Circular economy (CE) has attracted considerable attention from governments, policymakers, and societies due to its potential to promote sustainable development goals while shifting away from linear economy models. Despite a growing body of research conducted in the CE, the barriers to its successful implementation for solid waste management (SWM) remain less explored especially in context of municipal solid wastes, and commercial and industrial wastes. The purpose of this current study is to identify the critical barriers to circular economy implementation in SWM. The scientometric analysis of literature is the research methodology in this study. A total of 1709 journal articles were searched and retrieved from Scopus database for the data analysis. The results show that circular economy has not gained much root in solid waste management in the global south. Countries such as China, United States, Australia, Italy, and United Kingdom (UK) are the topmost countries to fund research in this research area. The commonly used keywords in scholarly literature on this topic include sustainability, reuse, waste management and recycle. Further, the major findings of the study were grouped into clusters relating to challenges on macroeconomic policies, recycling and reuse of waste, stakeholder management, operation, and legal regulations, generated solid wastewater treatment, and construction and demolition waste. The contributions of this research are twofold: a comprehensive list of relevant gaps for further studies are provided for the scientific community to delve into this matter and proffer solutions. The findings could serve as a guide to understand and develop best practice framework on circular economy and its implementation in the SWM.

Understanding the key determinants of residential water conservation is crucial for designing effective water demand management policies in arid and semiarid regions. While extant literature has frequently identified such determinants using statistical significance and correlations, there is a growing emphasis on understanding these determinants using probabilistic sufficiency and deterministic necessity logics. Integrating these two logics to test an integrated model of the Theories of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and Protection Motivation (PMT), this study identifies and differentiates the probabilistic sufficient and necessary conditions or "must have" factors that need to exist for residential water conservation intentions and behaviours to occur. Combining partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) to analyse 346 responses from residents in Australia's Northern Territory (NT), we found that attitude, self-efficacy, perceived vulnerability, and response efficacy are probabilistic sufficient and necessary conditions for water conservation intention. Self-efficacy and intention further provided probabilistic sufficient and necessary conditions for water conservation behaviour. Based on the findings, the TPB-PMT constructs are categorised into four groups and the bottleneck table is used to indicate the minimum levels of the identified necessary conditions that must exist to realise the highest levels of water conservation intention and behaviour. This study further draws on these two logics to conduct a combined importance-performance map analysis (cIPMA) to provide guidelines for policymakers and water authorities on how to better prioritise water management actions to improve residential water conservation intentions and behaviours.

Studies on technology adoption have generally found significant variations across cultures, with the literature suggesting a strong reluctance to adopt new technologies, particularly in non-western countries. Given the accelerated increase in remote working and collaboration during the COVID-19 crisis, this paper compares the determinants of sustainable technology adoption by employees across Western and Non-Western countries. Using a survey of 302 participants from 13 Western and non-Western countries, four proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling and multi-group comparisons. The empirical results suggest a significant positive relationship between perceived ease of use and usefulness, influencing employees’ attitudes towards using sustainable technologies. We also found a significant positive effect between attitude towards using sustainable technologies and actual use. The indirect effect of perceived usefulness and ease of use on actual use via attitudes towards using was also positive and significant. We, however, found no significant differences between Western and non-Western countries in terms of the adoption of sustainable technologies.

Recent global events and actions toward climate change have heightened the urgency of sustainability in all aspects of life. However, few studies exist on the incorporation of sustainability principles into the corporate governance practices of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study aims to review the current state of the literature on the incorporation of sustainability principles in corporate governance practices of SMEs, validate the outcomes and set future research agenda. This research was conducted using a systematic literature review (SLR). Findings suggest female executives, board size, firm size, board diversity, board independence and ownership concentration are the dominant themes in sustainable corporate governance (SCG) of small businesses. Studies are predominately conducted in the European context with some studies in Asia and North America while studies in Africa and South America are limited. The study showed that corporate governance models of SMEs have excluded pertinent issues such as climate change, digitization, and racial equality. Although the study concentrated on limited but highly relevant literature, the results establish the basis for further studies and enhance debates on sustainable models for corporate governance practices of SMEs. Compared to existing studies, the outcomes of this study emphasise the need to prioritise sustainability-inspired research of SMEs and provide solutions to integrate sustainable practices in small businesses. The study offers a guiding framework for managers and policy makers to promote progressive and sustainable practices in managing SMEs.

This paper assesses the relationship between corporate governance practices and the performance of pension funds in Ghana, which is an emerging market. Data for this study came from two sources: surveys of pension fund managers and annual financial reports of pension funds. Data analysis techniques include mean score ranking and panel regression. The results showed that corporate governance practices such as upholding the rights of shareholders to know the capital structure of the pension funds, equitable treatment of all shareholders, effective internal controls, and timely supervisory functions of audit committees influence the performance of pensions funds. In addition, ensuring proper board composition, the ethnic and gender diversity of board members affect the success of pension funds in the country. The study indicates that the current challenges facing pension funds in the country include poor investment decisions and market volatilities in the investment market. This study provides insight into the governance practices of pension funds. It is relevant for policies and corporate practices to be strengthened to enhance the performance of the firms.

Although there have been a number of publications discussing sustainability reporting (SR) in private and public sectors within the last decades, the number has been quite low when compared to works on non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This research explores this and finds that SR is a key driver for organisational learning and change in NGOs. A combination of descriptive statistics, grounded theory (GT) and inferential statistics was used to analyse the data. The findings show that SR and organisational learning and change share a reciprocal relationship that begins as the driver for learning and extends as change. This reciprocal relationship is repetitive and improves reporting process through enhanced sustainability performance in a mimetic approach. The research shows that SR fosters opportunities for cost and benefit evaluation, the institutionalization of sustainability, transfer of skill and innovation, attitudinal change towards sustainability, stakeholder engagement and ownership, as well as increasing the donor base. The findings further reinforce the contention that SR is influenced by organisational culture, donor behaviour and management decisions. The study also communicates the various lessons learnt from NGOs’ sustainability efforts that other NGOs, private and public sectors can benefit from.