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Purpose. This chapter discusses the challenges and different strategies to increase skill development for the future workforce.

Methodology. Multiple sources on the topic were studied and reviewed in this chapter. The idea of skill and its development is discussed in the literature review.

Findings. Different nations’ governments have promoted human capital development by providing up-skilling and retraining programs to balance supply and demand. Skills gaps need to be brought to the attention of stakeholders, such as governments, businesses, and the educational system. Teachers, employers, and other stakeholders need to develop strategies and action plans to ensure that the skills gaps are appropriately identified and adequately addressed. These initiatives must be developed with input from various stakeholders.

Practical Implications. The research results would inform the curriculum, incorporating skill development processes tailored to various scenarios. These findings would aid business organisations in crafting skill development programs that address identified skill gaps. Challenges in skill development would be taken into account during course development, and relevant teaching–learning materials would be created. Key stakeholders, such as accrediting organisations, employers, and students, should exert more influence on academic institutions to prioritise societal demands for economic development.

Originality/Value. The uniqueness and significance of this chapter lie in its concise summary of the strategies to tackle the hurdles in skill development.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact on student work readiness outcomes of collaboration with employers in developing and delivering tailored graduate employability workshops in socio-emotional skills for work (SES4Work).

Framed by the CareerEDGE model of graduate employability, the authors piloted a five-session module for near graduates in five disciplines. The research included an online employer survey (n = 128), employer interviews (n = 21) and tailored workshops for near graduates, culminating in a mock competency-based interview. Using a pre/post-test design, participants (n = 24) also completed the CareerEDGE Employability Development Profile (EDP) and the Trait Emotional Intelligence questionnaire (TEIque).

After completing the module, there was a statistically significant improvement in participant scores on the CareerEDGE EDP +12.3%, p < 0.001, effect size (Cohen's d) 0.89, large, and the TEIque +6.4%, p = 0.009, effect size (Cohen's d) 0.61, moderate. Furthermore, 70% (n = 17) of participants were “hired” based on their mock interviews, with 12% (n = 4) offered employer connections after graduation.

This is the first academic research in Ireland to develop and evaluate an enterprise-collaborative, discipline-specific module for enhancing graduate employability. Findings suggest that employer collaboration can enhance the efficacy of employability interventions and therefore merits further research.

The impact of COVID-19 on tourism destinations has been severe, but a future crisis is never far away. How communities can better prepare for disasters to come in the near future continues to be researched. This research aims to understand the tourism community’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and present the Tourism Community Resilience Model as a useful instrument to help communities better respond to disasters in the future.

This research uses a qualitative research approach which seeks to understand phenomena, events, social activities, attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and individual and group opinions that are dynamic in character in accordance with the situation in the field. Research primary data is in the form of Kuta Traditional Village local community responses in enduring the COVID-19 pandemic conducted between January and May 2022. These data were obtained through in-depth observations and interviews involving informants based on purposive sampling, including traditional community leaders, village officials, tourism actors (i.e. street vendors, tourist local guides, taxi drivers and art workers) and tourism community members. We selected the informants who are not only directly impacted by the pandemic, but also some of them have to survive during the pandemic because they do not have other job options. The results of previous research and government data concerning the pandemic and community resilience were needed as secondary data, which were obtained through a study of the literature. The data which had been obtained were further analysed based on the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) technique, which seeks to make meaning of something from the participants’ perspective and the researchers’ perspective as a result there occurs a cognition of a central position.

Based on findings from Bali, Indonesia, this resilience model for the tourism community was created in response to the difficulties and fortitude shown by the community during the COVID-19 pandemic. It comprises four key elements, namely the Local Wisdom Foundation, Resource Management, Government Contributions and External Community Support. These elements are all rooted in the concepts of niskala (spirituality) and sekala (real response); it is these elements that give the tourism community in the Kuta Traditional Village a unique approach, which can inspire other tourism destinations in other countries around the world.

A tourism community resilience model based on local community responses has implications for the process of enriching academic research and community management practices in facing future crisis, particularly by involving local wisdom foundation.

A tourism community resilience model based on local community responses has implications for the process of enriching academic research and community management practices in facing future crisis, particularly by involving local wisdom foundation.

The existence of the resilience model strengthens local community social cohesion, which has been made stronger by the bonds of culture and shared faith in facing disaster. This social cohesion then stimulates the strength of sustainable and long-term community collaboration in the post-pandemic period. For tourism businesses, having strong connections with the local communities is an important condition to thrive.

The value of this research is the Tourism Resilience Community Model, which is a helpful tool to optimise and improve future strategies for dealing with disasters. Illustrated by this Balinese example, this paper emphasises the importance of adding social factors such as niskala and sekala to existing community resilience models. Addressing these local characteristics is the innovative aspect of this paper and will help inspire communities around the world to prepare for future disasters better and build more sustainable and resilient tourism destinations elsewhere.

This paper aims to conduct research to examine the impact of Internet adoption on the productivity of firms in non-urban China.

The study investigates the impact of Internet adoption on firms' productivity in non-urban China. More specifically, the authors conduct a comprehensive and rigorous study while addressing concerns related to firm-level endogeneity by utilizing firm-level panel data. Information on firms in non-urban areas is collected from China's Annual Surveys of Industrial Firm data. For robustness, the authors implement the instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching estimations to strengthen the evidence for suggestive causal inference. Furthermore, the authors also examine the mechanisms and group heterogeneity.

Evidence indicate that the adoption of Internet technology positively impacts the total factor productivity (TFP) of firms in non-urban areas. According to the heterogeneity analysis, the marginal effect of Internet adoption is more significant and pronounced for labor-intensive, private and small-scale manufacturing firms. Moreover, additional evidence suggest that Internet adoption is beneficial for non-urban firms in expanding their business and enlarging their market. It has also been found that the positive effect of Internet adoption on firms' TFP is amplified by expanding public infrastructure.

The current study supports that the informatization strategy benefits non-urban firms and promotes rural revitalization. The findings suggest the possibility of firms borrowing market size from the closest cities and supporting the ongoing policies of investing in broadband infrastructure to narrow the urban-rural digital gap in China.

The paper aims at studying the effect of management practices on the extensive and intensive export margins of Egyptian manufacturing firms.

The study relies on the 2020/2021 Egyptian Industrial Firm Behavior Survey (EIFBS) which comprises 2,383 manufacturing firms representing small, medium, and large sized firms located in different regions of Egypt: Urban Governorates, Lower Egypt, and Upper Egypt. It constructs an overall management z score for each firm to estimate its effect on a firm’s probability of exporting and value of exports using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions.

Results indicate that good management is associated with a higher probability of firm exporting as well as higher export revenues conditional on exporting, robust to controlling for the level of domestic sales. These effects do not differ by firm ownership or type of sector, but rather by firm size, with managerial competence raising the probability of exporting more for large-sized firms. Additionally, good management is associated with higher firm productivity, innovation and worker training propensities which gives evidence that it is both an efficiency and a quality enhancer. Moreover, monitoring and targeting practices have significant positive effects on both margins, while incentives are only significant for the extensive margin.

Firms that aim at enhancing their export prospects and revenues should devote resources to review and upgrade their management systems to boost their product quality and production efficiency. Policy-wise, the government should create a competitive market environment that is open to both domestic and foreign firms’ entry to stimulate the adoption of better management practices.

The paper is the first to explore the link between firm management practices and export outcomes for a MENA country (Egypt). It makes use of a recent survey, the 2020/2021 Egyptian Industrial Firm Behavior Survey (EIFBS). The findings shed light on the importance of different management components (monitoring, targeting and incentives) in driving a manufacturing firm’s export performance.

There is a renewed interest among economists and policymakers in striking a perfect balance between the market, state, and the community for equitable and sustained development. Inclusive development is the need of the hour and healthcare cooperatives provide the perfect means to deliver that. The cooperatives can and should have an important role to play in this scenario. However, there is an important need to provide an enabling environment for the genesis and growth of Healthcare Cooperatives in India and to learn from the best models and practices across the world. The chapter discusses the effectiveness of healthcare cooperatives.

The development of green manufacturing has become essential to achieve sustainable development and modernize the nation’s manufacturing and production capacity without increasing nonrenewable resource consumption and pollution. This study investigates the effect of green industrial practices on technical efficiency for Thai manufacturers.

The study uses stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to estimate the stochastic frontier production function (SFPF) and inefficiency effects model, as pioneered by Battese and Coelli (1995).

This study shows that, on average, Thai manufacturing firms have experienced declining returns-to-scale production and relatively low technical efficiency. However, it is estimated that Thai manufacturing firms with a green commitment obtained the highest technical efficiency, followed by those with green activity, green systems and green culture levels, compared to those without any commitment to green manufacturing practices. Finally, internationalization and skill development can significantly improve technical efficiency.

Green industry policy mixes will be vital for driving structural reforms toward a more environmentally friendly and sustainable economic system. Furthermore, circular economy processes can promote firms' production efficiency and resource use.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the effect of green industry practices on the technical efficiency of Thai manufacturing enterprises. This study also encompasses analyses of the roles of internationalization, innovation and skill development.

Manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have already noticed the tangible benefits offered by artificial intelligence (AI). Several approaches have been proposed with a view to support them in the processes entailed in this innovation path. These include multisided platforms created to enable the connection between SMEs and AI developers, making it easier for them to network each other. While such platforms are complex, they facilitate simultaneous interaction with several stakeholders and reaching out to new potential users (both SMEs and AI developers), through a collaboration with supporting ecosystems such as digital innovation hubs (DIHs).

Mixed methods were used. The literature review was performed to identify the existing approaches within and outside the manufacturing domain. Computer-assisted telephonic (in-depth) interviewing , was conducted to include perspectives of AI platform stakeholders and collect primary data from various European countries.

Several challenges and barriers for AI platform stakeholders were identified alongside the corresponding best practices and guidelines on how to address them.

An effective approach was proposed to provide support to the industrial platform managers in this field, by developing guidelines and best practices on how a platform should build its services to support the ecosystem.

This study aims to examine the influence of research self-efficacy (RSE) on academics' research productivity (RPR) in public higher education institutions in Tanzania.

A cross-sectional design was utilized to collect and analyze data from 247 academics in four public higher education institutions in Tanzania.

The findings show that RSE has a positive and significant influence on academics' RPR in higher education (ß = 0.657 and p < 0.001).

Higher education institutions should focus on creating a favorable work environment that fosters academics' RSE so as to enhance more productivity in terms of research.

The results of this study expand the aspects in which social cognitive theory can be applied in Tanzania's higher education institutions. On the other hand, by conducting empirical-based research on the influence of RSE on RPR in developing nations like Tanzania, the findings contribute to the literature on RSE and RPR.