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The changing environment and competitive market forces have brought many changes in the business sector that have put organisations under immense pressure. The use of psychometric assessments and behavioural profiling help organisations to determine individuals' abilities, aptitudes, personality traits, values and factors which intrinsically motivate them and assist in bringing the right people on board who fit well within the organisational culture and can contribute towards the performance goals. Although behavioural profiling and psychometric assessments are accepted worldwide, however, developing countries particularly the public sector still relies on conventional recruitment methods and the adaptation of contemporary behavioural profiling and psychometric assessments is a challenge. Therefore, this chapter evaluates how the adaptation of behavioural profiling and psychometric assessments in the civil service exams in developing countries can improve the selection process and ultimately can help to improve the quality of public services, capacity building and achieving sustainability goals.

The age of artificial intelligence (AI) is already upon us. The rapid development of AI tools is facilitating sustainable development and its corollary social good. For AI dedicated to social good to be impactful, it has to be human-centred, striving to achieve inclusiveness, sustainable livelihoods and community well-being. In short, it offers major opportunities to holistically enhance peoples' lives in diverse areas: education, health care, food security, disaster reduction, smart cities, etc. However, ethical, unbiased and ‘secure-by-design’ algorithms that power AI are crucial to building trust in this technology. Civil society's engagement can hopefully drive the features and values that should be embedded in AI.

This chapter focuses on the societal benefits that AI can deliver. Our initiatives and decisions of today will fashion the ‘Social Good’ AI applications of tomorrow. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) being addressed are 2–4 and 10–11.

Using 13 major Indian state-level data of the rural sector, covering the period 2004–2005 to 2011–2012 and by estimating a simultaneous-panel model employing Baltagi's Instrumental-Variable EC2SLS estimation method, this chapter contributes to the literature by establishing: (i) the simultaneous dependence between female labor force participation rate (FLFPR) and female health status as measured by female life expectancy (FLE), (ii) the negative impact of outdoor air pollution as measured by prevalence of SPM, SO₂, and NO₂ on FLE, and (iii) the interaction among different demographic factors in determining both FLFPR and FLE. The interaction effect of air pollution with (i) economic growth and (ii) poverty (POV) on FLE is negative implying that the partial effect of a change in growth (POV) depends on air pollution level. Thus reduction in air pollution will increase FLE and hence FLFPR, as the simultaneous positive dependence between FLFPR and FLE is supported. The interaction effect of women's political power and education on rural FLFPR is significant and nonlinear with positive marginal effect. Thus the partial effect of a change in women's political power on FLFPR will in turn depend on level of education and vice versa. The positive impact of other demographic factors like (i) education, (ii) female leader, (iii) POV, and (iv) urbanization on FLFPR and (a) education, (b) female household head, (c) female leader, (d) sex ratio, and (e) growth on FLE are apparent. However, the household size significantly and negatively affects FLFPR.

Purpose: Consumer acceptance is considered the most important factor in functional food success and is given top priority in new product development. This study focussed on finding factors that influence consumer perceptions about active food and the pattern of active food consumption. This chapter aims to provide a deeper understanding of taste trading based on a consumer decision-making framework.

Research Methodology: Cross-sectional consumer data were collected by floating G-Doc containing the questionnaire which was supposed to be answered by people according to their behaviours, preferences, knowledge regarding functional foods etc. It contained questions about their income, gender, preference towards functional foods, factors affecting decision-making while purchasing functional foods etc.

Results of the Study: The findings suggest that the consumers' attitude towards functional foods was mainly influenced by the quality and suitability of the product. Purchase intent was found based on age, literacy of population, income and health benefits of active foods. Awareness of functional foods and their price significantly affected the purchase of functional foods. Most people were willing to spend more on functional foods in the future regardless of the taste and provided high quality and product suitability.

The COVID-19 crisis has forced the majority of higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide to transition to distance education. All countries have faced several challenges, such as the deteriorating economy, poor ICT infrastructure, and insufficient training, in their transition to distance education, with the severity of these challenges being remarkable for developing countries. This chapter aims to investigate tertiary students’ perceptions, attitudes, experiences, and expectations of their higher education journey amid COVID-19 across four developing countries: Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh through an online questionnaire that was administered in each of these countries. This study found that many of the stances, attitudes, concerns, and challenges related to online learning experiences and the emergency status of higher education were common amongst the Lebanese, Afghani, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi participants. The participants across the four countries favored the physical classroom over online learning and identified the disadvantages of distance education that included lack of ICT skills, poor infrastructure, and insufficient training. The few differences that were identified across participants from these countries were mainly attributed to differences in contexts, including socio-economic and political contexts. These findings voice the concerns of one of the key stakeholders, tertiary students, that address the transition to distance education during emergency times and call for immediate intervention from decision and policy-makers.

The current study aims to analyze the role of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) in sustainability issues and its impact on the attitude of practitioners (auditors) in industrial companies. The current study relies on the analytical method, one of the tools of the inductive approach, by examining the literature of researchers, international and local organizations, publications, series, alerts, and topics dealt with by the IFAC, as well as reviewing studies, theoretical and applied research, periodicals, books, and statistics. And specialized publications for this subject, which is related to other sciences – such as – environmental science, economic, and political sciences. The study reached many results, the most important of which are: (1) The first half of the current decade has seen high interest from the IFAC, has led to the issuance of International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) international standard on assurance engagements 3410, (GHG) Statements. (2) Sustainability has become important to a growing number of enterprises, and may have a significant influence, in certain cases, the financial statements, also became the sustainability of the topics under increasing attention from users of financial statements. Thus, the financial statements will need a practitioner to take into consideration sustainability issues and a private greenhouse gas when auditing the financial statements. This study is distinguished by analyzing the role of the IFAC and the IAASB for the period from 1998 to 2023 regarding sustainability issues.

Risk reporting in financial reports has a positive impact on the company and its stakeholders. The purpose of this research is to present a literature review using the bibliometric method with the title we used is Risk Reporting, and the keywords are risk disclosure, risk reporting, stakeholders, and stakeholder theory. Data processing in this chapter uses Publish or Perish (PoP) software and Vos Viewers. This study uses the Google Scholar database. The researcher scanned the journal by using Scimagojr.com to view the journal quartile. Before the search was revised, there were 230 papers from 1991 to 2021 (30 years). Researchers will see the development of risk reporting from several sides, such as the country of origin of the researcher, the type of industry that reports risk, the research methods that have been used so far, and the analysis used for reporting risk.