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This paper aims to shed light on the relevant benefits that collaborations with external innovation drivers can offer to companies in traditional sectors to embark on a twofold path oriented toward both a sustainable horizon and digital transformation (DT) goals.

This work describes the outcomes of the METROPOLIS project, financed by the Economic Development Ministry (MISE), to support small and medium enterprises in the DT process. The project involves the collaboration between the University of Naples Federico II and Palescandolo Lavorazioni Siderurgiche (PLS), an enterprise in the shipbuilding sector.

The project’s results highlight the complexity of the required interventions and show that DT is necessary but not sufficient condition to improve performance. Therefore, it is crucial to implement an appropriate decision support system based on advanced methodologies that can efficiently handle the system’s complexity, managing objectives oriented on efficiency and sustainability. Hence, the authors developed an original optimization approach to combine the need to ensure good production performances with sustainability-oriented objectives.

This study emphasizes the complex path necessary to radically transform companies’ processes across digital and sustainable paradigms through a real project experience. In particular, it demonstrates that efficiency and sustainability objectives may conflict, and multicriteria approaches may help overcome this. Hence, it may provide insights for stakeholders and researchers involved in DT and green transition processes.

Despite increasing awareness among fashion consumers about the positive environmental and societal impacts of sustainable fashion as a viable alternative to fast fashion, their actual adoption behavior often diverges. This study aims to empirically investigate consumers’ resistance barriers to sustainable fashion clothing.

This study utilizes innovation resistance theory to examine the barriers to consumer intention to buy sustainable clothing. The study collected a large sample (N = 745) of fashion consumers from the USA and India to test a research model.

The study finds that value, social risk, tradition and image barriers significantly reduce consumers’ intentions to buy sustainable fashion clothing. Additionally, the findings highlight that environmental concern moderates the relationship between social risk barriers and buying intentions.

The study findings contribute to the existing sustainable fashion literature by highlighting the main barriers for sustainable clothing consumption and emphasizing the crucial role of social elements, economic values and the image of sustainable fashion products in shaping consumer behavior within the fashion landscape.

Managers in China prioritize the cultivation of loyal employees, resulting in positive effects associated with leader-member exchange (LMX). However, fragmented evidence suggests that LMX also can trigger deviant behavior. LMX provides employees with access to resources, while it also harbors potential risks for deviant behaviors. Based on the cognitive-affective system theory of personality and resource-related theories, this study aims to explore the double-edged sword effects of LMX by examining how LMX influences interpersonal deviant behaviors through emotional and cognitive pathways, respectively.

This study involved three waves of paired data surveys that were conducted in China over one month, and a total of 117 leaders and 235 subordinates participated in this study.

Even though LMX as a job resource reduces workplace anxiety, LMX also generates work overload for employees. Workplace anxiety and work overload further result in interpersonal deviant behavior. Narcissistic admiration, as a personality trait, can weaken the mediating role of work overload but not that of workplace anxiety.

The finding can help managers pay attention to negative effect of LMX and provide suggestions for preventing employees’ workplace deviant behavior.

The findings revealed how LMX leads to negative outcomes in the workplace. In addition, the results demonstrated the buffering effect of narcissistic admiration on the negative effect of LMX.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of the external environment on the strategic thinking dimensions in Malaysia and Palestine on the banking sector.

This paper focuses on dynamism and complexity in political and economic external environments. This study uses qualitative methodology through a comparative case study method. Purposive sampling was used to collect data from in-depth semistructured interviews with 33 bank executives from Malaysia and 17 from Palestine.

The findings revealed that the banking sector in both Malaysia and Palestine shared five common strategic thinking dimensions, including vision, creativity, conceptual thinking, futurism and opportunity. However, a sixth dimension, intent-focused, was unique to Palestinian bank executives. This study indicates that Palestine’s financial strategic thinking environment is more dynamic and complex than Malaysia’s. Additionally, the study highlights the significant influence of both microenvironments (such as types of banks) and the macroenvironment (such as political and economic situations). These findings hold important implications for decision-makers in the banking sector of both countries.

As with many studies, this study has some limitations. First, the analysis examines only the turbulent and stable environment in the two countries by using a qualitative approach which enables the analysis of thoughts and actions and exposes the beliefs, perceptions, mental maps and structures of belief in their perceptions (Cavana et al., 2001). As such, the results are limited to a particular time, date and geographical location; thus, opinions and perceptions might be altered due to changes in the external political and economic environment. The second limitation of this work is that the case study might not be appropriate for generalization (Stake, 1978). Finally, the limited number of female participants in Palestine shows a high level of inequality compared to Malaysian participants.

This study explores the implication of uncertain environments at the national level on executives’ cognition and actions, links the micro- and macro-environment of the banking industry to a theoretical perspective and develops a conceptual circular model to show the effect of macro environments on bank performance. The findings offer practical contributions to the current literature, providing insights for executives to navigate a dynamic and complex banking industry.

This study fills the literature gap by exploring how strategic thinking dimensions triggered by macro- and micro-environments impact banking sector performance in Malaysia and Palestine.

While extensive research exists on how positive life circumstances and positive personality traits promote entrepreneurship, there is little research focusing on how negative personal circumstances may potentially breed entrepreneurship. This study aims to build upon the theory of underdog entrepreneurship to examine the effect of challenging life circumstances such as poverty on the development of entrepreneurial traits in underdog entrepreneurs. This research analyzed the effect of risk-taking (RT) on the entrepreneurial success (ES) of underdog entrepreneurs and the role of optimism (OPM) and persistence (P) as mediating variables and poverty as a moderator variable.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect data from 400 micro-finance borrowers of Akhuwat Foundation Pakistan. Akhuwat provides interest-free small loans to the poor segment of society. Preliminary testing of the survey questionnaire with a sample of 35 borrowers of Akhuwat Foundation in Lahore city was conducted before data collection. Data was collected from four randomly selected branches in Lahore city.

The authors found that OPM and P significantly mediate the relationship between RT and ES. In addition, the authors analyzed the moderating effect of poverty on the relationship between OPM and ES and found a negative moderating effect. A strong positive moderating effect of poverty was found on the relationship between P and ES. The results of multi-group analysis show that successful and unsuccessful underdog entrepreneurs differ in their RT propensity, which is significantly mediated by OPM and P.

This study provides empirical evidence on entrepreneurial traits and success of poor entrepreneur in an emerging economy. This work is original and has not been submitted elsewhere.

Network configurations have been proposed as an efficient form of organisation and a promising area of research; however, a lack of conceptual clarity can be noted. The purpose of this review is to allow for a broad appreciation of network configurations and provide guidance for future studies of the concept.

A systematic literature review was conducted based on the PRISMA method; Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and the Cochrane Library were searched for conference proceedings and journal articles describing organisational networks to integrate resources aimed at care delivery. Around 80 articles were included in the final review and analysed thematically and by use of bibliographic coupling.

The last decades have seen an increase in the frequency of articles describing networks for healthcare delivery. The most common contexts are care for multiple and/or long-term conditions. Three clusters of articles were found, corresponding to different conceptualisations of networks in healthcare: efficiency-enhancing cooperation, efficiency-enhancing integration and involvement for cocreation.

To increase conceptual clarity and allow the research on network configurations in healthcare to produce meta-learnings and guidance to practice, scholars are advised to provide ample descriptions of studied networks and relate them to established network classifications.

The current review has only included articles including networks as a key concept, which provides a focused overview of the use of network configurations but limits the insights into similar approaches not described explicitly as networks.

Health professionals play a crucial role in addressing the climate crisis and contributing to sustainable development. However, despite urgent calls from experts and health professions students, tertiary education currently lacks fit-for-purpose planetary health curricula. This study aims to provide a comprehensive, Australia-wide examination of planetary health curricula offered within two health professions: nutrition and dietetics.

This mixed-method study involved two phases. Firstly, content analysis of publicly available unit titles and descriptions to determine the frequency and distribution of relevant curricula. Secondly, content and inductive thematic analysis of relevant learning outcomes, guided by Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy to assess the level of cognitive learning and the subject matter being prioritised.

Examination of 104 degrees offered by 41 Australian universities identified relevant curricula in 71 nutrition degrees (84%) and 18 dietetics degrees (95%). Majority of relevant learning outcomes (n = 137) focus on lower-order cognitive learning, with 11 themes of subject matter identified; planetary health, critiquing the status quo, innovation and disruption, equity, values-based practice and evidence-based practice, (dietary modification, food service in health-care settings, food and nutrition policy, food system drivers and elements of the food supply chain.

This study identified an increase in coverage of planetary health curricula in Australian nutrition and dietetics degrees compared to previous examinations and the need for higher-order learning to adequately equip the future health workforce.

Mental health inequalities based on race and ethnicity in the USA and globally persist despite efforts to address them. The COVID-19 epidemic accentuated these inequalities and demonstrated the extent to which they are linked to social determinants. However, the organizations that are best placed to ameliorate mental health inequalities are often underfunded and under-resourced. Investment strategies that restrict funding for programmatic costs rather than general operating costs often disproportionately impact small organizations that serve communities of color. This study aims to argue that effectively addressing mental health inequalities requires investing in these organizations by applying the lessons learned from implementation science.

This study demonstrates how organizational factors such as leadership, supervision and organizational culture and climate are key to programmatic success and how implementation strategies can target these factors. As promoting health equity is increasingly recognized as a priority outcome for implementation science research, these organizational approaches can inform funders on how to support small organizations that serve marginalized communities, giving them the capacity and flexibility to address mental health inequalities.

This paper applies the findings from implementation science to consider how best to support mental health organizations, particularly those well suited to serving the mental health needs of diverse communities.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between work-life balance and the mental health of Indian managers and to explore the moderating role of emotional intelligence (EI) and gender.

Work-life balance scale (Hayman 2005), Mental Health Inventory (Viet and Ware, 1983) and EI scale (Wong and Law, 2002) were administered to 202 (102 males and 100 females) Indian managers. Based on the Conservation of Resource theory, a theoretical model has been designed and hypotheses were tested by descriptive, correlation and moderation analysis.

The results of this study indicated that work-life balance is positively correlated with psychological well-being and mental health, while negatively correlated with the psychological distress of managers. EI has emerged as a potential moderator that positively influences the relationship between work-life balance and the mental health of managers. At the same time, gender did not show any moderating effect.

This research has theoretical, practical as well as social implications.

This study is aligned with SDG 3 and SDG 5 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2023. This paper provides valuable inputs in promoting mental health at the workplace and formulating gender-neutral work-life balance policies and programs in Indian organizations.

This study is aligned with SDG 3 (Health and well-being) and SDG 5 (Gender equality) of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2023.

This study is an empirical research paper backed by a sound theoretical framework, which addresses the work-life balance and mental health issues of managers and highlights the positive role of EI in managing their personal and professional lives in a low gender-egalitarian Indian work–family culture.

Drawing upon social exchange theory, this study investigates how witnessed incivility is related to psychological distress for employees. In addition, scholars dug deep into the potential moderating effect of self-esteem that links witnessed incivility, employee silence and psychological distress.

In data were obtained from 292 bankers at family-owned banks. In this work, data analysis was performed using Smart-PLS covariance-based SEM version 4.

The study results indicate that employee silence mediates witnessed incivility and psychological distress. Findings also suggest that high self-esteem can mitigate the harmful effects of witnessed incivility, indirectly causing silence and psychological distress among employees.

Family-owned bank management should encourage employees to speak up, demonstrate self-esteem and share their concerns. Thus, reducing witnessed incivility increases well-being, stress, and mental health in Pakistani family-owned enterprises which operate in diverse industries.

In the context of family-owned banks, our study adds context and theory to the existing body of knowledge by illuminating the underlying process that relates incivility with psychological distress By exploring the use of social exchange theory.