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This study analyses configurations of national culture as boundary conditions of countries’ national systems of innovation (NSI). Drawing from the NSI approach, we argue that culture’s role is that of a contingency factor shaping the relationship between investments in innovation and national innovation outputs.

We assessed the moderation effect of national culture through a systematic, two-stage approach using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), which allows the analysis of changes induced by the moderator variables. Analyses were conducted with a diverse sample of 61 countries over a period spanning 12 years, from 2011 to 2022.

Findings reveal that investments in innovation, but not individual cultural dimensions, is a necessary condition for high innovation outputs. Furthermore, several configurations of cultural dimensions were identified as moderators of the relationship between investments in innovation and innovation outputs.

This study provides insights into cross-national innovation research by exposing the role of cultural configurations, rather than just individual cultural dimensions, as boundary conditions involved in the achievement of high levels of innovation.

This paper aims to explore the role played by the National Archives of South Africa in human rights promotion and protection. The study examined the challenges that archivists encounter when undertaking archival functions, such as acquisition, appraisal and access provision, that contribute to forming documentary archives crucial for human rights promotion and protection.

A review of literature dealing with acquisition, appraisal and access was used in this research. It was supplemented with interviews.

This paper provides recommendations of benefits in the field of archives management with a focus on the areas of acquisition, appraisal and access. The transformational discourse in the jurisdiction of archives management challenges archival institutions to be active players in selecting historical and cultural archives’ significance that is significant in human rights protections. However, despite judicial requirements that recommend the importance of archives, there is evidence that archival functions such as appraisal, acquisition and access are not being fully used, resulting in national archives institutions that are subject to irregularities that contribute to an unbalanced archives collection.

The paper was limited only to the National Archives of South Africa.

The paper makes practical implications concerning the acquisition, appraisal and providing access to human rights records.

Sufficient funding resource allocation ought to be provided to advance human rights promotion.

This paper offers informed recommendations to address the challenges of acquisition, appraisal and access provision of archive materials. The availability of archives materials reinforces the community by aiding to protect legal rights and prevent human rights violations. It was, thus, necessary to establish whether the National Archives of South Africa is actively building the archives collections that are important for human rights promotion and protection.

Brazil’s regional inequality is an important topic due to the large and persistent differences in development between states and the high levels of inequality in the country. These variations in development can potentially render survey data inaccurate since the significance of capital income varies across the states. Besides, previous studies incorporating tax and national accounts data globally have mainly focused on measuring the income distribution at the country-level. This approach can limit the understanding of inequality, especially when considering large countries such as Brazil.

The methodology used to construct these estimates follows the guidelines of the Distributional National Accounts, whose core goal is to provide income distribution measures consistent with macroeconomic aggregates and harmonized across countries and time. The procedure has three main steps: first, it corrects the survey’s underrepresentation of top incomes using tax data. Then, it accounts for national income items not included in the survey or tax data, such as imputed rents and undistributed profits. Finally, it ensures that all components match the national income.

Compared to survey-based estimations, the results reveal a new angle on the state-level inequality. This study indicates that Amazonas, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have a more concentrated income distribution. The top 1\% of earners in these states receives around 28\% of total pre-tax income, while the top 10\% receive nearly 60\%. On the other end, Amapá (AP), Acre (AC), Rondônia (RO) and Santa Catarina (SC) are the states where the income distribution is less concentrated. There were no significant changes in the income distribution across the states during the period analyzed.

This study combines survey, tax and national accounts data to construct new estimates of Brazil’s state-level income distribution from 2006 to 2019. Previous results only considered income captured in surveys, which usually misses a significant part of capital incomes. This limitation may bias comparisons as capital income has different importance across the states. The new estimates represent the income of top groups more accurately, account for the entire national income and enable to compare regional inequality levels consistently with other countries.

This paper aims to examine the unique Chinese context by analyzing the city labels (e.g. smart city and eco city) used by Chinese local governments at or above the provincial capital level to represent themselves (adopted city labels) and the developmental pathways they actually pursued (adopted developmental pathways).

The authors compared the city brand choices to those anticipated based on their geographic and economic contexts (predicted city labels and developmental pathways) as well as the directives outlined in national planning documents (imposed city labels and developmental pathways). The authors identified ten main categories of city labels used to designate themselves and establish the frequency of their use based on municipal plan documents, economic and geographic data and national plan documents and policy reports, respectively.

The authors discovered that both local economic development and geographic factors, as well as top-down administrative influences, significantly impact city branding strategies in the 38 Chinese cities studied. When these models fall short in predicting adopted city labels and pathways, it is often because cities favor a service-oriented reputation over a manufacturing-focused one, and they prefer diverse, multifaceted industrial images to uniform ones.

The originality and value of this paper lie in its contribution to the academic literature on city branding by developing a predictive model for brand development at the municipal level, with explicit attention to the national-local nexus. The paper’s approach differs from existing research in the first cluster of city branding by not addressing issues of stakeholder involvement or adoption and implementation processes. Additionally, the paper’s focus on the political power dynamics at the national level and urban governance details at the municipal level provides a unique perspective on the topic. Overall, this paper provides a valuable contribution to the field of city branding by expanding the understanding of brand development and its impact on the socioeconomic environment.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has led to the displacement of many Ukrainians. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between their contact with Dutch society and their mental health. To this end, 136 adult, mostly female, displaced Ukrainians in the Netherlands participated in an online survey to investigate the relationship between quality of host national contact and mental health, as moderated by quantity of host national contact. The survey had a Ukrainian, Russian and English version, and it consisted of single questions assessing various variables, including quality of host national contact, quantity of host national contact, amount of discrimination/prejudice as well as five questions assessing mental health (Mental Health Inventory 5 [MHI-5]; Berwick et al., 1991). Contrary to the hypotheses, no interaction was found between quality of host national contact and quantity of host national contact, and quality of host national contact did not have a significant main effect on mental health. However, there is a significant, yet nonlinear main effect of quantity of host national contact on mental health. Moreover, there is a significant correlation between quality of host national contact and quantity of host national contact. Finally, and interestingly, there is a positive relationship between the amount of discrimination/prejudice and mental health among people who chose to fill out the Ukrainian version of the survey. These results provide a nuanced view of the relationship between the host environment and mental health, and governmental policies should take into account the complexity of this relationship.

A total of 161 displaced, mostly female (90.40%), Ukrainians in the Netherlands with the average age of 35 agreed to participate in this online survey. The main variables measured were mental health (dependent variable), quality of host national contact (independent variable 1) and quantity of host national contact (independent variable 2/moderator). Additional variables, such as the level of perceived discrimination/prejudice, have been included in the analyses. The survey was available in three different languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English.

In this study, the role of host national contact in the mental health of displaced Ukrainians in the Netherlands was investigated. The results showed that there was no interaction between quality of host national contact and quantity of host national contact in the prediction of mental health. Moreover, quality of host national contact did not predict mental health. Thus, both of the (preregistered) hypotheses of this study were refuted. However, the amount of perceived discrimination/prejudice turned out to be linked to mental health. Surprisingly, the amount of perceived discrimination/prejudice predicted higher mental health scores among participants who chose to fill out the survey in Ukrainian. Moreover, of the respondents included in the analysis, 94.85% gave reason for mental health concerns, as expressed by a converted MHI-5 score below 60.

Even though this study does show a positive relationship between the level of discrimination/prejudice and mental health among displaced Ukrainians who filled out the Ukrainian version of the survey, it does not offer a definite explanation for why this seemingly unexpected result occurred. No causal conclusions can be drawn based on this study regarding the relationship between host national contact and mental health.

The results of this study show that certain occurrences in the contact with host society members relate to mental health in unexpected and seemingly complex ways. This might mean that this study has potential for nuancing the current scientific knowledge regarding the relationship between host national contact and mental health. Such nuances might be quite important, as scientific research often forms the basis for governmental policies aimed at improving the mental health of displaced people. Therefore, governmental policymakers should be aware of the fact that there is no easy, clear-cut answer yet to the complex host society factors that play a role in the mental health of various displaced groups. Moreover, an investigation of the role of host national contact might lead to valuable knowledge about factors that contribute to the mental health of refugees. As has been said, refugees are at risk of developing various mental health issues, so they might need help managing their mental health. To this end, policymakers might need evidence-based information to develop interventions targeted at specific refugee groups. By investigating the mental health of displaced Ukrainians in the Netherlands, new insights will be gained to optimize mental health care for this particular refugee group.

This study yields important information regarding the degree of participation and inclusion of displaced Ukrainians in Dutch society, which can inform policies targeted at improving the experiences of this new displaced group. Because displaced Ukrainians have to deal with the mental health consequences of war and displacement, they might be particularly in need of a safe haven in which they feel included.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study in which the role of the host society context in the mental health of displaced Ukrainians in the Netherlands is assessed. The results are quite unexpected and can nuance the current research on the link between discrimination and mental health. Moreover, this study can inspire future research to be conducted in the reasons behind this nuance, by researching the role of identity and uncertainty. Also, the author believes that this study is particularly suitable for this journal because it really looks at the link between social inclusion in the Dutch context and mental health outcomes.

Drawing upon social judgment theory, the research examines whether changes in psychological involvement with a sport human brand owing to their sporting success can generate spillover effects on people's national pride, a proxy for the collective level of well-being and whether the individual's behavioral engagement in sport spectating will moderate this relationship.

Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment grounded in the 2021 Indian Premier League championship, the authors solicit responses from 296 representative individuals residing in India twice using a two-wave panel design. The authors conducted confirmatory factor analysis, repeated measures T-test, latent change score analysis, and structural regression analysis to examine the relationship between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride.

The results demonstrate a positive association between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride. Further, the findings indicate that an increase in psychological involvement with sport human brand was associated with an increase in national pride due to the successful athletic endeavor involving the sport human brand. However, the relationship between psychological involvement with sport human brand and national pride was invariant irrespective of patrons' spectatorship behavior.

This research demonstrates that sport human brands possess transformative soft power that extends their prerogative cultural identity personified by their athletic ability and success, allowing them to shape public sentiments of national pride via their profound influence through and beyond the complex network of brand ecosystems.

Competency frameworks can support public procurement capacity development and performance. However, literature on connecting professionalisation with national procurement contexts is limited. This paper aims to explain and conceptualise recent Romanian experience with developing bespoke competency frameworks at national level for public procurement that reflect the features of the Romanian public procurement system. The approach used could guide in broad-brush, mutatis mutandis, other (national) public procurement systems with comparable features, mainly those seeking a shift from a rather administrative function of public procurement towards a strategic function.

This case study reflects on the methodology used for analysing the Romanian public procurement environment in EU context to develop bespoke professionalisation instruments, and on ways to integrate competency management approaches in Romanian public procurement culture. That methodological mix has been mainly qualitative and constructionist, within an applied research approach. It combined desk research with empirical research and included legal research in this context.

A principled, methodological and pragmatic approach tailored to the procurement environment in question is essential for developing competency frameworks capable to resonate to and address the specific practical needs of that procurement system.

Competency frameworks can uphold societal objectives through public procurement.

Using valuable insights into the development of the Romanian public procurement competency frameworks, the paper provides a conceptual framework for instilling competency management approaches to public procurement professional development where the latter is governed by a rather distinct, public administration, paradigm. This conceptual framework can guide other public procurement systems and stimulate further research.

This paper analyzes how quality management in Ecuador’s national parks is explained through the quality practices contained in Deming’s quality principles from the point of view of employees.

Quantitative research was conducted with the participation of 254 employees from all national parks in Ecuador who rated the quality management practices (leadership, talent management, work climate and training) in their respective parks.

The results show that leadership, talent management, work climate and training significantly explain the service quality in the national parks. This study contributes to the adaptation of Deming’s quality principles to national parks via individual and joint analysis of the relationship between leadership, talent management, work climate and training with service quality in order to highlight which practices are the most important to service quality.

The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the key factors that influence service quality in the National Parks of Ecuador. Its multidisciplinary approach and exhaustive research make this work an invaluable tool for understanding and improving the preservation of natural resources and the tourism experience in these protected areas.

Este trabajo analiza cómo la gestión de la calidad en los parques nacionales del Ecuador se explica a través de las prácticas de calidad recogidas en los principios de la calidad de Deming desde el punto de vista de los empleados.

Se realizó una investigación cuantitativa en la que participaron 254 empleados de todos los parques nacionales del Ecuador quienes valoraron las prácticas de gestión de la calidad (liderazgo, gestión de talento, clima laboral y formación) en sus respectivos parques.

Los resultados muestran que el liderazgo, la gestión del talento, el clima laboral y la formación explican significativamente la calidad de servicio en los parques nacionales. Este estudio contribuye en la adaptación de los principios de calidad de Deming a parques nacionales a través del análisis individual y conjunto de la relación entre liderazgo, gestión de talento, clima laboral y formación con la calidad del servicio para destacar qué prácticas son las más importantes para la calidad del servicio ofrecido.