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This paper aims to provide a comprehensive view of the different competition-based approaches that policymakers can exploit to foster external knowledge search and their positioning among innovation policy measures. A growing number of companies have implemented initiatives to access external knowledge to increase their innovativeness, consistently with the open innovation paradigm. Competition-based approaches have received increasing attention by the private sector as a way to access external knowledge. However, despite their potential role as innovation policy measures, a limited attention has been devoted so far to investigate them from the policymakers’ perspective.

To this aim, a two-stage empirical analysis has been carried out to develop a taxonomy of competition-based approaches. The first stage leveraged a multiple case study methodology including a sample of 20 competition-based approaches, while the second one leveraged interviews with Italian and European key informants.

This paper proposes a novel taxonomy including eight competition-based approaches, which differ among each other in terms of policy strategy, scope breadth and output required. Moreover, this paper enriches a well-established taxonomy of innovation policy instruments with the identified competition-based approaches.

This study contributes to the current debate on innovation policy by providing a taxonomy that includes eight competition-based approaches that can be exploited by policymakers to foster external knowledge search as well as their positioning among the innovation policy instruments. The taxonomy will hopefully support policymakers in identifying of the most suitable instruments in the light of their policy strategy and objectives.

This paper intended to explore the knowledge and use of the digital verbs and tools by the students and teachers for conceptual understanding in the virtual and conventional learning environment. The study also explored the use of such digital tools for lower- and higher-order thinking.

A survey research method was used for the study. All the students and teachers of the faculty of education from one virtual and one conventional university were the population of this study. Teachers were selected through census sampling. Student enrollment in the faculty of education of the virtual university during Spring 2019 was 1,139 while the conventional university had 1,809 students. In total, 20% of the students from each of the two universities were sampled by using a convenient proportionate sampling technique. A questionnaire was developed by the researchers and validated by three experts before administration. The reliability of the instrument was a = 0.934. Mean, SD, parametric and nonparametric statistics were applied for data analysis.

The study reveals that the students of ODL are far better in using digital tools and activities that is, googling, collaborating and Skyping. They are good at understanding and application levels and are involved in higher-order thinking tasks, that is, publishing and podcasting as well. Unlike the students, the teachers of the virtual university are using digital tools of lower-order thinking. The authors infer that the students and teachers of the online universities are using these tools regularly because of the demands of the ODL environment. These findings suggest further research to explore the factors that hinder the use of higher-order thinking skills by the teachers in the online environment.

The study suggests the adoption of Bloom's digital taxonomy in teaching–learning processes, that is, curriculum, instructions and assessment for the millennials. The findings may motivate the online and conventional higher education institutions to adopt digital pedagogy for instructional purposes as the students of the digital age are already extensively involved with digital tools.

Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular channel for project fundraising for entrepreneurial ventures. Such efforts require fundraisers to develop and manage a crowdfunding campaign over a period of time and several stages. Thus, the authors aim to identify the stages fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign process and how their engagement evolves throughout this process.

Following a multiple case study research design analysing six successful campaigns, the current study suggests a taxonomy of stages the fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign management process while identifying the types of engagement displayed and their relative intensity at each of these stages.

The study proposes a five-stage process framework (pre-launch, launch, mid-campaign, conclusion and post-campaign), accompanied by a series of propositions outlining the relative intensity of different types of engagement throughout this process. The authors show that engagement levels appear with high intensity at pre-launch, and to a lesser degree also at the post-launch stage while showing low intensity at the stages in between them. More specifically, cognitive and behavioural engagement are most prominent at the pre- and post-launch stages. Emotional engagement is highest during the launch, mid-launch and conclusion stages. And social engagement maintains moderate levels of intensity throughout the process.

This study focuses on the campaign process using engagement theory, thus identifying the differing engagement patterns throughout the dynamic crowdfunding campaign management process, not just in one part.

The service marketing literature has traditionally argued that the marketing practices of service firms that operate in diverse cultures should also differ. This paper aims to investigate this argument by examining the marketing practices of service firms in two highly diverse countries “Canada and Qatar” in the context of a contemporary conceptual framework.

Survey data were collected in both countries using a self-administered questionnaire that was used in previous contemporary marketing practice (CMP) studies. The data analysis was conducted in two stages. First, descriptive statistics were used to determine cross-national differences in the intensity of use of various CMP activities in Qatar compared to Canada. Second, cross-national differences in various combinations of marketing practices were identified using a cluster analysis.

The results indicate that service firms in both countries have more similarities than differences and that the overall patterns of marketing practices are similar. In addition, the firms’ marketing practices reflect aspects of all four marketing approaches rather than just one.

The study was conducted in only two countries, thus generalisability of its findings and conclusions may not be possible.

The results of this study can help marketers to better understand the changing marketing environment and identify new marketing solutions when operating in different environments.

This study enhances the literature on service marketing and expands the application of the CMP framework to a new context that has not been addressed in previous studies.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate final projects in a freshman leadership course (combining grounding in leadership theories with a service-learning component) to determine what students learned about leadership, themselves as developing leaders, and leading in the civic community, and how deeply they learned these concepts. Students found situational leadership theories, team leadership theories, and leadership principles (Drath, 2001) most relevant to their experiences. Personally, students learned about themselves as individuals, leaders, team members, and community members. Civically, students learned how to apply leadership theories, work in teams, and about the community as a system. In terms of depth of learning, based on Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy, students were able to identify, describe, and apply concepts and to some extent analyze and synthesize them. These findings suggest that using service learning to help students learn about both the theory and practice of leadership is a viable alternative.

This paper examines the effect of ESG ratings and its dimensions (environmental, social and governance) on the financial performance of JSE-listed firms included in FTSE/JSE Responsible Investment Index.

The paper employs panel data covering 40 JSE-listed firms included in FTSE/JSE Responsible Investment Index between 2015 and 2019. The paper employs the two-stage least squares (2SLS) instrumental variable regression technique to estimate the effect of ESG ratings and its dimensions (environmental, social and governance) on both accounting- and market-based performance indicators.

The results of the two-stage least squares instrumental estimation analysis reveal that investment in ESG initiatives improves both accounting- and market-based indicators of financial performance. Of the ESG pillars, the paper finds environmental initiatives improves firms' financial bottom line and market performance, while a firm's social and governance practices are observed to have no effect on a firm's accounting and market performance measures.

The insights from this study proffers policy implications for firms' management, investors and regulatory authorities.

As far as the authors are concerned, this paper presents the first empirical analysis on the contribution of ESG ratings on financial performance in South Africa.

Practices of transfer pricing in among companies having “special relationship” (hubungan istimewa in Bahasa Indonesia, this study uses a term of ‘related party’) to others are very common nowadays. However, the complexity of transfer pricing strategy and practices in many companies made the use of individual level data become insufficient, therefore we conduct an ethnographic study to explore how taxpayer determines the reasonable transfer pricing based on five methods (i.e. Comparable uncontrolled Price/CUP, Resale Price/RPM, Cost Plus, Transactional Net Margin Method/TNMM and Profit Split Method/PSM).This research aims to execute a tax strategy based on those methods, which finally derive the amount of product price according to arm.s length transfer pricing rule. We collected the data through interviews, observation and literatures. They are based on several months of personal experience of field research in and around the manufacturing enterprise. The results showed that the tax expense could be reduced by using Cost Plus Method, but practically, the application of this method requires more in-depth analysis and a very reliable & comparative data so the company must spend a lot of cost and time to process it. The Transactional Net Profit Method is proved to be the best application for the enterprise to optimize tax expenses because the data used for the analysis were more accessible which saved time and costs.