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The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of how a UK business school has explicitly linked sustainability to employability and embedded these into all levels of its undergraduate and postgraduate degree portfolio.

This case study features Nottingham Business School’s (NBS’s) journey of linking sustainability with employability to achieve the University’s strategic objectives and help deliver on the sustainable development goals (SDGs). After reviewing all courses, a cross-school approach was adopted in re-designing the curriculum, first at undergraduate and later postgraduate level. Partnerships, both internal and external were developed, involving the employability and enterprise teams, the University’s students and alumni, local employers, local authorities and businesses and charities. Feedback from graduates is included.

When NBS introduced new undergraduate modules in 2012, there was resistance with concerns over already crammed curricula and the perceived irrelevance of sustainability. This changed as students realised that an understanding of sustainability was benefiting them at interviews and adding value to their employers. While it cannot be proved that increased self-awareness and sustainability literacy have a direct effect on graduate prospects (as measured by the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey), NBS has seen the percentage of students in graduate level employment and/or study increase from 71 to 89.6 per cent over the past five years.

Linking sustainability to employability, and embedding these in the curriculum, should benefit any institution, its students, employers and society, and can be replicated anywhere in the world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of the complexity-based temporary innovation system (TIS) framework to social innovation and examine the extent to which “nature-based solution” (NBS) projects may be understood through a TIS lens. It is proposed that TIS provides a framework to facilitate multi-actor engagement in social innovation responses to the complexity of wicked problems? The goal is to explore if TIS provides a useful framework for understanding the evolution of social innovation projects and enabling more consciously designed and facilitated social innovation with the potential for large-scale, long-term impact.

The research uses a case study methodology in which 10 NBS projects in 3 European cities are examined and compared to the expected features of a TIS as proposed by anonymised for the review process (2018; 2019)

Of the 10 NBS projects, only 3 were “TIS-like”, each of which was targeting wicked problems in the city/community. As only one of the remaining 7 projects was aimed at a wicked problem, the authors concluded that the TIS framework may be best suited to those social innovations that address one or more wicked problems and that NBS projects may not display this feature.

The authors conclude with a reflection on theoretical insights arising from applying the TIS framework to NBS in particular, and social innovation generally – and proposes the next steps in developing the TIS framework in relation to social innovation.

This paper applies a new complexity framework to empirical data that have not been examined previously. This analysis contributes to the development of a new framework for designing and analysing complex social innovation initiatives and challenges existing theories presenting NBSs as addressing complex “wicked” problems.

The European Union (EU) Medical Device Regulations (MDR) 2017/745 entered into force on May 2021 with changes related to strengthening the clinical evaluation requirements, particularly for high-risk devices. This study aims to investigate the impact of these strengthened requirements on medical device manufacturers by investigating the challenges they encounter while generating an MDR-compliant clinical evaluation report.

A systematic literature review was carried out using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses method of peer-reviewed literature and various government jurisdictional reports and legislation.

The findings from the study understanding what constitutes sufficient clinical evidence poses the biggest challenge to the generation of an MDR-compliant clinical evaluation report. Resulting from the challenges they are facing, manufacturers of certain CE-marked medical devices are planning to remove (and have removed) devices from the EU market upon expiration of their certificate, and in the case of new and innovative devices, some manufacturers are planning to launch in other markets ahead of the EU. These challenges will lead to a potential shortage of certain medical devices in the EU and a delay in access to new devices, thereby negatively impacting patients’ quality of life.

This study provides a unique insight into the challenges currently experienced by medical device manufacturers as they transition to the MDR clinical evaluation requirements and the subsequent impact on the continued availability of medical devices in the EU. A limitation is the lack of literature analysing the regulations and their effects.

This study has both theoretical contributions in that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first detailed and systematic review of the new MDR Regulations and has implications for practice as manufacturers and policymakers can leverage it alike to understand the challenges of the new MDR.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of characteristics of the institutional environment on the disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR).

This is a quantitative and descriptive research. The dependent variables used were environmental dimension (ED) and social dimension (SD) that together compose the corporate social performance (CSP). The independent variables that will be used are the characteristics of the institutional environments of Brazil and the UK. Thus, for this end, variables of the national business system of both countries will be used: corruption transparency, access to credit by countries, quality of the education system and labor relations. After their collection, the data were submitted to descriptive and inferential statistics and hierarchical regression.

Data show that UK companies make more disclosure in CSR than Brazilian companies. Through linear regression, it can be seen that the institutional environment affects disclosure in CSR. In the UK, a country with better educational, labor, political and financial indicators than Brazil, it presented better CSR practices. The findings reveal that the better an institutional environment, the more firms act in CSR. The findings of the research confirm the premise of institutional theory: different institutional fields can modify business performance.

The study analyzed only the disclosure practices of companies in the public sector. Thus, the results should be carefully analyzed, without generalizations for all industry sectors. Therefore, it is suggested that future research looks at other industry sectors as well as other institutional contexts, i.e. other countries.

Multinational companies may have different CSR practices according to the institutional environment in which they operate. For example, companies in developed countries, such as the UK, have greater stakeholder pressure. Given this, managers must adapt their environmental strategies according to the institutional environment in which they operate.

This research contributes to CSR studies in various institutional contexts. There is a consensus in the literature that institutional environments affect firms' CSR practices. However, few empirical studies show results between the national business system and CSR. Thus, the present study intends to fill this research gap.

The main objective of this study is to investigate what are the critical success factors that exist for continuous improvement (CI) methodology deployment in the Irish medical technology (MedTech) industry. The research will, in particular, seek to establish if the highly regulated nature of the global MedTech industry is an additional critical failure factor (CFF) for the deployment of CI methodology. The study involves the analysis of the benefits, challenges, CFFs and tools most utilised for the application to the deployment of CI methodologies in the Irish medical device (MD) industry.

A quantitative survey was utilised in this study. The main participants were made up of senior quality professionals working in operational excellence, quality consultants, quality directors, quality engineers, quality managers and quality supervisors working in both manufacturing and service sectors from Irish MD companies. A total of 94 participants from the Irish MedTech industry responded to the survey.

The main finding of this study is that 42% of participants perceived that a highly regulated environment was a CFF to CI, whilst 79% of respondents utilised Lean Six Sigma in their organisations, and productivity and financial factors were found to be the highest reasons for CI deployment amongst the Irish MedTech industry. The top CFFs highlighted for CI in regulated industries were fear of extra validation activity, compliance versus quality culture and a regulatory culture of being “safe”. Another relevant finding presented in this paper is that just over 48% of participants felt that CI tools are very strongly integrated into the industries quality management systems (QMSs) such as the corrective and preventative action system, non-conformance and audit systems.

All data collected in the survey came from professionals working for Irish indigenous and multinational MedTech companies. It is important to highlight that n = 94 is a low sample size, which is enough for a preliminary survey but reinforcing the limitation in terms of generalisation of the results. A further study on a wider European and global scale as well as a comparison with the highly regulated pharma industry would be informative.

The authors understand that this is the very first research focussed on the CFFs for CI in the MedTech/MD manufacturing industry with a specific focus on the highly regulated nature of the industry as a potential CFF. The results of this study represent an important first step towards a full understanding of the applicability and use of CI in the medical-device-manufacturing industries on a global scale.

During the transition from socialist to post-socialist regimes, many Central and Eastern Europe societies have developed a broad sector of informal work. This development has caused substantial economic and social problems. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper aims to answer two questions regarding European countries with a relatively weak economy and welfare state: what are the differences in the social characteristics between workers in formal and informal employment? And how might they be explained? According to the main assumption, a key reason why people work in undeclared employment in such countries is that they are in particularly vulnerable positions in the labour market. This paper uses the example of Moldova. The empirical study is based on a unique survey data set from the National Statistical Office of Moldova covering formal and informal employment.

The findings show that, in informal employment, workers in rural areas, workers with a low level of education, young workers and older workers – in the final years of their careers and after the age of retirement – are over-represented. It seems that a significant reason why these workers are often engaged in informal employment is the lack of alternatives in the labour market, particularly in rural areas, compounded by limited social benefits from unemployment benefits and pensions.

Research about social differences between workers in formal and informal employment in the countries of the European periphery is rare. This paper makes a new contribution to the theoretical debate and research regarding work in informal employment.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial passion for founding firms (EPFF) and persistence in venture start-ups and to examine the mediating role of searching and scanning alertness, association and connection alertness and evaluation and judgment alertness (i.e. entrepreneurial alertness).

Using a three-way parallel mediation involving searching and scanning alertness, association and connection alertness and evaluation and judgment alertness, on data from 342 serial entrepreneurs from Nigeria, the authors examined the influence of EPFF on persistence in venture start-ups, through a parallel mediation involving searching and scanning alertness, association and connection alertness and evaluation and judgment alertness.

The authors find that EPFF was not significantly related (positive) to persistence in venture start-ups, but that searching and scanning alertness, association and connection alertness and evaluation and judgment alertness mediated the path through which EPFF impacts persistence in venture start-ups. Thus, entrepreneurial alertness is relevant in explaining the relationship between EPFF and persistence in venture start-ups in Nigeria.

The findings of this study highlight the relevance of EPFF and alertness in explaining persistence in venture start-ups in Nigeria.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a quality improvement (QI) intervention in primary health facilities providing childbirth care in rural Southern Tanzania.

A QI collaborative model involving district managers and health facility staff was piloted for 6 months in 4 health facilities in Mtwara Rural district and implemented for 18 months in 23 primary health facilities in Ruangwa district. The model brings together healthcare providers from different health facilities in interactive workshops by: applying QI methods to generate and test change ideas in their own facilities; using local data to monitor improvement and decision making; and health facility supervision visits by project and district mentors. The topics for improving childbirth were deliveries and partographs.

Median monthly deliveries increased in 4 months from 38 (IQR 37-40) to 65 (IQR 53-71) in Mtwara Rural district, and in 17 months in Ruangwa district from 110 (IQR 103-125) to 161 (IQR 148-174). In Ruangwa health facilities, the women for whom partographs were used to monitor labour progress increased from 10 to 57 per cent in 17 months.

The time for QI innovation, testing and implementation phases was limited, and the study only looked at trends. The outcomes were limited to process rather than health outcome measures.

Healthcare providers became confident in the QI method through engagement, generating and testing their own change ideas, and observing improvements. The findings suggest that implementing a QI initiative is feasible in rural, low-income settings.

This study aims to investigate the effect of CBDC issuance on economic growth rate and inflation rate in Nigeria. We are interested in determining whether the rate of economic growth and inflation changed significantly after the issuance of a non-interest bearing CBDC in Nigeria.

Two-stage least squares regression and granger causality test were used to analyze the data.

Inflation significantly increased in the CBDC period, implying that CBDC issuance did not decrease the rate of inflation in Nigeria. Economic growth rate significantly increased in the CBDC period, implying that CBDC issuance improved economic growth in Nigeria. The financial sector, agricultural sector and manufacturing sector witnessed a much stronger contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) after CBDC issuance. There is one-way granger causality between CBDC issuance and monthly inflation, implying that CBDC issuance causes a significant change in monthly inflation in Nigeria. The implication of the result is that the non-interest bearing eNaira CBDC is not able to solve the twin economic problem of “controlling inflation which stifles economic growth” and “stimulating economic growth which leads to more inflation.” Policy makers should therefore use the eNaira CBDC alongside other monetary policy tools at their disposal to control inflation while stimulating growth in the economy.

There are no empirical studies on the effect of CBDC issuance on economic growth or inflation using real-world data. We add to the monetary economics literature by analyzing the effect of CBDC issuance on economic growth and inflation.

Betting games have become a global industry worth billions of dollars providing employment to millions and contributing to the gross domestic product (GDP) of several countries. While there are debates and controversies surrounding betting games discourse, a growing body of literature shows that it has been exacerbated by growing unemployment rates. This paper aims to examine the nexus between the increasing involvement of youth in betting games and unemployment from the Nigerian perspective.

The study adopts simple random and stratified sampling techniques to select participants for the study. Three hypotheses were tested for this study and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.

The three hypotheses tested in this study were coined from previous literature. The study established a direct link between technology advancement, promises of winning big coupled with bonuses while unemployment was not significant to youth involvement in betting games. The study also showed that playing betting games provides another source of income to the youth, who are already engaged in one form of work or another. Finally, youth involvement in betting games has created awareness regarding different sports in the world, while contributing to Nigeria’s economy.

As betting games centre as a business in Nigeria has contributed substantially and positively to unemployment in Nigeria; the Government of Nigeria are encouraged to streamline and regulate the activities of the sector such that they can contribute significantly to the country GDP and provide employment opportunities to the youths.

The research shows that the reason why betting games have a massive turnaround of youths in Nigeria is not majorly because of unemployment but as another means to a substantial financial individual/family income. Thus, Nigerian youths see betting games as an avenue to make more money. The study is the first of its kind to examine the nexus between betting games, technology and unemployment hence, its contribution to knowledge.