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There is a dearth of research that investigates the impact of national culture on budgeting and management indexes in the public sector across developing countries. Limited studies in accounting and management have explained the role of national culture in shaping organisational and individual values. It is posited that national cultural variables impact budget transparency and performance management. This study contributes to the literature by examining these relations in 16 developing countries.

Adopting an unbalanced timing framework, the current paper seeks to fulfill this gap and applies four cultural dimensions from the GLOBE study (House et al., 2004) as explanatory variables to investigate whether national culture is associated with budget transparency and performance management or not, particularly in the context of developing countries. The paper uses budget transparency as the first dependent variable, based on the OECD database from Qi and Mensah (2011), along with performance management as the second dependent variable, from the BTI Project (2016), according to the leadership's political performance management.

Generally, the empirical findings reveal a minimal relation among GLOBE cultural variables with budget transparency and performance management. Particularly, the empirical findings indicate that only performance orientation has a significant relation with budget transparency and performance management.

The findings of this paper suggest that any plan to improve a nation's budget transparency should consider the links between budgeting, performance management and the culture of those that run them.

The formal adoption of new methods by performance management may not be enough without accompanying efforts to transform performance orientation as an index of national culture.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the applicability of employee engagement theories in a South Asian country, Sri Lanka, and determine whether engagement theories are universally applicable beyond the Western countries in which they have been developed and tested.

A heterogeneous sample of 451 private-sector employees in Sri Lanka was used. A mixed-method design was adopted; quantitative findings were compared with previous studies conducted in Western countries, and qualitative findings enabled a more nuanced understanding of employee engagement in the Sri Lankan context.

Despite cultural differences between Sri Lanka and Western countries, the antecedents of engagement did not manifest differently in a consistent way. Combined results suggest that the different manifestations of engagement in Sri Lanka cannot be attributed solely to cultural variance.

The authors used cross-sectional data and tested only four antecedents of engagement.

This study highlights the importance of multinational organisations' awareness of how employee engagement manifests across different contexts and going beyond cultural adaptation when developing context-specific engagement strategies.

This is among the first studies on an Asian country to examine whether cultural differences impact the antecedents of engagement to empirically test Kahn's (1990) theory of engagement and the motivational process of the job demands-resources theory in a single study and to use a heterogeneous sample and mixed-methods design. The authors challenge the centrality of national culture as a determinant of employee engagement and highlight the importance of considering other contextual factors when examining employee engagement in different countries.

Despite enormous literature on Human Resource Management (HRM) practices in the context of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As), researchers have not come up with a synthesis that integrates the role and importance of HRM practices during M&As. This study aims to identify, analyse and synthesise existing literature to discover associated HRM practices that facilitate organisational change during M&As.

Bibliometric analysis is performed using 473 research articles entailing 871 authors from 62 countries (published in Scopus and WoS listed journals), followed by a thematic cluster analysis using bibliographic coupling. The analysis is performed using different means as citation analysis, cluster analysis and keyword analysis to reveal the most significant publications, authors, keywords, trends and future research questions.

The results are primarily descriptive and aim at capturing a panoramic view of what was already written on the topic so far. The bibliometric analysis is conducted using different means like citation analysis, cluster analysis and keyword analysis to reveal the most significant publications, notable authors, keywords, current research trends and future research questions. Further, the bibliographic coupling analysis led to the identification of the following six clusters: (1) coping strategies during and post-M&As; (2) changes in individual and organisational identification during and post-M&As; (3) role of cultural and transformational leadership in M&As success; (4) HRM practices to develop employee capabilities post-M&As; (5) case studies and success stories of M&As; and (6) organisational readiness for M&As.

This study has theoretical and practical implications and suggests future research directions. The authors also propose an abstruse model for HRM practices during M&A process for further investigation.

This is the first bibliometric study to explore the vast extant literature in M&A research related to the role of HRM practices in the execution of successful M&As.

Tourists with different cultural backgrounds think and behave differently. Accurately capturing and correctly understanding cultural differences will help tourist destinations in product/service planning, marketing communication and attracting and retaining tourists. This research employs Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory to analyse the variations in destination image perceptions of Chinese-speaking and English-speaking tourists to Xiamen, a prominent tourist attraction in China.

The evaluation utilizes a two-stage approach, incorporating LDA and BERT-BILSTM models. By leveraging text mining, sentiment analysis and t-tests, this research investigates the variations in tourists' perceptions of Xiamen across different cultures.

The results reveal that cultural disparities significantly impact tourists' perceived image of Xiamen, particularly regarding their preferences for renowned tourist destinations and the factors influencing their travel experience.

This research pioneers applying natural language processing methods and machine learning techniques to affirm the substantial differences in the perceptions of tourist destinations among Chinese-speaking and English-speaking tourists based on Hofstede's cultural theory. The findings furnish theoretical insights for destination marketing organizations to target diverse cultural tourists through precise marketing strategies and illuminate the practical application of Hofstede's cultural theory in tourism and hospitality.

The current research elucidates the role of empathy in design of artificial intelligence (AI) systems in healthcare context, through a structured literature review, analysis and synthesis of academic literature published between 1990 and 2024.

This study aims to advance the domain of empathy in AI by adopting theory constructs context method approach using the PRISMA 2020 framework.

The study presents a current state-of-the-art literature to review the connections between empathy and AI and identifying four clusters showing the emerging trajectories in the field of AI and empathy in healthcare setting.

Despite a rise in empirical research, the potential pathways enhancing AI accountability by incorporation of empathy is unclear. The research aims to contribute to the existing literature on AI and empathy in the healthcare sector by carving out four distinct clusters depicting the future research avenues.

The idea of value co-creation involves the benefit actors gain from integrating resources through activities and interactions within a service network, with the environment enabling high-quality collaboration. This paradigm highlights customers’ ability to co-create value with service providers and other customers. This idea is gaining traction in health care. These days, patients are no longer passive recipients of health-care services; rather they have started taking proactive roles in their self-health management. This study aims to understand the phenomenon of value co-creation among patients within online health communities (OHCs).

A systematic literature review of papers published from 2003 to 2024 in Web of Science-indexed journals was conducted. The review highlights theories, contexts, characteristics and methodologies in this area, synthesizing insights from previous research and presenting a future research agenda for underexplored and unexplored contexts using emerging theoretical perspectives and analytical methodologies.

The review illuminates theoretical and empirical studies on value co-creation among patients in OHCs. Previous research shows that value co-creation among patients leads to cognitive, affective and physical benefits such as reduced anxiety and stress, increased assurance and self-confidence, improved quality of life, enhanced patient empowerment, acceptance of disease and treatment effectiveness and a sense of self-worth and well-being.

This review synthesizes insights from previous works and outlines a research agenda for future studies in underexplored and unexplored contexts using new theoretical perspectives and methodologies. Considering the role social media plays in an individual’s life, this work will help in deep diving into the role of such online communities in the health-care sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine failures in internal and external controls associated with sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), using three caselets to illustrate the fraud triangle theory factors.

This study uses a qualitative research approach. Caselets are used to illustrate the fraud triangle factors associated with SWFs.

Ideally, SWFs would be characterized by opacity and the strategic flexibility to advance political goals, but this operational agility facilitates an environment ripe for fraud, in large part because there is little transparency with regard to their regulatory structure. Elements of the fraud triangle inherent in the structure of SWFs contribute to the fraud found in the three case examples.

The authors use three SWF fraud cases rather than statistical sampling of all SWFs, which limits the generalizability of the findings. Future research should explore additional recommendations for the evaluation of SWF governance.

The overlap between public sector governance and SWF governance creates an environment amenable to fraud, and as a result, fraud has occurred in several SWFs. Governance recommendations should take into account the lessons learned from previous SWF fraud cases.

Ideally, SWFs would be characterized by opacity and the strategic flexibility to advance political goals, but this operational agility may also facilitate an environment ripe for fraud, in large part because there is little transparency with regard to their regulatory structure.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to identify the fraud triangle risk factors associated with sovereign wealth funds using SWF fraud caselets.

This study aims to examine the relationship between knowledge management and career development in an era characterized by high levels of youth unemployment and a demand for specialized skills. Despite the increasing transition to a knowledge-based economy, there is a significant gap between young people’s skills and career readiness, necessitating an in-depth analysis of the role of knowledge management at the individual, organizational and national levels.

The authors conducted a qualitative study using the theory-context-characteristics-methodology approach based on a systematic literature review. The authors created an ecological framework for reflecting on knowledge management and career development, arguing for a multidisciplinary approach that invites collaboration across sectors to generate innovative and reliable solutions.

This study presents a comprehensive review of the existing literature and trends, noting the need for more focus on the interplay between knowledge management and career development. It emphasizes the need for businesses to promote the acquisition, storage, diffusion and application of knowledge and its circulation and exchange to create international business human capital.

The findings may help multinational corporations develop managerial training programs and recruitment strategies, given the demand for advanced knowledge-based skills in the modern workspace. The study also discusses the influences of education, experience and job skills on business managers’ performance, guiding the future recruitment of talents.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review is among the first to assess the triadic relationship between knowledge management, career development and the global unemployment crisis. The proposed multidisciplinary approach seeks to break down existing silos, thus fostering a more comprehensive understanding of how to address these ongoing global concerns.

Recent calls in international management (IM) research ask scholars to conduct more context-sensitive research, however; little attention has been paid to the methodological particularities that inform such context sensitivity. This paper aims to addresses this shortcoming by exploring how emic concepts implicate IM research processes during qualitative field studies.

We carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Brazilian subsidiaries of three German multinational enterprises. We relied on the researchers’ experiences and data from a larger research project including 63 semi-structured interviews, 7 focus groups, documents and field notes. Adopting a culturally sensitive and self-reflexive lens, we reflect on the researchers’ experiences in the Brazilian sociocultural context from an interpretive paradigm.

Our findings reveal how seven identified emic concepts affect four prototypical phases of the research process: securing access, collecting data, analyzing data and presenting findings. We discuss how these seven emic concepts influenced the research process and impacted research outcomes, as experienced by the researchers.

Findings are limited by our self-reflexive capabilities as foreign researchers, the limited explanatory power of emic categories, our paradigmatic positioning and the research context.

We contribute to research practice by providing eight suggestions for conducting international fieldwork and proposing avenues for future research.

This research contributes to the epistemological and methodological debate on context-sensitive research by arguing that intercultural sensitivity needs to be managed as an integral dimension for any form of international fieldwork. Findings contribute to interpretive approaches showing how emic concepts affect research practices, with implications for critical management perspectives.