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Governance can often be assessed as one part of directing companies’ action toward something better. This study examines how governance quality at the country level and firm level can affect sustainability performance that aligns with sustainable development goals (SDG). Prior academic literature explains that if a country has a low institutional condition, it is a great challenge to implement sustainability. However, the internal awareness of the company to implement sustainability plays an important role as well. To examine the research question, this study uses the banking sector as a research sample with an observation period from 2017 to 2019. Prior literature overlooks research in the banking sector and does not feature country-level governance with firm-level governance. The data were collected either from the annual report or sustainability report, which comprises 141 companies, with the total observation of 423 firm-year. This study used panel data regression analysis and was based on the Hausman Test; it shows that random effect is used to test the hypothesis. This research finds that good quality governance at the country level, results in good sustainability performance. However, contrary to expectations regarding the quality of firm-level governance, which is thought to be positively related to sustainability performance, this study found a negative relationship. The argument that might answer the finding is the existence of governance conditions at the state level and at the firm level that mutually subsidize each other. This research contributes to policymakers continuing to provide counseling and improve institutional conditions to motivate companies to support the achievement of the SDGs. Companies should also pay attention to the effectiveness of their internal governance and strive to use stakeholder opinions as a guide in the realization of SDGs.

There has been a continuous growth in the number of women leaders in higher education globally. Since 2005, there has been close to 50% growth in women with doctoral degrees. However, this has not resulted in similar growth of women is leadership positions in higher education. Women in turn have struggled a lot due to assumptions about the male and female characteristics such as gender stereotypes. This chapter explores the various stereotypical barriers experienced by women in leadership positions in higher education. The aim of the chapter is to highlight these barriers and how it has impacted women in her growth. An attempt has been made to explore these stereotypical barriers experienced by women leaders in higher education such as occupational sexism, exclusion of informal networks, tokenism, lack of mentoring, abuse at the workplace, and wage inequality. Despite these stereotypical barriers some countries primarily in the European Union have been leading with some positive examples such as Sweden with 43% of women as Vice Chancellors of universities. Another positive example is that the first authorship of women authors in medical journals has increase from 27% to 37% in two decades precisely from 1994 to 2014.

Purpose – This chapter examines the interactions among wholesale betel nut traders within Papua New Guinea’s (PNG’s) flourishing, contemporary, and indigenous betel nut trade. It explores the nature of the “social embeddedness” of the trade and how particular “place-based” practices and ideas shape people’s engagements with markets.Methodology/approach – Multisited ethnographic research focused on betel nut traders.Findings – This chapter highlights how local ideas about sociality and exchange shape the copresent rivalry and companionship that characterize interactions among Mt. Hagen’s betel nut traders. Traders travel long distances and take great risks to buy betel nut. They travel together, share resources, and trade in the same places, and through this they become part of one another’s social networks. This creates the expectation that traders will cooperate, consider other traders in their actions, contribute to each other’s safe-keeping, and act collectively in their interactions with producers. This does not preclude competition, however. Traders compete for profits, but the competiveness of their interactions is also influenced by a concern for status. This copresence of companionship and rivalry, which pervades Hagen sociality more broadly, is central to shaping the trade as a whole.Originality/value of the chapter – Betel nut is the most important domestic cash crop in PNG, and selling betel nut is a prominent livelihood activity for rural and urban people. This chapter reports some of the findings of the first detailed study of the betel nut trade in PNG.

Stations have two main functions. The primary function of a station is to connect different modes quickly and easily with each other, this is when passengers are moving from one place to another. The secondary function is to make sure that passengers can spend their (waiting) time at a station in a pleasant way when they are staying at the station. Interchanges have to be designed to make moving as efficient as possible and staying as pleasant as possible. This means that users want a station where they can move safe, fast and easily and spend their time in a comfortable and pleasant way. The station experience can be enhanced with optimal (intuitive) wayfinding and environmental stimuli (e.g. music, light, colours, infotainment and advertisements) that can turn a transport interchange into an efficient node and a positive unique place. In this chapter, we explain how the quality of stations can be improved.

The Norwegian health care system is semi-decentralized. Primary care and long-term care (LTC) are the responsibilities of the municipalities. Specialist care is the responsibility of the central government and is organised through four Regional Health Authorities (RHA). Resource use, health outcomes and severity are the three main pillars for priority setting, regularly applied in reimbursement decisions for pharmaceuticals.

The sustainability of health care is challenged in Norway. The main factors are a growing elderly population with high need of complex, coordinated services, an increasing demand for newly approved drugs and advanced technology and a potential shortage of health care personnel.

We present recent trials and policy reforms in Norway aimed at improving care pathways combined with cost containment. Reforms in the pharmaceutical market, both with regard to market access and reimbursement (cost-effectiveness), and regulation of prices, have resulted in cost containment. The primary care sector awaits reform initiatives to recruit and retain physicians as general practitioners. No reform in the hospital sector has had cost containment as a main focus. The sector is characterized with low productivity growth, and expenditures that have increased more than the GDP growth. Waiting times are long, and coordination between sub-sectors of health care has been poor, although the Coordination reform of 2012 has alleviated some of the challenges related to intersectoral coordination. Still, the divided responsibility for health care between the central government and the municipalities creates tensions between national ambitions and local decisions in the financing and provision of health services.