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The purpose of this study is to address the main reasons that limit Jordanian women from undertaking expatriation, based on the assumption that Arab women’s opportunities for international engagement may be compromised by local cultural and institutional issues.

A cross-sectoral survey with 60 Jordanian expatriates (30 women and 20 men) located in EU countries and the UK is used to better explore Eastern women perceptions.

Company’s resistance, a lack of support mechanisms, safety in the destination country and family commitments play a major role in hindering Jordanian women opportunities to be assigned abroad, echoing the commonly recognized barriers identified in previous research. Additionally, the culture of the home country and prejudice toward foreigners act as an additional barrier for women professional development.

The main limitation of this study lies in the data collection instrument, that is, the survey. Larger samples are needed to extend these results. The second limitation is that the potential effects of gender differences cannot be examined because the number of men in the sample was small.

The findings bring evidence that could be used by organizations to understand the barriers Jordanian expatriate women face and take informed action to tackle them. Meanwhile, more research on Middle Eastern female roles and views is needed to reduce stereotyping against them. Similarly, regional studies can be an opportunity for future development to identify the impact of the regional context.

This research highlights the intertwining of religious and cultural values in influencing Arabic women’s experience in international assignments and thus, would enhance readers’ understanding of women’s career progression in a new context.

This research shows that socio-cultural and political realities need more space in discussions about expatriation. Specifically, the expatriation literature needs more scrutiny and problematizing of the lived experiences of women expatriates from the Global South.

The purpose of this study is to use thermodynamic data to estimate the pressure exerted by the crystallization of iron oxyhydroxides following the equation proposed by Correns and Steinborn.

Standard free energy and molar volume data have been considered for goethite, lepidocrocite, magnetite and hematite, which are described in the literature as the most commonly found mineral phase rust constituents.

The studied mineral phases generate higher to lower crystallization pressure values in the following order: goethite > lepidocrocite > hematite > magnetite. The crystallization pressures calculated for these phases are in the 32-350 MPa range, which is higher than the tensile strength of concrete (of the order of 0.2-10 MPa) and thus leads to failure of the cover concrete.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on this issue by calculating the stresses generated by the crystallization of iron oxide from a supersaturated solution using thermodynamic data. A deliberately simplistic method was proposed, taking as reference the Correns–Steinborn model (Correns and Steinborn, 1939; Correns, 1949). The crystalline phases considered in this paper are those most commonly found in the literature as rust constituents, that is, goethite (α-FeOOH), lepidocrocite (γ-FeOOH), magnetite (Fe₃O₄) and hematite (α-Fe₂O₃). The FeO synthetic phase was also included as a reference.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have a great responsibility to put education for sustainable development at the centre of their work. Curricula should therefore start to incorporate the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and key competencies in sustainability, and research should be carried out to determine effective learning methods for this. This study aims to explore the usefulness of problem-based learning (PBL) approaches to train biomedical students in sustainability and to provide some recommendations for the design and implementation of new PBL-SDG scenarios.

Two PBL-SDG scenarios were designed, implemented and evaluated for 110 students of human biology degree. Learning outcomes and student perceptions of this approach were analysed through questionnaires, student productions, non-participant observation and focus groups.

The results show that the PBL-SDG scenarios effectively addressed several SDGs and sustainability competencies in a transversal, collaborative and innovative manner. According to student perceptions, the elements that contributed most to the development of these competencies were emotional involvement with the scenario, reflection on their own actions, freedom to approach the problem and tutors who empowered them with their proposals.

The PBL-SDG approach presented in this study is an example of a pedagogical strategy that can help HEIs educate their learners as key change agents. The findings of this study provide evidence for this important aspect and give guidelines and strategies to successfully designing and implementing such methodologies in biomedical education.

The expatriation literature has developed an insightful body of research on the reasons why women are not assigned abroad as frequently as men. However, the authors know very little about the systemic and recursive consequences of women's underrepresentation in international assignments (IAs), which are examined in this conceptual paper.

Drawing upon expatriation research and a system dynamics perspective, the authors propose a conceptual model to explain both women's underrepresentation in IAs and its recursive consequences.

The authors highlight how women's underrepresentation in IAs results from a complex system of recursive effects that jeopardizes women's professional development and undermines both their own career progression to top management and firms' competitive advantage and international growth. The authors argue that organizations make decisions that contravene their own interest in a competitive global context. First is that they are limiting their talent pool by not considering female candidates. Second is that they are missing the opportunity to use IAs to advance women's careers.

The model provides a solid grounding for future research on selecting the most effective organizational actions and designing supportive measures to disrupt the persistent dynamics contributing to women's underrepresentation in IAs. Future research could also expand our study by incorporating individual differences and the proactive role that women may take.

The model points to specific managerial interventions (e.g. increased access to job training and specific training ahead of the assignment, dual-career support, women's mentoring and affirmative action) which have the potential to reduce women's underrepresentation in IAs and in top management.

The system dynamics approach enables a broader understanding of why women are underrepresented in IAs, how this underrepresentation further exacerbates gender segregation in international business, and how these recursive outcomes can be averted to the advantage of firms' sustainable growth.

The paper suggested a sustainability indicators framework for industrial parks in contexts where information is weakly reliable or insufficient. The authors tried to cover those gaps and construct an indicators framework by answering the following research questions: can a combination of “adopted international” certifications be locally implemented in the Mexican context to reflect the level of regional sustainability of clusters of companies? How sustainable individual performance can be extended to a cluster of companies through collaborative strategies? What is the level of agreement on key success factors for implementing voluntary certification scheme in Mexican Industrial Parks? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In order to provide a more realistic set of sustainability indicators for Mexican Industrial Parks, the authors first carried out an analysis of secondary information sources for matching sustainability indicators with available related data which is reported by companies along their certification processes. The main purpose of doing this was to construct the indicator framework, which was explored empirically in the second phase of this research. During such phase, the authors validated the indicators framework by means of surveys and interviews to gather the perceptions of Mexican business managers selected from United Nations indicators which were coupled to available certifications in Mexico.

It has been observed that the sustainability indicators framework can be adopted from international structures to the local/regional situation when companies have framed their performance under international certifications allowing to count with a minimum of indicators to be used for sustainability development tracking.

Sustainability indicators in industrial parks is not an addressed topic in Latin America. Mexico can be taken as an example for the other Latin American countries in sustainability trends and shows the current context of the use of this tool for measurement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of mayors’ corruption on the municipal interest rate set by lenders.

The sample consists of a panel data for all the Spanish cities with population over 50,000 for 2002–2013 (130 municipalities). In line with previous literature and the structure of the panel data, the authors use a generalized method of moments equation to the main model and three robustness checks.

The results, robust to different specifications, indicate that banks do not take mayors’ corruption as a significant risk component of the municipal solvency. The data show a “corruption premium” ranging from −1 to 33 basis points, which aligns with the size of the “corruption premium” found by the literature, but the significance is low. This finding is connected, on the one hand, with the rigid, thorough Spanish legal framework ruling municipal financial management, and on the other hand, with the characteristics of mayors’ corruption. Robust evidence shows that key financial indicators influence interest rates: current saving, with a strong influence, and level of indebtedness, to a lesser extent. Besides, more populated cities pay lower interest rates.

The main limitation stems from the calculation of interest rate, because but sharp debt changes may decrease the accuracy.

The data prove that banks value this surplus as a sign of solvency and set lower interest rates. Considering that this financial indicator is key for setting the interest rate, as a point for practitioners, current saving should be monitored by the municipal financial officer, as a way to reduce the financial cost. Besides, legislation should consider current saving as a benchmark to set balanced budget rules or to establish conditions for municipalities to get into greater indebtedness.

This is the first research on municipal interest rate premium due to corruption in Spain.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain new knowledge about the accounting measurement of financial sustainability in local governments, by studying the influence of political factors on the evolution of income statements.

This paper analyses income statements of Spanish municipalities from 2006 to 2014, together with mayor profiles and political-institutional factors, using the generalised method of moments system.

The income statement represents a useful measure to assess financial sustainability, showing the effect of political factors on three dimensions proposed by IFAC (i.e. service, revenue and debt), such as ideological coincidence, political competition, political ideology, and absolute majority or political fragmentation.

The findings can be useful for policymakers and accountants responsible for accountability, supervisory bodies, fiscal authorities, voters, users of public services and other stakeholders interested in governmental income statements.

In the Eurozone, the crisis of government finance has made the citizens and the policymakers question the size and volume of public services. Likewise, in countries such as Spain, politicians remain one of the main problems for citizens. These circumstances make it very interesting and timely to study the accounting measurement of financial sustainability and its political explanations.

The findings provide new empirical evidence about the accounting measurement of financial sustainability in local governments, and they identify political factors that influence the evolution of income statements.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if a type of cactus mucilage, Opuntia ficus-indica (OFI), may act as a corrosion inhibitor for carbon steel in cement-based materials (mortar) exposed to chloride-laden environment.

Mortar prisms, reinforced with carbon steel rods, were immersed in sodium chloride (NaCl) solution for five wet – dry cycles. The experimentation included electrochemical monitoring (corrosion potential, Ecorr, and polarization resistance, Rp) of carbon steel during the time of exposure until corrosion-induced cracking appeared at the mortar surface. Crack survey on the mortar prisms was performed. Carbon steel rods were retrieved from the mortar after crack survey and steel mass loss at the end of the experimental period was estimated. A comparison between the different mixtures was also performed.

OFI mucilage did perform as a corrosion inhibitor of steel in chloride contaminated mortar.

The experimental program needs to be corroborated in concrete specimens with typical dimensions. The surface oxide/hydroxide formation of the carbon steel in contact with the OFI mucilage is still unknown; thus, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses are needed.

OFI mucilage is a suitable natural product that can be used to increase durability of concrete structures not only in countries where OFI cactus is produced, but also in many other countries where this plant is considered a plague.

The new information obtained from this paper is the innovative use of a by-product of this cactus plant for construction industry applications.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) offer courses and programmes focusing on sustainability in economics, as courses on sustainable development (SD), which examine the economic, social and environmental dimensions of SD. This paper aims to examine sustainability integration in economics degree programmes.

Through an extensive literature review in Web of Science (WoS) and information search in Google, conducting to 28 relevant case studies, this paper elucidates the emphasis given to sustainability as part of economics degree programmes in HEIs.

The results suggest that, whereas the inclusion of sustainability components in this field is a growing trend, much still needs to be done to ensure that matters related to SD are part of the routine of university students studying economics.

It is worth noting that the literature review conducted in WoS was primarily aimed at assisting in the selection of university case studies. The 28 university case studies scrutinised in this study may lack sufficient representation from numerous developing countries.

This study highlights challenges in integrating the SD into economics degree programmes, suggesting the need for curriculum adjustments as underscoring operational issues, acting as barriers. The inclusion of sustainability in economics programmes must navigate operational issues stemming from packed timetables and busy schedules, requiring innovative solutions.

As far as the authors are aware, this study holds substantial importance in its emphasis on implementing sustainability within HEIs’ economics programmes, assisting in pursuing SD.

The novelty of this study lies in addressing sustainability with the specific economics focus programmes within the HEIs context.