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The purpose of this study was to leverage agency theory to examine the impact of board attributes on cash flow management in Ghana’s financial institutions.

Data for the study was collected from the annual published financial statements of selected financial institutions, which were obtained from their respective websites. The sampling technique used was purposive, resulting in the selection of 15 financial institutions in Ghana, of which 10 were listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange and 5 were non-listed. The study covered a period of 10 years, ranging from 2011 to 2020. The two-step generalized method of moments estimation was used to determine the relationship between the board attributes and cash flow management.

The study found that board size had a positive and significant influence on net cash flow from operating, investing and financing activities. The study also discovered that the proportion of nonexecutive directors had a positive and significant influence on net cash flow from operating, investing and financing activities. In addition, it was revealed that the proportion of female directors on the board exhibited a positive and significant influence on net cash flow from operating activities but a negative and significant influence on net cash flow from investing and financing activities.

The study recommends increasing female representation on corporate boards to 25%, as women bring valuable skills, knowledge and experience that positively impact the financial institutions’ cash flows.

This study focused on the impact of board attributes on cash flow management within Ghana. It explored how corporate governance affects strategic decisions related to cash flow management, contributing original insights to this field of research.

The literature on knowledge management in sustainable supply chain (KMSSC) has witnessed significant growth in the past two decades. However, a scientometric review that consolidates the primary trends and clusters within this topic has been notably absent. This paper aims to scrutinize recent advancements and identify the intellectual underpinnings of KMSSC research conducted between 2002 and 2022.

The present review employs a scientometric analysis approach via visualization maps of prolific contributions, co-citation, co-occurrence and thematic networks to examine a total of 114 articles and conference papers on KMSSC.

Emerging research frontiers and hotspots are revealed and a state-of-the-art framework of KMSSC research structure is developed.

The review provides significant implications that guide KMSSC research and better inform sustainability decisions in the supply chain context.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first review to thoroughly synthesize the intersected domain of KMSSC using scientometric analysis.

This paper attempts to study the relationship between the level of urban innovation and subjective well-being (SWB). The following questions are discussed: (1) Does improving the level of innovation in cities affect the SWB of residents? (2) If urban innovation levels affect residents' SWB, can improving urban innovation level improve residents' SWB? (2) If urban innovation level improves residents' SWB, what is the possible mechanism? (3) Is there any difference in the effect of urban innovation level on the SWB of different groups?

This paper chooses the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression method for baseline regression with robust standard errors, and the regression results of Oprobit will be presented in detail in the robustness test section. The model is constructed by matching the micro data and the macro data. Meanwhile, the instrumental variable (IV) method is also used to deal with the possible endogeneity problem.

This paper finds that urban innovation has significantly improved the SWB of residents. This finding still holds after considering the endogeneity issue and conducting a series of robustness tests. Moreover, the level of innovation positively influences residents' SWB mainly through the paths of increasing income levels, improving environmental quality and promoting convenience in life. What's more, urban innovation has a more significant effect on the SWB of low-income groups and those with low education levels. Finally, based on the findings, this paper also proposes some policy recommendations to further improve the SWB of residents.

Given the limitations of the data, the above study deals with China. In the future, international data can be further used to further explore the impact of the innovation level of international cities on the SWB of residents and then the research conclusions can be applied to the international community to provide theoretical basis and empirical support for policy makers of various countries, which will help improve the SWB of residents of various countries and enrich the theoretical and empirical research on the impact of innovation on the SWB of residents.

Well-being is a goal constantly pursued by human beings. This paper shows that urban innovation has significantly improved the SWB of residents. The findings provide guides to improve the SWB of residents and provide a certain theoretical basis and empirical reference for policy makers.

The possible innovations or contributions of this paper include: (1) based on the China Household Income Survey (CHIP) and the “Report on Innovation of Chinese Cities and Industries”, this paper studies the impact of urban innovation levels on residents' SWB, supplementing the gaps in existing literature; (2) through group analysis, the heterogeneity of the impact of urban innovation level on groups with different incomes and education levels was discussed and (3) the mechanism of urban innovation level on residents' SWB was identified. These studies and discussions provide a basis for more effective improvement of residents' SWB and provide a valuable reference for promoting people's pursuit of a better life.

This paper provides a systematic review of literature pertaining to the welfare impact of financial inclusion. We identify the 50 most influential publications in the field that have evolved into three distinct categories, each of which we critically review to identify the main contributions of this research area.

By conducting a state-of-the-art literature review, this paper identifies the most influential papers in the research fields on the welfare impact of financial inclusion. One caveat is that as newer publications generally have fewer citations, reviewing prior work can result in a misleading account of emerging trends and research directions. Manual assessment of publications after 2018 facilitates a discussion of important emerging research trends and their directions.

The three key research streams are identified as financial services and financial accessibility, financial capability, and financial literacy and household welfare. By assessing publications from 2018 to 2023, we also document four key emerging research trends: Fintech and digital financial inclusion, sustainability and climate change, growth, poverty, income inequality, financial stability, and Entrepreneurship. Drawing on these emerging trends, we highlight the opportunities for future research.

Keyword searches have limitations as some papers might be overlooked if they do not match the specific search criteria, despite their relation and significance to the overall topic of the welfare impact of financial inclusion. To address this issue, we have expanded this review by incorporating more literature from other databases, such as the Scopus database which may alleviate this issue.

The three key research streams contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the welfare impact of financial inclusion. The emerging trends integrate existing knowledge and leave the chance for innovative research to expand the research frontier.

This paper fulfils the systematic literature review streams in the welfare impact of financial inclusion and provides fruitful opportunities for future research.

This study aims to investigate the components of a halal tourism ecosystem and how to establish a model for an effective halal tourism ecosystem. Therefore, each component can play a role in encouraging the productivity of halal tourism.

A qualitative approach was applied through in-depth interviews and focus group discussion (FDGs) with representatives of stakeholders who are associated with the development of halal tourism in Indonesia.

The results show that the effectiveness of the halal tourism ecosystem is primarily determined by the role of the government as an initiator and a policymaker. The halal tourism ecosystem must be run with universal Islamic norms, and it must be avoid exclusive rules.

This research concludes that the symbols in the halal ecosystem are not components that can glue the differences between various organizations and institutions in the context of tourism. However, the role of adhesive is substituted by its practice or implementation that can accommodate shared understandings of Sharia norms.

This study aims to investigate the influence of external factors identified by the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal (PESTEL) framework on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in Vietnamese construction firms.

The snowball sampling method was employed to gather 182 validated responses. Employing Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), the research analyzed how these factors correlate with CSR practices under institutional theory.

Results indicated that social, economic, environmental, legal and technological factors positively impacted CSR performance. Among these, social factors had the most significant effect, followed sequentially by economic, environmental, legal and technological influences. Intriguingly, political factors demonstrated no significant association with CSR performance.

The strong impact of social factors confirms that societal norms and cultural values are critical in shaping corporate behavior in Vietnam. Firms can leverage this insight by intensifying their community engagement and social investment. Additionally, the negligible role of political factors in shaping CSR suggests that firms might not need to focus heavily on political engagement in Vietnam. However, firms should remain aware of legal changes as legal factors influence CSR outcomes.

Despite CSR’s growing importance, there remains a notable research gap regarding how external macro-environmental factors influence CSR performance, particularly within the construction industry. The findings emphasize the importance of aligning business strategies with socioeconomic and environmental aspects.

This study explored the tax evasion and corruption–economic development nexus in Ghana and the moderating role of institutional quality in this relationship.

To achieve this objective, this study employed the structural equation modelling (SEM) strategy and maximum likelihood (ML) estimation method on selected quarterised data from 1996 to 2020.

The study found that tax evasion has a positive impact on GDP per capita and urbanisation but a negative impact on the Economic Freedom of the World Index (EFWI). The study revealed that corruption has a positive relationship with GDP per capita but relates with EFWI inversely. Finally, the study found that institutional quality moderates the nexus between tax evasion and corruption and economic development.

The findings imply that the quality of state institutions has a significant impact on the government's ability to control tax evasion and corruption in order to drive economic development.

One novelty of the study is the examination of the combined effects of tax evasion and corruption as exogenous variables in a single econometric model. Again, to moderate the multivariate relationships of the study, the principal component analysis (PCA) was used to create an institutional quality index. The study recommends that policymakers implement comprehensive tax evasion and corruption reduction strategies simultaneously in order to increase tax revenues for economic development and SDGs achievement.

This study aims to provide empirical evidence on two research questions: firstly, whether green finance is positively related to electricity access, and, secondly, if the domestic economic environment moderates the relationship between green finance and electricity access? This paper pays particular attention to the regional disparities in Africa.

While pursuing the study objectives, the authors apply a variety of statistical approaches and tools to assess the robustness of the findings. The authors use panel dataset for analysing data. In order to empirically examine the relationship between green finance and electricity access in the African region, the paper employs static and dynamic panel estimation methods, Poisson method and adopts two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) approach for dealing with issues relating to endogeneity. The authors also use alternate proxy for the electricity access, which is drawn from the regulatory indicators for sustainable energy (RISE) scores.

The authors find that despite the fact that green funding appears to support job creation, household incomes aren't high enough to drive rising demand for electricity. The study underscores the role and responsibilities of external funding agencies to ensure that funds at the receiving end are effectively routed to encourage access to clean and sustainable energy, which is good to the economic and domestic environment. Further, due to the relatively modest size of some funds, the cost to administer those funds is larger than the funds themselves. This causes inefficiencies, which may temporarily provide jobs but not lasting growth. This means there is no regular need for energy, therefore larger investors have no reason to enter the market. This discourages investors from public-private partnerships or private investments and prevents future investment.

The provide insights into the private-public partnerships and whether the challenges to electricity access are being turned into investment opportunities. The effects of the power Africa project initiatives are revealing, with, sanitation being an impediment to the development of electricity infrastructure, specifically in low-income group countries.

The study confirms the view that trivial amounts of green financing (US-Aid or grants) impose a burden on the absorptive capacity of the recipient government and increases the transaction costs and is likely to be an impediment (Kimura et al., 2012) to initiating projects that enhance electricity access.

The results indicate that although green financing seems to be supporting employment opportunities, income levels are insufficient to create demand for electricity usage. It, therefore, becomes imperative that sanitation (SDG 6) is fully addressed in order to ensure that SDG 7 is attained.

The authors provide insights around the private public partnerships and whether the challenges to electricity access are being turned into investment opportunities. The effects of the power Africa project initiatives are revealing, with, sanitation being an impediment to the development of electricity infrastructure, specifically in low-income group countries.

For this paper, the authors focus on Porter’s competitive advantage. Hybrid strategy refers to how a firm creates value vis-à-vis competitors by simultaneously relying on lower costs and greater differentiation to achieve a competitive advantage. This strategy emphasises both and aims to provide much more monetary value to customers through the combination of reduced cost and a higher rate of differentiation. In addition, this research focuses on family small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), because they have particularities arising from the incorporation of family members both as owners of the SME and in managerial positions. The porpose of this study is to analyse whether the existing differences produced by the role of the family in strategic decision-making and the concentration of family power have a higher impact on performance and innovation than non-family SMEs.

Structural equation modelling was used to analyse Spanish firms with fewer than 250 employees. This study randomly selected SMEs operating in Spain from the Spanish Central Business Directory (2021) database. The overall sample design was based on stratified sampling.

SMEs are facing new challenges, and this has led to the emergence of new competitive strategies. Companies have started to combine differentiation strategies with cost strategies to achieve superior performance and better adapt to these changes. This study confirms a positive relationship between the adoption of hybrid strategies and market performance in SMEs. In addition, hybrid strategy reinforces innovation, which has a mediating role between hybrid strategy and market performance. Finally, the findings indicate that family SMEs achieve a greater impact of hybrid strategy on innovation than non-family SMEs. Moreover, innovation plays a mediating role only in the case of family firms, which enhances the relationship between hybrid strategy and market performance.

For SMEs to survive in turbulent environments, this study proposes the adoption of hybrid strategies instead of pure strategies. The novel model links hybrid strategy (as opposed to “stuck in the middle”), innovation and market performance. The research is valuable for owners and managers of family SMEs because this study finds differences in the relationships studied compared to non-family SMEs.

Although the overall impacts of innovation and innovative practices have been emphasized in recent years, the effect on the growth of firms in Nigeria have not been proven. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect of innovative practices on the growth of quantity surveying firms (QSFs) in Nigeria.

The study adopted the quantitative correlational research design in which a well-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from QSFs in South-West, Nigeria. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis to investigate the effect of innovative practices on the growth of QSFs.

The study reveals that there is a significant increase in the growth indices used for assessing QSFs, while all the innovation variables were found to be reliable. Based on the result of multiple regression analysis, the relationships were identified as follows: quantity surveying (QS) software influenced the size growth of QSFs; QS software and services affected client growth and profit growth; and all innovation practices impacted asset growth of QSFs.

Although the use of software tools has been found to negatively affect the size of QSFs and other growth indices, there is need for them to embrace innovative software applications for more quality service delivery. In addition, QSFs should formulate strategic objectives that will guide them in taking informed decisions for diversification.

The outcome of this study provides information and direction for innovation practices required to bring about the growth of QSFs.