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Employee involvement in management’s decision making has been a challenge for the European Community (EC) since its beginning. Already in view of the six founding countries the European Economic Community (EEC) was confronted with a significant degree of diversity between the different Member States. This diversity increased with every enlargement, in particular when in 1973 the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland became members and much later in 2004 when Central and Eastern European (CEE) States together with Malta and Cyprus were included. This diversity in the area of employee involvement in management’s decision‐making is well documented. Therefore, it may be sufficient for the purpose of this paper to only give some broad indications. There are countries, as for example Germany, Austria, the Netherlands or Luxembourg, which have systems with a dual structure where employee involvement in management’s decision‐making institutionally is separated from the trade unions, even if in actual practice the links between the two are significant. In other countries employee involvement is based on two pillars: both the trade unions and a body elected by all em ployees. This is the case in France, Greece, Portugal and Spain. In the Scandinavian countries employee in volvement is exclusively in the hands of the trade unions. In countries like Ireland and the U.K. employee involvement for a long time was more or less a taboo subject for the trade unions. The fear of being compromised in opposing measures through their industrial strength prevented them becoming integrated into the mechanism of decision‐making in companies. Only recently ‐ mainly due to the EU input ‐ this attitude is changing gradually. Italy has developed an interesting mixture of its own. Even if it may be possible ‐ as just indicated ‐ to discover or gani ‐ sational similarities between the systems of different countries, the still remaining differences should not be overlooked. It has to be added that in some countries employee involvement in manage ment’s deci sion‐making is exclusively based on legislation (as for example in Germany), in others exclusively on collective agreements (as for example in Scandinavia) and again in others on a mixture of both (as for example in Belgium). The subject matters for employee involvement are as different as the degree of participation, ranging from mere information to co‐determination. And only some countries know employee involvement in company boards whose systems again differ significantly from each other. In short, there is a wide spectrum of patterns of employee involvement in management’s decision‐making and some countries where such involvement is virtually unknown.

The authors measure the impact of culture on Sharia; Social and Financial Disclosure (SSFD) of Islamic Banks (IBs) around the world.

Content analysis is used to measure levels of disclosure for a sample of 136 IBs of 25 countries for years 2013 and 2014. Different cultural measures are used. These include secrecy/transparency as suggested by Gray (1988) and Hofstede (1980, 1983, 2001, 2010)’s culture dimensions which include: Power Distance; Individualism; Masculinity; Uncertainty Avoidance; Long-Term Ordination and Indulgence. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression is used to test the research hypotheses.

After controlling bank-specific, corporate governance and country characteristics, the authors found that Hofstede’s culture dimensions have a significant impact on SSFD. They also found that Gray's transparency dimension positively influence levels of sharia, social and aggregated disclosure. Therefore, they conclude that culture influences levels of disclosure in IBs.

This study has policy implications for managers and regulators of Islamic banking industry.

This study is the first to use both Gray and Hofstede models in the context of IBs around the world. It also the first to explore the impact of culture on three different disclosure levels for IBs.

Regional economic integration has been a major area of research in the field of international economics and international trade, with little attention being paid to the impact of these economic collaborations on the organizational strategies of firms within the economically integrated regions. By building on the organization‐environment relationship paradigm, this paper aims to address the impact of environmental changes associated with economic integration, market commonality and currency commonality, on the patterns and structures of strategic alliances within members of the economic community.

Using mixed linear models, the study looks at changes associated with the integration of the European Union and their effects on international alliances within the integrated area and among the various member countries.

The findings suggest that the emergence and the adoption of economic integration policies at the country level do impact the patterns and structures of strategic alliances practiced between member countries. Specifically, the adoption of common market policies among members of an economic community has implications on the pattern and structure of strategic collaborative relationships of firms within these member countries.

While regional economic integrations have accelerated, theoretical and empirical research addressing their impact on multinational strategies has yet to catch up.

This paper documents the EU integration process using the uneven and combined development framework. Because capitalist social relations are territorially defined and politically built, unevenness between countries is not unconnected with that within countries and both involve antagonism between capital and labor. This is manifest in the ‘state form’ of the EU and its anti-democratic tendencies: public institutions at the community level play a major role in reinforcing unevenness in favour of leading countries, in both the productive and financial spheres.

Identifying if aid flows have contributed to economic growth or growth divergence between a sample of Asian and African countries is the purpose of this paper. Using data over the period of 1980–2015, the paper attempts to establish whether aid, in any of its forms, has played a role in economic growth in these countries.

A comprehensive literature analysis over the past 70 years sets the scene for the paper. A panel data fixed-effects model is applied for each sample (Africa and Asia) between 1980 and 2015. Both theoretical predictions and empirical studies are used to derive the independent variables selected for modelling.

The findings strongly suggest that aid flows in both the Asian and African samples have no relation at all to either long-run growth paths or growth divergence. However, there is a suggestion in the case of the Africa sample that governance decline may well be the primary source of growth divergence.

This result cannot be generalised because it only focuses on six countries but as demonstrated in the paper, other possible samples (from both regions) actually make no difference to the results. It could also be argued (given the comprehensive literature analysis presented here) that it is not essential to have a theoretical relationship between aid and growth because aid is given to different countries with very different characteristics, needs, governance and policy environments.

Donor countries must play a more supervisory role to ensure aid flows are directed to the right channels in recipient countries. Aid should be given to countries which have a certain degree of macroeconomic stability and “good” policy to ensure effectiveness. They also need to pay attention to the sectoral distribution of aid as do recipient countries to better allocate aid flows to productive sectors that contribute to both short- and long-term growth.

These are not given much emphasis in this paper.

Most aid–growth studies are based on a large number of countries from different regions with different characteristics or on a single country case. This paper compares between two samples of countries sharing the same characteristics to overcome the heterogeneity problem. This paper is based on a more protracted time series from 1980 to 2015 to capture more accurately the impact of foreign aid on economic growth.

The purpose of this study is to propose and test predictors of millennials’ social entrepreneurial intent (SEI), mediating mechanisms and influential contextual factors.

This study includes survey data from 1,890 respondents, 315 each from China, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Russia and the USA.

Empirical results show that social entrepreneurial self-efficacy (SESE) mediated the relationship between perseverance and proactive personality and the dependent variable SEI in all six countries. Life satisfaction positively moderated this relationship among US students and negatively moderated it among Chinese students. In China dissatisfaction appears to enhance SEI, while in the US satisfaction appears to do so.

This paper identifies the mediating role of SESE and the moderating role of life satisfaction when explaining SEI, as well as providing data from millennials in six countries.

This chapter provides an overview of waste management across Europe. It offers an outlook of evolution of waste generation and how European Union (EU) countries treat waste, by providing historical and current data as well as by describing a few best practices of waste management companies and municipalities throughout Europe. The circular economy framework applied to urban waste management and the zero waste strategy are described.

The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a resilience curriculum in early years and primary schools to enhance social inclusion, equity and social justice amongst European communities, particularly amongst disadvantaged and vulnerable ones, through quality education. It defines educational resilience in terms of academic, social and emotional growth in the face of life challenges; discusses the conceptual framework and key principles underpinning the curriculum; and presents the six major content areas of the curriculum. Finally, it presents the preliminary findings of a pilot project on the implementation of the curriculum in more than 200 classrooms in about 80 early and primary schools in six European countries.

The curriculum was first drafted collaboratively amongst the six partners on the basis of the existing literature in the promotion of resilience in early years and primary schools, with a particular focus to European realities. Once it was internally reviewed, it was piloted in 200 early years and primary school classrooms in six European countries, with each of the six partners implementing one theme. Data collection included teacher reflective diaries, classroom checklists, semi-structured interviews with teachers and focus groups with students.

The preliminary results from the pilot evaluation of the curriculum in 199 classrooms totalling 1,935 students across six countries indicate that both the teachers and the learners overwhelmingly found the curriculum highly enjoyable, useful, relevant and easy to use. They looked forward to the possibility of having the programme on a full-time basis as part of the general curriculum in the future. The teachers reported a positive moderate change in learners’ behaviour related to the theme implemented and argued that for the implementation to be effective, it needs to take place throughout the whole year. A number of modifications have been on the basis of the teachers’ and learners’ feedback.

This is the first resilience curriculum for early years and primary schools in Europe. While it seeks to address the needs of vulnerable children such as Roma children, immigrant and refugee children and children with individual educational needs, it does so within an assets-based, developmental, inclusive and culturally responsive approach, thus avoiding potential labelling and stigmatising, while promoting positive development and growth. It puts the onus on the classroom teacher, in collaboration with parents and other stakeholders, in implementing the curriculum in the classroom.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between trade openness and economic growth in developing countries. Under this aim, the co‐integration relationship between trade openness and economic growth of 17 developing countries is examined without relying on data stationarity.

The co‐integration relationship between trade openness and economic growth is analyzed by Bounds testing approach developed by Pesaran et al. In addition to this, the causality relationship is tested by causality analysis developed by Toda and Yamamoto.

According to the Bounds test results, co‐integration relationship has been detected for six countries and long‐term coefficients among the variables have been found positive and statistically significant. According to the Toda and Yamamoto causality analysis, causality has been detected for eight countries. In four of these, the direction of causality is from trade openness to economic growth and in the other four, vice versa.

The methodology employed provides an alternative framework for examining relationship among economic variables. The paper shows how to create co‐integration and causality tests without relying on data stationarity, which is a major problem in time series of economic variables. On the empirical side, it adds new empirical results into the literature in the name of identification of relationship between trade openness and economic growth in developing countries.