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Most ecosystem services (ES) are co-produced, to varying degrees, by interactions between people and ecosystems. Although ES research has tended to emphasize the role of ecosystems, or natural capital, in ES provision, the need for a deeper understanding of the role of human-derived capitals, like technology, labour, and management, is increasingly being recognized. Understanding the capacity for, and limitations of, human-derived capitals to enhance or substitute for natural capital is important for environmental decision-making, especially for decisions about when to promote conservation of natural capital to provide ecosystem services and when to employ technological alternatives. From the perspective of long-term sustainable ecosystem management, such decisions are further complicated by dynamics and interactions between different types of capital. We created a simple simulation model to compare how different assumptions around the temporal dynamics and interactions between natural and human-derived capitals affect long-term outcomes of different management choices on ES provision. We found that the extent to which different capitals are substitutable in the long-term depends on how individual capitals change over time and how different capitals interact with each other, and that replicating the near-term function of natural capital does not necessarily mean human-derived capitals are a viable long-term substitute. With an understanding of the dynamics and interactions of natural and human-derived capitals, it is possible to determine general long-term ES management strategies that are more likely to produce the desired benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between refugee investments in human capital and short‐run economic outcomes may influence the extent to which refugees invest in human capital that is associated with positive future economic mobility. Using data from the Annual Survey of Refugees from 2016 and 2017 we assess the relationship between recent investments in human capital and hourly wages for employed refugees in the United States. Results suggest that recent job training has a positive effect on hourly wages. In contrast, enrollment in English classes and educational programmes have no short‐term positive effects on hourly wages. When combined with the pressure resettled refugees experience to find employment quickly, these results suggest that the lack of short‐term wage benefits from English language or educational courses may dissuade refugees from sufficiently investing in the amount of English language or education necessary to promote positive long‐term economic mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, Sweden changed its labour-migration policy to facilitate more labour migration from countries outside the EU. Most state ambitions to shape labour migration, including practices such as the use of labour-market tests and the assessment of migrants' human capital, were abandoned and the responsibility to select migrants was transferred to employers. We use Swedish register data and adopt a difference-in-differences approach to assess the effects of the policy change on labour migrants' labour income, in comparison to non-EU migrants who moved to Sweden for reasons other than work. The effects of the policy change are substantial. Labour migration from outside the EU increased and its composition changed after the reform, resulting in a significant decrease in mean income. We conclude that changes in their occupational composition were the main drivers of the income drop for labour migrants. In sum, the new non-selective labour-migration policy lowered labour migrants' mean income by opening the door to unskilled labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: Since SMEs lack the financial and human resources required for internationalization, they face more obstacles than large firms. In this regard, their internal/controllable risk management capabilities based on the Resource-based View (RBV) theory might help them overcome internationalization barriers. Purpose of the article: This study aims to investigate the positive impact of internal/controllable risk management capabilities, such as strategic, operational, and personnel risk capabilities, on the export intention of SMEs. Moreover, this paper finds out whether the impacts of these risk management capabilities on export intention differ depending on the countries where SMEs operate. Methods: This research uses a random sampling method and shares an online questionnaire with survey respondents. It includes research samples from Czech, Slovakian, and Hungarian SMEs. The researchers analyze the effects of enterprise risk management capabilities on export by performing Binary Logistic Regression analyses. Findings & value added: While personnel risk management does not affect the export intention of SMEs, strategic risk management and operational risk management positively affect the export intention of SMEs, depending on the countries where SMEs are located. For this reason, there are international differences in the impacts of strategic and operational risk management capabilities on the export intention of SMEs. This paper provides a more holistic approach to managing internal/controllable risk factors and investigates this construct's effect on internationalization. A country comparison in this specific effect has been only performed in this study. Moreover, the construct of managing internal/controllable risk factors is also linked with the dynamic capability of RBV only in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study evaluates the regional development potential of a specific rural micro-region with regard to its qualitative aspect. It aims to set a general strategy for further development. The method is a geographical analysis using the migration balance as an indicator of the region's attractiveness for housing. Main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats were identified. Generally accessible statistical data was used. The proposed strategy is to support the development of the human capital. In addition to the generally valid recommendations for the development of rural areas, it is always necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the geographical location, path dependency, natural, economic and social potential, the state of the environment, cultural factors or other specifics. The regional and local decision-making levels play an important role in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have noted that output per worker varies enormously across countries. Using firm-level survey data, the present paper contributes to the related literature by analyzing difference in labor productivity between firms in 22 upper middle-income and 11 high-income countries. Labor productivity in upper-middle-income countries is about 57.5% lower than in high-income countries. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analysis of the productivity gap reveals that the gap is somewhat larger due to differences in the level of contributory factors (endowment effect) than due to differences in the returns to such factors (structural effect). That is, 55.2% of the productivity gap is due to endowment effect and the remaining 44.8% is due to structural effect. The biggest contributors via the endowment effect include tertiary education attainment, law and order, and quality management. Factors that contribute most via the structural effect include secondary education attainment, market size, and law and order. Thus, our results underline the importance of human capital, institutions and market size for the upper middle-income countries aspiring to become high-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of institutional shifts on the strategic choices of Russian firms. It proposes and tests hypotheses of how a shift from a weak to a strong institutional context is likely to affect firms' knowledge accumulation, absorptive capacities and internalisation of operations. Using discriminant analysis, the econometric investigation demonstrates that firms tend to allocate greater resources towards improving their knowledge and absorptive capacity and make more efforts to vertically integrate—in line with improvements in the institutional environment. These investments ensure the survivability and competitiveness of firms in the long term. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the long-term strategic orientation of firms goes hand in hand with rising resource allocations by the nation-state towards economic development. The findings align with the institutionalist political economy views that institutions are the ultimate overseers that allow the market to operate efficiently, especially in emerging market environments. The paper is also instructive to other developing economies about the need to strengthen their institutional environments, which supports the long-term orientation of firms and has a positive impact on economic development. The analysis does not take into account the impact of sanctions on Russian business and economy, post the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict with Ukraine. Nor does it consider the impact of COVID-19 on the economy. As such, the study attempts to constitute an untainted comparison of two paths of transition on Russian firms—shock therapy, vis-à-vis, an institutional political economy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Industrial robots can significantly promote firm productivity. • The main mechanism comes from the improvement of human capital structure and innovation of firms. • Industrial robots are more likely to increase the total factor productivity of non-state owned and small-scale firm. • Industrial robots are more likely to increase the total factor productivity in firms that have political affiliations and low market concentration. • Industrial robots are more likely to increase the total factor productivity in firms that low financialization, and high managerial competence. Industrial robotics has become a driving force in the development of high-quality manufacturing enterprises. This paper investigates the impact of industrial robotics on the total factor productivity of enterprises and its mechanism of action through the use of data from A-shares of Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges from 2007 to 2019. We found that the use of industrial robots significantly increases the total factor productivity of enterprises, findings that still hold when Bartik instrumental variables are constructed. The mechanism of action suggests that industrial robot application improves both the human capital structure and the innovation capability of enterprises, thus increasing total factor productivity. Heterogeneity analysis shows that industrial robot applications are more likely to increase total factor productivity in firms that are non-state-owned and small scale and have political affiliations, low market concentration, low financialization, and high managerial competence. The findings of this study will help to accurately assess the productivity effects of industrial robotics, and the government should continue to promote the integration of industrial robotics and manufacturing development and actively cultivate independent innovation capabilities and professional skills in the field of industrial robotics in order to increase total factor productivity in enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article gives an overview of Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory. We outline the basic propositions and highlight new empirical findings and theoretical innovations in relation to the theory. We discuss four major innovations of the past decade, namely (a) the person × situation approach of JD-R, (b) multilevel JD-R theory, (c) new proactive approaches in JD-R theory, and (d) the Work-Home Resources model. After discussing practical implications, we elaborate on opportunities for future research, including JD-R interventions, team-level approaches, and demands and resources from other life domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In talent management, predicting high potential (HP) is one of the most important questions human resources professionals face. The main goal of this study was to analyze which competences predict employees' HP and whether these competences differ by gender. The study analyzed 806 employees in the Spanish branch of a multinational service firm that employs over 6,000 employees. Participants, were classified as HP using a questionnaire about eight competences identified as key to the firm's talent management (TM) and divided into two categories: cognitive-intrapersonal and emotional-interpersonal, and assessment interviews of supervisors. Results indicate that the competences in the cognitive-intrapersonal category contribute greater weight in predicting HP. More specifically, competences of Initiative, Appetite for learning, and Thinking beyond boundaries were significantly related to the HP criterion. The competences that were significant by gender were also analyzed. Application of these results, as well as the study's limitations and recommendations for future research, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effect of railroads, the single largest public investment in colonial India, on human capital. Using district-level data on literacy and two different identification strategies, we find railroads had positive effects on literacy, in particular on male and English literacy. We show that railroads increased literacy by raising secondary and elite primary schooling, rather than vernacular primary schooling. Our mediation analysis suggests that non-agricultural income, urbanization, and opportunities for skilled employment are important mechanisms, while agricultural income is not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early-life shocks often produce negative long-run consequences lasting into adulthood, but little is known about how childhood social programs interact with early-life environments. In this paper, we analyze the effect of early-life conditions on child health and evaluate whether access to a conditional cash transfer program is differentially effective among children who experienced adverse early-life events. We use variation in delays in enrollment from the rollout of Brazil's Bolsa Família program to analyze the impact of longer treatment durations alongside a variation of in utero rainfall to determine the potential for the program to drive catch-up growth. We find that the duration of Bolsa treatment impacts stunting, obesity, and other health outcomes, with the program being most effective among children whose in utero conditions predisposed them to worse health outcomes. Finally, we find that these effects are driven by children who receive Bolsa before age five and that girls experience more health gains. Overall, the duration of treatment matters, with some effects only appearing after one to two years of transfers, as does the timing of treatment, with some effects only appearing for younger initial recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic diversity has received increased research attention in Nordic countries; however, only a few studies have looked at it from the perspective of firms. In this study, we analyze whether changes in ethnic diversity among staff and in management affect firm performance. We also test whether productivity gains from diversity are due to immigrants being hired in low-paying jobs by analyzing how the association between diversity and productivity is affected by immigrants' positions in firms' wage distributions. Our results suggest a positive relationship between changes in ethnic diversity within firms and firm productivity. The association strengthens if firms have more diversity in management and immigrants higher up in their wage distribution. This suggests that our results are not driven by firms that hire immigrants in low-paying positions. Possible mechanisms to increase firm productivity through ethnic diversity include wider recruitment and activation of diversified human capital and more inclusive firm policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates determinants of science and technology parks (STPs) performance in China. We estimate dynamic panel‐data models on a sample comprising 53 STPs for 2008–2018. Foreign direct investment and human capital impact labour productivity and innovation of STPs and explain differences in performance among them. We find evidence for beta‐ and sigma‐convergence of labour productivity and beta‐, but not sigma‐convergence of innovation. Our study provides novel insights for research on STPs and innovation policy regarding heterogeneity in performance of STPs, and specifically, some evidence concerning formation of "clubs" of STPs based on the city‐tier system in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing calls on the state to manage major challenges, in the existing literature, the state – and public sector activities more generally – tends to be overlooked as an agent of regional change. The role of public sector jobs is often taken for granted, with diverse empirical findings being strongly influenced by geography and time period, if they are considered at all. We discuss two main threads of research on contemporary public sector employment that could enhance our understanding of the role of the public sector in regional development (i.e. human capital formation and diversification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective The physical therapist labor market has recently noted higher rates of turnover and job vacancies. An understudied factor contributing to these trends in the profession is job satisfaction. The profession continues to experience relatively low wages compared with other health professions, and graduates of Doctor of Physical Therapy programs face increasingly high student debt. This study used the labor-search model as a conceptual framework to understand associations between job satisfaction, income, and educational debt. The purpose of this study is to observe the financial and workplace factors that are associated with higher levels of physical therapist job satisfaction. Methods Data from 4764 physical therapists in 1 state were captured retrospectively through the state's licensure renewal process from 2014 to 2020. A random effects panel analysis, with job satisfaction as the dependent variable, was used to evaluate the relationships between job satisfaction and income, educational debt, and a variety of work-related factors. Results Job satisfaction was negatively correlated with educational debt, number of hours worked per week, and some practice settings. Conversely, job satisfaction was positively correlated with the expected age of retirement. The percentage of time spent in research and administration was also positively correlated with job satisfaction, though additional research in this area is needed to draw meaningful conclusions on this association. Conclusion The results support the conceptual framework, which suggests that early career physical therapists, motivated by high amounts of educational debt, may choose more financially advantageous practice settings and increased working hours to the detriment of job satisfaction. Impact High levels of job satisfaction among physical therapists are correlated with low levels of educational debt, working 45 hours or less per week, a longer time horizon until retirement, and practice settings other than home health and skilled nursing facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim to be achieved in this research is to find out, analyze and describe the Financial Management Accountability of Public Service Agencies (BLU) at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law (FISH) Universitas Negeri Manado (Unima). The research method uses a qualitative descriptive approach. Informants were determined using perposive sampling. Data were analyzed descriptively qualitatively. Data collection techniques use observation, interviews and documentation. The data analysis techniques that will be used in this research consist of data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results of the research show that the process of preparing planning documents up to Budget Planning looks good, but in the future the coordination of the preparation of activities between Departments, study programs, Faculties and Universities, can still be improved. Meanwhile, in budget implementation, efforts are still needed to reduce or simultaneously eliminate obstacles in the submission of Accountability Letters (SPJ) from departments and study programs, so that they do not hinder the implementation of other activities due to negligence in SPJ matters. In Budget Accountability, the role of Faculty leaders is still needed in monitoring the preparation of activity reports and the placement of human resources who have competence in preparing reports. This needs attention because negligence in financial management accountability has legal consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational culture paves the way for employees, shows how one should function in a given organization – it aims to keep it together by adhering to similar values. Thanks to conditions prevailing there, specific rules employees know how they can perform their duties, properly cooperate with others and also how looks like the possibility of professional development, which is very important in the development of human capital. Human capital is people, their skills, creativity and qualifications. Development of capital through competence development has a positive impact on further functioning of the organization, but also on the satisfaction of employees themselves. In the case of retired officers of the Polish Army, who acquired specialized knowledge and valuable skills during their service, it is important to use their capital after the end of service. They can be supplemented with additional courses, training that will enrich their existing potential, and also enable them to find work in the civilian market. A survey was conducted among retired Army officers and employers/supervisors hiring retired officers from 2019 to 2021. The snowball method was used. A qualitative method was used – a survey questionnaire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of the Internet had a profound influence on the spatial distribution of economic output activities. On the basis of theoretical analysis, this study takes China's regions as research samples and construct a spatial econometric model to empirically analyze the impact of Internet development on regional productivity. The analysis reveals that the distribution of regional productivity in China had significant spatial correlation; regional productivity had positive spatial externalities; Internet development had significant promotion effects and positive spatial spillover effects to regional productivity, but the effects are heterogeneous in different subregions. The subregion analysis shows that the optimization effect of the Internet on regional productivity exhibits heterogeneity in different subregions. The threshold effect analysis reveals the increasing marginal effect of Internet development on regional productivity, and economic development and human capital supply are important factors restricting this marginal effect. Altogether, this study provides useful references on the positive effects of the Internet on regional productivity in the spatial dimension, and suggests that the policy makers can optimize the spatial distribution of regional productivity by promoting Internet access in various regions and narrowing the digital divide among regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of affirmative action on the incentives to human capital accumulation are ambiguous from a theoretical perspective and the scarce empirical evidence on the matter provides mixed results. In this paper, we address this issue by investigating the impacts of Brazil's Law of Quotas on the students' performance in the college entrance exam, the ENEM. We provide causal evidence that the law fostered incentives to pre-college human capital accumulation, inducing students to attain higher ENEM scores. Moreover, the effects of the quotas were greater in quantitative-intensive subjects and these impacts increased throughout the first years after the law's implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public higher education is chronically under-funded in developing countries, making private investment necessary for human capital development. We investigate if information provision mobilizes support for private investment in public higher education by employing an online RCT in Afghanistan. We find that information cues impact respondents' support for how education should be financed. Respondents that received information about the current amount of funding devoted to different levels of education (including tuition amounts for private tertiary programs), became more partial to prioritizing public funding for primary and secondary education over tertiary education but also became more supportive of tuition introduction in public universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting rural sustainable development requires improving rural systems' self-organization to reduce dependence on external resources, which is inherently difficult in peasant economies due to low rural household income. Bottom-up collective action can help address these issues. However, few studies have examined how networks of elite and non-elite actors influence collective action and system transitions toward sustainability. This study scrutinizes the changing structures of collaborative networks in three Chinese villages through analysis of elite and non-elite actor groups and their relationships. We also examine the key elements that influence system transitions at every phase of rural sustainable development. The three case studies demonstrate that (1) elites play a vital role in the formation of collaborative networks and facilitate actor awareness; (2) spatial relationships are as essential as institutional design for successful collective action in response to sustainable development problems; (3) highly centralized collaborative networks help to improve the efficiency of the reorganization, renewal, and innovation of the village system, but the collective action outcome depends on the leadership and spatial relationships of the central actors; and (4) social memory and human capital are the most important system elements needed to exploit technology-driven windows of opportunity and achieve strong sustainability. These results provide important insights for enhancing rural systems' capacity to self-organize and capturing windows of opportunity to achieve sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 20th century, skilled labour migration has become a primary channel for resolving the increased global competition, ageing workforces, and skill shortages facing industrialised countries. Despite this ongoing policy trend, skilled migrants – who are increasingly from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESBs), including Asia – confront barriers to securing employment that is commensurate with their skill levels, which exposes them to an array of social and economic vulnerabilities. This article uses qualitative data to examine post-migration employment disadvantages among an under-researched group of Asian NESB skilled migrants in Australia: Japanese independent professionals. The findings show that their employment disadvantages in the host labour market can be attributed to what is termed here multilateral contextual gaps in skills transfer, rather than simply a lack of competence, knowledge, or work experience. The article concludes by identifying the implications of the study, including policy changes that would help improve the skills utilisation and retention of skilled migrants in Australia, which appear to be hampered by the host country's human capital-based, market-driven skills regimes. These changes are urgent given the imperative for societies such as Australia to revive their economies in the post-pandemic era through higher intakes of skilled migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the sustainable livelihood approach (SLA) to assess the strengths and weaknesses of small-scale fisheries (SSF) in the Paraná River delta (Argentina), their vulnerability to different external stressors, and their role in the rural economy. Methods included semi-structured interviews and participant observation to assess 33 criteria corresponding to human, social, natural, physical, and financial capitals and to analyze the main governmental structures in fisheries management and policies. Natural, physical, and human capital showed the highest scores, while social and financial assets presented the lowest. Identified government institutions showed little capacity to address capital-strengthening measures. The SLA assessment allowed us to understand the critical factors and institutions that affect the performance of inland SSF and suggest that the fisheries of the lower Paraná River are highly vulnerable in the face of climate change and other external stressors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Air pollution poses significant health and economic challenges globally and specifically affecting China. Although air pollution has been associated with decreased productivity and biases in decision-making, its effect on the development of digital finance has received limited attention in the literature. By employing city-level data from China covering the period from 2013 to 2020, this research examines the impact of air pollution on digital finance. The results show that deteriorating air quality has a negligible impact on digitalization, whereas it has a negative impact on financial inclusion, measured by usage and coverage metrics. The negative impact on financial inclusion is more noticeable in economically weaker and less developed urban areas and low R&D than in developed areas and economically robust cities. The mechanism analysis shows that air pollution reduces human capital quality, resulting in a decline in financial inclusivity. These findings have significant policy implications, underscoring the necessity for approaches that simultaneously tackle air pollution and foster financial innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined burnout dynamics among Ukrainian academic staff during the full-scale war. A cross-sectional study was conducted twice: the first wave in July 2022 and the second in January 2023. To assess the burnout syndrome as the final outcome, the self-reported Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services adapted for socioeconomic professions by Vodopyanova was used and correlated with different characteristics. The results showed a significant positive trend in emotional exhaustion among Ukrainian academic staff, with females being more sensitive to war-related factors. The results demonstrate that prolonged stressful situations associated with the ongoing war and constant changes in professional conditions lead to significant depersonalization dynamics among academic staff of both sexes. For male academic staff, factors such as age and academic position become less significant for depersonalization. However, university relocation and migration processes were significant factors affecting female academic staff's' perception of effectiveness and accomplishment in their professional activities. The alarming dynamic of burnout levels detected among Ukrainian academic staff urges the national and institutional levels to take prompt actions to enhance the academic staff's mental health in the workplace for preserving not only the quality of higher education, but also human capital in war times for postwar recovery in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental sustainability concerns are growing worldwide. Reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is crucial to combating global warming and reaching sustainable global economic development. Many recent studies have focused on key indicators of CO2 emissions, but less consideration has been given to associated factors such as renewable energy and human capital. This article applies the two-step system FOD-GMM (Forward-Orthogonal Deviations-Generalized Method of Moments) to estimate the role of renewable energy and human capital in reducing environmental degradation in Europe and Central Asia. The results reveal that renewable energy consumption and human capital have a significant negative impact on CO2 emissions in the EU and Central Asian countries, government efficiency has a positive effect on CO2 emissions, and economic development has a neutral effect, confirming the strong role of renewable energy and human capital in reducing CO2 emissions in EU and Central Asian countries. The role of human capital and renewable energy in promoting CO2 reduction should be fully utilized. Policymakers should develop infrastructure for renewable energy and education to support the decrease in CO2 emissions in Europe and Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The composition of commodities that are produced by a country is a key factor for its environmental performance. High economic complexity implies the transition from a lowly productive agricultural economy to highly productive sectors and the production of more sophisticated commodities. This transition needs an increased level of energy consumption, which in turn entails an increased level of CO2 emission and environmental degradation. The present research aims to explore the effect of economic complexity on CO2 emission in some Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member countries using the GMM method. According to the results, CO2 emission in these countries is affected by the variables of economic complexity, industry, human capital, and population growth rate negatively and significantly and by the variable of energy consumption positively and significantly. Also, the variables of trade openness and economic growth rate have negative but insignificant effects on CO2 emission in these countries. It is also found that economic complexity in these countries will significantly reduce CO2 emission in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leisure tourism can be analyzed as a mechanism to rebuild human capital depleted by work. Human capital is an essential input to human economies, and possesses a corresponding economic value. Therefore, tourism possesses an economic value additional to expenditure and multipliers, which can be seen as investments in increasing human capital as an asset. Calculating the financial value of human capital gains is likely to prove a more powerful political tool for the tourism sector, than current political perceptions as discretionary leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explored the nexus between the quality of human capital, productivity-enhancing factors, and the quality of institutions in nine Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries using canonical correlation and principal component analysis of country-level data for 2007–2017 from the World Bank, World Economic Forum, and Penn World Tables databases. We found that an unequal development of human capital in the ASEAN countries is clearly linked to their heterogeneous institutional conditions and that the quality of human capital drives technology absorption and innovation. The four transition economies in the region—Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Myanmar—are facing particularly difficult challenges in developing institutional environments that stimulate human capital development to reach higher levels of knowledge intensity of their economies and achieve the resulting competitive advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the soaring costs of higher education, financial aid is helpful to reduce the direct costs of college. Student loans are the most common financial support for college students. The purpose of this research was to estimate whether student loan holding and amounts were negatively associated with life satisfaction utilizing 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This study utilized the fixed-effects-logit model to demonstrate the association. The results showed that holding student loans was negatively associated with life satisfaction. But there was no statistically significant association when student loans were measured as the actual amount. The existence of student loans rather than the amount was what was associated with decreased utility in the short term. This study mainly focused on the change of "within-group" effect on life satisfaction in the short run. The findings underscore the importance of education savings from parents and use of student loans on overall life satisfaction practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable livelihood was introduced in the 1980s as a new approach to rural development to reduce and eradicate rural poverty. Achieving sustainable rural livelihoods is not possible without considering the rural livelihood assets. To understand the consequences of a change in the rural livelihood system, comprehensive and interactions-based approaches are needed to understand the complicated interactions and feedback between different factors. Accordingly, in this study, an integrated System Dynamics (SD) model was developed for sustainable rural livelihood analysis in the eastern villages of Qarabagh Ghazni, Afghanistan, where managing rural development is seriously challenging due to population growth. SD is a strong and effective approach to examine the behavior of complex systems over time. Findings illustrated that the population in the study area was increasing and the average annual population growth rate was +2.94%. Also, a significant proportion of this population was illiterate. Therefore, it seems that the requirement for skills training in this area will be higher due to population growth. An effective step can be taken to achieve sustainable rural development by increasing the skills and the desire of young people to be self-employed in rural areas. The results also showed that, by increasing per capita income in this region, the tendency to stay in the rural areas increased during the simulation period. Therefore, the government should pay special attention to increasing the household's income in order to prevent migration of the people and strengthen the desire to stay in the rural areas. The results of this research support the idea that there is the necessary potential in terms of human resources in this region to reduce poverty and improve the living conditions of people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role played by public capital on the production level of Italian regions by specifically accounting for the quality of institutions. Our analysis, carried out over the period 2000–2019, benefits from a rich data set on public expenditures. This allows us to build the regional public capital stock by distinguishing among public institutions in charge of the investments and sectors of intervention. While controlling for several contextual variables (human capital, technological capital, and population density), the main results show that public capital has a positive and significant effect on production. Most interestingly, looking at Mezzogiorno's regions, public capital carried out by local institutions turns out to have a lower impact than in the rest of the Italian regions. On the other hand, central bodies in the South exhibit an impact higher than the average. Moreover, institutions' quality exhibits a positive and significant effect on regional economic performance. These results cast serious doubts about the local Southern administrations' capacity to effectively manage the National Recovery and Resilience Plan's enormous resources and the new European Union cohesion framework 2021–2027. Our results are also relevant for other European regions that, featuring structural traits similar to Southern Italian regions, are expected to face the same difficulties in managing public funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a growing tendency to use humanistic and utopian goals in the naming and framing of education policies. The case of the Happiness Education Policy (HEP) in South Korea is illustrative and demonstrates the potential of such framing, combined with references to external authorities, to neutralise domestic opposition and generate support from diverse national stakeholders. The HEP focuses on nurturing 'happy human capital' for the future through education initiatives such as the Free Semester/Year Initiative, character education, STEAM-based curriculum, and software education. Through an analysis of a corpus of policy documents and press releases, this article demonstrates how happiness, as a floating signifier, has been redefined in ways that align and support the different sociotechnical imaginaries envisioned by political regimes over the past decade which depart from its humanistic focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents are the key people in the family when it comes to determining the extent and type of education for their children. Within the theoretical frameworks of African feminisms, human capital theory, and the liminality theory, this paper examines the parental perceptions of the girls' secondary education in Tanzania's rural communities. Moreover, it determines the effects of those perceptions on the girls' secondary schooling in rural Tanzania. Using the ethnographic research design, this qualitative study found that, although some parents perceived girls' secondary education negatively, there were some glimmers of hope and changing attitudes among parents. The findings further indicate that there are tensions and conflicting perspectives, as some of the parents struggled to reconcile emerging beliefs about girls' education with the existing largely conservative cultural and familial practices. This changing perception on the girls' secondary education signals a favourable disposition towards the improvement of girls' secondary schooling, particularly in the largely conservative rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge is recognised as a critical resource, and managing knowledge is crucial in organisations. The benefits of knowledge management have been reviewed in much literature. This paper presents an overview of knowledge management, the maturity model, and the knowledge management maturity model. To the best of our knowledge, the amount of literature relating to knowledge management maturity is almost nonexistent in the field of libraries. Identifying this gap, the main goal of this paper is to discover knowledge management maturity dimensions, namely human capital, support from top management, organisational culture, leadership, and employee skills, towards innovation performance in university libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football clubs are traditional institutions with the particularity of having the main characters of their successes as intangible assets, that is, their players. The aim of this work is to analyse the determinants of the market values using intellectual and structural capital indicators as explanatory variables. Descriptive statistics and panel data model estimates were used in the analyses to control the footballers' fixed effects, the club's fixed effects and the effects of player-year and club-year interactions. Results confirmed that footballers' market value is determined by a set of variables that can be explained by components of human capital (one's skills), structural capital (infrastructure that supports human capital). Understanding the players' pricing can help both clubs and players to improve their management and increase the possibility of financial success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of recent studies have investigated the relationship between bride prices and social development. However, there has been little empirical evidence that bride prices affect household income. Based on a unique set of bride price data from China and data from China's Labour Force Dynamic Survey (CLDS), this paper studies the effect of bride prices on rural household income. The findings show that higher bride prices can significantly reduce rural household income. For income categories, higher bride prices have a significantly negative impact on the agricultural income of rural households, while higher bride prices can boost rural households' remittance income by inducing individuals to work as migrant workers. There is a significant age difference in the impact of rural household income. Finally, the relationship between bride prices and income is an inverted U-shape, and moderate bride prices are conducive to income growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PT Gipan Metal Teknik Indonesia (GMTI) is a manufacturing company that has a vision of being the best company in the field of providing and fabricating abrasion resistance steel materials, as well as a mission to prioritize product quality, deliver on time, provide the best service, and provide customized products . . Therefore, in order to support the achievement of the company's vision and mission, PT GMTI must have human resources with high competitiveness for the short, medium and long term. To achieve this, PT GMTI carries out human capital strategy and planning starting from the stages of recruiting competent employees by adapting to company needs, socializing moral guidelines as a basis for employee behavior, training and developing employee skills, to career development planning such as appointing permanent employees and career promotions. . Human resource management planning has an important role in companies in increasing work productivity to support long-term business goals and results. The success of human resource management planning is determined by the accuracy of strategy selection such as predicting company projections and maximizing human resource capabilities according to the company's organizational needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to map the conceptual approach of intangibles for the period 1982 - 2022 by using a bibliometric study. For this study, we used the Web of Science Core Collection database as a main reference for data collection. From 1982 to 2022, we filtered 21,564 records for our final sample. Collected data were analysed with descriptive statistics and coword analysis, where a co-occurrence network was used for visualisation of co-word analysis. From a total of 37 460 keywords, the most frequent are: "Risk", "Performance", "Human Capital", "Impact", "Growth", "Return" and "Volatility". USA is the leader in researching the area of intellectual capital (approximately 30% of the total amount of papers belongs to USA researchers). Separately, we analysed the case of the Slovak Republic. Our results show that Slovakia has a huge time gap with other countries, but the positive is that Slovak researchers are in step with worldwide popular areas of intellectual capital. Also, we found that Slovak Republic published 0,75% of the total 21,564 papers. This study offers a wide range of the current state of researching intellectual capital worldwide and separately for the Slovak Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to explore the potential of human capital, competitive advantages, and women entrepreneurship innovation in Indonesia and Kuala Lumpur, as well as to provide academic policies to the government by establishing a cluster of human resources (HR) expertise and enhancing the development of women entrepreneurship, resulting in regulations to improve human capital and women entrepreneurship. 9T10TThe research problem is how female entrepreneurs can transform 10T1THR expertise in their business10T1T. The survey sample of active female entrepreneurs in various cities were selected using a multi-stage random sampling method, totaling 47 female entrepreneurs, consisting of 39 respondents from Medan and Deli Serdang, 5 from West Sumatra, and 3 from Kelantan, Malaysia10T12T. 10T12TThe qualitative descriptive research and a comparative analysis were applied to this research. 10T13TThis research proves that female entrepreneurs who act as housewives must continue to 13T14Tdevelop 13T14Ttheir human resource potential, competitive advantages, and innovative abilities in entrepreneurship to produce superior products, be competitive, increase economic income, and improve the welfare of their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging challenges and opportunities from business environments keep organizations embedded in volatility and unpredictability. Acknowledging the increasing need for organization flexibility, this study examined the influence of human resource flexibility on the performance of selected deposit money banks in Nigeria. To achieve this objective, the variables were operationalized, and models specified. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. Data were gathered from primary sources, and study hypotheses were tested using the Multiple Regression Technique. The findings showed that all the factors used to proxy functional flexibility, except relational flexibility, had a significant effect on customer loyalty; and that functional flexibility significantly affects customer loyalty. The study also found numerical flexibility to influence service innovation positively and significantly in the selected Banks. Based on these findings, the study recommended that in order to achieve a higher level of flexibility in these banks, managers should put in place coordination mechanisms towards generating new forms of collective human capital through the combination of individual capabilities of employees, in addition to maintaining other aspects of their employees' functional flexibility; and that managers should minimize the application of fixed-term contract employments and focus more on contracting external specialists who will introduce fresh ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the value that employers assign to immigrants' labour market experience, from both before and after immigration, using a surveyed representative sample of the Swedish immigrant and native populations. A novel feature of the survey is that it contains a measure of immigrants' actual years of labour market experience, including about work before immigration. Previous research has, in contrast, relied on so-called potential measures, risking bias in the analyses. For immigrants, results show that only pre-immigration labour market experience from the Nordic countries has a positive return. Results also show that return to labour market experience after immigration does not depend on whether the individual acquired Sweden-specific human capital before or with the entry into the labour market. Natives and immigrants, as well as immigrants with and without schooling or upbringing in Sweden, have parallel wage trajectories across labour market experience years, with immigrants being at a stable disadvantage. This is interpreted to be caused by immigrants being sorted into jobs with worse opportunities to acquire new human capital compared with natives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a novel panel dataset on recent immigrants in Switzerland, we study the relationship between the degree of skills utilization, the foreign-acquired education and its certification in the host country. We find that the relationship with foreign education is negative, especially when acquired in a non-EU country, in line with the literature documenting the imperfect international transferability of human capital. Obtaining a "Certificate of Equivalence" in Switzerland makes this relationship statistically non-significant: in other words, the certification enables immigrants to enjoy the same degree of skills utilization in the Swiss labour market as those with Swiss education. Additional results suggest that immigrants with a foreign but not Swiss-certified education keep the degree of skill utilization as high as it would be if they were Swiss educated when they obtain a job contract or job offer before migrating to Switzerland. These findings are robust to controlling for self-selection on unobserved characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: University–industry (UI) collaboration is essential for knowledge and technology exchange between higher education institutions and industries, enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation. However, few studies have investigated the collaborative innovation mechanism through which UI collaboration can enhance the accumulation of firms' intellectual capital (IC) and how this, in turn, affects their innovation-driven development. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing from the knowledge management and collaborative innovation theory, this research proposes a theoretical framework of the inter-organization relationship between enterprises and universities to investigate the influence mechanism of UI collaboration, including academic engagement and commercialization, on corporate performance as well as the mediating role of IC by employing survey that covers 177 UI collaborations. Findings: Empirical results show that human capital and relational capital fully mediate the relationship between academic engagement UI collaboration and corporate economic performance, while human capital partially mediates the relationship between commercialization UI collaboration and corporate economic performance. Additionally, structural capital and relational capital partially mediate the relationship between academic engagement and corporate innovation performance, while structural capital fully mediates the relationship between commercialization and corporate innovation performance. Originality/value: This study empirically investigates how academic engagement and commercialization impact corporate performance (i.e. innovation dimension or economic dimension). It uncovers this relationship's underlying mechanism by documenting the IC's mediating impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To cope with intensifying uncertainties coupled with the rapid advancement of information communication technology (ICT), understanding how to encourage employees' innovative workplace behavior (IWB) is imperative, with two motivational concerns: (1) the possession of critical knowledge resources characterized by intellectual capital (IC) to better reconfigure new and existing knowledge and (2) the development of career sustainability to handle ICT-enabled intricate job arrangements. The authors investigate the relationships among IC, career sustainability and IWB in Chinese cross-border e-commerce enterprises (CEEs), which are becoming increasingly prevalent and central to the global economy. Design/methodology/approach: Using data collected from 417 participants employed in Chinese CEEs, the authors used regression analyses to test the authors' hypotheses. Findings: Human capital (HC) and structural capital (SC) exerted inverted U-shaped influences on IWB, while relational capital (RC) was positively related to IWB. Perceived career sustainability positively moderated such associations between HC and IWB and between SC and IWB; perceived career sustainability negatively moderated the positive RC-IWB relationship. Practical implications: Results can inform managers which components of IC and how managers are related to IWB so crucial for success of CEEs with ICT-enabled, intricate architectures of knowledge exchange. The authors' results can help global managers and policymakers to more appropriately allocate scarce knowledge resources to maximize innovative behaviors in the highly competitive international business context. Originality/value: From the knowledge-based view (KBV) of firm innovation, the authors examine the differential effects of IC components on employee IWB amid coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) through a novel lens of employees' perceptions of career sustainability, enriching the literature at the intersection of IC, knowledge management (KM) and career development. The authors' cross-level analysis links micro-level variables to organizational IC in the new normal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]