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This study aims to examine the extent and quality of biodiversity reporting within publicly traded companies in Italy during 2022, amidst growing calls worldwide for enhanced corporate environmental responsibility.

The study proposes a framework derived from existing biodiversity reporting literature and international guidelines on the topic. Using data from companies’ non-financial reports, the voluntary biodiversity disclosure index is quantified on disclosed information. Various quality reporting characteristics are also deepened. Sector-specific analysis is conducted across 11 industries.

Approximately 30% of companies in the sample release information on their biodiversity practices/initiatives regarding biodiversity and extinction loss risks. Quantitative analysis reveals a general commitment to disclosure yet falls short of optimal standards. Qualitative insights suggest a genuine intention towards reporting exists, with notable gaps in future orientation, double materiality and mitigation strategies. The quality analysis underscores that the reporting is mainly generalised, narrative and disaggregated concerning actions to restore habitats and ecosystems.

A limitation of this study is the observation of annual reports during one reporting period. Future studies of longer duration would provide cross-period insights into corporate behaviour.

Policymakers should implement regulations and guidelines specifically tailored to biodiversity reporting, providing clear frameworks and standards for companies. Collaborative initiatives between governments, businesses and environmental organisations offer potential to develop best practices and facilitate knowledge-sharing in biodiversity reporting.

Collaborative initiatives between governments, businesses and environmental organisations offer potential to develop best practices and facilitate knowledge sharing in biodiversity reporting.

The study contributes to future biodiversity disclosure research by introducing a comprehensive framework that fosters stakeholder trust and environmental accountability. It also sheds light on biodiversity stewardship among Italian companies, under EU directives.

The purpose of this study is to learn what kinds of obstacles Indian businesses face when trying to make biodiversity protection a top priority as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. Interventions are proposed to elevate biodiversity protection to the ranks of CSR priorities among Indian businesses.

This study applies an interpretive phenomenological analysis strategy to glean information from in-depth interviews with leaders and professionals in CSR.

The findings of the study revealed that the main factors influencing Indian companies’ CSR area choices are existing processes and stakeholder pressures. Companies prioritise engaging with local communities and employees when selecting CSR activities. The major challenge is integrating biodiversity into business plans, with CSR heads struggling to secure investment due to long gestation periods and limited media coverage. Implementing agencies face issues with project deliverables, mainly due to land ownership and lack of local government support. Companies can also encourage employee involvement in pro-environmental behaviours. The study also provides practical solutions for Indian companies to enhance their CSR engagement in biodiversity conservation.

The research only focuses on the opinions of CSR specialists and leaders, so it may only consider part of the situation’s complexity inside the organisation. The results may only apply to the business climate in India; hence, extra care is warranted when extrapolating them to other countries. Nonetheless, the study provides valuable insights into the interplay between CSR and biodiversity protection that might inform future studies and policy initiatives.

This research fills a gap in the literature by investigating an uncharted territory: the role of CSR in protecting biodiversity in India. Examining obstacles and variables affecting CSR objectives illuminates business involvement in biodiversity conservation. The recommended treatments have real-world consequences for improving CSR involvement in this critical area.

The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the conditions and motivations that influence teachers to adopt innovations.

Using Diffusion of Innovation theory (Rogers, 2003) and Self-Determination theory (Ryan and Deci, 2017), data from two surveys (n = 568; n = 108) and qualitative follow-up interviews of Early Adopter teachers (n = 16) were triangulated to discern relationships among their identification as Early Adopters, satisfaction of their basic psychological needs (BPN) and their implementation of an educational innovation.

Early Adopters had a positive and statistically significant relationship with the implementation of the innovation. Satisfaction of teachers’ BPN had the largest impact on innovation.

The findings are preliminary and based on a small sample size of teachers. Reliability of the measure of BPN was not as high as the standard, but it did have the largest impact on implementation. Additional studies should explore the connections among Early Adopter teacher motivation, leadership and the satisfaction of their BPN.

School leaders should leverage the influence of Early Adopters to support innovation, and they should provide additional time, training and resources to supports teachers’ BPN.

This study examines how to identify and support Early Adopter teachers as enablers of change within schools. We know of no other studies that have used both Diffusion of Innovation theory and Self-Determination theory to understand the motivations of Early Adopter teachers.

Emerging debates in public policy emphasise sustainability and the role of the Creative Economy in advancing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals within UNESCO Creative Cities (UCC). However, research on ‘coopetition’ – a blend of cooperation and competition – remains sparse within these global networks. This study investigates coopetition under Multilevel Governance in UNESCO-designated tourist destinations, offering a comprehensive examination of its dynamics through a multidimensional, jurisdiction-spanning lens. We uncover disparities within Multilevel Governance structures using a qualitative methodology, including documentary and field research with non-participant observation and thematic content analysis. While cooperation strategies are intended to foster reciprocity among social actors and their organisations, competition prevails, resulting in conflicting goals. This study concludes that the UCC label while promoting coopetition, risks reducing these cities to mere ‘brands’, challenging their legitimacy. This study underscores the complexity of integrating coopetition within UCC governance and its implications for their identity and sustainability objectives.

This research aims to define the novel attitude toward social responsibility phenomena from a multi-level governance perspective and, based on the Lithuanian case, to illustrate the territorial perspective concerning the needs and challenges for future responsible governance in rural areas.

This research is organized according to qualitative research principles. The seven-step Delphi technique was applied to reach the aim. The expert selection was done using the two criteria, based on the Quadruple Helix approach (Carayannis & Rakhmatullin, 2014; González-Martinez et al., 2023) and the Stakeholder Salience model (Mitchell et al., 2017). The complementary expertise was accumulated by involving experts from the ministry (government helix) as holding the highest level of legitimacy in the field of building responsible governance in rural areas; business helix representatives hold high urgency attributes; power attributes varied among the experts in different helixes. In total, 15 experts were selected to implement the necessary Delphi steps, where experts’ involvement is relevant. The research work lasted for four months, starting from December 2022, and finalizing in March 2023. Technical support and funding for this research were organized in parallel with part of the activities of the Horizon 2020 programme’s project “SHERPA – Sustainable Hub to Engage in Rural Policies with Actors” (2019–2023).

The number of recently observed issues while realizing the increasingly complicated application of multi-level governance mechanisms, both scientific discussions and practical implementation evidence call for a novel attitude in governance. In particular areas, where imperfections are very sensitive and most evident, scientific elaborations are more demanded from the very top, i.e. from the EU. Throughout recent years, the European Commission started employing cocreative consortiums (e.g. SHERPA), which, as found much earlier in scientific discourse, represent the joint multi-level power, involving the most powerful, urgent and legitimate stakeholders, representing the four helixes – government, society, business and academia, in building innovative cocreative and collaborative policy formation and implementation practices in multi-level governance. However, the core component that might add to future responsible governance is the social responsibility phenomenon. In conjunction, the multi-level governance and social responsibility paradigms might propose the desired novel responsible governance concept, which would work for more responsible policy formation and implementation, especially considering the interests of local communities.

This paper presents empirical findings, based on limited qualitative data, collected in one EU new member state, i.e. Lithuania. International comparative perspectives are given referring to other related papers. Research findings are promising for further research in the field of novel responsible multi-level governance framework by using the Quadruple Helix stakeholder approach to foster collaboration for innovation in socially responsible governance both from theoretical and empirical points of view.

The developed theoretical framework and described methodological approach might be applied to practitioners in any area policy formation process. The Quadruple Helix approach might be used in defining the needs and challenges of any unit of analysis, either a small canton or a metropolitan city. The study suggests a meaningful departing point starting with expert views on better and more responsible governance practices. The study envisages the ways and manners to define the best value for stakeholders that is the general public or citizens of a rural setting, and this could be extended to other levels of government or state.

The research takes into account the public interest from a very broad point of view – how to develop a political course for rural regions in a socially responsible way by using already established innovative methodology.

The article proposes using the novel combination of the three-pillar and stakeholder perspective of CSR, fulfilled by the original Quadruple Helix innovation approach, for establishing proactive stakeholder needs-based responsible multi-level governance practices, enabling the socially responsible policy formation and implementation mechanisms.

This paper aims to study the effects of varying inlet channel angle in a novel microfluidic architecture blood plasma separation ability over range of hematocrit values (5–45%) at multiple flowrates.

CAD designs for both micro architectures were designed in SOILWORKS. In the second step, these designs were imported into ANSYS to perform where meshing, model selection, defining blood as two-phase material and boundary conditions are performed.

Separation efficiency values close to 100% with diluted blood and 65.2% with whole blood were observed. Straight channel inlet design has significantly better performance at high hematocrit levels, whereas at lower hematocrit levels, both designs had almost same outcome. Furthermore, lower flowrates have shown the highest separation efficiency for lower hematocrit levels, whereas at higher hematocrit percentages, higher flowrates have shown better separation effects for both designs. Furthermore, trends obtained for flow ratio and flowrates against separation efficiency are demonstrated.

This study is based on blood modeled as two-phase flow, with the phases consisting of blood plasma as primary phase and red blood cells as secondary particulate phase.

Implications of this study are far reaching for point-of-care health-care systems. A practical system of this numerical study can provide a microchannel device which take very small amount of blood sample to separate it into constituents which can be coupled with detection module to detect a particular disease for which it is designed for. This microsystem can be very beneficial for remote areas where a large hospital facility is far away.

This study has carried out a detailed analysis on the ability of a novel microchannel architecture to separate blood plasma from other blood constituents. Inlet channel angle variation effects are observed over a range of hematocrit percentages. These trends are further investigated for three different flowrates to assess the microchannel design behavior.

The purpose of this study is to explore the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) of Industry 4.0 between the academicians and industry players in construction engineering, further suggesting a mechanism to narrow the gap between the distinct parties.

This study was conducted through structured online and face-to-face interviews, using KAP survey, and semi-structured interviews. This constructive research was conducted among Malaysian construction industry players and academicians from the construction engineering department in public universities.

The findings exhibit the similarities and differences of KAP between academics and industry on Industry 4.0 in construction engineering. In general, both categories of respondents have displayed more similarities than differences in all aspects, except for knowledge. The better knowledge profile of Industry 4.0 among the academicians reflects the nature of the academic works that constantly seek new knowledge, thus suggesting the establishment of an industry-academic (I-A) knowledge equilibrium framework to leverage the knowledge profile between both parties.

This exploratory study that showcases the perspective of the academia and industry practitioners on Industry 4.0 acts as a cornerstone for bridging the gap between the two distinct sectors within the same field.

The gap between the academic and industry was highlighted, further establishing the I-A knowledge equilibrium framework that could also be applied to other fields of study.

The originality of this paper was the profiling of the KAP of Industry 4.0 for the academicians and industry players in construction engineering, further distinguishing the gap between both parties.

The build-up of large-scale COVID-19 testing required an unprecedented effort of coordination within decentralized healthcare systems around the world. The aim of the study was to elucidate the challenges of vertical policy coordination between non-political actors at the national and regional levels regarding this policy issue, using Sweden as our case.

Interviews with key actors at the national and regional levels were analyzed using an adapted version of a conceptualization by Adam et al. (2019), depicting barriers to vertical policy coordination.

Our results show that the main issues in the Swedish context were related to parallel sovereignty and a vagueness regarding responsibilities and mandates as well as complex governmental structures and that this was exacerbated by the unfamiliarity and uncertainty of the policy issue. We conclude that understanding the interaction between the comprehensiveness and complexity of the policy issue and the institutional context is crucial to achieving effective vertical policy coordination.

Many studies have focused on countries’ overall pandemic responses, but in order to improve the outcome of future pandemics, it is also important to learn from more specific response measures.