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The paper aims at addressing the following research questions: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency? And which pillars of institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

By specifying a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method where GHG emissions are considered as the bad output and the GDP is referred as the desirable one, the work computes the environmental efficiency into the appraisal of a production function for the European countries over three decades.

According to the countries' performance, the findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries. In this environmental context, the role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries.

This article attempts to analyze the role of different dimensions of institutional quality in different European countries' performance – in terms of mitigating GHGs (undesirable output) – while trying to raise their economic performance through their GDP (desirable output).

1. The paper aims at addressing the following research question: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

2. We adopt a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method, considering 40 European economies over a 30-year time interval.

3. The findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries.

4. The role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries, while the performance decreases for the low middle-income countries.

The paper aims at addressing the following research question: does institutional quality improve countries' environmental efficiency?

We adopt a directional distance function in the context of stochastic frontier method, considering 40 European economies over a 30-year time interval.

The findings confirm that high and upper middle-income countries have higher environmental efficiency compared to low middle-income countries.

The role of institutional quality turns out to be really important in improving the environmental efficiency for high income countries, while the performance decreases for the low middle-income countries.

The ranking of universities and other research-intensive institutions in global ranking systems is based on numerous indicators, including number of articles with external collaboration, number of articles with international collaboration, number of articles with industry collaboration as well as co-patents with industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine university–industry research collaboration in Ghana, with the aim of exploring the relationship between the research output collaborations in the top four universities in Ghana and industry across different geographical scales.

This study’s data was obtained from the SciVal database, which drawn its data from the Scopus bibliographic and citation database. The bibliographic and citation data were extracted using a search of the publications affiliated to the University of Ghana, for the period 2011–2020.

Key findings demonstrate a constant rise in the number of research publications by the selected universities over time. Research collaboration intensity in the selected universities in terms of co-authored publications was higher as compared to single-authored publications. University–industry research co-authorships were, however, lower when compared to university–university research co-authorships. The university–industry research co-authorships occurred mostly with Europe, Asia-Pacific and North American-based institutions as opposed to African-based institutions. In Ghana, four industry-based institutions were engaged in intensive research with the selected universities.

This study demonstrates that, for each selected university, it is possible to measure the performance of individual universities in both intra-regional and international collaboration. Such results may be useful in informing policy as well as merit-based public funding of universities in Ghana.

This study aims to examine the impact of geographical and business proximity between parent companies and affiliates on R&D investments in business groups. Furthermore, it compares the moderating effect of value chain participants’ bargaining power and the performance-aspiration gap.

This study uses data from 411 Chinese private manufacturing listed firms affiliated with business groups. This paper conducts regression analysis using Stata 16.0 software. Additionally, this paper employs combined random effects regression models, the 2SLS method and GMM method.

Geographical distance between focal affiliates and parent companies is negatively related to focal affiliates’ R&D. The higher the business proximity between focal affiliates and parent companies, the more R&D investments are made. Further research shows that with stronger bargaining power and a wider performance-aspiration gap, the negative relationship between geographical distance and R&D investment weakens.

This study contributes to the R&D investment literature by offering a novel perspective on why proximity influences affiliates’ R&D investments in Chinese business groups. This study enriches the proximity theory by introducing business proximity as a new dimension into the framework. Furthermore, this study highlights the boundary conditions of the proximity theory by ascertaining the moderating effects of bargaining power and the performance-aspiration gap.

Apples have always been considered a healthy product able to provide curative properties to consumers. In Italy, there is a long tradition of apple consumption and production both as a fresh product and as processed food. However, as with many other products, the consumption of fruits and vegetables and, more specifically apples, has been drastically affected by the first lockdown in 2020. In this project, the authors investigate whether the change in consumption habits had long-lasting consequences beyond 2020 and what are the main eating motivations, food-related behavior and socio-demographic affecting the consumption of fruits and vegetables after the pandemic.

The authors ran two online surveys with 1,000 Italian consumers across a year (from October 2021 to December 2022). In the study, participants answered questions about their consumption habits and their eating motives. Out of 1,000 consumers, the authors included in the final analysis only the participants who answered both surveys, leaving a final sample of 651 consumers.

The results show that participants have allocated more budget to fruit and vegetables after the lockdown than before it. Moreover, consumers reported an average increase in the consumption of apples. However, the increase was more pronounced for people aged between 30 and 50 years old and identified as female. After showing the difference across time, a cluster analysis identified three main segments that differ in their eating motives, place of purchase and area of residence.

Overall, the results contribute to a better understanding of how the global pandemic is still affecting people's daily life. Moreover, the findings can be used to guide the marketing and communication strategies of companies in the food sector.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that investigates changes in the consumption of fruits and vegetables, and, more specifically, apples, in Italy more than one year after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the study proposes a classification of consumers based on their habits in a time frame during which the COVID-19 wave was at its bottom which is not currently present in the literature.

The purpose of this study is to clarify the findings and criticisms in the extant literature concerning the theory of consumption values (TCV) by conducting a meta-analysis to (1) examine the extent to which consumption values influence consumer behavior and (2) to explore contextual and methodological factors that may account for between-study variance in the focal relationship.

The study employs a random-effects model and psychometric meta-analysis approach to examine 82 studies with 297 effect sizes in 34 countries between 1991 and 2022, inclusive.

Results reveal that consumption values have a positive significant and moderate effect on consumer behavior. Moreover, emotional value is the most influential predictor of consumer behavior, while social value is the weakest. Furthermore, the study's findings show that some contextual and methodological factors moderate the relationship between consumption values and consumer behavior.

The findings highlight that managers can work on consumption values to prompt positive consumer responses like attitude, intention, satisfaction and overall value perception. However, managers must consider that the relevance of the consumption values depends significantly on the outcome variable and the context, which calls for a tailored-made marketing strategy to appeal to consumers' diverse needs and wants.

Besides providing empirical evidence of the broad validity of the TCV, this study is the first meta-analytic review of the TCV, which integrates several insights to provide valuable research directions for future researchers and insightful implications for practitioners.

This study aims to examine how ethical leadership enhances the relationship between employee ethical behaviour and the job performance of employees in state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

This study was a survey, with data collected using a structured questionnaire. The study focused on employees from SOEs in Ghana. The sample covers 238 employees drawn from 10 SOEs. Data was analyzed using structural equation modelling.

The study concludes that employee ethical behaviour positively influenced the job performance of employees of SOEs in Ghana. The effect of ethical leadership on employee job performance was positively significant. Finally, ethical leadership positively moderated the effect of employee ethical behaviour on the job performance of employees of SOEs.

Future research should look at identifying the specific behaviours of ethical employees that influence improved job performance. Also, future research could conduct a comparative study of private-owned enterprises and SOEs.

Attention should also be paid to ethical leadership, as it strongly enhanced both employee job performance and the quality of employee ethical behaviour required for increased job performance of employees.

Extant studies have paid limited attention to understanding how the interaction between employee ethical behaviour and ethical leadership will enhance employee job performance.