Employee retention promotes positivity in an organization and improves employers’ brand value. As the human resource department operates with the objective of improving employees’ contribution towards the organization, meaningful work is an important topic in the core areas of human resource development (HRD), such as employee involvement, motivation, and personal development. Not only salary, benefits, working environment, and status but also the factors that determine whether you enjoy going to work every day are whether you believe that your work makes a meaningful contribution. In HRD, meaningful work comes to the forefront through a connection with a high level of commitment. Thus, this study aims to establish the relationship between meaningful and purposeful jobs affecting employee retention and the mediating factors of person organization fit (POF) and person job fit (PJF). A cross-sectional study involving a survey methodology was used to collect data from 150 white-collar employees working in the IT, banking, textile, and multinational companies in Bangladesh. The results indicate that job meaningfulness has a positive relationship with employee retention (p-value = 0.031) and both the mediating factors of PJF (p-value = 0.040) and POF (p-value = 0.028). The results also indicate that while POF positively influences employee retention (p-value = 0.019), PJF has no significant influence on employee retention (p-value = 0.164). Thus, promoting employee job meaningfulness and purpose in the workplace may represent an opportunity for organizations to improve employee engagement and retention.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive view of the E-Government Development Index analysis in Southeast Asia. Through a review of the results of an annual survey of 192 United Nations (UN) member states, the study identified 11 countries with the E-Government Development Index in Southeast Asia. The findings in this study revealed that the E-Government Development Index (EGDI) in Southeast Asian countries displays different levels of development. Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei are the countries in the region with the highest EGDI scores. Singapore leads the area with a high EGDI score. These countries have effectively implemented advanced e-government services, such as online public services, digital infrastructure, and e-participation, which have greatly improved the quality of life of their citizens and the efficiency of their government function. On the other hand, countries such as Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar lag in their e-government development as a result of factors such as limited Internet access, inadequate digital infrastructure, and low levels of digital literacy among the populations of these countries. In addition, some moderate progress has been made in the development of e-government in mid-level countries, such as Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. These countries continue to improve their digital infrastructure and enhance their e-service offerings to close the digital divide. Overall, EGDI in Southeast Asia reflects different levels of digital transformation in the region, with each country facing its distinct set of difficulties and opportunities when it comes to leveraging technology for better governance and public service delivery.

The state delivery of affordable and sustainable housing continues to be a complicated challenge in Africa, and there is a need to encourage private sector participation. As a result, this study examines the risks associated with private sector participation in affordable housing and supporting infrastructure investment and the strategies towards mitigating the risks from an Afrocentric perspective. The evidence from a systematic literature review was coupled with the opinion of an international expert panel to address the paper’s aim and provide recommendations for developing improved housing and supporting infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa. The review outcomes and the qualitative data from the panel discussion were analysed using thematic analysis. The results revealed that market dynamics, land supply and acquisition constraints, cost of construction materials, unsupportive policies, and technical and financial factors constitute risks to affordable housing in the region. Mitigation strategies include leveraging joint efforts, strengths, and resource bases, increasing access to land and finance for private sector participation, developing a supportive government framework to promote an enabling environment for easy access to land acquisition and development finance, local production of building materials, research and technology adoption. In line with the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030 targets and principles, reforms are required across the housing value chain, involving the private sector and community. Application of the study’s recommendations could minimise the risks of affordable housing delivery and enhance private sector participation.

This paper provides a disaster resilience-based approach. For the definition of the approach, a three-step method (definition of components, analysis of the resilience pillars and definitions of resilience-based actions) has been followed. To validate the approach, an application scenario for mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic is provided in the paper. The proposed approach contributes to stimulating the co-responsibility quadruple helix of actors in the implementation of actions for disaster management. Moreover, the approach is adaptable and flexible, as it can be used to manage different kinds of disasters, adjusting or changing itself to meet specific needs.

Through Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) on destination attractiveness characteristics at the country level, this study identifies attribute configurations in the pre- and post-pandemic period to analyze the changes and differences generated by an exogenous event (COVID-19). The results suggest that the destination attractiveness attributes work together, in multidimensional configurations, to increase leisure travel volume. We found an important change in pat-terns/configurations of attractiveness between the pre- and post-pandemic scenarios. Our findings suggest that the destination attributes may change in importance and valuation or disappear for some configurations. The conclusion has implications for the stakeholders related to the destination attractiveness development, showing possible patterns of tourism attributes to guide the action to improve the resilience in the tourism sector and recover these activities in a disaster scenario.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) wants to become a key regional actor in the Arctic. PRC's underlying priority in the region is gaining access to commercial opportunities from trade and natural resources. To this end, PRC is building its domestic capacities for research and commercial development in the Arctic, increasing its involvement in multilateral forums on Arctic governance and deepening ties to Arctic nations, especially Russia.

Attitudes towards PRC among Arctic nations are diverging, but Beijing generally faces high levels of skepticism and opposition to its Arctic involvement, explicitly grounded in perceptions of PRC as a state undermining the rules-based international order and potential military build-up in the high north.

The analytical framework in this article builds on an outline authored by Exner-Pirot in 2012 (Exner-Pirot, 2012) to detail the current schools of thought within Arctic governance, and builds on it by including more recent developments in Arctic governance, incorporating the updated Arctic policies of most Arctic countries and connecting it to PRC.

This article contends that Beijing wants to change the status quo of Arctic governance and shift it towards a more accommodating approach to non-Arctic states. This article finds, based on the stated Arctic strategies of the eight Arctic states and PRC, that there are different views on Arctic governance where Arctic countries for the most part indicate an openness to a Chinese entry into the Arctic, albeit in diverging ways. This creates a complex governance scenario for PRC to navigate as it seeks to become a key Arctic player