The study explores the relationship between authentic leadership, psychological capital, and work engagement among educators in the Makhado Municipality. The primary aim was to assess how authentic leadership influences educators’ psychological capital and examine how psychological capital impacts work engagement. A quantitative research design was employed, utilizing a survey-based approach to collect data from a sample of educators across 15 primary schools within the Makhado Municipality. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the data and test the relationships between authentic leadership, psychological capital, and work engagement. Results indicate that authentic leadership has a significant positive influence on the psychological capital of educators. In turn, psychological Capital was found to have a strong positive impact on work engagement, suggesting that educators who perceive their leaders as authentic are more likely to experience higher levels of psychological well-being and engagement in their work. This study contributes to the literature on leadership and educator well-being by demonstrating the value of authentic leadership in promoting a supportive work environment that enhances educators’ psychological capital and engagement. The educational management and policy implications emphasize the need for leadership development programs that foster authentic leadership behaviors to improve educator performance and overall school effectiveness.

Orientation: Rewards are integral to keeping employees happy, efficient and engaged in their work. Thus, the engagement of academic staff within higher education institutions has become a top priority for organisational productivity and competitiveness. Research purpose: This study investigated the impact of total rewards on work engagement among the academic staff at a South African higher education institution. Motivation for the study: Engagement of academic staff is vital as higher education institutions are influential in the country’s development. Literature, however, has shown that most studies on total rewards and work engagement focus on sectors such as financial institutions, the mining industry and others. However, few reports have been on total rewards and work engagement in higher education. Research design, approach and method: This study employed a cross-sectional survey design, following a quantitative approach. From a population of 100 academic staff, 74 respondents responded to a self-administered questionnaire. Main findings: The results show a positive relationship between two dimensions of total rewards (work-home integration and quality work environment) and work engagement. However, no relationship was found between base pay, benefits, performance and career management, and work engagement. From the five dimensions of total rewards, a quality work environment was the only significant predictor of work engagement. Contribution: The study provides theoretical contributions through new literature and possible recommendations. The study may guide management in developing a rewards strategy that can promote staff work engagement.

This study explores the application of the co-design approach in participatory planning for the development of Kambo Tourism Village, located at the intersection of urban and rural areas in Indonesia. By combining the Delphi Consensus Method and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the study successfully identified and prioritized key aspects in the planning process, with a primary focus on local community participation. The results indicate that the co-design approach is effective in creating a masterplan that not only aligns with the needs and aspirations of the community but also supports the sustainability and inclusiveness of tourism village development. AHP results reveal that local community participation was assigned the highest priority with a weight of 0.35, followed by stakeholder collaboration with a weight of 0.27. Community participation not only contributed to the creation of a well-structured tourism village masterplan but also enhanced human resource quality and strengthened stakeholder collaboration. The impact of this participatory planning process includes increased national recognition for Kambo Village, the village’s success in receiving awards, and local economic growth. Moreover, the study identified a gap between the calculated and expected weights in the AHP process, highlighting the complexity of aligning diverse stakeholder perspectives. These findings offer both practical and theoretical contributions and open opportunities for further research to address the challenges of participatory planning in the context of tourism villages.

With the declaration of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the importance of localisation principles and, consequently, the local-level institutions in implementing development policies came to the forefront. India adopted a thematic approach by condensing the seventeen goals into nine themes, to be worked upon by the local administrative units, furthering that each Village Panchayat (constitutionally known as Grama Panchayats) should select a theme in a plan year and strive towards attaining it. For the South Indian state of Kerala, with its good trajectory of decentralised governance, this localisation process of SDGs was rather smooth. In this article, we discuss the case of the best-performing Grama Panchayat (GP) in Kerala, which has identified ‘Village with Self-Sufficient Infrastructure’ as the development theme. Through qualitative research methodology, we examine how the Panchayat included projects specific to this theme in the development plans and how the implementation helped produce effects on multidimensional aspects of SDGs using the SDG Impact Assessment Tool. The case studies of different infrastructure-based projects endorse that with proper planning and implementation of such projects, the lowest tier of administration can significantly contribute to the improvement of development goals. We have delineated full fund utilisation through convergence schemes, community participation, and strong monitoring mechanisms as the factors leading the selected Panchayat to be the champion of the cause. The accomplishment exhibited by the Panchayat by integrating SDGs into the Village Development Plan through the projects on the theme of self-sufficient infrastructure can be well emulated by other local bodies across the world.