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This paper analyzes the effect of institutional quality and economic freedom on investment and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Focusing on a panel of 27 countries, the study employed the panel fixed and random effect models to analyze data spanning from 2005 to 2018. The study also employed the Wu–Hausman test to determine if the endogeneity problem exists in the model.

The findings of the study show that individually, an improvement in economic freedom stimulates economic growth while the improvement in institutional quality is effective in spurring investment. However, the interaction effect of improvement in institutional quality and economic freedom is the stimulation of both investment and economic growth. The findings are robust to alternative model specifications.

The study implies that for SSA countries to effectively achieve higher investment and economic growth outcomes, there is the need to simultaneously strengthen institutional quality and improve economic freedom. Focusing on either of the factors without the other leads to less desirable growth and investment outcomes.

The study examined the combined influence of institutional quality and economic freedom on investment and growth in SSA. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has investigated this in the context of SSA.

This paper presents a review of the state of the art on the application of blockchain and smart contracts to the peer-review process of scientific papers. The paper seeks to analyse how the main characteristics of the existing blockchain solutions in this field to detect opportunities for the improvement of future applications.

A systematic review of the literature on the subject was carried out in three databases recognized by the research community (IEEE Xplore, Scopus and Web of Science) and the Frontiers in Blockchain journal. A total of 1,967 articles were initially found, and after the exclusion process, the 26 remaining articles were classified according to the following dimensions: System Type, Open Access, Review Type, Reviewer Incentive, Token Economy, Blockchain Access, Blockchain Identification, Blockchain Used, Paper Storage, Anonymity and Maturity of the solution.

Results show that the solutions are normally concerned on offering incentives to the reviewers' work (often monetary). Other common general preferences among the solutions are the adoption of open reviews, the use of Ethereum, the implementation of publishing ecosystems and the use of InterPlanetary File System to the storage of the papers.

There are currently no studies covering the main aspects of blockchain solutions in the field of scientific peer review. The present study provides an overall review of the topic, summarizing important information on the current research and helping new adopters to develop solutions grounded on the existing literature.

The rising volume of open government data (OGD) contrasts with the limited acceptance and utilization of OGD among citizens. This study investigates the reasons for citizens’ not using available OGD by comparing citizens’ attitudes towards OGD with the development of OGD portals. The comparison includes four OGD utilization processes derived from the literature, namely OGD awareness, needs, access and consumption.

A case study in China has been carried out. A sociological questionnaire was designed to collect data from Chinese citizens (demand), and personal visits were carried out to collect data from OGD portals (supply).

Results show that Chinese citizens have low awareness of OGD and OGD portals. Significant differences were recognized between citizens’ expectations and OGD portals development in OGD categories and features, data access services and support functions. Correlations were found between citizens’ OGD awareness, needs, access and consumption.

By linking the supply of OGD from the governments with each process of citizens’ OGD utilization, this paper proposes a framework for citizens’ OGD utilization lifecycle and provides a new tool to investigate reasons for citizens’ not making use of OGD.

Social media has the potential to enable exchange of diverse opinions, foster dialogue on important social issues and exert positive influence on stakeholders and society. However, evidence is contradictory as to whether this is the case; it is possible that millennials' behaviors on social media are mainly driven by conservation (conformity and safety) or self-enhancement (power and achievement). In this research, the authors examine the extent to which different human values (self-transcendence, conservation, self-enhancement and openness to change) influence millennials' activities and behaviors on social media.

The authors conduct three separate surveys on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with 491 millennials (18–34 years of age) in the USA, examining the influence of four higher-order values of the Schwartz human values model (open self-transcendence, conservation, self-enhancement and openness to change) on specific social media activities (consumption, self-focused and sharing nonpersonal content activities).

First, the authors find that for millennial users, human values significantly influence social media activities. Second, conservation values, followed by self-enhancement values, overshadow the expression of open self-transcendence values on social media. Thus, social media platforms may function more as agents of conservation and self-enhancement than agents of personal growth.

This is among the first studies to examine the influence of human values on social media and to find that human values such as conservation and self-enhancement have a strong influence on users' social media activities, while open self-transcendence values, which lead to expansion and growth, do not find genuine expression on social media.

This study is a radical interactionist analysis of family conflict. Drawing on both a negotiated order perspective and Athen's theory of complex dominative encounters, this study analyzes the role that domination plays in conflicts among intimates. As the family engages in repeated conflicts over roles, the family also engages in negotiations over the family order, what role each party should play, interpretations of past events, and plans for the future. These conflicts take place against a backdrop of patriarchy that asymmetrically distributes power in the family to determine the family order. The data from this study come from a content analysis of mothers with substance use problems as depicted in the reality television show Intervention. The conflicts in these families reveal that these families develop a grinding family order in which families engaged in repeated conflict but also continued to operate as and identify as a family. These conflicts are shaped by and reinforce patriarchal expectations that mothers are central to family operation. The intervention at the end of each episode offered an opportunity for the family to engage in a concerted campaign to try to force the mother into treatment and reestablish the family order.

The research paper aims to study dissatisfaction of teleworking employees in Spain during the Covid-19 health pandemic in order to propose three models: sociodemographic profile of the teleworking dissatisfied employee; advantages and disadvantages for the teleworking dissatisfied employee and advantages for the teleworking dissatisfied employee.

This study uses official open data obtained from the Spanish National Statistical Institute (INE, 2022) through Decision Trees statistical multivariable models implementing Classification and Regression Trees and Recursive Partitioning and Regression Trees techniques to determine the variables that can influence the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the subjects.

This investigation offers three models with two sociodemographic profiles of dissatisfied teleworking employee, who is a high/middle-level manager/employee around 45 years old, and she/he lives with the partner. Regarding the most important advantage of teleworking, employees consider “use/saving of time” and as disadvantage “worse organization and coordination of work”.

This research provides empirical evidence with inductive reasoning on understanding the challenges of teleworking dissatisfied employees in Spain not only in turbulent times but also in “normalcy” to improve overall teleworker well-being and accomplish company’s and organization’s long-term objectives for better productivity and effectivity. The study has high practical value due to the integral approach incorporating dissatisfaction as a driver that can trigger negative behaviours towards the organizations and that is seldom addressed in the literature. Additionally, this paper could provide some new ideas for accomplishing “Spain Digital 2025” and “Europe’s Digital Decade: 2030” plans on institutional level.

Innovation management in the healthcare sector has undergone significant evolutions over the last decades. These evolutions have been investigated from a variety of perspectives: clusters, ecosystems of innovation, digital ecosystems and regional ecosystems, but the dynamics of networks have seldom been analyzed under the lenses of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs). As identified by Cao and Shi (2020), the literature is silent about the organization of resource allocation systems for network orchestration in EEs. This article investigates these elements in the healthcare sector. It discusses the strategic role played by entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) in resource allocation and elaborates on the distinction between sponsored and nonsponsored ESOs in EEs. ESOs are active in network orchestration. The literature explains that ESOs lift organizational, institutional and cultural barriers, and support entrepreneurs' access to cognitive and technological resources. However, allocation models are not yet discussed. Therefore, our research questions are as follows: What is the resource allocation model in healthcare-related EEs? What is the role played by sponsored and nonsponsored ESOs as regards resource allocation to support the emergence and development of EEs in the healthcare sector?

The article offers an explanatory, exploratory, and theory-building investigation. The research design offers an abductive research protocol and multi-level analysis of seven (sponsored and nonsponsored) ESOs active in French healthcare ecosystems. Field research elaborates on semi-structured interviews collected between 2016 and 2022.

This article shows explicit complementarities between top-down and bottom-up resource allocation approaches supported by ESOs in the healthcare sector. Despite explicit originalities in each approach, no network orchestration model prevails. Multi-polar coordination is the rule. Entrepreneurs' access to critical technological and cognitive resources is based on resource allocation modalities that differ for sponsored versus nonsponsored ESOs. Emerging from field research, this research also shows that sponsored and nonsponsored ESOs manage their roles in different ways because they confront original issues about organizational legitimacy.

Beyond the results listed above, the main originalities of the paper relate to the instantiation of multi-level analysis operated during field research and to the confrontation between sponsored versus nonsponsored ESOs in the domain of healthcare-related innovation management. This research shows that ESOs have practical relevance because they build original routes for resource allocation and network orchestration in EEs. Each ESO category (sponsored versus nonsponsored) provides original support for resource allocation. The ESO's legitimacy is inferred either from the sponsor or the services delivered to end-users. This research leads to propositions for future research and recommendations for practitioners: ESO managers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers.

In order to estimate the value of semi-automated subject indexing in operative library catalogues, the study aimed to investigate five different automated implementations of an open source software package on a large set of Swedish union catalogue metadata records, with Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) as the target classification system. It also aimed to contribute to the body of research on aboutness and related challenges in automated subject indexing and evaluation.

On a sample of over 230,000 records with close to 12,000 distinct DDC classes, an open source tool Annif, developed by the National Library of Finland, was applied in the following implementations: lexical algorithm, support vector classifier, fastText, Omikuji Bonsai and an ensemble approach combing the former four. A qualitative study involving two senior catalogue librarians and three students of library and information studies was also conducted to investigate the value and inter-rater agreement of automatically assigned classes, on a sample of 60 records.

The best results were achieved using the ensemble approach that achieved 66.82% accuracy on the three-digit DDC classification task. The qualitative study confirmed earlier studies reporting low inter-rater agreement but also pointed to the potential value of automatically assigned classes as additional access points in information retrieval.

The paper presents an extensive study of automated classification in an operative library catalogue, accompanied by a qualitative study of automated classes. It demonstrates the value of applying semi-automated indexing in operative information retrieval systems.

The global COVID-19 crisis posed many managerial and leadership challenges for principals. More specifically, after the crisis passed noticeable changes in school climate manifested and affected principal management style. The present study examined perceptions of principals regarding school climate and its impact on management style. The research literature clearly affirms the profound impact of school climate in terms of the relationship between students and school leaders. The study focused solely on religious high schools because, in Israel, the negative impact of the pandemic was most marked there.

The study was qualitative in nature, and included semi-structured interviews with 10 religious school principals in Israel. Study participants were asked about the existing school climate and their management style in light of the COVID-19 period.

This study indicated that positive school climate and interpersonal relationships between principals and students were affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Study participants reported that principals had to work arduously in the post-COVID-19 period to restore and improve positive school climate and consequently their management style also needed altering. Specifically, restoring open lines of communication and a sense of belonging as the main components of the school climate were the main foci of principal work. The principals' management style had to be more open and inclusive to restore a sense of belonging and security among students.

The study highlights the importance of an open and inclusive management style to restore positive school climate after crises.