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Many future research proposals of Lean Manufacturing (LM) are presented in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine these future research proposals of LM which are country-related and classify them.

A systematic literature review (SLR) of peer-reviewed journal articles in LM was conducted. A total of 145 articles published in 34 journals during 2010–2020 were collected from four major management science publishers namely, Emerald Online, Elsevier/Science Direct, Springer Link and Taylor and Francis. The country-related future research proposals of LM identified in the literature were classified according to, firstly, the continent of the country of reference, and secondly, some form of natural affinity of these proposals creating meaningful themes. The quality tool “affinity diagram” was applied to classify the country-related future research proposals of LM.

The country-related future research proposals of LM, which are increasing in the literature over time, refer mostly to studies to be conducted in several continents/countries and to multinational studies. Conducting studies specifically in Asia, Europe, South and North America, Africa and Australia–New Zealand is also suggested. The plethora of the country-related future research proposals of LM were classified, based on the affinity of their content, into 18 meaningful themes. These themes were also classified based on their affinity into two broad categories, namely “themes concerning the LM approach itself” and “themes concerning factors outside the LM approach”.

The restricted number of the databases searched and the subjectivity of classifying the large number of the country-related future research proposals into themes are the main limitations of the present SLR. Based on these limitations, future literature review studies can be carried out.

Useful proposals are provided to researchers of several countries for conducting original and country-specific research studies which can enrich the knowledge of the implementation of LM under the specific circumstances of a country for the benefit of practitioners.

This study goes beyond previous literature review studies on LM by focusing exclusively on the LM future research agenda which is country related. The analytical presentation of the country-related future research proposals as well as the formulation of clusters of these proposals make the present SLR study substantially different from those carried out worldwide so far.

Qualitative results of a benchmarking process in logistics areas between companies operating in Argentina are presented. A description of the main logistics processes reengineered by these companies is done and some inferences are taken from the study. The companies are finally analyzed according to another benchmarking process generated in Michigan State University, which leads to a discussion on how companies can be characterized as world class in emerging countries.

The research aims to applying Baumol’s framework to address some research gaps in the literature. This paper aims to analyze how institutional variations at the subnational level impact entrepreneurship decisions and the path toward productive or unproductive entrepreneurship in an institutionally underdeveloped country. The results offer potentially new theoretical insights and practical implications for developing or emergent countries.

The research applies Baumol’s framework to Mexico’s context. The research collects data compounded by individual- and state-level variables from diverse sources for the 32 Mexican states. The individual level and some controls were obtained from sources of regular frequency, but the institutional variables were derived from surveys of irregular frequency, nonsynchronic and mostly nonoverlapping, which required aligning and centered them around 2016 and 2019 to match with the individual variables. The authors apply multilevel nonlinear mixed-effects probit regression to test nine hypotheses regarding the impact of institutional variables on entrepreneurial decisions and the path toward productive or unproductive entrepreneurship.

Improved formal institutions across the Mexican states reduce the entrepreneurship probability, implying interactions with other variables and indirect effects; encourage the selection of productive entrepreneurship, e.g. formal ventures; and discourage self-employment. Consequently, those institutions do not encourage entrepreneurship selection as an occupation but entrepreneurial quality, i.e. the selection of productive-formal entrepreneurship and larger ventures. Deficient informal institutions increase the entrepreneurship and formal entrepreneurship probabilities, implying the interactions with other variables and indirect effects and supporting the corruption “greases the wheels” hypothesis, consequently encouraging productive ventures. New evidence of the positive relationship between criminality and entrepreneurship types in Mexico is reported.

Our findings indicate important impacts of the individual-level variables on the entrepreneurship decisions and that most of those decisions are potentially necessity driven and a minority are driven by opportunity, given their relationship with the macroeconomic controls and the institutional variables. The authors report mixed results on the relationship between institutions and entrepreneurship partially consistent with the literature; some results contribute additional evidence on controversial hypotheses or imply the existence of indirect effects. Overall, the results suggest that institutions impact the individual decisions to venture and the type of venture consequently affecting the amount and quality of entrepreneurship across states.

The research addresses some of the literature gaps by providing empirical evidence on a middle-income country and how diverging regional institutional contexts, including formal and informal institutions, impact the individual’s entrepreneurship decisions within an institutionally underdeveloped country. The paper contributes new knowledge and insights into entrepreneurship in emerging or developing countries with implications for Baumol’s framework in this context and adds to the debated hypothesis on the relationship between some institutions, e.g. corruption and criminality and entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the online information system Redalyc as an intermediary tool that provides Latin American scientific articles with international standards (mostly related to natural sciences and developed countries) as well as with specific areas to host local research.

Redalyc is based on a semantic intersection model proposed by Russian semiologist Yuri Lotman. This model allows us to visualize the role played by Redalyc as a mediator between opposites, i.e. local science versus global science, and natural sciences versus social sciences. The paper presents some of the projects Redalyc has developed in conjunction with different countries and different scientific communities.

The paper describes some characteristics that local projects, similar to Redalyc, must have in order to become an intermediary between scientific journal production indexes that link global parameters for scientific communication with local production. The paper finds that efforts should not only be centered on the development of strategies to change certain inertias that distinguish local social scientific production (e.g. dependence on literary resources, lack of recognition of periodical media), but also on the way they could help these disciplines and local media overcome certain barriers, namely: normalization, language and technological handicaps.

The recognition of Latin American scientific production implies a dual process that not only involves local policies (scientific councils), but also requires producing reliable databases to provide scientists and journal editors with global references on how to produce visible scientific literature and pertinent knowledge for their contexts. Redalyc is currently a database that contributes in both ways.

This study reviews the use of meta-analysis in accounting research. We categorize the meta-analytic research into five topics: financial reporting, auditing, corporate governance and accounting quality, management accounting, and miscellaneous topics. Further, we classify the studies by the meta-analysis technique employed: Hunter et al. (1982), Hunter and Schmidt (2000), Lipsey and Wilson (2001), and Stouffer’s approach. We identify 27 meta-analytical studies over the period 1985–2014 with financial reporting (auditing) topics representing seven (six) of these studies. Our review highlights that meta-analytic methods are being applied and accepted, more frequently, to answer complex questions concerning the moderating effects of country-level variables, such as national culture, economic conditions, and institutional characteristics, on various associations of interest.

Considering corporate governance (CG hereinafter) practices' variety across Anglo-American and European countries, this study relies on contingency and complexity theories to investigate the effect of environmental sustainability performance (ESP hereinafter) on shareholder value under various configurations of board of directors (BoD hereinafter), firm and country characteristics.

The author used the Thomson Reuters Environment Pillar Score (ASSET4) and the Total Shareholder Return to assess ESP and shareholder value respectively. The author applied a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA hereinafter) to an unbalanced panel of 2,284 observations from 486 European and Anglo-American non-financial listed firms over the period 2016–2020.

The author found a positive association between ESP and shareholder value and he displayed notable differences between Anglo-American and European economies regarding causal predictors of this positive association. Within European firms operating under civil law code where investor protection is low and family ownership is widespread, ESP creates shareholder value under configurations of causal predictors that significantly differ from those of their Anglo-American peers. The author's findings are robust to different identification strategies.

This study assists researchers, practitioners, shareholders and policymakers the significant roles that BoD diversity, organisational and institutional traits are jointly playing as determinants of the ESP-shareholder value relationship.

The author's study offers a more encompassing, complete and theoretically richer picture of the key drivers and outcomes of ESP.

The present paper seeks to focus on the processes involved in the knowledge transfer of CSR and sustainability programs and theorises about a conceptual framework that addresses three aspects of such a knowledge transfer process: the “thinking”, the “doing” and the “being”.

The paper is a theoretical interdisciplinary study, which combines insights from the theory of knowledge transfer within the application domain of CSR and sustainability, and looks into the ways the above impact aspects of diversity, career identity and career development of professionals in this field.

HRM issues such as new competencies and differing approaches to career development options, talent retention and management, and a change of the notion of employment contract need to develop to successfully support the transfer of knowledge in terms of professionals in the domain of CSR and sustainability.

Future directions and implications of this research include furthering the understanding of career identities and their development in the milieu of globally mobile knowledge workers in the field of CSR and sustainability knowledge transfer and identifying relevant and necessary tools for HR management and stakeholder engagement in this field.

The establishment of career pathways and new career identities is an increasingly significant challenge in the workplaces of the twenty‐first century, and CSR/sustainability knowledge transfer processes highlight that.

The paper contributes an innovative angle to the topic of knowledge transfer in the area of CSR and sustainability, whilst also highlighting the importance of the role of knowledge workers with global mobility in this process, including their perceptions of career identities and development.

The purpose of the article is to identify relevant criteria for decision support in the implementation of waste-to-energy (WtE)-based systems.

The methodology is a simple case study with a qualitative approach. Five experts involved in the project of a thermoelectric power plant qualitatively evaluated, on a Likert scale, a decision model with 15 indicators derived from recent studies. The research object was the first stage of a project to implement a thermoelectric plant employing municipal solid waste (MSW) in southern Brazil.

The study identified 15 criteria supporting the decision-making process regarding WtE implementation for MSW in a mid-sized city in southern Brazil. The study identified that compliance with MSW legislation, compliance with energy legislation, initial investment and public health impact are the most influential criteria. The study offered two models for decision processes: a simplified one and a complete one, with ten and fifteen indicators, respectively.

The study concerns mid-sized municipalities in southern Brazil.

Municipal public managers have now a methodology based on qualitative evaluation that admits multiple perspectives, such as technical, economic, environmental and social, to support decision-making processes on WtE technologies for MSW.

MSW management initiatives can yield jobs and revenues for vulnerable populations and provide a correct destination for MSW, mainly in developing countries.

The main originality is that now municipal public decision-makers have a structured model based on four constructs (technical, economic, environmental and social) deployed in 15 indicators to support decision-making processes involving WtE and MSW management.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the evolving IFLA approach to impact evaluation through three of its international programmes: Freedom of Access to Information, Building Strong Library Associations (BSLA) and the International Advocacy Programme (IAP). This review positions these three programmes within the wider discourse of the international evaluation community.

Each of the three programmes is considered in turn to show what they were trying to achieve and how thinking about impact evaluation at IFLA is evolving.

This paper reports key evaluation findings for relevant phases of the BSLA and IAP programmes in general terms.

The views presented are those of the evaluation consultants who advised each of these programmes (and in the cases of BSLA and the IAP conducted the programme evaluations).

The processes described and the conclusions drawn should be of interest to anyone involved in international or national library evaluation, especially of public libraries, library associations and national libraries.

The paper suggests that more systematic impact evaluation of public libraries, library associations and national libraries is necessary to ensure their future survival.

The authors were uniquely placed to see and participate in IFLA impact evaluation discussions over the past decade.

The benefits of trade liberalization on upskilling and skill-based wage premiums for high-skilled workers have recently been questioned in policy circles, in part because of rising income inequality and populist movements in developed economies such as the USA. The purpose of this paper is to determine the effects of trade liberalization on the relative supply and demand for skills.

Through the systematic review of the literature on trade and skill acquisition, this paper isolates a total of 25 articles published over the past two decades.

Key findings demonstrate the importance of the relative development of the trading partner, with more developed countries experiencing higher upskilling, while less developed countries experience deskilling. Technology, geographic level of analysis, sector and gender were also found to be important influences on human capital acquisition associated with international trade.

Overall, the authors find support for the idea that trade with developing countries places pressure on low-skill jobs in developed countries but increases the demand for educated workers. The implications of shifts in skills for public policy-making and in terms of the skill premium on wages are discussed.