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In this book chapter, we analyse social entrepreneurship (SE) development in the Western Balkans and present a regional overview. SE has become a globally known contributor to alleviating societal, economic, social, and environmental concerns. Its influence on increasing people’s quality of life has put the concept on a pedestal, and the Balkans are no different. The new advances have increased the efforts from the third sector in advocating for increased visibility, recognition, and support for social enterprises (SEs) as contributors to the development of resilient communities and facilitating the countries’ recovery from economic, social, and environmental crises. To provide a regional development overview, we use the institutional perspective. We base the analysis on data by applying qualitative methods, including document analysis, conference speeches, round tables, consultations, and other impactful events conducted over the last decade. The evidence suggests that the Western Balkan countries are similar in their development and lack a clear vision, a strategic pathway, and sustainable solutions to accelerate the sector’s growth. The awareness of the SEs’ contributions is still low, hindering their impact and potential scalability. Raising awareness campaigns is much needed to increase SEs’ visibility, recognition, revenues, and financial sustainability. Intersectoral collaboration is not at a suitable level, and the coordination and partnerships between the SE actors are lacking. The region needs to make a significant and consistent effort to facilitate the sector’s development and support SEs to provide the expected societal impact.

Policy coherence is a complex and tough task for many developing nations because their capacity to examine and deliver evidence-based inputs to policymaking is limited, and policy dialogue platforms need to be effectively used. Resolving these difficulties is a critical requirement for policy consistency. As a result, the study focuses on the level of policy coherence for climate change adaptation (CCA), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and sustainable development goals (SDG) in Sri Lanka and suggests routes for policy coherence for Resilience. This study aims to investigate the coherent approach of CCA, DRR and SDG; to identify concerns in policy documents addressing the coherence of CCA, DRR and SDG in local context; and to propose policy coherence suggestions for resilience in Sri Lanka.

Methodology comprises a review and content analysis of 17 policy and legal documents in Sri Lanka and a qualitative study. The qualitative approach consists of semistructured interviews that obtained deep and broad expertise knowledge with ten government representatives and stakeholders. Both content analysis and interview data were analyzed by using NVivo.

It was discovered that there are several issues with the coherence of policies in Sri Lanka, including the fragmented approach, lack of integration, inadequate coordination, limited resources and lack of monitoring and evaluation. The policies are inspired by international frameworks, and local implementations are not focused, leading to inadequate implementation of policies. The lack of development cooperation for the use of innovative approaches, such as climate-resilient infrastructure and environmentally friendly solutions for CCA and DRR, further aggravates the situation. Another concern is the lack of land use management and responsibility for the development of physical infrastructure for DRR integration with CCA. It is found that there is a limited community involvement which is vital for the implementation of policies. Local implementations are encouraged to fill the gaps in existing policies/acts. The analytical framework of the study is based on a preliminary examination of policy documents, a review of the literature and discussions with practitioners. The framework reflects the current situation of policy integration which addresses strategic, conceptual, institutional, operational and financial coherence. The research suggests pathways for achieving policy coherence in CCA, DRR and SDG in Sri Lanka, such as enhancing the strategic coherence by improving goals to increase the coherence within CCA, DRR and SDG; improving the credibility of the unified approach for developing DRR and CCA risk assessments; intensifying institutional cooperation and stakeholder management; improving the common monitoring and evaluation; establishing implementation strategies; and increasing the community involvement.

The study on policy coherence in Sri Lanka recommends increasing community and professional involvement, conducting more research, developing a national strategy, increasing capacity building, strengthening international collaboration and fostering multisectoral collaboration. These recommendations can help improve policy coherence between CCA, DRR and SDGs, align policies with national goals and priorities and improve implementation effectiveness. By implementing these recommendations, Sri Lanka can address the challenges of climate change and natural disasters and achieve SDGs.

The study on policy coherence for resilience in Sri Lanka has practical implications, including improved coordination and resource allocation, increased capacity building, improved reputation and sustainability. By integrating CCA, DRR and SDGs, this study can help Sri Lanka become more resilient to climate change and natural disasters, achieve SDGs and become a responsible actor in the international community. These implications can contribute to a more sustainable future and ensure that development goals are achieved in a way that is resilient to climate change and natural disasters.

Increased community participation: the study emphasizes the importance of community involvement in the policy development process. This can help build trust between communities and government agencies, improve transparency and ensure that policies are developed in a way that is responsive to local needs and priorities.

Based on the identified existing loopholes in the policies and pathways to policy coherence, the issues in policymaking could be overcome. It could be used to establish strong linkages between policies based on CCA, DRR and SDGs to achieve long-term resilience.

Saudi Arabia (SA) is amongst the few countries with a significant foreign workforce who are employed in the higher education sector. More specifically, 39% of SA's academic staff members are foreign nationals and 63% of that proportion occupy professorial positions. Drawing from a workforce localisation perspective, the study was framed as an exploration of equity and social justice amongst Saudi nationals and foreign nationals in a university work setting. The authors employ the lens of how human resource development (HRD) opportunities are administered.

Following the choice of an exploratory qualitative study, the authors employed a multi-case study approach where each of the six universities represented a unit of analysis.

The authors found that nationality differences influenced access to HRD opportunities. These differences are reinforced by practices associated with procedural processes, managerial discretion and selective restrictions in accessing HRD opportunities.

The findings have both practical and social implications, specifically for the SA government's strategic vision of developing local human capabilities.

The workforce localisation agenda within the higher education sector has both a compounding effect on local human capital and supports SA's 2030 Vision and human capital target. Nonetheless, perceived inequity and injustice in accessing HRD opportunities by foreign nationals potentially undermine morale, academic quality standards and research performance, which impacts the development of future human capital and the ‘Saudization’ goals.

This research is very important to conduct to review government policy on Indonesian contract law that still uses contract law inherited from Dutch product (BW) and review which regulations are to be adapted to current development of contract law. This research’s novelty is that new rules will be found in Indonesian contract law.

This research used normative and empirical methods. Normative research is dogmatic research or one that analyzes legislation using secondary data consisting of primary, secondary and tertiary legal materials. Besides the normative method, the research was also conducted using empirical method through direct interview and observation in some government agencies, such as the Directorate General of Legislation, Ministry of Law and Human Rights (HAM) and Chairman of Legal Product Formation Division, House of People’s Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia and the Civil Law Teaching Association (APHK).

This research found that new Indonesian contract law is very important to give legal certainty and justice to the people, and the contract law must regulate important matters related to the sources of contract besides agreement and law, related to termination, unjust enrichment, negotiation, good faith, public contract and private contract and related to legal act and validity of electronic contract.

The novelty of this research is that new rules will be found in Indonesian contract law. This research is different from previous researches conducted by Sigit Irianto (2013) and Deviana Yuanitasari (2020), that discuss only on contract law development related only to the good faith principle.

Drafting contract law is a relatively heavy duty due to the factor of law pluralism that contains contract aspect in Indonesia such as customary law aspect, Islamic law aspect, regional aspect, international aspect and other aspects. In fact, meanwhile, there is rapid development in the community with regard to business transactions that are also followed with contract law development. Therefore, amendment is needed for the Indonesian contract law to adapt to the people’s need for law, and this change agenda is also addressed to updating the contract law.

Civil law reform, especially contract law, is deemed very important for Indonesia, because based on field fact, people do their business contract by applying contract law that is not yet regulated in the contract law in KUHPerdata; thus, new contract law is needed that regulates important matters related to sources other than agreement and law.

It is very important to conduct this research to review government policy in Indonesian contract law that still uses the contract law inherited from Dutch product (BW) and review what regulations should have been adjusted to current development of contract law. The novelty of this research is that new rules will be found in Indonesian contract law. This research is different from previous researches conducted by Sigit Irianto (2013) and Deviana Yuanitasari (2020), that discuss only on contract law development related only to the good faith principle.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyze the context and concept of higher education for sustainable development (HESD) in Nepalese higher educational institutions (HEIs).

The research gathers facts and information both from primary and secondary sources. Five open-ended questions were developed to interview university high-ranking officials, such as VCs, registrars, deans and the chief of the planning division.

The inclusion of 17 sustainable development goals in the country’s Fifteenth Plan, national policy documents, and the University Grants Commission-led higher education reform programme provides sufficient context for HESD. In the absence of HESD literacy and a persuasive strategy, university leadership is less active in lobbying for SDG 4.7 with the government and funding agencies, university faculties and trade unions. In fact, both insights and initiatives to conceptualize HESD are lacking.

This study’s setting is distinct and the interpretation of the HESD concept is based on a small sample size. Thus, the generalization of its findings is intrinsically limited in the context of a country in the geographic region. However, the findings of this research provide practical insights to implement HESD in Nepalese HEIs.

This study is intended to inform and prepare the Nepalese academic community, urging HEIs to implement HESD with a well-defined plan of action. It contributes to the literature by considering how the current context and concept of HESD suites to promote sustainability in Nepalese HEIs, transforming the traditional academic structure and making academic leaders aware that HESD is only a means to an end.

This research is Nepal’s first study of its type with a broad understanding of the context and concept of HESD. It also provides information for HEI leaders on how to initiate the HESD acceleration process.

Education is a strong pillar to national development. It is vital to ensure sustainable higher education development (SHED) in a bid to facilitate global development. This study aims to investigate academic libraries, information and communication technology (ICT) use and SHED.

Descriptive survey research design was used for this study. The population of the study was 607 librarians in the 41 public university libraries in Southern Nigeria. Total enumeration and purposive sampling techniques were used for this study. The instrument of data collection was questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used for the data analysis.

It was found that qualified teachers and promotion of scholarship constitute SHED. The extent of contribution of academic libraries to SHED is high. Academic libraries face a number of challenges in their effort to provide information services for the actualisation of the SHED. The extent of use of ICT in SHED is high. It was therefore recommended that academic libraries and ICT should be adequately used to accomplish SHED in Nigeria.

This study will contribute to the body of literature on how academic libraries and the use of ICT can contribute to SHED.

While SHED is central to global development, the role of academic libraries and the use of ICT should be unanimously embraced by all the stakeholders in education industry.

SHED is inevitable in the contemporary era. This study reveals that academic libraries and ICT use are vital in achieving SHED.

This study aimed to contribute to the field of Human Resource Management (HRM) by providing a critical review of existing scholarly research and a thematic analysis of the workforce nationalization domain in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. To strengthen the literature on this topic, it seeks to identify key gaps and areas for further exploration.

A two-step systematic research methodology (qualitative and quantitative) and a thematic analysis of empirical and theoretical studies were used in this study. The quantitative review was conducted using a predesigned coding framework.

The study identified and discussed four perspectives of workforce nationalization in the GCC countries. These were (1) the conceptualization of workforce nationalization; (2) the role of institutional policies in achieving it; (3) the practices and outcomes of nationalization efforts and (4) the impact of gender and women in the nationalization process.

This study has several limitations, which the authors have addressed by proposing several future research avenues. For example, the reviewed studies are skewed toward certain countries (e.g. UAE and Saudi Arabia), which limits the generalizability of their findings.

A more comprehensive definition of nationalization, development of qualitative and quantitative measures to enhance HRM practices and outcomes, and the identification of alternative approaches to improve the employment of locals are emphasized as needs. Additionally, revised measures and mechanisms to rectify negative perceptions about entitlement and the revision of policies to integrate females in the national labor force are suggested.

Workforce nationalization initiatives in the GCC region offer a unique and rich research phenomenon replete with managerial, organizational, economic and political dilemmas. The investigation of this phenomenon would profoundly enlighten employers, policymakers and scholars.