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This study aims to explore the role of rebel group legitimacy and ideology in durable peace (DP) following peace agreements to end civil wars. It builds on earlier research showing that justice and civil society involvement are critical in achieving DP. This study adds the impacts of rebel group activities and support on DP. Activities include service delivery and mobilization. Support is gauged with outcomes of presidential and parliamentary elections held following peace agreements.

Five data sets were used to measure the key variables: DP, inclusive commissions (IC), legitimacy symmetry (electoral outcomes), service delivery and ideological mobilization. A measure of rebel group integration in the political system was also constructed. Impacts of the integration, legitimacy and ideology variables were assessed with a hierarchical regression model (HRM). This study begins with a base model drawn from earlier research showing the key predictors were procedural justice (PJ) and IC. The authors ask about the extent to which the rebel group variables contribute additional variance to the prediction of DP.

The main contributors to the prediction of DP were PJ, IC and integration in the political system. None of the legitimacy or mobilization variables added significant variance to the prediction. Only one of the mobilization variables, forced recruitment, was significant. The decision to integrate into the political system following the agreement did not mediate the relationship between PJ in the negotiation process and DP. Results of a factor analysis showed that DP, PJ, IC and integration formed a cluster with strong loadings on the first factor.

The negative results for the legitimacy and mobilization variables may not be the last word on rebel group influences. Lack of support for the key hypotheses spurs attempts to discover other sources that contribute to the survival of rebel group actors in the political system and, in turn, to DP.

The issues raised by this study contribute to debates about ways to attain peaceful relations among competing groups following a civil war. It appears that attention to factors inside and around the negotiation process (PJ, ICs and conversion) may be more important than rebel group activities outside of these processes. The results call attention, in particular, to the important role played by political integration. From a policy perspective, it would be useful to develop levers for encouraging rebel groups to emerge as political actors in the post-agreement environment.

Developing measures of the symmetry of rebel group legitimacy and integration in the context of a comparative case study are the primary original contributions of this study. Furthermore, the mode of analysis (HRM) is novel in this literature. This approach builds on and extends the earlier research on factors influencing DP.

This paper aims to interrogate the accountabilities of the foreign companies which have directly invested in the Iraqi oil and gas industry.

Using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, the authors first map the stakeholder accountabilities (qualitative) of foreign oil and gas companies and second, the authors seek to demonstrate quantitatively – through structural break tests and publicly available sustainability reports – whether these companies have accounted for their environmental and social impacts both to Iraqi people and to the global community.

The authors find that the Western democratic values embedded in stakeholder theory, in terms of sustainability, do not hold the same meaning in cultural contexts where conceptions and application of Western democratic values are deeply problematic. This paper identifies a crucial problem in the global oil supply chain and problematises the application of traditional theoretical approaches in the context of the Iraqi oil and gas industry.

Implications of this study include the refocus of attention onto the local and global environmental impacts of the Iraqi oil and gas industry by foreign direct investments. Such a refocus highlights the reasons and ways that decision makers should accommodate these less salient stakeholders.

The primary contribution is the critique of the lack of environmental accountability of foreign direct investment companies in the Iraqi oil and gas industry. The authors also make theoretical and methodological contributions via the problematisation of the cultural bias inherent in traditional stakeholder theories, and by introducing a quantitative method to evaluate the accountabilities of companies.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the role of music in social projects.

This paper introduces the reader to the field of social music projects and why it is important.

Ongoing conflicts, inequalities and the use of orchestras and choirs for other-than-musical purposes, have all contributed to an increasing interest and adoption of music practices in social projects to support people’s inclusion and well-being, from both service providers and service users.

This paper will look at research into music for social inclusion, with particular attention on benefits related to well-being and methodological innovations in this field.

The research examples will also consider the implications of various social music projects for the support of well-being of diverse groups of people.

Different approaches and points of view will be considered in relation to their impact on inclusion and well-being.

Over the past 17 years, the author has developed an interest in the use of music and musical creativity for social purposes. The author has recently edited a book, published by Routledge, on music and social inclusion and feels it is an important topic for the Journal of Mental Health and Social Inclusion.

Insufficient internal financing capacities and challenges to accessing external finance are crucial to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) investment and growth. This study aims to investigate how SME leverage of bank financing is related to the investment decision.

Using Heckman’s two-step econometric modelling to correct for sample selection bias, this study investigates the effect of entrepreneur characteristics, firm characteristics and performance on firms’ capital structure choices conditional on new investment decisions.

The main results reveal that larger firms with growth aspirations tend to make new investments. In the second stage equation, empirical results demonstrate that among SMEs who made a new investment, those SMEs with highly educated owner/managers, on average, use more external financing (i.e. banks loan) rather than internal funds – also, the smaller the company, the less bank leverage. Compared to the limited liability legal form, SMEs registered as individual businesses have less bank financial leverage. These results confirm that internal capacities for funding new investments are limited, and hence small firms must rely on external finance.

This study provides a unique empirical investigation and evidence based on a sample of SMEs in Kosovo. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to empirically analyse investment behaviour in relation to capital structure for SMEs in Kosovo and one of the few, in general, to consider the sample selection bias issues underpinning the other studies in this field. The analysis corrects for sample selection bias, using growth aspiration as an instrumental variable.

This paper aims to examine the influence of formal and informal institutional quality on country-level variations in foreign equity shares in transition economies (TEs).

Drawing on institutional theory and transaction cost theory, this paper examines the influence of formal and informal institutional quality on country-level variations in foreign equity shares in TEs. The authors use a two-step empirical strategy, identifying clusters of explanatory variables and running generalized least squares random effect estimations to test for the influence of explanatory and control variables on foreign equity shares.

Foreign equity share is positively affected by informal institutions and negatively by formal institutions. However, when control for stage of transition we find that the the presence of informal institutions in more rapidly or advanced transforming economies negatively influences foreign equity shares. Complex infrastructure discourages foreign equity shareholdings, and foreign companies use informal practices to overcome unfavourable host country conditions. Government size has a negative effect, and gross domestic product per capita positively affects foreign equity shares.

The study is the new groundwork for the re-enactment of a fruitful discussion on foreign equity. The study has practical implications for managers, too – managers of foreign-owned firms operating in weakly installed institutional environments should carefully analyse the entry strategies because of the high presence of informal institutions. Furthermore, managers could understand the various facilitation roles of informal institutions in any firm internationalisation effort to arrive at optimal ownership holdings for better internationalisation performance. Although the study is based on a sample of transition countries, the findings have implications for other emerging economies’ contexts sharing similar institutional settings.

This study provides a unique empirical investigation and evidence based on country-level indicators on the effect of formal and informal institutions on foreign equity shares holdings in TEs, reinforcing the importance of impacts of both the formal and informal dimensions on ownership decisions of foreign investors.

The dynamism of competition in international markets requires managers to react accordingly and ensure the firm's survival and competitiveness. This study examines the impact of cognitive styles and dynamic managerial capabilities (DMC) on a firm's international performance and the mediating role of these capabilities in the relationship between cognitive styles and international performance.

This study adopts a quantitative cross-sectional research design, employing a sample of 306 firm owner-managers from exporting companies in Kosovo.

The findings suggest that managers' cognitive styles positively influence firm international performance, including their impact on DMC. Results also indicate that only managerial cognition mediates cognitive styles' effects on a firm's international performance, compared to managers' social capital.

In this study, the authors contribute to the literature by integrating cognitive styles with DMC in a transition country. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that DMC mediate the impact of cognitive styles on the firm international performance.

This paper aims to explore how typical personal, interpersonal and environmental factors influence entrepreneurs' growth aspirations by investigating the impact mechanism of entrepreneurial competency and guanxi on the growth aspirations of small tourism entrepreneurs in a dynamic environment.

Applying social cognitive theory (SCT) and business growth theory (BGT), this research uses confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) based on the questionnaire survey data of 371 small tourism business owners/owner-managers to test the relationship between entrepreneurial competency, guanxi and growth aspirations, with self-efficacy as a mediator and environment dynamism as a moderator.

The findings indicate that entrepreneurial competency is a more direct and significant factor than guanxi in facilitating the entrepreneurial growth aspirations in small tourism enterprises (STEs). Entrepreneurial competency and guanxi can both enhance entrepreneurs' self-efficacy, which then affects their aspirations to grow their business. Self-efficacy is a critical predictor of entrepreneurs' growth aspirations in STEs, although its effect is weakened by environmental dynamism.

This study expands the integrated application of SCT and BGT in tourism context, providing a more comprehensive and nuanced interpretation of the growth aspirations of entrepreneurs in STEs. It sheds more light on the effect of different entrepreneurial capital on growth aspirations and provides managerial implications accordingly.

Informal dwellings describe makeshift lodgings made from temporary materials, such as plastic, corrugated iron, sheeting, packing cases, or wood. These units allow low-income groups to informally occupy land and create their habitable space in a phased manner. This article focuses on elements of the urban morphology, such as density, accessibility, and operating assortment of informally built areas in the southern region of Montenegro.

The author examines the urban morphologies of four urban areas, whose informality is traditionally viewed as markers of decline and despair. Using observations, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews, the investigator maps dwellings in Ulcinj, Budva, Tivat, and Herceg Novi neighbourhoods. The researcher interrogated participants about land distribution during the construction of sheds, buildings' outline and orientation toward the street, and activities performed in their dwellings, such as living, working, and accommodating relatives and guests. This methodology tests the hypothesis, formulated as a deeper understanding of urban morphology for examining the interweaving of informally built settlements with the rest of the city.

A cartographic investigation is used to reframe customary rights of low-income populations to land inclusion and their place in the city. The results clearly show that the location and lifestyle are designed to obfuscate the vulnerable populations from the public view, disconnected from policymaking, and ignored by urban planning projects. However, the interviewees' destinations orientation away from the downtowns represents the possibility of reconfiguring existing urban planning practices. For creating alternative urbanisation, the orientation of less visible neighbourhoods presents a model for building regulations embedded in social forces and cultural habits of all social and ethnic groups.

This study did not address the implementation of social hosing policies and the logistical limitations of realising them by the local and national governments. During firework, the author encountered dwellers outside four studied low-income neighbourhoods in the south region of Montenegro. Mapping morphological elements of these generally small clusters of informal built units are left for future research. Future studies could examine how informality is performed in Montenegro by moderate and high-income groups as an assemblage of different power relationships and urban practices.

The argument is based on counter urbanism as the orientation and destination of less visible neighbourhoods for creating building regulations embedded in social forces and cultural habits of all social and ethnic groups. This study showed that the urban morphology of informality in the coastal cities of Montenegro lays the ground for alternative urban planning practices based on the different interconnection of districts. The outcome is a strong link between different social and ethical groups through self-building practices.

In coastal cities of Montenegro, Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptian live with other low-income groups in unsanitary settlements characterised by poor living conditions, low-quality illegally built housing, no plumbing or sewage systems, and overcrowded urban areas. Mapping morphological elements of less visible urban areas propose shifting from top-down urban planning policies to a participatory model of developing urban areas.

The assemblage of informally built urban areas legitimise place in the city that goes against the housing market's dominant logic and exceeds alternative logics of building production. This article outlined the urban morphologies of four urban areas for turning the image of informality away from decline and despair to lessons of urban interconnection. By creating different maps, the author presented a diverse orientation of four case studies based on density, accessibility, and operating assortment.

Sharing accommodation has lowered the threshold for digital entrepreneurship in the accommodation industry, prompting entrepreneurs to join this industry. However, digital micro-entrepreneurs have been ignored by previous studies. To bridge the gap, this study aims to explore the impact of reputational asset (host popularity) and host’s human capital (entrepreneurial entry speed and managerial seniority) on host expansion grounded on the resource-based theory.

This study obtained crawler data by python from Airbnb.com, locking the time range to the past five years from 2013 to 2018 in Beijing of China. This study finally has 348 hosts’ balanced panel data to estimate the ordinary least squares regression model with fixed-year effect.

Results demonstrate that host popularity has a significant positive effect on host expansion. Furthermore, entrepreneurial entry speed strengthens the positive effect of host popularity on host expansion, whereas managerial seniority weakens the positive effect. The three-way interaction analysis reveals that the positive impact of host popularity on host expansion is strongest when managerial seniority is smaller and entrepreneurial entry speed is faster.

The research has important implications to how the platforms interfere with the implementation of host expansion strategy and adds valuable insights to understand the transformation process of host expansion from nonprofessional to professional.

The research has expanded the literature related to the micro-entrepreneurship of the sharing economy and verified the application of resource-based theory under sharing economy.

This study aims to deepen the understanding of the challenges and implications entailed by deploying mobile clinics in conflict zones to reach populations affected by violence and cut off from health-care services.

This research combines an integrated literature review and an instrumental case study. The literature review comprises two targeted reviews to provide insights: one on conflict zones and one on mobile clinics. The case study describes the process and challenges faced throughout a mobile clinic deployment during and after the Iraq War. The data was gathered using mixed methods over a two-year period (2017–2018).

Armed conflicts directly impact the populations’ health and access to health care. Mobile clinic deployments are often used and recommended to provide health-care access to vulnerable populations cut off from health-care services. However, there is a dearth of peer-reviewed literature documenting decision support tools for mobile clinic deployments.

This study highlights the gaps in the literature and provides direction for future research to support the development of valuable insights and decision support tools for practitioners.