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The question of what level of public debt can increase inequality has become crucial in Africa. In this study, the authors examine the effect of public debt on inequality in Africa and estimate the debt-inequality threshold. The authors then examine the moderating role of tax burdens and corruption in the relationship between public debt and inequality.

Using data from the period 2005 to 2019 in 38 African countries, the generalized method of moment and the dynamic panel threshold regression techniques were employed to achieve the purpose of the study.

The results reveal that a 1% increase in public debt leads to a rise in inequality by about 0.17%. However, the effects doubles when the public debt ratio hits 57.47%. Tax burden worses the effect of public debt by about 2.9 percentage points, while control of corruption reduces debt effect on inequality by 61 percentage points.

Owing to data availability, the study period was restricted to 2005 to 2019. Moreover, the study could not consider the disagreggation of inequality into different income groups due to pausty of data. While this could narrow the scope of the study, the results provide an important insight for policy makers.

This contributes to the scant literature on the effect of public debt on income inequality in African countries. This study is a novelty because its provides the level of public debt which worsens inequality in Africa, as well as the moderating effects of tax burden and corruption control.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2022-0581

The study examined the roles of fiscal and monetary policy in reducing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), while accounting for macroeconomic disruptions. In particular, the study examined the complementarity of fiscal and monetary policy to mitigate shocks and reduce poverty in SSA.

The study adopts the fixed effect (within regression) model to account for country-specific characteristics, and a cross-sectional dependence – consistent model to control for the potential cross-sectional in panel data modelling. The study used the dummy variable approach to account for the macroeconomic shocks. The authors assigned 1 to the following years – 2008, 2014 and 2020; and 0 otherwise to take care of the global financial crisis, commodity terms of trade shocks and the COVID-19 pandemic respectively.

The study found that fiscal policy (particularly, government spending on health and education) has the greater capacity to reduce the level of poverty in SSA. The results also indicate that fiscal policy and monetary policy can work in tandem to reduce the negative effects of a pandemic. However, the study found an optimal threshold level of monetary policy beyond which monetary policy reduces the effectiveness of fiscal policy to reduce poverty in SSA. The research and policy implications are discussed.

The study, unlike previous studies, accounts for the impact of macroeconomic shocks in the monetary/fiscal policy and poverty literature.

In a time of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation, critical thinking has become the most important skill for discerning false, incomplete, and outdated information and communication online. The study examines the effects of personal (gender, age, ethnicity, religiosity, and Big Five personality traits) and positional inequalities (education, occupational status, language proficiency) on critical thinking digital skills (CTDS) among generations X, Y, and Z.

An online survey was conducted among 1,495 Israeli Jews between the ages of 18 and 57, belonging to the X, Y, and Z generations.

The findings show that CTDS among Gen X were significantly lower, by a large margin, than those of the younger generations, while Gen Z reported the highest level of these skills. Multivariate analysis indicated different effect patterns of personal and positional categorical variables on CTDS. We found that the contribution of personal demographic inequalities (gender, age, ethnicity and religiosity) to the explained variance in CTDS was most pronounced in Gen Y, compared to Gen X and Gen Z. The contribution of Big Five personality traits and positional social inequalities (education, occupational status and language proficiency) to explaining CTDS was similar between Gen X and Gen Y, but much less pronounced among Gen Z.

Understanding the intergenerational differences in CTDS is crucial for tailoring educational approaches, promoting inclusivity, and harnessing the diverse strengths of each generation to navigate an ever-evolving digital landscape successfully.

First of its kind, this study combines Generational Cohort Theory with Resources and Appropriation Theory to identify which inequalities may hinder the acquisition of one of today’s most vital skills among three generations.

Judiciary plays a pivotal role in the overall development of a nation's economy and its involvement assures process transparency and impartiality. However, litigation is often expensive, uncertain and prone to delays. Notwithstanding such inherent challenges associated with litigation, it is observed that parties in construction disputes do resort to litigation. This study attempts to understand the potential paths triggering litigation of contractual disputes in construction. While extant researchers have identified focus areas or factors influencing litigation, the underlying paths connecting these focus areas, leading parties to litigation, is explored in this study.

Considering the framework of Rachlinski's “framing theory of litigation” and the mixed-methods approach (qualitative and quantitative approaches), this study proposes and validates a model that identifies the paths to litigation of contractual disputes in construction.

The results of in-depth interviews, followed by validation through structural equation modelling (SEM), reveal four critical paths, namely positional focus (PF) – contract and dispute characteristics (CDC) – decision to litigate (DTL), milieu influence (MI) – CDC – DTL, MI-PF-DTL and CDC-DTL.

The identified paths highlight the areas policymakers can consider while developing policy interventions to mitigate litigation.

Researchers have identified factors causing litigation in construction. However, attempts to examine the existence of multi-factor “paths” on the decision to litigate (DTL) have hitherto received a muted response, so this study focuses on identifying the project-level path(s) leading to the litigation of contractual disputes in construction.

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore leader identity development experiences of emerging adults at a large Midwest university and how retrospective family storytelling (Koenig Kellas, 2018) plays a role in the sense-making of the leader identity process. Through a unique, three-phase qualitative and narrative inquiry approach, this research further explores LID sense-making through retrospective family storytelling.

Qualitative phenomenology and narrative inquiry approach. Data collection consisted of three different data sets: (a) two semi-structured interviews, (b) leader artifacts and (c) journals.

The stories told by the emerging adults described how key messages influenced their identity within the context of leader identity development and their college experiences. Furthermore, a key finding in the narratives exhibited the stories emerging adults recalled in the sense-making of their leader identity centered on persevering, overcoming hardships and interpersonal connections and relationships. Findings from this research contribute to LID literature for leadership educators, researchers and practitioners in leader development.

The research presented in this article advances LID by using a narrative approach to explore the role of family narratives in identity development. Further, it approaches qualitative work with rigorous data collection and analysis processing using a cross-case analysis to develop leader identity archetypes. This study directly impacts those who work with emerging adult college students and supports the development of college student leaders.

As workplaces and relationships evolve with increasing complexity, co-worker dynamics have become a key concern for HR managers and scholars. An important yet overlooked aspect of co-worker dynamics is gratitude. This paper adopts a relationship-specific conceptualization of gratitude and explores its influence on prosocial behaviors within co-worker dyads. The proposed model also suggests structural-relational factors under which these relationships are affected.

The conceptual paper draws insights from personal relationships to consider an alternative side of gratitude’s prosocial action tendencies, thereby highlighting two: risk-oriented and opportunity-oriented. These assumptions are then situated within the affect theory of social exchange to predict gratitude’s influence on prosocial behaviors within co-worker dyads.

The proposed model illuminates the importance of studying relationship-specific gratitude within co-worker relations by illustrating its effects on two types of prosocial action tendencies – opportunity-oriented and risk-oriented and varying prosocial behaviors (from convergent to divergent). Structural-relational factors, such as positional and physical distance between co-workers, are considered to affect these relationships.

While the study of gratitude in the workplace is emerging, little research has examined its influence on the nature of prosocial behaviors within co-worker relations. This paper advances the notion that gratitude serves an adaptive function in co-worker dyads, thereby highlighting the risk-oriented and opportunity-oriented continuum, and its implications for the type and scope of prosocial behaviors exchanged.

To do this, the authors carried out a systematic literature review to answer three questions: (RQ1) Which external pressures affect an FC and its suppliers in an MSC? (RQ2) What influences power relationships between an FC and its suppliers for MSC compliance? and (RQ3) Which governance mechanisms support an FC to achieve compliance for managing its MSC?

This research aims to identify how external pressures affect chain agents to achieve compliance and implement governance mechanisms and analyzes the influence of the power relationship between FC and their suppliers.

The results identify how external pressures from different stakeholders act on FC and FT and ST suppliers. A combination of contractual governance mechanisms (auditing, certification, assessment, code of conduct and monitoring) with relational ones (third-party, cooperation) is identified, facilitating compliance between agents. Furthermore, different power relationships (power position, level of resources and institutional distance) that influence the implementation of governance mechanisms are explored.

This article comprised only a systematic literature review and content analysis. Carrying out empirical research, covering the theme of this article, is the next step, which is being completed and will be discussed in due course in another publication.

The results can help professionals of the FC to understand their role in multi-tier supply chain (MSC), the external pressures exerted and the governance mechanisms that can be implemented to achieve compliance.

This article develops three relevant issues constantly addressed in MSC, which have not yet been combined to understand the management of multi-tier suppliers.

This empirical study aims to explore how actors in specific human resource practices (HRPs) such as line managers (LMs) impact employee productivity measures in the context of financial institutions (FI) banks.

This cross-country study adopted a qualitative methodology. It employed semi-structured interviews to collect data from purposefully selected 12 business facing directors (BFDs) working in the top 10 banks in Nigeria and the UK. The data collected were analysed with the help of the trans-positional cognition approach (TPCA) phenomenological method.

The findings of a TPCA analytical process imply that in the UK and Nigeria’s FIs, the BFDs line managers’ human resources practices (LMHRPs) resulted in a highly regulated workplace, knowledge gap, service operations challenges and subjective quantitatively driven key performance indicators, considered service productivity paradoxical elements. Although the practices in the UK and Nigerian FIs had similar labels, their aggregates were underpinned by different contextual issues.

To support LMs in better understanding and managing FIs BFDs productivity measures and outcomes, we propose the Managerial Employee Productivity Operational Definition framework as part of their toolkit. This study will be helpful for banking sectors, their regulators, policymakers, other FIs’ industry stakeholders and future researchers in the field.

Within the context of the UK and Nigeria’s FIs, this study is the first attempt to understand how LMHRPs impact BFDs productivity in this manner. It confirms that LMHRPs result in service productivity paradoxical elements with perceived or lost productivity implications.

Literature concerning the linkages between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance (FP) has been growing in tourism research. However, the linkage's relevance to new venture travel intermediaries remains vague. This study proposes a model that helps researchers and practitioners understand how EO translates into new venture FP through two strategic perspectives of value creation, i.e. firm value (FV) and customer perceived value (CPV).

The study tests this framework using structural equation modeling on a matched dyadic sample of 127 new venture firms belonging to the Indian travel industry.

The results posit that FV and CPV partially mediate the relationship between EO and new venture FP. The study advances the existing knowledge on the link between EO and FP and provides insights into how EO can enhance FV and CPV which ultimately enhances FP.

This work is the first to extend and integrate the idea of FV and CPV to entrepreneurship and new venture performance literature. By considering the two strategic aspects of value creation, i.e. FV and CPV, the paper presents a holistic view of value creation through EO.