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As many businesses faced economic disruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic and sought financial relief, existing bank relationships became critical to getting a loan. This study examines factors associated with the development of personal relationships of rural small businesses with community bank representatives.

We applied a mixed-method approach. We employed descriptive statistics, principal factor analysis and logistic regression for data analysis. We distributed an online survey to rural small businesses in five states in the United States. Key informant interviews with community bank representatives supplemented the survey results.

A business owner’s trust in a banker was positively associated with the establishment of a business–bank relationship. However, an analysis of individual trust’s components revealed that the nature of trust is complex, and a failure of one or more components may lead to decreased trustworthiness in a banker. Small businesses that preferred personal communication with a bank were more inclined to relationship banking.

Due to the relatively small sample size and cross-sectional data, our results may not be conclusive but should be viewed as preliminary and as suggestions for future research. Bankers should be aware of the importance of trust for small business owners and of the actions that lead to increased trustworthiness.

The study extends the existing knowledge on the business–bank relationship by focusing mainly on social (instead of economic) factors associated with the establishment of the business–bank relationship in times of crisis and high uncertainty.

This study aims to assess the efficiency of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) countries in achieving sustainable development by analyzing their ability to convert resources and technological innovations into sustainable outcomes.

Using data envelopment analysis (DEA), the study evaluates the economic, environmental and social efficiency of BRICS countries over the period 2010–2018. It ranks these countries based on their sustainable development performance and compares them to the period 2000–2007.

The study reveals varied efficiency levels among BRICS countries. Russia and South Africa lead in certain sustainable development aspects. South Africa excels in environmental sustainability, whereas Brazil is efficient in resource utilization for sustainable growth. China and India, despite economic growth, face challenges such as pollution and lower quality of life.

The study’s findings are constrained by the DEA methodology and the selection of variables. It highlights the need for more nuanced research incorporating recent global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical shifts.

Insights from this study can inform targeted and effective sustainability strategies in BRICS nations, focusing on areas such as industrial quality improvement, employment conditions and environmental policies.

The study underscores the importance of balancing economic growth with social and environmental considerations, highlighting the need for policies addressing inequality, poverty and environmental degradation.

This research provides a unique comparative analysis of BRICS countries’ sustainable development efficiency, challenging conventional perceptions and offering a new perspective on their progress.

Although employees' creativity is vital for firm innovation and overall performance, little is done to examine the potential association between creativity and employment. This paper investigates the contribution of employees' creativity, process and product innovations to firm-level employment growth.

The authors use data from World Bank Enterprise Survey and Innovation Follow-up Survey on 9503 firms covering the period 2012–2015 in 11 countries from sub-Saharan Africa and Heckman's two-stage estimation model.

This study's results indicate a positive role of creativity on firm-level employment growth. In addition, the authors find evidence for a complementary effect arising from the combination of creativity with managerial experience, staff level of education and their associated skills, in contrast, combining creativity with internal or external R&D results in a substitution effect. Interestingly, these synergy effects are pronounced for SMEs but absent for large firms.

Policy makers in developing economies of sub-Saharan Africa should stimulate company management to use free time offered to employees to be creative in the workplace as one of their key strategies to stimulate employment growth. This strategy is expected to be particularly fruitful among SMEs having some managerial experience and skilled stuff.

In contribution to innovative work practices and workforce creativity, the authors demonstrate that providing employees with free time could be an alternative way to enhance the focal firms' performance.

The study examines the impact of socio-economic governance on economic growth in Nigeria. It measures socio-economic governance from the perspective of fiscal policy, using indicators such as investment in education, research and development (R&D) and health.

This study employs the Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) Bound Testing method to achieve its objective.

The study finds that socio-economic policies aimed at increasing investment in education are crucial for Nigeria’s long-term economic growth. Additionally, investment in R&D positively impacts economic growth. However, the study reveals that investment in health negatively affects economic growth in Nigeria in the long run. This suggests that if a country overinvests in health, it may divert resources from other vital sectors such as education, infrastructure and R&D, which can hinder overall economic growth. The short-run parameter is, however, not statistically significant in this study.

The study’s originality lies in its exploration of the relationship between socio-economic governance and economic growth in Nigeria, specifically from a fiscal policy perspective. It highlights the importance of investing in education and R&D for long-term economic growth. Additionally, the finding that overinvestment in health may have a negative impact on long-term economic growth provides valuable insight for policymakers in Nigeria and other developing countries. Overall, this study’s findings can be beneficial for policymakers and researchers interested in the intersection between socio-economic governance and economic growth in developing countries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the dynamic relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and its components on financial performance of banks within the selected eight countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The study utilizes the balanced panel data of 37 publicly listed banks from eight leading ASEAN economies for the period of 2017–2021. In this sense, the authors applied the Ante Pulic's typology, i.e. value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC™) to evaluate the efficiency of intangible and tangible assets. While, investigating the dynamic nature of relationship, the authors employed the generalized system method of moments because of its power to account for the problem of endogeneity and heteroscedasticity.

The results of the study demonstrate that banks in ASEAN countries shed a varied degree of a spotlight on VAIC™ and its components to create value. The findings revealed that structural capital efficiency is significantly associated with earning per share (EPS), return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), compared to human capital efficiency (HCE) and capital employed efficiency of ASEAN banks. These results endorse the importance of resource- and knowledge-based views of organizations to leverage the financial performance of banks. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, this study found no positive relationship between HCE with ROA and ROE. Whereas, the relationship of VAIC™ is positive and significant with EPS and ROE but it remains statistically very marginal.

There are some inherent limitations in this study that could be opportunities for future research. The current study uses the VAIC™ typology, but future researchers can use the modified value-added intellectual coefficient (MVAIC) or triangulation approach to enhance the validity and reliability of the study. Additionally, future research can investigate the similarities and differences among countries in terms of their cultural backgrounds and regulatory frameworks regarding the disclosure of intangibles. Furthermore, future research can increase the length and sample size of the study to enhance its generalizability.

The robust empirical findings extend the academic debate on IC by unveiling the dynamic nature of relationship between IC and financial performance in context of ASEAN banking sector. The findings provide plausible recommendations for policy makers (managers, regulators and stakeholders) to understand how to increase the IC efficiently, especially human capital as a source to evaluate the firms’ ability in determining value-added and financial performance. Further, findings of this study also suggest that how can policy makers get the benefit by investing more on structural capital as a valuable strategic source to guarantee the optimal performance returns.

Prior studies on IC have been country- and firm-specific, utilizing cross-sectional research designs. However, this research contributes to the limited literature by investigating the dynamic nature of the relationship between IC and financial performance of banks in the context of ASEAN countries using micro-panel data.

The aggregate index and per capita index have different meanings for some countries or regions. CO₂ emissions per capita matters for China because of its huge population. Therefore, this study aims to deepen the understanding of Kuznets curve from the perspective of CO₂ emissions per capita. In this study, mathematical formulas will be derived and verified.

First, this study verified the existing problems with the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) through multiple regression. Second, this study developed a theoretical derivation with the Solow model and balanced growth and explained the underlying principles of the EKC’s shape. Finally, this study quantitatively analyzed the influencing factors.

The CO₂ emission per capita is related to the per capita GDP, nonfossil energy and total factor productivity (TFP). Empirical results support the EKC hypothesis. When the proportion of nonfossil and TFP increase by 1%, the per capita CO₂ decrease by 0.041 t and 1.79 t, respectively. The growth rate of CO₂ emissions per capita is determined by the difference between the growth rate of output per capita and the sum of efficiency and structural growth rates. To achieve the CO₂ emission intensity target and economic growth target, the growth rate of per capita CO₂ emissions must fall within the range of [−0.92%, 6.1%].

Inspired by the EKC and balanced growth, this study investigated the relationships between China’s environmental variables (empirical analysis) and developed a theoretical background (macro-theoretical derivation) through formula-based derivation, the results of which are universally valuable and provide policymakers with a newly integrated view of emission reduction and balanced development to address the challenges associated with climate change caused by energy.

This study introduces an ecological framework for disabilities meant to provide a new model of viewing and learning about disabilities and special education. This model projects a multi-systemic view of factors that influence a person's life, where people with disabilities are active actors in the development of the world. The increased awareness about interconnectedness, globalization, inter- and trans-disciplinarity, influences on human experience, greening, sustainability, inequality, inequity and lack of opportunities is shifting how people think about potential and growth.

The methodological approach is qualitative, interpretive research.

In disability studies, the Ecological Model of Disabilities helps reframe this uniqueness as part of the spectrum of human experiences. In special education, the Ecoducation Model helps reframe the learning experience.

This research is conceptual, but it is also all-inclusive, rendering itself to a wide application in educational settings.

The Ecoducation Model for Special Education is specific to the education of children and adults with disabilities, and it is directly compatible with the broader Ecological Model of Disabilities. These ecological models can be applied to all levels of the ecological system, and to different ecodemes of population. Nevertheless, the ecological models need to be locally implemented, with general principles tailored to national traditions, laws and resources.

Advocating for the pursuit of individual well-being within the larger society, both models call for practical changes in a multitude of areas, including legislation and policy, training of professional personnel, sufficient financial input in programs designed for the care of children and adults with disabilities, change in societal mentalities to fight discrimination, disempowerment and isolation. Because the scope of ecological frameworks is incommensurate, being both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, further research possibilities are countless. The ecological perspective opens the fields of disability studies and special education to new theoretical and empirical possibilities.

Two epistemological models are described as new frameworks in disability studies: the Ecological Model of Disabilities and the Ecoducation Model for Special Education. Both are original models that look into the education and inclusion of the person with disabilities.

This research should help determine whether development should focus on individual firms or will raising the national development level act like a rising tide and raise the performance of all corporations.

The comparative data used in this study come from 150 Australian (ASX200 index listed) firms and 150 Sri Lankan (Colombo Stock Exchange listed) firms. The research questions are answered via a quantitative research design that uses primary and secondary data.

The findings demonstrate that capital budgeting practices are more influenced by contingency features and sophistication in Australia and Sri Lanka. Also, Australian firms tend to use capital budget models with good-to-strong predictive power (except for ROE) and Sri Lankan firms tend to use capital-budget models with fair-to-poor predictive power. Further, the analysis of Australian firms yielded much stronger and more statistically significant results than the analysis of Sri Lankan firms.

In complex real-world situations, reconciling the outputs of a multifaceted approach to capital budgeting methods is more likely to give the depth and width of input needed to achieve an optimal capital investment plan.

The results of this study can provide rich information for stakeholders about new findings in capital budgeting (CB) practices and their contributions to firm performance in a comparative perspective.

Global climate change characterized by an increase in temperature has become the focus of attention all over the world. China is a sensitive and significant area of global climate change. This paper specifically aims to examine the association between agricultural productivity and the climate change by using China’s provincial agricultural input–output data from 2000 to 2019 and the climatic data of the ground meteorological stations.

The authors used the three-stage spatial Durbin model (SDM) model and entropy method for analysis of collected data; further, the authors also empirically tested the climate change marginal effect on agricultural productivity by using ordinary least square and SDM approaches.

The results revealed that climate change has a significant negative effect on agricultural productivity, which showed significance in robustness tests, including index replacement, quantile regression and tail reduction. The results of this study also indicated that by subdividing the climatic factors, annual precipitation had no significant impact on the growth of agricultural productivity; further, other climatic variables, including wind speed and temperature, had a substantial adverse effect on agricultural productivity. The heterogeneity test showed that climatic changes ominously hinder agricultural productivity growth only in the western region of China, and in the eastern and central regions, climate change had no effect.

The findings of this study highlight the importance of various social connections of farm households in designing policies to improve their responses to climate change and expand land productivity in different regions. The study also provides a hypothetical approach to prioritize developing regions that need proper attention to improve crop productivity.

The paper explores the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity by using the climatic data of China. Empirical evidence previously missing in the body of knowledge will support governments and researchers to establish a mechanism to improve climate change mitigation tools in China.

By reconsidering the concept of the historic environment, the aim of this study is to better understand how heritage is expressed by examining the networks within which the cultural performances of the historic environment take place. The goal is to move beyond a purely material expression and seek the expansion of the cultural dimension of the historic environment.

Conceptually, the historic environment is considered a valuable resource for heritage expression and exploration. The databases and records that house historic environment data are venerated and frequented entities for archeologists, but arguably less so for non-specialist users. In inventorying the historic environment, databases fulfill a major role in the planning process and asset management that is often considered to be more than just perfunctory. This paper approaches historic environment records (HERs) from an actor network perspective, particularizing the social foundation and relationships within the networks governing the historic environment and the environment's associated records.

The paper concludes that the performance of HERs from an actor-network perspective is a hegemonic process that is biased toward the supply and input to and from professional users. Furthermore, the paper provides a schematic for how many of the flaws in heritage transmission have come about.

The relevance here is largely belied by the fact that HERs as both public digital resources and as heritage networks were awaiting to be addressed in depth from a theoretical point of view.