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The purpose of this study is to analyze the intersection of research on impact investing and its closely related financial vehicles.

The paper explores 196 articles collected from Scopus and Web of Science using bibliometric and content analysis methodologies.

Despite a growing academic interest in impact investing, scholars generally investigate impact investing as a social phenomenon, using the specific financial mechanism of social impact bonds. This perspective potentially deflates the complex nature of impact investing, which actually combines both social and financial targets and uses a plurality of financial vehicles to reach its goals.

The emerging themes identified will provide both academics and practitioners additional tools to further the debate on impact investing and the understanding of its potential and limits according to the different financial forms it takes. This review should pave the way for a discussion about the boundaries of the social impact sector itself.

Despite the strong international commitment toward impact investing, tensions still exist. A comprehensive overview on the relevant aspects not yet thoroughly investigated will foster the growth of impact investments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first holistic overview of impact investing, that jointly examines both literature on impact investing and literature on the correlated financial products used in the industry. The result is a comprehensive report of what is known about impact investing in its different financial forms, opening up new pathways for future studies.

An interview with Zeynep Ton, a professor of practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management, about er latest book, The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay & Meaning to Everyone’s Work.

She believes that leaders can either view their employees as a cost to be minimized, invest little in them and operate with high turnover, or they can see them as drivers of profitability and growth—investing heavily in them, designing their work for high productivity and contribution and therefore operating with low turnover.-- “the good jobs strategy.”

The secret sauce of good jobs strategy is four operational choices—focus and simplify, standardize and empower, cross-train and operate with slack—that improve productivity and contribution and make that higher investment possible.

The competitive costs of low people investment are even higher than the poor operational execution costs.

By making the work better and increasing pay, companies can better attract and keep their talent and enforce high standards, which improve execution and service, uplifting revenue. Few have examined this important topic more closely than Zeynep Ton, a professor of practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management, best-selling author of The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits.

This paper aims to propose a framework that combines the triple helix model with competitive strategies concepts to capture and guide any innovation-led national development strategies.

This paper adopted a methodological framework based on existing methods and guidelines, the most commonly reported approach for developing a methodological framework. The review of fundamental approaches to achieving fast and sustained economic development, triple helix model and competitive strategies helped develop the methodological framework. The framework was validated and tested using the case studies approach on Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.

Kuwait aims to create an innovative environment to benefit from the innovation strategies anchored by the East Asian miracle economies and how they used the triple helix actors at different developmental stages. First, Kuwait’s research institutes and universities need to design interactive programs and activities with industry and community to help innovate solutions to current and prospective challenges. Second, the government needs to provide a competitive business environment and effective policies. Thirdly, the Kuwait industry must be encouraged to innovate and infuse modern technology practices.

Developing countries are trying to use science, technology and innovation as an effective strategy for achieving sustained economic growth. However, since each country has its unique conditions, learning from other success stories proved difficult if not structured in a framework designed to serve a specific purpose such as the one the authors propose in this paper.

Human capital is a portfolio of rich skills that the labour possesses. Human capital has attracted significant attention from scholars. Nevertheless, empirical findings on the utility of human capital have often been divided. To address the research gap in the literature, the authors attempt to understand how human capital plays a significant role in financial development and economic growth nexus.

The authors rely on secondary data published by the World Bank. The authors use econometric tools such as the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model and related statistical tests to study the relationship between human capital, India's financial growth and gross domestic product (GDP) growth.

Study findings suggest that human capital and financial development contribute significantly to economic growth. Further, the authors found that human capital has a positive and significant moderating effect on the path of joining financial development and economic growth.

The study contributes to the human capital debate. Despite the rich body of literature, the study based on World Bank data confirms the previous findings that investment in human capital is always useful for the financial and economic growth of the nation.

This paper reveals some unique findings regarding effect of financial development and economic growth nexus which opens the window of new dimension to think about their nexus. It also provides a different pathway to foster the economic growth by using human capital and financial development as together, especially in India.

Existing theories on the determining factors of corporate investment decisions raise the importance of financial market imperfections in explaining investment behavior. Many factors have been proposed as drivers of investment, mainly in developed economies, while emerging countries have almost been neglected. The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of financing constraints on the investment behavior of a small context, namely, Jordan, with an imperfect environment.

This study considers panel data regressions from the industrial companies traded at the Amman Stock Exchange with a total of 1,058 firm-year observations.

The results are able to demonstrate that business size, tangibility, market-to-book ratio, profitability, financial slack and leverage are major drivers of investment choices. The results support the importance of information asymmetry in explaining the investment behavior of firms. Nonetheless, the Q-theory is in place, as is firm agility.

Policies to reduce information asymmetry are immediately needed to help firms increase investments by providing them with access to training, technology and market information. They also should enhance the firms’ opportunities for growth. Moreover, they should make it easier for businesses to access financial slack, such as by improving access to credit and financial institutions. They also can work to improve the financial infrastructure to meet the financing needs of businesses. Finally, smaller businesses should be assisted by improving their ability to invest and grow.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies, if any, to investigate this issue in a distinct environment. Despite the unique characteristics of Jordan, the findings are applicable to other countries that experience comparable political and economic circumstances because Jordan has traits common to many emerging nations.

This study empirically aims to examine the collaboration between social enterprises (SEs) and impact investors (IIs), which are organisations with similar interests but with distinct logics, and in high demand in emerging economies with complex problems. Despite the significant economic contributions of these organisations, there have been limited studies examining how they collaborate in different contexts, including theoretical insights explaining how they gain partner fit from resource synergy.

Mainstream businesses use the compatibility and complementarity concepts to examine buyer–supplier strategic alliances. Using similar concepts in the context of hybrid organisations, the authors interviewed six pairs of SEs and IIs with dyadic relations in Nigeria, aiming to deeply understand how they align dissimilar logics in pursuing common goals in emerging economies.

The authors’ findings revealed how compatibility criteria from the institutional logics perspective and complementarity from social exchange theory guide collaboration between SEs and IIs in an emerging economy. Using these theories provides new insights that distinguish SEs and IIs collaboration from conventional theories on the internationalisation of businesses, which remained insufficient for understanding the cross-border operations of SEs.

The study holds practical implications for organisations, regardless of their size, international investors, governments, organisations and individuals desiring to pursue sustainable business agendas in emerging economies with huge impact opportunities and the process involved.

The outcomes of this study extend knowledge of the theoretical lens examining collaborative entrepreneurship from the perspective of hybrid organisations. It also challenged existing knowledge on collaboration between SEs and IIs, often characterised by potential tensions due to the dissimilarity of institutional logics of actors.

Trade relations between China and the USA have been marked by conflict, especially since China’s membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). These conflicts have been analyzed from a variety of perspectives, including the loss of jobs in the USA due to Chinese imports, competition in high technology sectors and the balance of trade. Conceptual frameworks have employed models of domestic differences as well as models of international power distribution. Among domestic differences examined are the existence of state-owned enterprises in China compared to the domination of the USA economy by private firms, the large role of the Communist Party in China and the influence of labor and environmental and labor groups in the USA. Power distribution theories focus on the systemic effects of the distribution of power on trade openness and on the pattern of intra-bloc versus between-bloc trade. This paper aims to examine the role of macroeconomic policy factors in China and the USA, in particular, the role of national patterns of savings, investment and consumption (both private and government). The paper concludes that insofar as the balance of trade is an important component of the trade conflict, domestic macroeconomic factors continue to be important. The resolution of the conflict will have to take into account the respective macroeconomic policies of China and the USA.

The design is an analytic case study of US–China trade relations with a particular focus on the balance of trade. The conceptual framework employed involves an analysis of macroeconomic policy categories, especially the overall pattern of savings (household, firm and government), investment and consumption. Process tracing over time since China's membership in the WTO is carried out with an eye toward the relationship between the balance of trade and macroeconomic policy.

The main findings are that there is a strong relation between the respective macroeconomic policies of the USA and China and their trade relations. The domestic political economy of the USA encourages consumption and a low rate of savings. The opposite is true of China where household income is low by design and national savings are high. China depends on the USA to consume what is not consumed domestically. The USA depends on Chinese imports for additional consumption encouraged by its low rate of savings. The two economies are locked in a mutual dependence.

Key research implications are that there should be more focus on domestic macroeconomic policies since these are the root causes of the trade imbalance. This is not to say that trade frictions centering on jobs, subsidies and competition in high technology are unimportant. However, without the resolution of differences in the management of macroeconomic policies, trade conflicts between the USA and China will continue.

Practical implications are huge, in some ways much more important than the academic implications. Macroeconomic policy differences in savings, investment, government spending, taxation and infrastructure are important. Furthermore, there are available tools in both China and the USA to manage the macroeconomy, particularly, monetary and fiscal policy.

One implication of this paper is that satisfaction or dissatisfaction of workers is dependent on income distribution which in turn affects trade. Treatment of people in different socioeconomic categories, such as the elderly, the young, and those at working age are a function of macroeconomic policies.

Many people have written about macroeconomics. It is a conventional subfield of economics. The originality of this paper lies in its advocacy of a shift of focus and attention and in the argument that traditional macroeconomics is related to trade. Despite its importance, macroeconomics has not been the center of attention for most political scientists, though economists have made it more central.

This study is to examine and develop sector skills strategies and action plans for the textile and apparel (T&A) sector.

The paper used a participatory action qualitative method anchored on the Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED) framework, utilising the workshop-based approach with 24 key stakeholders of the sector. Content analysis was used with the help of Nvivo software.

The findings revealed that there are skills shortages, skills gaps, skills mismatches and skills diversification programmes available through higher education and work-based learning. Further, there are labour supply challenges such as national skills policy and strategy, government and stakeholder coordination, funding, relevance of curriculum and qualifications, access to practicals and the absence of a clear national vision for the sector.

This study possesses an inherent limitation in terms of generalising the findings derived from qualitative research.

This research is among the first of its kind to assess skills needs and gaps through the lens of STED framework, which has been overlooked in previous literature. Importantly, this study provides vocational insights into skill needs in the sector.

This empirical study uncovers emotional sensemaking factors that cause changes in management perceptions about wicked strategic problems under dynamic complexity. These perception changes improve understanding of, and solutions to, the wicked problem.

Senior managers from three large organizations in different sectors participated in gaming simulation workshops. The strategic issues at stake were intractable and divisive. Qualitative methods captured participants' perceptions of the problems and the dynamic complexity that they faced and how they changed.

Flawed management perceptions were revised as sensemaking processes were catalyzed by emotions of shock/surprise that came from experiencing unexpected stakeholder conduct within a simulation. The plausibility of the conduct was strengthened because managers were role-playing stakeholders. The shock/surprise emotion uncoupled attachment to entrenched beliefs, leading to a willingness to revise the flawed perceptions. The changed perceptions created new insights for a solution to the wicked problem.

Practical implications are how management practitioners can improve the tackling of wicked strategic problems through the use of shock and surprise in a gaming simulation.

This research extends theory on the role of emotions in sensemaking under dynamic complexity. The authors uncover how a hierarchy of managers' emotions used in sensemaking explains the catalytic effect of the shock and surprise of unexpected stakeholder conduct on revisions to their perceptions of the outcomes of the dynamic complexity.