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The study presents the push–pull motives and behavioural intentions of youth tourists and how these provide the foundation for the planning and development of Ghana’s tourism future. Since youth tourism (YT) is regarded as a niche market globally, the purpose of this paper is to identify the prospects of this form of tourism in a developing nation.

The study has utilised a convenience sampling approach in gathering data from 557 youth tourists, adapting existing instruments for measuring push–pull motives, satisfaction and behavioural intentions. The reliability and validity of the instruments were established through confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach’s α analyses. Structural equation modelling is used to establish relationships.

The results revealed the positive effects of push and pull factors on tourists’ satisfaction as well as the significant influence of tourists’ satisfaction on youth behavioural intentions. However, push factors positively influenced pull factors of youth tourists.

The conclusion and recommendations of this study might not be congruent with the factors that motivate adults or student tourism, satisfaction and behavioural intentions.

The findings of the research validate the viability of YT activities and the behavioural intentions for future tourism market in Ghana. Ghana’s tourism sector should design interesting and competitive offers that attract youth tourists and address tourism growth.

To date, investigation into motives, satisfaction and behavioural intentions of youth tourists as the basis for future tourism development remains a virgin field in Ghana. This study has timely attempted to address this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm’s reputation in terms of product and service quality, management performance and attractiveness as well as reputation on overall performance from a developing country’s environment.

The partial lest squares structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship between CSR and firm’s reputation as well as the overall organizational performance using a survey of informants from Ghana.

Using data from firms in Ghana, the study demonstrates that CSR initiative by firms will have a positive relationship with firm’s reputation in terms of product and service quality, management performance and attractiveness as well as overall performance. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that enhanced reputation by firms through social responsibility initiatives will lead to firms’ overall performance from the Ghanaian business environment.

The main limitation of this work is the source of the data originating from only executives from Ghana where managers are sometimes skeptical giving out such information; this might have some influence on the results. In addition, there could be potential endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity issues. It is therefore recommended that future studies should consider these issues to check as to whether the same results could be achieved. Specifically, results indicate that when organizations invest in CSR initiatives, they are likely to achieve product quality, improved management performance and an attractiveness as well as overall performance.

The research shows how CSR initiatives can enhance firm’s reputation and overall performance of a firm.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and builds on the literature in the area CSR and reputation from a developing country’s environment.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the impact of sustainability as measured by the triple bottom line constructs on the competitive advantage of manufacturing firms in Ghana.

To understand the impact of sustainability on competitive advantage, a survey was conducted where managers were asked about their engagement in the sustainability issues and how it affects their competitive advantage. The study uses the structural equation modelling (SEM) and, in particular, the partial least square (PLS) approaches to SEM.

The results of this study indicate that economic and social have a positive impact on the corporate image but not the environment. In addition, corporate image and social have positive impact on corporate performance, whilst economic and environment seem not to have any impact on corporate performance.

The study is limited to only manufacturing firms operating in the Ghanaian environment. It is important, therefore, for firms in Ghana to invest in social sustainability initiatives, as it will ultimately affect their bottom line performance. This study provides policy implications to Ghana and other developing countries to implement the necessary policies and provide incentives to improve environmental awareness.

There have been just a few studies that tried to find out the impact of sustainability constructs and performance and how corporate image mediates this relationship.

Manufacturing organizations have begun to implement green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in response to customer demand for products and services that are environmentally sustainable and that are created through environmentally sustainable practices and in response to governmental environmental regulations. Despite rising concerns about green management, there seem to be few studies investigating GSCM and its impacts on the operational competitive capabilities from a developing economy. The purpose of this paper is to understand the extent of GSCM practices’ implementation in Ghana and how such practices impact firms’ operational competitive capabilities.

Structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship between GSCM practices and firm operational competitive performance in terms of cost, quality, flexibility, and delivery time using a survey of informants.

Using data from Ghana, the work demonstrates that GSCM practices such as environmental management systems (EMSs) and green purchasing (GP) practices will have a positive relationship with firm’s operational competitive performance in terms of cost, quality, and flexibility, but seems to have no positive relationship with delivery time. Further moderation analysis indicates that the paths from environmental management practices to reduced cost and flexibility were significant, indicating that the effect of environmental management practices on operational efficiency differs among services, manufacturing, construction and mining. The paths from Green purchase to improved quality, delivery time, flexibility, and reduced cost were insignificant.

The results indicate the relevance and the implications of GSCM practices such as implementing comprehensive EMSs and GP on operational competitive performance on firms from a developing country such as Ghana. Specifically, the results indicate that when organizations invest in GSCM practices, they are likely to achieve cost reductions, improved quality, and flexibility. The relationship between GSCM practices is moderated by various industrial sectors.

The research shows how GSCM practices such as EMSs implementation and GP practices can enhance firm’s operational competitive performance.

The work illustrates and provides some insights and build on the literature in the area of green supply chain and firms’ operational competitiveness from a developing country’s environment.

The use of structured literature review methods like bibliometric analysis is growing in the management fields, but there is limited knowledge on how they can be facilitated by technology. Hence, we conducted a broad overview of software tools, their roles, and limitations in structured (bibliometric) literature reviewing activities. Subsequently, we show that several software tools are freely available to aid in searching the literature, identifying/ extracting relevant publications, screening/assessing quality of the extracted data, and performing analyses to generate insights from the literature. However, their applications may be confronted with several challenges such as limited analytical and functional capabilities, inadequate technological skills of researchers, and the fact that the researcher's insights are still needed to generate compelling conclusions from the results produced by software tools. Consequently, we contribute toward advancing the methodologies for performing structured reviews by providing a comprehensive and updated overview of the knowledge base of key technological software tools and the conduct of structured or bibliometric literature reviews.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the foreign direct investment (FDI) strategies of manufacturing firms in Ghana using the eclectic model in order to understand how ownership, location and internalization factors impact FDI to developing countries like Ghana.

The authors use a quantitative methodology in order to statistically explore the relationships between dependent and independent variables. The data comes from a sample of 75 multinational enterprises that invested in the manufacturing sector between 1994 and 2008.

The results reveal that large firm size, extensive international experience and large market size lead to the choice of acquisition mode of entry, while high cultural distance, high country risk, high proprietary assets and incentives lead to the choice of greenfield mode in the context of Ghana.

The results imply that the different economic, business and legal (locational) conditions of developing countries create different FDI strategies and paths of companies compared to developed markets.

Policy makers in developing countries should make efforts to improve market size, the institutional and regulatory environment, as well as the availability of human capital in order to attract FDI.

FDI studies have mainly analysed establishment mode strategies of firms in advanced markets. There is an increasing amount of research on FDI in emerging markets but very little on developing countries and African markets. Therefore, this study enables the authors to develop implications for existing theory and generate practical implications for firms and policy makers related to African and developing country markets.

The aim of this paper is to conduct an initial exploratory investigation to systematically identify and classify the stakeholders associated with the mining sector in West Africa into key and non-key stakeholders through the use of the comprehensive project stakeholder management tools and processes. The results can be used as an initial identification and classification of stakeholders associated with a typical mining project and can also be used as a basis for confirmation analysis to develop further knowledge and an improved understanding of the management of multiple stakeholders in mining sector projects.

This exploratory work used mine managers from West Africa, asking them to identify stakeholders that are of importance to a typical open pit mining project and also to make some objective assessments of their attitudes and influence of the stakeholders identified. From this, a stakeholder power/interest grid was developed to classify stakeholders into key and non-key stakeholders.

The findings present an initial exploratory result indicating that the key stakeholders for a mining project are the Environmental Protection Agency, Minerals Commission, Geological Survey Department, Member of Parliament, the Ministry in charge of mining, Forestry Commission, farmers, Lands Commission, non-governmental organizations, Department of Feeder Roads, traditional chiefs, district or municipal assembly and youth associations within the concession area.

The research was limited to only respondents working in the mining sector in three West African countries.

Practically, this study highlights for mining companies and operators, some preliminary understanding of stakeholders that are critical for engagements to be successful in their operations.

This study, essentially, reveals the importance of the various stakeholder groups interested in a mining project and the level of influence.

This study contributes to the debate on project stakeholder management in the mining sector, especially from a developing country’s point of view.

This paper aims to address the viability of two recent initiatives proposed to address the important human rights issue of employee and building safety among manufacturers in the global supply chain: the recently proposed “Shared Responsibility Paradigm” now being considered by concerned stakeholders as a new approach to understanding human rights issues across global supply chains and the proposed International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 45001 comprehensive framework for management systems addressing occupational health and safety.

First, the paper establishes a theoretical foundation for these two initiatives as practical and implementable solutions for this human rights issue and includes a section addressing the results of recent academic research on social responsibility in global supply chains. The paper then provides a detailed description of the shared responsibility paradigm and the ISO 45001 health and safety standard, respectively, followed by a discussion of their viability, policy implications and directions for future research.

Recent developments pertaining to the implementation of the ISO 45001 standard and the unveiling of the World Economic Forum’s shared responsibility model offer aspirational hope for a multi-stakeholder solution to successfully addressing serious human rights issues related to employee safety in Bangladesh and other least developed countries.

This paper offers an early viability assessment of the two recent initiatives proposed to address the important human rights issue of employee and building safety among manufacturers in the global supply chain: the “Shared Responsibility Paradigm” and the proposed ISO 45001 standard for worker health and safety.