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This chapter investigates the social determinants (urbanisation, population, literacy and corruption) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the top 100 developed and developing emitting countries. The data were collected from central repositories for the different variables explored for the period 2012–2020 in a cross-country analysis. Fixed effects ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to analyse the data. The results for all top 100 countries and developing countries show that urbanisation and corruption are significantly positive and negative determinants of GHG emissions, respectively. In addition, literacy is a significant positive determinant of GHG emissions in developing countries but not in the top 100 and developed countries. Population is not significant in the top 100 developed and developing countries. The results for the control variables suggest that primary energy consumption is a positive significant determinant of GHG emissions in the top 100 developed and developing countries. However, gross domestic product (GDP) is not a significant determinant of GHG emissions. The findings have important policy implications.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether COVID-19 had an impact on the brand equity of the Top 100 global brands in the Americas, European and Asian regions over the three years of assessment (2020–2022).

A secondary data method (document scanning) was used to gather the study’s data from Brand Finance’s Global 500 annual reports from 2019 to 2022. The data for this study was analysed using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0. The data were subjected to a descriptive test and one-way analysis of variance.

The findings showed that most of the Top 100 global brands from the Americas, Europe and Asia experienced little or no impact due to COVID-19. Thus, no significant differences were found to exist among the Top 100 global regional brands due to COVID-19 in the years 2020 and 2021. However, there is a significant difference in 2022 due to its small effect size.

The findings of this paper contribute to brand equity literature and global branding literature in the context of COVID-19. This paper innovatively frames brand equity and provides guidelines to help brands sustain their financial-based brand equity during a worldwide crisis.

This paper seeks to address the question: should the world's top universities be led by top researchers, and are they?

The lifetime citations are counted by hand of the leaders of the world's top 100 universities identified in a global university ranking. These numbers are then normalised by adjusting for the different citation conventions across academic disciplines. Two statistical measures are used – Pearson's correlation coefficient and Spearman's ρ.

This study documents a positive correlation between the lifetime citations of a university's president and the position of that university in the global ranking. Better universities are run by better researchers. The results are not driven by outliers. That the top universities in the world – who have the widest choice of candidates – systematically appoint top researchers as their vice chancellors and presidents seems important to understand. This paper also shows that the pattern of presidents' life‐time citations follows a version of Lotka's power law.

There are two main areas of contribution. First, this paper attempts to use bibliometric data to address a performance‐related question of a type not seen before (to the author's knowledge). Second, despite the importance of research to research universities – as described in many mission‐statements – no studies currently exist that ask whether it matters if the head of a research university is himself or herself a committed researcher. Given the importance of universities in the world, and the difficulty that many have in appointing leaders, this question seems pertinent.

Human resource development (HRD) as an applied discipline is an example of a scholarly field that has emerged through the collaboration of scholars and practitioners with backgrounds in various foundational disciplines. This study interested in both the influence of other disciplines on HRD research and in HRD’s influence on other disciplines. The purpose of this study is to take stock of the relationships between HRD research and research in other academic disciplines affecting and affected by HRD research.

The study used content analysis of the top 100 most frequently cited empirical articles published in three HRD journals between 2000 and 2019 to identify disciplinary foundations of HRD research. The influence of HRD on other disciplines was scrutinized through citation analysis of work citing the top 100 articles. In addition, categorizing the 100 articles into six research themes, the influence of six research themes on citation patterns was explored.

The findings indicated that empirical research in HRD, as represented by the top 100 articles, relied mainly on theories and frameworks from two disciplines, management and psychology. Another important finding is that the top 100 HRD articles were cited most often in management publications and the rate of citation in management journals has been growing rapidly since 2005. The citation frequency of HRD articles in other disciplines including psychology, social sciences, education and medicine and nursing shows a general upward trend as well. In addition, there was a difference in disciplines providing theoretical foundations to the HRD articles and citing the articles depending on six predominant research themes, identified in HRD articles.

This study empirically identified theories and disciplines contributing to HRD research, considering the influence of cited research on the HRD articles through content analysis. In addition, the findings of this study broadened the understanding of the relationship between HRD research and other disciplines by examining the contributions of HRD articles to other disciplines. Finally, this research provided new information regarding the changes in dominant themes in HRD research over time.

Bourdieu’s construct of the field of power has received relatively little attention despite its novelty and theoretical potential. This paper explores the meaning and implications of the construct, and integrates it into a wider conception of the formation and functioning of elites at the highest level in society. Drawing on an extensive dataset profiling the careers of members of the French business elite, it compares and contrasts those who enter the field of power with those who fail to qualify for membership, exploring why some succeed as hyper-agents while others do not. The alliance of social origin and educational attainment, class and meritocracy, emerges as particularly compelling. The field of power is shown to be relatively variegated and fluid, connecting agents from different life worlds. Methodologically, this paper connects biographical data of top French directors with the field of power in France in a novel way, while presenting an operationalization of Bourdieu’s concept of the field of power as applied to the French elite.

The purpose of this paper is to explore emerging trends in the content of codes of ethics of US Fortune 100 and Global 100 corporate web sites through a longitudinal study.

The web sites of the 200 companies were surfed and the relevant documents of the codes of ethics were extracted to separate text files. The computer files were then mined using the customized developed software and each ethical keyword was counted. The number of filed codes of ethics was 95 for both the 100 US‐based and the 100 Global‐based companies.

In addition to the content analysis of the ethic codes of the studied groups and finding high‐frequency ethical keywords, the results of this study indicate a convergence of the contents. Moreover, the results also show that the ethical codes are now more readily available on corporations’ web sites; that is a sign of higher level of disclosure of ethical codes compared to that in 2006. Finally, this research proposes some hypotheses to explain the changes from 2006 to 2009.

Many smaller corporations and start‐up companies can benefit from the results of this study by comparing their codes of ethics with those of the major US and global companies, using key ethical phrases that are discussed here. Moreover, US companies wanting to establish new subsidiaries in other countries can also take advantage of the results of this study. They can find out what are the common dissimilarities between American corporates and other international firms, from ethical point of view, when they want to reach a uniform code of ethics.

Longitudinal study of the content of codes of ethics can help in encouraging firms to give consideration to ethical issues. This research is the first attempt to study the ethical standards adopted by the major US and global corporations, before and after the global financial crisis.

This study analyses the content of codes of ethics of the world's top firms and compares Fortune 500 and global 500 companies, considering the frequency of ethical keywords on their codes. It also compares the similarities and differences and indicates whether the content is divergent or convergent. The study also shows how the disclosure of codes of ethics has changed in the time‐span of research.

To properly assess the relative places of China and the United States in the world system, the fact of the transformation of old, and the emergence of new, centers of capital accumulation needs to be established, and some attempt made to develop means of measuring these developments. This paper, working within the framework of Uneven and Combined Development, will suggest a new metric by which we can assess the geography of capital accumulation in the world economy, a metric with three components. The first component examines national income, both per capita and as shares of the world total. The second component refines the latter to an examination of share of world manufacturing, with a specific examination of distribution of the key sector of high-technology manufacturing. The third and final component examines the distribution of large corporations through the world economy, and introduces a new term – the relative weight of large corporations. All components of this metric suggest that key aspects of the modern economy remain “territorially bound” and clearly reveal the steady, long-term decline of the United States as the dominant center of capital accumulation, and the simultaneous emergence of new centers of capital accumulation in an increasingly multi-polar world economy.

This paper aims to examine how the Master of Business Administration (MBA) curricula of top-ranked business schools are offering stand-alone courses on ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). To provide additional evidence, this study tests some hypotheses to contrast the effect of different variables on the inclusion of stand-alone courses on ethics and CSR. Also, the paper provides a comparative analysis in two ways: one comparison aims to analyse how the presence of ethics and CSR stand-alone courses in the MBA programmes over the past 10 years has evolved, and the other comparison seeks to explore whether there are differences between different rankings with regard to the inclusion of ethics and CSR stand-alone courses in the MBA curricula.

A Web content analysis was conducted on the curricula of 92 of the top 100 global MBA programmes ranked by the Financial Times in their 2013 ratings.

The findings show that there is a trend towards the inclusion of stand-alone courses on CSR and ethics as electives. Empirically, the findings suggest that the presence of ethics and CSR elective stand-alone subjects in the MBA programmes is explained by the following variables: public/private, business school’s accreditation and cultural influence. Comparatively, the findings suggest that requiring CSR and business ethics stand-alone courses in the MBA programmes ranked by the Financial Times have not increased over the past 10 years. In addition, when we have compared the results of this study with other rankings, we have appreciated that there are important differences between top MBA programmes in accordance with the aims and scope of rankings.

The findings of this study seem to suggest that business schools included in the Financial Times ranking have not changed their view based on a shareholder approach, which is focused on providing an economics-centred training.

This paper aims to explore Web 2.0 technologies usage and trends in the top 100 US academic libraries as exemplified through the academic library websites.

The top 100 universities were selected from the US News & World Report's (USNWR) 2013 ranked list's top 100 of the best colleges in the USA. Content analysis was used in terms of quantitative approach. A checklist was developed as the main research instrument based on other checklists and questionnaires. Each of the selected university library websites was visited within a period of two weeks to explore implementation and usage of web tools, including SNS, blog, RSS, wikis, podcast/vodcast, and social bookmarking/tagging.

All 100 academic libraries had a social media presence on Facebook and Twitter, making SNS the most widely applied Web 2.0 tool. The wiki was the least applied Web 2.0 technology, with a 34 percent participation rate. Blog was the second most popular tool with a 99 percent participation rate, followed by RSS and IM/Chat with 97 percent and 91 percent respectively. The vodcast and podcast had 47 percent and 46 percent participation rates respectively, while social bookmarking/tagging were also used by 39 percent of the academic libraries.

This study is completely based on publicly available data regarding usage of Web 2.0 applications. Web 2.0 tools used on library intranets were not analyzed for this study. Outcomes suggest that academic libraries are increasingly using Web 2.0 applications to promote themselves, enhance library services, and highlight resources to patrons.

This is the first research that draws an overall picture of the usage and trends of Web 2.0 applications in the top 100 US academic libraries. This study demonstrates some noticeable patterns regarding usage, trends, and adoption which are relevant to how Web 2.0 applications are perceived and used within academic libraries. The study provides academic libraries with helpful information to better meet their user needs by effectively applying Web 2.0. Additionally, library managers, librarians and other libraries may also find this research beneficial as they plan to deploy Web 2.0.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the degree to which business schools, in particular MBA programs, have developed academic programs and centers specifically focused on corporate social responsibility and sustainability (CSRS) and, for those that have, promote them on their Web sites. The instruction of CSRS in institutions of higher education is increasing worldwide. The extent to which US MBA programs have developed academic programs and centers focused on CSRS could potentially be a way for business schools to distinguish themselves from other schools.

The authors use a Web-based search of the Web sites of the top-100 US MBA programs to ascertain the extent to which they have developed CSRS-related academic programs and centers. They then look specifically at the full-time MBA main Web page to ascertain to what extent these programs promote CSRS material.

The results suggest that schools in the top quarter and bottom quarter, as well as private schools, are more likely to have CSRS academic programs and centers. The authors also find that very few full-time MBA programs promote CSRS on their main MBA Web pages.

This study is unique in its focus on the top-100 US MBA programs and the collection of primary data directly from their Web sites. Additionally, a summary of the data gathered from the MBA programs is provided in Table I of the study.