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In the following, the region of Southeast Asia will be introduced by offering an overview of the recent developments regarding demographic transition, socioeconomic change, social inequality and the diversification of migration patterns. We will sketch out, how young people fare in the face of these conditions, especially with regard to their own or their families' mobilities. Finally, the four contributions of this section, each reflecting a specific context of Southeast Asia's transnational societies and the related intergenerational dynamics, will be introduced.

This paper explores the collaborative dynamics and dimensions within a virtual multi-cultural and interdisciplinary workplace. The study focusses on the use of online communication technologies to enhance social inclusion and networking within academia.

This study uses an autoethnographic approach to draw on the personal experiences of a team of four scholars, including three early-career researchers and a senior scholar. Their reflections on their academic positionality and the institutional constraints reveal both the strengths and vulnerabilities of collaborating in a virtual workplace.

The findings offer insights into the complexities of navigating social dynamics, such as delegating responsibilities, organising meetings across various time zones and encouraging continuous collaboration, inclusivity and effective communication during an extensive timeline. As a result, their experiences revealed that a virtual workplace culture with similar and different attributes to a “normal” workplace emerged.

The paper demonstrates how to create an effective and inclusive virtual workplace by exemplifying best practices in academia and providing practical guidance for individuals and institutions based on honest, co-produced autoethnographic reflections of the authors’ lived experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to (a) examine the current state of the digital economy in Southeast Asia (SEA), the challenges and opportunities derived from digital transformation and the digital economy, and the impact of the digital economy on SEA, especially human and physical capital development, and (b) propose policy recommendations for SEA countries to better manage digital transformation.

This is a conceptual paper. The theoretical framework has been built from the three-sector governance approach to identify the issues of the digital economy and propose solutions to address the issues. Specifically, it examines the role and activities of the public sector, the private sector and the third sector to address the challenges posed by the digital economy, especially human and physical capital development.

This paper revealed challenges and opportunities derived from the experience of Southeast Asian countries and proposed several policies recommendations, including a common data policy and payment platform for the Asian region, a good training and development policy to equip the workforce with digital skills, and digital mindset as well as build cybersecurity capability and capacity at the regional level.

This paper is significant as it examines the development of the digital economy from an interdisciplinary perspective – including economics, digitalisation, governance, management, public policy, technology and human resource development. It also provides better insights into how SEA's digital economic development can be further improved to contribute to a sustainable regional economy.

Healthcare providers are under pressure due to increasing and more complex demands for services. Increased pressure on budgets and human resources adds to an ever-growing problem set. Competent leaders are in demand to ensure effective and well-performing healthcare organisations that deliver balanced results and high-quality services. Researchers have made significant efforts to identify and define determining competencies for healthcare leadership. Broad terms such as competence are, however, inherently at risk of becoming too generic to add analytical value. The purpose of this study is to suggest a holistic framework for understanding healthcare leadership competence, that can be crucial for operationalising important healthcare leadership competencies for researchers, decision-makers as well as practitioners.

In the present study, a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) was conducted to analyse competency descriptions for healthcare leaders. The descriptions were retrieved from peer reviewed empirical studies published between 2010 and 2022 that aimed to identify healthcare services leadership competencies. Grounded theory was utilised to code the data and inductively develop new categories of healthcare leadership competencies. The categorisation was then analysed to suggest a holistic framework for healthcare leadership competence.

Forty-one papers were included in the review. Coding and analysing the competence descriptions resulted in 12 healthcare leadership competence categories: (1) character, (2) interpersonal relations, (3) leadership, (4) professionalism, (5) soft HRM, (6) management, (7) organisational knowledge, (8) technology, (9) knowledge of the healthcare environment, (10) change and innovation, (11) knowledge transformation and (12) boundary spanning. Based on this result, a holistic framework for understanding and analysing healthcare services leadership competencies was suggested. This framework suggests that the 12 categories of healthcare leadership competencies include a range of knowledge, skills and abilities that can be understood across the dimension personal – and technical, and organisational internal and – external competencies.

This literature review was conducted with the results of searching only two electronic databases. Because of this, there is a chance that there exist empirical studies that could have added to the development of the competence categories or could have contradicted some of the descriptions used in this analysis that were assessed as quite harmonised. A CIS also opens for a broader search, including the grey literature, books, policy documents and so on, but this study was limited to peer-reviewed empirical studies. This limitation could also have affected the result, as complex phenomenon such as competence might have been disclosed in greater details in, for example, books.

The holistic framework for healthcare leadership competences offers a common understanding of a “fuzzy” concept such as competence and can be used to identify specific competency needs in healthcare organisations, to develop strategic competency plans and educational programmes for healthcare leaders.

This study reveals a lack of consensus regarding the use and understanding of the concept of competence, and that key competencies addressed in the included papers are described vastly different in terms of what knowledge, skills and abilities they entail. This challenges the operationalisation of healthcare services leadership competencies. The proposed framework for healthcare services leadership competencies offers a common understanding of work-related competencies and a possibility to analyse key leadership competencies based on a holistic framework.

Early evidence suggests that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused a sharp deterioration in fiscal accounts worldwide. This paper empirically assesses the fiscal impact of previous pandemics and epidemics.

Using a large sample of 170 countries from 2000 to 2018, this study relies on Jordà's (2005) local projection method to trace pandemics' short- to medium-term dynamic impact on several fiscal aggregates.

This paper shows that (qualitatively) similar responses to those observed more recently with COVID-19 have characterized the effects of previous pandemics. While the fiscal effect has been economically and statistically significant and persistent, it varies; pandemics affect government expenditures more strongly than revenues in advanced economies, while the converse applies to developing countries. The author also finds that asymmetric responses depend on whether a country is characterized as a chronic fiscal surplus or deficit type. Another factor that generates an asymmetric fiscal response is the prevailing phase of the business cycle the economy was in when the pandemic shock hits.

This paper's findings provide a lower bound to what the current COVID-19 pandemic will inflict on countries’ fiscal situation. That said, the set of pandemics and epidemics used in this paper are geographically more concentrated and did not affect all countries in such a systemic and synchronized manner as did COVID-19 more recently.

This is the first paper to explore the fiscal side of this type of health-related shocks, as most of the literature has focused on the more traditional macroeconomic effects.

Digitalization is one of the major factors that fosters economic growth across the world. However, the level of digitalization varies significantly between developed and developing countries, with the latter often lagging behind. To bridge this gap, it is crucial to pinpoint the drivers of digitalization, specifically from the macroeconomic and country-level governance dimensions. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the determinants of digitalization, particularly for countries in Asia and the Pacific region.

Our study utilizes unbalanced panel data from 46 Asian and Pacific countries for the period of 2001–2021. Initially, we analyzed the data using conventional econometric methods, such as pooled ordinary least squares (POLS), random-effects model (REM) and fixed-effects model (FEM). Moreover, we employed endogeneity-corrected techniques and alternative proxies to enhance the robustness and reliability of our findings.

Our findings reveal that economic development progress, government expenditure relative to country size and political stability are key drivers of digitalization. In contrast, corruption at the country level emerges as a significant impediment. Notably, our results remain robust to endogeneity-corrected techniques and alternative proxies of digitalization. Overall, these insights can inform policymakers, helping them to understand the macroeconomic and governance factors shaping digitalization and guide their decision-making toward effective policy interventions.

This study’s empirical findings add significant value to the existing literature by quantifying the impact of macroeconomic and governance factors on digitalization in selected countries. This offers valuable insights for policymakers, particularly in nations with lower levels of digitalization.

The paper aims to investigate the relationship between institutions and economic growth in developing countries, considering the role of financial inclusion, education spending and military spending.

The study employs dynamic panel analysis, specifically two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM), on a sample of 61 developing countries over the period 2009–2020.

The results confirm that weak institutional quality, weak financial inclusion and increased military spending are barriers to economic growth, conversely, increased spending on education and gross capital formation contribute to economic growth in developing countries. Regarding the specific institutional factor, we find that corruption, ineffective government, voice and accountability and weak rule of law contribute negatively to growth.

The study calls for strengthening institutions so that the financial system supports economic growth and suggests increasing spending on education to improve access to and the quality of human capital, which is an important determinant of economic growth.

The study contributes to scarce literature by empirically analyzing the relationship between institutions and economic growth by considering the role of financial inclusion, public spending on education and military spending, factors that have been ignored in previous studies. In addition, the study identifies the institutional dimension that contributes to reduced economic growth in developing countries.

Women’s empowerment remains a key development challenge in Kenya. The purpose of this study is to attempt to understand the status of women’s empowerment and the key contributors to their disempowerment in Kenya’s aquaculture sector.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 534 male and female fish farmers from 300 households drawn from six counties in Kenya (Kakamega, Kisumu, Kisii, Kiambu, Meru and Nyeri). The Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) was adapted to Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Fisheries and Aquaculture Index (A-WEFI) to suit the aquaculture and fisheries sub-sector. The adapted A-WEFI was then used to estimate and the status of women’s and men’s using five domains of empowerment (5DE) and a gender parity index (GPI). Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Cramer’s V and sensitivity analysis as test statistics.

About 86% of the men and 80% of the women were classified as empowered. The mean score of the 5DE was 0.93 and 0.95 for women and men, respectively. In addition, 82% of the households achieved gender parity, suggesting that for such households, empowerment of men was no greater than that of women. Overall, the results suggest no major differences between the empowerment of women and men. Findings suggest areas of improvement in empowerment: when observed separately, women report lack of agency in production, resource, time-use and allocation and leadership.

This paper adapts the A-WEAI to the fisheries and aquaculture context, in bid to bridge the gap in standard women’s empowerment measurement methods in this area. Also, there are limited empirical studies on the multifaceted empowerment of women in aquaculture in Kenya. The findings are meant to serve as a point of reference for policymakers, as they develop gender-responsive intervention programmes, and in implementing gender mainstreaming in Kenya.

The Purpose of the study was to investigate the construct validity and internal consistency of the LaMI among staff in the context of elderly care in Sweden.

Questionnaire data from a longitudinal study of staff working in elderly care were used. Data were collected using the Leadership and Management Inventory. First data collection was for explorative factor analysis (n = 1,149), and the second collection, one year later, was for confirmatory factor analysis (n = 1,061).

The explorative factor analysis resulted in a two-factor solution that explained 70.2% of the total variance. Different models were tested in the confirmatory factor analysis. The final model, a two-factor solution where three items were omitted, showed acceptable results.

The instrument measures both leadership and management performance and can be used to continually measure managers’ performances as perceived by staff to identify areas for development.

This paper aims to investigate the determinants of global interest in central bank digital currency (CBDC). It assessed whether global interest in sustainable development and cryptocurrency are determinants of global interest in CBDC.

Google Trends data were analyzed using two-stage least square regression estimation.

There is a significant positive relationship between global interest in sustainable development and global interest in CBDC. There is a significant positive relationship between global interest in cryptocurrency and global interest in the Nigeria eNaira CBDC. There is a significant negative relationship between global interest in CBDC and global interest in the eNaira CBDC. There is a significant positive relationship between global interest in CBDC and global interest in the China eCNY. There is a significant negative relationship between global interest in cryptocurrency and global interest in the Sand Dollar and DCash.

The literature has not empirically examined whether global interest in sustainable development and cryptocurrency are factors motivating global interest in CBDC. This study fills a gap in the literature by investigating whether global interest in sustainable development and cryptocurrency are factors motivating global interest in CBDC.