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The number of MSMEs is very influential in economic growth, especially in developing countries. What is of concern to developing countries, although the number of MSMEs is increasing every year, they cannot develop in an increasingly competitive business environment. In this case, good business performance is needed to survive in this intense competition. This study tries to make a performance model of small-scale enterprises by finding out the effect of entrepreneurial competency variables and moderated by the variable competitive sphere and capability of organization. We use the partial least squares to confirm the theory and get answers about the influence between variables. Respondents of this study were 100 MSME owners in Bandung, Indonesia. The study's findings revealed that entrepreneurial competence had a significant influence both directly and indirectly on small firm performance. The variable of entrepreneurial competence provides the most powerful influence on the competitive sphere than organizational capability's moderating variable. Although the moderating variable of organizational capability is not as strong as the competitive sphere in influencing firm performance, it has a strong predictor (quality and flexibility).

This brief note sheds light on the links between Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) codes and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

Three alternative methods based on keyword overlap to establish links between SDGs and JEL codes are presented.

These simple linkages illustrate that the themes of SDGs have corresponding closely related JEL classification codes.

The mappings presented in this note are based on simple keyword overlap and are therefore necessarily imperfect and incomplete. There is plenty of room for further development.

Despite the demonstrated possibility of linking SDGs to existing JEL codes, introducing a specific JEL code for each SDG would reduce search costs for those searching for economic research related to specific SDGs.

The first and preliminary attempt to link SDGs and JEL codes.

The purpose of this study is to provide an extensive bibliometric literature review on authentic leadership as a term and concepts to deliver authentic leadership research with Publish and Perish (PoP) software, Mendeley software, and databases from Google Scholar index. Article located through PoP software based on a Scopus index database. A total of 122 articles refined and analyzed from various qualifying journals starts on January 1999 to December 2018 (20 years). The Mendeley software is used to help manage the references and brief resumes of each article. This chapter presents five clusters to review authentic leadership literature. The clustering process assisted by the VOSviewer software by matching words that often appear in each group, namely antecedents, commitment, performance, positive effects, organizational behavior, and leadership effectiveness. Each of these clusters shows authentic leadership research areas. The five clusters produced through the VOSviewer software provide an overview and research stream of the authentic leadership. Researchers and practitioners need to pay attention to trends and research areas in authentic leadership for improving authentic leadership development.

In literature, it is recognized that there is no universal set of critical success factors (CSFs) applicable to all projects. The goal of this research is to validate a theoretical model which considers that CSFs’ influence on project success (PS) is configurational, that CSFs combine to influence PS.

The authors proposed a theoretical framework which operationalizes CSFs considering contingency and institutional theories' terms, as external contingencies, organizational resources and project strategies, which influence PS. The framework is validated through a qualitative approach on 18 social projects implemented by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Based on the conducted semistructured interviews with NGO managers or project managers, 91 instances when CSFs combine to influence PS were identified.

The dominant path reveals the combination of CSFs in terms of strategies adopted to face contingencies (70 instances), another as resources which moderate managers' strategies (14 instances), and in seven instances positive contingencies and resources combine and influence the PS. The results reveal that CSFs combine in reactive and dynamic ways to influence PS.

The research contributes to the vast literature on projects' success by adopting a different perspective. Configurational theory explains project management and projects' complexity better than the traditional approaches, which have a rather correlational perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the resource rents–quality-adjusted human capital nexus and the impact of quality of institutions.

For a large data set of 161 countries for the period 1996–2018 (yearly and 4-year periods), fixed effect estimation method is applied to investigate the impact of resource rents on quality-adjusted human capital and the role of quality of institutions on this relationship.

The paper found little evidence on the negative, significant and direct impact of total resource rents on quality-adjusted human capital. However, the results show that the negative effect of resource rents can be mediated by the quality of institutions. This result is robust to a long list of controls, different specifications and estimation techniques, as well as several robustness checks. Therefore, institutional quality seems to play a critical role in determining the indirect impact of natural resources on human capital. Moreover, the obtained results demonstrate that this resource adverse effect depends on the type of resource rents; in particular, high dependency on oil rents in developing countries appears to harm human capital.

The paper shows that it is not obvious that total resource rents decrease human capital and found that the coefficient is no longer significant in the two-way fixed effects model. However, the analysis has emphasized the crucial role of political institutions in this relationship and has shown that countries with higher quality of institutions make the most of their resource rents transiting to a better human capital environment. This result is found to be robust to a list of controls, different specifications and estimation techniques, as well as several robustness checks. In addition, we demonstrate that not all resources affect human capital in the same way and found that oil rents have a significant negative effect on human capital. This is an important distinction since several countries are blessing from oil rents. From this we conclude that the effect of natural resources on human capital varies across different types of commodities. On the other hand, the interaction between institutions and the sub-categories of resource rents shows that oil rents can increase human capital only in developing countries with higher quality of institutions (above the threshold). This result is also still hold while using alternative measures of political institutions.

The results in this paper have important policy implications. In particular, results highlight important heterogeneities in the role resource rents to the economy. As international commodity prices have shown high volatility in recent years, it is important for policy makers to understand the rents. Rents which are the difference between the price of a commodity and the average cost of producing it can have different effects in the economy, including the human capital. It is shown that in countries with low-quality institutions, natural resource rents negatively affect institutional quality, leading to conflicts, corruption and fostering rent-seeking activities. Overall, this reinforces the elite at the power that, obviously, is interested in preserving the status quo. In other words, there is a vicious circle between resource rents and low-quality institutions that impedes institutional change. How to regulate this in the best possible way requires a good understanding of how resource rents are generated and appropriated for different sectors, their different effects and how people react to these rents. The evidence suggests the policy toward better political institutions may help countries to improve social outcomes such as health and education which offer high social returns.

The paper is part of the author's PhD research and is an original contribution.

The chapter points to the interactive nature of the different aspects of sustainability of development and investigates the interrelations among the various facets of development or sustainability. It further makes deeper analysis of the dynamic relations among human development, the natural environment, and economic growth. Using simultaneous equation econometric models for 1990–2019 in a cross section of 110 countries, it observes that economic growth in terms of growth of per capita national income is important for both human development as well as for environmental conservation and protection. For environmental sustainability it is thus both growth policy and direct environmental policies relating to protecting human health and health of the ecosystem would be of prime importance.

In the postglobalized world, information and communication technology (ICT) has been considered a key driver of human development. The world is reshaping from resource-based economy to knowledge-based economy after rapid growth of ICT. ICT can be considered as an umbrella that incorporates any communication device such as radio, television, cell phones, computer and network hardware, satellite systems etc., and also various services and appliance with them such as video conferencing and distance learning (Akarowhe, 2017). ICT is a technological system that is able to meet the gap of formal communication system and ultimately affects the level of standard of living. Human development can be defined as a process of enlarging people's freedoms and opportunities and improving their well-being. Whereas, human development index (HDI) is a statistical tool used to measure a country's human development based on the health of people, their level of education attainment, and level of income. The present chapter tries to find out the impact of ICT on human development for selected high HDI and medium HDI countries during the period 2001–2018. Applying panel data technique result shows that ICT has a positive and significant impact on human development.

Education and knowledge have become the prerequisites for the growth and development of any economy or region. Knowledge is a liberator of individuals and societies from human poverty and is a precondition for rapid advancement in today's global knowledge economy (KE). Any nation or region which does not key into the global KE trend may find it very difficult to catch up and become competitive in the global market so as to benefit from the power of knowledge. The objective of this chapter is to investigate whether knowledge and human capital have contributed to the growth of sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Out of the four pillars of KE – the economic and institutional regime (including governance), education and human resources, the innovation system, and information infrastructure – this study focused on education and human capital in the estimation of how knowledge has contributed to growth of SSA countries. The data for the study were sourced from World Development Indicators published by The World Bank Group. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was applied and the results show that knowledge variables have a significant impact on economic growth of SSA countries. It is therefore recommended that welfare and working conditions of the labor force be improved so as to be more productive; SSA countries should key into the KE policies so as to be competitive in the production, use, dissemination and transfer of knowledge, ICT, and science.

With economic reforms increasing market competition, greater efficiency and productivity of factors of production, particularly of the workforce, have become important prerequisites for firms' growth and survival. Consequently, designing appropriate strategies to motivate the workforce in this direction appears as a critical aspect of human resource management. However, an important issue is if increase in wages, salaries, and other benefits can necessarily result in the desired outcomes. This chapter will examine this aspect. Estimating long-term trends in share of wages, salaries, and total emoluments in major industries, it is found that while the share of wages, salaries, and total emoluments has increased in recent years, such changes are not reflected in higher productivity. It is, therefore, suggested that, in addition to higher wages, salaries, and other benefits, enhancing efficiency and productivity of human resources requires adequate emphasis on human aspects as well.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the determinants of scholastic performance using an efficiency analysis perspective.

The authors apply data envelopment analysis (DEA) at the pupil level using the 2009 PISA survey in Azerbaijan. Before applying DEA with multiple outputs, this paper integrates the maximum amount of available information on inputs via the use of correspondence analysis.

The results show that scholastic efficiency depends positively on the externalities due to the resources of the school and to a peer effect. The analysis of the determinants of these externalities shows how they influence scholastic performance and has some policy implications.

Education policies should promote the resource externality, because its effect is more homogeneous among pupils. The mechanisms generating school externalities should be taken into consideration by educational authorities, when allocating resources to school and should give some guidelines about how to use these resources and how to manage a school in order to promote peer effects externalities.

The authors distinguish various sources of efficiency: that of the pupil and that due to school externalities operating via resources and peer effects. The authors relate the efficiency due to school externalities to individual, family and school characteristics.