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Currently, consumers of financial products and services have become more vulnerable to predatory financial institutions, especially in the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, financial consumers like the persons with disabilities (PWDs) should be equipped with knowledge and skills to help them to evaluate complex financial products on offer in financial markets, especially in developing countries to avoid being victims of fraudulent lending. The purpose of this study is to establish whether customized financial literacy mediates the relationship between financial consumer protection and financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs in rural Uganda post Covid-19 pandemic.

SmartPLS 4.0 was used to construct the measurement and structural equation models to test whether customized financial literacy significantly mediates the relationship between financial consumer protection and financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs in rural Uganda post Covid-19 pandemic.

The results revealed a partial mediating effect of customized financial literacy in the relationship between financial consumer protection and financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs in rural Uganda post Covid-19 pandemic. Conducting customized financial literacy increases financial consumer protection by 12 percentage points to promote financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs in rural Uganda post Covid-19 pandemic.

This study focused only on customized financial literacy and financial consumer protection to promote universal financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs post Covid-19 pandemic. Future studies may use data collected from other vulnerable groups amongst the unbanked population in developing countries, Uganda inclusive. In addition, this study also collected only quantitative data from the selected population. Further studies can be conducted using key informant interviews and focused group discussion to get the perceptions of the PWDs on being protected from exploitation by unscrupulous financial institutions.

The findings from this study can help policymakers in developing countries like Uganda to revise the existing consumer protection law to include strong clauses on protection of people with special needs like the PWDs. The law must ensure that they are not exploited by financial institutions because of their conditions. The law ought to make sure that the PWDs are educated about their rights in the financial market place and all information on financial products offered by financial institutions should be simplified and interpreted to them before they make consumption decisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is amongst the first few studies to provide a meticulous and unique discourse on the ever increasing role of financial literacy combined with consumer protection to reduce consumption risks within the financial markets, especially in developing countries in the aftermath of global pandemic shocks. This study uses the social learning theory, theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behaviour to elucidate how customized financial literacy can enhance consumer protection to increase financial inclusion of groups with special needs like the PWDs who have become more susceptible to exploitation by unscrupulous financial institutions in under-developed financial markets, especially in post Covid-19 pandemic.

This paper examines how soft skills training for owner-managers affects the financial performance of exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, the authors examine the differential influence of specific owner-manager skills, such as “team working skills”, “technical skills” and “leadership skills”, on performance.

The paper utilises the Longitudinal Small Business Survey, which is a nationally representative employer dataset of UK SMEs with up to 249 employees, including those with no employees. The dataset contains information on firms' turnover, export status of goods or services and training provision for employees or owner-managers.

The results suggest that owner-manager's training has a positive effect on turnover in non-exporting firms. Moreover, a combination of soft and hard skills is associated with higher turnover in exporting firms. Amongst the specific skills of owner-managers, training on “team working” has the most significant impact on exporting SMEs' performance.

The authors' findings imply that managerial training to develop soft skills such as leadership, decision-making and communication is a worthwhile investment. The knowledge that owner-managers acquire through soft and hard skills training enables them to develop essential internationalisation competencies. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that teamwork is a significant predictor of performance.

The authors contribute to the literature by examining the role of owner-managers' training in shaping internal systems, structure, processes and internationalisation strategies, thus affecting SMEs performance. The authors' also provide a nuanced analysis of how various types of soft and hard skills underpin the successful implementation of internationalisation initiatives.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a shift from the ideal of immersion to a practice of “committed localism” in the ethnographic study of relational work in the post-bureaucratic and service-based economy.

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork following management consultancy projects in a hospital and a manufacturing company in Denmark. The approach was predicated on committed attention to the everyday of consultancy work activities and associated relational dynamics. This involved being present at the client sites, observing and listening in concrete situations of interaction and engaging in conversations with the multiple actors involved, both external consultants and members of client organisations.

The paper shows how “committed localism” was practiced in the ethnographic study of management consultancy as it is relationally accomplished in and through concrete situations of interaction between consultants and different actors in client organizations and the associated meaning production of the involved actors.

The paper develops the notion of “committed localism”, originally introduced by George Marcus, into a methodological concept to challenge the conventional ideal of immersion as the hallmark of “proper” ethnography. Such a shift is particularly pertinent for the ethnographic study of relational processes involving multiple actors occupying different positions in the temporary social spaces of contemporary workplaces.

Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify their social worlds or reaffirm the status quo. Thus, reality breakdowns are the initial points at which actors can conceive of new possibilities for institutional arrangements and initiate change processes to realize them. Studying reality breakdowns enables scholars to understand not just how institutional change occurs, but also why it does or does not do so. In this paper, we investigate how institutional inhabitants responded to a reality breakdown that occurred during our ethnography of collegial governance in a large North American university that was undergoing a strategic change initiative. Our findings suggest that there is a consequential process following reality breakdowns whereby institutional inhabitants construct the severity of these events. In our context, institutional inhabitants first attempted to restore order to their social world by reaffirming the status quo; when their efforts failed, they began to formulate alternative possibilities. Simultaneously, they engaged in a distributed sensemaking process whereby they diminished and reoriented necessary changes, ultimately inhibiting the formulation of these new possibilities. Our findings confirm reality breakdowns and institutional awareness as potential drivers of institutional change and complicate our understanding of antecedent microprocesses that may forestall the initiation of change efforts.

This study aims to investigate the influence of CEO’s only-child status on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It seeks to extend the understanding of upper echelon theory by examining unexplored CEO characteristics and their impact on CSR decisions.

The paper uses manually collected CEO family information and Chinese Stock and Market Accounting Research data as a basis to examine the influence of CEOs’ early-life experiences on their engagement in CSR activities. The study applies attachment security theory from developmental psychology and uses upper echelon theory, particularly focusing on CEOs’ only-child status. A comparative analysis of philanthropic donations between CEOs who are only children and those who have siblings is conducted. The study also examines the moderating effects of corporate slack resources and CEO shareholdings.

Preliminary findings suggest that CEOs who are only children are more likely to engage in CSR compared to their counterparts with siblings. However, the difference in donation amounts between the two groups tends to attenuate with decreased slack resources and increased CEO shareholdings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research represents the first attempt to investigate being the only child in one’s family and the CSR-related decision of CEOs, which extends the upper echelon theory by introducing the family science theory into the management domain.

This study aims to empirically examine the factors that affect mobile loyalty (m-loyalty) and its influence on customer reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging services. This study identified measurement items to assess the business users and individual users reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging services and test the relationship in the conceptual model. This study bridges a literature gap focusing on m-loyalty and its impact on customer reuse intention, which has not received attention previously.

To evaluate the influence of the factors, this study identified and extracted the items from past literature to develop the survey instrument. This study surveyed 600 respondents including business users and individual users from the Delhi-National Capital Region of India and applied the structural equation modelling to test the conceptual model.

The results revealed that satisfaction and m-loyalty have a direct effect on the business users and individual users’ reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services. This study found that satisfaction, usability, perceived value, commitment, trust and m-loyalty influence on business users reuse intention. This study indicate that enjoyment has an insignificant relationship on m-loyalty for business users followed by usability and enjoyment has an insignificant relationship on m-loyalty for individual users. Further, female gender does not moderate the relationship between satisfaction and business users reuse intention. The cognitive absorption and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) theories supported evaluating the association between the factors in the context of business and individual users reuse intention of mobile instant messaging service.

The empirical findings imply that all the factors except enjoyment have directly influenced the business users reuse intention of mobile instant messaging. The significant influence of usability factor on the business users reuse intention towards mobile instant messaging is the major variation between the validated models of business and individual samples. The results of influencing factors of m-loyalty and its impact on customer reuse intention are associated with cognitive absorption and the UTAUT theories.

Focus on these factors can be beneficial for the business users, managers, mobile instant messaging service providers and application developers to increase customer loyalty and reuse intention for the mobile instant messaging services. This research will facilitate mobile instant messaging service providers to keep their services market relevant and focus on user satisfaction in building applications for loyalty.

This research identified measurement items from earlier literature to identify, analyze and verify the relevance of these factors in m-loyalty and customer reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services and fill the gap in customer reuse intention of mobile instant messaging services literature.