Purpose: Global lockdowns and restrictions linked to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have affected food environments and consumption patterns. Conflict-affected countries are disproportionately affected from economic and food security perspectives. In this regard, the Palestinian territories (namely West Bank and Gaza Strip), which face a number of issues such as Israeli military and economic control, overcrowded cities and refugee camps (especially in Gaza Strip), rising poverty and food insecurity, are an especially interesting case study. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the selection and intake of foods and drinks, as well as consumer behavior and attitude toward food in the Palestinian territories.Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws upon an online survey in the Palestinian territories administered in Arabic through the Survey Monkey platform from September 15 to October 10, 2020, with 322 adults. The survey findings were analyzed using descriptive statistics and several nonparametric tests. Particularly, the U-Mann Whitney test was used in dichotomous, categorical independent variables (e.g. gender), while the Kruskal–Wallis test was run to analyze multi-choice responses (e.g. occupation).Findings: The results reveal that food attitudes and consumer behavior towards food have been widely affected. First, they reveal that Palestinians try to have healthier diets but ate more between meals (e.g. snacks). Second, the pandemic transformed respondents' shopping behavior and induced panic buying, negatively affecting food affordability due to increased prices of some foods (e.g. fruits and vegetables). Some food behaviors were shaped by negative psychological determinants (e.g. depression and anxiety). The pandemic effects are moderated by different sociodemographics (age, education and income). COVID-19 negatively affected food security but also opened a “window of opportunity” to trigger the transition towards more sustainable diets.Originality/value: The paper results show that the eventual effects of COVID-19 will most likely vary from country to country, based not only on the epidemiological circumstances but also, among other factors, on the baseline socioeconomic situation and shock resilience. The findings contribute to the clarification and critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on food behaviors in the Palestinian territories, which would have several policy implications.

Purpose: This paper focuses on social innovation dynamics in extreme contexts where institutional volatility is deeply rooted and enduring. In other words, the authors focus their discussion on the challenges that social innovators are facing in their endeavor of solving wicked social problems within an extreme institutional environment. This research is guided by the following question: How does an extreme institutional environment influence social innovation processes?Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative research builds on the unique case of the Palestinian non-governmental organization (NGO) sector, a rarely studied context in organizational studies. The authors combine archival sources with 24 semi-structured interviews with Palestinian NGOs.Findings: The authors theorize three barriers that hinder social innovation in such contexts: institutional trap, effectiveness trap and sustainability trap. The authors also theorize five mechanisms through which these barriers influence each other dynamically: mingling, surviving, undermining, binding and reinforcing. Taken together, these barriers and mechanisms shed light on social innovation processes taking place within extreme institutional environments.Research limitations/implications: The main limitation of this study is the methodological design, based on an extreme single case-study which, on a bunch of features, is quite unique in the world. The authors argue that the results are all the same transferable to other relatively similar contexts.Practical implications: By theorizing the institutional barriers to social innovation in an extreme institutional context, the research thus sheds light on how social innovation could be sustained and stimulated in Palestine and other contexts that face similar institutional challenges.Social implications: From an engaged scholarship perspective, studying Palestine cannot be more relevant than today considering the turmoil in which Palestinians are. The research thus provides a deeper understanding of organizational and institutional dynamics with crucial social repercussions.Originality/value: The social innovation literature has overemphasized success stories to the detriment of the struggles that hinder social innovations in extreme institutional environments. By focusing on the barriers that social innovators experience in these contexts, the authors provide novel empirical insight. Furthermore, this study enriches the understanding of the institutional dynamics of social innovations by proposing a process model that elucidates how an extreme institutional context can influence social innovations.

Countries differ in terms of the effectiveness of their innovation ecosystem. The Triple Helix Model (THM) is useful in describing and analyzing the impact of the key actors in the national innovation system on the innovation performance of the industrial firms. The impact of Triple-Helix relationship on the firms’ innovativeness is measured using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression models. The results showed that industrial collaboration with every single actor as per the THM is weak and its impact on the ability of the industrial firms to innovate is not significant. However, this relationship becomes significant in the presence of the three key THM actors for all types of innovation except organizational innovation. In general, the sectors, the working environment, size of firms, and their ability to export are significant predictors of firms to innovate. Therefore, there is a need to promote trio relationships through an active government role.

This study presents factors that encourage Palestinian NGOs to embrace financial sustainability employing modern ideologies that encompass community engagement, voluntarism, collaboration, and business-like practices in order to meet societal challenges. The study explores the reliance of Palestinian NGOs on external funds (donor-driven funds) and the environment impact of their attempts at financial sustainability. Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews with 22 NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza in 2019. The data were analyzed through thematic analysis using the computer software MAXQDA. Key findings were that Palestinian NGOs need to alleviate the dependency on a donor-driven model by functioning independently from donors’ agendas; and that Palestinian NGOs need to collaborate with each other to centralize their efforts and avoid fragmentation. Further, the Palestinian government needs to revisit the relevant laws to regulate the civil society sector and avoid competition between NGOs and private sector on the one hand, and NGOs and governmental institutions on the other hand.

International audienceUsing firm-level data provided by the 4 th Community Innovation Survey (CIS4), this paper measures the effect of cooperation on innovation in French service firms. It distinguishes between the effects of two types of cooperation or innovation networks (INs): public-private innovation networks and private-private innovation networks. The empirical evidence presented shows that extended public-private INs (in which service firms cooperate not only with public but also with private actors) seem to be more efficient than strict public-private INs as regards product, organizational and market innovation. Private-private INs for their part seem to be more efficient in the case of process innovation