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This paper aims to develop a simple model for estimating sustainable development goals index using the capabilities of artificial neural networks.

Sustainable development has three pillars, including social, economic and environmental pillars. Three clusters corresponding to the three pillars were created by extracting sub-indices of three 2018 global reports and performing cluster analysis on the correlation matrix of sub-indices. By setting the sustainable development goals index as the target variable and selecting one indicator from each cluster as input variables, 20 artificial neural networks were run 30 times.

Artificial neural networks with seven nodes in one hidden layer can estimate sustainable development goals index by using just three inputs, including ecosystem vitality, human capital and gross national income per capita. There is an excellent similarity (>95%) between the results of the artificial neural network and the sustainable development goals index.

Instead of calculating 232 indicators for determining the value of sustainable development goals index, it is possible to use only three sub-indices, but missing 5% of precision, by using the proposed artificial neural network model.

The study provides additional information on the estimating of sustainable development and proposes a new simple method for estimating the sustainable development goals index. It just uses three sub-indices, which can be retrieved from three global reports.

Purpose – This chapter discusses the application of the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) to school change and the learning of groups of leaders, teachers, and students. Specifically, the authors describe the Seven Levels to Success, a model for school change that supports teachers in building their school’s own staircase (coherent) curriculum in literacy. The authors discuss the effectiveness of this model for capacity building – giving schools a “deep bench” of leaders and teachers who can sustain improved student achievement over a period of years.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The theoretical underpinning of this research is provided by the Vygotsky Space, a construct that shows how learning may be understood in terms of the intersections of collective and individual actions, and public and private settings. This construct allows us to understand what drives a school’s advancement through the Seven Levels and how that advancement can be restarted after it has been slowed or interrupted. The authors report findings about school change from 20 years of work in 264 elementary and secondary schools, reflecting a wide range of students and communities across the United States.

Findings – While schools’ typical advancement in the Seven-Level model is neither steady nor linear, it adheres to an overall pattern: Leaders must take ownership first, followed by teachers and then students. To build their school’s staircase curriculum, teachers must see themselves as creators rather than consumers of curriculum. Teachers who see themselves as creators take ownership of their curriculum. Their deep understanding of the curriculum promotes continuous improvements and related success in improving their students’ literacy learning. Four case examples illustrate change in a variety of school settings, providing existence proofs of how the Seven-Level model functions to improve students’ literacy learning.

Research Limitations/Implications – The authors highlight the importance of the school as the unit of analysis in change efforts, and of understanding a school’s progress over time. The authors emphasize considering the role of multiple constituencies, beginning with school leaders and encompassing teachers, students, and families. One implication of this study is that more attention should be paid to the role of school leaders – administrators, curriculum coordinators, and teacher leaders – in setting the stage for sustainable improvement.

Practical Implications – The authors provide guidance to practitioners working on school change within the framework of the Seven Levels to Success and other social constructivist models. Specifically, the authors give examples of relevant actions external consultants and school leaders take at critical junctures in a school’s progress.

Originality/Value of Paper – This chapter breaks new ground in applying the GRR model and the Vygotsky Space to the area of school change in literacy. Summarizing 20 years of work with the Seven-Level model demonstrates potential of teacher-developed curricula for the sustainable improvement of students’ literacy learning.

A key cause for missing strategy goals is that leaders do not invest the same amount of time, energy, and resources in managing the implementation of the strategy as they do in setting the strategy. They also do not realize that managing strategy execution requires well orchestrated management processes – letting existing business processes run the course will not drive the transformation required. So, in order for companies and business units to reach the audacious ambitions stated in their strategies, they must thoughtfully manage the way the strategy is implemented.

Our experience transforming Global 1000 companies for over 20 years has shown the “Three pillars of effective strategy execution” methodology to be powerful yet flexible in helping companies to deliver on strategy execution.

The three pillar approach addresses the direction, structure, and people required to be effective in strategy implementation over the planning horizon. It keeps companies from falling into the trap of emphasizing only one pillar or sub‐element (e.g. structural re‐organization, detailed interpretation of the strategy content, or employee communications) while neglecting others, and allows for ongoing adaptation and re‐balancing of the three pillars as they learn.

Managers should develop implementation plans that specifically address the following issues to execute their strategy effectively: direction – getting specific with strategy to the point where it is relevant for everyone and everything in the company; structure – creating an organizational architecture that shadows the strategic architecture; people – engaging and mobilizing employees for sustained commitment.

Managers must manage their progress on the three pillars in a coordinated way, ensuring that no one element gets too far ahead of the others. Many companies have failed by letting re‐organization get out in front of cascading the content of the strategy, for instance. Balance is a great virtue in implementing the three‐pillar model.

Sluggish performance in construction productivity (CP) is a common occurrence worldwide. This phenomenon is also observed in Singapore. In this context, the role of trade unions (TUs) has also been mentioned but appears to be little understood. Hence, this study evaluates the role of TUs in contributing to CP. The key issue is to determine whether TUs have a role to play in contemporary society in improving CP.

This study takes on multiple research methodologies; more specifically, the mixed-method of survey questionnaires and interviews is used. Firstly, a survey questionnaire was employed to obtain broad viewpoints on the general understanding of the target groups towards the CP issues in Singapore. The survey questionnaire also attempts to study the TUs in greater depth by examining their existing strategies of and hindrances to improving CP. Once findings were gathered from the survey questionnaire, the interviews were carried out to probe deeper into the phenomena in the results.

The research findings showed there is a generally positive outlook that TUs have the ability to contribute to CP. The study finds that the TU respondents possess strong attributes within the normative pillar, but weak attributes in the regulative and cultural–cognitive pillars.

This study uses the Institutional Theory as a general framework, which identifies a union's functions and activities in three pillars that underpin the institutional theory and defines its impact on construction productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how institutional mechanisms operate within both formal and informal channels of cross-border remittance.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with Myanmar migrants mostly working in Thailand. Thematic coding was used to analyze field notes and identify themes in channel member perceptions and institutional environmental process.

Informal money transfer channels have achieved higher levels of legitimacy when compared to formal channels. Channel legitimacy is a more important attribute than efficiency. Lack of financial infrastructure, such as bank branches and ATM machines particularly in rural or outlying areas of Myanmar, the requirements for formal documentation and language and communication are the major institutional constraints that encourage the development and use of multiple channels in Myanmar. Formal money transfer channels develop with stronger regulative institutional processes, whereas informal money transfer channels develop with stronger cultural-cognitive and normative institutional processes.

Using convenience sample of remitters mainly from one area of Thailand and other channel members from Yangon, the financial capital of Myanmar, may limit the applicability of the findings, which calls for future research.

Banks and money transfer offices need to improve legitimacy perception within migrant communities by building stronger networks with local banks and international banks. They could provide Myanmar speaking front-line service personnel and include brochures in the Myanmar language to improve the communication process. The findings and recommendations from this study are also applicable to informal channels and formal financial institutions in other ASEAN countries that are preparing to make investments in Myanmar. Moreover, Myanmar banks should also consider opening branches to cater for Myanmar workers in ASEAN, especially in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.

This paper applies institutional theory within channels, investigates the context of a financial channel rather than a product channel, addresses the importance of institutional environmental mechanisms and constraints in influencing channel behavior and is embedded in the situational context of Myanmar, a newly opened South-East Asian economy where little prior research has been conducted.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of utilising a holistic ergonomic approach, covering engineering, cognitive and social perspectives, to cultivate beneficial and productive collaborative information seeking (CIS) systems and environments, specifically with regard to three main CIS pillars (control, communication and awareness).

A qualitative research approach, based on a selective corpus of CIS literature, was utilised to perform a content analysis to note if terms and concepts normally associated with engineering, cognitive and social ergonomics can be used to eliminate terms reflecting issues related to three CIS pillars (control, communication and awareness) that can benefit from a holistic ergonomic approach.

The content analysis revealed that a fairly extensive amount of holistic ergonomic terminology is prominent within the CIS literature, therefore establishing a connection between the two disciplines: CIS and ergonomics. This suggests that CIS system issues could benefit from the insights of a holistic ergonomic approach.

Since this is an exploratory study the scope of CIS literature utilised in the content analysis was limited to a selection considered most important by the authors; this should be supplemented by further research.

Intended to instigate interest in further exploration of the beneficial and productive implications and practical application of holistic ergonomics in designing CIS systems and environments.

This is the first research paper in the Library and Information Science literature that explores the potential of utilising holistic ergonomics to cultivate CIS systems and environments.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal interrelations among the four pillars of corporate sustainability, which indicate a firm’s contribution to environmental, social, governance and economic activities. Moreover, this study identifies the critical drivers of corporate sustainability by focusing on the levels of market developments and geographical regions.

Based on corporate sustainability data of 2,725 global companies in 2016, this study uses a combination of analytical techniques including cluster analysis, data mining, partial least square path modeling and importance performance map analysis.

This study finds that companies in European developed markets exhibit the highest-ranking of corporate sustainability. In line with the social impact hypothesis, environmental, social and governance performance positively affects economic performance. Moreover, there is strong evidence of causal relationships and synergistic effects among the four pillars of corporate sustainability. In accordance with the institutional theory, the patterns of causal directions and the critical pillars depend on levels of market developments and geographical regions. Overall, social and environmental pillars are among the most critical drivers of corporate sustainability.

The methodology does not aim to provide a new weighting scheme for calculating the corporate sustainability index.

Corporate managers should consider sustainability practices in all dimensions to benefit from synergistic effects among environmental, social, governance and economic activities. Furthermore, corporate sustainability strategies should not be generalized across countries with different levels of market developments and geographical regions.

This study prioritizes environmental, social, governance and economic pillars of corporate sustainability in emerging and developed markets across geographical regions.

Previous literature dealing with sustainable marketing in a B2B context is mostly limited to spot measures on an environmental, economic or social layer. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to exemplify how seaports as powerful economic business networks can facilitate multi-layered sustainability.

The authors integrate multiple case studies to pursue an inductive research approach to derive general patterns based on empirical observations.

Operationalizing the concept of a port community enables the authors to show how seaports not only facilitate multi-layered sustainability but also mutually interact. Hence, port sustainability can be achieved through and by a port community.

The conceptualization of the interplay between port community and multi-layered sustainability contributes to the business and industrial marketing literature in general and to the yet hitherto scarce port marketing literature in particular. Future research should go beyond this initial conceptualization by gathering further empirical research.

The study outlines how strengthening interactions among port management stakeholders (i.e. business and non-business actors such as port authorities and policymakers) might lead to higher economic success and societal welfare by pooling yet hitherto independent resources.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to define how the concept of a holistic port community can facilitate sustainability acted out on its three pillars and how both concepts interact.

We view emerging-market multinational corporations (EMNCs) as agents for global isomorphism. EMNCs seek to enter developed markets not only to expand their business operations but also to acquire advanced knowledge to enhance their core competencies. In entering these markets, EMNCs are subject to coercive, normative and cognitive pressures as they seek legitimacy. Once these firms gain legitimacy in advanced markets through the adoption of local business practices, they transfer these approaches to their headquarters in developing markets, establishing best practices in their home markets. Further, EMNCs may engage in efforts aimed at changing the institutional environment in the developing market to facilitate the transfer of learned practices from the developed market. Thus, we propose that these best practices lead to global isomorphism, but also note instances where symbolic adoption of developed market practices may slow the isomorphic process.

A full and adequate Systematic Quantitative Literature Research Analysis of the academic literature and research on creating shared value (CSV) is long overdue. This chapter commences this process by introducing some of the academic literature currently on CSV and examining the strengths and weaknesses of this literature, while identifying gaps for future research. The chapter builds on current academic literature to include writing and research from the business community in an attempt to make this chapter both topical and accessible to anyone interested in CSV, including practitioners interested in implementing these types of projects as direct CSV projects or as part of already existing CSR strategy. It is expected that the inclusion of this type of business literature will add value to academic research going forward. The Appendix brings the chapter together by presenting examples of a variety of CSV case studies to provide ideas for future project implementation and opportunities for future research in both implementation and measurement.