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Investments in gender training for agricultural researchers have not attained expected outcomes, bringing into question the efficacy of training approaches used. New approaches for transformative gender training need to draw on lessons learned from previous courses. This chapter analyses short gender training courses identified using a scoping methodology. Selected courses offered between 2005 and 2015 for scientists in Eastern Africa were critiqued against a theoretical framework for transformative gender training. Also shared is a training model (Gender Responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation course) that addresses gaps in previous courses. The chapter identifies critical lessons for facilitating transformative gender training for non-gender research practitioners which include the need for inter-disciplinary grounding in the disciplines of gender and agriculture, having a phased course delivery and the value of continuous technical support during and after training. Gender training models should also allow for the deepening of gender awareness and consciousness by providing safe spaces for personal reflections on the root causes of gender inequalities and for the questioning of the internalized norms and biases.

While it is argued that entrepreneurship provides considerable freedom, it is also underlined that it might have the potential for exclusion and oppression. The study contributes to this debate and aims to investigate how entrepreneurs with disabilities (EWD) ascribe meaning to freedom in a contested terrain informed by entrepreneurial autonomy as well as constraints due to impairments and an ableist social environment.

The study uses a qualitative approach and builds upon the critical concepts of negative, positive and social freedom as a theoretical lens for the in-depth analysis of the twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with EWD in Hungary.

Findings indicate that EWD experiences freedom in ambivalent ways. Engaging in the discourse of entrepreneurship offers a subversive discursive toolkit to debunk the constraints established by ableism, enabling both negative and positive freedom. However, individualism being at the heart of entrepreneurship results in othering and undermines social freedom. Thus, while entrepreneurship offers greater individual freedom in both a negative and a positive sense for people with disabilities (PWD), it nevertheless fails to promote collective social change.

Contributing to the critical disability literature, findings contrast the view that having an impairment only reduces a person's abilities and highlight that it also affects the very nature of liberty. Contributing to critical studies on entrepreneurship, the case of EWD provides empirical evidence for understanding the simultaneous emancipatory and oppressive character of entrepreneurship through the interplay of the subjective experience of freedom related to disability and entrepreneurship.

This study aims to provide a critical assessment of developments in the field of voluntary corporate non-financial and sustainability reporting and disclosure (VRD). The assessment is grounded in the empirical material of a three-year research project on integrated reporting (IR).

Alvesson and Deetz’s (2021) critical management framework structures the arguments in this paper. By investigating local phenomena and the extant literature, the authors glean insights that they later critique, drawing on the empirical evidence collected during the research project. Transformative redefinitions are then proposed that point to future opportunities for research on voluntary organisational disclosures.

The authors argue that the mainstream approaches to VRD, namely, incremental information and legitimacy theories, present shortcomings in addressing why and how organisations voluntarily disclose information. First, the authors find that companies adopting the International IR Council’s (IIRC, 2021) IR framework tend to comply with the framework only in an informal, rather than a substantial way. Second, the authors find that, at times, organisations serendipitously chance upon VRD practices such as IR instead of rationally recognising the potential ability of such practices to provide useful information for decision-making by investors. Also, powerful groups in organisations may use VRD practices to establish, maintain or restore power balances in their favour.

The paper’s limitations stem directly from its aim to be a critical reflection. Even when grounded on empirics, a reflection is mainly a subjective effort. Therefore, different researchers could come to different conclusions and offer different lessons from the two case studies.

The different rationales the authors found for VRD should make a case for reporting institutions to tone down any investor-centric rhetoric in favour of more substantial disclosures. The findings imply that reporting organisations should approach the different frameworks with a critical eye and read between the lines of these frameworks to determine whether the purported normative arguments are achievable practice.

The authors reflect on timely and relevant issues linked to recent developments in the VRD landscape. Further, the authors offer possible ways forward for critical research that may rely on different methodological choices, such as interventionist and post-structuralist research.

In 2023, the New England Journal of Entrepreneurship (NEJE) reached its 25th anniversary. To commemorate this major milestone as well as entrepreneurship’s growth as an academic field, the study employs bibliometric methods to provide key trends and research suggestions for entrepreneurship scholars using all original research published in the journal.

The authors perform two predominant bibliometric techniques, performance analysis and science mapping, using all 251 articles published by NEJE from 1998 to 2022.

The authors find that the impact of entrepreneurship research published at NEJE is growing consistently and that the challenge of the future will be to maintain this growth in tandem with greater publication productivity. The authors also find that although most contributions come from authors affiliated with institutions in the USA, there is a global representation from authors who have published in NEJE. Further, the authors found that the major entrepreneurship research themes of articles published in NEJE revolve around general entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial behavior, gender, technology, entrepreneurship education, innovation and value creation and sustainability.

The analysis is restricted to articles published in NEJE and therefore may not be representative of the entrepreneurship field. However, it can serve as a useful resource, particularly for prospective NEJE authors, to gain empirical insights about entrepreneurship research trends and rising topics of interest.

The authors’ work represents the first effort to synthesize research published in NEJE through bibliometric techniques and offers insights about important trends and themes in this rising outlet of the entrepreneurship field.

This paper aims to examine the effects of the 2014 European regulatory reform on auditors’ activity, the audit outcome and the audit market, with a focus on the Spanish market.

The research is based on in-depth, semistructured interviews with partners of the main audit firms operating in the Spanish market. This qualitative approach provides a precise identification of the cause-effect relationships of the new measures introduced by the European audit regulation.

The findings indicate that, based on auditors’ opinions, the costs of the main regulatory changes outweigh the benefits. The European Union (EU) Audit Regulation imposes more demanding provisions, such as an extended auditor’s report, mandatory audit firm rotation, more banned nonaudit services and stricter quality controls, resulting in substantial side effects on audit activity and the audit market. This could undermine the objective of enhancing the quality of audit services.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the effect of the 2014 EU regulatory reform on audit activity, audit market and audit outcome based on auditors’ perceptions. The findings may be of interest to academics, professionals and regulators alike, as they offer valuable insights for assessing the effectiveness of the new audit provisions. Additionally, the qualitative methodology used facilitates a causal analysis of the key elements introduced by the regulations, potentially paving the way for future research avenues.

The hospitality and tourism industry faces a number of workforce challenges, especially the high turnover rates and associated replacement costs associated with continually identifying and hiring new employees. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how hospitality and tourism organizations can use electronic human resource management (eHRM) and artificial intelligence (AI) to help recruit and select qualified employees, increase individual retention rates and decrease the time needed to replace employees. Specifically, it discusses how e-recruiting and e-selection and AI tools can help hospitality and tourism organizations improve recruiting and selection outcomes.

Research on eHRM, AI, employee recruitment and employee selection are applied to the hospitality and tourism industry and insights for how eHRM and AI can be applied to the industry are discussed.

eHRM and AI have the potential to transform how the hospitality and tourism industry recruit and select employees. However, care must be taken to ensure that the insights gained and the decisions made are well received by employees and lead to better employee and organizational outcomes.

This paper represents the first research that integrates research from eHRM and AI and applies it to the hospitality and tourism industry.

This paper represents the first research that integrates research from eHRM and AI and applies it to the hospitality and tourism industry.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether attention, emotion, and cognitive regulation (CR) may be strategies to advance one’s ethnic identity.

The paper is presented in three parts. The first section discusses integrative inquiry (INIQ) (Bresciani Ludvik et al., 2016), a mindfulness methodology and mindful inquiry training program, as a potential pathway to help mitigate stress and enhance healthy development and well-being strategies that combat stressors related to ethnic and racial identity; and increase opportunities for positive ethnic identity development. INIQ was designed to influence areas of the brain associated with attention regulation, emotion regulation, and CR in order to decrease stress and anxiety, and heighten executive functions of undergraduate and graduate students. The second section discusses an exploratory study to see whether INIQ resulted in higher mean scores for participants on their ethnic identity, as assessed by the multigroup ethnic identity measure (Phinney, 1992).

The results indicated that there was a significant increase in pre-test and post-test scores for mindfulness (p=0.001) as well as the dependent measure for learning exploration (p=0.028) among 30 undergraduate, master’s- and doctoral-seeking students. There was also a non-significant increase for clear understanding (p=0.15) and overall ethnic identity achievement (p=0.387); and non-significant decrease for ethnic belonging (p=0.424).

These findings suggest that INIQ may increase students’ ethnic learning exploration, which is an important process in ethnic identity development (Phinney and Ong, 2007). This study also suggests that INIQ increases mindfulness in participants. The authors conclude with a discussion and recommendations to future INIQ and other diversity centered student support practitioners interested in influencing positive ethnic identity formation.

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of mindfulness in organizational science literature, little is known about how mindfulness motivates individuals to configure information processing and team member exchange relationships to increase creative process engagement. Drawing on motivated information processing theory, this study conceptualizes and empirically examines whether and how mindfulness motivates individuals toward creative process engagement.

The authors collected data through an online survey from 311 respondents working in the Research and Development (R&D) departments of organizations in multiple industries in Pakistan. For analytical purposes, the authors have applied the structural equation modeling technique.

This study advances a different view of individual mindfulness on the creative process engagement in the following ways. First, mindfulness enables individuals to self-regulate in specific situations and become effective in fostering creative process engagement. Second, this study extends research on relational information processing by linking it to mindfulness and creative process engagement. Relational information processing partially mediates the relationship between mindfulness and creative process engagement. Third, this study highlights that mindfulness motivates individuals to focus more on developing quality working relationships, but they seem less willing to participate in idea generation and problem-solving solutions.

The study findings provide implications for research on mindfulness, creativity and motivated information processing to enhance individuals’ creative process engagements. The authors also discuss the implications for executives on the relational and creative benefits of mindfulness.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between board gender equality and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the European banking sector. The study examines whether and how the presence of women on the board of directors (BoD) influences ESG dimensions.

The authors analyzed a sample of 72 European Union banks for the period 2015–2021 and developed an econometric model applying unbalanced panel data regression with firm fixed effects and controls per year. To test the research hypotheses, the authors considered gender equality in terms of female participation on the BoD and measured ESG dimensions by using the ESG score provided by Refinitiv.

The findings suggest a significant positive relationship between the number of women on BoD and the ESG performance of European banks only up to a certain threshold of female directors (at least three women). The study also explores how the proportion of women on BoD influences the individual ESG pillars. The results show that the percentage of female directors has a positive and statistically significant impact on the social dimension of the ESG framework.

The investigation is highly relevant to investors considering ESG issues in their decision-making process. The overall findings support policymakers and regulators on how to improve ESG performance through the design and the application of corporate governance (CG) mechanisms. From a managerial perspective, the study suggests that managers and CEOs should focus their efforts on establishing the right gender combination of directors on bank BoDs.

This paper offers an in-depth examination of the CG practices of banks, and it attempts to bridge the gap in prior literature on the determinants of ESG issues in the European banking industry. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first that investigates the relationship between the representation of women on BoDs and the ESG dimensions measured by the Refinitiv Eikon score. The use of critical mass theory adds a fresh perspective to the literature on ESG in Europe since the influence of board gender diversity on ESG performance of the European banks is still unaccounted for. This study addresses this pressing research issue drawing on resource dependence, agency and legitimacy theories.

This paper aims to present a description of the development and implementation of a combined school- and community-based intervention for the prevention of overweight among children, using the combined methods of social marketing (SMk) and intervention mapping (IM).

The SMk total process planning (TPP) framework was used, a simple but robust framework that consists of five stages: scoping, development, implementation, evaluation and follow-up. In addition, IM tools were embedded in the development stage to strengthen the development element of the campaign.

The use of the SMk TPP framework led to the selection of one specific target segment and behaviour. IM tools helped to select the most important and modifiable determinants and behaviours in the target segment, as well as to select and appropriately apply theoretical methods for influencing determinant and behaviour change. The resulting “Water Campaign” was aimed at Turkish and Moroccan mothers and their 6-12-year-old-children (target segment). This intervention addresses the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages through the promotion of tap water drinking (target behaviour). The systematic involvement of key stakeholders resulted in capacity-building and co-creation.

A key finding of the present work is that the SMk TPP framework and IM tools can be successfully combined in intervention development, helping to develop enhanced interventions. Combining these methods led to a theory-based and client-oriented intervention, which was directed at multiple ecological levels and which systematically involved key stakeholders. With this detailed description of the intervention development, this paper aims to assist other researchers and practitioners in their quest to develop better interventions.