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Recent gender-related research has focused on how gender affects work–life balance (WLB), particularly whether men and women have similar difficulties balancing work and family demands. However, to broaden WLB research beyond its concentration on employees to a different population, this study investigates the WLB experiences of single student-working mothers.

This article uses a qualitative study using three focus groups to compare Nigerian and British single student-working mothers' WLB experiences and coping strategies or mechanisms adopted in these two contexts.

The findings indicate that, regardless of nationality, single student-working mothers are affected by inter-role conflict, role ambiguity, role strain, role overload and external role pressures, which make achieving WLB a herculean task. Nevertheless, given the different political, economic and socio-cultural landscapes of the two countries, the extent to which the aforementioned factors impact single student-working mothers varies and influences the range of coping mechanisms adopted in the two contexts.

The insights gleaned from this study suggest that there are huge challenges for single student-working mothers in terms of achieving WLB due to their status as students, workers and mothers. Combining these roles negatively affect their WLB and level of productivity and effectiveness, at home, at work and at university. This poses significant implications for human resource structures, policies and practices. The authors suggest that single student-mothers should learn from their counterparts' experiences and coping mechanisms, and that organisations and government should also provide adequate support to help them combine their challenging roles. This would ease the tension associated with combining multiple roles and enhance their well-being and WLB.

The study calls for a re-examination of WLB policies and practices at organisational and national levels to ensure that single student-working mothers are well supported to enhance their productivity and WLB.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of work-life-balance (WLB) challenges for Nigerian female medical doctors. This study focusses on Nigeria, which its peculiar socio-cultural, institutional and professional realities constitute WLB as well as social sustainability (SS) challenge for female medical doctors.

Relying on qualitative, interpretivist approach and informed by institutional theory, this study explores how Nigeria’s institutional environment and workplace realities engender WLB challenges, which consequently impact SS for female doctors. In total, 43 semi-structured interviews and focus group session involving eight participants were utilised for empirical analysis.

The study reveals that factors such as work pressure, cultural expectations, unsupportive relationships, challenging work environment, gender role challenges, lack of voice/participation, and high stress level moderate the ability of female medical doctors to manage WLB and SS. It also identifies that socio-cultural and institutional demands on women show that these challenges, while common to female physicians in other countries, are different and more intense in Nigeria because of their unique professional, socio-cultural and institutional frameworks.

The implications of the WLB and SS requires scholarship to deepen as well as extend knowledge on contextual disparities in understanding these concepts from developing countries perspective, which is understudied.

This study offers fresh insights into the WLB and SS concepts from the non-western context, such as Nigeria, highlighting the previously understudied challenges of WLB and SS and their implications for female doctors.

Does the self-employed nature of entrepreneurs’ business ventures mean that they have perfect boundaries between their work and nonwork lives? Drawing on border theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine entrepreneurs’ work–life balance (WLB) in terms of how they construct and manage the borders between their work and nonwork lives.

The authors adopt a qualitative research approach to enhance their insight into entrepreneurs’ WLB using border theory. The study benefits from its empirical focus on Nigerian migrants in London who represent a distinct minority group living in urban areas in the developed world. Data for the study was collected over a three-month period, utilising semi-structured interviews as the primary method of data collection.

The study’s findings indicate that entrepreneurs prioritise “work” over “life” and reveal that entrepreneurs have little desire for boundaries as they work everywhere, which makes long working hours prevalent among them. Furthermore, the findings bring to the fore the prevalent social anomaly of entrepreneurs preferring to be unmarried, single and even divorced as a result of or associated with the entrepreneurs’ boundaries creation and management.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the limited and selected sample of the research.

Research on human resource management (HRM) in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or businesses in which entrepreneurs operate is still under developed. The issue of the size and the nature of an organisation (i.e. labour or product market influences, ownership structures, etc.) have profound implications for human resources (HR) structures, policies and practices and the quality of the WLB of entrepreneurs. Research on HRM and entrepreneurship is still evolving. Consequently, HRM in several entrepreneurial business ventures is sometimes (if not often) organisationally fluid and ad hoc. The main implication for this work environment is that there may be little structure in HRM policies and processes to help self-employed entrepreneurs in their ability to comprehensively manage border crossing and to achieve WLB.

This paper provides valuable insights into entrepreneurs’ work/nonwork boundaries, which is hugely influenced by the commodification of time and money. It also enriches work–life border theory and its social constructionist perspective.

The chapter discusses Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) with appropriate theoretical framings with the intent of creating a deeper understanding and application of CSR theories in Ibero-America’s hospitality industry. The research method is a qualitative research approach relying on critical review of scholarly articles on CSR theories. The sourced articles were critically discussed and analysed to fit the needs of the hospitality industry in Ibero-America. The shareholder/agency, stakeholder, legitimacy, instrumental, social contract, conflict, green and communication theories were identified as the eight dominant theories of CSR with diverse applications in the hospitality industry. The CSR theories discussed are not exhaustive, as there are emerging theories that explicate CSR in different contexts. The implication is that better understanding and application of CSR theories would strengthen conceptual, theoretical and empirical research in Ibero-America. The CSR theories are useful sources of information for practitioners for designing corporate CSR policies as well as providing scholars with sound theoretical framework for academic research. The chapter is a novel attempt at bridging theory and practice in the field of CSR, as well enriching the understanding of this concept among both practitioners and scholars in Ibero-America.

Diverse understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) abounds among scholars and practitioners in Nigeria. The purpose of this chapter is to reinvent CSR in Nigeria through a deeper understanding of the meaning and theories of this nebulous concept for better application in the industry. The qualitative research approach is adopted, relying on critical review of scholarly articles on CSR, website information of selected companies and institutional documents. It was found that there are diverse meanings of CSR in the reviewed literature, but the philanthropic initiatives and corporate donations for social issues are the common CSR practices in Nigeria. Besides, the eight dominant theories of CSR that find relevance for applications in the industry are shareholder/agency, stakeholder, legitimacy, instrumental, social contract, conflict, green and communication theories. The implication of the discourse is that better understanding and application of CSR theories would strengthen conceptual, theoretical and empirical research in the field of CSR. Besides, CSR theories are useful sources of information for practitioners for designing social responsibility policies and practices as well as for providing scholars with sound theoretical framework for academic research.

Funding infrastructural facilities of higher institutions, especially in some developing nations such as Nigeria, that is under-funded, is a challenge in the current era. Private organisations participation in infrastructure development via a proposed expanded corporate social responsibility (ECSR) may enhance infrastructural facilities provision. There is a paucity of literature regarding ECSR, a form of infrastructure tax relief providing infrastructural facilities for higher institutions. Therefore, the study investigated the role of private organisations via a proposed ECSR in the provision of infrastructure and proffer ways to enhance higher institutions' infrastructure development delivery in Nigeria.

The study data were collated via face-to-face interviews and observation of existing buildings. From the six geo-political zones, two higher institutions each were selected for a good representation across Nigeria. Saturation was achieved with 26 participants interviewed. The emerged three main themes were analysed via thematic analysis.

Findings show inadequate infrastructure development in Nigerian higher institutions. Lack of policy and institutional framework, lax governance, level of transparency, and corruption, emerged as the key issues that may hinder private organisations from participating in public higher institutions infrastructure development delivery in Nigeria via ECSR. Others are lack of autonomy, inadequate planning, high level of impunity, political affiliation, poor management, and access to funding. The study proffers some recommendations based on these findings.

This research is restricted to the role of private organisations via ECSR in infrastructure development (buildings) in Nigeria's public higher institutions. Future study is needed to validate the proposed ECSR framework in developing countries for the provision of buildings for higher institutions in their host communities.

The paper will advance the philosophy of corporate social responsibility to the provision of building facilities in host communities' higher institutions by private companies through tax relief and supported by a proposed Presidential Executive Order.

The proposed ECSR framework can be used to improve building facilities in Nigeria's higher institutions. This may assist and stir up policymakers to explore the proposed model and back up with an established policy such as infrastructure tax relief (ITR) for implementation.

This paper aims to examine the prospect of utilising corporate social responsibility and entrepreneurship (CSRE) as antidotes for mitigating the incidences of poverty, insecurity and underdevelopment in Nigeria. The paper derives its theoretical foundation from the stakeholder, instrumental and legitimacy theories, which all justify the use of CSRE for actualisation of Triple Bottom Line (i.e. the social, economic and environmental concerns of business organisations).

The study used the quantitative research method relying on the use of secondary data published by institutional bodies. The quantitative method entail a systematic extraction of reliable data on corporate social responsibility (CSR), insecurity, poverty and development from the publications of Office of the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria, CLEEN Foundation, National Bureau of Statistics and Central Bank of Nigeria, respectively. For missing years, the authors improvised using projections as well as proxies. The extracted data, which spanned a period of 13 years, were subjected to econometric tests using SPSS, on the basis of which informed conclusions were drawn.

The first econometric result indicates a negative relationship between gross domestic product and poverty. The second result indicates that there is a positive significant relationship between gross domestic product and total crime rate. The third result indicates that there exists a positive relationship between gross domestic product and unemployment rate. The fourth result indicates that there is a negative relationship between gross domestic product and industrial growth rate. The last result indicates that there is a significant positive relationship between gross domestic product and CSR.

The results of this research have macro-level application, hence the outcomes cannot be narrowed to any particular sector of the economy. A micro-level analysis across diverse sectors of the economy is recommended in future studies. The implication of this empirical research is that policymakers in the Nigerian private sector need to reinvent their CSR programmes as mechanisms for poverty eradication, entrepreneurship development (CSRE), dousing tension of restive youth, empowerment/support for security agencies for better crime prevention and for impacting on sustainable development.

In the face of dwindling financial resources in the treasury of governments, the reinvention of CSRE by private sector organisations as complementary mechanisms for combating social problems is becoming acceptable in both developed and developing nations. This paper therefore boldly recommends that policymakers reinvent CSRE as development mechanisms through a sound partnership between government, advocacy groups and business corporations in Nigeria.

The paper explicates that CSR can indeed be reinvented by corporations as part of their social concerns to their operating environment instead of leaving all social problems to governments.

The research lends credence to stakeholder, instrumental and legitimacy theories of CSR. It also justifies the plausibility of CSRE, a novel concept being promoted in this research.

This paper reviews and analyzes the corporate social responsibility (CSR) legal framework worldwide, discussing the new CSR definition which comprises legal features and debates for and against CSR validation. The work contributes in linking CSR and corporate laws by considering the legislative approaches worldwide.

CSR has mostly a voluntary character whilst it entails a normative condition attributable to social and market demands. A detailed examination of CSR worldwide is presented paying attention to international CSR legal framework in Europe, USA, Asia, Africa and Australia. Arguments for and against CSR legalization are studied.

The authors show that more regulations have to be launched mainly concerning the consequences of corporations' activities impacting the environment. Governments should promote CSR and relative encouragements focusing on a win-win state of affairs for companies.

It seems that in the future, more regulations will be established particularly concerning the effect of companies' activities toward the environment. Little research has been conducted on the legal aspect of CSR; therefore, future research should focus on this, providing new insights. Analysis in sector level will be helpful and instructive.

Many further disputes have to be worked out to set up and support arrangements which will direct and observe conversions into sustainable, habitable and low pollution.

The authors examine and discuss in details CSR schemes around the world concentrating to the international CSR legal framework in Europe, the USA, Asia, Africa and Australia. At the same time, the authors study the arguments for and against CSR legalization.