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Drawing on work from home (WFH), job demand-control and street-level bureaucracy literature streams, this paper specifically focuses on the emerging trend of WFH for public sector employees in a developing country context of Egypt.

The empirical sample comprises focus group discussions with a total of 40 public sector employees in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used on focus group discussion transcripts to bring out main themes linked to this topic.

Our findings show that employee (marginal discretion power, pharaonism, corruption), citizen (unfamiliarity with digital services) and country (lack of proper info-structure, overstaffing in the public sector)- level challenges hinder and/or slow down the potential for WFH in Egyptian public sector.

A major implication of our paper relates to highlighting the criticality of e-governance and WFH for public sector employees, as well as highlighting multilevel challenges associated with those. At the same time, socio-economic and political consequences of offering such options need to be considered in a country like Egypt where most public organisations are overstaffed, and those employees lack modern day employability skills. Hence, there needs to be an open debate in countries such as Egypt on the consequences of e-governance and WFH and whether it may facilitate delivering citizen services digitally. Also, high power distance culture plays a role in this context, and any change cannot be successful unless that specific aspect is confronted.

This study contributes to the emerging WFH literature by being one of the pioneering studies to offer a multilevel (micro, meso and macro) assessment of this phenomenon in the under-researched fragile developing country’s context.

Based on the rankings of the global competitiveness index and the fragile states index, this paper aims to suggest alternative approaches to shed some light on the effectiveness of rankings in helping emerging economies improve their competitiveness from an institutional standpoint.

The statistical analysis consisted of a two-stage analysis; the first stage consisted of constructing an updated Alternative Institutional Quality Index (AIQI), intending to design a comparative measure between dimensions over time. The second stage consisted of evidencing the structure of each of the observed dimensions' variance to evidence the existing changes or gaps of the AIQI and its components. The authors incorporated the Kruskas–Wallis (KW) model to test the results.

This paper demonstrates that the analyzed countries generally maintain their competitive position, even though changes in their scores are reflected. This makes invisible the development and progress factors generated by the countries that are mainly found with low scores and only reflect stable structures that allow them to maintain their position.

The current study has a limitation because it concentrated on a few selected indicators based on the literature review. The limitations of this research may be overlooked in the future by adding additional variables and observations. The paper could be improved by including intra- and inter-regional approaches to control based on the occurrence of specific circumstances (i.e. informal institutions, economic development or factor endowments).

The paper contributes to the applicable measurement of competitiveness and its structural change over time.

This paper proposed an alternative and simple methodology to assess the evolution of the competitiveness indicators; this methodology could be used to measure structural changes at different levels, which may be an input for the design and implementation of policies to foster competitiveness.

When a major landslide and floods devastated Freetown, Sierra Leone had just overcome the Ebola crisis, which had left its mark on socio-political relations between different disaster response actors. With international disaster response frameworks increasingly shifting to local ownership, the national government was expected to assume a coordinating role. However, in “post-conflict” settings such as Sierra Leone, intra-state and state–society relations are continuously being renegotiated. This study aimed to uncover the complexities of state-led disaster response in hybrid governance setting at national and community levels in the response to the 2017 landslide and floods.

During the four months of fieldwork in Freetown in 2017, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with various state, aid and societal actors were conducted.

The findings show that a response to policy building on the idea of a uniform state response did not take into account intra-state power politics or the complexity of Sierra Leone's hybrid governance.

This paper argues for a more nuanced debate in humanitarian governance and practice on the localisation of aid in post-conflict and fragile settings.

The study's findings contribute to the literature on the disaster–conflict nexus, identifying paradoxes of localised disaster response in an environment with strong national–local tensions. The study highlights intra-local state dynamics that are usually overlooked but have a great impact on the legitimacy of different state authorities in disaster response.

This paper aims to present a new survey data set of 9,065 private sector respondents and other stakeholder groups, in Myanmar. The primary aim of this paper is to offer new insight avenues on local business–conflict–development interactions, and offer the full survey data set itself as an open-source research tool for scholars and practitioners.

The survey was conducted over smartphone in 2018. It asked questions that aimed to better understand the relationships between business, ethnic conflict, investment, corporate social responsibility and the United Nations sustainable development goals in Myanmar and in Rakhine State in particular.

The data set captures a series of significant differences in corporate leadership perspectives on the role of business in society, across sectors (e.g. banking, agriculture, retail, manufacturing, extractives) and variations across firm country of ownership (e.g. national firms, Global North firms, Indian firms, Chinese firms).

The authors conclude with a brief discussion of possible research findings from the survey, offering suggestions for possible forward analysis. The authors offer here the raw survey data as an attachment for full global open-source use and application.

This data set offers a unique window into stakeholder perceptions and understandings of working through conflict, and the role of business in development in a fragile conflict-affected state (Myanmar). The authors also conduct two example analyses of the data set using ANOVA and Kruskal–Wallis tests to illustrate possible uses and findings of the data set.

The authors briefly discuss social implications as well, particularly regarding the role of business in peacebuilding and development.

This data set offers a unique window into stakeholder perceptions and understandings of working through conflict, and the role of business in development in a fragile conflict-affected state (Myanmar). The authors also conduct two example analyses of the data set using ANOVA and Kruskal–Wallis tests to illustrate possible uses and findings of the data set.

Attaining the Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) of zero hunger continues to be a challenge in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, financial inclusion is seen as a potential pathway for reducing food insecurity among poor households. Mobile money is a financial inclusion instrument that is easily accessible to poor households and has the potential to increase the level of financial inclusion. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the determinants of mobile money adoption, its effects on household food security and the choice of coping strategies in Burundi, a post-conflict and fragile country.

Using survey data that involved 860 households in Burundi, we adopted the Household Hunger Scale (HHS) developed under the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project to measure household food security. We further employ the endogenous switching regression treatment effects model for ordered outcomes and the multivariate probit model to achieve our aims.

The results of our study reveal that the adoption of mobile money is influenced by factors such as gender, marital status, age, formal education, membership in a social network, area of residence and access to a tarred road network. Additionally, the food security status of a household was determined by marital status, formal education, social network membership, access to tarred roads, off-farm income, access to credit and land tenure security. We confirm that mobile money adoption has a significantly positive effect on the food security status of households with heterogeneity in gender and area of residence. We also find that mobile money adoption reduces the likelihood of households adopting consumption-related coping strategies.

The promotion of mobile money should, therefore, be included in Burundi’s national food security policies.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the effect of mobile money adoption on household food security and the choice of coping strategies in a post-conflict context.

Non-politicized bureaucracy plays a fundamental role in the survival of states during times of transition and drastic change. Moreover, non-politicized bureaucracy protects state institutions from failing. In fact, state survival bureaucracy (SSB), as an alternative to Deep State, obtains all mechanisms for the sustainability of the state, both its entity and identity. In case of resistance to the elected officials and executives’ abrupt decisions, professionals and experts came up with Deep State to reflect the elements of rejection.

The paper uses both system and function approaches in analyzing the role of bureaucracy in states going through transition. It also draws comparisons from the harsh experiences in the Arab region after Arab revolutions where most of the states collapsed while Tunisia and Egypt survived. The authors will use the available literature in reviewing different arguments regarding the role of bureaucracy in addition to the own observations as scholars who were engaged in the political process in Egypt for sometimes and during the drastic changes since January 25, 2011 and the knowledge about political process in Tunisia and other Arab states.

In the study of the collapse of a number of Arab states and the survival of Tunisia and Egypt, it was found out that it is SSB which holds state together in cases of drastic changes or tangible threats. SSB includes bureaucrats and policy implementing agencies that are committed to both entity and identity of the state. The role of SSB emerges clearly in a state of utmost survival crisis of the state. SSB does inherently obtain self-correcting mechanisms that help states face, experience drastic change and cope with it.

Non-politicized bureaucracy plays a fundamental role in the survival of states during times of transition and drastic change. Moreover, non-politicized bureaucracy protects state institutions from failing. In fact, SSB as an alternative to Deep State, as defined in this paper, obtains all mechanisms for the sustainability of the state, both its entity and identity. The analysis will show how SSB is a constructive mechanism for the survival of the state when its entity and identity as well as well-established national interests are under tangible threats.

The purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize how managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs) manage risk, particularly in fragile and/or conflict-affected areas of operation. The authors suggest that MNEs consider reducing risk at its source rather than trying to avoid or react to risks as they occur. By incorporating peacebuilding strategies, managers may not only reduce investment risk but also contribute to stability and prosperity in the communities where they operate, and gain a competitive advantage in doing so.

The authors show how firms can take a more holistic approach to working in conflict-affected areas. They do so by overlaying conceptualizations of risk with those of peacebuilding and then use case examples to illustrate how such actions work in practice.

Using a series of examples, the authors find that MNEs that incorporate peacebuilding frameworks in their risk calculations in complex settings tend to have a better understanding of local environments and how they affect firm operations and profitability. These same MNEs may hold a long-term advantage over international competitors that do not share the same understanding.

The authors argue that the study of relationships between international businesses and society in conflict-affected or fragile areas of operation is under-developed and tends to focus on negative (risk-aversion) aspects as opposed to positive (value-added) opportunities. This paper offers new ways in which these relationships can be reconceptualized. The authors’ main takeaway is that a peacebuilding approach does not require corporations to be arbitrators of peace at the expense of profit. Rather, it is instead a broader way to conceptualize and weigh risk when working in the world’s most challenging regions. This approach is more likely to be in the long-term interest of both the firm and the local society where the firm operates.