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This study explores a hegemonic alliance and the role of relational forms of accounting and accountablity in the making of contemporary capitalism.

We use the WikiLeaks “Cablegate” documents to provide an account of the detailed machinations between interest groups (corporations and the state) that are constitutive of hegemonic activity.

Our analysis of the “Cablegate” documents shows that the US and Chevron were crafting a central role for Turkmenistan and its president on the global political stage as early as 2007, despite offical reporting beginning only in 2009. The documents exemplify how “accountability gaps” occlude the understanding of interdependence between capital and the state.

The study contributes to a growing idea that official accounts offer a fictionalized narrative of corporations as existing independently, and thus expands the boundaries associated with studying multinational corporate activities to include their interdependencies with the modern state.

The study traces how global capitalism extends into new territories through diplomatic channels, as a strategic initiative between powerful state and capital interests, arguing that the outcome is the empowerment of authoritarian states at the cost of democracy.

The study argues that previous accounting and accountability research has overlooked the larger picture of how capital and the state work together to secure a mutual hegemonic interest. We advocate for a more complete account of these activities that circumvents official, often restricted, views of global capitalism.

The China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, hereafter) has reenergized the Silk Road concept, with most literature focusing on the political and economic effects of the BRI. While certain aspects of the Digital Silk Road (DSR), digital component of BRI, have been researched, much less focus has been placed on the technological development, tech transfer and information diffusion aspects of the BRI. The aim of this study is to investigate the opportunities, issues and critiques that have arisen as a result of the Belt and Road Initiative’s implications on innovation, knowledge transfer and dissemination.

Research in its nature is descriptive. Literature reviews are a significant part of the development of a field. Therefore, secondary sources were considered.

The literature and the study have highlighted several opportunities, problems and criticism that decision-makers and the relevant agencies and institutions should take into account when deciding how to move forward with BRI and its digital component DSR.

This paper contributes to the research literature on BRI and its subset DSR’s impacts on innovation, knowledge transfer and information diffusion. In fact, the DSR’s primary aim is to strengthen international cooperation in the digital economy. Furthermore, digital platforms now play a significant role in global trade, emphasizing the necessity of DSR.

With the change in climate and increased pollution, there has been a need to reduce environmental carbon emissions. This research aims to develop a framework for reducing environmental carbon footprints to improve business performance.

This study uses Scientific Procedures and Rationales for the Systematic Literature Reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) approach. Articles are searched in the Scopus database using various keywords and their combinations. It resulted in 651 articles initially. After applying different screening criteria, 61 articles were considered for the final study.

This study provided four themes and sub-themes within each category. This research also used theories, methodologies and context (TMC) framework to provide future research questions. This study used the antecedents, decisions and outcomes (ADO) framework for synthesising the findings. The ADO framework will help to achieve carbon neutrality and improve firms' supply chain (SC) performance.

This study provides theoretical implications by highlighting the various theories that can be used in future research. This study also states the practical implications for the achievement of carbon neutrality by the firms.

This study contributes to the literature linking carbon neutrality with business performance.

Drawing on indigenous theory of Ibn Khaldun, the rise and fall of States, this paper explores the agency of women entrepreneurs in family business in Bahrain and the underlying enablers in supporting and facilitating the exercise of this agency. This study attempts to move beyond the Western-centric studies to reflect and bring to light the unique institutional settings of the Gulf States.

The research builds on a rich qualitative single case of a family business based in Bahrain. The single case study methodology was motivated by the potential for generating rich contextual insights. Such an approach is particularly valuable to gain a more holistic and deeper understanding of the contextualized phenomenon and its complexity.

In this study the authors show how women entrepreneurs take two different paths to enter and become involved in the family business, the barriers they are subjected to and the active role they play in dismantling the challenges to the extent that they become the main mediators between the family business and central institutions in society.

By incorporating indigenous theory with Western family business concepts, the study extends existing understanding of women entrepreneurs in family business by underscoring the agency that women entrepreneurs have in “doing context” and the role that women play in strengthening common cause and destiny within the family and the business by building and drawing on different forms of loyalty.

The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled higher educational institutions to implement alternative educational strategies that rely heavily on internet accessibility and utilisation to monitor and evaluate students. This study aims to find certain indicators for planning and designing future courses of inclusive online education in the domain of disaster risk reduction (DRR).

The study reviews and analyses online teaching and learning experiences of DRR courses. It uses online surveys and interviews to derive the perspectives of selected students and educators in universities in Asia and the Pacific region.

Active engagement is considered to be achieved when students are active in chat boxes, through presentations, through assignments and when the video cameras of students are turned on. On the contrary, students perceive active engagement differently because they face emotional disturbances and health issues due to prolonged screen/digital device use, have inadequate information and communications technology infrastructure or have digital literacy deficiencies among others. The study finds that online courses have many sets of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, when they are balanced, they can improve DRR courses in the future.

The study is based on the outcome of interviews with 10 experienced educators in DRR courses as well as students from different schools taking courses in DRR education. However, the students are not necessarily taking the courses of the educators interviewed due to the inability of some educators to avail themselves and the challenge of contacting the students. This notwithstanding, the results of this study give a general overview of the situation to be considered in the planning and design of online and distance education.

The results do not reflect the reaction of students and tutors of the same course. Future studies of collecting and analyzing the responses from the students and the educators with the same course could provide tailored solutions.

This study attempts to find solutions to bridging two different perspectives on teaching and learning. The results would be important to strengthening and designing future online courses.

This study aims to explore the research internationalization process in Georgia, one of the post-Soviet countries. Specifically, it examines the individual-level reasons that motivate faculty at Georgian universities to engage in the process of research internationalization. It also unpacks scholars’ perspectives on the driving factors for selecting the key partners in international research.

Sixteen faculty members for this exploratory qualitative study were selected through stratified purposeful sampling from five higher educational institutions in Georgia. Participants were asked to discuss their participation in international research projects and underline the activities and events that motivated them to participate in international collaborative projects. The critical incident method was used to analyze our qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews.

The research revealed that faculty at Georgian universities are more oriented toward collaboration with their peers from European countries and the USA. This preference is influenced by such factors as higher quality of science, higher level of freedom and autonomy, personal contacts and networks, as well as language competencies. The data also helped to unpack Georgian scholars’ individual-level rationales that were conceptualized into three domains: human capital, financial capital and physical capital.

This study is an original work conducted in Georgia. It contributes to the development of the field of internationalization of research. The three-domain conceptual framework on the individual-level rationale for internationalization can be used in future research on post-Soviet countries and beyond.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a preliminary analysis of the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in state climate science assessment (CSA) and state climate adaptation plan (CAP) development in the USA.

This study uses a content review of US state government and land grant (LG) university websites, including 36 CSAs and CAPs. These data informed the development of a tiered conceptual model of HEI engagement in state climate action planning. The conceptual model is evaluated through the lens of coproduction within knowledge networks.

HEI contributions to state-level climate action planning in the USA are highly variable, ranging from minimal engagement to defined roles in the development and implementation of robust state CAPs. Novel approaches to optimize effective exchange between scientists and decision-makers that also increase the engagement of academia are needed.

This study advocates for and provides a replicable example of HEI engagement in the development of mechanisms that increase the connectivity of in-state climate networks. Such mechanisms optimize information sharing and engagement, consequently building sustained capacity for in-state collaboration at the science–policy interface.

HEIs, particularly LG universities, are a stable source of state-specific climate science and expert assistance that persist beyond national and state political cycles. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to examine their unique contributions to climate science policy development and implementation. It investigates specifically the relationships and interactions between HEIs and state governments in the USA and offers a detailed case study from the state of Maine.

Flood preparedness and response from the perspective of community engagement mechanisms have been studied in scholarly articles. However, the differences in flood mitigation may expose social and behavioural challenges to learn from. This study aimed to demonstrate how text mining can be applied in prioritising existing contexts in community-based and government flood mitigation and management strategies.

This investigation mined the semantics researchers ascribed to flood disasters and community responses from 2001 to 2022 peer-reviewed publications. Text mining was used to derive frequently used terms from over 15 publications in the Scopus database and Google Scholar search engine after an initial output of 268 peer-reviewed publications. The text-mining process applied the topic modelling analyses on the 15 publications using the R studio application.

Topic modelling applied through text mining clustered four (4) themes. The themes that emerged from the topic modelling process were building adaptation to flooding, climate change and resilient communities, urban infrastructure and community preparedness and research output for flood risk and community response. The themes were supported with geographical flood risk and community mitigation contexts from the USA, India and Nigeria to provide a broader perspective.

This study exposed the deficiency of “communication, teamwork, responsibility and lessons” as focal themes of flood disaster management and response research. The divergence in flood mitigation in developing nations as compared with developed nations can be bridged through improved government policies, technologies and community engagement.

Globally, climate change governance continues to be a significant challenge to policymakers, environmentalists and politicians despite international summits, conferences and programmes designed to find sustainable solutions to the climate change crises. Climate change continues to be viewed primarily as a challenge for the future, whereas many leaders and administrators globally regard it as an environmental issue rather than a challenge that encompasses all aspects of life. In South Africa, these misleading perceptions of climate change continue to prevail both at national and local levels. The government and private organisations do not attach the required levels of urgency needed to address the climate change crisis. While numerous policies and institutions have been established to address these challenges, they lack financial backing, coordination and synergy that cut across the broad objectives of environmental, social and economic agendas. Additionally, weak, eroding trust and manipulating of institutions continue to hinder effective policy implementation and focus-driven governance. This paper aims to explore the structural and governance weaknesses of climate change administration in the KwaZulu-Natal province and South Africa in general.

This paper used extensive literature reviews and a triangulated approach to investigate the weaknesses of the current governance structure in the context of institutional and capacity constraints.

The findings uncovered that most institutions and organisations mandated to address climate change challenges operate in silos, lack required investment and capacity and have weak accountability mechanisms with a shallow understanding of climate change governance.

This paper recommends better coordination between national, provincial and local governments as well as the private sector towards climate change activities and capacity to ensure that climate change actions are effectively implemented.

This study investigated the role of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, by concentrating on the obstacles that hinder effective governance of community infrastructure planning.

The qualitative approach via case study design was adopted in this study. The Song District, located in the State of Sarawak, Malaysia, was selected as the case study area. Semi-structured interview sessions were conducted with 21 respondents who belonged to the government agencies involved in rural community infrastructure planning and village community representatives to capture their views on community infrastructure development planning in the selected district. The gathered responses were analysed thematically and the outcomes are discussed.

The findings revealed that although the development of community infrastructure in Song District has progressed and has exerted transformative impacts on rural livelihood, several challenges were identified in the delivery of community infrastructure. The four main themes of challenges that emerged from the data were location factors, financial resources, cooperation and collaboration of stakeholders, as well as community involvement. The outcomes disclosed that, in terms of governance, the institutional roles of the community, stakeholders and government agencies must be integrated throughout the rural community infrastructure planning process to resolve the emerging challenges effectively so that the demands of the rural community are met meritoriously.

An effective and efficient community infrastructure planning approach ascertains that the community infrastructure development gaps in rural areas are bridged and brings fruition to the rural communities for their livelihood transformation.

This paper delineates a view on the governance aspect of community infrastructure planning in Sarawak, Malaysia, that is largely untapped. The study outcomes may facilitate practitioners and academics to move forward and recommend improvements in the approach to rural community infrastructure planning.