Purpose: Since Zuckerberg's announcement to change Facebook's name to Meta Platforms Inc. on October 28, 2021, the concept of the metaverse has gained unprecedented popularity in the business world. Tech giants, SMEs and start-ups across various sectors are making substantial investments in metaverse-related technologies. Despite this, scholarly research in entrepreneurship and strategic management regarding the metaverse remains limited. This paper, grounded in value creation theory, aims to analyze how value is generated in the metaverse era.Design/methodology/approach: This paper conducts a thematic analysis of 895 press releases published by LexisNexis between October 28, 2021, and October 28, 2022. The analysis identifies the primary emerging themes related to value creation in the metaverse age.Findings: The thematic analysis reveals four significant emerging themes concerning value creation in the metaverse age: (1) factors enabling value creation, (2) digital resources contributing to value creation, (3) motives driving value creation and (4) practices of value creation.Originality/value: This paper represents the inaugural attempt to analyze the metaverse through a value creation lens. Given the substantial investments and growing academic interest in the metaverse, understanding value creation in this context is a pressing concern. Additionally, this study provides valuable insights and suggests critical questions for future research on the metaverse.

Purpose: To communicate their sustainability and responsible management practices to the public, firms can leverage digital technologies both at the organisational and managerial levels. This study explores how firms' communications of responsible management contribute to sustainability in supply chains, as well as the role of blockchain in promoting responsible management.Design/methodology/approach: Employing a qualitative methodology, the authors perform social media analytics (content analysis and sentiment analysis) on a dataset obtained from the social media posts of managers.Findings: The study identifies eight key responsible management practices and shed new light on the role of blockchain in responsible management. The study results contribute to theory by linking responsible management practices with existing sustainability practices in the supply chain. The authors also demonstrate that blockchain enhances responsible management.Research limitations/implications: Reliance on publicly available data from social media, comprising corporate statements emanating from managers is a major limitation in this study.Practical implications: The eight responsible management practices identified in this study are recommended for managers of different supply chain echelons to promote sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). The study findings also offer new rationale for blockchain adoption in supply chains.Originality/value: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to link the concepts of responsible management and SSCM. Moreover, the authors obtain empirical evidence from managers in the luxury fashion supply chain.

Despite remarkable progress in the fight against poverty during the past few decades, the proportion of the poor living in developing countries is still on the high side. Many countries have promoted integration as an important development strategy; however, its impact on welfare of the poor is still unclear. In this study, we examine the roles of education and health dimensions of human capital in globalization and its impact on the poverty gap and the child mortality rate using cross-country panel data covering 110 developing countries between 1970 and 2015. We use a model based on system generalized method of moments (SGMM) to control for unobserved heterogeneity and potential endogeneity of the explanatory variables. The empirical results reveal that globalization reduces poverty gap and child mortality rate, and that an increase in the stock of human capital in developing economies improves welfare outcomes. The study also finds that human capital strengthens the negative impact of globalization on poverty gap and child mortality rate. For example, should enrollment in secondary school in Nigeria (in 2013) be increased from 39.2% to 61.6%, on average, it could translate into 2508 fewer under-five child deaths. We recommend that interconnectedness and promotion of human capital development should constitute a fundamental component of policy mix targeted at enhancing reduction of poverty and child mortality rate in developing countries.

Blockchain technology has revolutionised the ownership structures and business models of young companies, leading to the emergence of new digital entrepreneurship in innovative digital companies known as decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs). This study examines the influence of blockchain use on the entrepreneurial structure and business models of DAOs. Following an inductive approach guided by the underlying theoretical framework of a nonfungible token (NFT) enabled entrepreneurship and the token economy business model, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of /the whitepapers of 22 selected DAOs obtained from the DeepDAO platform. The results reveal that blockchain assists the growth of digital companies by decentralising their ownership structure and improving their value propositions through NFT and a smart contract-enabled consensus mechanism. However, market uncertainties and the non-liquidity of tokens were identified as significant barriers to implementing DAOs. Three propositions emerged from this study with meaningful contributions to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship.

This paper examines the effect of population growth on food production in Nigeria using secondary data on food production index and population growth rate obtained within the period of 1980 to 2011. Time series nature of data was adequately investigated using unit root tests. Engle-Granger causality test was also performed on the two variables of interest- food production index and population growth rates. Two standard econometric methodologies were employed. Ordinary Least Square regression and Instrumental Variable technique were both employed in estimating the model. Empirical finding from the OLS indicates that population growth is positively related to food production. However, the Instrumental Variable Approach produced a more interesting result; an increase in population growth rate significantly reduces food output. It is therefore pertinent for Nigeria to check her population growth rate in order to avoid population explosion and its attendant consequence. Suggested population control measures include legislation against polygamy as well as placing a ceiling on the number of birth allowable per family. Primary education should also be promoted by the Government just as better health care facilities should be put in place to increase longevity.