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The purpose of this study is to investigate what sustainability initiatives are being implemented by Canadian independent restaurants and to determine if the initiatives represent all 10 categories of a sustainable restaurant as established by a sustainability initiative framework.

The study uses a qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews with 15 small to medium enterprise (SME), independent restaurant owners and operators across Canada. The data was digitally transcribed and thematic analysis was performed.

Results indicated that most initiatives aligned with the categories of “sustainable food/menu” and “waste reduction and disposables” which shows that the operators were inclined to pursue initiatives in customer view. Restaurants put limited focus on water supply, chemicals and pollution reduction, furniture and construction materials. Some of the barriers to implementing, measuring and learning about initiatives were: cost, lack of access to programs, supply chain complications, not having buy-in from owners and lack of time to implement.

The study recommends that governments provide incentives to implement sustainability initiatives that are out of sight to the customer. For example, implementing composting, energy efficient equipment and water saving processes. It is also recommended that third-party restaurant organizations provide more accurate, evidence-based guidance and education on implementing a wide-range of sustainability initiatives.

This research contributes to the literature on sustainability in restaurants and applies a sustainability initiative framework in a practical context. The study provides a unique assessment of the current state of restaurant sustainability and states where restaurants need to improve their efforts.

Growth optimism, which describes the expected future growth of a firm, is an important but underexplored construct in strategy. This paper aims to assess the planning antecedents of such growth optimism by using a large Australian sample of small enterprises.

The authors use a secondary data set, gathered among Australian small to medium enterprises (SMEs), by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The analysis adopts a regression approach including a mediated and a non-mediated path to explore the direct and indirect effects of strategic planning and budgetary planning and management on expected future revenues.

This paper assesses the implications of concurrent strategic planning and financial management dynamic capabilities on anticipated future revenue growth, an important predisposition dynamic capability. The authors note that this configuration of actions and predisposition aligns closely with the necessary requirements for growth. The findings suggest that firms that use strategic planning and robust budget planning and monitoring processes exhibit higher optimism about future sales growth and firms that effectively configure these planning activities with market development tend to exhibit higher growth and more growth optimism.

In terms of theoretical contributions, the paper strongly supports the formality view in the formal/informal debates associated with effectuation strategies. The authors suggest that appropriate strategic and budgetary planning and control systems act as a counterbalance to organisational confusion and managerial capriciousness, leading to improved confidence among managers and their employees regarding future resource commitments and plans.

The findings of the paper are potentially important for both managers and policy makers. For managers seeking to grow their future sales, planning is shown to be an important antecedent activity. The presence of financial and strategic planning may predispose firms to make important investment decisions that drive future growth. Also, a better understanding of the firm’s current and future strategic and financial position may be evidence of effective firm management, a situation that, in turn, drives growth.

In terms of social and policy implications, the data gathered for the survey by the ABS forms a valuable collection of information in relation to business practices. Australian firms are required by law to regularly report budget plans and outcomes. The research suggests that this data can inform policy initiatives, particularly in relation to programmes that may assist small and young firms to undertake prospective strategic and budgetary planning.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to investigate the particular configuration of strategic and financial planning and anticipated sales growth in the SME context.

This paper aims to examine the opportunities of continuous family succession in operating small-to-medium-sized wineries (SMWs) in Victoria, Australia.

Using case studies from Victoria, an exploratory qualitative approach was used to explore the benefits of continuous family succession in this conceptual paper. This included interviewing participants from wineries about their perceptions about family business succession. Themed analysis was applied to highlight the findings and overall conclusions about why the wine industry was affected more than other industries with regard to family business succession issues.

The three main findings of this study include family succession is extremely important in building a story customers can relate to; family reinvestment opportunities for financial sustainability and innovation of the winery and family succession for future employment and legacy. These three findings highlight the way family business succession is integral to the successfulness of the wine industry.

Small-to-medium-sized wineries (SMWs) have many challenges including long-term financial sustainability and innovation opportunities. To assist in overcoming these challenges, the findings suggest winery owners need to create lasting legacy through story-telling, competitive advantage and family linkage (succession). This will assist wineries to create marketing campaigns focussing on family succession and brand attachment, seven opportunities for family reinvestment and innovation leading to financial sustainability and competitive advantage.

There is little research investigating family succession in the Victorian wine industry even though it is common practice and essential to marketing and communication campaigns. This paper supports continuous family succession as a legitimate marketing technique and long-term financial sustainability and innovation for small-to-medium-sized wineries (SMWs) through reinvestment opportunities. This is the first time small-to-medium-sized wineries have been defined as SMWs and reinvestment opportunities have been identified by wine stakeholders.

This paper aims to propose the mechanism of cross-network effect embedded, which can help cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) platforms strengthen cooperative relationships with sellers more equitably and effectively by using the network structural characteristics of the platforms themselves.

A two-stage evolutionary game model has been used to confirm the influence factors. The mathematical derivation of evolutionary game analysis is combined with the simulation method to examine the role of cross-network effect in cooperation. The evolutionary game model based on the cross-network effect is proposed to achieve better adaptability to the study of cooperation strategy from the two-sided market perspective.

The evolutionary game model captures the interactions of cross-network effect and the influence factors from a dynamic perspective. The cross-network effect has a certain substitution on the revenue-sharing rate of SMEs. CBEC platforms can enhance the connection between consumers and the website by improving the level of construction, which is a good way to attract sellers more cost-effectively and efficiently.

This study provides a new method for the validation of the cross-network effect, especially when data collection is difficult. But this method is only a numerical simulation. So the conclusions still need to be further tested empirically. Besides, researchers are advised to explore the relationship between the added user scale and the cross-network effect in some specificCBEC platforms.

This study provides a new method for the validation of the cross-network effect, especially when data collection is difficult. But this method is only a numerical simulation. So the conclusions still need to be further tested empirically. Besides, researchers are advised to explore the relationship between the added user scale and the cross-network effect in some specific CBEC platforms.

Investigations that study cooperation strategy from the cross-network effect perspective in CBEC are limited. The research figured out which influence factors are affected by the cross-network effect in cooperation. A two-stage evolutionary game model was proposed to explain the interaction of the factors. The evolutionary game analysis with a simulation method was combined to highlight the role of cross-network effect on cooperation strategy to give a deeper investigation into the sustainable cooperation ofCBEC.

As part of the growing necessity for inter-organisational and multi-disciplinary interaction to facilitate complex innovation in digital security, there needs to be greater engagement with regulation in the innovation process. This is particularly true in the case of security technologies that are embedded within wider systems and that are largely invisible to most of the users of that system. This paper aims to describe stakeholders’ perspectives on regulation in the digital security innovation process and evaluates the implications of these perspectives on anticipatory regulation in digital security.

Using a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured expert interviews and ethnographic participant observation, the study draws on the authors’ involvement in a formally organised programme of academia–industry–government collaboration called Digital Security by Design (DSbD).

The study highlights a relational dimension to establishing regulatory responsibilities that is enabled through interdisciplinary dialogue. The study contributes to understanding the multifaceted roles of regulation in digital security innovation across organisations and areas of expertise. It does so by identifying four themes in how regulation is perceived in the DSbD programme: ethical imperative, adding value, adoption lever and passive compliance.

Incorporating regulatory responsibilities through dialogue early in the innovation process, rather than only once a security technology’s deleterious effects are noticeable, which could make digital innovation and transformation safer and better regulated. It can also make regulation successfully adopted, rather than an exercise in damage control or an adversarial process between regulators and organisations.

This paper presents original empirical research on how regulation is considered by stakeholders in a novel multi-disciplinary digital security innovation process. It then uses these findings as a basis to evaluate the implications for establishing regulatory responsibilities for a class of security technologies that are embedded within wider systems and that are largely invisible to most of the users of those wider systems.

The UK government has elaborated the effect of late payment on the economy, with its impact on the construction sector being particularly pronounced. This paper aims to evaluate the late payment epidemic that persists within the construction industry, specifically analysing the effectiveness of government-led voluntary payment initiatives.

A mixed philosophical lens is adopted that incorporates both pragmatism and post-positivism to examine the late payment phenomena. Couched within deductive reasoning and a case study strategy, a questionnaire survey was conducted to elicit responses from one-hundred construction professionals. Elucidating upon respondents’ perceptions of the UK’s late payment epidemic, a comparative analysis was undertaken of upstream (main contractor) and downstream (subcontractors/suppliers) contractors through Cronbach’s alpha, descriptive statistics, independence chi-square test, Kruskal–Wallis test and Mann–Whitney U test.

Emergent findings reveal that in practice, the monitoring and enforcement of government-led voluntary payment initiatives has been unprosperous with numerous contractors being forced to adopt indefensibly poor and punitive payment practices. Survey responses and extant literature substantiate and underscore the industry’s need to strengthen voluntary government-led payment initiatives. To create a responsible payment culture, any future code created should be mandatory and enforceable as a self-regulating approach has failed dismally. The work concludes with practical additional measures that could be introduced to create a responsible payment culture and promote ethical trading within the UK construction industry.

This paper constitutes a novel vignette of, and reflection upon, contemporary practice in this area of construction finance and serves to emphasise that very little has changes in the sector despite numerous UK government led reports and interventions.

This paper aims to evaluate the processes and strategies of Nigerian banks towards achieving financial inclusion and offer recommendations for policies that can lead to effective and sustainable financial inclusion.

This paper conducts semi-structured interviews with senior executives of Nigerian banks to investigate their financial inclusion policies and practices.

This paper highlighted Nigerian banks’ views on dimensions that measure financial inclusion and found that they recognise that they play a pivotal role in providing access to formal financial services; however, their efforts to promote financial inclusion are provider-focused rather than customer-focused; they are keen to promote financial services usage; however, very little attention is paid to customer outcomes; financial inclusion is viewed as synonymous with access and innovations are not aiming for impact; and the sector is plagued with infrastructural challenges that breach service quality.

This paper reports on the practices of Nigerian banks towards financial inclusion and provides recommendations for rethinking sustainable financial inclusion. To date, this issue has not been investigated in the substantive literature. Nigeria is an ideal research site for examining financial inclusion. In recent years, the banking sector has made rapid strides in implementing policies to promote the adoption and usage of formal financial services. However, over half of the country’s adult population remains outside the formal financial system.

The global construction industry is significant to economic development, whereas the sector, particularly its small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) have continued to suffer from low labour productivity for decades. This has given rise to the concern of relevant construction stakeholders on the need to address the challenges undermining labour productivity growth in construction. Hence, this study aims to conduct a meta-data analysis of factors that hamper productivity growth of construction SMEs in developing countries.

A systematic review of existing studies relative to factors affecting construction labour productivity (CLP) is presented. Thereafter, eight developing countries-based studies that are specific to SMEs were selected for meta-data analysis using relative importance index values from the studies.

The essential productivity influencing factors were identified and quantitative data of the selected studies were synthesised. The effect summaries derived from the meta-data analysis revealed that the most significant factors that negatively affect CLP amongst SMEs include: workers’ skills, inadequate training, rework, management style and incentive to labour.

The study is limited to scientifically analysed secondary data relative to SME contractors in developing countries.

The findings of the study can be adopted by construction stakeholders to evolve productivity growth policies for construction SMEs in developing countries.

Synthesis of quantitative data of different studies has lent deeper insight into a more realistic and scientific precision of factors affecting labour productivity of construction SMEs.

This study aims to offer insights into the state of research covering cybersecurity, cyber insurance and small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It examines benefits of insurance to an SME’s security posture, challenges faced, and potential solutions and outstanding research questions.

Research objectives were formulated, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Protocol was used to perform a systematic literature review (SLR). A total of 19 papers were identified from an initial set of 451.

This research underscores the role of cybersecurity in the value proposition of cyber insurance for SMEs. The findings highlight the benefits that cyber insurance offers SMEs including protection against cyber threats, financial assistance and access to cybersecurity expertise. However, challenges hinder SME’s engagement with insurance, including difficulties in understanding cyber risk, lack of cybersecurity knowledge and complex insurance policies. Researchers recommend solutions, such as risk assessment frameworks and government intervention, to increase cyber insurance uptake/value to SMEs.

There is a need for further research in the risk assessment and cybersecurity practices of SMEs, the influence of government intervention and the effectiveness of insurers in compensating for losses. The findings also encourage innovation to address the unique needs of SMEs. These insights can guide future research and contribute to enhancing cyber insurance adoption.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first SLR to comprehensively examine the intersection of cybersecurity and cyber insurance specifically in the context of SMEs.