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This study investigates the factors that influence citizens trust in public leaders [i.e. presidents, members of parliament (MPs) and local government leaders (LGs)] in 34 countries in Africa between 2019 and 2021.

Individual-level data with a sample size of 48,084 was obtained from the Afro-Barometer round 8 survey only and analyzed using multivariate binary logistic regression.

Several important and intriguing observations were made from this analysis: (1) the performance of public leaders influences citizens trust in their leaders; (2) the perceived corruption of public leaders and civil servants and the level of corruption influence citizens trust in public leaders; (3) perceived neighborhood problems (i.e. fear of violence, fear of terrorism and service delivery) influence citizens trust in their public leaders and (4) the socio-demographic characteristics of citizens (i.e. age, religion, education, location, employment and political party affiliation) influence citizens trust in their public leaders.

This study is exceptional in two ways: (1) it examines and compares citizens trust in public leaders across different levels, i.e. presidents, MPs and LGs in Africa and (2) it examines and compares the factors influencing citizens trust in public leaders in Africa comparatively.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides researchers and practitioners with an opportunity to examine the effect of emergency policing on public trust in the police and augment our understanding. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of police enforcement of COVID-19 health measures on public trust in the police in Ghana.

A multivariate binary logistic regression was utilized to assess the effect of police enforcement of COVID-19 health measures on public trust in the police in Ghana using national representative data.

Our analysis suggests that emergency policing positively influences public trust in the police in Ghana. Additionally, we observed that police-related issues such as corruption and professionalism, as well as demographic factors of the public, influence trust in the police. These observations are helpful for emergency policing and policy development in Ghana.

This study is unique because it uses national representative data to assess the effect of police enforcement of COVID-19 health measures on public trust in the police in Ghana. Furthermore, this study is among the first or among the few from Ghana and the sub-region to examine the nexus between health emergencies and policing.

This study investigates how employees' experience of resource-depleting workplace loneliness may steer them away from performance-enhancing work efforts as informed by their propensity to engage in negative work rumination. It also addresses whether and how religiosity might serve as a buffer of this harmful dynamic.

The hypotheses tests rely on three-round survey data collected among employees who work in various organizations in Pakistan – a relevant country context, considering the importance of people's religious faith for their professional functioning and its high-uncertainty avoidance and collectivism, which likely make workplace loneliness a particularly upsetting experience.

An important channel through which a sense of being abandoned at work compromises job performance is that employees cannot “switch off” and stop thinking about work, even after hours. The role of this explanatory mechanism is mitigated, however, when employees can draw from their religious beliefs.

For human resource (HR) managers, this study pinpoints a notable intrusion into the personal realm, namely, repetitive thinking about work-related issues, through which perceptions of work-related loneliness translate into a reluctance to contribute to organizational effectiveness with productive work activities. It also showcases how this translation can be subdued with personal resources that enable employees to contain the hardships they have experienced.

This study helps unpack the connection between workplace loneliness and job performance by detailing the unexplored roles of two important factors (negative work rumination and religiosity) in this connection.

In this study, we question: how do the social costs of failure interact with gendered institutions to affect the early stage entrepreneurship activity? We address this question by employing the institutional theory and a unique dataset of 286,989 entrepreneurs across 35 countries.

To test our hypotheses, we use a multilevel modeling analysis that nests individual entrepreneurs within the countries. To capture individual and country-level variables, we constructed a unique dataset that combines data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), European Flash Barometer (EUFB), World Bank Development Indicator (WDI), World Bank Doing Business Report (WBDB) and World Economic Forum (WEF).

Our analysis confirms that higher levels of the country-level gender equality positively correlate with the early-stage entrepreneurship activity of women. Moreover, we find that this positive relationship is amplified in institutional environments with high social costs of failure, suggesting that societal intolerance for failure can exacerbate the negative effect of gender inequality on the participation of women in entrepreneurship.

Our research contributes to academic interest on the role of legitimacy in women entrepreneurship and is of particular interest to international business scholars, seeking a better understanding of multidimensional construction of institutional frameworks across countries. In this study, we set out to address an important research question: how do the social costs of failure interact with gendered institutions to affect entrepreneurship activity? Our study provides a comprehensive portrait of gendered institutions by including the framework conditions of education, healthcare and political power. We found that in societies with gender equality, the likelihood of individuals engaging in the early-stage entrepreneurship activity is higher and that the positive relationship is strengthened in national environments with high social costs of failure.

Our study findings underscore the need for government policies addressing global gender gaps in economic empowerment. In particular, policies assisting women in obtaining education in high-growth industries like information technology or providing funding to women-dominated industries may foster activity for women seeking to do business in such industries. Such policies connect the early-stage entrepreneurship activities with gender equality concerns and initiatives.

Regarding the social costs of failure construct, specifically, prior studies generally focus narrowly on the context of failed entrepreneurs. We cast a wider net on men and women entrepreneurs’ entry decisions (irrespective of prior experience with business failure) and provide new views on the effects of social costs of failure on entrepreneurial ecosystems. We also extend the research on the legitimacy of women as entrepreneurs with the gender equality construct.

Unlike previous studies, which often focus on the “3Ms” of market, money and management, our research adopts a more holistic perspective. We recognize that the opportunities and challenges faced by entrepreneurs are shaped not only by individual skills and resources but also by the broader macroenvironment. By incorporating the framework conditions of education, healthcare and political power, alongside the intricate interplay of social costs and norms, our study paints a comprehensive picture of the landscape of female entrepreneurship.

There is extensive literature on the determinants of job tenure insecurity. However, very little is known about the individual drivers of labour market insecurity. Additionally, while a piece of literature shows that volunteering improves workers' income, no study considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of labour market insecurity if they lost or resigned their jobs. Therefore, purpose of this paper is to study whether workers who volunteer are less likely to perceive labour market insecurity.

The paper employs data from the sixth European working conditions survey which provides a great deal of information on working conditions. For the empirical investigation, probit model as well as robustness analysis have been implemented.

Results show that employees who do voluntary activities have a greater likelihood of declaring perceived labour market insecurity, which is nearly 3 percentage points lower, than employees who do not volunteer. Findings suggest that governments need to improve the relationship between for-profit and non-profit sectors to encourage volunteering.

This is the first study which considers volunteering as an activity which could help workers to feel more confident about their perception of “labour market insecurity”. Most of the studies on “labour market insecurity” do not focus on the workers individual characteristics but mainly on the labour markets institutional characteristics and welfare regimes differences.

As young individuals transition from educational settings to embark on their career paths, their expectations for their future careers become of paramount importance. Ng et al. (2010) examined the expectations of young people in post-secondary education in 2007; those colloquially referred to as “Millennials” or “GenY”. The present study replicates Ng et al.'s (2010) study among a sample of post-secondary students in 2019 (referred to as Generation Z or GenZ) and compares the expectations of young adults in GenY and GenZ.

This study employs a time-lag comparison of GenY and GenZ young career entrants based on data collected in 2007 (n = 23,413) and 2019 (n = 16,146).

Today's youth seem to have realistic expectations for their first jobs and the analyses suggest that young people continue to seek positive, healthy work environments which make room for work–life balance. Further, young people today are prioritizing job security and are not necessarily mobile due to preference, restlessness or disloyalty, but rather leave employers that are not meeting their current needs or expectations.

Understanding the career expectations of young people allows educators, employers and policymakers to provide vocational guidance that aligns those expectations with the realities of the labor market and the contemporary career context.

While GenY was characterized as optimistic with great expectations, GenZ can be described as cautious and pragmatic. The results suggest a shift away from opportunity, towards security, stability, an employer that reflects one's values and a job that is satisfying in the present.

This paper aims to extend the scope of previous studies on education-occupation mismatch to explicitly focus on the role high school track choices have on the risk of being mismatched in the labor market.

The paper uses the most exhaustive available database regarding the early-career paths of university graduates in Romania. Using a novel matching technique, entropy balancing (EB), our study relies on multinomial logit models and logit regressions to estimate the effect of the completed high school track on the likelihood of being mismatched in the labor market. The empirical analysis focuses on two types of education-occupation mismatches: horizontal and vertical mismatches.

We show that studying a different field in college compared to the completed high school track increases the risk of being skill mismatched in the first job after graduation. Five years after college graduation, the influence of the high school track fades, while being skill mismatched in the first employment plays a more important role. In contrast, we find no evidence that pursuing a college major unrelated to the completed high school track increases the probability of being overeducated. However, being overeducated in the first job increases the risk of being overeducated five years later.

The study brings new reliable evidence on the extent to which high school track choices may contribute to the risk of being mismatched in the labor market.

A faculty development program (FDP) introduced postsecondary instructors to a module focused on the food–energy–water (FEW) nexus, a socio-hydrologic issue (SHI) and a sustainability challenge. This study aims to examine factors influencing faculty interest in adopting the instructional resources and faculty experience with the FDP, including the gains made during the FDP on their knowledge about SHIs and their self-efficacy to teach about SHIs, and highlighted characteristics of the FDP.

Data from n = 54 participants via pre- and post-surveys and n = 15 interviews were analyzed using mixed methods.

Findings indicate that over three quarters of participants would use the curricular resources to make connections between complex SHIs, enhance place-based learning, data analysis and interpretation and engage in evidence-based decision-making. In addition, participants’ experience with the workshop was positive; their knowledge about SHIs remained relatively constant and their self-efficacy to teach about SHIs improved by the end of the workshop. The results provide evidence of the importance of institutional support to improve instruction about the FEW nexus.

The module, purposefully designed, aids undergraduates in engaging with Hydroviz, a data visualization tool, to understand both human and natural dimensions of the FEW nexus. It facilitates incorporating this understanding into systematic decision-making around an authentic SHI.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight current utilizations of advanced technology within the digital mental health platform Keel Mind.

Keel Mind, based out of Ontario, Canada is a therapeutic delivery platform that dually functions to train clinicians and deliver virtual therapy to clients.

From personalizing client and therapist matching to using natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven features Keel Mind supports clinician decision-making to meet the growing mental health needs of the population. Keel Mind functions to provide accessible service, efficiently train high-quality clinicians and enhance clinical outcomes for clients. In a preliminary study within post-secondary students from Ontario, Canada, 90.1% of clients reported liking the platform, and 83.4% reported that they experienced positive mental health outcomes as a result of using Keel Mind.

Keel Mind is a leader within the rapidly developing field of telepsychology and aims to promote positive mental health outcomes worldwide.

This digital showcase is the first published piece of work highlighting the technological capabilities of Keel Mind as a digital therapeutic platform. The intention of this work is to highlight current uses of digital technology within the field of therapeutic practice and to promote technological growth within the field.

This study employs the social ecology model to comprehensively explore the complex challenges young Black men face in South Africa and aims to highlight the importance of collaboration in addressing these multifaceted issues.

A multidisciplinary approach combines insights from sociology, education and the health literature with regard to government reports and academic data, and provides a holistic analysis of challenges faced by young Black men. Furthermore, it emphasises formal and informal learning, social and environmental influences and health disparities.

Young Black men in South Africa encounter complex challenges throughout their developmental journey, including limited family support, educational barriers, financial constraints, societal expectations and health disparities. Therefore, collaboration among stakeholders is essential for creating an equitable and inclusive environment that supports their development.

This research provides a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by young Black men in South Africa by emphasising the interconnectedness of informal education, economic empowerment and healthcare. Future research should focus on longitudinal studies, cultural influences and international comparisons, informing evidence-based interventions for a more equitable society.