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This study aims to propose a comprehensive framework for assessing circular economy (CE) performance in the agri-food sector. It identifies those indicators that should be used to measure circularity regarding CE strategies, applies them at a microeconomic level and examines the impact of key business determinants (financial, internalization, knowledge, awareness and digitalization).

A literature review was conducted with a focus on CE strategies and related indicators. The framework obtained is applied on a Spanish agri-food sector survey to provide an empirical CE analysis at firm level. A partial least squares based-structural equation modelling method is applied.

The research suggests a set of circularity indicators to assess CE strategies at micro level. The findings reveal the heterogeneity of CE sub-indicators related to narrowing, slowing, closing and regenerating strategies. It also highlights the strong effects that the drivers tested have on CE, especially awareness and knowledge.

This study provides a framework that can guide public policies and business decisions in sectors with significant environmental impacts. It provides a conceptual framework that explains which CE indicators should be considered by governments and regulators when developing policies that seek to promote circular strategies.

In the case of companies, the results show that acquiring more environmental awareness and knowledge is essential for promoting more sustainable work habits that enhance CE.

The paper offers a novel contribution to the CE literature by introducing a multidimensional indicator framework comprehensively applied to the agri-food sector, integrating miscellaneous pillars of circular strategies and business determinants.

A debate on whether new ventures should be supported with public funding is taking place. Adopting a position on this discussion requires rigorous assessments of implemented programs. However, the few existing efforts have mostly focused on regional cases in developed countries. To fill this gap, this paper aims to measure the effects of a regional acceleration program in a developing country (Medellin, Colombia).

The economic notion of capabilities is used to frame the analysis of firm characteristics and productivity, which are hypothesized to be heterogeneous within the program. To test these relationships, propensity score matching is used in a sample of 60 treatment and 16,994 control firms.

This paper finds that treated firms had higher revenue than propensity score-matched controls on average, confirming a positive impact on growth measures. However, such financial growth is mostly observed in service firms rather than other economic sectors.

Further evaluations, with a longer period and using more outcome variables, are suggested in the context of similar publicly funded programs in developing countries.

These findings tip the balance in favor of the literature suggesting supportive programs for high-growth firms as opposed to everyday entrepreneurship. This is an insight, especially under the context of an emerging economy, which has scarce funding to support entrepreneurship.

International trade and its effects on the environment are increasingly discussed both in academia and by policymakers. To counter negative effects of international trade on the environment, so called environmental provisions have been integrated in trade agreements aimed at businesses and economies. However, as both the intent and effectiveness of these provisions are controversial, this paper aims to provide an overview of the current state of research and identified key factors influencing their effectiveness.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of 44 papers on the effects of environmental provisions in international trade agreements on the environmental performance of businesses, as well as economies from 1992 to mid-2024.

The integration of environmental provisions into trade agreements generally has positive effects on the environment while their effectiveness is influenced by their design and several boundary conditions. Alongside the importance of effective enforcement mechanisms, reputation concerns of businesses and lobbyism are discussed as intermediary factors in the design and impact of environmental provisions.

The insights can benefit policymakers to optimize future environmental provisions and advance the effectiveness of policies aimed at balancing the effects of trade liberalization with environmental protection.

Social sustainability is increasingly relevant for creating more sustainable trade policy while societal mechanisms seem to be an adequate tool to ensure effective enforcement of ecological provisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this review is the first of its kind to provide a systematic overview of the literature on the effectiveness of environmental provisions that combines the micro-level of businesses and macro-level of economies, although the importance for trade in general and environmental protection, in particular, has been recognized in the academic literature.

This study aims to examine whether engineer chief executive officers (CEOs) influence corporate risk-taking behaviour. We further examine the corporate characteristics that facilitate this association.

We argue that engineer CEOs have unique skills and access to technical and/or technological social circles, increasing their self-confidence in decision-making. Using upper echelon and imprint theories, we hypothesise a positive association between engineer CEOs and corporate risk-taking. We hand-collected data of engineer CEOs in a sample of Australian listed firms from 2015 to 2022, and corporate risk-taking is measured based on stock return volatility and return on asset volatility over three overlapping years. The hypothesis is examined using regression analysis, followed by robustness tests.

The analysis indicates a positive association between engineering CEOs and corporate risk-taking. The results are robust to fixed effect regressions, propensity score matching, accounting for residuals of the engineer CEO variable, and two-stage least squares (2SLS) methods. We traced sources of corporate risk-taking, finding that financial leverage and sales growth facilitate risky investments.

The results present implications for the literature, corporate leaders, investors and regulators in understanding the role of CEOs’ technical expertise in determining corporate risk appetite. The results are insightful for stakeholders by revealing that engineer CEOs increase the corporate risk profile.

This paper reveals that engineering CEOs increase corporate risk profiles, showing the importance of considering the specific expertise of leaders independently in understanding corporate risk-taking behaviour.

Little is known about how followers can influence leaders through affect display. This paper explores the relationship between follower affect and leader support through the mediating processes of leader social mindfulness and leader affect.

This paper is based on two studies (Pakistan and New Zealand) and employs a multisource time-lagged design. Multilevel analysis was conducted using the MLwiN program to test hypotheses.

Follower positive affect has a beneficial impact on leader support behavior, and negative affect has a detrimental effect. Leader affect and social mindfulness partially mediate these direct relationships.

Leaders should acknowledge that followers, too, can influence them via affect display. Organizations need to train leaders to boost their emotional intelligence.

This research provides additional evidence on follower-leader influences. It adds to leadership literature by providing a novel understanding of the underlying mechanisms of how follower affect can shape leader factors.

This study introduces a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the foreign direct investment (FDI) literature by multinational corporations (MNCs) focusing on emerging economies to identify the most influential authors, journals and articles in FDI research and reveals the fields' conceptual and intellectual structures. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

The study analyzed 533 articles published between 1974 and 2020 in 226 academic journals indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. We used the R language for statistical computing to map author collaboration, co-word and develop a conceptual and intellectual map of the field.

The results show that, although the FDI literature has many authors, few dominate the field. The International Business Review (IBR) and International Journal of Emerging Markets (IJoEM) are the main sources of the publications. Moreover, bibliometric laws show that our dataset follows the Lotka law of scientific productivity and Bradford law of scattering, identifying the core journals. Finally, FDI by MNCs in emerging economies research is divided into four sub-research themes related to (1) FDI determinants, (2) entry mode, (3) MNCs and FDI performance and (4) the internationalization process.

The current article provides several starting points for practitioners and researchers investigating FDI. It contributes to broadening the vision of the field and offers recommendations for future studies.

The aim of the research reported here was to determine how Lithuanian citizens engaged in information-seeking behaviour in response to the stress caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

An interview survey was designed, using a semi-structured interview schedule. A convenience sample of 21 participants was obtained and the interviews lasted between 20 and 70 min. The schedule design was guided by the transactional theory of stress and coping and employed the Perceived Stress Scale.

A majority of participants experienced moderate to high levels of stress associated with the war in Ukraine. Information seeking and discussing information found with family members and friends played a significant role in helping to moderate stress. Most of the participants understood more than one language and, consequently, were able to compare local information sources with international sources. Only five participants were active users of social media, the rest were critical of these sources. All participants valued those sources they believed to be reliable and truthful.

The small convenience sample of educated urban participants limits generalizability but provides indicative findings for future investigations into information behaviour during prolonged international conflicts.

The study highlights the importance of media literacy in managing psychological stress during geopolitical tensions, demonstrating how strategic information seeking and social support can serve as effective coping mechanisms.

The research reveals psychological impacts of war beyond direct conflict zones, illustrating how communities develop collective emotional resilience through informed, critically engaged information practices.

The study provides unique insights by examining war-related stress in a neighbouring country not directly experiencing conflict, applying stress-coping theory to understand intricate information-seeking behaviours during a geopolitical crisis.

Entrepreneurial universities, through their intellectual capital (IC), can promote the development of a third mission, which involves collaborating with business and societal organizations to create value. Joint research projects are undertaken within entrepreneurial universities leveraging their IC. These generate value for both the academic community and the territory as they generate impact, in terms of regional IC. At the micro level, scientists in the principal investigator (PI) role are influential actors in generating impact and IC that is beneficial for all joint project stakeholders. The purpose of the paper is to address the existing gap in entrepreneurial university literature concerning the impact generation process.

The paper represents a theoretical contribution adopting a deductive approach.

This paper proposes a novel approach to support PIs in entrepreneurial universities in the process of managing innovative initiatives toward IC impact generation. First, we present the IC-based Research Impact Tool (ICRIT) to guide PIs acting as explorative entrepreneurs; then we propose an IC-based Research Impact Report (ICRIR) including some key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate impact and IC.

The theoretical approach proposed could be developed further. This could be furthered through more empirical studies using initially, for example, comparative cross-country case study research.

The paper sheds new light on the importance of the final impact generated by research initiatives, focusing on the crucial role played by PIs and promoting the adoption of an IC-based strategic approach, to maximize the final impact of projects, in terms of regional IC.

This study examine how provider- and customer-related factors interact to influence servitization success. It adopts the transaction cost theory along with a configurational approach and hypothesizes that different configurations of five key conditions—service offering, specific investments, perceived customer opportunism, willingness for integration and demand uncertainty—can lead to servitization success or failure.

The study applies fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to a sample of 143 German manufacturers, addressing the complex causalities involved in servitization success.

The analysis identifies six sufficient configurations for servitization success and five for servitization failure. The findings reveal that servitization can succeed through various types of service offerings. While opportunism does not hinder success, the decision to offer an extensive service portfolio is influenced by anticipated opportunism and complex customer needs. Specific investments function primarily as drivers for success, particularly when combined with a limited service offering and complex customer needs. However, these investments can increase transaction costs when linked to an extensive service portfolio. Though not essential, customer integration emerges as a relevant success factor, acting as a safeguard against opportunism.

Servitization can be successful even with opportunism. Developing methods to assess customers’ readiness for integration can mitigate opportunistic behavior and foster successful servitization.

This study advances servitization research by addressing the often-overlooked interplay between provider- and customer-related factors. Applying the transaction cost theory and a cutting-edge fsQCA, it contributes to the theoretical and methodological plurality of the field.

The study aims to examine the joint effects of foreign ownership (FO) and involvement in global value chains (GVCs) on the productivity performance of firms from a catching-up country (Poland) and a leader economy (Germany).

The authors use micro-level data on firms combined with several sector-level GVC participation measures. The authors investigate whether the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership. The authors verify the robustness of the obtained results by using an instrumental variables approach and weighted regression.

The results show that domestically owned firms are less productive than foreign ones, which is particularly true at low GVC participation levels. However, as GVC involvement increases, the FO productivity premium decreases, leading to productivity catching up between foreign and domestically owned firms. This mechanism is similar in Poland and Germany. However, in the leader country (Germany), the productivity performance of domestically owned firms is more stable along the distribution of GVC involvement.

This study contributes to the foreign direct investment (FDI)–productivity literature by comparing the catching-up and developed countries' perspectives and incorporating the productivity–GVC relationship into the FDI analysis. The authors show that the FO premium is not confined to the developing context but is also present in a leader country. Moreover, the link between productivity and the overall sectoral degree of involvement in global production structures depends on a firm's ownership.