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This paper aims to examine a co-produced initiative implemented at the University of the West of England, UWE (UWE) between September 2022 and April 2023. The student-led project (Climate, Conversations and Cake: The 3C’s) addressed environmental and climate crisis awareness through monthly gatherings where, in partnership, students, academic staff and professional personnel gathered to share food, engage in conversations and partake in joint activities.

This paper draws upon a mix of student and staff feedback, gathered through surveys and written/verbal reflections, to explore the value and impact of this project.

The project received two UWE student Union awards for teaching sustainability and for student welfare, and was a finalist in the UK and Ireland Green Gown Awards. The 3C’s provided a platform for emotional expression by fostering a safe and supportive environment and encouraged students to reflect, share, apply and deepen their learning experiences in an informal setting characterised by compassion and empathy. This paper highlights the importance of developing supportive and compassionate pedagogical practices which recognise and normalise climate concern.

The findings contribute to the growing body of literature on co-produced projects within higher education institutions, showcasing the potential of such initiatives to encourage meaningful engagement and empower students in addressing the pressing challenges of climate crisis. In addition to providing an evidence base for the value of such initiatives, through outlining the specifics of this student-led project, a framework that can be used by other institutions to develop their own initiatives is offered.

Children with developmental disabilities (e.g. learning disability and autism) often struggle with handwriting skills. This study aims to implement an adapted handwriting programme for children with developmental disabilities to improve their handwriting skills.

Six children with developmental disabilities aged 9–15 years received an adapted Handwriting Without Tears® (HWT) programme in small groups over eight weeks. The programme was delivered by typical teaching staff (i.e. paraprofessionals) at a special education school following a brief training session and with ongoing supervision. A range of measures assessed the children’s handwriting and related skills. Social validity interviews were conducted with school staff following the intervention to evaluate the programme’s acceptability.

Typical teaching staff implemented the handwriting programme with 92.3% average fidelity and delivered a minimum of three sessions per week. Social validity interviews demonstrated the acceptability of the intervention to school staff. After eight weeks of intervention, all children improved their handwriting on various assessments. Improvements were only partially maintained at follow-up.

This study supports the feasibility of using an adapted HWT programme to teach handwriting to children with developmental disabilities in special education settings. Typical teaching staff can be trained to support the delivery of the programme to children in small groups.

This editorial introduces a special issue of the Journal of Services Marketing, dedicated to the concept of resilience in the services sector. This editorial aims to identify how service organizations, networks and systems are resilient in the face of or wake of marketplace disruptions.

Drawing on available literature in service research, the authors illustrate how service scholars can better understand the processes, relationships and outcomes that are a crucial part of resilience in service organizations.

This editorial presents a theoretical framework illustrating interactive, linked and interdependent resource-based resilience practices that enable service organizations and individuals to develop and grow resilience. The special issue papers identified six themes to guide future research: conceptual complexity and challenges of operationalization; culture, context and resilience; antecedents to resilience and outcomes; resilience and the complex world of artificial intelligence and technology; value co-creation; and service ecosystems.

This editorial presents service researchers with an overview of research examining the concept of resilience. It also demonstrates diversity in how the concept is defined and operationalized. Our theoretical framework illustrates a new way of conceptualizing service resilience by identifying three resource-based resilience practices in an increasingly ambiguous, dynamic and complex service world. Together these underpin the six themes for further research.

There seems to be no controversy about Nigeria being an agricultural country with food sufficiency up till the late 1970s. However, in recent times the country is finding it very difficult to provide sufficient food for the teeming population which has resulted in the majority of the country’s citizens slipping into poverty. The ability of the country to provide sufficiently for the citizens was a result of a lack of reliable and effective developmental and transformational strategies in the agricultural sector of the country which is a major employer of labour in the rural community. To this end, this chapter mainly focuses on factors inhibiting the development of agricultural companies in Nigeria and how to overcome the developmental barriers in the agricultural sector in Nigeria. The findings from the review show that the bane of the agricultural sector in Nigeria is due to the lack of an agricultural regulatory framework and policy transmission mechanism and over-dependence on oil revenue amongst other things (Adams, 2016). It is therefore imperative for the country to embark on the development of a reliable agricultural framework and model that will aid food sufficiency in the country.

Upon completion of this case study, students should be able to apply lessons learned in core readings, analysis and discussion to a specific case study dealing with a current, real-world situation, specifically: critically assess Livestock Wealth’s case facts and present and justify their point of view – based on attentive reading, critical analysis and engagement – about the company; use a range of strategic tools such as strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis, PESTLE analysis and the Ansoff matrix to thoroughly evaluate Livestock Wealth’s internal and external business environment for developing strategic options for business growth and improvements to marketing strategy; use strategic thinking to develop a range of creative solutions to guide the company’s business growth and improvements to marketing strategy; and assess their own growth and development in terms of personal preparation and organisation, collaboration, critical thinking, decision-making skills, participation and problem-solving.

By February 2022, Ntuthuko Shezi, the founder and chief executive officer of Livestock Wealth, had turned his idea of “crowd farming”, which enables anyone to invest in living farm assets and earn a profit at harvest, into a full-fledged business that was creating wealth for both investors and farmers. Underpinning this case study is Shezi’s vision of an African continent where there is “no ground that is not planted with something of value”, local economies are created in those areas, communities are wealthy, there is abundance, there is money for children to attend school and ultimately where “cows (and agricultural produce in general) are seen as money”. Shezi had grown up in a rural area with grandparents who owned a couple of cows, realizing that the cows were the bedrock of the family’s finances. Describing his business, he says, “Cattle are like a walking bank, and we see ourselves as the bank of the future, where every person who owns a cow can access financial services through Livestock Wealth, just like it has always been in Africa.” This case study describes the two key decisions that Shezi needed to make – what direction to take in terms of business growth and how to improve his marketing strategy (with a limited budget) to attract sufficient investment into Livestock Wealth to make his dreams a reality.

This case study is suitable for use for a post-graduate diploma in business, master of business administration or master’s in management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This paper aims to examine whether China's grain price support policy has distorted the grain market price.

The time-varying differences-in-differences (DID) model is used to study the impact of support policies on grain prices, and it is combined with the event study method to explore the dynamic effects of price support policy. Panel data model is used to study the effect of the price support policy on price formation for national grain market prices. In addition, we apply the smooth transformation (STR) model to verify whether there is a distortion in the transmission of grain prices among different markets in China and from the international market to China’s market.

China’s grain price support policy plays a significant role in rising grain market prices, weakens the decisive role of the market mechanism in the formation of grain prices, hinders the spatial transmission of market price signals and decreases the effect of price transmission from the world market to China’s market.

In order to ensure both the stability of grain production as well as the market stability, and also to ensure that intervention policies do not distort the food market, the minimum purchase price of grain and market regulation policies should be adjusted as follows: (1) price support policy should be shifted to an income support policy and (2) reasonably determine the scale of reserves and implement a grain minimum purchase price policy in limited areas.

Our findings are relevant for understanding the effect of China's grain price support policies on the implementation regions and the price transmission effect, which provide reference experience for developing countries to implement food price policies.

African agricultural mechanization could lead to a mechanization divide, where only large farms have access to machines. Technological solutions such as scale-appropriate machines and institutional solutions like service markets offer hope for more inclusive mechanization. Two-wheel tractor-based service markets combine both technological and institutional elements, but there is limited research on their economic viability and challenges.

We analyze the economic viability of two-wheel tractor-based service provision based on data from service providers in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Zimbabwe. We also examine the institutional framework conditions for such service providers based on qualitative interviews with these service providers and stakeholders such as machinery dealers, spare parts providers, and banks.

Two-wheel tractor-based service provision is economically highly viable, largely due to multifunctionality. Post-production services such as threshing and transportation are particularly lucrative. However, the emergence and economic sustainability of service providers can be undermined by bottlenecks such as access to finance, knowledge and skills development, access to fuel and spare parts, and infrastructure problems.

This is the first study on the economics of two-wheel tractor-based service provider models. Past studies have focused on large four-wheel tractors, but two-wheel tractors are different in many aspects, including regarding investment costs, repair and maintenance costs, capacity, and multifunctionality.

There will probably be nine billion people on the earth by 2050, meaning food consumption will rise dramatically. Pakistan, the fifth most populous nation in the world, is rapidly expanding its population, making it difficult for the nation to sustain its food supply. Unfortunately, the country's focus on ensuring food security has not kept up with the demographic shifts in its population. However, innovative solutions are sorely needed in the face of several worldwide problems, especially in the crucial agriculture sector. This underscores the need to integrate sustainable financial practices. Considering these circumstances, this research thoroughly examines the intricate relationship inside Pakistan between financial stability (FS), agricultural subsidies, and productivity. Acknowledging the underlying intricacies and asymmetries at work, this study aims to analyze the complex relationships influencing the nation's agricultural production.

The research tries to shed light on the subtle processes at the intersection of financial stability, agricultural subsidies, and agricultural productivity through a comprehensive investigation of these multiple challenges. A non-linear autoregressive distributive lag (NARDL) technique is used, using a dataset from 1980 to 2022.

The results show that FS has a mixed impact on agricultural productivity, both positive and negative. Increasing FS_POS has a beneficial influence on agricultural output, linked to a notable 1.404% increase in output. On the other hand, increasing FS_NEG causes a significant 11.441% decrease in agricultural output, demonstrating its negative impact on output. Subsidies for agriculture also have asymmetric impacts; SUB_POS and SUB_NEG influence variations in agricultural productivity. A substantial 2.414% rise in agricultural output is shown by SUB_POS, demonstrating its noteworthy beneficial influence. Conversely, SUB_NEG adds a relatively small increase of 1.659% in agricultural output. However, the different amounts of each person's contribution show how subtle their effects are.

The current study is limited to the relationship between financial stability, agricultural subsidies, and agricultural productivity, considering the inherent complexity and asymmetries at work in Pakistan only. Further studies are required in Asian markets to have a bigger picture of the agricultural sector.

Considering these critical empirical findings, the report recommends strategic strategies to promote long-term agricultural growth in Pakistan. These include providing integrated financial services customized to farmers' needs, such as credit, insurance, and savings alternatives. Transparency and efficiency in procedural frameworks and the formation of efficient public-private partnerships should be prioritized. Furthermore, improving agricultural subsidy schemes emerges as a crucial priority. Targeting marginalized farmers more effectively and optimizing distribution through transparent, digitally driven systems can significantly improve program performance.

The purpose of the research is to analyze the factors that determine the intention of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt the Metaverse. For this purpose, the analysis of the effort expectancy and performance expectancy of the constructs in relation to business satisfaction is proposed.

The analysis was performed on a sample of 182 Spanish SMEs in the technology sector, using a PLS-SEM approach for development. For the confirmation of the model and its results, an analysis with PLSpredict was performed, obtaining a high predictive capacity of the model.

After the analysis of the model proposed in this research, it is recorded that the valuation of the effort to be made and the possible performance expected by the companies does not directly determine the intention to use immersive technology in their strategic behavior. Instead, the results obtained indicate that business satisfaction will involve obtaining information, reducing uncertainty and analyzing the competition necessary for approaching this new virtual environment.

The study represents one of the first approaches to the intention of business behavior in the development of performance strategies within Metaverse systems. So far, the literature has approached immersive systems from perspectives close to consumer behavior, but the study of strategic business behavior has been left aside due to the high degree of experimentalism of this field of study and its scientific approach. The present study aims to contribute to the knowledge of the factors involved in the intention to use the Metaverse by SMEs interested in this field.

This study aims to explore how organisations use institutional language in Green Bond reports to explain and justify their activities using language that describes and reflects narratives while simultaneously constructing and shaping ideology. The paper mobilises Wodak and Meyer’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine reports and related documentation relating to Green Bonds issued in France.

The study uses three legitimating discourses: technocratic, environmental and social and business performance to develop a linguistic perspective that permits contributions to existing knowledge in the area.

The analysis attempts to identify the discursive strategies used to legitimise Green Bond issuance via claims linked to environmental management improvements and business activities’ social impact.

The study contributes to the critical literature on organisational legitimation and responsibility, investigations of Green Bond narratives and an understanding of broader environmental reporting in the financial sector.