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The purpose of this examine the impact of income inequality and shadow economy on environmental degradation given the growing income inequality, shadow economy and ecological degradation in developing countries. Thus, this study is motivated to offer empirical insight into how income inequality and shadow economy influence the environment in African countries.

Data from 29 countries in Africa between 2000 and 2017 were used, while the novel method of moments quantile regression of Machado and Silva (2019) and Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) (2012) granger causality is used as the estimation techniques.

The results established the presence of cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity in the panel, while Westerlund panel cointegration confirmed the long-run cointegration among the variables. The results from the quantile regression suggest that income inequality increases environmental degradation from the 5th to the 30th quantiles, while from the 70th quantiles, income inequality reduces ecological degradation. The shadow economy negatively influences environmental degradation across the quantiles, strengthening environmental quality. Per capita income (economic growth) and financial development positively impact environmental degradation throughout the quantiles. However, urbanization reduces environmental degradation from 60th to 95th quantiles. The D-H causality established a two-way relationship between income inequality and environmental degradation, while one-way from shadow economy, per capita income and urbanization to environmental degradation were established.

This study provides fresh insights into the nexus between shadow economy and environmental quality in the presence of higher levels of income inequality for the case of African region. The study applies quantile analysis via moment proposed by Machado and Silva (2019). This technique shows that the impact of income inequality and shadow economy on environmental degradation is heterogeneous across the quantiles of ecological footprints in Africa.

The goal of this paper is to investigate the antecedent of employee performance (EP) through perceived organizational support (POS), as well as the moderating role of job satisfaction (JS) on the connection between POS and EP among employees of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Northwest Nigeria, using social exchange theory (SET) and organizational support theory (OST).

This research employed a survey design, using SMEs employees in Northwest Nigeria as the research unit of analysis. Purposive sampling was used in this research, with standardized questionnaires used to obtain data from 1750 employees of the targeted SMEs within the region. This study’s hypotheses were tested using partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings of this research stated that POS has a substantial effect on EP, while JS moderates the association between POS and EP.

The study offers practical insights for SMEs in Northwest Nigeria, aiding in resolving employee issues and providing actionable strategies for management. Understanding the dynamics of perceived organizational support, job satisfaction and employee performance enables proactive measures to improve organizational effectiveness, fostering a positive work environment and enhancing competitive edge.

This study innovates existing literature by exploring how perceived organizational support affects employee performance in small and medium-sized enterprises in an emerging economy. It introduces PLS-SEM, emphasizing job satisfaction’s pivotal role as a moderator. This provides valuable guidance for SMEs to boost employee performance and formulate effective HR strategies, advancing organizational behavior and management research.

The purpose of this research is to assess how full-time tenured academic staff promotion practices (SPP) in Malaysian private universities (MPUs) influence academic staff engagement (SE) and academic staff performance (SP).

The research used quantitative and descriptive methods, focusing on MPUs' academic staff as the unit of analysis. Sampling involved simple random and stratified techniques, with 314 academic personnel surveyed. Participant data was collected through a questionnaire, and study hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) via a bootstrapping approach.

The findings show that SE somewhat mediates the connection between SPP and SP and that SPP significantly influences SP.

This study emphasizes the importance of impartiality and transparency within university administration when promoting academic staff. Universities should adopt modern strategies and approaches for advancing their employees to higher positions, doing so will motivate employees to fully invest in their work, leading to sustained high-performance levels.

This research has substantially improved the understanding and the practical utilization of literature about SP, SPP and SE. This improvement can potentially facilitate the development of models, theories, research initiatives, and practical strategies geared toward enhancing staff efficiency.

Several studies have examined the effect of formal economy (usually proxy by economic growth) on environmental quality; however, the symmetric and asymmetric impact of the informal economy on environmental quality has not been examined in Nigeria. Therefore, this study aims to explore the short- and long-run (a)symmetric effect of formal and informal economies and financial development on Nigeria’s environmental quality between 1984 and 2017.

The study uses ecological footprint to measure environmental quality. An increase in ecological footprint suggests a fall in environmental quality. Informal economy is calculated as a percentage of GDP using the currency demand approach. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), nonlinear ARDL cointegration framework and vector error correction granger causality are used as estimation techniques.

The study’s outcomes establish the existence of asymmetric structure in the link between economic activities and the environment both in the short and long run. The asymmetric results reveal that positive and negative changes in the formal economy increase the ecological footprint in both periods. Hence, activities in the formal economy reduce environmental quality. On the other hand, positive and negative changes in the informal economy only positively influence the ecological footprint in the long run. In contrast, it negatively impacts the ecological footprint in the short run. This suggests that activities in the informal economy worsen the long-run environmental quality. Financial development has a positive influence on the ecological footprint, thus degrading the environmental quality. Furthermore, in the short run, a unidirectional relationship from the formal economy to the ecological footprint, while a bidirectional causality exists between informal and formal economies. Meanwhile, a unidirectional causality from the (in)formal economies and financial development to the ecological footprint was found in the long run.

The outcome of this study shows that both informal and formal economies contribute to ecological footprint; therefore, mainstreaming the informal economy into the formal economy will further increase the problem of environmental degradation and worsen environmental quality.

The study investigates the symmetric and asymmetric effect of formal and informal economies on environmental quality in Nigeria, which is largely missing in the empirical literature.

Motivated by the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-7: clean and affordable energy, SDG-8: sustainable economic growth, SDG-13: climate action), this study aims to investigate the role of economic complexity, disaggregated energy consumption in addition to economic growth, financial development, globalization and urbanization on the ecological footprint of United Arab Emirates (UAE).

This study adopts unit root tests (with and without a structural break), autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test and dynamic ordinary least squares.

The results obtained from the ARDL model suggest that economic complexity (EC), nonrenewable energy and economic growth increase the ecological footprint in both the short and long run, thus deteriorating the environment. However, renewable energy and urbanization reduce the ecological footprint in UAE during the two periods, thus improving environmental quality. Globalization and financial development have different influences on ecological footprint during these periods. These findings are robust to other estimation techniques.

Based on these results, this study offers significant policy implications such as increasing renewable energy supply, particularly solar energy and aligning the product manufacturing structure and complexity toward producing environmentally friendly products which can be used to realize the nation’s agenda of reducing fossil fuels consumption to 38% by 2050 and achieving sustainable environment and growth.

This study provides an empirical attempt to investigate the influence of EC and renewable and nonrenewable energy on the ecological footprint of the UAE.

Motivated by the conflicting evidence on the effect of financial development on environmental quality, this study investigates the moderating role of institutional quality in the link between financial development and environmental quality using a robust proxy in Malaysia from 1984 to 2017.

Ecological footprint is used to measure environmental quality, while financial development is proxied using three measures (domestic credit provided by the private sector, domestic credit provided by the financial sector and domestic credit provided by the banking sector). An index of institutional quality is generated from voice and accountability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds Test, Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square and Canonical Cointegrating Regression were used as the estimation techniques.

The results show that financial development, institutional quality, economic growth and foreign direct investment improve environmental quality in the short run, whereas trade openness and natural resources worsen it. In the long run, financial development, institutional quality, economic growth, trade openness and natural resources deteriorate the environment. Furthermore, findings from the interactive term suggest that institutions and financial development complement each other to affect the environment in the short run. However, institutions and financial development perform a substitutability role in influencing the environment in the long run.

The outcome of this study suggests that there are time lags in the relationship between institutional quality, financial development and ecological footprint in Malaysia. Furthermore, the study offers important policy implications to policymakers in Malaysia and other developing countries on how to mitigate environmental degradation.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on the moderating role of institutional quality in the relationship between financial development and ecological footprint in Malaysia. It examines the direct and indirect effects of financial development on environmental degradation through institutional quality, which have received less attention in the context of Malaysia. The findings from this study are robust to different proxies and estimation techniques.

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) has attracted considerable attention worldwide, and the challenges of managing employees’ entrepreneurial behaviours are increasingly recognised. However, the paucity of research on managers’ entrepreneurial behaviour in the United Arab Emirates multinational corporate environment creates a salient gap in the current understanding of how national and organisational cultures that not always align frame the critical problems of CE. This study aims to fill this research gap by examining multinationals’ CE antecedents drawing on an institutional perspective in Dubai.

The author conducts 54 in-depth interviews with middle managers in multinational enterprises. This study adopts a multiple case study research design to reveal whether an emergent discovery is exclusive to a particular case or is consistently replicated by multiple cases. The author has used abductive reasoning to systematically integrate analytical framework deduction with raw data induction.

This study’s findings indicate that CE in Dubai is ineffective and fragmented. Arguably, the cultural background of employees creates different circumstances and determinants of entrepreneurial behaviour. Hence, CE may not achieve epitome competencies without identifying multicultural nuances in an organisational context.

Existing research has placed relatively little emphasis on the role of individual national culture in multinational enterprises. This study’s results offer potentially valuable implications for theory, practice and future research addressing other emerging countries. This model presents a distinct CE architecture with compelling evidence for national culture (at the macro level), organisational culture, Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument and emergent factors (at the meso level) and individual middle managers' real-life experience (at the micro level).

Research-funding organisations (RFOs) and research-performing organisations (RPOs) are in a privileged position to significantly reshape the research and innovation landscape – not only by implementing gender equality plans (GEPs) as institutions but also in terms of the relationship and potential impact of these plans on the institutional context in which they are embedded. This paper reflects on the content and methodology of the GEP implementation at two RFOs and one non-university RPOs. Grounded in the knowledge base of each organisation, the analysis provides insights and expert feedback in order to understand to what extent and under which conditions GEPs are a systematic and comprehensive policy in promoting structural change that has a high potential impact on research policy definition and funding. Reviewing the internal assessment phase, the preliminary steps in the design process as well as the implementation and monitoring phase, the analysis detects both the strengths and challenges or resistance connected to external and internal factors as well as the specific strategies that small organisations employ to promote and sustain organisational and cultural change.

Driven by the Sustainable Development Goals (goals 7, 8, 12 and 13), this study investigates the moderating role of financial development in the link between energy poverty and a sustainable environment in African nations.

Panel cointegration analysis, fully modified least squares, Driscoll and Kraay least squares and method of moments quantile regression were used as estimation techniques to examine the link between financial development, energy poverty and sustainable environment for 28 African nations. Energy poverty is measured using two proxies-access to clean energy and access to electricity, while the environment is gauged using ecological footprint.

The regression outcomes show that access to clean energy and electricity negatively impacts the ecological footprint across all the quantiles; hence, energy poverty increases environmental degradation. Financial development positively influences environmental degradation in the region at the upper quantiles. Similarly, the interactive term of energy poverty and financial development has a significant positive impact on ecological footprint; thus, the financial sector adds to energy poverty and environmental degradation. The results of other variables hint that per capita income and institutions worsen environmental quality while urbanisation strengthens the environment.

This study offers fresh insights into the moderating effect of financial development in the link between energy poverty and sustainable environment in African countries.

This paper investigates the (a)symmetric effects of financial development in the presence of economic growth, energy consumption, urbanization and foreign direct investment on environmental quality of South Africa between 1980 and 2017.

A robust measure of financial development is generated using banking institutions and non-banking institutions market-based financial development indicators, while environmental quality is measured using carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint. The objectives of the study are captured using linear and non-linear autoregressive distributed lag.

The result from the symmetric analysis suggests that financial development stimulates carbon footprint and ecological footprint in the short run; however, financial development abates non-carbon footprint. In the long run, financial development has a significant negative effect on carbon footprint and ecological footprint. However, the asymmetric analysis established strong asymmetric effect in the short run, while no asymmetric effect is found in the long run. The short run asymmetric analysis reveals that positive shock in financial development increases carbon footprint and ecological footprint; however, positive changes in financial development reduce non-carbon footprint. Negative shocks in financial development, on the other hand, have a positive impact carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint.

The study's outcome implies that the concept of “more finance, more growth” could also be applied to “more finance, better environment” in South Africa. The study offers vital policy suggestions for the realization of sustainable development in South Africa.

This empiric adds to the body of knowledge on the influence of financial development on various components of environmental quality (carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint) in South Africa.