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There seems to be no controversy about Nigeria being an agricultural country with food sufficiency up till the late 1970s. However, in recent times the country is finding it very difficult to provide sufficient food for the teeming population which has resulted in the majority of the country’s citizens slipping into poverty. The ability of the country to provide sufficiently for the citizens was a result of a lack of reliable and effective developmental and transformational strategies in the agricultural sector of the country which is a major employer of labour in the rural community. To this end, this chapter mainly focuses on factors inhibiting the development of agricultural companies in Nigeria and how to overcome the developmental barriers in the agricultural sector in Nigeria. The findings from the review show that the bane of the agricultural sector in Nigeria is due to the lack of an agricultural regulatory framework and policy transmission mechanism and over-dependence on oil revenue amongst other things (Adams, 2016). It is therefore imperative for the country to embark on the development of a reliable agricultural framework and model that will aid food sufficiency in the country.

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.

This study aims to better inform environmental management at universities by applying and validating the policy integration processes theory through a case study of Manchester Metropolitan University.

Social network analyses were used to identify, differentiate and categorise working networks of individuals and departments and the interconnections between them.

In an organisation, networks can be developed and active at departmental level but not at individual level. High numbers of departments can be doing work related to sustainable development whilst having low and medium levels of interconnections between departments. Influence of stakeholders throughout the network suggests levels of sustainable development policy integration at individual and departmental.

New insights provide evidence for universities’ environmental managers of the need of developing and implementing strategies that involve individuals’ work between departments by providing incentives, supporting capacity building and staff empowerment.

This paper applied and validated the theory of policy integration processes, showing that work at individual level and between departments needs more attention.

The study examines the instigating factors behind the development of the local content (LC) policy in Ghana and it further investigates the accountability mechanisms that drive the LC policy implementation to promote sustainable development.

The study reports on a series of interviews with key actors using Institutional Theory and the application of Bovens’ (2010) Global Accountability Framework as a lens for discussion and interpretation of results.

The results reveal that two forces instigated LC policy enactment. One is external funding pressure from the Norwegian government and the World Bank. The other is the government’s engagement of Civil Society Organisations and other internal stakeholders to justify its activities and missions to signal adherence to impartiality, neutrality, and, to a lesser extent, solidarity. The analysis also reveals tensions in how accountability legitimacy relates to implementation of the LC policy. The study further discovers that while participation, transparency, monitoring, and evaluation are frequently invoked as de jure institutional legitimacy in oil and gas contracts, actual practices follow normative (de facto) institutionalism rather than what the LC policy law provides.

The interview had a relatively small number of participants, which can be argued to affect the study’s validity. Nevertheless, given the data saturation effect and the breadth of the data obtained from the respondents, this study represents a significant advancement in LC policy enactment knowledge, implementation mechanisms and enforcement in an emerging O&G industry.

The findings of this study suggest that future policy development in emerging economies should involve detailed consultations to increase decision-maker knowledge, process transparency and expectations. This will improve implementation and reduce stakeholder tension, conflict and mistrust.

The findings of this study build on earlier investigations into legitimacy, accountability and impression management in and outside the O&G sector. Also, the findings reveal the legitimising tactics used by O&G actors to promote local content sustainable development targets.

This paper aims to ask how the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has orchestrated a sustainable development (SD) agenda in its international policy since 2020.

By drawing on theoretical ideas around policy orchestration as a key UN governing strategy and applying them to the analysis of the progression of the SD agenda in the EHEA, the paper conducts a thematic analysis of six recent key EHEA international policy documents and 19 interviews with key Bologna stakeholders in France, Germany and Italy.

The resultant analysis uncovers three overarching key themes that show the EHEA has the capacity to mitigate pitfalls in the UN’s SD agenda; some weaknesses of the UN’s orchestration of SD are translated into weaknesses in the EHEA’s formulation of its SD agenda; and the further development of an SD agenda as an essential direction of EHEA’s work. The paper then goes on to discuss how EHEA policies only mention SD discourse, omit concrete plans for its implementation and keep the very meaning of SD ambiguous throughout international policy documents.

The authors offer three original recommendations that the EHEA should adopt in an attempt to mitigate the issues raised in the run-up to its 2030 deadline for implementing its policies: the EHEA should develop an explicit definition of SD; recognise the Euro-centredness of EHEA policies and open them up to other voices; and cite academic research when developing policy documents.

Policy for women's entrepreneurship is designed to promote economic growth, not least in depleted rural areas, but very little is known about the contributions of rural women entrepreneurs, their needs or how the existing policy is received by them. Using a theoretical framework developed by Korsgaard et al. (2015), the authors analyse how rural women entrepreneurs contribute to rural development and discuss the implications for entrepreneurship policy. This paper aims to focus on the aforementioned objectives.

The authors interviewed 32 women entrepreneurs in rural Sweden representing the variety of businesses in which rural Swedish women are engaged. The authors analysed their contributions to rural development by analysing their motives, strategies and outcomes using Korsgaard et al.’s framework of “entrepreneurship in the rural” and “rural entrepreneurship” as a heuristic, interpretative device.

Irrespective of industry, the respondents were deeply embedded in family and local social structures. Their contributions were substantial, multidimensional and indispensable for rural viability, but the policy tended to bypass most women-owned businesses. Support in terms of business training, counselling and financing are important, but programmes especially for women tend to miss the mark, and so does rural development policy. More important for rural women entrepreneurs in Sweden is the provision of good public services, including for example, schools and social care, that make rural life possible.

Theoretically, the findings question the individualist and a-contextual focus of much entrepreneurship research, as well as the taken-for-granted work–family divide. How gender and how the public and the private are configured varies greatly between contexts and needs contextual assessment. Moreover, the results call for theorising place as an entrepreneurial actor.

Based on the findings, the authors advise future policymakers to gender mainstream entrepreneurship policy and to integrate entrepreneurship and rural development policy with family and welfare state policy.

The paper highlights how rural women respond to policy, and the results are contextualised, making it possible to compare them to other contexts. The authors widen the discussion on contributions beyond economic growth, and the authors show that policy for public and commercial services and infrastructure is indeed also policy for entrepreneurship.

The academic library’s physical capacity and its service obligations to local users structured the traditional print collection. Largely freed of these constraints, the digital collection manager enjoys unprecedented freedoms but now contends with a collection susceptible to resource sprawl and scope ambiguity. This exploratory study aims to consider the possibility that intra-field social processes help to structure and routinize digital collection practice.

Lacking the constraints to which print collections are subject, electronic resource and digital library collections are more likely to reflect idiosyncratic institutional interests and therefore, to demonstrate significant variation. Evidence of homogeneity may suggest the influence of heretofore underexplored social structures. To determine the extent of such homogeneity, the author performed exploratory/descriptive content analyses on ten electronic resource collection development policies and six digital library collection development policies.

The data reveal among both the electronic resource and digital library collection policies significant uniformity. Content analyses demonstrate consistent themes (e.g. media, audience, selection priorities, etc.) and rhetoric. These findings lend support to the study’s central hypothesis regarding latent social structures. Analyses also reveal a set of unanticipated constraints unique to digital collection management.

Despite the breadth and maturity of literature addressing the Digital Turn in academic librarianship, relatively little attention has been paid to the social dimensions of collection management. This work represents an important corrective and suggests new theoretical approaches to the study of digital collection practice.

This study aims to examine the fiscal policy drivers of sovereign sukuk market development in selected Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries. Specifically, the research aims to analyze the effects of fiscal deficit, public debt and government expenditure on sovereign sukuk market development, while controlling for macroeconomic and financial factors.

The sample consists of eight OIC member countries that play active role in the global sukuk market which include Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey and Sudan. In addition, the study covers a period of 10 years spanning between 2011 and 2020. Similarly, the study uses three models, namely, random effect, generalized least square and system generalized method of moments panel models. To check for the robustness of the results, the study replaces current values of fiscal policy variables with one-year lagged values.

The findings establish that fiscal policy variables significantly influence the development of sovereign sukuk markets. Specifically, public debt is a significant fiscal variable that promotes sovereign sukuk market development, while fiscal deficit has a negative effect on the development of sovereign sukuk market. However, the findings suggest that government expenditure does not influence sovereign sukuk issuance in the OIC member countries.

The study is significant to both investors and regulators in the sukuk market because it attempts to spotlight the importance of sound fiscal climate in developing sovereign sukuk market. Public debt is a facilitator, whereas fiscal deficit appears to be a constraint. Therefore, policymakers should determine the optimal mix of public debt and fiscal deficit in designing policies that promote sukuk market development.

The novelty of the study is its focus on the role of fiscal policy variables in facilitating sovereign sukuk market development. The study systematically establishes the link between fiscal policy and sovereign sukuk market in the OIC countries. Previous empirical studies focus extensively on the effects of macroeconomic, financial and institutional factors on sukuk market development.