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The article investigates the institutional setup of e-lending in public libraries in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Our point of departure is that e-lending has necessitated new library collaborations between local, regional and national levels, and therefore, institutional e-lending setups have emerged. The study seeks to provide better understanding of how the institutional setups are structured, how governance logics have shaped them and what tensions and dynamics become visible in the key actors’ problematisations of these setups.

The study is situated in the neo-institutional tradition and applies the institutional logics perspective. The research questions are answered by taking a qualitative approach, grounded in an extensive interview study with representatives of libraries, publishers and policy actors in three Scandinavian countries. To provide in-depth insight into e-lending setups, the scope of empirical material is then limited to accounts the central library and policy actors involved in establishing e-lending.

The analysis shows that the e-lending setups are both similar (especially when it comes to financing), and different across Scandinavia, especially when it comes to centralisation and involvement of librarians in this task. The differences are attributed to the influence of different governance logics (question of administrative autonomy, collaboration in the field and existing legal and political frames), and to what extent the digital and market logics are incorporated or rejected in the field.

The study provides new insights into the question of how Scandinavian public libraries face the consequences of the digitalisation of book distribution and consumption by investigating how they organise their e-lending services. This has not been explored before, notably in a comparative perspective.

This study aims to investigate Bangladesh’s e-commerce regulations in light of the growing criticism that they are insufficient to curb predicate crimes like fraud and money laundering in the online marketplace.

This study used the exploratory design to examine the latest ministerial directives and laws governing e-commerce in Bangladesh to determine why they cannot prevent fraudulent activities in this promising sector and identify potential solutions.

Bangladesh’s regulatory responses to e-commerce fraud prevention and detection are reactive and inadequate. Regulators are unwilling and unable to enforce available legal provisions for various reasons, including a lack of knowledge and coordination among the agencies.

This paper focuses solely on the legal and regulatory framework in place to combat e-commerce fraud. Other critical issues, such as consumer rights, privacy and data protection in e-commerce, are not addressed.

The findings of this study will assist policymakers in revising current regulatory approaches to e-commerce to protect this sector from criminal abuse.

This study looked into the possibility of using a proactive risk-based approach in the e-commerce sector, similar to what the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit does in the financial sector.

Political Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), based on ideas about deliberative democracy, have been criticised for increasing corporate power and democratic deficits. Yet, deliberative ideals are flourishing in the corporate world in the form of dialogues with a broad set of stakeholders and engagement in wider societal issues. Extractive industry areas, with extensive corporate interventions in weak regulatory environments, are particularly vulnerable to asymmetrical power relations when businesses engage with society. This paper aims to illustrate in what way deliberative CSR practices in such contexts risk enhancing corporate power at the expense of community interests.

This paper is based on a retrospective qualitative study of a Canadian oil company, operating in an Albanian oilfield between 2009 and 2016. Through a study of three different deliberative CSR practices – market-based land acquisition, a grievance redress mechanism and dialogue groups – it highlights how these practices in various ways enforced corporate interests and prevented further community mobilisation.

By applying Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony, the analysis highlights how deliberative CSR activities isolated and silenced community demands, moved some community members into the corporate alliance and prevented alternative visions of the area to be articulated. In particular, the close connection between deliberative practices and monetary compensation flows is underlined in this dynamic.

The paper contributes to critical scholarship on political CSR by highlighting in what way deliberative practices, linked to monetary compensation schemes, enforce corporate hegemony by moving community members over to the corporate alliance.

Education to an international standard that can provide successful careers has arguably been the main drive of many parents to allocate scarce financial resources to the education of their progenies. Competition for high-calibre degrees has seen an explosion of opportunity in the private education sector. As many Global South countries do not have the equivalent control of standards provided in the United Kingdom (UK) by the Quality Assurance Agency, this can lead to dissatisfaction with the qualifications received in the Global South. This chapter aims to explore the factors influencing participation in higher education in the Global North versus the Global South, particularly where these relate to or vary by locality, and the relative influence these have on the propensity of the learners living in these areas to progress into higher education in local universities. The conceptual framework and methodology provided in this chapter show the differences between transnational education (TNE) as primarily a standalone or independent activity supported by a UK higher education institution (HEI)/provider versus being a collaborative effort between a UK host university and a South/Southeast Asian HEI university partner. The methodology provides a strategy for UK host institutions to best provide carefully aligned independent or collaborative partnerships with the partner country regulatory bodies. The chapter concludes with the author’s personal reflections and recommendations based on decades of collaborative and independent university provision of TNE. These reflections are focused on design-based courses in selected South/Southeast Asian HEI partnerships with the College of Architecture and Design at Birmingham City University.

This study aimed to evaluate the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool for knowledge synthesis, the production of written content and the delivery of coaching conversations.

The research employed the use of experts to evaluate the outputs from ChatGPT's AI tool in blind tests to review the accuracy and value of outcomes for written content and for coaching conversations.

The results from these tasks indicate that there is a significant gap between comparative search tools such as Google Scholar, specialist online discovery tools (EBSCO and PsycNet) and GPT-4's performance. GPT-4 lacks the accuracy and detail which can be found through other tools, although the material produced has strong face validity. It argues organisations, academic institutions and training providers should put in place policies regarding the use of such tools, and professional bodies should amend ethical codes of practice to reduce the risks of false claims being used in published work.

This is the first research paper to evaluate the current potential of generative AI tools for research, knowledge curation and coaching conversations.