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Successful smart cities' implementation will require organisational leadership decision-making competences. The foundation of smart cities is digital technologies; many of these technologies are emerging technologies that require IT skills, which are scarce and will exacerbate the battle for talent between organisations. Filling the talent gap will necessitate global hiring, which has implications for organisational culture, cultural diversity and organisational leadership. Organisational cultural mix is an important contributor to leadership decision-making. However, decision-making is underpinned by trust. Blockchain is an emerging technology that has the potential to engender organisational trust in decision-making and, by extension, in the leadership with the ‘right’ organisational culture. Smart cities will be required to leverage emerging technologies to give business performance a competitive advantage and use emerging technologies’ applications to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

The purpose of this research is to explore the experiences regarding diversity and inclusion in the professional context. The stories of female IT professionals included the discussion around enablers and blockers of career and development in IT and talking about worst and best daily experiences at the workplace.

This is a qualitative study that presents the findings from four focus groups with 50 participants – selected female IT professionals working in Poland. The IT professionals were taking part in the Women in Tech Summit in Warsaw in 2019. LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® projective technique has been applied during the group interviews to help the participants express their experiences in a creative way.

The findings include conceptualization of the three main sources of inequalities: (1) Imbalance in rewards and recognition and performance visibility (2) Inability to build wider women-oriented strategic alliances and meaningful relationships around D&I and (3) Willingness but no practical mechanisms to contribute to the business value and being a part of meaningful activities and two concepts of how to improve employee experiences, namely: business strategizing based on daily meaningful experience and mentoring others and impacting business reality through creating professional alliances that matter and are recognized as business value generators as the key directions.

The research was conducted before the pandemic.

The research creates a practical conversational framework for managers giving directions on how to talk about diversity and inclusion in the workplace using a perspective of “daily interactions” and “everyday employee experiences”.

The emerged concepts help to direct the corporate discussions around Social Development Goal No. 5 – Gender Equality in a practical business dimension.

The originality is brought by (1) LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® – the method of creative exploration used during the focused groups (2) social significance of gender equality in the technological roles and industries, especially in the context of reskilling approaches (3) Central and Eastern European perspective of the research.

Higher education institutions have a significant role in preparing future generations for the world of work and sustainable development. This paper aims to present a curriculum model of an enquiry-based learning pedagogy and a sustainable development conceptual context as a mechanism for teaching skills in a geography module. Potential influences of this model on organisational change towards integrating sustainable development are explored.

Following the design and implementation of the curriculum model, semi-structured interviews of the module teaching team were conducted. Thematic analysis was undertaken against a priori objectives determined from existing theoretical frameworks.

Thematic analysis suggests powerful synergies exist between enquiry-based learning, education for sustainable development and skills teaching. Potential impacts are as follows: conceptual perspectives enhance cognitive potential around systems thinking, learning methods promote behavioural potential around professional capability and agency and cultural encounters raise affective potential around inclusive curricula.

Findings indicate potential for bottom-up curriculum intervention to enhance individual learner capability and outcomes, to promote the role of Geography in responsible futures, to build teaching team capacity for active learning pedagogies, to influence individual and institutional behaviour change towards sustainability practices, diversity and inclusion, and to catalyse organisational change around sector priorities including integrating education for sustainable development, active learning, inclusive education and enhanced graduate outcomes.

This paper identifies multiple benefits from a curriculum model combining skills teaching in a synergistic pedagogical and conceptual framework and its bottom-up potential to catalyse organisational change in higher education.

The emergence of dark kitchens in the restaurant industry is a contemporary phenomenon, arising most recently in the context of the so-called gig economy. This new business model flourished during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on a global scale. Despite dark kitchens' popularity, considerable negative publicity exists in the news related to poor working conditions. To highlight this new phenomenon, this paper explores the existing literature on worker exploitation in dark kitchens in the context of the gig economy.

A systematic literature review of hospitality and tourism databases generated 1,430 articles, of which 18 met the authors' inclusion criteria for the final analysis, and 1,030 anecdotal sources, of which 47 were included. Thematic analysis was used to identify the key themes and summarise the findings to be used for further studies.

The popularity of dark kitchens as a business model is premised on the fact that dark kitchens' dramatically reduces the operational cost and increases productivity. On the other hand, the working conditions and contractual agreements of the gig workers in dark kitchens raise several questions from operational, legal and ethical perspective. These poor working conditions create the conditions for worker exploitation and further damage the sector's image.

This study advocates that companies and managers are responsible for implementing and monitoring fair working conditions in dark kitchens. The existence of poor working conditions increases employee turnover and, overall, affects the industry's reputation.

This explorative study provides insights into the working conditions and contractual agreements in dark kitchens. Currently, there is no other study (empirical or conceptual) to shed light on the working practices. The authors hope this study will trigger further discussion and empirical research in this field.