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This paper aims to explore pathways in which adaptation challenges may occur. Focus is on the barriers to adaptation, challenges to adaptation and maladaptation with reference to smallholder farmers in the Southern African Development Community region.

Bibliometric analysis techniques were used to track the literature on smallholder farmers’ adaptation challenges. Web of Science was the main data source. A total of 41 articles were retained for analysis and exported into Visualization of Similarities Viewer Software where the development of research on the subject, co-occurrence of keywords analysis, top publishers, citations and total link strength was done.

Results indicate that research on smallholder farmers’ adaptation challenges is not new but has gained more consideration post-2020. The main adaptation challenges emanate from perception barriers and constraints based on determinants of adoption, limitations for resilience building and achieving sustainable adaptation as well as contestations around Climate Smart Agriculture technologies.

Effective design of adaptation policies should center on prioritizing the needs of the local people. This would reduce the occurrences of smallholder farmers’ adaptation challenges, promote resilience building and contribute toward achieving sustainable adaptation.

It is equally important to document adaptation challenges. However, adaptation challenges are rarely shared with the same enthusiasm as its successes. This work focuses on the matter with the intention of conscientizing smallholder farmers to reduce the risk of repeating the same adaptation mistakes.

This paper aims to examine the complex balance between enthusiasm and skepticism regarding artificial intelligence (AI) integration in educational practices. It advocates for a cautious, evidence-based approach while addressing both opportunities and challenges, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) for Quality Education.

Through critical analysis of current discourse surrounding AI in education, this paper synthesizes existing literature on both supportive and skeptical perspectives. The methodology involves systematic examination of past educational technology trends, current AI developments and their implications for teaching and learning. The paper develops its research agenda through careful consideration of existing empirical studies, theoretical frameworks and identifying gaps in current understanding.

The analysis reveals that while AI offers promising potential for enhancing learning outcomes and educational accessibility, its integration presents significant challenges that require careful consideration. The paper identifies critical tensions between technological innovation and pedagogical values, highlighting areas where enthusiasm for AI adoption must be tempered with empirical evidence and critical evaluation. Current evidence suggests that successful AI integration requires balanced consideration of both opportunities and limitations, with particular attention to maintaining human-centered educational practices.

This viewpoint provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the dialectic between AI’s educational potential and its limitations. By synthesizing both supportive and critical perspectives, it offers a nuanced approach to AI integration that acknowledges both opportunities and challenges. The article’s value lies in its systematic identification of key research priorities and its emphasis on evidence-based implementation strategies that serve educational goals while mitigating potential risks.

The paper aims to close a literature gap by proposing a comprehensive conceptual soft skills competency framework for enhancing graduate intern employability through the cultivation of employability capital.

The study employed a theoretical inquiry and delved into the existing literature on employability, soft skills competencies and employability capital to establish a comprehensive foundation to formulate the conceptual framework. A content analysis of existing empirical studies was conducted to derive a generic list of employers’ required soft skills. A Delphi technique was employed to harness expert consensus and insights into the derived framework.

Employability capital can be cultivated in the setting of work-integrated learning programmes and synergised through emotional and social intelligence interventions to enhance soft skills competency and graduate employability.

The soft skills identified may overlook other important skills required by employers. Increasing participation in the Delphi study could yield additional valuable insights. Validation of the framework is needed in practical settings to understand its effectiveness and applicability to real-world organisational needs.

This study significantly enhances understanding of the role of employability capital in soft skills competency development and graduate employability through work-integrated learning programs and self-development. In addition, the framework has the potential to positively impact the employer-employee relationship.

The key theoretical contribution is a soft skill development framework that offers employers and graduates a means to identify and address deficiencies through WIL and self-development.

Following the imperative for human-centric digital innovation brought by the paradigm of Industry 5.0, the article aims to integrate the dispersed and multi-disciplinary literature on individual risks for workers to define, explain and predict individual risks related to Industry 4.0 technologies.

The paper follows the question, “What is the current knowledge and evidence base concerning risks related to Industry 4.0 technologies, and how can this inform digital innovation management in the manufacturing sector through the lens of the Industry 5.0 paradigm?” and uses the method of systematic literature review to identify and discuss potential risks for individuals associated with digital innovation. N = 51 contributions met the inclusion criteria.

The literature review indicates dominant trends and significant gaps in understanding risks from a human-centric perspective. The paper identifies individual risks, their interplay with different technologies and their antecedents at the social, organizational and individual levels. Despite this, the paper shows how the literature concentrates in studying risks on only a limited number of categories and/or concepts. Moreover, there is a lack of consensus in the theoretical and conceptual frameworks. The paper concludes by illustrating an initial understanding of digital innovation via a human-centered perspective on psychological risks.

Findings yield practical implications. In investing in the adoption, generation or recombination of new digital technologies in organizations, the paper recommends managers ensure to prevent risks at the individual level. Accordingly, the study’s findings can be used as a common starting point for extending the repertoire of managerial practices and interventions and realizing human-centric innovation.

Following the paradigm of Industry 5.0, the paper offers a holistic view of risks that incorporates the central role of the worker as crucial to the success of digital innovation. This human-centric perspective serves to inform the managerial field about important factors in risk management that can result in more effective targeted interventions in risk mitigation approaches. Lastly, it can serve to reinterpret digital innovation management and propose future avenues of research on risk.

This paper aims to investigate the entrepreneurial behaviours exhibited by commercial smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, focusing on their socio-economic characteristics, and considers their implication for outcomes of livelihood resilience in a resource-constrained and turbulent rural context.

The study used survey data collected from 430 smallholder farmers in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. Using a two-step cluster analysis, the study constructed a typology of farmers based on their entrepreneurial behaviour and socio-economic characteristics.

The results revealed that commercial smallholder farmers are heterogeneous in terms of their entrepreneurial behaviours. Four clusters were identified: non-entrepreneurial, goal-driven, means-driven and ambidextrous. Beyond their entrepreneurial behaviours, these clusters significantly differ in the socio-economic characterises (gender, age, education levels, farm size, proximity to the market and social connection) and farm performance (seasonal sales per hectare and farm income per hectare).

The typology framework relating farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours to their socio-economic characteristics and business performance is important to tailor and therefore improve the effectiveness of farmer entrepreneurship programmes and policies. In particular, tailoring farmer entrepreneurship education is crucial to distribute land, finance and market resources in purposive ways to promote a combination of smallholder farmers’ effectual and causal behaviours at an early stage of their farm ventures.

Researchers still know little about which farmers’ behaviours are entrepreneurial and how these behaviours manifest in action during their commercial farm activities. This research leverages effectuation and causation theory to unveil previously overlooked distinctions on farmers’ entrepreneurial behaviours, thereby enhancing a more grounded understanding of farmer entrepreneurship in a resource-constrained context.

The mapping of university research onto the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is important, as it demonstrates the crucial contributions that research makes to the SDGs while also showing researchers how the SDGs can inform research and enhance research impact. This paper aims to detail a novel and comprehensive research mapping approach implemented by University College Cork (UCC) and helps to guide other higher education institutions (HEIs) who are beginning their own mapping exercises.

This paper adopts a mixed-method approach, involving the quantitative mapping of publications, qualitative impact case studies, and the collation of researchers’ self-assessment data at innovative SDGs workshops.

The workshops generated a high level of engagement from the research community, resulting in 119 impact case studies and 497 researchers mapping their own research to the goals/targets. The results provide a clear picture of the main goals/targets that are the focus of UCC research, at the institutional level, in schools/research centres, and at the researcher level.

This study was resource intensive. Its reach may be challenging for other universities to replicate, as success was supported by UCC’s longstanding institutional commitment to sustainability, the mature structures in place and the practical investment in this project.

The authors are unaware of other universities using this comprehensive approach. While other studies focus on the 17 overarching goals only, UCC research, as far as possible, was mapped at a deeper level to each of the associated SDGs targets.

The purpose of the review is to synthesize the research on materiality measures of sustainability reporting and highlight how preparers, users, auditors, regulators and other stakeholders assess or determine the materiality in sustainability reporting. The review further summarizes the findings on consequences and determinants of material disclosures in sustainability reporting. Several directions for future research are also discussed.

This study provides a systematic review of materiality measures developed in the context of sustainability reporting. This synthesis of the literature summarizes the existing methodologies of measuring materiality. It also evaluates the strength and limitations of existing methods and approaches of measuring materiality in sustainability disclosures.

We find that the ex post materiality measures are simplistic and unidirectional in nature and ex ante materiality measures lack external validity and are generally narrow in focus – for example, focused on single firms or industries. Another major limitation in the current literature is the absence of robust empirical investigation of double materiality in sustainability reporting and a vast majority of the measures are developed without stakeholder engagement. Lastly, we document that the findings on determinants of material disclosure are fragmented and inconclusive and that the literature on consequences of material disclosure is rather un-explored.

The study explains the connections and differences between the various materiality measures. We document that materiality is measured in two distinct ways, ex ante and ex post and often times without stakeholder engagement. Moreover, given that a vast majority of the measures rely on manual content analysis, we find that they suffer from reproducibility and scalability.

As the warehouse is increasingly viewed as a strategic component, retailers’ willingness to invest in automated warehouse systems (AWS) has increased. These investment decisions are influenced by well-known operational factors, but strategic factors, which have received limited attention in warehousing literature, also play a pivotal role. Addressing this gap, this study investigates how strategic factors influence AWS investment decisions in retail.

Based on a theoretical foundation of technology adoption, strategic intent, and automation strategy, an abductive multiple case study is conducted with eight purposefully selected retailers that had implemented or were in the process of implementing a large AWS.

The study ranks 10 competitive priorities and 21 AWS evaluation aspects and shows how the firm’s strategic intent and the AWS investment decisions can be connected via the formulation of a warehouse automation strategy. The findings reveal the content for such a strategy – including 7 categories and 17 considerations – related to, for example, technology innovativeness, efficiency versus adaptiveness, technology-supplier relationships, control and ownership, and risk exposure. The study empirically shows how manager characteristics and owner strategies influence retailers’ AWS investment decisions. Four strategic intent profiles are abductively developed: reliability and delivery service; profitable deliveries; scalable logistics for volume growth; and platform building for logistics services. The study also provides evidence of a reciprocal relationship between strategic intent and AWS investment decisions.

The study is conducted with a limited number of Swedish retailers, indicating a need for additional studies to test the findings across different contexts.

The study offers a framework for formulating a warehouse automation strategy. As a foundation for developing the framework, the study shares empirical insights from retailers in the forefront of AWS implementation.

The study contributes as a conversation changer by showing the importance of shifting from a tactical-operational focus to a strategic perspective on warehouse configuration in general and on AWS investment decisions in retail in particular.

Urban backyards hold both aesthetic and practical value, offering significant potential for native biodiversity conservation within cities. Homeowners, as the primary managers of these spaces, play a crucial role in determining whether their backyards contribute to ecological sustainability by planting native species. This study aims to investigate how New Zealand homeowners’ attitudes, behaviours and motivations influence their engagement with native planting, and identifies effective strategies to encourage this practice.

This study used an online survey targeting a diverse sample of New Zealand homeowners, designed to assess their perceptions, motivations and barriers related to native planting. Correlational and regression analyses were used to identify the factors most strongly associated with the likelihood of increasing native planting in urban backyards.

Homeowners with healthier backyards, greater native plant coverage and those who spend 6–8 h per week maintaining native plants exhibit greater satisfaction with their backyards. Key motivations for native planting include attracting wildlife, enhancing aesthetics and contributing to ecological sustainability. Younger homeowners, Maori and Pacific communities and those dissatisfied with their current backyards are particularly inclined to increase native planting. Targeted financial and educational initiatives could significantly boost native plant coverage in urban backyards, contributing to both homeowner satisfaction and broader environmental goals.

While the role of urban backyards in biodiversity conservation is recognized, there is limited understanding of how homeowners can be motivated to enhance native plant coverage. This study addresses this gap by examining the factors that drive or hinder native planting among New Zealand homeowners.

This study aims to examine Africa’s environment, social and governance (ESG) research through a systematic literature review (SLR). The authors aim to identify and discuss influential aspects of ESG accounting in Africa, focusing on prominent themes, authors and journals in published articles using Africa’s setting. It also constructs agendas for future research to advance the literature and contribute to the ESG accounting practices in Africa.

This study uses an SLR approach, where accounting research journal articles are collated and compiled according to pre-determined criteria and analysed using bibliometric techniques. After carefully reviewing 1,387 articles, the authors selected and examined 246 academic articles published from 2006 to 2024 in 32 accounting journals indexed in the Web of Science.

The authors identify four main streams of ESG accounting research in Africa, namely, ESG disclosure in primary-based economies; corporate governance dynamics in Africa; internal mechanisms in ESG reporting; and external mechanisms in ESG disclosure. According to the analysis, the authors propose future research agendas to discuss institutional perspective of ESG reporting standards implementation and enforcement; value creation impact on sustainability performance; ESG reporting effect on conflict resolution; and ESG reporting quality and environmental sustainability.

This study assists policymakers, academics, managers, accounting professionals and investors in comprehensively understanding the current state and projecting future actions to develop ESG accounting in Africa.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is perhaps the first to examine Africa’s ESG research through an SLR. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a comprehensive analysis of the existing ESG accounting landscape and tailoring future research agendas based on the distinctive characteristics of Africa.