This study investigates the relationship between democracy and innovation across 61 developing countries from 2013 to 2020, utilizing data from Global Innovation Index. Employing the Freedom House Index and Polity2 indicators as proxies for democracy, research employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Fixed Effects and SystemGMM techniques to analyze their impact on innovation. The findings of the study reveal no statistically significant relationships between democracy and innovation in developing nations within specified timeframe. Through empirical analysis, including various econometric approaches, it is observed that the level of democracy as measured by these indicators, does not appear to exert a discernable impact on the innovation landscape of these countries. These results carry important implications for public policy. While the promotion of democracy remains a crucial goal, especially for societal development and political stability, this study suggests that solely focusing on enhancing democratic institutions might not necessarily yield immediate direct improvements in the innovation capacities of developing nations. Policymakers and stakeholders involved in fostering innovation ecosystems in these regions may need to consider a more nuanced approach, encompassing factors beyond the scope of democratic governance to effectively spur innovation. Understanding the nuanced relationship between democracy and innovation in developing countries has significant implications for designing targeted policies aimed at enhancing innovation capacities, economic growth and overall societal development in these regions.

Global environmental concerns have prompted organizations to adopt green human resource management practices that will eventually lead to green innovations. Given that understanding, this study aims to converge multidimensional research published on green human resource management (GHRM) and green innovation. In addition, it seeks to discuss the topic’s research trends in the context of what, how, when, where, and by whom. The data were retrieved from the Scopus database (until March 2023), and VOSviewer was used to investigate the research trends. A total of 312 documents were extracted from the Scopus database, and 46 published articles were finalized using the PRISMA flow approach. The results indicate that there has been an upward trend in terms of published articles on the topic, and the highest number of articles (15) were published in the current year, 2023. The co-occurrence results indicate that GHRM is strongly associated with environmental performance and green innovation. The journals Environmental Science and Pollution Research and Sustainability (Switzerland) stand out in this domain. The Abu Dhabi University of United Arab Emirates is the most cited institution, whereas Saudi Arabia has the highest co-authorship at the country level. Furthermore, this study summarizes the major developments in this research domain and suggests research gaps and possible future directions.

Water governance is a widely acknowledged as an important factor for sustainable development. This study attempts to assess if the water governance in eight Indian states has improved after the announcement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We utilize the Institutional Decomposition and Analysis (IDA) framework developed by Saleth and Dinar. Using survey data from two periods and 152 respondents, we calculate the scores on 17 indicators of water law, policy, and administration. We found that average scores on water law, policy, and administration have increased between the first and the second survey. We attributed this improvement to the fact that the Indian government is paying special attention to the provision of clean drinking water after the announcement of the SDGs. We also calculated nominal and weighted water governance indices (WGIs) for eight Indian states. This study made an important contribution to the existing water governance literature by capturing improvements in the water governance scores of eight Indian states after the announcement of the SDGs.

Recently, sustainable economic growth has taken the front line of the global development agenda. The common dependency on fossil fuel energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the continuous rising demands for energy have posed challenges that put the world in a climate change trap. This work empirically analyzes the effect of innovation, oil price, oil price volatility and economic growth on GHG emissions over the period of 1991–2015. The study compares the emission level between European Union countries (EU) (26), oil-producing countries (22), China and the United States of America (USA) using the Driscoll–Kraay model. The main empirical finding points to a positive effect of innovation on GHG emission reduction initiatives in oil-importing economies. Particularly, EU countries significantly minimized emissions due to innovation, followed by China and the USA. Contrarily, the effect of innovation increases GHG emission in oil-exporting economies. The results also indicate broader significant effects of oil price and oil price volatility on GHG emission. Interestingly, the effect of oil price on GHG emission is asymmetrical between oil-exporting and -importing economies. Oil price increases in oil-importing countries decrease GHG emission; contrarily, its effect increases emissions in oil-exporting countries. Thus, oil-exporting countries lack motivation to decrease emission levels due to oil price escalation. Unlike the oil price, oil price volatility comparably decreases GHG emissions in oil-exporting and -importing economies. Thus, one might be tempted to take oil price volatility and the future uncertainty of oil price as a virtuous instance rather than oil price increment. Thus, policymakers need to pay attention to market forces and policy measures to monitor GHG emissions due to economic activities. The results are also robust under the alternative econometrics estimation model of generalized method of moments (GMM)-Differenced.

The purpose of this research is to explore the influence of Green HRM (GHRM) on environmental performance (EP). There has been a noticeable lack of focus on concurrently examining green ambidexterity (GA), GHRM, green behavior (GB), and their combined impact on EP in the lens of Human Capital theory. The purpose of this study is to investigate the interrelationship between GHRM and EP through serial mediation of GA and GB with a moderating role of responsible leadership (RL) in the relationship of GHRM and GA. A variance-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to 570 sample of hotels. The results indicate that GHRM facilitates the development of green ambidexterity, and green behavior among employees in the way that they contribute to improving EP. The outcomes of this research offer valuable contributions to the existing literature on GHRM and GA, along with providing practical insights for managers in hotels.