Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a critical role in achieving environmental sustainability, particularly in developing economies where regulatory enforcement and resource constraints remain significant challenges. Drawing on Institutional Theory, this study examines how green leadership influences environmental performance in Ghanaian SMEs, with digital innovation as a mediating variable and environmental culture as a moderating variable. Institutional Theory provides the conceptual foundation for explaining how normative pressures embedded in leadership values and organizational culture, alongside mimetic pressures associated with digital innovation adoption, shape firms’ environmental outcomes. Using survey data collected from SMEs in Ghana and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), the results revealed that green leadership has a significant positive effect on both digital innovation and environmental performance. Digital innovation also significantly enhances environmental performance and partially mediates the relationship between green leadership and environmental performance. Notably, the findings demonstrated that environmental culture significantly moderates the relationship between digital innovation and environmental performance, with the effect stronger in organizations with a well-developed environmental culture. This indicates that internalized environmental values amplify the effectiveness of digital innovation initiatives. The study contributes to the sustainability and organizational literature by extending Institutional Theory to the SME context in a developing economy and by clarifying the conditional role of environmental culture in translating digital innovation into superior environmental performance. Practically, the findings suggest that SME leaders and policymakers should promote environmentally oriented leadership, invest in digital innovation, and cultivate strong environmental cultures to enhance sustainability outcomes.

This paper aims to explore how developing countries like Indonesia have an approach to managing talent to enhance career development using an application system. The application of talent management in the career development of civil servants in Indonesia includes planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating career development. Talent management is essential for the government sector and can help improve employee quality, organizational performance, and the achievement of human potential. This research aims to examine the application of talent management in organizations and develop a state civil apparatus information system (SI-ASN) to support the career development process of civil servants. The research methods used include library research and field research, including interviews with competent officials in West Java Province as primary data. The qualitative data was collected in 2022–2023. The results of this study show that the application of talent management for civil servants in Indonesia is considered appropriate, as it directs employees to positions that are in line with their qualifications, competencies and performance. However, it requires an improvement in the methods used, particularly for competency tests, which may be conducted with new methods that are more efficient in terms of budget and time. The study concluded that the application of talent management in the career development of civil servants in Indonesia has a positive impact on the quality of leaders and organizations because it ensures that the appointed leaders are the most competent ones in the field and shows the importance of talent management in succession planning and the career development of civil servants.

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on financial inclusion in China, a country with a significant agricultural sector and an evolving digital landscape. The pandemic has accelerated the shift towards digital financial services, underscoring disparities in access. This study explores the pre- and post-pandemic scenarios of financial inclusion in China, evaluates the economic and social impacts of the pandemic, and assesses the role of digital transformation in the financial sector. It also investigates the changing roles of commercial banks and microfinance institutions, the integration of technology in finance, and the development of rural-urban economic linkages. The paper aims to propose strategies to enhance financial inclusion, ensuring it reaches the most vulnerable, and concludes with recommendations for creating a more equitable and robust economic system.

This study explores the influence of digital technologies, including media, on pre-service teachers’ interactions and engagement patterns. It underscores the significance of promoting digital competence to empower pre-service teachers to navigate the digital world responsibly, make informed decisions, and enhance their digital experiences. The objective is to identify key themes and categories in research studies related to pre-service teachers’ digital competence and skill preparations. Conducting a systematic literature review, we searched databases such as SCOPUS, ScienceDirect, and Taylor & Francis, including forty-three articles in the dataset. Applying qualitative content analysis, we identified four major themes: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills, and digital thinking. Within each theme, categories and their frequencies were examined. Preliminary findings reveal a growing prevalence of digital competence and literacy articles between 2019 and 2024. The paper concludes by offering recommendations for further research and implementations, with specific criteria used for article selection detailed in the paper. A digital literacy policy for teacher education preparedness is included.

While there has been much discussion about the large infrastructure needs in Asia and the Pacific, less attention has been paid to public expenditure efficiency in infrastructure services delivery. New constructions are not the only solution, especially when governments have limited capital to invest. Globally, new infrastructure projects face delays and cost overruns, leading to an inefficient use of public resources. The root causes include the lack of transparency in project selection, the lack of project preparation, the silo approach by public entities in assessing feasibility studies, and the lack of public sector capacity to fully develop a bankable pipeline of projects. To tackle these issues, governments need a smarter investment approach and to do so, enhancing public service efficiency is very crucial. The paper suggests a “whole life cycle” (WLC) approach as the main strategic solution for the discussed issues and challenges. We expand the definition of WLC to include the entire life cycle of the infrastructure asset from need identification to its disposal. The stages comprise planning, preparation, procurement, design, construction, operation and maintenance, and disposal. This is because we believe any efficient or inefficient decision throughout such a wide life cycle influences the quality of public services. Hence, in this holistic approach, infrastructure life cycle consists of four phases: planning, preparation, procurement, and implementation. Governments could enhance public efficiency and thus improve access to finance throughout the WLC by several solutions. These are (i) preparing infrastructure master plan and pipelines and long-term budgeting during the planning phase; (ii) establishing framework and guidelines and improving governance during preparation phase; (iii) promoting standardization, transparency, open government, and contractual consistency during the procurement phase; and finally (iv) continued role of government and total asset management during the implementation phase. In addition to these phase-specific means, key WLC solutions include proper use of technology, capacity building, and private participation in general and public-private partnership (PPP) in particular.