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PurposeMotivated by the growing and urgent demands for a unified set of internationally accepted, and high-quality environmental, social and governance (hereafter ESG) disclosure standards, this exploratory study aims to propose a roadmap for setting out the proper technical groundwork for global ESG disclosure standards. Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory study is conducted to gain initial understanding and insights into establishing a worldwide set of standards for reporting on sustainability, as this topic has not been extensively studied. This study examines the viewpoints of various stakeholders, including sustainability practitioners, academics and organizations focused on ESG issues, to generate knowledge that is more solid than knowledge produced when one group of stakeholders work alone. FindingsThe results revealed that there is an ongoing and incompatible debate regarding several conceptual and practical challenges for setting a unified set of ESG disclosure standards. Practical implicationsThe study results provide multidimensional insights for regulatory parties and standard-setters to develop a high-quality package of global ESG reporting standards. This, in turn, enables different groups of stakeholders to understand the firm's impact on the environment, society and economy. Originality/valueResearch into this timely and relevant global issue is considered an appealing area of study and deserves significant attention. Thereby, working on this topic merits remarkable attention. Furthermore, this exploratory article provides valuable and informative suggestions for creating a unified and high-quality set of internationally accepted sustainability reporting standards.
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Academic debates highlight bureaucratic steering of crisis governance in authoritarian China. Nonetheless, the crisis response from the bottom up has been less represented. To address this lacuna, we explore how citizens initiate the crisis response in the neighbourhood by investigating Community Group Buying (CGB) during the 2022 pandemic lockdown in Shanghai. We qualitatively analyze the narratives of Chinese stakeholders, to get insight into the dynamics, components and implications of CGB. This study indicates that facing urgent needs and the failure of institutional response system, community residents leveraged social media to bond together to purchase essentials in bulk during the lockdown. The components of CGB involve: constructing online interactive spaces, creating community conventions, forming leadership, optimizing CGB procedures, legitimizing CGB by social media promotion. CGB favoured neighbourhood ties and advanced civic participation and increased the reciprocal interaction of the state and society and the responsiveness of policy practitioners to public demands during crises. However, local disagreements eroded volunteerism and citizens' initiatives in neighbourhood governance to some extent. Our study will not only deepen global audiences' understanding of spontaneous neighbourhood governance in authoritarian China, but also contribute neighbourhood-level solutions for responding to the future crises globally.
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This study explores how China's education responses to COVID-19 from a perspective of policy analysis. Specifically, it involves building an educational policy system for COVID-19 to examine educational governance framework, school management and teaching, policies for teachers during the epidemic. The education policy during the epidemic has achieved positive results. Those results aim to ensure the physical and mental health of teachers and students, ensure the supply of epidemic prevention materials and educational resources, ensure the quality of students' learning, and enhance the application ability of teachers' teaching technology. The process of policy changes and effects of policy implementation have been examined to analyze how China's education responses to COVID-19. The characteristics and experience of China's education policy in response to the epidemic concentrate on forming a governance system under the centralized and unified leadership of the Communist Party of China, building a pattern in which families and schools cooperate closely to promote the smooth development of education and teaching, transforming from an emergency substitute during the crisis into an important motivation to promote the transformation of education paradigm, and paying great attention to remote and poor areas and disadvantaged student groups.
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This book mainly introduces the concepts and approaches of global governance from the viewpoints of Chinese and Russian scholars and is divided into four parts. The first one deals with the concept of a new type of global governance, namely "Globalization 2.0". The second one is dedicated to institutions and multilateralism, including the importance and effectiveness of international institutions. The third part focuses on the important countries and regions in the new era, as well as such issues as the current global status quo, processes in Eurasia, the prospects of the U.S.-China-Russia trilateral relationship. The last part analyzes the future development of global governance and possible solutions of how it might be improved. Climate change, digital era, cyber security, financial and economic regimes, COVID-19 are all involved in this part. In short, this book is a profound and cutting-edge research on global governance. © China Social Sciences Press 2023.
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Over the years, citizens' expectations of the healthcare sector have increased, especially after the sudden outbreak of COVID-19. Additionally, citizens are becoming more conscious of having a healthier lifestyle based on several environmental and economic issues prevailing worldwide. Hence, empirically testing the predictors of providing excellent public healthcare services and enhancing the resultant citizens' trust in such services is of utmost significance. Simultaneously, the critical role of healthcare workers' capacity in providing quality services to patients in public health institutions and improving healthcare services to develop citizens' trust needs has been considered in this study. Based on a quantitative survey, the current study collected data from 460 individuals regarding three collaborative governance practices and resultant improved public healthcare services. The results revealed the significance of all three collaborative governance of public health practices. Citizen participation was the most impactful, followed by democratic accountability and procedural legitimacy. The study results are valuable to practitioners, policymakers, healthcare service providers, and governments. Among the recommendations are that collaborative governance practices should be developed, the healthcare system should be decentralized to provide the best services to citizens, and public healthcare workers' capabilities should be improved by providing proper training. © 2023, Florida Gulf Coast University. All rights reserved.
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This paper examines racialized encounters with the police from the perspectives of people experiencing homelessness in San Diego, California in 2020. By some estimates, homelessness doubled in San Diego during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a survey of (n = 244) and interviews with (n = 57) homeless San Diegans during initial shelter-in-place orders, oversampling for Black respondents, whose voices are often under-represented despite high rates of homelessness nationally. Our respondents reported high rates of police contact, frequent lack of respect;overt racism, sexism, and homophobia;and a failure to offer basic services during these encounters. Centering our Black respondents' experiences of criminalization and racism in what Clair calls "criminalized subjectivity," we develop a conceptual framework that brings together critical theoretical perspectives on the role of race in the governance of poverty and crime. When people experiencing extreme poverty face apathy, disrespect, and discrimination from police—as our data show—the result is a reluctance to seek services and to engage with outreach when offered. This reinforces stereotypes of unhoused people as not "wanting" help or "choosing" to be homeless. We reflect on these findings and our framework for envisioning a system of public safety that supports and cares for—rather than punishes—the most vulnerable members of our society. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Public Integrity is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
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Smart cities are concepts much loved by politicians and technologists but are very difficult to bring about in practice. There are many isolated applications in cities such as operating streetlamps, but very few, if any, examples of integrated applications sharing data and managing the city as a holistic entity rather than a set of disparate and unconnected applications. This is despite hundreds of trials and indicates how difficult bringing about a smart city will be. The key challenge is the wide range of interested parties in a city including the elected city authority, subcontractors and suppliers to the authority, emergency services, transport providers, businesses, residents, workers, tourists, and other visitors. Some of these entities will be primarily driven by finance, such as businesses and transport providers. Some will be driven by political considerations. Some will be concerned with the quality of life as well as financial costs. In some cases, there will be conflicting interests-the city may want as much information as possible on people in the city, whereas individuals may want privacy and the minimum data stored concerning their movements and attributes. COVID-19 does not change any of these issues, but it does increase the importance of some applications such as smart health, logistics, people surveillance, data security, and crisis management, while reducing the importance of others such as traffic management. It may result in more willingness for monitoring and data sharing if this can be shown to result in better control of the virus. © 2023 the authors.
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PurposeThis paper aims to identify key factors for a contextualised Systemic Risk Governance (SRG) framework and subsequently explore how systemic risks can be managed and how local institutional mechanisms can be tweaked to deal with the complex Indonesian risk landscape.Design/methodology/approachUsing a case study from Palu triple-disasters in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, the authors demonstrate how inland earthquakes in 2018 created cascading secondary hazards, namely tsunamis, liquefactions and landslides, caused unprecedented disasters for the communities and the nation. A qualitative analysis was conducted using the data collected through a long-term observation since 2002.FindingsThe authors argue that Indonesia has yet to incorporate an SRG approach in its responses to the Palu triple-disasters. Political will is required to adopt more appropriate risk governance modes that promote the systemic risk paradigm. Change needs to occur incrementally through hybrid governance arrangements ranging from formal/informal methods to self- and horizontal and vertical modes of governance deemed more realistic and feasible. The authors recommend that this be done by focusing on productive transition and local transformation.Originality/valueThere is growing awareness and recognition of the importance of systemic and cascading risks in disaster risk studies. However, there are still gaps between research, policy and practice. The current progress of disaster risk governance is not sufficient to achieve the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) unless there is an effective governing system in place at the local level that allow actors and institutions to simultaneously manage the interplays of multi-hazards, multi-temporal, multi-dimensions of vulnerabilities and residual risks. This paper contributes to these knowledge gaps.
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Focusing on the central government's response to the Covid-19 crisis during the first wave in Spain, the article analyses the executive's strategy of power concentration, and the factors that shape its implementation. We sketch how the crisis erupted, the main measures and strategies adopted by the national executive, the role of the experts, and the interaction with other political actors and institutions. We also explore the second phase and how the political reaction evolved towards a more consensual approach. Paradoxically, the consequences for the political actors were apparently less harmful than expected, since the governments did not lose political support, and the electorate continued to support the policy measures adopted to mitigate the pandemic.
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The COVID-19 pandemic and global responses to this crisis reveal the changing landscape of global health governance. As countries around the world struggle to secure COVID-19 vaccines for their citizens, some non-Western powers have actively distributed vaccines internationally – an act broadly recognized as vaccine diplomacy. While existing literature suggests that geopolitical concerns affect the selection of recipient countries, it has yet to explain other aspects of vaccine diplomacy. Why are some countries focused on vaccine sales while others are more open to donation? Why do some prefer bilateral to multilateral channels in distributing vaccines? Through comparative analysis of China, India, and Russia, this article shows that political economic factors, in addition to geopolitics, shape the ways non-Western powers conduct vaccine diplomacy. We argue that these countries adjust their strategies in line with their relative advantages in development, manufacturing, and delivery of vaccines. Each country has unique strengths and weakness, which gives rise to the varied patterns in vaccine diplomacy. Our findings suggest that their strategies of vaccine diplomacy are enabled as well as constrained by their economic realities, and the rise of these countries in this field does not necessarily mean an outright challenge to the existing international system. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Review of International Political Economy is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
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This analytical essay addresses authoritarian communitarianism as the normative and ideological underpinnings of the current Chinese foreign policy. In recent years, China has exhibited its ambition in bidding for its preferred world order, through both its rhetoric and behavior. Being well aware of this new development, people are debating about what is exactly China's world vision and its approach to a future world order. Driven by the puzzle in contemporary global affairs, this chapter focuses on the philosophical and ideological roots of China's world vision, rather than investigating its foreign policies directly. It is argued that China's world view today and its ensuing policy approach are substantially informed by the authoritarian version of communitarianism, deriving largely from the traditional Chinese thoughts of Confucianism. Inspired by authoritarian communitarianism as the main international ideology, China is envisaging a world order, based on values of international stability and communal harmony, emphasizing the role of nation states and vertical hierarchical order. This argument is further assessed with China's role and policy in the crisis of the on-going Covid-19 pandemic. Through this specific case, strength and limitation of China's world vision are better illuminated, with reference to global governance. It is concluded that the ideological struggle between China and mostly the West tends to generate substantial policy implications in contemporary global affairs. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Paper aims: We analyze in this study the management and governance structure of technology transfer in megaprojects under an emergency context. Originality: We analyze an emergency health megaproject's management and governance structure. There is a dearth of studies that explore the management and governance structure of combination megaprojects in emergencies. We focus on analyzing the literature and the management and governance structure in the technology transfer, production, and supply of the Covid-19 vaccine. We then develop a reference model for building the management and governance structure of megaprojects in emergencies. Research method: We conducted a case study in Bio-Manguinhos/Fiocruz. From the case study, we can analyze real situations that contribute to the development of theories. For this, we systematically reviewed the literature to identify how the megaproject management structure has been used. We interviewed stakeholders of the Oxford/AstraZeneca/Fiocruz vaccine megaproject against Covid-19 and triangulated these data by collecting corresponding documents. Main findings: We conclude that the management and governance structure of the Oxford/AstraZeneca/Fiocruz vaccine technology transfer, production, and supply megaproject was appropriate. Since this structure should not be reproduced faithfully due to its specific characteristics, we developed a reference model for structure building in emergencies. This model can support institutions and governments in structuring management and governance in critical situations. Implications for theory and practice: The knowledge obtained from this study will contribute to determining management and governance structures for future megaprojects, especially in emergencies © This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
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COVID-19 has brought a combination of health, socioeconomic and protection challenges to migrants everywhere, and a common view is that these effects have been harshest for those already in vulnerable situations before the pandemic. However, the lived experiences of Filipino irregular migrant domestic workers (IMDWs) in the Netherlands point to a range of impacts instead of a homogenous one. Drawing on interviews and participant observations, we analyse three specific pandemic consequences: income and financial remittance volatility, dual country or transnational precarity and physical and migration status immobility. We then analyse the resilience strategies deployed by IMDWs to navigate through such impacts. While our focus is on the microlevel, we also highlight the vital importance of the responses by the community on the mesolevel, and the government on the macrolevel. Following this relational approach, we put forward a conceptualisation of individual resilience as the capacity to navigate the negative impacts of a shock or crisis to maintain, adapt, or transform valued functionings. We argue that IMDWs cultivate resilience despite their precarious legal status;however, the effectiveness of strategies is contingent on personal circumstances as well as the sociopolitical context wherein they are deployed. The paper contributes to the literature by providing a more nuanced picture of the impacts of and responses to COVID-19 in relation to migrants with irregular status. The articulation of resilience in terms of valued functionings also paves the way for the advancement of the still nascent research agenda on migration and human development.
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Covid - 19 has affected global value chains (GVCs) and firms' behaviours within GVCs to a large extent. Firms need to find flexible solutions to stabilize production and rethink value chain governance and supplier relationships. Thus, GVCs recover from the initial shock, and the GVCs reconfiguration becomes essential for managers. We reviewed recent literature focusing on the GVCs, the role of governance and Covid - 19 effects on it as well as the regionalization trend. Thus, this study aims to give empirical evidence on the reconfiguration of GVCs, particularly the changes in the structure of suppliers in the global apparel industry, by using the Bloomberg Supply Chain Analysis tool in the period of 2017- 2021. We analysed the structural changes in selected leading apparel multinational companies' GVCs - Industria de Diseno Textil, S.A. (Inditex), Hennes & Mauritz AB (H & M) and adidas AG. The findings provide insights on the current state of the theoretically discussed and widely expected regionalization trend in GVCs. The study concludes that two out of three cases provide evidence indicating an ongoing trend toward GVCs regionalization. The contribution of this study consists of empirical evidence of the changes in GVCs supplier structure in the apparel industry in response to pandemic global business environment. Practical implications and recommendations for businesses and policy makers are related to the revealed theories and testable models by using Bloomberg's Supply Chain Analysis data and linking causes and effects of the GVCs regionalization processes.
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Joint decision-making processes such as negotiations play a vital role in diverse societal contexts spanning from business and politics to sustainability-related negotiations. One of the most prominent examples of how negotiations play an important role in overcoming societal challenges was the COVID-19 vaccine supply negotiations. These negotiations have put the spotlight on an aspect of joint decision-making that always has been of great interest to both negotiation researchers and practitioners yet remains empirically understudied- the effect of uncertainty. In the present article, we develop a framework of uncertainty in negotiation using the COVID-19 vaccine supply negotiations between the European Union and pharmaceutical companies as an example. More specifically, we categorize different kinds of uncertainty based both on mathematical considerations (i.e., differentiation between risk, ambiguity, and uncertainty) as well as on more circumstantial factors. To do so, we adapted the nine kinds of uncertainty in environmental governance proposed by Dewulf and Biesbroek to the more general context of negotiations. We first differentiate between three natures of uncertainty (i.e., lack of knowledge, unpredictability, and interpretations) and three objects of uncertainty (i.e., issue- based, strategy- based, and context- based). Second, we illustrate the psychological barriers that negotiators face when handling uncertainty, before concluding with proposals for practitioners on how to manage different kinds of uncertainty. Overall, we aim at stimulating investigations of the effects of uncertainty in mixed- motive decision- making while simultaneously helping negotiation teachers and practitioners better cope with the additional demands created by specific kinds of uncertainty.
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This study examines the E-readiness of the Universities during the Covid-19 pandemic in the kingdom of Bahrain. The study uses quantitative methods and purposive techniques in collecting data during the Covid-19 pandemic. The data were collected from public and private universities in Bahrain during the Covid-19 pandemic. The public and private universities in Bahrain turned to remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. The main results revealed the influential role of Covid-19 on teaching methods and the readiness of the Academic staff during the Covid-19 outbreak. This study highlights the impact of Covid-19 on the Academic staff's readiness in using and learning new skills to disseminate the courses' contents among students. The need of significant investment and IT governance infrastructure is essential for the digital transition in public and private universities in Bahrain. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has developed into a diverse worldwide emergency with gigantic difficulties for any association all throughout the planet. With lockdowns and other social removing conventions carried out in nations around the world, financial exercises and social associations become progressively dependent on innovation. This examination planned to look at the intercession part of business-IT arrangement because of IT administration (ITG) in Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) performance. The Higher Educational area was picked as an object of study as this area will encounter a time of extremist innovation driven change because of COVID-19‘s boost and there very few studies in this sector. This study used the case study of a HEI in Bahrain where Integrated IT governance framework was implemented successfully during the time of crisis and need. In fact the ITG helped a lot in achieving the strategic goals of the HEI. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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The outbreak of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 or COVID 19 pandemic has literally dashed our enlightened scientific rationality. It has claimed more than six million lives around the globe. The struggling humanity has adopted a series of strict legal-administrative protocols like lockdown, quarantine, isolation, to contain the spread of the virus. However, the strict adherence to the above-mentioned protocols has brought several collateral damages like the disruption of normal socio-economic activities;suspension of political and civic engagements of the people. The situation gets further complicated as endless suggestions and opinions have been offered by several experts. The scientific community, till today, is grappling with the possible antidote of the virus in the form of vaccines. Several research laboratories across the globe have been actively engaged in devising full-proof vaccines of which, some have already started manufacturing commercially. Despite the tall claims of these companies, the efficacy of these vaccines is still not very clear. Moreover, the modality of administering these vaccines is another difficult issue, involving delicate distributive management that requires something more than mere scientific rationality. Further, given the nature of neoliberal governance, where delivery of services is a collective venture of all the stakeholders like state, civil society, market, and community, administrative rationality is perhaps the most important means. Drawing on the existing literature, the paper intends to explore the administrative responses to the pandemic of COVID-19 through the lens of administrative rationality. Finally, the paper with an optimistic note concludes that the administrative rationality of the bureaucracy has the potential to devise a bailout programme for all the stakeholders concerned. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022, corrected publication 2022.
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PurposeThis study aims to explore the status and drivers (including free-floated shares, board size, rule duality and board independence) of corporate risk disclosure (CRD) for the conventional listed banks in the Egyptian stock market from 2010 to 2021, which include the country's major political upheavals and the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approachThis study based on a sample of 117 annual reports of sampled banks from 2010 to 2021. RD index of Al-Maghzom (2016) was developed and adopted to quantify CRD using an unweighted scoring system. The multiple linear regression model was used to validate the hypotheses. FindingsThe analysis shows that the COVID-19 pandemic increased insignificantly disclosure of all risks except for segment risks. In addition, findings reveal that all sampled banks adhere highly to the requirements of mandatory RD, with a low level of adherence to voluntary RD. Moreover, the analysis concluded that the board size and free-floating shares positively affect the disclosure of financial, operational, general information. Research limitations/implicationsThe study's limitations include the content analysis methodology, reliance on annual reports, emphasis on financial and non-financial risks, focus on listed conventional banks in Egypt. Practical implicationsCurrent study's findings are more likely to be useful for many parties. It informs investors about the characteristics of the boards' directors of Egyptian listed banks that disclosed risk information. Banks should disclose more comprehensive risk information. For academics, the current study's limitations can be considered in their future research. Originality/valueThis work fills a new research area in which there is relatively little research in emerging financial markets that adds new evidence to the relationship between RD and both free-floating shares and board characteristics, particularly in Egypt.