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This study aims to understand what drives firms towards board gender diversity in emerging markets. The authors examine the effect of regulative, normative and cognitive pressures on board gender diversity and the moderating effect of national governance quality.

This study tested the hypotheses using unbalanced panel data for the period between 2014 and 2019, which includes 1,384 observations of 380 different firms located in emerging markets.

The results reveal that board gender diversity is directly conditioned by normative pressures (women’s economic and educational empowerment). This relationship becomes stronger if firms are located in countries with high governance capacity. Interestingly, this study finds that regulative and cognitive pressures do not enhance women’s presence on boards if they are not accompanied by strong national governance.

Although we have learned in recent years about how women’s presence on boards brings positive corporate outcomes, we know little about how country-level antecedents foster or hinder this gender diversity. This paper expands knowledge of the way gender-related institutions affect a firm’s board gender diversity, and these findings have policy implications for firms, policymakers, the government and other institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of institutional structures on the strength of auditing and financial reporting standards.

This paper employs a panel data of 36 African countries over the period 2000–2018. System generalised method of moments (SGMM) was employed to estimate the relationship between institutional structures and the strength of auditing and financial reporting standards in Africa.

The findings of this paper indicate a positive and statistically significant relationship between institutional structures and the strength of auditing and financial reporting standards. As a further analysis, the study finds that the relationship between institutional structures and the strength of auditing and financial reporting standards is stronger for economies with common-law accounting traditions than those with civil-law origin.

The paper has important implications for countries striving to adopt and implement auditing and financial reporting standards fully. Such efforts must begin with establishing strong institutional structures in those countries.

This study presents the first empirical panel data evidence on the effect of institutional structures on the strength of auditing and financial reporting standards in Africa. Further, the methodology employed in this study can be regarded as effective in testing the phenomenon in other regions, or it can be employed as a guiding model for future research in the area.

This study aims to investigate whether Bangladesh would avoid the middle-income trap (MIT) in its transition to a high-income country (HIC) according to its “Vision 2041”.

Using both actual and forecasted secondary data, three MIT models of different approaches were used to evaluate the government’s vision-based projections. Moreover, crucial indicators of deindustrialization and institutional strength were linked to the investigation of potential transitions.

According to the absolute definition and international forecasts, the Bangladesh economy might not fall into an MIT at its lower-middle-income level within the intended period due to being shorter than the defined limit. However, its real GDP per capita relative to the USA would remain far below the defined threshold limit of an upper-middle-income country (UMC) in 2041. Meanwhile, Bangladesh has reached the third of the five gradual phases and is awaiting a new transition in 2029. However, its vision-based plan would face challenges such as skills gaps, institutional reforms and successive global crises.

Bangladesh might be trapped in MIT at the UMC level in the 2030s, with no path to renovate after the demographic dividend ends in 2047. In this regard, the government must demonstrate a strong political will to ensure the effectiveness of its policies and the viability of its institutions.

This study not only compared projections to forecasts using different MIT models but also connected transition phases to industrial policies and institutional strengths.

The objective of this study is to examine how the heterogeneity of the institutional environments within a single country influences International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) convergence and earnings quality based on a meso- and multi-level approach.

Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to capture the between-group heteroskedasticity and within-cluster interdependence, this study investigates the simultaneous effect by incorporating institutional factors residing at different hierarchical levels and the interaction effects of factors within the same level on IFRS convergence and earnings quality in the largest IFRS adopter, China.

The results show that after IFRS convergence (i.e. 2007–2015), earnings quality decreases in terms of conservatism. However, the further analysis indicates that the strong institutional environment could mitigate the negative impact of IFRS on conservatism.

Consistent with the emphasis of heterogeneity within a country by Terracciano et al. (Science, 2005, 310 (5745)), this study indicates that the heterogeneity in the institutional environments and the simultaneous effect of the multilevel institutional environments within a single country cannot be ignored. This study also indicates that, equally important, research methodology plays a substantial role in investigating the outcomes of IFRS convergence. Finally, this study, based on an integrated theory, adopts a meso-paradigm linking macro- and micro-level institutions to provide comprehensive insights into IFRS convergence and conservatism.

The authors probe the relationships between country institutional support for entrepreneurship and new venture survival. Specifically, the authors unpack the nuanced influences of entrepreneurs' perceived environmental uncertainty and their subsequent entrepreneurial behavioral profiles and how this particularly bolsters venture survival in contexts with underdeveloped institutions for entrepreneurship.

Coleman (1990) ‘bathtub’ framework is applied to develop a model and propositions surrounding how and when emerging market entrepreneur's perceptions of their countries institutional support toward entrepreneurship can ultimately enhance new venture survival.

Entrepreneurs' interpretations of regulatory, cognitive and normative institutional support for private enterprise helps them embrace uncertainties more accurately reflective of “on the ground” realities and stimulates constructive entrepreneurial behaviors. These are critical for increasing survival prospects in characteristically turbulent, emerging market contexts that typically lack reliable formal resources for cultivating nascent ventures.

This paper has implications for international policymakers seeking to stimulate and sustain entrepreneurial ventures in emerging markets. The authors shed light on the practical importance of understanding the social realities and interpretations of entrepreneurs in a given country relating to their actual perceptions of support for venturing—cautioning a tendency for outsiders to over-rely on aggregated econometric indices and various national ‘doing business' rankings.

This study is the first to create a conceptual framework on the mechanisms of how entrepreneurs in emerging economies affect new venture survival. Drawing on Coleman's bathtub (1990), the authors develop propositional arguments for a multilevel sequential framework that considers how developing economies' country institutional profiles (CIP) influence entrepreneurs' perceptions of environmental uncertainty. Subsequently, this cultivates associated entrepreneurial behavior profiles, which ultimately enhance (inhibit) venture survival rates. Further, the authors discuss the boundary conditions of this regarding how the national culture serves to moderate each of these key relationships in both positive and negative ways.

This study aims to test the moderating effect of market-supporting institution on the strategic similarity–firm performance relationship.

The present is study based on a large panel of firms from developed and emerging economies covering the period 2000–2014.

Highly-developed market-supporting institutions improve the performance of firms that stick to industry's average strategies while weakly-developed market supporting institutions improve the performance of firms that deviate from industry norms.

This is the first paper that shows that the effect of strategic similarity on firm performance depends on the degree of development of market-supporting institutions.

The purpose of this study is to build on previous literature in this area thus, the views of professionals working with those who report institutional abuse was sought using a Delphi method.

Professionals working with those who report institutional abuse, such as psychologists, social workers and personal injury lawyers, were invited to engage in the Delphi study. Sixteen professionals completed the final round (with four rounds in total). This method was used to gain professional consensus on the considered impacts of institutional child abuse and what factors influence impacts.

Eight superordinate themes were developed, as follows: institutional abuse has lasting negative effects on well-being, functioning and behaviour; loss of trust in others and the system is a potential outcome of institutional abuse; negative impacts on future life chances; negative impacts of institutional abuse are exacerbated by numerous factors; protective factors reduced negative impacts; psychological intervention is useful for survivors; positive and negative impacts of disclosure – the response of others as important; and keep impacts individualised.

The need for an individualised approach when working with those reporting institutional abuse was a salient finding.

Institutional abuse is known to result in several negative impacts, although research into this area is limited with a need to better understand what may protect or exacerbate impacts.

Reports and experiences suggest that several developing African economies are faced with entrepreneurial-impeding forces such as lengthy bureaucratic processes and poor regulatory space. The study examines a general trend in “doing business performance” among selected African countries and uses the case of Ghana to explore how particular indicators or forces affect the development and deployment of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) policies.

Comparative analysis of six African economies on their ease of doing business score. This is followed by a critical review of the literature to develop a six-point explanatory framework to explore the relative position of the six countries on the ease of doing business scores. Using Ghana as a critical case study, the authors deploy an in-depth case study analysis via in-depth interviews of relevant stakeholders to validate the information from secondary sources.

The study observes that the nature of leadership, socio-cultural imperatives, economic structure and policy and the role of domestic institutional players and international players have implications for the extent to which the state creates an enabling environment for SMEs and entrepreneurial activities. The role of supportive cultural software that will help drive SME and entrepreneurial growth has been established. The study contends that different aspects of national culture do have implications for the tendency for people to be business-minded or to have the ability to take risks. The demand and supply sides are crucial in promoting SME growth.

The study develops a framework that helps explore elements to help explain ease of doing business scores and the viability of SMEs in Africa. These elements were validated through qualitative interviews as well.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Danish higher education institutions (HEIs) navigate the demands and expectations of accreditation procedures, and how the limited freedom posed by accreditation schemes is used by HEIs by way of translation.

Through document studies of policy documents and the institutional self-assessment reports, the paper follows the concept of quality from the international level to the Danish national level, and onwards into the individual HEIs, where the authors examine how notions of quality are constructed through the translation of national regulation, guidelines and procedures of accreditation into the self-narratives of the self-assessment reports.

The authors find that the national guidelines for accreditation represents a complex translation of supranational guidelines by minimizing certain aspects and enhancing others. This national translation is then analyzed as the frame for the institutional translations where the analysis reveals how HEIs exercise a great deal of agency, within a quite narrow frame constituted by regulations and guidelines.

By using the Olivers (1991) typology of organizational responses, the authors discuss how the HEIs not only imitate and abide to institutionalized norms and concepts of quality but also reformulate, edit, omit and enhance certain elements of quality. The authors demonstrate that when accreditation meets the HEIs, it is clearly the national agendas that are most pervasive and offer the most relevant vocabulary for the HEIs.

Over the years, public sector reforms in emerging economies have focused on improving national budget systems and financial management practices to promote sustainable development. In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, this article examines whether the strength or effectiveness of national budget systems and related financial management practices moderates the impact of fiscal policy measures on economic recovery and resilience.

The article uses bivariate correlations and difference-in-difference analyses to examine the relationship between budget system effectiveness, government stimulus measures and forecasts of economic recovery and resilience. The analysis uses data from the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) program, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

The article finds that estimates of economic recovery and resilience are higher in countries with more reliable budget processes and more transparent public finances. Also, the strength or effectiveness of the budget system before the pandemic appears to moderate the impact of government stimulus measures on economic recovery and resilience over a medium-term forecast horizon.

This is a prospective analysis based on economic forecasts from the IMF, which are subject to change in the coming years. In addition, the analysis uses subjective budget system indicators, which present measurement challenges that often influence this area of research. Better comparative data in the future, for example, large administrative datasets, will enable researchers to explore these issues with less estimation bias.

The findings are relevant for policymakers and budget officials in developing countries in Africa who are engaged in plans to improve national budget systems and enhance resilience to crises, such as the COVID-19-induced economic crisis. The findings also have implications for developing countries beyond Africa with similar economic and fiscal conditions.

The findings have implications for economic and budgetary planning for the social sector as well as the efficient delivery of public services in developing countries. Public managers have a critical role to play in adapting national budget systems and financial management reforms within complex and evolving economic circumstances even after the coronavirus pandemic.

The authors use novel and latest data on country responses to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as medium-term economic forecasts to examine the relationship between national budget systems and post-pandemic economic recovery and resilience in the African context. Previous research has only addressed these issues in the context of industrialized countries, and a limited number of empirical studies examine these relationships. The findings also have significant value for policymakers outside Africa who are facing similar challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic.