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The changing roles of the United Nations (UN) and national institutions have made addressing climate change a critical concern for many multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) survival and growth. This chapter discusses how such institutions, which vary in their nature and characteristics, shape firm strategies for climate change adaptation. Exploring different versions of institutional theory, the chapter demonstrates how and why institutional characteristics affect typical patterns of firm ownership, governance, and capabilities. These, in turn, influence companies’ internationalisation and climate-change strategies. Climate change poses challenges to how we understand firms’ strategic decisions from both an international business (IB) (HQ–subsidiary relations) and global value chains (GVC) (buyer–supplier relations) perspective. However, climate change also provides opportunities for companies to gain competitive advantages – if firms can reconfigure and adapt faster than their competitors. Existing IB and GVC research tends to downplay the importance of climate change strategies and the ways in which coherent or dysfunctional institutions affect firms’ reconfiguration and adaptation strategies in a globally dispersed network of value creation. This chapter presents a perspective on the institutional conditions that affect firms’ climate change strategies regarding ownership, location, and internalisation (OLI), and GVCs, with ‘investment’ and ‘emerging standards’ playing a significant role. The authors illustrate the discussion using several examples from the Global South (i.e. Bangladesh) and the Global North (i.e. Denmark, Sweden, and Germany) with a special emphasis on the garment industry. The aim is to encourage future research to examine how a ‘business systems’, or varieties of capitalism, institutional perspective can complement the analysis of sustainability and climate change strategies in IB and GVC studies.

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has been a good example of a Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) world. Higher educational institutions (HEIs) have faced a massive hit because the jobs in this industry have become unexpected. Considering the most valuable assets ‘Teachers’ crunched in the VUCA crisis, the study intends to determine if personal harmony (PH) and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) would enhance teachers’ job satisfaction (JS).

Design/methodology/approach: Data are collected from the teachers of Indian HEIs and teachers who have experienced the impact of the COVID-19 catastrophe (VUCA). Considering the pandemic restrictions, data have been collected through an online survey (N = 364).

Practical Implications: PH is an individual’s internal quality and attribute that cannot be developed on force or situational need. Even in an uncertain situation, teachers have tried their best to contribute through professional service. Hence, people who possess PH contribute their best even though unsatisfied with their jobs.

Originality/value: This study has focused on finding the relationship between two different variables, PH and OCB (which has not been explored in Asian countries, majorly in India, where it has a vast cultural diversity and structure influencing the educational policies) that hinders the factors influencing JS, where these two variables are highly influenced by hygiene factors such as values, culture, ethical standards, personal belief, leadership styles, and fair treatment showcased by the organisations/institutions.

This chapter contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning in extracurricular enterprise and entrepreneurship education. It draws on research from two annual ‘Business Challenge Weeks’ (BCW) held at Oxford Brookes University in 2021 and 2022, in which teams of postgraduate students from three faculties worked on external client projects, supported by an academic mentor. It presents and discusses findings derived from a survey and interviews conducted after the second of these years. The chapter takes a transdisciplinary perspective, after Budwig and Alexander (2020), Piaget (1972) and Klein et al. (2001) and explores the relationship between this and the enterprise and entrepreneurship development pipeline set out by QAA (2018). It analyses the experiences of the three main participating groups engaged in the challenge weeks – students, external clients and academic mentors – and explores the organising challenges inherent in multiparty pedagogical initiatives. The chapter contributes to knowledge in this area by revealing and reflecting on the motivations and expectations of the three participant groups, the roles they played during the week and the outcomes they reported. It also expands understanding of transdisciplinary enterprise pedagogy.

Purpose: As a result of the transition from the paradigm of ‘knowledge and skills’ learning to the university of uncertainty, the concept of VUCA has grown for the revision of various adaptive models of educational practices.

Need for Study: The primary goal is to explore the research field of the educational system and learning environments; the investigation of scientific knowledge is enabled by bibliometric analysis, revealing through it the fluctuations of the literature.

Methodology: To better view the historical evolution of publications in the educational system field, two data samples were integrated into this study, with the focus of the chapter being on the authors, keywords, articles, journals, subject analysis, word cloud analysis, and cluster analysis. The first includes 1,620 Web of Science-recorded documents published between 1991 and 2022, and the second sample comprises 159 Scopus-recorded papers published between 1978 and 2022.

Findings: The first empirical results show that interest in this subject escalated around 2008. The main concerns around this research field are the labour market, teaching-learning, technology, economic development, the medical field, and sustainability. After 2020, a new subject took amplitude, seemingly connected to the educational system and learning environment, that subject being ’COVID-19.

Practical Implications: The relationship between authors, keywords, and sources is illustrated through Sankey diagrams, from which valuable information can be extracted: nine of the Scopus authors have published articles in the ‘Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management’ documents that present the following list of keywords: ‘higher education’, ‘education’, ‘management’, ‘leadership’, and ‘tertiary education’.

This chapter is focussed on the macro context of higher education and describes the historical developments in higher education and how these developments affect academic jobs and academic work. When we sketch the development of higher education with a few broad strokes of the pen, we see (1) a development from a small-scale elite institution to broad training (and research) institutes; (2) a struggle over control of higher education; and (3) a movement in which higher education is professionalized and increasingly assigned a societal task, with a series of consequences for education, research and impact. These developments contribute to a field of tension in which old traditions of academic behaviour must be reconciled with demands that are placed on higher education by society. This makes talent management, both on an individual and collective level, no easy task.

High turnover rates, delay and dissatisfaction among PhD students about the high efforts and low rewards are common problems in doctoral education. Research shows that many different factors are associated with the mental health crisis in graduate education, but these diverse aspects have not often been studied in relation to talent management and human resource management (HRM) strategies. Based on questionnaires and in-depth interviews, this chapter critically assesses the factors that influence doctoral students’ well-being, using as theoretical framework the self-determination theory, concerned with the social and other conditions that facilitate or hinder human well-being and flourishing, and the job demands–resources model, an occupational stress model that suggests strain is a response to imbalance between demands on the individual and the resources he or she has to deal with those demands. These theoretical frameworks help to explore the perceived job demands and resources, and motivations of a sample of 25 PhD students in the Netherlands, in order to recommend adequate talent management strategies to improve PhD work conditions at universities and reduce the increasing levels of ill-being. The study proposes a collegial model, focussing on the enjoyment of work, instead of the current managerial model, which focusses on strengthening knowledge and skills, and stimulating performance-oriented behaviour. A differentiated approach is needed, offering customized talent development for each PhD student in order to respond to his or her specific qualities, improving general well-being. This radical shift in talent management is needed to counter the mental health crisis in doctoral studies.

Research excellency has long been the dominant paradigm in assessing academic quality and hence a prime determinant of academic careers. Lately, this approach to academic performance has come under higher scrutiny for its narrow focus on the individual, promoted an exclusive, performance-oriented talent management and inhibiting collaboration, transparency and societal involvement.

As a response to the limitations of the excellency policy, this chapter examines the emergence of open science as a transformative force in the academic world. Open science represents a paradigm shift, emphasizing the importance of transparency, and increased societal engagement in the academic process. It opens up the possibility to include the context dimension, multiple stakeholders and a more diverse set of development and performance indicators.

This chapter stresses the urgent need to realign our system of recognition and rewards with the premise of open science and with talent management. By highlighting the disconnect between current recognition mechanisms and the values of universities, this chapter emphasizes the necessity of transformative changes at institutional and systemic levels.

To provide concrete insights into the implementation of these changes, this chapter explores a case study of Utrecht University. This specific example showcases how strategic decisions at an institute level allow navigation of the complexities of recognizing and rewarding open science practices. The Utrecht University case study serves as an inspiration for other institutions seeking to embrace open science and adapt their policies and practices accordingly.

Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the world, although the current situation is more under control. Because the development of the pandemic took place in the context of a digital society, where digital information and communication technologies (ICT) were already widely used, households certainly had to make greater use of this powerful communication tool, partly for work, and partly for distance learning purposes. It is likely that the increased use of ICT in the home, due to the lockdown, created an environment in which families were more united but also isolated and in conflict and this trend may still be present today.

This chapter is based on a study of ICT in the daily lives of Portuguese and Italian women, who lived in nuclear families, during and after the COVID pandemic. Through the testimonies of these women, therefore, we will discuss the results of the study to describe and understand how families used ICT during and after the pandemic. In particular, we are interested in answering the following questions: Did domestic spaces become more and more like work spaces due to the increased use of ICT due to the pandemic lockdown? Did distance learning, due to the lockdown, lead to an increase in ICT use by children/adolescents that is still perpetuated today?