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Despite turning a recent eye toward work teams, motivation research has largely treated the group as a contextual influence affecting an individual’s motivation, leaving explanations of motivational forces within a group cached in theories of intrapersonal motivation. As a result, our understanding of the processes of motivation that operate beyond the individual remains lacking. Moving beyond this individual paradigm, the present paper seeks to clarify a process through which the motivational forces circulating within a team per se produce nascent member motivation through a motivational contagion. Specifically, we examine how motivational dynamics within a group serve as a unique motivational stimulus for its members and thereby operate as a process-altering collective effort as a consequence of its presence.

This paper is a conceptual analysis.

Either through an intrinsically driven adoption that promotes member persistence in effortful action or an extrinsic compelling that engenders intensity of effort, apparent motivation may spread through a connected social network.

Through providing a top-down explanation of how broader group-level motivation in and of itself may serve as an impetus for future motivation within the group, this paper takes an important first step to clarify how team-level motivation operates beyond a mere contextual influence on pre-existing individual motivation.

This study aims to empirically assess how infrastructure development influenced economic growth in Zambia from 2000 to 2020.

The study uses data from the World Development Indicators (WDI), spanning from 2000 to 2020. The selection of this time period was determined by the availability of data related to the research. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach was used for data analysis.

The findings show that economic growth is cointegrated with capacity to generate electricity, proving the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between them. Furthermore, the empirical results established that electricity generation capacity had a positive and significant impact on economic growth. Similarly, in the short run, electricity generation capacity, and mobile cellular services had a positive impact on economic growth.

Policy measures should prioritise increasing capacity for producing electricity and expanding access to energy by relevant economic sectors. Increased access to energy by these sectors can raise productivity, spur economic growth and accelerate industrialisation. Also, in the light of climate change, it is crucial that policymakers explore alternate sources of electricity generation, such as green and renewable sources. Furthermore, policy initiatives should prioritise expanding mobile cellular infrastructure, given that mobile cellular technology has become a vital component of economies and continues to offer unprecedented opportunities for economic growth.

This study presents novel empirical evidence on the unique relationship between infrastructure and economic growth in Zambia, highlighting electricity generation and mobile cellular services as pivotal factors for enhancing productivity and spurring industrial development.

This study aims to investigate issues of natural resource management (NRM), conservation and ecotourism leadership on rural livelihood in Musina Local Municipality, Limpopo Province, South Africa. It concentrated on the existing and probable effects of ecotourism and integrated rural activities and their environmental influences on climate change and vice versa, subsistence and sustainability. The study utilizes a broad literature review, focus group discussions and field observations to investigate the municipality’s biodiversity, holistic livelihoods and tourism resource and facility concerns with climate change implications in the study area, with data analyzed manually and also by means of cross tabulations and central tendencies. A harmful link between ecotourism-induced environmental impacts and integrated rural activities that retain potential climate change consequences is found to exist in the vicinity. Nevertheless, it is fathomed in line with the study findings that when tourism actions adhere to the justifications of sustainable and responsible tourism management, they can result in better ecotourism products that foster environmental sustainability and enhance rural livelihoods. Therefore, the study has identified a need for decent ecotourism facilities and activities and a managerial approach to diminish climate change hazards and spur subsistence for local communities in the municipality. Within its rationale and ability, the study presents an analysis of conservation, ecotourism management, environmental degradation and responsible tourism qualities regarding climate change consequences within the municipality.

This study introduces a multi-vaccine multi-echelon supply chain (MVMS) framework designed to ensure sustainable vaccine distribution during outbreaks. The framework aims to minimize the total costs of vaccine distribution and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to mitigate environmental impacts while maximizing job opportunities within the network.

Our proposed appraoch employs a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model.

The findings indicate that incorporating uncertainties related to demand and inspection errors significantly facilitates timely responses to unexpected shortages, fulfills the requirements of healthcare facilities, and enhances the supply chain’s resilience against future uncertainties. This study also explores managerial implications and suggests avenues for future research to further advance this field.

Existing literature on MVMS often relies on simplifying assumptions of perfect vaccines and primarily focuses on demand uncertainty. However, real-world supply chains are typically marked by imperfections, disruptions, and a variety of uncertainties beyond demand. In this work, we address several sources of parameter uncertainty, including demand variability, inspection errors, vaccine waste, and defective treatments rates to enhance the robustness of our model.

The purpose is to assess the usefulness of creative vouchers, a specific kind of technology and innovation vouchers (small grants usually given to SMEs to acquire external knowledge) where the knowledge suppliers are creative firms such as design agencies.

A multiple case analysis of four EU-funded pilot voucher schemes was carried out through project reports and semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders.

The authors show that creative vouchers are effective policy instruments despite the limited amount of money involved because they trigger new innovation trajectories often in a serendipitous way. The authors also show that the quality of projects and satisfaction of the beneficiaries increase when both proposals and suppliers are screened.

The authors’ conclusions are based on four pilot projects in a specific region of the world (Western Europe). Though two of them were extended to a much bigger scale, their generalizability may be limited. Moreover, the limited number of cases does not permit an analytical evaluation of all the voucher schemes mechanisms.

The findings of this paper can be very useful to policymakers designing voucher schemes and to the companies involved, whether they are providers or beneficiaries. In particular, the voucher allocation mechanisms may have a strong impact on the success of the program.

The innovation spurred by the collaboration with creative firms is generally neither energy-intensive nor capital intensive, but brain intensive, and this is the best way to leverage on the talent of local creative and make companies create value based on immaterial resources.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of creative vouchers after Bakhsi et al., 2015, and the only one involving several schemes in different countries. It shows the innovation potential of such a little known policy instrument for SMEs. Moreover, it provides insight on how to design a voucher scheme in order to improve its effectiveness.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainable development goals (SDGs) disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

The study focuses on a sample of 95 Italian-listed companies preparing the mandatory non-financial declaration (NFD) according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards over a five-year period (2017–2021), corresponding to an unbalanced sample of 438 observations. Analyst forecast quality was proxied by earnings forecast accuracy (FA) and earnings forecast dispersion (FD), built on data retrieved from the Refinitiv database. A manual content analysis was performed on NFDs to derive an SDG disclosure score (SDGD) for each sampled company.

This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that voluntary SDG disclosure matters to the capital market in that it helps enhance the information environment of companies, evidenced by improved analyst forecast quality. In particular, this study highlighted that SDG disclosure positively influences analyst FA while negatively affecting analyst FD.

This study focuses on the Italian context, which has idiosyncratic characteristics regarding the structure of the financial market, the composition of corporate ownership and experience in non-financial reporting practices.

This study indicates to corporate managers that following GRI standards may represent the right way to better integrate SDG disclosure in corporate non-financial reports and increase the relevance of such information for investors and other capital market participants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the association between SDG disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

This paper aims to uncover the insights derived from past experimental studies in promoting sustainable tourism. It also advocates for leveraging future experimental designs to position tourism as a catalyst for positive change toward sustainable development goals.

A review of previous literature examines the contributions of experimental design in both tourist studies and employee studies within the tourism fields.

Previous experimental studies have explored effective methods shaping tourists’ sustainable behaviors and management strategies contributing to employees’ decent work. The importance of integrating digital technology in these interventions is highlighted. A future research agenda encompassing three dimensions – technological progress, theory development and practical implications and research design – is proposed to leverage experimental studies for fostering sustainable development within the tourism industry.

This study, through a comprehensive review, highlights the significant impacts of previous experimental studies on encouraging responsible consumption among tourists and championing improved working conditions for employees. It underscores the necessity for enhanced experimental design, which should integrate theoretical frameworks and prioritize technological innovations to address real-world challenges. These improvements are crucial for advancing the tourism industry toward greater sustainability.

This paper aims to examine the effects of both transient and chronic loneliness on consumers’ variety-seeking (VS) behavior and to identify the various underlying mechanisms involved.

Four studies were adopted to clarify how transient and chronic loneliness affect consumers’ VS behavior.

Both transient and chronic loneliness promote consumers’ VS behavior. More importantly, the effect of transient loneliness on VS behavior is driven by perceived loss of control, whereas the effect of chronic loneliness on VS behavior is driven by need for uniqueness and sensation-seeking.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to explore the differential roles of transient and chronic loneliness on VS behavior, which may open new avenues for future research. First, future research could investigate moderators that influence the impacts of transient and chronic loneliness on VS behavior. Second, future research could examine different participant populations and use cognitive neuroscience techniques to further verify the differential roles of these two types of loneliness on VS behavior.

This research contributes to marketing practice by providing practical guidance on how to effectively design different marketing strategies to promote VS for consumers with different types of loneliness. For consumers with transient loneliness, marketers can benefit from a concerted focus on improving consumers’ sense of control. Yet, for consumers with chronic loneliness, marketing strategies that improve consumers’ need for uniqueness will be more effective.

This research contributes to the literature on loneliness and consumer behavior, which has largely overlooked the distinct roles of different types of loneliness (i.e. transient vs chronic loneliness) in influencing consumer behavior. Specifically, this paper conducted a comparative analysis of the impacts of transient and chronic loneliness on consumers’ VS behavior and proposed that transient and chronic loneliness promote consumers’ VS behavior through divergent underlying mechanisms.

Racial wealth inequality is a significant and growing issue in the USA. Improving the lagging rate of black new venture creation and successful entrepreneurship could help close the gap. The purpose of this paper is to focus needed attention on the financial challenges resulting from institutional and systemic discrimination that black entrepreneurs must deal with. Following this literature review, the paper makes recommendations and broad public policy suggestions.

This study conducts a literature review and discusses the myriad of reasons black entrepreneurs struggle with inadequate access to capital, with special emphasis on weaker entrepreneurial ecosystems that have resulted from systemic racism.

The paper sheds light on several factors which continue to directly impede successful black entrepreneurship including discrimination in lending, distrust in institutions, over-reliance on (inadequate) personal capital and declining black-owned banking and financial institutions, as well as community banking options in black communities.

The paper is conceptual and relies on prior literature. The proposed solutions are just a starting point and are certainly not meant to be all-inclusive or comprehensive. Much future research, particularly longitudinal research, is needed to further develop theory and specific public policies which can close the disparities this study has discussed. This study outlines several key areas in need of further quantitative and qualitative studies to better understand black entrepreneurship.

The US economy will increasingly suffer if the nearly 15% of population (and growing) made up of black communities continues to struggle. The broad-based policy solutions proposed in this paper would allow for increased access to capital that would address the long-term deficiencies and help to close the racial wealth gap.

Through this study’s broad-based potential solutions, entrepreneurial ecosystems can be strengthened to build the environment for successful new venture creation in black communities. The longer-term benefit would be increased tax revenues, improved communities with fewer individuals needing support through government assistance and greater social stability as economic gaps between various racial groups are closed.

Using a broader entrepreneurial ecosystem framework and a systemic racism theory lens, this study discusses the limited capital black entrepreneurs have access to. Following this literature review, this study offers broad-based policy solutions that can strengthen ecosystems and directly address the issues raised in the paper.

This study aims to explore how digital platforms (DPs) contribute to value co-creation in municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems.

The present paper conducts an explorative analysis using single case study methodology. The case in question involves a DPs operating in Italy.

Empirical analysis shows that DPs help engage citizens in MSW and reduce the fragmentation in waste management systems by fulfilling a brokerage role that connects citizens, municipalities and waste management companies. The development of bidirectional knowledge and resource flow among actors contributes to better waste recycling processes, as well as fosters economic, environmental and social value co-creation in a complex public service.

This research is limited to a single case study within the Italian context, which may influence the generalizability of the findings. Future research could expand the scope to include multiple case studies across different geographical regions.

For practitioners and policymakers, this paper underscores the strategic benefits of adopting DPs in MSW management systems and thereby improving public service delivery.

The case analysis highlights that DPs can assist public actors in achieving numerous sustainable development goals by enhancing recycling rates and activating learning mechanisms among citizens.

This study contributes to literature by connecting different fields of research (i.e. waste management and public management) and using network theory to show how DPs can contribute to the economic, environmental and social sustainability of MSW while generating relevant benefits for the actors involved.