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Capacity development in fragile environments in Africa has often proven to be a complex undertaking. This has largely been because of existing knowledge gaps on what exactly causes fragility of states, the economy and society. The liberal peace development model that generally informs post‐conflict reconstruction and capacity development has a limited conception of fragility by narrowly focusing on the national dimensions of the problem, promoting donor‐driven solutions, emphasizing minimal participation of beneficiary actors in the identification and prioritization of capacity development needs, and by subcontracting the design and management of projects and programs. The resulting capacity development impact has generally been disappointing. In the absence of homegrown strategic plans, stakeholder participation and ownership, international development partners have all too often addressed capacity gaps by financing training, supply of equipment and professional exchanges of parliamentarians and parliamentary staffers. These efforts usually achieved their presumed number targets but tended to ignore addressing the larger issues of political economy within which capacity development take place. However, the recent re‐conceptualization of parliamentary capacity development as a development of nationally owned, coordinated, harmonized, and aligned development activities seems to be gaining growing attention in Africa. As the experience of Rwanda eloquently demonstrates, capacity development is essentially about politics, economics and power, institutions and incentives, habits and attitudes – factors that are only partly susceptible to technical fixes and quantitative specifications. These structural factors have to be negotiated carefully and tactfully.

This study aims to explore how the shift from traditional to digital banking transforms the nature of trust between banks and their younger clients (aged 18–35) from the perspective of bank employees.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews with representatives of Ukrainian classical banks and neobanks were conducted. The interviews were analysed using the theoretical approach of institution-based and social network-based trust to identify the key distinctions between the nature of trust in traditional and digital banking.

The employees of the banks reported that digitalization processes have helped to mitigate trust issues; as a result, their banks have not experienced any difficulties in this regard among young people. Furthermore, social networks, particularly social approval, were found to be significant factors for establishing trust in digital banking among young people.

The results of this study could assist bank managers in adapting their strategies for cultivating trust among younger clients and aiding international law regulators and government institutions in preventing unintended circumstances in financial services. These contributions were shaped by the study’s limitations, including its focus on only two concepts of trust building: institution-based and social network-based, as well as its specific Ukrainian context.

This study highlights social approval as a valuable constituent of the trust-building process that influences trust in institutions. Furthermore, while gaining social approval – particularly through digital platforms – can promote trust-building among young people, this “easy way” may have negative societal consequences by endorsing unscrupulous institutions.

This paper aims to discuss the nexus between two societal (sub) systems of housing and energy supply to shed new light on the key institutional barriers to socio-technical energy transition in the built environment. The key research question is to explore if and how key patterns of institutional elements associated with energy retrofit and energy supply are combined, co-evolved and played out in the housing system, leading to an alternative energy transition pathway in the built environment.

A comparative case study of residential buildings in the Swiss cities of Basel and Sion is conducted to map retrofitting policies and practices in a wide range of buildings (e.g. multi-family and single family) that each requires a particular constellation of institutions, actors and artefacts.

The key finding is that the regulative institutions support energy transition in each urban form/housing type. However, the co-evolution with normative and cultural-cognitive institutions does not play out very clearly in the housing system. One reason is that the norms and cultures are deeply rooted in the practices exercised by business community and households and therefore they need a longer time frame to adapt to a new regulation.

The policies and actions to increase the rate of housing retrofit are discussed in the specific socio-political context of Switzerland. Therefore, the results of this study might not be applied in other contexts with different conditions, limiting the possibility for analytical generalization. The case study can generate only context-specific knowledge, which might be valuable only to cities with similar conditions. This paper addresses theoretical, methodological and policy challenges in scaling-up retrofit projects by taking a holistic and integrated approach to the systems of housing and energy supply.

It would have been necessary to find out how the introduction and enforcement of new energy policies and regulations (regulative institutions) have changed the norms and building practices (normative institutions) used by actors from housing industry and the attitudes and energy consumption behaviour of the households (cultural-cognitive institutions). Nevertheless, information about normative and cultural-cognitive institutions require more primary data in the form of interviews with organizations and households, respectively, which goes beyond the scope and resources of this study.

Insights from different strands of literature (institutions and sustainability transition) are combined to understand if and how retrofitting practices go along with other elements of urban sustainability including architectural, technical, socio-cultural and economic factors.

Why have so many overlapping regional institutions been established in the Asia-Pacific? Is there any possibility of a convergence of these institutions into a single (or a few) “authoritative” regional institution(s)? What implications do the emerging overlapping regional institutions have for an evolving regional architecture in Asia? I argue first that the proliferation of regional institutions reflects complicated strategies taken by the countries to respond to the increased insecurity and uncertainty caused by the structural changes. Second, the countries of the region are taking a variety of national strategies through regional institutions, ranging from engagement to soft balancing and risk-hedging, to respond to these changes. Third, all the states of the region want to maintain a variety of institutional choices to respond to their uncertain futures. Fourth, what makes the institution-building so complicated lies in the fact that there are two major (and uncertain) powers to whom the regional countries have to respond through regional institutions: the United States and China. This makes the bargaining game for regional institution-building more complicated and competitive. Fifth, the amalgamation or convergence of the existing institutions into a single (or few) “authoritative” institution(s) through “institutional competition” will not take place in the foreseeable future. Sixth, the countries of the region may engage in “forum shopping.” Seventh, the roles of these institutions have been and will be quite modest. However, the regional institutions could to some extent contribute to moderating inter-state tensions and putting institutional constraints on the deviant behaviors of member countries.

This article observes how, in today’s common building practice, design practitioners seldom utilize the expertise of researchers in building‐related fields. The lack of the collaboration may be due as much to the “applicability gap” between research and practice as to the lack of a clearly defined role of researchers in building design. Most institutions’ research groups and facilities planning offices are generally not set up to collaborate with the design and engineering professionals. This study, however, found design teams’ collaboration with academic and research institutions to be instrumental in the successful development and implementation of technological innovations in architectural projects. It discusses the findings and provides partnership strategies between the institutions, as large‐building owners, and the building professionals, as design providers.

Although the impacts of trust on information disclosure have been well recognized, the trust building mechanisms in social media are still underexplored. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to explore two trust building mechanisms, namely, institution-based and transference-based trust building and identify how these two mechanisms vary across gender.

An online survey was conducted to collect data. The partial least squares method was used to examine the relationships among regulatory effectiveness, three trusting perceptions and disclosure intention. A cross-group path coefficient comparison method was used to test gender differences.

The results suggest that regulatory effectiveness affects competence- and character-based trust and these impacts are stronger for males than for females. Both competence- and character-based trust influence general trust in members while their impacts vary. Competence-based trust is more important for males while character-based trust is more important for females.

This study contributes to social media literature by identifying the two trust building mechanisms with special attention to the role of regulatory effectiveness and trust transfer. Further, this study also sheds light on how these two mechanisms vary across gender.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comparative analysis of institutions and institutional voids in Russia, Brazil, and Poland over the decades of the 1980s through to 2015. The paper asserts that Russia and Brazil could learn much from Poland regarding formal institution building and formal institutional voids that cause problems like corruption and limit economic growth.

A comparative case study approach is utilized to assess the relative success of the three emerging market countries in transitioning to a market economy, viewed through the lens of institutional theory.

Poland’s experience in building successful formal institutions and mitigating major institutional voids can be instructive for Russia and Brazil which have shown far less success, and correspondingly less sustained economic growth.

This paper demonstrates the value of applying institutional theory to analyze the progress of emerging economies in transitioning to a market economy.

This country comparison can prove valuable to other emerging economies seeking a successful transition to a market economy.

Since institutions are the fabric of any society, the emphasis on institutions in this paper can have positive implications for society in emerging markets.

This paper is an original comparison of two BRIC countries with a smaller emerging economy, utilizing institutional theory. Factors contributing to Poland’s success are compared to Russia and Brazil to assess how those countries might be positively informed by Poland’s experience in building and strengthening sustainable formal institutions as well as avoiding institutional voids and their associated problems.

This paper explores the patterns of the current needs of users' social characteristics in post occupancy evaluation (POE) associated with the environmental performance of green buildings using systematic literature review (SLR). This paper aims to establish a conceptual nexus between environmental performance mandates and the current needs of the users' social characteristics.

This paper adopts a SLR approach designed using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for 21 articles that were selected as qualitative synthesis in this study. The search parameter for the selected articles in this review was limited to publications in three databases, Scopus, Web of Science and Emerald, between January 2016 and January 2023, with the help of qualitative software ATLAS.ti 9© in the presentation of the network codes. The initial literature search has retrieved 99 papers which sequentially excluded 42 papers due to exclusion criteria, and the researcher was left with 57 papers. Out of 57, 14 papers were then removed due to duplication of records found in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, and 43 articles were further screened for qualitative synthesis. A thorough critical appraisal was applied to ensure that only selected papers were included, consensus was achieved among the authors and 22 papers were excluded. The qualitative synthesis has finalized 21 studies, and they are selected as confirmative findings.

Using network codes presentation of ATLAS.ti 9©, the result shows that the social characteristics are influenced by the evaluated building category and the users' category – the stakeholders (owners, designers) and the occupants. New-fangled elements in environmental performance mandates are legitimacy and accessibility. The users’ social characteristics are derived from the category of users, where the stakeholders (designers, owners) are relatively a novel benchmark in meeting the POE objectives towards environmental performance. The least attention on the users’ social characteristics based on the findings shows that image, experiential (conjoint), happiness, interactive behaviour, morale and values are depicted as the social current needs in the environmental performance using POE. However, all stakeholders and the building occupants’ social characteristics must have a confirmative relation to the performance mandates, especially for newly performance mandates elements: legitimacy and accessibility.

The research limits the literature search between the recent January 2016 and January 2023 in Scopus, Web of Science and Emerald databases. Limiting the year of publication to the recent years is important to select and rank relevant scientific papers which encompass the reviewed subject. Other limitations include the selection of papers focusing on the POE approach and environmental performance as the main subject of evaluation. Other evaluation purposes that are not related to environmental objectives are excluded in this study.

The characteristics of the social elements become a challenging subject in meeting the environmental performance needs as they lean more towards intangible elements. The novelty of the findings is drawn from the new pattern and current needs of users' social characteristics in POE for environmental performance.

Aspects of research conducted among financial institutions, specifically building societies, banks, charge card operators and insurance groups are discussed. Within the context of trends in, and growing deregulation of, the financial sector, the role is examined of the marketing information systems to enable institutions to differentiate their marketing strategies and services. In particular, the ability to process information to develop precise targeting of customers with the appropriate value added services is considered. The MIS is increasingly crucial to strategic development within, and between, financial sectors. It is contended that size and use of technology are critical to leadership in the personal finance market.

How can we account for the actual state of capacity building in Africa? This paper attempts to respond to this question, building on the existing literature and statistical data available both within and outside the continent. Using the arguments put forward by different national and international institutions around the world, it is possible to trace the path followed by the capacity building process in Africa around change and human capital theories. Following the creation of ACBF in 1991 and thanks to the intervention of a number of development partners, capacity building practices have significantly influenced the functioning of African States, the implementation of educational systems, the expansion of microfinance, and the impact of multilateral trade negotiations. This paper suggests that capacity building in Africa still requires urgent and vigorous actions towards a qualitative and quantitative of scientists, for the coordination of the dispersed efforts made by various regional and sub‐regional institutions, and for the strengthening of individual and collaborative programmes aimed at developing African human resources in Africa.