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First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

Purpose: This chapter aims to evaluate the significant impact of Gandhian values on sustainable consumption behaviour (SCB) by applying the value-attitude-behaviour (VAB) framework. This chapter contributes by incorporating Gandhian values as one influencing factor for SCB.

Need for the Study: Values are considered as guiding principles in people’s lives. Studies suggest that values and other social and psychological factors can be vital in determining consumers’ behaviour towards sustainable consumption. There needs to be more empirical research on consumer behaviour facets of sustainable consumption for markets in India.

Methodology: The study uses partial least square structural equation modelling to empirically test proposed hypotheses and the research model of the relationship. The study results are based on data collected by administering a survey through a questionnaire confined to India.

Findings: The results indicated that Gandhian values, attitude, and sustainable consumption intention significantly influence SCB. Intention acts as a mediator between both outward and inward environmental attitudes and behaviour. The study provides directions for further research.

Practical Implications: This research study is helpful for researchers, marketers, and policymakers.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) own and control technological resources and capabilities that make them critical actors in accelerating the transition toward net zero. Even beyond the energy sector, stakeholders are putting increasing pressure on MNEs to reduce the carbon intensity of their operations, that is, to improve their carbon performance. While there is unambiguous evidence that national climate policy is a critical catalyst for long-term carbon performance improvements, there is limited research on how MNEs’ carbon strategies react to climate policies. This chapter reviews the concepts, drivers, and strategies connected to carbon performance in the broader sustainability and management literature to clarify potential complementarities to international business (IB). The authors then highlight how MNEs will face increasing institutional complexity along two dimensions: (1) the structural diversity of institutional environments and (2) institutional dynamism, primarily reflected by public policy. The proposed conceptual framework maps these two dimensions to national and subnational levels, and the authors present two data sources that allow the quantitative analysis of country differences in the diversity and dynamism of national climate policy. The authors conclude that there are ample opportunities for IB researchers to explore MNEs’ strategic reactions to climate policy and to inform policymakers about the consequences of national climate policy in the global economy.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic was unprecedented, and none of the world’s think tanks could have predicted how far it would spread. People visualise the pandemic as a classic example of a VUCA environment (an environment characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity). Managing COVID-19 requires unique and different leadership qualities.

Purpose: This study’s rationale emphasises that VUCA demands strategic and agile leadership. Leaders across the globe must acknowledge the fact that the elements of VUCA, i.e. volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, are not synonymous and hence need differential treatment. Also, recommend adopting agile leadership to tackle the VUCA world.

Methodology: This is a conceptual study focusing on agile leadership. The study addresses the challenge of leading in the VUCA environment. The constituting components of VUCA are differentiated, followed by an extensive literature review of agile leadership.

Findings: VUCA is the new normal and is there to stay. Business leaders still need to counter VUCA due to their incapacity to distinguish and treat the components equally. Furthermore, there is an emergent need to develop an agile workforce, agile organisations, and agile leadership to combat VUCA. The study indicates that business leaders must be agile enough to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises. There is a constant need to ensure agility. This study will provide a deep insight into VUCA and help business leaders emerge victorious in turbulent times.

Racial stigma and racial criminalization have been centralizing pillars of the construction of Blackness in the United States. Taking such systemic injustice and racism as a given, then question then becomes how these macro-level arrangements are reflected in micro-level processes. This work uses radical interactionism and stigma theory to explore the potential implications for racialized identity construction and the development of “criminalized subjectivity” among Black undergraduate students at a predominately white university in the Midwest. I use semistructured interviews to explore the implications of racial stigma and criminalization on micro-level identity construction and how understandings of these issues can change across space and over the course of one's life. Findings demonstrate that Black university students are keenly aware of this particular stigma and its consequences in increasingly complex ways from the time they are school-aged children. They were aware of this stigma as a social fact but did not internalize it as a true reflection of themselves; said internalization was thwarted through strong self-concept and racial socialization. This increasingly complex awareness is also informed by an intersectional lens for some interviewees. I argue not only that the concept of stigma must be explicitly placed within these larger systems but also that understanding and identity-building are both rooted in ever-evolving processes of interaction and meaning-making. This research contributes to scholarship that applies a critical lens to Goffmanian stigma rooted in Black sociology and criminology and from the perspectives of the stigmatized themselves.

Four reputed leaders for the coming years in the field of special education for individuals with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) each with a slightly different perspective on the field were asked to respond independently to a prompt asking what does special education mean for students with EBD and what is being done and how do we maintain tradition? The contributors' responses to the prompt are presented and then summarized across the essays. A remarkable consistency emerges across the independent essays. In addition to the tradition of providing a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment, the contributors identify needs to support teachers serving this population. Needs in teacher training and the expertise required to meet the needs of individuals with EBD are outlined as well as potential contributions of technology to carry out specific tasks. We conclude with a call for increased advocacy for use of the knowledge that we currently possess and that which will soon be discovered to support students with EBD as well as their teachers. We also note that the contributors' names are listed alphabetically to acknowledge the equality of each person to the final product.

Implementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) unarguably demands huge financial investments. However, the United Nations has acknowledged the huge financial gap militating against the implementation of the SDGs worldwide, leading experts to question the possibility of complete implementation of the goals by their terminal dateline of 2030. While the bulk of the finance currently outlaid on the SDGs comes from traditional sources including foreign direct investments (FDIs), there is the need to focus more attention on developing and exploiting impact investments that are more suitable for financing development programmes and projects. In this chapter, the SDG implementation profiles of the 12 Arab West Asia countries concerning the five most targeted SDGs were evaluated and sustainable finance issues were discussed. Secondary data were retrieved from World Bank's DataBank. The data were descriptively analyzed. Based on the profiles generated, debt relief is put forward as a possible impact investment mechanism suitable for funding the SDGs. Specifically, this chapter recommends that outright cancellation of debts based on the debt-for-SGD swap could serve as some of the impact investments needed to boost the global drive for a developed, peaceful, and just world.