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This research mainly aims to shed light on sustainable development in Syrian higher education during the Syrian crisis.

In this research, the authors mainly study sustainable development in the Syrian Arab Republic through the bibliometrics data of universities and research centres in Syrian Arab Republic, where these data are related to sustainable development. Also, the authors study the strategies used in the university with the largest research output of sustainable development in the Syrian Arab Republic. The authors extract research data arranged in sustainable development goals in the Syrian Arab Republic from SciVal database.

Based on the bibliometric data on sustainable development research in the Syrian Arab Republic, the authors find that universities and research centres in the Syrian Arab Republic have taken important steps towards the goals of sustainable development, especially in the year 2022. The authors also find that the University of Damascus had the largest share in research related to the goals of sustainable development, and the authors find that this is due to the strategies taken by the University of Damascus towards the goals of sustainable development, such as the policy of digital transformation, the policy of recycling and the increase of green areas in the university.

This study is the first of its kind to study the goals of sustainable development in Syrian higher education during the Syrian crisis period.

Policy framework has significant roles in minimizing the impact of climate change in agrarian societies like Ethiopia. The purpose of this paper is to assess the integration of issues related to climate change adaptation into the national development planning of Ethiopia.

A qualitative research design, which depended on secondary and primary data sources, was used in this study. Data were collected from relevant documents. These were substantiated with field data gathered through key informant interviews and focus group discussions from participants identified using purposive sampling. Thematic analysis of the collected data was done by first considering the relevant documents and then comparing with the field data. During the analysis and interpretation, the results were combined to explain, confirm, refute and/or enrich the data obtained through document reviews and interviews.

The result of the study revealed that the general issues of environmental management have been included in the relevant documents (national plans). However, the documents do not explicitly identify climate change adaptation strategies and options that can alleviate the current impacts and the projected negative impacts associated with climate change. In fact, some documents were found to be characterized by numerous gaps. For example, the environmental policy of Ethiopia does not address climate trading, climate resilient green economy and recent development. The result from interviews shows that the constitution of the country lacks sufficiently addressing climate change adaptation. The result obtained from focus group discussion with informants indicated that the environmental policy of the country is shallow and suffers from showing clear direction regarding integration. The informants indicate that though there is an office that works on climate change at zonal level, there is no well-defined structure for climate change at zonal, district and Kebele levels and there appears to be weak integration among the different institutions working on climate change.

This study would speed up the revision of environmental policy of Ethiopia and the development of a separate policy document that focuses on adaptation to climate change.

Guided by paradox theory, the study aims to significantly advance Sustainability in Higher Education Institutions (SHEI) scholarship and inform change agents’ (CAs) practices by uncovering the tensions underlying the challenges CAs face in embedding sustainability in their universities and learning about potential strategies to manage these tensions.

The authors conducted a multi-step, mix-methods study including interviews (n = 15), an online survey (n = 36) and focus groups (n = 29) with CAs from 17 of Austria’s 22 public universities. Participating CAs consisted of faculty, staff and administrators with leading roles in their Higher Education Institutions’ sustainability change processes.

Austrian SHEI CAs’ responses revealed 15 tensions at and between the individual, organizational and system level addressing academic, organizational and external stakeholder engagement aspects. Six tensions were selected for more in-depth exploration including elaboration of management strategies, building on CAs’ experiences. Results revealed examples of acceptance, separation and synthesis strategies.

Based on the exploratory nature of our study, the authors do not claim to have identified a comprehensive list of tensions underlying the challenges faced by SHEI CAs, nor of all potential management strategies.

Although this study focused exclusively on Austrian SHEI CAs, the challenges they shared were consistent with those in the literature and, thus, insights should also support the CAs’ efforts in other countries.

This study offers novel perspectives on how to manage the challenges to SHEI. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to describe paradox theory-informed management strategies recommended by a heterogenous group of SHEI CAs to address the barriers they face in transforming their universities toward sustainability.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

Change of climate is attributed to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere observed over comparable periods. The purpose of this paper is to explore smallholder farmers' perceptions of climate change and compare it with meteorological data, as well as to identify perceived adaptation barriers and examine the factors that influence the choice of adaptation options in eastern Ethiopia.

In total, 384 sample households were chosen from four districts of the zone. A cross-sectional survey was used to conduct the study. Primary data was acquired through key informant interviews, focus group discussions and semistructured interviews, whereas meteorological data was collected from the National Meteorological Service Agency of Ethiopia. A Mann–Kendall statistical test was used to analyze temperature and rainfall trends over 33 years. A multivariate probit (MVP) model was used to identify the determinants of farmers' choice of climate change adaptation strategies.

The result indicated that temperature was significantly increased, whereas rainfall was significantly reduced over the time span of 33 years. This change in climate over time was consistently perceived by farmers. Smallholder farmers use improved varieties of crops, crop diversification, adjusting planting dates, soil and water conservation practices, reducing livestock holdings, planting trees and small-scale irrigation adaptation strategies. Moreover, this study indicated that sex of the household head, landholding size, livestock ownership, access to extension, access to credit, social capital, market distance, access to climate change-related training, nonfarm income, agroecological setting and poverty status of the households significantly influence farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies.

Further research is required to evaluate the economic impact of each adaptation options on the livelihood of smallholder farmers.

Institutional variables significantly influenced how farmers adapted to climate change, and all of these issues might potentially be addressed by improving institutional service delivery. To improve farm-level adaptation, local authorities are recommended to investigate the institutional service provision system while also taking demographic and agroecological factors in to account.

This study compared farmers' perceptions with temperature and rainfall trend analysis, which has been rarely addressed by other studies. This study adopts an MVP model and indicated the adaptation strategies that complement/substitute strategies each other. Furthermore, this study discovered that the choice of adaptation options differed between poor and nonpoor households, which has been overlooked in previous climate change adaptation research.

This study aims to draw observations on the current status and potentials of the Philippines as a farm tourism destination and identify the underlying factors that inhibit farm tourism development. It intends to gauge the challenges that Filipino farmers face in diversifying farms and operating farm sites and uses these challenges in crafting strategies and policies for relevant stakeholders. It also provides Philippine farm tourism literature to address the limitations of references in the topic.

The study adopts an exploratory type of inquiry method and secondary data collection from various sources, such as published journal articles, news articles and reports, to gain insights and relevant information on farm tourism. The study also uses a threats, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths analysis approach to develop competitive farm tourism strategies.

The Philippines, with vast agricultural land, has the necessary base for farm tourism, and the enactment of the Farm Tourism Development Act of 2016 bridges this potential. With low agricultural outputs, the country draws relevance for farm tourism as a farm diversification strategy to supplement income in rural communities. While having these potentials, crucial initiatives in physical characteristics, product development, education and training, management and entrepreneurship, marketing and customer relations and government support must be implemented. Farmers' lack of skills, training and capital investment potential to convert their farms into farm tourism sites serves as the major drawback. Thus, developing entrepreneurial and hospitality skills is crucial.

This work presents a historical narrative of initiatives and measures of the Philippine farm tourism sector. It also provides a holistic discussion and in-depth analysis of the current state, potentials, strategies and forward insights for farm tourism development.

Technological advancements are reshaping the manufacturing industry toward digitalized manufacturing. Despite the importance of top-class maintenance in such systems, many industrial companies lack a clear strategy for maintenance in digitalized manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate the implementation of maintenance in digitalized manufacturing by proposing a strategy development process for the Smart Maintenance concept.

This study is designed as a multiple-case study, where the strategy development in three industrial cases is analyzed. Several methods were used to collect data on the case companies' development of smart maintenance strategies. The data were analyzed with an inductive approach.

A process of strategy development for smart maintenance is proposed, including six steps: benchmarking, setting clear goals, setting strategic priority, planning key activities, elevating implementation and follow-up.

The proposed process provides industry practitioners with a step-by-step guide for the development of a clear smart maintenance strategy, based on the current state of their maintenance organization. This creates employee engagement and is a new way of developing maintenance strategies.

Maintenance strategies are traditionally regarded as a selection of corrective/reactive and preventive maintenance actions using a top-down approach. By contrast, the proposed process is starting from the current state of the maintenance organization and allows a mixture of top-down and bottom-up approaches, supporting organizational development. This is a rare perspective of maintenance strategies and will make maintenance organizations ready for the demands of digitalized manufacturing.

The shift toward a circular economy (CE) represents a collaborative endeavor necessitating the presence of efficient frameworks, conducive contexts and a common comprehension. This research serves as a pivotal stride towards this goal, presenting an exclusive prospect for the investigation and fusion of these frameworks, with particular emphasis on the Quintuple Helix Model (5HM), into a unified theoretical framework that underscores the core principles of the CE. This study is centered on three pivotal questions aimed at decoding the CE transition in specific regional settings.

Adopting an abductive approach firmly anchored in a two-stage qualitative process, this study specifically merges the foundational principles from institutional theory, entrepreneurship literature and CE frameworks to provide insights into the dynamics of circular ecosystems, with a specific focus on the Huelva region in Spain.

The findings demonstrate significant potential in the CE, ranging from the integration of product and service systems to innovations in eco-industrial practices. Yet, a notable deficiency exists: the absence of institutional entrepreneurs, highlighting the essential role that universities can play. As recognized centers of innovation, universities are suggested to be key contributors to the transformation toward a CE, aligning with their societal and economic responsibilities.

This study highlights the importance of managing relationships with entities like SMEs and policymakers or academia for effective CE adoption. Policymakers can refine strategies based on the research’s insights, while the impact of university-driven circular ecosystems on sustainable societies is another crucial area for research.

The sustainability models cited in CE literature may not be comprehensive enough to prevent problem shifting, and it can be argued that they lack a sound theoretical and conceptual basis. Furthermore, the connections between sustainability objectives and the three levels of the CE operating system remain vague. Additionally, there is insufficient information on how regions foster the involvement of the environment in fivefold helix cooperation and how this impacts the CE.

This research attempts to reveal ways of addressing challenges in open universities related to empowering lifelong learning; establishing policies and strategies in dropouts, student portfolio and support services for students with special needs; and implementing online instructional design and strategies. Two institutions were investigated, namely National Open University (NOU) Taiwan and Universitas Terbuka (UT) Indonesia, both founded in the 1980s to serve lifelong learners with diverse backgrounds and needs. This study was aimed at understanding good practices and challenges for improvement for the two open universities in those areas being investigated.

This research was qualitative using document analysis along with focus group discussions and interviews with administrators, academic staff, students and alumni to collect data for analysis.

Lifelong learning is the necessity of individual in societies for continuing professional development through enabling access to quality university education. Open universities have been tasked to cater for lifelong learners using non-traditional approaches, new technology and adapting to online learning and teaching in digital age. This research was exploratory, and the findings were expected to improve understanding of lifelong learning in open universities, particularly in NOU and UT.

Findings of this research are relevant to open universities to enhance its missions and define its possible new roles to serve lifelong learners.

This research reveals the roles of open universities in lifelong learning and enhances understanding of open universities that have a wide range of responsibilities in offering programs and courses to accommodate lifelong learners.