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Introduction: In the context of Sri Lanka, this study compares how institutions and financial development (FD) affect economic growth (EG) and inclusive growth (IG).

Purpose: The well-structured administration and judicial system at the provincial level have been established against the socioeconomic vulnerabilities in the country for an extended period. Still, the country as a whole and provincial level is experiencing huge income and social inequality, though there are required provisions for enhancing the well-being of the people.

Methodology: The study consists of data from the nine provinces from 2013 to 2019. The analysis used the Dynamic Spatial Durbin Model (D-SDM) to explore the spatial dependencies between the provinces. Two models were developed: the interaction of the financial service activities (FSA) and insurance, reinsurance, and pension (INPEN), representing the FD with the EG and IG with and without. The IG index was estimated by principal component analysis (PCA) using indicators of the four dimensions. The results indicated spatial dependency among FD’s interaction with EG when provincial tax (PROTAX) and provincial expenses (PROEXP) are the provincial institutions.

Findings: The IG model results showed the IG’s spatial dependency moderated by the FD and only the IG model between the provinces. PROEXP showed a significant positive spillover impact among provinces towards the IG.

Practical Implications: The finding inform economic policy making while identifying weaknesses in existing local governments. Attention must be given to how poverty can be reduced, enhancing the well-being of the people with the proper channelling of finance and government institutional mechanisms.

This chapter aims to discuss the challenges facing these countries building productive capacity for development. This chapter makes use of data published by international organizations as indicators for measuring the state of development in the Arab region. Several indicators are presented to compare Arab countries with other world regions. The use of data identifies some of the gaps that countries in the Arab region need to close to strengthen capacity building for development and fostering economic growth. The findings from the data presented reveal that the productive structure in most Arab countries remains weak to generate production linkages and provide incentives for investment in nonenergy sectors. The failure of the export-led growth model to diversify output and promote development in energy producing countries has increased the dependence of these countries on global trade. Fluctuations in commodity prices and uncertainty about global demand for energy have influenced the ability of the state to construct strategies for rapid transformation. Except for the energy sector, the productivity of nonoil sectors remains low reflecting inadequate incentives and ineffective entrepreneurial capabilities. The study examines the challenges for building productive capacity in the Arab world. It illustrates the failure of the led-export model and its inability to prompted economic diversification, especially in the Gulf countries. The study contributes to the literature on capacity building in the Arab world so that to encourage researchers and students of development conducting studies concerning the main development challenges facing these countries.

Misunderstanding and harmful stereotyping have become commonplace amongst people in the United States and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region since 2001, if not earlier. If universities are the locus of transformative education, work remains towards remedying these issues.One non-profit organisation, “Natafaham (pseudonym, Arabic for « we understand each other”), works to undo this negativity student by student. It brings participants from the MENA and Europe/North America into dialogue via Zoom each week. The inter-cultural dialogue availed to participants is empowering to actors, including the dialogue facilitator. This narrative is an autoethnographic exploration of my experience as an intercultural dialogue facilitator. Yet reviewing contemporaneous notes and reflections revealed structural aspects of this programme that empower voices from the MENA region, while facilitating learning amongst participants on both sides of the Atlantic. Such aspects include the format and the location of the programme, its focus on individuals rather than institutions or groups, its mixed top-down and bottom-up approach, and the opportunities it avails for ascension to positions of authority. This narrative analyses these aspects through several lenses and academic traditions, including those of global citizenship, critical internationalisation, (reciprocal) global service learning, and socio-cultural frameworks of second language acquisition. The chapter urges that these aspects are recognised as key catalysts of (more) equal relationships between youth in the MENA region and the United States, which merit widespread replication. It concludes by envisioning a still more equal relationship predicated upon more equitable language usage.

First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

Purpose: Since its inception in 1987, the literature on the VUCA that represents the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous nature of the business environment has progressively increased. This study systematically evaluates the vast literature on the VUCA world. Since review-based studies have been criticised as biased, this study uniquely amalgamates bibliometric analysis with content analysis, thereby taking a research triangulation discourse.

Need of the Study: This study was conducted to consolidate the literature about the VUCA environment and uncover the foundational and emerging themes for future research agendas.

Design/Methodology/Approach: This study conducts a performance analysis and science mapping of 193 carefully selected articles (using PRISMA) published in various sources during 2012–2023. Articles for the study were procured from the SCOPUS database. While performance analysis focused on analysing publication and citation evolution, thematic evolution, leading publications, country publication analysis, and most relevant authors and sources. On the other hand, science mapping revealed conceptual structures (keyword plus co-occurrence analysis and thematic maps) and intellectual structures (co-authorship analysis). VOSviewer and Biblioshiny (R-tool for comprehensive science mapping) were used for this study’s choice of application.

Findings: This chapter concludes with future research agendas using content analysis of the ‘scope for the future research’ section of selected publications and bibliographic coupling (to unearth emerging themes).

Practical Implications: The work presented in this chapter will help the researchers gain a structured conceptual, intellectual, and social understanding of the vast literature on the VUCA environment.