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The purpose of this article is twofold. First, this study characterises the current state of the bio-packaging market's development. Second, it identifies key factors influencing and possible scenarios of the bio-packaging market transition to increase the market share of compostable packaging.

The results of 29 in-depth interviews (IDIs) with representatives of the key groups of bio-packaging supply chains' (SCs') stakeholders were the input for the consideration of the research problem.

The main economic, legal, social and technological enablers and barriers to the bio-packaging regime transition are recognised, and their impact at the market level is explained. The authors recognised the hybrid transition scenario towards an increase in the market share of compostable packaging related to the three traditional pathways of transformation, reconfiguration and technological substitution.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the socio-technical system theory by examining interdependencies between landscape (external environment), market regime (bio-packaging market) and niche innovations (compostable packaging) as well as system transition pathways. The findings and conclusions on bio-packaging market developments can be important lessons learnt to be applied in different countries due to the same current development stage of the compostable packaging lifecycle worldwide.

This study examines the role of financial development (FD) in enhancing the growth effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) in emerging and developing Asia from 1996 to 2019.

The study exploits the new broad-based Financial Development Index of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and adopts panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) to perform alternative empirical models for a multidimensional analysis of the FD threshold effect in the growth–FDI nexus.

The results show two thresholds of FD mediating the nonlinear effect of FDI on growth. FD beyond a certain level will enhance the growth effect of FDI, but very high levels of FD will not induce foreign investment to benefit economic growth in emerging and developing Asian economies. The impact of financial institutions on the FDI–growth link is stronger than that of financial markets. Besides, FDI’s effect on growth has an inverted-U shape conditional on financial depth, whereas it is positively associated with the accessibility and efficiency of the financial system.

These results suggest policy implications for emerging and developing Asian countries, emphasizing the other side of “too much finance” and the potential for improvement in the access to and efficiency of the financial system to boost the effects of FDI and FD in the growth of these economies.

The study is the first multifaceted investigation into the influence of FD on the growth effect of FDI. Beyond the previous empirical evidence showing only the impact of credit from banking sector, this study shows different mediating effects of different financial sectors and three dimensions of financing (depth, access and efficiency). The study suggests essential implications for the region in adjusting long-run policies to enhance the FDI–FD–growth link.

This paper aims to examine the Canadian financial sector’s reaction to opportunities and risks created by the green bond market in a low-carbon and climate-resilient (LCR) economy.

The authors used a concurrent mixed methodological approach that undertakes an online survey and semistructured interviews with critical green bond market stakeholders.

The most significant market driver in Canada is the reputational benefit for stakeholders, i.e. its ability to meet the high demand for sustainable finance and the marketing potential of its green credentials. The major market barriers are transactional costs, i.e. additional tracking required for reporting purposes, lack of market liquidity and identification of environmental impact or additionality. Canadian green bonds are also more likely to be evaluated on their green impact than their global market peers.

Limitations of this study include its focus on Canada, which may exclude or not apply to drivers and barriers in other green bond markets.

The paper helps create an accounting-based conceptual framework for key motivations and barriers that affect financial decision-making regarding green bonds.

The authors identify economic and policy-related barriers and drivers for green bonds, addressing the financing gap for the LCR economy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to identify and compare Canadian green bond market drivers and barriers and to examine relevant stakeholder- and policy-related approaches that can be targeted to scale this market effectively.

In socio-technical transition theory, resistance by existing technology and regime resistance plays a key role. The resistance is in the form of intentional improvements; eventually, the regime destabilizes and adopts the new technology, referred to as the sailing-ship effect. Researchers used a structural view and examined it as a strategic action and its relationship with new technology (competitive/symbiotic) in non-fast-changing sailing systems. This study uses a microlevel view and examines it in a fast-changing where products/services are developed by integrating existing technology with new product innovations; their success depends on addressing technical/market uncertainty. This study examines the sailing-ship effect in a fast-changing system and contributes to the socio-technical transition theory.

The authors need to examine the phenomena of the sailing-ship effect in its setting, and a case-study method is appropriate. The selected case provided diverse analytic and heuristic perspectives to examine the phenomena; therefore, it was a single case study.

In an IT scenario, the strategic actions decide and realize agility and competitive advantage by formulating appropriate goals with required budgets and coevolutionary changes to resources at product, process and organizational levels, addressing technical/market uncertainty. Moreover, the agility displayed by strategic actions determines the relationship with new technology, which is interspersed. Finally, it provided insights into struggle, navigation and negotiations, forming strategic actions to display the sailing-ship effect.

The study selected a Banking Financial Services and Insurance product of an IT Services company. As start-ups exhibit inherent (emergent) agility, the authors can examine agility as a combination of emergent and strategic actions by selecting a start-up.

The study highlights the strategic actions specific to an IT services company. It developed its product and services by steering clear from IT innovations such as native cloud and continuous deployment. It improved its products/services with necessary organizational changes and achieved the desired agility and competitive advantage. Therefore, organizations devise appropriate strategic actions to combat the sailing-ship effect apart from setting goals and selecting IT innovations.

The study expands the socio-technical transition theory by selecting a fast-changing system. It provided insights into the relationship between existing and new technology and the strategic actions necessary to manage technical and market uncertainty and achieve the desired competitive advantage, or the sailing-ship effect.

This paper aims to show the possibilities of implementing the idea of sustainability in the context of energy transformation using the concept of an industrial cluster. The implementation of the idea of sustainability is of particular importance from the perspective of the functioning of the meta-organisations involved in the implementation and promotion of decarbonisation processes. Industrial clusters, as collective actors initiating collective actions and providing complex governance structures, seem to have a great fit with regard to the needs of disseminating and implementing the idea of sustainable development, also in conjunction with energy development.

Empirical evidence is derived from a case study of Mazovia Clustes ICT (MC ICT). Based on the experience of this cluster, this study wants to show the evolution of the industrial cluster through the prism of its growing activity in supporting energy transition. The authors conducted the research in the period 2022–2023 using in-depth personal interviews and an analysis of the secondary data. The primary technique for data analysis and interpretation was conventional qualitative content analysis.

As a result of this study, the authors have distinguished three main areas of cluster activity covering the strategic, operational/project and institutional levels. Within the first area, the cluster’s efforts focused on the development of a strategy and involvement in lobbying and co-legislating. The second area refers to the cluster’s activity in the carrying out of national and transnational projects on the creation and implementation of various energy solutions. The activities undertaken in the third area include support for the development of start-ups in the field of energy and involvement in the launch of an energy cluster and the development of distributed energy in Poland. Although the strategic and operational/project levels are characterised by a commonality of activities and goals, there is additionally a commonality of interests at the institutional level.

This paper has its limitations, which primarily relate to the small research sample (the choice of a case study as the main research strategy) and the methods used (qualitative research). Therefore, it is impossible to generalise the results to the entire population of clusters.

This paper has considerable practical value, as the results of this study may be relevant for public authorities interested in implementing energy transition through industrial clusters. The activities described can also be a source of inspiration for other clusters interested in shaping pro-environmental attitudes.

The cluster’s activities are closely linked to the three pillars of sustainable development, including the social pillar. The solutions developed within the cluster in the context of energy development are aimed not only at increasing energy efficiency and protecting the environment but also at broader social welfare.

This paper makes an additional contribution to the state-of-the-art of the industrial cluster concept by linking it to the idea of sustainable development, in the context of energy transformation. In addition, it sheds new light on issues related to cluster co-operation, combining the case of the industrial cluster with the very fresh and as yet poorly described idea of the energy cluster.

This research empirically investigates the evidence of the financial development and economic growth nexus in sub-Saharan Africa from 1995 to 2022.

A series of preliminary tests are conducted before using the two-stage estimated generalized least squares and robust least squares methods for the analysis. Two indices are constructed to measure financial development: one for the banking sector indicators and another for the market-based indicators (Ustarz and Fanta, 2021).

The results indicate that the banking sector index significantly impacts the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita positively. The market sector index has a negatively significant effect on the GDP per capita. Government expenditure has a positive impact on the GDP per capita.

Policymakers in sub-Saharan Africa should improve and implement finance–growth inclusive strategies that promote financial reforms and development to efficiently impact all population sectors. Policymakers should take stringent measures to ensure that the banking sector's development is sustainable to lead economic growth. The governments should strategize and promote capital market development using favorable listing rules for companies in the stock markets. Global stock market integration should be encouraged to diversify risks, increase public awareness, raise investors' confidence level and reduce stock market impediments like high taxes and regulatory barriers.

Previous study findings on the financial development and economic growth nexus are inconclusive and debatable. This study employs the financial development index approach.

Despite the global resolves to curtail fossil fuel consumption (FFC) in favour of clean energies, several countries continue to rely on carbon-intensive sources in meeting their energy demands. Financial constraints and limited knowledge with regards to green energy sources constitute major setbacks to the energy transition process. This study therefore aims to examine the effects of financial development and human capital on energy consumption.

The empirical analysis is based on the system generalised method of moments (SGMM) for a panel of 134 countries from 1996 to 2019. The SGMM estimates conducted on the basis of three measures of energy consumption, notably fossil fuel, renewable energy as well as total energy consumption (TEC), provide divergent results.

While financial development significantly reduces FFC, its effect is positive though non-significant with regards to renewable energy consumption. Conversely, financial development has a positive and significant effect on TEC. Moreover, the results reveal that human capital development has an enhancing though non-significant effect on the energy transition process. In addition, the results reveal that resource rents have an enhancing effect on the energy transition process. However, when natural resources rents are disaggregated into various components (oil, coal, mineral, natural gas and forest rents), the effects on energy transition are divergent. Although our findings are consistent when the global panel is split into developed and developing economies, the results are divergent across geographical regions. Contingent on these findings, actionable policy implications are discussed.

The study complements extant literature by assessing nexuses between financial development, human capital and energy transition from a global perspective.

How does the regional institutional environment of China’s transitional economy influence the relationship between a firm’s R&D investment intensity and innovation performance? Based on the resource-based view and institution-based view, an empirical study was executed to identify the moderating effects of institutional environment variables from the Marketization Index of China’s Provinces: National Economic Research Institute (NERI) Report on the relationship between a firm’s R&D investment intensity and innovation performance. This paper aims to study how effectively improve the impact of R&D investment intensity on innovation performance under the influence of the institutional environment.

Against the background of China’s transitional economy, the authors present empirical evidence from panel data covering 374 Chinese A-share listed high-tech manufacturing firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange to examine the relationship between R&D investment intensity and innovation performance.

Empirical results illustrate the following: The R&D investment intensity and innovation performance displayed an inverse U-shaped relationship, and R&D investment intensity had a lagged effect on R&D output according to the uncertainty and industrialization period of R&D activities. The level of financial market development can intensify the effects of R&D investment intensity on innovation performance. The degree of government intervention weakens the effect of R&D investment intensity on innovation performance.

Based on the background of China’s institutional environment during the transition period, combined with previous research and the Marketization Index of China’s Provinces: NERI Report, selecting financial market development, government intervention level and legalization level as moderating variables to study how effectively improve the impact of R&D investment intensity on innovation performance under the influence of the institutional environment. Due to the different ownership of firms during the transition period, the appropriate impact of the institutional environment on the relationship between R&D investment intensity and innovation performance will vary. Moreover, the level of legalization would impact on innovation insignificantly.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the twin transition in China in the organization of innovation processes in artificial intelligence (AI) and green technology (GT) development and to understand the role of foreign multinationals in Chinese innovation systems.

A qualitative research approach is used by interviewing executives from German multinationals with expertise in AI and GT development and organization of innovation processes in China. In total, 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with companies, and the data were analysed with a thematic qualitative text analysis.

The findings show that AI applications for GT are primarily developed in cross-company projects that are led by local and regional authorities through the organization of industrial districts and clusters. German multinationals are either being integrated, remaining autonomous or being excluded from these twin transition innovation processes.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing one of the first qualitative approach towards twin transition innovation processes in China and exploring the integration of multinational enterprises in cluster organizations. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first twin transition studies from this perspective in emerging economies.

This study aims to study the moderating effects of private ownership and government support on the relationship between outsourcing and product innovation in entrepreneurial ventures in a transition economy.

The data of 10,296 Vietnamese entrepreneurial ventures from the four rounds of the survey conducted by the General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam to investigate the moderating effects of private ownership and government support on the association between outsourcing and entrepreneurial ventures’ product innovation performance. The Probit regression model is employed to estimate such associations.

Our research uncovered that the impact of outsourcing on the likelihood of product innovation is more significant for entrepreneurial operations characterized by a substantial degree of private ownership and government backing as opposed to those without.

The results of our research indicated that the resource-based perspective and extended resource-based view (ERBV) are essential in examining the impact of gaining resources or skills from external sources on the growth of entrepreneurial enterprises. These ideas have significance and importance not just in industrialized economies but also in countries undergoing transition. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurial enterprises should have the ability to manage a wide range of resources and make decisions about which activities should be handled internally and which should be delegated to other parties.

Our findings also imply that entrepreneurial ventures should be able to control many resources and choose which tasks should be performed in-house and which should be outsourced to third parties.

By adopting and leveraging the resource-based view (RBV) and extended resource-based views (ERBV), our study developed a theoretical model about private ownership and government support for moderate outsourcing’s impact on entrepreneurial innovation in a transition economy.