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Sustainability start-ups introduce business models that address current environmental and social challenges. However, to reach their mission, they need to integrate the intention of delivering such impact since their formulation. Business incubators show promise in supporting them in this process by enhancing their access to resources and knowledge during the early stage. For these reasons, this paper aims to investigate the transfer of knowledge in a support program, outlining what knowledge is transferred in the program and through which activities for encouraging the generation of sustainability start-ups’ impact.

The present paper is supported by a qualitative case study methodology based on primary data (interviews) and secondary data (internal and external documents) related to a French support program.

The study shows that the support program transfers explicit and tacit knowledge for encouraging the generation of sustainability impact, throughout three main phases: awareness, identification and assessment.

The limitation concerns the analysis of a French support program and the focus on sustainability start-ups. Future research lines will study other and more traditional business incubators to confirm and possibly enrich the results.

The study has managerial implications for incubator managers willing to support sustainable entrepreneurship and for sustainable entrepreneurs who want to find a support program and reach their impact.

The study shows that a sustainability orientation in business incubators can play a role in fostering sustainable development through the creation of new sustainability ventures.

This paper contributes to two different fields: sustainable entrepreneurship support and knowledge management in incubators.

Health sector corruption constitutes a pervasive challenge and a major obstacle to the equitable enjoyment of the right to health by exacerbating health inequalities within societies, while often eroding public trust primarily amid public health crises that threaten human security. The purpose of this paper is to examine the value of advancing right to health considerations in national legislative and regulatory responses against health sector corruption.

This paper builds on existing evidence, with focusing attention on international standards that are relevant to the topic under discussion. The literature research included publicly available reports, peer-reviewed studies and other documents primarily of human rights bodies at the United Nations level.

Advancing right to health considerations in national responses against health sector corruption offers comprehensive guidance for the deployment of a strong regulatory anti-corruption framework for action by the governments as part of their health rights obligations. Essentially, the implementation of such a national framework for action, encompassing accountability, participatory decision-making and transparency, constitutes a necessary and an important step towards maintaining well-functioning health systems and a robust social pressure for continued political commitment with the ultimate goal the provision of equitable access to quality health services at all times.

By using a rights-based approach, the paper identifies a national framework for state action consisting of legal obligations and tools towards guiding governments, while at the same time empowering civil society groups to demand the implementation of core human rights principles of transparency, participation and accountability within health system governance. It provides insights for the future development, reinforcement and/or reform of national law, policies and practices towards minimizing and eradicating vulnerabilities to health sector corruption.

In fire condition, the time to failure of a timber connection is mainly reliant on the wood charring rate, the strength of the residual wood section, and the limiting temperature of the steel connectors involved in the connection. The purpose of this study is to experimentally investigate the effects of loaded bolt end distance, number of bolt rows, and the existence of perpendicular-to-wood grain reinforcement on the structural fire behavior of semi-rigid glued-laminated timber (glulam) beam-to-column connections that used steel bolts and concealed steel plate connectors.

In total, 16 beam-to-column connections, which were fabricated in wood-steel-wood bolted connection configurations, in eight large-scale sub-frame test assemblies were exposed to elevated temperatures that followed CAN/ULC-S101 standard time-temperature curve, while being subjected to monotonic loading. The beam-to-column connections of four of the eight test assemblies were reinforced perpendicular to the wood grain using self-tapping screws (STS). Fire tests were terminated upon achieving the failure criterion, which predominantly was dependent on the connection’s maximum allowed rotation.

Experimental results revealed that increasing the number of bolt rows from two to three, each of two bolts, increased the connection’s time to failure by a greater time increment than that achieved by increasing the bolt end distance from four- to five-times the bolt diameter. Also, the use of STS reinforcement increased the connection’s time to failure by greater time increments than those achieved by increasing the number of bolt rows or the bolt end distance.

The invaluable experimental data obtained from this study can be effectively used to provide insight and better understanding on how mass-timber glulam bolted connections can behave in fire condition. This can also help in further improving the existing design guidelines for mass-timber structures. Currently, beam-to-column wood connections are designed mainly as axially loaded connections with no guidelines available for determining the fire resistance of timber connections exerting any degree of moment-resisting capability.

Against the background of sustainable finance, this study aims to address whether global asset management firms started transforming toward more environmentally friendly investment policies according to the Agenda for Sustainable Development launched by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015.

The authors apply qualitative, explorative research methods through the development of the case study of BlackRock, Inc. (USA). Addressing sustainable finance, the authors compare the opposite to the editorial page (op-eds) communication strategy of BlackRock against real life for the period from 2015 until today.

The op-eds communication strategy by BlackRock is multi-faceted targeting to develop a leading sustainable reputation supported by fine-grained relationships to business and policy makers. This study empirically proves that there is a discrepancy between BlackRock’s op-eds communication contends concerning sustainable finance and the reality. Among others this study found that BlackRock still invests in fossils and increasingly launches passively managed funds with limited transparency standards in terms of sustainable finance.

This study contributes to the corporate social responsibility literature focusing on fossil energy and sustainable finance. As BlackRock did not reply to the authors’ requests for conducting interviews, the authors rely on a broad range of secondary sources including material provided by non-governmental organizations. This study proposes that research should be amplified by further empirical studies among various sustainable finance stakeholders based on the research propositions the authors have developed as a result of this study.

This research provides empirical evidence for business executives and policy decision-makers involved in the energy industry, corporate ethics and global financial asset management.

This study provides insights toward sustainable finance policies of BlackRock with corresponding outcomes related to global climate change and its impact on societies.

This study delivers empirical evidence on the energy transformation from fossils toward renewables against the background of sustainable finance strategies of large asset management enterprises such as BlackRock which is rare to find in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to give an updated overview over the development of employee-ownership in Italy, France, Spain including Mondragon, the UK and the US with relatively many employee-owned firms. How have the barriers for employee-ownership been overcome in these countries?

The overview is based on updated descriptions of the development of employee-ownership included in this special issue. The analysis follows the structure of overcoming five barriers: the organization problem; the problem of entry and exit of employee-owners; the startup and takeover problem; the capital- and the risk problem.

Italy, France and Spain have overcome the barriers by specific legislation for worker cooperatives, this includes rules for entry and exit of employee members. Cooperative support organizations play an important role for monitoring and managing the startup problem and for access to capital. The Mondragon model includes individual ownership elements and a group structure of cooperatives. The EOT and ESOP models are well suited for employee takeovers, financing are eased by tax advantages and they are all-employee schemes. While the EOT has no individual risks, the ESOP model has the possibility for capital gains for employees but also the risk of losing these gains.

Comprehensive and updated overview of the development in employee-ownership in the five countries to identify successful formats of employee-ownership for implementation in countries with few employee-owned firms.

Many problems occur when assigning tasks to work centres, especially in determining the required number of workstations for line balancing which requires a minimum theoretical number of workstations. The most common problem is bottleneck. In this paper, a method is proposed to solve floating tasks problem in single-model line when the actual required number of workstations exceeds the minimum theoretical number, and the standard time of the floating task (work center) exceeds the cycle time. The floating task will represent a critical bottleneck activity in line. The proposed method depends on minimizing the standard time of critical bottleneck and non-critical activities by a minimum free-floating time depends on the average of slack times of the non-critical activities, and it will increase the line efficiency from (77%) to (88%), and balance delay is minimized from (23%) to (12%).

The study investigates the influence of financial transparency on citizens' trust and revenue paying behaviour of citizens of local governments in sub-Saharan Africa. It relies on the theories of stewardship and public choice in explaining the relationship between financial transparency, trust and willingness to pay.

The study applied a Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) to survey data of 404 respondents selected from four Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies of Ghana to test the hypotheses of the study.

It establishes the fact that financial transparency positively influences trust of citizens in local government and their willingness to pay taxes and levies. The study also found that both financial transparency and trust are low in the local governments of Ghana.

The study emphasises the importance of financial transparency in improving trust and willingness to pay. Thus, local governments are encouraged to seek innovative ways to enhance the quality and access to financial information by the citizens.

While prior studies focus on the measurement and determinant of financial transparency, this study links financial transparency to revenue mobilisation in the local government of sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper aims to analyze the “crafts” of governance within social and solidarity economy (SSE) cultural organizations, considering formal and informal rules, to support their project of democratization of arts and culture and more generally of cultural democracy. The hypothesis is that it is through participatory and democratic governance that SSE can have a transformative role.

This paper builds upon a qualitative, multiple case study of three SSE organizations in the performing arts and audiovisual production in France. Although different in age, size and legal form, they all experiment a more participative governance system, not without tensions, to face deep institutional changes in their environment.

The results show that legal forms from the SSE are necessary safeguards but not sufficient to effectively implement a democratic governance beyond the “one member, one vote” principle. Democratic governance is supported by both formal and informal rules. By experimenting with innovative participative and democratic governance rules, these organizations contribute to the transformation of practices in the cultural field (democratization of art and culture) but also in society at large by fostering cultural democracy.

Building upon three case studies, this exploratory work stresses important issues that are worth to explore on a larger scale to understand by which levers SSE can play a transformative role in the cultural field.

This paper contributes to the literature on SSE and on governance by enlarging the analysis beyond the board of directors and the statutory rules. Applying the approach of collective action and reasonable values developed by Commons to SSE, it shows that participatory governance cannot be based on an ideal or a choice of preestablished values and principles but must leave room for creativity and representations of stakeholders not only to support transformation of practices within the cultural field but also externally by increasing cultural democracy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the context and concept of higher education for sustainable development (HESD) in Nepalese higher educational institutions (HEIs).

The research gathers facts and information both from primary and secondary sources. Five open-ended questions were developed to interview university high-ranking officials, such as VCs, registrars, deans and the chief of the planning division.

The inclusion of 17 sustainable development goals in the country’s Fifteenth Plan, national policy documents, and the University Grants Commission-led higher education reform programme provides sufficient context for HESD. In the absence of HESD literacy and a persuasive strategy, university leadership is less active in lobbying for SDG 4.7 with the government and funding agencies, university faculties and trade unions. In fact, both insights and initiatives to conceptualize HESD are lacking.

This study’s setting is distinct and the interpretation of the HESD concept is based on a small sample size. Thus, the generalization of its findings is intrinsically limited in the context of a country in the geographic region. However, the findings of this research provide practical insights to implement HESD in Nepalese HEIs.

This study is intended to inform and prepare the Nepalese academic community, urging HEIs to implement HESD with a well-defined plan of action. It contributes to the literature by considering how the current context and concept of HESD suites to promote sustainability in Nepalese HEIs, transforming the traditional academic structure and making academic leaders aware that HESD is only a means to an end.

This research is Nepal’s first study of its type with a broad understanding of the context and concept of HESD. It also provides information for HEI leaders on how to initiate the HESD acceleration process.

This study aims to investigate why anti-corruption statutes are not efficient in Nigeria’s upstream petroleum industry.

This study is a doctrinal legal research that embraces a point-by-point comparative methodology with a library research technique.

This study reveals that corruption strives on feeble implementation of anti-corruption legal regime and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention. Finally, this study finds that anti-corruption organisations in Nigeria are not efficient due to non-existence of the Federal Government’s political will to fight corruption, insufficient funds and absence of stringent implementation of the anti-corruption legal regime in the country.

Investigations reveal during this study that Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) operations are characterised with poor record-keeping, lack of accountability as well as secrecy in the award of oil contracts, oil licence, leases and other financial transactions due to non-disclosure or confidentiality clauses contained in most of these contracts. Also, an arbitration proceeding limit access to their records and some of these agreements under contentions. This has also limited the success of this research work and generalising its findings.

This study recommends, among other reforms, soft law technique and stringent execution of anti-corruption statutes. This study also recommends increment in financial appropriation to Nigeria’s anti-corruption institutions, taking into consideration the finding that a meagre budget is a drawback.

This study reveals that corruption strives on feeble implementation of anti-corruption legal regime and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention. Corruption flourishes due to poor enforcement of anti-corruption laws and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention by the government.

The study advocates the need for enhancement of anti-corruption agencies' budgets taking into consideration the finding that meagres budgets are challenge of the agencies.