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The history of the profession in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries is not a long one; it results from their history, their size, their spending on research and innovation, their position in geopolitics and world economy. Nevertheless, what makes it exciting is the fact that we are just at the birth of the profession in the region. Historically, there have been very few professionals either related to or officially recognised as Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs) in CEE countries, resulting in their limited resources and capabilities. Nevertheless, some RMAs have found the way to start mutually beneficial collaboration for the sake of their own professional development, for their institution’s and country’s competitiveness by launching networks of RMAs or using regional or European funds for capacity building and developing training or educational programmes.

This chapter aims to provide a short summary of the profession in CEE countries while highlighting a few cases which show how the RMA profession is moving forward but still lagging behind.

In this chapter, we provide further insights into challenges and opportunities as perceived by Research Managers and Administrators (RMAs) and previously described in Chapter 4.6 (Professionalism section, Part 1). The study provides a bird’s-eye view of the current state of the RMA profession in the Western Balkans (WB) and offers a set of recommendations for future research.

Develop a comprehensive framework for assessing the knowledge organization systems (KOSs), including the taxonomy of Wikipedia and the ontologies of Wikidata, with a specific focus on enhancing management and retrieval with a gender nonbinary perspective.

This study employs heuristic and inspection methods to assess Wikipedia’s KOS, ensuring compliance with international standards. It evaluates the efficiency of retrieving non-masculine gender-related articles using the Catalan Wikipedian category scheme, identifying limitations. Additionally, a novel assessment of Wikidata ontologies examines their structure and coverage of gender-related properties, comparing them to Wikipedia’s taxonomy for advantages and enhancements.

This study evaluates Wikipedia’s taxonomy and Wikidata’s ontologies, establishing evaluation criteria for gender-based categorization and exploring their structural effectiveness. The evaluation process suggests that Wikidata ontologies may offer a viable solution to address Wikipedia’s categorization challenges.

The assessment of Wikipedia categories (taxonomy) based on KOS standards leads to the conclusion that there is ample room for improvement, not only in matters concerning gender identity but also in the overall KOS to enhance search and retrieval for users. These findings bear relevance for the design of tools to support information retrieval on knowledge-rich websites, as they assist users in exploring topics and concepts.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the sources of real exchange rate fluctuations in Egypt using structural vector autoregression (SVAR). The data covers the period between 1980 and 2016, where exchange regime has been changed more than once.

This paper investigates the source of real exchange rate fluctuations for the period between 1980 and 2016 using the SVAR method. The SVAR method will incorporate real gross domestic product (GDP), real effective exchange rate (REER) and price level in a multidimensional equations system. However, impulse response function (IRF) and error variance decompositions (EVDC) will be generated by the system to have a behavioral insight of real exchange rate in response to economic shocks.

The IRF and EVDC results indicate a significant impact of demand shocks over the real exchange rate relative to supply shocks and monetary shocks in the period between 1980 and 2016. On the other hand, monetary shocks will have a negligible effect on the real exchange rate in the short run and converging to its previous level in the covering period of the study.

In the best of the authors' knowledge, the topic of the source of the real exchange rate fluctuations in Egypt has not been discussed in a wide range due to the lack of time series data. However, this study provides constructed data for REER for Egypt with the published method in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Furthermore, the study involves theoretical and econometric modeling to ensure the reliability of the economic results.

This study aims to explore the role of rebel group legitimacy and ideology in durable peace (DP) following peace agreements to end civil wars. It builds on earlier research showing that justice and civil society involvement are critical in achieving DP. This study adds the impacts of rebel group activities and support on DP. Activities include service delivery and mobilization. Support is gauged with outcomes of presidential and parliamentary elections held following peace agreements.

Five data sets were used to measure the key variables: DP, inclusive commissions (IC), legitimacy symmetry (electoral outcomes), service delivery and ideological mobilization. A measure of rebel group integration in the political system was also constructed. Impacts of the integration, legitimacy and ideology variables were assessed with a hierarchical regression model (HRM). This study begins with a base model drawn from earlier research showing the key predictors were procedural justice (PJ) and IC. The authors ask about the extent to which the rebel group variables contribute additional variance to the prediction of DP.

The main contributors to the prediction of DP were PJ, IC and integration in the political system. None of the legitimacy or mobilization variables added significant variance to the prediction. Only one of the mobilization variables, forced recruitment, was significant. The decision to integrate into the political system following the agreement did not mediate the relationship between PJ in the negotiation process and DP. Results of a factor analysis showed that DP, PJ, IC and integration formed a cluster with strong loadings on the first factor.

The negative results for the legitimacy and mobilization variables may not be the last word on rebel group influences. Lack of support for the key hypotheses spurs attempts to discover other sources that contribute to the survival of rebel group actors in the political system and, in turn, to DP.

The issues raised by this study contribute to debates about ways to attain peaceful relations among competing groups following a civil war. It appears that attention to factors inside and around the negotiation process (PJ, ICs and conversion) may be more important than rebel group activities outside of these processes. The results call attention, in particular, to the important role played by political integration. From a policy perspective, it would be useful to develop levers for encouraging rebel groups to emerge as political actors in the post-agreement environment.

Developing measures of the symmetry of rebel group legitimacy and integration in the context of a comparative case study are the primary original contributions of this study. Furthermore, the mode of analysis (HRM) is novel in this literature. This approach builds on and extends the earlier research on factors influencing DP.

The paper aims to examine agrochemical traders’ tax morale in three Ghanaian regions.

Primary data were collected from 92 respondents using structured questionnaires. A multistage sampling technique was employed and used in selecting respondents.. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and quantile regression analysis were used to analyse data obtained via the questionnaires.

The study found tax reporting knowledge, tax calculating knowledge and tax payment knowledge to be the keen factors influencing agrochemical traders’ tax knowledge. It was also revealed that age, religion and marriage positively influence the tax morale of traders. Inversely, gender, high level of education and monthly sales were found to affect tax morale negatively. Moreover, trust (respect, trustworthiness and expertise knowledge) negatively influenced tax morale. Authorities’ tax knowledge and power (sanction and lockdown) were revealed to impact tax morale positively. However, tax morale decreases amongst agrochemical traders with higher tax morale when sanction increases.

Unlike previous studies which focussed on tax morale amongst individuals and firms outside the agribusiness sector, this study examined the tax morale within the informal agrochemical trading sector, which has recently attracted colossal patronage due to the high usage of agrochemicals amongst farmers in Africa and Ghana. This study also assumed tax morale to be at different levels; hence the factors that affect the morale at different levels differ. Therefore, the study examined the factors influencing tax morale amongst agrochemical traders by segregating tax morale into quartiles. Relating to theory, the economic deterrence theory was used to ground the study, which is not usually used in most tax morale studies.

The total defence (TD) concept constitutes a joint endeavour between the military forces and civil defence structures within a TD state. Logistics is essential for such joint collaboration to work; however, the mismatch between military and civil defence logistics structures poses challenges for such joint collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to identify logistics concept areas within the TD framework that allow for military and civil defence collaborations from a logistics operations perspective.

Pattern-matching analysis is used to compare patterns found in the investigated case with those prescribed from the literature and predicted to occur. The study seeks to identify logistics concepts within TD from the literature and from the events describing the Swedish response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Pattern matching thus allows for the reconciliation of logistics concepts from the literature to descriptions of how the response was handled, albeit under a TD framework.

Findings show quite distinct foci between the theoretical and observational realms in terms of logistics applications. While the theoretical realm identifies four main logistics concepts, the observational realm identifies five logistics conceptual themes. This goes on to show an incongruence between the military and civil parts of the TD.

This study provides basis for further research into the applications and management of logistics activity within TD and emergency response.

Logistics applications within TD have not, until now, received much attention in the literature. Given this knowledge gap, this study is of original value.

Although there is a growing body of work on immigrants' information behavior, little is known about the pre-arrival information experiences of immigrants who consult formal information sources such as immigration agents. Drawn from a larger study on the information behavior of immigrants, this paper mainly reports the semi-structured interview findings on the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants who used formal information sources with discussion on how that affected their post-arrival settlement into Canada.

The study used a mixed method approach with semi-structured interviews (n = 60) and surveys (n = 205) with participants who arrived in Canada between the years of 1971 and 2017. Data were collected from May 2017 to February 2018.

Although the overall scope of the original study is much larger, this paper features findings on the pre-arrival information experiences derived mainly from an analysis of interview data. This study provides insights into the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants consulting formal information sources such as immigration firms, individual immigration consultants and more formal government agencies. The author introduces a new concept of “information crafting” by exploring the negative consequences of selective information sharing by immigration consultants/agents in newcomers' settlements in Canada, primarily positive information about life in Canada, sometimes with exaggeration and falsification. The interview participants shared story after the story of the settlement challenges they faced after arriving in Canada and how the expectations they built through the information received from immigration consultants and government agencies did not match after arrival. This study emphasizes the importance of providing comprehensive information about life in Canada to potential newcomers so that they can make informed decisions even before they apply.

The findings of this study have theoretical and practical implications for policy and research. This study provides insights into the complicated culturally situated pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants. Moreover, the study findings encourage researchers in various disciplines, including psychology, migration studies and geography, to delve more deeply into newcomers' information experiences using an informational lens to examine the information newcomers receive from diverse sources and their effects on their post-arrival settlement in a new country. The study challenges the general assumptions that formal information sources are always reputable, useful, and comprehensive, and it provides some future directions for research that seeks to understand the culturally situated information behavior of diverse immigrant groups.

The reasons for and experiences during migration, as well as additional stressors in the new host country, may give rise to mental health problems and additional need for public services. The purpose of the study was to investigate factors related to service utilization among newly arrived refugee youth.

Cross-sectional data were gathered in Sweden where 37 youth aged between 19 and 23 reported on factors related to service utilization, encompassing health-care and support services in school. These factors included predisposition (demographic), need (migration status and mental wellbeing) and enablement (living situation). Service utilization was estimated using multiple logistic regression analysis.

About a fourth of the sample used psychosocial services. Use of general support was more common. Neither predisposing, need nor enabling factors were associated with the use of psychosocial or general health-related services.

Self-reported factors related to use of health-related services have previously not been investigated for refugee youth, which is important in assuring access to appropriate services for this exposed youth population.

The business landscapes in Asia and Africa are predominantly characterized by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) facing significant resource constraints. Understanding the capability dynamics of these enterprises in such contexts carries significant implications for theory and practice. This paper aims to addresses a crucial question of whether increasing customer involvement capability consistently yields the necessary rent for enterprises operating under resource constraints in emerging markets in Asia and Africa. By investigating this question, the paper offers SMEs a more nuanced approach to capability development, enabling them to achieve better returns on their investments.

To ensure the robustness of the findings, data were collected from SME service firms operating in two emerging economies: India (Asia) and Ghana (Africa). Data were collected in two waves to allow for catering to specific environmental conditions not accounted for in the study. Two-stage data analysis was then conducted to test the hypothesized relationships across the two countries.

The findings reveal that customer involvement capability does not always lead to an increase in firm-level competitiveness, and the effect follows an inverted U-shaped pattern. However, the nature of this relationship varies under different market conditions in both contexts. Specifically, in periods of low customer demand and intense competition, the relationship is linear and positive. On the other hand, in periods of high demand and competition, the relationship becomes inverted U-shaped, returning to a direct relationship with firm-level competitiveness.

This paper provides a resolution to the critical issue of whether customer involvement capability consistently delivers firm performance benefits, particularly for resource-constrained SMEs in emerging markets. By explaining how SMEs in emerging markets can fully capitalize on their capability development to optimize their resources, this paper makes a distinctive contribution. Moreover, it sheds light on the importance of aligning involvement capabilities with prevailing market conditions for SMEs to reap the maximum benefits.