of qualitative studies, the design of the current study is subject to limitations. Firstly, the research quality of narrative reviews is dependent on the researcher’ skills and more easily can be influenced by his/her personal biases. Second, the rigor is more difficult to maintain, assess and demonstrate. Nevertheless, narrative studies often complement quantitative studies and are informative.

To fulfill the right to health, Iran should improve affordability and quality of care and the situation of the determinants of health. The gaps in people’s access to health care need to be identified, and all necessary means and scarce resources be allocated to remove access barriers and to improve the situation of disadvantaged people. The adoption of relatively low-cost targeted programs, the proper management of resources and the prevention of unnecessary costs are suggested.

Construction is one of Australia’s largest employers of young people and the industry is facing a major labor shortage, with young people expected to account for much of the shortfall. Surprisingly however, there been little research into the pathways for young people into construction employment. The aim of this paper is to address this gap in research by exploring whether project-based intermediaries can support the development of disadvantaged young people’s trust in the often-problematic systems which are meant to help transition them into employment in construction.

Employing an in-depth case study approach, this research mobilizes theories of personalized and generalized trust to report the results of interviews with 15 sectoral leaders; focus groups with 12 young people working in construction; and interviews with 11 young people being transitioned into construction employment through a unique project-based intermediary developed by a major Australian construction company as part of its social procurement requirements.

Findings show that project-based intermediaries can play an important trust-building role in transitioning disadvantaged young people into work in construction. They do this by bridging a young person’s strong social ties (family and friendship) and weak social ties (with government and construction industry organizations), both of which can be problematic when used in isolation to seek employment in construction. By performing a crucial bridging role between a young person’s individual self-interest in acting alone to find work and their collective interest in being part of a collaborative group, the project-based intermediary creates a new form of linking social capital, enabling social procurement policies which target young people to work while also addressing wider systemic problems in Australia’s employment systems.

This research addresses the lack of employment research into young people in construction and the paucity of theory in social procurement research more broadly. It takes an original approach in aligning theories related to a duality of personalized trust and generalized trust seen against the duality of individual intentionality and agency (self-focused) and shared intentionality and agency (group-focused). By doing so it provides new conceptual and practical insights into the important role that construction project-based intermediaries like the one studied here can play in providing innovative cross-sector and collaborative solutions to the world’s growing youth unemployment crisis.

In today’s information and knowledge society, it is indispensable for citizens to acquire the requisite digital and information literacy (IL) skills to search information independently to meet their multiple and diverse information needs. As a result of digitalisation in the world, development and acquisition of digital and information skills is critical even for students and learners to retrieve digitised and online information to meet or achieve their curriculum-related accomplishments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of the digital and information literacies in South Africa from 2016 to 2022.

This qualitative study used a scoping review approach to collect data from research articles, conference articles and textbooks on digital literacy and IL – published in the years ranging between 2016 and 2022 from Google Scholar.

The major findings revealed that majority of the citizens especially students and learners lack digital and IL skills to recognise when information is needed, to find, locate, evaluate and use the retrieved information to meet an information need in a particular situation or context. Practical implications of this study include the alignment of curricula towards information and communication technologies to face the everchanging digital information technologies.

The study used scoping literature review research where empirical studies were retrieved and selected to address the objectives. This study provided significant approaches regarding promoting information and digital literacies in developing countries such as South Africa.

The study examines how calculative practices and accountability appear in a rural community of marginalised people in Egypt who depend on jasmine plantations that contribute to the production of global essences.

The data were collected from various sources, namely conversations with villagers, documents and relevant videos and news available on social media and the Internet. This study draws on the concepts of social accountability, the politics of blame avoidance and using calculative practices as a language to explain accountability in context.

The author found a lack of accountability on the part of the government and business owners, with serious implications for the livelihoods of people in a community that has been wholly dependent on jasmine plantations for a century. Power holders have deployed a blame-shifting game to avoid social responsibility. In response, calculative practices rather than advanced accounting tools are used by the poor in the community to induce power holders to be accountable.

The findings of this study show that authorities need to take proactive steps to address the disadvantaged position of powerless people in the lower echelons of society, recognising their accountability for those people.

This paper enhances the understanding of the status of calculative practices and accountability in a community of marginalised people who contribute to the production of global commodities. The paper also enhances the understanding of what goes on behind the scenes with popular and prestigious commodities, whose development is initiated in poor countries, with the end product marketed in rich Western countries.

Future service interactions are anticipated to use humanoid robots in a society that is shifting to a digitalized era. Currently, it is evident that many businesses are replacing service interactions with self-service technologies (SSTs). This movement creates substantial societal changes that researchers have not paid sufficient attention to comprehend. In this setting, the purpose of this study is to examine the social drivers that influence customer mobility toward co-creating value via SSTs. The study also seeks to discover variations in customers' willingness and capacity to adopt SSTs.

To fulfill the research aims, a qualitative technique was adopted, with semistructured interviews conducted with 25 SST users from varied demographic backgrounds. To recruit individuals for the study, a nonprobabilistic purposeful sampling technique was adopted, with the goal of employing information-rich instances. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

The study identified eight social drivers that are important in the customer transition toward co-creating value with SSTs. According to the study, SSTs are characterized as a social trend in which adoption is accepted (social norm) and modifies social connections in a new direction. Using SSTs has evolved into a socializing tool that gives people social acknowledgment. Some people see SSTs as social pressure, putting them at a disadvantage if they do not adopt. People, on the other hand, acquire sufficient social support and independence to use SSTs. Customers were categorized into four groups depending on their willingness and ability to embrace SSTs: trendsetters, dreamers, old-fashioned and stragglers.

In practice, service providers can use this knowledge to successfully promote their SSTs and create enhanced client experiences through technological interfaces.

The study adds new knowledge by identifying social determinants in customer shifts toward SSTs, a phenomenon that has not been studied previously, and it adds to marketing theory by proposing a typology to group customers based on their ability and willingness to embrace SSTs.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how decision-makers can enhance citizens’ sustainable disposal of e-waste through bin proximity and ad hoc communication. Specifically, the authors discuss a two-year research project that took place in Northern Italy, where the authors documented the number of products disposed of sustainably in four towns.

The project involved five main groups of stakeholders: i) four municipalities, ii) one social purpose organisation employing people with disabilities, (i.e. Andromeda), iii) one provider of bins (i.e. PubliCittà), iv) another social purpose organisation entity (i.e. Fondazione CRT) and v) the University of Portsmouth. After conducting three online pilot tests to confirm expectations of this study regarding how to enhance citizens’ sustainable disposal of e-waste, the authors have implemented the field pilot programme in a small municipality and successively in other three towns. Finally, the authors measured the impact of the programme on the actual recycling rate of citizens in the three target municipalities.

The authors found that the positioning of drop-off bins in such a way as to reduce the distance from as many households as possible, along with the use of communication that facilitates the understanding of information related to sustainable disposal schemes, can improve the sustainable behaviour of citizens. The sustainable disposal of exhausted batteries after the intervention improved by 135% on average in the three municipalities that adopted the disposal scheme (Saluggia, San Benigno Canavese and Santhiá). The disposal rate of toners and electronics increased by 204.0% and 318.75% (San Benigno Canavese) and 138.7% and 85.4% (Santhiá), respectively.

The authors believe it would be cautious to consider potential differences in terms of recycling cultures and facilities before implementing the programme in other countries.

The authors’ contribution shows decision-makers how to effectively design disposal schemes to enhance citizens' sustainable behaviour. The authors demonstrate how the thoughtful and responsible use of marketing levers can affect environmental sustainability and impact social development.

This paper has an actual impact on society by changing citizens’ behaviour, reducing harm to the environment and human well-being and supporting the inclusion of disadvantaged people in sustainability-oriented programmes.

The structured and equitable engagement of scholars with multiple stakeholders can lead to the co-creation of societal value and knowledge and improve the well-being of multiple stakeholders. The collaboration between academics and practitioners enables the definition of effective strategies by observing the actual behaviour of individuals (i.e. citizens) and offers a direct and measurable impact on society. The involvement of social purpose organisations reinforces the shared primary aim of achieving measurable social and environmental impact.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the state of appraisal with regard to compliance with archives and records management legislations (ARML), the archives and records management policy (ARMP), reappraisal of records, capacity building, archives building and electronic records management (ERM) and to make a recommendation based on the research findings.

This study was based on the qualitative research technique. The research approach was a multiple case study comparing the previously advantaged and disadvantaged universities in South Africa.

The study found that ARML, ARMP, reappraisal of records and capacity building are essential for the appraisal of university records. The lack of appropriate appraisal theory/strategy led to a loss of institutional memory.

This research was limited to the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) and the University of Venda (UNIVEN). These two institutions are representatives of the state of archiving in South Africa.

This research will serve a benchmark for other South African universities, intending to implement systematic disposal of records in compliance with legislations and policies.

Failure by universities to appraise records will lead to the loss of institutional memory. This implies that history of institution will be lost if necessary measures are not taken.

There is very little, if any, research on the appraisal of South African universities’ records. The outcome of this research will benefit universities that are seeking to develop and implement appraisal strategies.

This article examines whether accountability can contribute to the analysis of effectiveness in grassroots voluntary organizations (GVOs) in France.

Based on recent studies and stakeholder theory, hypotheses are formulated about the negative link between accountability and financial effectiveness and a positive link between accountability and non-financial effectiveness.

The findings show that accountability practices are positive determinants of financial indicators (apart from return on assets [ROA]) and employment of people in difficulty. In contrast, the other non-financial indicators are not explained by accountability practices.

The study points out the complexity and paradoxes surrounding accountability and highlights the risk of insensitivity to it. It thus underlines a specific French situation, close to the risks of myopia linked to accountability. One possible explanation could be the coupling and decoupling mechanisms that allow non-profit organizations (NPOs) to regain power. Given the sometimes-random effects of accountability, producing nuanced theories is necessary, and governance should oscillate between equilibrium and adaptation in the face of stakeholders. Finally, this article introduces the risk of insensitivity of NPOs to accountability (i.e. they act as they wish, regardless of control mechanisms such as accountability).

This study thus reveals governance dilemmas, which could be solved through less formal, more mission-oriented, more creative and therefore heterodox accountability.

The French context of mistrust of certain managerial approaches and the development of codes of governance based on a disciplinary vision are confronted with a growing and critical literature on accountability in NPOs.

Using intersectionality and introducing newer developments from critical cross-cultural management studies, this paper aims to discuss how diversity is applicable to changing cultural contexts.

The paper is a conceptual paper built upon relevant empirical research findings from critical cross-cultural management studies.

By applying intersectionality as a conceptual lens, this paper underscores the practical and conceptual limitations of the business case for diversity, in particular in a culturally diverse international business (IB) setting. Introducing newer developments from critical cross-cultural management studies, the authors identify the need to investigate and manage diversity across distinct categories, and as intersecting with culture, context and power.

This paper builds on previous empirical research in critical cross-cultural management studies using intersectionality as a conceptual lens and draws implications for diversity management in an IB setting from there. The authors add to the critique of the business case by showing its failures of identifying and, consequently, managing diversity, equality/equity and inclusion (DEI) in IB settings.

Organizations (e.g. MNEs) are enabled to clearly see the limitations of the business case and provided with a conceptual lens for addressing DEI issues in a more contextualized and intersectional manner.

This paper introduces intersectionality, as discussed and applied in critical cross-cultural management studies, as a conceptual lens for outlining the limitations of the business case for diversity and for promoting DEI in an IB setting in more complicated, realistic and relevant ways.