Inter-organizational governance and innovation under different local institutional contexts

R&D tax credits and firm innovation: Evidence from China

Sustainability issues are now a global concern. However, knowing the root causes of problems and the target is not the only factor that constantly motivates change for the better (Wamsle & Osberg, 2022) as such change also requires encouragement from actors, including individuals, organizations, and communities. Therefore, the human aspect is crucial for the successful achievement of sustainability (Hariram et al., 2023). In other words, questions on sustainability are not just about "what should be done?" and also on “how to get people to do it?” and “why are currently available interventions not yet fully utilized?” Such is required reflecting the findings of a body of previous research which accentuates that our main struggle in the global era we already in, is the discrepancy between awareness and action, between policy and practice, between scientific knowledge and behavior (Hariram et al., 2023; Kirchner-Krath et al., 2024). Global sustainability efforts often promoted into green technologies and environmental policies. It has shown that even well-designed interventions, the result not always in meaningful change. In several countries, some initiatives have fallen short because they overlook the psychological and socio-cultural factors that shape individual behavior and collective decision-making (de Costa et al., 2025). It also requires a deep understanding of community perspectives as expressed through local social norms and everyday practices. As a result, the presence of infrastructure or the financial support mechanism alone is not enough to drive meaningful change (Kinzig et al., 2013). Local context is another critical factor that shape adoption behavior and the extent to which proposed solutions are accepted and supported (Carmen et al., 2024; Syamsiyah et al., 2025). In this context, a more comprehensive understanding of environmental science is required. With the philosophy of environmental science, humans constitute is one of the three core dimensions, together with environmental and economic factors, and any effective approach that must balance to these elements. However, when modern environmental science, characterized by data analyses and methodologies is applied in practice, it often meets tensions with deeply rooted local and traditional knowledge systems that have shaped people’s perceptions and behaviors for generations (Ijatuyi et al., 2025). A clear example can be found in Bali, where the Subak irrigation system and the Danu Kerthi philosophy have guided water management for centuries. These practices represent living environmental systems rather than merely cultural heritage to be preserved. When traditional approaches are used into environmental science, conservation efforts are often more effective, as they are grounded in community acceptance and sustained through active local participation (Morse, 2025). This integration can serve as a recognition that centuries-old knowledge systems have legitimacy and effectiveness that must be combined with scientific monitoring and formal governance to achieve optimal conservation outcomes. Beyond the local context, the organizational context, both in the public and private sectors, can also act as a transformative agent in driving individual practices (Borrás et al., 2024; Keil et al., 2025). Green human resource management (GHRM) integrates environmental and individual lifecycle goals within an organization. This approach demonstrates how integrating understandings of desires can influence individual behaviour and drive organizational innovation that contributes to sustainability (Ahmad et al., 2025; Borrás et al., 2024; Keil et al., 2025; Shoaib et al., 2025). This 15th issue of the Journal of Environmental Science and Sustainable Development focuses on an often overlooked yet fundamental dimension of sustainability: the ways in which human behavior, cultural and spiritual value systems, local institutional contexts, and the integration of traditional knowledge with modern science collectively shape sustainable landscapes. Unlike previous editions that highlight biophysical and techno-ecological aspects, this issue shifts attention into questions of agency, motivation, beliefs, norms, and meaningful systems that highlight environmental decisions and actions. This perspective shows the critical need for interdisciplinary approaches to explaining contemporary sustainability challenges. Environmental issues today extend beyond ecological degradation to include human behavior and the capacity of diverse knowledge systems, scientific, local, and policy-based, to interact and function cohesively. Consequently, behavioral transformation supported by the integration of multiple knowledge systems represents a fundamental pathway toward effective, adaptive, and long-term sustainability action. The articles in this issue explore diverse geographic and sectoral contexts, ranging from the application of green transportation technologies, air management in urban-industrial versus traditional-tourism contexts, climate adaptation in agricultural communities, global natural resource management (GHRM) practices in the tourism sector, to indigenous wisdom-based lake conservation and sustainable food systems.

Agrifood structural transformation underpins progress toward Sustainable Development Goals, yet whether the state should withdraw, deregulate, or inject this transition remains contested. We evaluate three governance modes across over 2,700 Chinese counties and two decades, ap- plying Causal Forest with double/debiased machine learning to three policy reforms—the 2006 agricultural tax abolition (withdraw), the 2016 supply-side reform (deregulate), and the 2014 targeted poverty alleviation campaign (inject). Governance design, not fiscal magnitude, deter- mines effectiveness, and each mode’s impact is conditional on local institutional context: with- drawal accelerates the shift out of agriculture where pre-reform distortions bind most tightly; deregulation diversifies cropping structures; yet injection produces no significant average ef- fect, masking offsetting heterogeneity along fiscal-capacity lines. Data-driven targeting robustly outperforms administrative allocation in out-of-sample validation while disproportionately re- taining the poorest counties. Sustainable agricultural transitions thus depend on the political economy of policy execution, not on spending magnitude.

In Cameroon, entrepreneurial activities are developed from two main cities namely; Douala and Yaoundé. Therefore researches on entrepreneurship development in Cameroon are based on entrepreneurs from these main cities, while other regions entrepreneurial activities are not considered as a target for entrepreneurship analysis. This paper analyses entrepreneurial activities in Eastern Cameroon that has a lowest level of enterprise creation that is in contrast to the abundant natural resources in the region. The study highlights the characteristic of local entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial activities as well as the local institutional environment context. The study was based on a survey of 138 local entrepreneurs and the study used both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The descriptive results revealed that local entrepreneurs are largely youthful and the entrepreneurial activities are mainly developed from the small business sector. The study found out that lack of infrastructure; government subsidies and financial resources negatively affected the development of entrepreneurship. The Study suggests that the development of activities from strategic sectors such as agro-industries, forestry industries and mining and a setting of suitable policies and developmental programs at a level of local government could contribute to the socio-economic development of the region and of the country at large.

Disagreements and power struggles induce failure in many collaborations based on an inter-organizational system (IOS). The stakeholders’ emergence and involvement fluctuate across a collaboration’s timeline. Inter-organizational governance is needed to achieve sustainable cooperation. However, most researchers and practitioners jump on the trend of “governance” as a buzzword.<br/>This thesis utilizes the stakeholder theory – the network model perspective – to complement the state of the art conceptualization. Building blocks of IOS-based inter-organizational collaboration governance are applied as a framework in longitudinal studies of supply chain cases. The building blocks are stakeholders, governance mechanisms, governance aspects, governance modes, and governance lifecycles.<br/>The building blocks help to analyze the governance evolutions from the first pre-partnership collaboration phase to the partnership termination phase or the collaborations’ succession to the next cycle. The governance modes classify collaborations to simplify our descriptions of governance. The roles of stakeholders – members, IOS providers, orchestrators, supply chain partners, and other partners - define the collaborations’ context. These stakeholders exercise formalized and informal mechanisms in all governance aspects. The cases also provide insights into the collaborations’ success and missteps in executing inter-organizational governance.

Transgender people are one of the most stigmatized social groups. They are experiencing institutional stigma and stigma on individual psychological level through different medical and legal procedures specific to their group. Though gender confirmation surgeries have been performed in Serbia for more than three decades, research on experiences and ways in which transgender people give meaning to the process is lacking. This topic became even more prominent due to significant changes in the area of depychopathologization of gender diversity and individualization of the medical gender confirmation process. This paper presents the experiences of transgender people in Serbia throughout the medical gender confirmation process and analyses the ways in which transgender people experience the process and give meaning to it, aiming to draw attention to certain problematic practices still present in the local institutional context. We used semi-structured interviews to collect data. Our approach is qualitative, based on interpretative phenomenological analysis. The sample consists of 12 transgender people age 23 to 48 (8 trans men and 4 trans women). Results indicate the great psychological and practical significance of the medical transition, and diversity in their needs when it comes to surgical interventions, implicating the importance of the easier access to the treatment and the individualization of treatment.

Disclosure practices of foreign and domestic firms in Australia

The implications of clientelism for democratic accountability are mixed: Brokers not only help coordinate votes for collective gain but also exploit their position to advance personal interest. I argue that brokers use distinct strategies—persuasion, reciprocation, and punishment—to motivate voters as a function of their local institutional context. Competitively selected brokers whose preferences are aligned with those of followers can rely more on persuasion than instrumental inducements. Economically autonomous brokers are more likely to rely on sanctions than reciprocity. Evidence to support both the proposed typology of broker strategies and their determinants is collected in Senegal, a clientelistic democracy where group-level heterogeneity generates natural variation in broker types. A coordination game played with real brokers illustrates that participants are less likely to sacrifice personal gain when brokers are competitively selected, more likely when they most fear retribution. Qualitative data suggest that results from the laboratory game plausibly generalize to behavior in elections.

Purpose This study aims to conduct a comparative analysis of human resource management (HRM) practices between domestic and multinational enterprises within India, a large emerging economy. It also highlights the distinct institutional arrangements that potentially influence the employment practices of these organizations. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from a diverse sample of domestic and multinational enterprises in India. The study utilized multivariate analysis to examine HRM practices, focusing on training and development, incentives and rewards and retention practices. Findings Contrary to initial expectations, the results indicate that DEs place significantly more emphasis on HRM practices than MNEs. This finding suggests that organizational scale and global presence do not consistently translate into a greater emphasis on critical HRM parameters. Instead, DEs leverage their local market knowledge and understanding of cultural and institutional nuances to prioritize effective HRM strategies. Research limitations/implications The study did not categorize the nationality of MNEs, which could reveal how different cultural contexts impact HRM practices. It is possible that MNEs headquartered in distinct cultural contexts may exhibit varying behaviors compared to enterprises based in different cultural environments. Additionally, while our findings reveal that domestic enterprises prioritize certain HRM practices over multinational firms, the question remains whether this emphasis translates into favorable organizational performance outcomes. Practical implications Both multinational and domestic enterprises should tailor their HRM practices to align with local dynamics and institutional arrangements. DEs can use their emphasis on HRM practices as a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining local talent, while MNEs should enhance cross-cultural competence to better integrate within different national contexts. Originality/value This study introduces a critical rethinking of HRM practices by illustrating the unique ways DEs and MNEs navigate institutional complexities within India. Unlike traditional assumptions that emphasize the superiority of MNE practices, this research uncovers how DEs strategically leverage local institutional knowledge to outperform MNEs in HRM dimensions. By embedding these findings within institutional theory, this study extends the theoretical discourse on organizational adaptability in emerging markets and provides actionable insights for aligning HRM strategies with local institutional contexts, fostering a comprehensive understanding of HRM dynamics across diverse economies.

This article is the outcome of a consensus building workshop entitled, "Overcoming Barriers to Implementation and Dissemination" convened at the 2009 Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference, ''Public Health in the ED: Surveillance, Screening, and Intervention." The participants were asked to address potential methods for overcoming barriers to the dissemination and implementation in the emergency department (ED) of evidenced-based practices to improve public health. The panel discussed three broad areas of interest including methods for disseminating evidence-based practices, barriers encountered during the process of implementation, and the importance of involvement in activities outside the ED including engagement in policy development and improvement. Four recommendations were discussed in detail and consensus was reached. The recommendations included 1) researchers and advocates should disseminate findings through multiple forums beyond peer-reviewed publications when an ED-based public health intervention has enough evidence to support integration into the routine practice of emergency care; 2) local barriers to implementation of public health interventions should be recognized and well understood from multiple perspectives prior to implementation; 3) innovation must be put into place and adapted based on local institutional context and culture as barriers and the best methods for overcoming them will vary across institutions; and 4) use of legislation, regulation, and incentives outside of the ED should support and strengthen ED-based interventions. For each area of interest, research dimensions to extend the current understanding of methods for effectively and efficiently implementing evidence-based public health interventions in the ED were discussed and consensus was achieved.

Bring institutions into FDI spillover research: Exploring the impact of ownership restructuring and institutional development in emerging economies

Research on STEAM education has primarily focused on formal education settings such as schools, with more research needed in informal or non-traditional education settings. As children frequently engage with informal and non-traditional education settings, it is important to understand how we can transmit information in these settings to bolster and further the learning process and increase engagement. STEAM fields have been plagued by racial and gender inequities that have led to these groups being marginalized and excluded (Blair et al., 2017; Eaton et al., 2020; Martin, 2018; Martin & Phillips, 2019; Miller et al., 2018; Newall et al., 2018, Sheffield et al., 2017; Starks & Matthaeus, 2018; Stitt & Happel-Parkins, 2019; Todd & Zvoch, 2019; van der Lee & Ellemers, 2015). Adults are a critical part of the learning process in informal settings, and it is critical that we understand the influence they can have (Fernández García et al., 2019; Lipowska et al., 2016; MacPhee & Prendergast, 2019; Martin & Phillips, 2019; Rice & Alfred, 2014; Spears, 2008; Tenenbaum & Leaper, 2002; Tiedemann, 2000). I sought to explore the impact of Color-Blind Racial Attitudes, Gender-Blind Attitudes, and STEM Gender Beliefs on adult language use in informal STEAM education settings given a child’s race and gender. I hypothesized that adults would use more STEAM language with a White boy than they would with a White girl, Black boy, or Black girl. I also hypothesized that adults with greater gender-blind attitudes would use more STEAM language with boys than girls. Additionally, I hypothesized that adults with greater STEM-bias attitudes would use more STEAM language with boys than with girls. Finally, I hypothesized that adults with greater color-blind racial attitudes would use more STEAM language with White children than with Black children. Child gender moderately predicted the use of some aspects of STEAM language. Additionally, adult color-blind racial attitudes moderately predicted some aspects of STEAM language given a child’s race. Primary hypotheses were not supported, although some marginally significant results were found.

This study was carried out to investigate similarities and differences in the decision-making process of managers (both, administrative and/or clinicians) within hospitals, taking as references Brazil and Great Britain and considering the cost information use. Exploratory and quantitative survey methods were used to test research questions. The research was undertaken in hospitals of the West Midlands Region/Great Britain and Minas Gerais State/Brazil. Hence, 26 hospitals in Great Britain and 22 in Brazil were detected as eligible and 150 intermediate level managers were randomly selected as units of research in each country. These organisations were considered public and possessing common and compatible characteristics with the intended research. After conducting the survey, using a structured questionnaire, semi-structured interviews with middle managers at chosen case study hospitals were undertaken. This work used quantitative survey methods to test the research questions but further understanding is gained through the use of case study interviews. In the cases analyzed, it was possible to identify significant differences in the decision making process considering the use of cost information in hospitals. This work also allowed inferences between the modes of governance in terms of the decision making process. The hospitals managers should curb situations that increase opportunism in decision-making process due to efficiency of process and control of costs procedures

This paper, and the special issue it introduces, explores whether, and how, the rise of the regulatory state of the South, and its implications for processes of governance, are distinct from cases in the North. With the exception of a small but growing body of work on Latin America, most work on the regulatory state deals with the US or Europe, or takes a relatively undifferentiated “legal transplant” approach to the developing world. We use the term “the South” to invoke shared histories of many countries, rather than as a geographic delimiter, even while acknowledging continued and growing diversity among these countries, particularly in their engagement with globalization.We suggest that three aspects of this common context are important in characterizing the rise of the regulatory state of the South. The first contextual element is the presence of powerful external pressures, especially from international financial institutions, to adopt the institutional innovation of regulatory agencies in infrastructure sectors. The result is often an incomplete engagement with and insufficient embedding of regulatory agencies within local political and institutional context. A second is the greater intensity of redistributive politics in settings where infrastructure services are of extremely poor quality and often non‐existent. The resultant politics of distribution draws in other actors, such as the courts and civil society; regulation is too important to be left to the regulators. The third theme is that of limited state capacity, which we suggest has both “thin” and “thick” dimensions. Thin state capacity issues include prosaic concerns of budget, personnel and training; thick issues address the growing pressures on the state to manage multiple forms of engagement with diverse stakeholders in order to balance competing concerns of growth, efficiency and redistribution.These three themes provide a framework for this special issue, and for the case studies that follow. We focus on regulatory agencies in infrastructure sectors (water, electricity and telecoms) as a particular expression of the regulatory state, though we acknowledge that the two are by no means synonymous. The case studies are drawn from India, Colombia, Brazil, and the Philippines, and engage with one or more of these contextual elements. The intent is to draw out common themes that characterize a “regulatory state of the South,” while remaining sensitive to the variations in level of economic development and political institutional contexts within “the South.”

In an increasingly globalized world, writing courses, situated as they are in local institutional and rhetorical contexts, need to prepare writers for global writing situations. Taking introductory technical communication in the United States as a case study, this article describes how and to what extent global perspectives are incorporated into writing. Based on an analysis of eight textbooks and a closer analysis of four of them, we illustrate the representation of technical communication and communicators as well as multiculturalism and multilingualism in these textbooks and point out the limitations vis-à-vis the cultural and linguistic complexity of global technical communication in today’s world. We conclude by considering implications for U.S. college composition as it continues to contribute to the international discourse of writing studies.