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This study identifies and synthesizes existing literature on the integration of diabetic and dental services and explores a service integration model for optimising diabetic patient health outcomes and improving healthcare systems in low and middle-income countries.

Peer-reviewed literature that analysed the integration of health services regarding dental and medical services were reviewed. The articles were identified using the Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, CINAHL Complete, Google Scholar and MEDLINE databases and screened using the PRISMA guidelines.

A total of 40 full-text articles were examined for eligibility out of which 26 were selected for analysis. Diabetes was shown to contribute significantly to the global disease burden and this is also reflected in most low and middle-income countries. It is found that the integration of medical and dental services could help alleviate this burden. Hence, locally adapted Rainbow-Modified Integrated Care model is proposed to fill this integration gap.

The integration of dental and medical services has been proven to be useful in improving diabetic patient outcomes. Hence, the need to facilitate cross-professional collaboration between dentists and physicians cannot be overemphasised and this can be extended and locally adapted by different health systems across the world.

The integration of dental and diabetic services using models such as the Rainbow Model of Integrated Care is recommended to optimise health outcomes of diabetic patients and enhancing service delivery, especially in resource-poor healthcare systems.

The purpose of this paper is to determine which factors influence information system security policy compliance. It examines how different norms influence compliance intention.

Based on relevant literature on information system security policy compliance, a research model was developed and validated. An online questionnaire was used to gather data from respondents and partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse 432 responses received.

The results indicated that attitude towards information security compliance mediates the effects of personal norms on compliance intention. In addition, descriptive and subjective norms are significant predictors of personal norms.

Though advancement in technology has reached significant heights, it is still inadequate to guaranteed information systems’ security. Researchers have identified humans to be central in ensuring information security. To this effect, this study provides empirical evidence of the role of norms in influence information security behaviour.

Using a subsidiary of a multinational mining company in Ghana as a case, the purpose of this study is to examine the formal and informal forms and channels of sustainability reporting in the emerging economy’s context.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted amongst managers and employees of the mining company and members of their host community. Based on the interview themes, archival data were extracted from the 2020 Integrated Annual Report of the case company to corroborate the results from the interviews.

The authors found that most of the stakeholders from the host community interviewed were not aware and, to an extent, not interested in formal sustainability reports. In place of that, the management of the mining subsidiary uses informal channels of communication, including meetings and durbars, to verbally engage the local community and their representatives on sustainability matters. Whilst the formal sustainability reports met the internal requirements set by the parent company, the informal engagements were critical for gaining external legitimacy from the host community and other interest groups. Hence, the authors argue that mining companies and their subsidiaries, particularly in developing economies, need to consider informal forms of sustainability reporting alongside the formal channels to engage local communities to address sustainability issues and avert disruptions to their operations.

Sustainability reporting studies have focussed mainly on annual reports published in print or corporate websites, ignoring informal forms of sustainability reporting. This study sheds light on the informal forms of sustainability reporting. This is important as formal forms of sustainability reporting may be less useful for engaging local mining communities in developing economy contexts.

A few decades ago, most research works on internationalisation were aligned to studies in developed economies. In recent times, business entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies have shown their potential to permeate international markets. The current capability of business entrepreneurs in developing and emerging economies, which drives their ability to overcome the numerous barriers to internationalisation, particularly within clusters, requires a critical examination. As a result, the study situates the discussion on internationalisation within the theory of agglomeration in developing and emerging economies and argues that the gains enjoyed by business entrepreneurs from operating in close proximity in clusters are critical for overcoming the barriers of internationalisation. This research adopts a systematic review of secondary data to tease out the unique attributes of clusters in developing and emerging economies, which supports the internationalisation drive. The findings show that most emerging economy clusters are engaged in exports but there is minimal work on international entrepreneurs operating within clusters. The unique features that drive exporting clusters are the presence of multinational companies, public agencies and collaborative relationships. These unique features have the capacity to minimise the constraints to internationalisation and determine the export performance of businesses in the cluster.

The contribution of the public–private partnership (PPP) model towards the achievement of the United Nation (UN)'s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been widely acknowledged. However, limited studies have shed light on the connection between PPPs and the achievement of these coveted goals in Ghana. In this study, the authors aimed at analysing and synthesising the existing literature on the use of PPP to achieve sustainability in infrastructure projects in the country.

A three-step approach was used to retrieve and review 60 selected articles aided by content analysis.

The analysis showed that all existing relevant publications on the application of the PPP model to attain UN’s SDGs in the country are organised around dominant themes, such as poverty alleviation, urban development, waste management and risk management. However, the review revealed little studies exist on pertinent issues relating to PPPs and sustainable development goals, such as climate action, critical resilience, sustainable finance and clean energy.

Although the study is limited to 60 articles in Ghana, the results reveal pertinent gaps for further research studies to achieve sustainable infrastructural development in Ghana and other countries.

Holistically, the outcome of this study will serve as a guide to project managers to understand essential issues on attaining sustainability on public projects.

This article contributes to the literature and practice on the significance of PPP in mainstreaming UN's SDGs in public infrastructure projects.

Implementing quality programmes faces challenges and are not able to yield the needed results. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which three key variables referred to as employee development, empowerment and participation (EDEP) determine the success of a quality programme of printing firms in Ghana.

The study is purely quantitative and data were collected from a cross-sectional survey of workers from printing firms in Ghana. The questionnaire instrument assesses the practices of the firms on development, empowerment and participation of employees. Descriptive, correlation and multiple regression analyses were performed to ascertain the contribution and relationship of the variables to quality achievement.

EDEP is directly and significantly related to print quality achievement. Among the three variables, participation has the greatest effect and contributes significantly to quality achievement. This is followed by empowerment, which has moderate effect on successful quality programme.

The study was unable to evaluate entire Total Quality Management dimensions. More extended research, preferably longitudinal study, is needed to establish how EDEP affect quality achievement in organisations.

Achieving quality printing depends on the level of attention to EDEP. The study suggests that when employees participate fully in quality drive and self-manage their actions and duties, high-quality printing can be assured.

The study provides useful information on factors that have been overlooked or given less attention, yet affect quality programmes of the firms.

The study empirically measure critical success factors of a quality in the printing firms.

This paper seeks to examine the effect of monetary policy rate (MPR) on the lending rates of commercial banks in Ghana.

The paper employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model as well as the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model econometric techniques on a quarterly time series data from 2002 to 2018.

The ARDL results revealed that, MPR has a positive and significant effect on lending rate in the long and short run. Although there exists a direct relationship between MPR and lending rate, from the NARDL revealed an asymmetric effect of MPR on lending rate to the effect that, lending rate in Ghana responds more to positive shock (a rise in MPR) compared to a negative shock (a decrease in MPR) both in the long and short run.

The paper contributes to policy and literature in Ghana by providing empirical evidence on the asymmetric effect that MPR has on lending rates in Ghana. The paper recommends among others, the establishment of a rating system of banks according to their monetary policy compliance, where highly rated banks could have for instance a reduction on borrowed reserves from the central bank.

Promoted for its inclusivity, agricultural value chain (AVC) financing leverages social capital and mechanisms such as off-take agreements and forward contracts to reduce borrowing and lending costs and risks for both farmers and lending institutions. AVC financing has been defined as the flow of financial products and services to and among the various actors within the AVC to address constraints of production and distribution and fulfill the needs of those involved in the chain by reducing risk and improving efficiency. This paper investigates how farmers' involvement in AVC affects their access to credit.

The authors collected primary data from 400 crop farmers in northern Ghana through a semi-structured questionnaire and analyzed the data, using the multinomial endogenous switching regression model.

Joint participation in AVC increased the amount of formal and informal credit received by 64 and 78%, respectively, compared to nonparticipation. Similarly, participation in AVC horizontal linkage and AVC vertical linkage increased the amount of formal and informal credit received by 40 and 47% and 46 and 74%, respectively, compared to nonparticipation. Irrigation farming, extension visits, knowledge of AVC in the community, access to a storage facility and trust in contract farming significantly influenced farmers' participation in AVC.

The authors’ work offers valuable insights into how different dimensions of value chain participation can impact smallholder farmers' access to credit. This work also underscores the importance of considering both formal and informal credit sources when analyzing the outcomes of value chain participation. The findings could enable formal financial providers to identify, liaise and/or resource informal financial players such as value chain actors to supply both formal and informal credit to farmers in AVCs.

There is a contradictive debate on factors influencing mobile phone usage awareness among scholars. This study aims to examine factors influencing mobile phone usage awareness for accessing agricultural marketing information.

A descriptive cross-sectional research design was used with 400 smallholder grape farmers. The use of structured questionnaires, focus group discussions and key informant interviews helped to collect primary data. Data analysis was subjected to descriptive, ordinal logistic regression and thematic approaches.

This study found that farmers were mostly aware of voice calls helping to access buyers and price information. Education, age and sex were the critical factors influencing mobile phone usage awareness among grape smallholder farmers.

This study contributes to scientific knowledge by providing an understanding of the perceived factors on mobile phone usage awareness within the grape subsector to inform policymakers.