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Social return on investment (SROI) has received increasing attention, both academically and professionally, since it was initially developed by the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund in the USA in the mid-1990s. Based on a systematic review of the literature that highlights the potential and limitations related to the academic and professional development of the SROI model, the purpose of this study is to systematize the academic debate and contribute to the future research agenda of blended value accounting.

Relying on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses approach, this study endeavors to provide reliable academic insights into the factors driving the usage of the SROI model and its further development.

A systematic literature review produced a final data set of 284 studies. The results reveal that despite the procedural accuracy characterizing the description of the model, bias-driven methodological implications, availability of resources and sector specificities can influence the type of approach taken by scholars and practitioners.

To dispel the conceptual and practical haze, this study discusses the results found, especially regarding the potential solutions offered to overcome the SROI limitations presented, as well as offers suggestions for future research.

This study aims to fill a gap in the literature and enhance a conceptual debate on the future of accounting when it concerns a blended value proposition.

Football exists and evolves in a dynamic ecosystem, displaying a massive and multidimensional influence on most contemporary societies, and football has grown into a significant industry with a plethora of stakeholders. This research is the first to comprehensively identify the key industry stakeholders and their distinct value, from the individual club perspective, and to conceptualise and test their interrelationship toward the development of a corresponding framework of club benefits.

The study applied a multilevel approach to collect and verify qualitative data. It initially developed a preliminary conceptual framework, which was first validated by an expert panel and was subsequently extensively tested in the Cyprus-specific context, which offered fertile ground for such a study. The empirical stage rested on 41 semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with very high-ranking individuals from the top nine football clubs, as well as with key industry stakeholders.

Though the examined industry is partly in line with international norms, it is also highly affected by unique characteristics that alter the various stakeholders' role, producing (even negative) value of varied typologies that is directly linked with the industry's financial, sporting, cultural and social conditions.

The research ultimately presents scholars, practitioners and policymakers with a systemic and comprehensive understanding of the individual club stakeholder value offerings, delivers a tested framework as a tool for social and business management and prescribes future avenues for research, governance and practice.

Extant studies on the subject are either partial or focus on individual stakeholders and evidently lack requisite scientific comprehensiveness. The current research bridges this significant gap in knowledge by exhaustively identifying the key industry stakeholders, explicating their relative social, economic or other value in the individual club perspective and developing a value-based stakeholder framework.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for an improved conceptualisation of health service research, using Stengers' (2018) metaphor of “slow science” as a critical yardstick.

The paper is structured in three parts. It first reviews the field of health services research and the approaches that dominate it. It then considers the healthcare research approaches whose principles and methodologies are more aligned with “slow science” before presenting a description of a “slow science” project in which the authors are currently engaged.

Current approaches to health service research struggle to offer adequate resources for resolving frontline complexity, principally because they set more store by knowledge generalisation, disciplinary continuity and integrity and the consolidation of expertise, than by engaging with frontline complexity on its terms, negotiating issues with frontline staff and patients on their terms and framing findings and solutions in ways that key in to the in situ dynamics and complexities that define health service delivery.

There is a need to engage in a paradigm shift that engages health services as co-researchers, prioritising practical change and local involvement over knowledge production. Economics is a research field where the products are of natural appeal to powerful health service managers. A “slow science” approach adopted by the embedded Economist Program with its emphasis on pre-implementation, knowledge mobilisation and parallel site capacity development sets out how research can be flexibly produced to improve health services.

The purpose of this study is to assess the contributions of graduate research to social innovation and change for learning and improved transdisciplinary practice. Universities, as centers of teaching and research, face high demand from society to address urgent social and environmental challenges. Faculty and students are keen to use their research to contribute to social innovation and sustainable development. As part of the effort to increase societal impact, research approaches are evolving to be more problem-oriented, engaged and transdisciplinary. Therefore, new approaches to research evaluation are also needed to learn whether and how research contributes to social innovation, and those lessons need to be applied by universities to train and support students to do impactful research and foster an impact culture.

This paper uses a theory-based evaluation method to assess the contributions of three completed doctoral research projects. Each study documents the project’s theory of change (ToC) and uses qualitative data (document review, surveys and interviews) to test the ToC. This paper uses a transdisciplinary research (TDR) quality assessment framework (QAF) to analyze each projects’ design and implementation. This paper then draws lessons from the individual case studies and a comparative analysis of the three cases on, namely, effective research design and implementation for social transformation; and training and support for impactful research.

Each project aimed to influence government policy, organizational practice, other research and/or the students’ own professional development. All contributed to many of their intended outcomes, but with varying levels of accomplishment. Projects that were more transdisciplinary had more pronounced outcomes. Process contributions (e.g. capacity-building, relationship-building and empowerment) were as or more important than knowledge contributions. The key recommendations are for: researchers to design intentional research, with an explicit ToC; higher education institutions (HEI) to provide training and support for TDR theory and practice; and HEIs to give more attention to research evaluation.

This is the first application of both the outcome evaluation method and the TDR QAF to graduate student research projects, and one of very few such analyses of research projects. It offers a broader framework for conceptualizing and evaluating research contributions to social change processes. It is intended to stimulate new thinking about research aims, approaches and achievements.

This paper aims to present a value cocreation framework that furthers understanding of social value cocreation.

This paper is an interdisciplinary conceptual analysis drawing on social enterprise studies, marketing research and philosophical value theory. It applies a visible-hand approach to the study of market relationships and, in line with philosophical research strategies, unfolds its analysis using conceptual distinctions.

This study provides a framework that substantiates the distinction between two modes of value cocreation and identifies the structure of the social enterprise business model. It explains how social enterprises can be conceived as role models for for-profit organizations, and it elucidates why social value cocreation is a demanding objective.

This paper develops an integrative, nondichotomist view of value cocreation that does not conceptualize social and economic value cocreation as opposing goals.

Social enterprises can use the business model structure and two modes of value cocreation and view themselves as role models for for-profit organizations.

This paper applies a visible-hand approach to both for-profit organizations and social enterprises. Using its framework, for-profit organizations can reflect on the consequences of their actions on society and how social value cocreation can improve social enterprise effectiveness.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to bridge service-oriented approaches to marketing and social enterprise studies using philosophical value theory to improve understanding of social value cocreation.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical review of the educational innovation field in the USA. It outlines classification of innovations, discusses the hurdles to innovation, and offers ways to increase the scale and rate of innovation-based transformations in the education system.

The paper is based on a literature survey and author research.

US education badly needs effective innovations of scale that can help produce the needed high-quality learning outcomes across the system. The primary focus of educational innovations should be on teaching and learning theory and practice, as well as on the learner, parents, community, society, and its culture. Technology applications need a solid theoretical foundation based on purposeful, systemic research, and a sound pedagogy. One of the critical areas of research and innovation can be cost and time efficiency of the learning.

Several practical recommendations stem out of this paper: how to create a base for large-scale innovations and their implementation; how to increase effectiveness of technology innovations in education, particularly online learning; how to raise time and cost efficiency of education.

Innovations in education are regarded, along with the education system, within the context of a societal supersystem demonstrating their interrelations and interdependencies at all levels. Raising the quality and scale of innovations in education will positively affect education itself and benefit the whole society.

Originality is in the systemic approach to education and educational innovations, in offering a comprehensive classification of innovations; in exposing the hurdles to innovations, in new arguments about effectiveness of technology applications, and in time efficiency of education.

First, this paper aims to identify and discuss the paradoxical relationship between theology and technology. Second, it also demonstrates the urgency of the digitalization of the Church ministry. Third, this paper offers an understanding of technology and theology through the missional perspective of the Church. Fourth, this paper asks the following questions: (1) Can the Church innovate ways of using technology while maintaining the social aspect of the organism? (2) Can organizations migrate to digital technology with adequate technology/human interface to engage innovations? (3) How can organizations renew their products via technological platforms? (4) From a socio-technical perspective on the digital era, can the Church keep abreast of its workforce in a way that provides adequate participative opportunities? and finally, this paper further interacts with views on the paradigm shift of practical theology and techno-theological practice and possible inclusion in the theology vocabularies of the Church.

A thorough search on the subject of techno-theology (TTheo) reveals that there are no scholarly works that offer a conceptual understanding of TTheo. However, TTheo derives an interdisciplinary definition from innovative leadership, socio-religious transformation, transformational leadership, anthropological studies, strategic leadership (and authentic leader AL), scenario thinking/planning, technological disruptions, digital transformation and Church sustainability. There are multiple inferences in the literature on the advantages and disadvantages of technology in human relations (Banks et al., 2016; Dyer, 2011).

Innovation is open-ended. It can take place anywhere and anytime. All it requires are human entities who are creative enough to respond appropriately. The author agrees with Goldsmith that innovation is not limited to a single aspect of any system (Goldsmith et al., 2010, p. xxiv). Innovation can occur anywhere, and there is no limit to it. The only hindrance to innovation is the lack of creative leaders, creative agents of change and an enabling environment to foster change (Teece, 2018, 2010; Bounfour, 2016; Hanna, 2016). While technological innovation is a good development, other factors drive innovation. Technological innovation is not an end by itself. It is a means to an end. And it cannot stand in isolation from other factors that support it. It competes with some external factors which can sustain it or obstruct it.

This paper used the traditional (or narrative), meta-analysis and meta-synthesis methods of literature reviews to study scenario thinking, system thinking, planning and TTheo principles to find a suitable space to redefine and reconstruct the Church’s ministry engagement in a technologically avowed age. This paper is not a technology text, nor does it pose to answer technology questions. Instead, it focuses on the role of technology in Christian ministry.

This paper recommended that the Church redefines its digital transformation perspective by adopting a TTheo that embraces digital materials and hybrid technology in its ministry engagement across the board. This paper further interacts with views on the paradigm shift of practical theology and techno-theological practice and possible inclusion in the theology vocabularies of the Church.

Technology shapes human interactions in a sociopolitical, socioreligious and sociocultural environment (Dyer, 2011; Postman, 2021; McLauhan, 1994, p. 7). As a community of faith, the Church is a segment of the broader cultural environment with a cross-section of people from various works of life and opinions. Language, customs and practice differ significantly from others in every environment. Hence, each setting is unique in multiple ways (Teece, 2018, 2010). The world continues to experience developments in many areas. Due to the symbiotic nature of humans and the environment, cross-breeding and cross-fertilization of ideas are inevitable. As one organization reacts to its unique existence, it indirectly or directly affects another. Hence, while growth may be relative, its impacts are overtly universal.

The term “Techno-theology” is a newcomer in the theological circle. Hence, there are practically little or minimal literature on this subject area. In this paper, the author has written the original concept of the subject matter (TTheo). This paper is part of the ground-breaking research the author is conducting on “Techno-theology.” The author’s PhD research proposal was approved in December 2022. The author’s research focuses on the subject matter of this paper (TTheo). The author also looks forward to leading a deeper conversation among scholars.

Recognizing novel entrepreneurial opportunities arising from a crisis is of paramount importance for firms. Hence, understanding the pivotal factors that facilitate firms in this endeavor holds significant value. This study delves into such factors within a representative empirical context impacted by a crisis, drawing insights from existing literature on opportunity recognition during such tumultuous periods.

The authors conducted a qualitative inspection of 14 Italian firms during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors collected a rich body of multi-source qualitative data, including 34 interviews (with senior managers and entrepreneurs) and secondary data (press releases, videos, web interviews, newspapers, reports and academic articles) in two phases (March–August 2020 and September–December 2020).

The results suggest the existence of a process model of opportunity recognition during crises based on five entrepreneurial influencing factors (entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial proclivity, entrepreneurial personality and entrepreneurial purpose).

Various scholars have highlighted that, in times of crises, it is not easy and indeed very challenging for entrepreneurs to identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities. However, recent research has shown that crises can also positively impact entrepreneurs and their capacity to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities. Given these findings, not much research has analyzed the process by which entrepreneurs identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities during crises. This study shows that some entrepreneurial influencing factors are very important to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities during crises.

This study aims to describe the COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies implemented in California prisons and the impact of these policies on the mental health of incarcerated women.

The authors conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with ten women who were over the age of 50 and/or had a chronic illness and had been incarcerated in California prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors also interviewed ten health-care providers working in California jails or prisons during the pandemic. Interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory coding framework and triangulated with fieldnotes from ethnographic observations of medical and legal advocacy efforts during the pandemic.

Participants described being locked in their cells for 23 hours per day or more, often for days, weeks or even months at a time in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19. For many participants, these lockdowns and the resulting isolation from loved ones both inside and outside of the prison were detrimental to both their physical and mental health. Participants reported that access to mental health care for those in the general population was limited prior to the pandemic, and that COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies, including the cessation of group programs and shift to cell-front mental health services, created further barriers.

There has been little qualitative research on the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on incarcerated populations. This paper provides insight into the mental health effects of both the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies for the structurally vulnerable older women incarcerated in California prisons.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and green innovation in boosting competitiveness in manufacturing in an emerging market context. This study adds green innovation as mediator in the relationship between CSR and competitiveness.

A model with three second-order constructs is developed and tested, in a sample of 325 managers from manufacturing companies in Ecuador, using quantitative and cross-section methods.

After obtaining adjusted and validated measurement models, a structural equation model was conducted, where the main hypotheses were confirmed, providing empirical evidence that CSR and green innovation significantly influence manufacturing competitiveness in a developing economy.

This study considers only manufacturing companies in Ecuador, focusing on CSR practices in a single territorial case study. It arguably contributes to reinforce the business case for CSR, with new evidence on the causal relationships between CSR, green innovation and competitiveness, in the context of emerging market manufacturing industries. Although the literature often points at a positive relationship between CSR and firm-level competitiveness, supporting empirical evidence remains scarce. This model, introducing green innovation as mediator in the relationship between CSR and competitiveness in developing markets, accounts for a novel theoretical approach.

The findings are consistent with previous research, reporting the positive influence of CSR activities on organizational competitiveness, reducing risks and cost structures, as well as improving the relationship with employees, enhancing talent attraction, retention and productivity. Incorporating formal CSR tools to the model allowed us to highlight the relevance of ‘green’ certifications as a means to provide a competitive edge, along with increased bargaining power in the supply chain, resulting in competitiveness gains. The findings on the role of green innovation suggest a transition from cost-savings to a more strategic leverage on responsible innovation as a source of competitive advantage.

Additionally, this research contributes to shed light on the impact of green processes and product innovations on social and environmental performance, providing evidence of a more efficient use of energy and natural resources, increasing productivity and by extension, profitability. CSR shapes an innovation culture that, through the use of social, environmental and sustainability controllers, can create new business models, products, services or processes that boost both firm-level and supply chain productivity, benefits that eventually spill over to the host community.

This study aims at bridging the research gap on the interplay of CSR, green innovation and competitiveness in manufacturing in an emerging market context.