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Despite their significant economic impact, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remain underrepresented in public procurement. While previous research has identified the barriers facing SMEs in public procurement markets, a knowledge gap still exists on how these barriers influence one another in a specific context.

This study developed a hierarchical structural model that reveals the contextual interrelationships between 14 notable barriers to SME involvement in public procurement, based on evidence from the publicly funded healthcare sector in the UK. The data were analyzed using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and matrix impact of cross-multiplication applied to categorization (MICMAC).

The results systematically classify barriers based on their hierarchical relationships, offering a robust theoretical foundation for understanding their nature and interconnections.

The findings can help scholars, government administrators and politicians in government-funded healthcare systems determine the most influential barriers to SME involvement and their causes, enabling them to build viable remedies.

This is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between the barriers to SMEs' public health procurement, using evidence from the public health procurement context.

Scholars working in the field of the economics of education have long documented how investment in girls’ education delivers the greatest return in terms of societal wellbeing (see, e.g., Dollar & Gatti, 1999; Forbes, 2000; Klasen, 2002). Unfortunately, mainstream economists have quite a narrow interpretation of wellbeing, the rate of growth in gross domestic product (GDP) usually serves as the main barometer. The problem here is that higher rates of economic growth do not necessarily imply improved outcomes in terms of gender equality. Getting girls in school certainly represents progress. There are 129 million girls around the world who are not in school (UNICEF, 2022), and there are numerous obstacles to overcome if this problem is to be seriously addressed. The good news is that far more attention is being devoted to girls’ education and the empowerment of women today than in the past, as countless NGOs and charities have sprung up in recent years that focus on these issues. A key question, however, is whether it is sufficient just to get girls to attend school. Less attention seems to be paid to what they actually do when they get there. Admittedly, some education is better than none at all, but what if girls attended schools where the measure of success was less focussed on exam results, getting a good job, and growing GDP? In this chapter, we present the case for school education that aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Green School for Girls (GS4G) – a pilot programme – seeks to implement a curriculum and pedagogy that will produce strong, independently minded, entrepreneurial young women, capable of earning a good living for themselves and their families in a fashion that is in harmony with the interests of the community and the natural environment.

Food and beverage (F&B) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must diversify their markets and obtain predictable sources of revenues to withstand difficult and volatile periods such as the post-pandemic geopolitical scenario, recently burdened by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. On the other hand, another strand of the literature suggests that public procurement could be considered a great source of income, enabling solid contracts, revenues and cash-flow stability. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the role of public procurement, the adoption of e-commerce platforms and their interactions in affecting the exporting performances of SMEs operating in the F&B sector.

The study retrieves data from 2,186 Italian F&B manufacturing SMEs relying on Margò by Cribis database. Therefore, it conducts a structured equational model (SEM) to test the developed hypotheses empirically.

The findings reveal that digital selling platforms positively affect exports, whereas public procurement negatively affects F&B SMEs exports. Nonetheless, findings underline that the interaction between public procurement and the adoption of digital selling platforms dampens public procurement's negative effects on exports.

This study brings an original contribution to the F&B literature by conducting empirical research on an extensive sample of firms from one of the most influential countries in the F&B vertical, Italy, with officially registered data. More importantly, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this study pioneers the investigation of the relationship between public procurement and e-commerce platforms in affecting F&B SMEs' export performances.

In recent years, there has been a growing academic interest in incorporating innovation into the public procurement practices. Nevertheless, a noticeable scarcity of current bibliometric studies in this particular field exists. To fill this gap, the study analyzes trends in public procurement and innovation.

The study conducts a bibliometric analysis on data from 354 journal articles and reviews retrieved from the Scopus database. Specifically, performance analysis was conducted to gain an overview of the field in terms of research productivity, while science mapping was performed to analyze the relationship networks between concepts through co-word analysis.

The initial part of the analysis focused on publication trends and compiled a list of the most influential journals that delve into the field. Generally, the findings indicate an increase in research on public procurement and innovation since 2012, despite fluctuations in the number of publications over the years. The geographical distribution highlighted that countries from Europe have been the most prolific contributors to this field, with limited representation of developing countries especially from Africa. A co-word analysis through VOSviewer identified 11 key clusters that present relevant knowledge themes and future research agenda in the field. The themes revolve around aspects such as sustiainability, development strategies, efficiency in construction industry, societal and regional development, small and medium-sized enterprises' involvement, sustainable public procurement, and tendering.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by uniquely presenting the trends on publications related to public procurement and innovation, considering recent developments in the field. It identifies key research themes and delves into the identified clusters, concluding with a discussion on potential avenues for future research.

Against the backdrop of management, planning, temporary organizations, Shannon–Weaver theory of communication and evaluation theories, the purpose of this research paper is to examine the relative importance of specific project management tasks in the various phases of system delivery projects in distinguishing successful and unsuccessful projects.

A survey method was used (N = 3,129) to collect data from the customers of a major systems delivery project management company operating in the facilities management industry. Logistic regression was used to analyze the capability and relative importance of the tasks in discriminating successful and unsuccessful projects.

The results of the paper indicate that three out four installation tasks were among the top three in their ability to differentiate the successful and unsuccessful systems delivery project. Especially critical tasks were “Meeting milestones” and “Allocation of appropriate resources” so that the project could be completed on-time. Relatively less important tasks were “Advice and suggestions regarding the development of specifications for the project” and “Proposal to meet the intent of the company’s specifications” in the proposal phase of the project, and “Resolving warranty issues as defined by the warranty process” in the commissioning phase.

Previous research has assessed the importance of the various project management phases. This research examines the capability of the more minutiae tasks to distinguish the successful and unsuccessful projects in the various phases of systems delivery projects, i.e. proposal, installation and commissioning.

Scholars and practitioners acknowledge that digital leadership can help organizations gain a competitive advantage. This article focuses on the characteristics, styles and skills needed for effective digital leadership. It looks at the role of digital leaders in innovating business models and introducing organizational change required for a successful digital transformation.

This paper is based on a comprehensive literature review of digital transformation, digital leadership, business model innovation, and organizational culture. It draws on institutional theory (INT) the neo-institutional theory (NIT). It draws from Science Direct, Web of Science and Google Scholar publications. A proposition and a conceptual framework are developed based on evaluating and synthesizing the literature.

We find that specific leader characteristics (agility, participative, innovativeness and openness), styles (democratic and transformational) and skills (cognitive, social, technological and digital) enable successful business model innovation and organizational change, all of which allow successful digital transformation of firms.

The literature on digital transformation has not been well integrated with the leadership literature. This is particularly true in terms of the role digital leaders play in the successful digital transformation of firms. The conceptual framework and a way forward proposed in this paper introduce future research directions on the topic.

This study aims to examine the relevant but overlooked intervening role of knowledge sharing and innovation capability between digital leadership and open innovation. This study hypothesizes that top management knowledge value (TMKV) can strengthen the relationship between digital leadership and knowledge sharing. In line with the resource- and knowledge-based views, the serial mediation model explains how organizations can achieve open innovation through knowledge sharing and innovation capability development under digital leadership.

The research hypotheses were tested with survey data collected in four different rounds, separated by three to four weeks each, from 250 employees working in telecom and IT companies. The statistical analyses relied on the PROCESS macro, which enabled a simultaneous estimation of the direct, mediation and moderated mediation effects that underpin the proposed theoretical framework.

Results showed good support for the serial mediation model. TMKV was found a significant factor to improve knowledge sharing among employees.

The role of leadership is inevitable in the journey of organizational performance, and digital leadership has become a significant phenomenon in this regard. To achieve open innovation, organizations need digital leadership that induce knowledge sharing and innovation capability.

This study contributes to extant research by explaining how digital leadership induces knowledge sharing and innovation capability to achieve open innovation that is highly important to compete and outperform the rivals.

Following the trend in the world over and on the African continent, the Parliament of Ghana passed a new law in 2020, the Narcotics Control Commission Act (Act 1019) that eased the legal restrictions on cannabis cultivation and use, subject to obtaining license from the relevant authority/authorities. This paper aims to examine the implications of Ghana’s decision to legalise the cultivation of cannabis for industrial purposes for the production of fibre and for medicinal purposes.

The author adopted the qualitative analysis critical review methodology in sourcing information from peer-reviewed articles, coupled with the author’s own professional knowledge, background and training, to critically analyse and review the reasons behind Ghana’s decision to legalise cannabis cultivation and the implications such a major policy change/shift.

It was found that, while the law mentions industrial and medicinal purposes for the legalisation of cannabis, the real reason, at least in the immediate term, is mainly economic. This agrees with those of other African countries that have legalised cannabis cultivation but appears to contrast with those of Europe and America.

This research is limited to Ghana and the few African countries that have legalised cannabis cultivation so far. The main reason for the legalisation (economic benefits) may also change in the future when the economics of scale turn in the favour of the country. Therefore, Ghana’s case may not represent the case of all countries legalising cannabis cultivation.

The research implication of this paper is that it brings to the world the law on cannabis cultivation in Ghana. It provides a professional and scientific position paper on Ghana’s drug law regime regarding cannabis, thus, serving as a useful reference literature to the academic and research community on the topic. More importantly, it discusses the implications of such major policy change from an objective perspective, unravelling the real reason behind the State’s decision to legalise the cultivation of cannabis in Ghana.

This paper will bring to the fore the other consequences of Ghana’s cannabis cultivation legalisation policy change, which little attention has been devoted to so far.

This paper, apart from reference to other published texts on the topic, which have been duly acknowledged, represents the sole work of the author. It has not been produced anywhere or by anyone else either in Ghana or elsewhere.

The purpose of this study is to examine the state of the literature related to the psychophysiological effects of travel, to identify gaps in the literature and to propose a vision to guide research between now and 2050.

The study was guided by a systematic literature review which started with more than 2,100 papers. The extant review and its findings are written in a conceptual nature with the concluding propositions, for the year 2050, guided by the systematic review and the authors’ personal knowledge.

It was found that research related to the psychophysiological effects of travel has greatly progressed over the past two decades. Findings include evidence that travel reduces both perceived and actual stresses and that taking more vacations has the ability to make people healthier. The study also revealed that travel can have negative effects on physiological health. The overall results led to a call for research on the psychophysiological benefits of travel between now and 2050.

The systematic review of literature was limited to studies conducted in English and to studies that included the words “travel” or “tourism” and “benefits”, stress, “health” and “wellness”. Results provide a discussion of theories that should guide the research agenda.

The review and proposed vision for research provide a detailed guide for researchers to follow. Should the proposed research come to fruition, tourism practitioners globally will have results to aid in engineering tourism experiences that could provide health benefits to visitors.

The proposed vision could have profound social implications, as the understanding of the positive and negative effects of travel should make travel experiences healthier for all. The study also proposes a call for research to determine ways to make the benefits of travel available to both the “haves” and “have nots” so that the benefits of travel can be more inclusive.

The main contribution of this manuscript is that it proposes 11 propositions for research between now and 2050 based on a thorough review of gaps related to the psychophysiological benefits of travel. The resultant propositions provide a clear and unique call for research in this area of inquiry.

本研究的主要目标是检查与旅行的心理生理益处相关的文献状况, 找出文献中的空白, 并提出从现在到2050年指导研究的愿景。

这项研究以一项系统的文献综述为指导, 该综述从2100多篇论文开始。现有的综述及其研究结果是在系统综述和作者个人知识的指导下, 以概念性的形式撰写的, 并附有2050年的结论性命题。

研究发现, 在过去的二十年里, 与旅行的心理生理益处相关的研究取得了长足的进步。研究结果包括有证据表明, 旅行可以减轻感知和实际的压力, 多度假可以使人们更健康。该研究还表明, 旅行会对生理健康产生负面影响。总体结果促使人们呼吁研究从现在到2050年旅行的心理生理益处。

本文的主要贡献是, 它根据对旅行的心理生理益处相关差距的全面回顾, 提出了从现在到2050年的11个研究主题。由此产生的主题为这一研究领域的研究提供了明确而独特的呼吁。

Los objetivos principales del presente estudio eran examinar el estado de la literatura relacionada con los beneficios psicofisiológicos de los viajes, identificar lagunas en la bibliografía y proponer una visión que guíe la investigación de aquí a 2050.

El estudio se guió por una revisión bibliográfica sistemática que partió de más de 2.100 artículos. La revisión existente y sus hallazgos están redactados de forma conceptual con las proposiciones finales para el año 2050, guiadas por la revisión sistemática y el conocimiento personal de los autores.

Se encontró que la investigación relacionada con los beneficios psicofisiológicos de los viajes ha progresado mucho en las dos últimas décadas. Resultados incluyen pruebas de que viajar reduce tanto el estrés percibido como el real y de que tomar más vacaciones tiene la capacidad de hacer que las personas estén más sanas. El estudio también reveló que viajar puede tener efectos negativos sobre la salud fisiológica. Los resultados globales condujeron a una llamada a la investigación sobre los beneficios psicofisiológicos de los viajes de aquí a 2050.

La principal aportación de este manuscrito es que propone once proposiciones para la investigación de aquí a 2050 basadas en una revisión exhaustiva de las lagunas relacionadas con los beneficios psicofisiológicos de los viajes. Las proposiciones resultantes constituyen un llamamiento claro y único a la investigación en este ámbito de estudio.