Although infrastructure is widely recognized as a key ingredient in a country’s economic success, many issues surrounding infrastructurespending are not well understood. This paper explores six themes: the returns to infrastructure; the role of the private sector; the evaluation and delivery of infrastructure in practice; the nature of network industries, pricing and regulation; political economy considerations of infrastructure provision; and infrastructure in developing countries. This paper aims to provide insights into many of these questions, drawing on the existing literature.

Intra-regional trade serves as a key growth engine for East Asian economies. Accompanying the rapid growth of bilateral and intra-regional trade ties, the East Asian economies are becoming increasingly connected and interdependent. Infrastructure connectivity plays a crucial role in bridging different areas of the East Asian region and enabling them to reap the full socioeconomic benefits of economic cooperation and integration. Nevertheless, further improvement of infrastructure in the region faces major challenges due to the lack of effective mechanisms for coordination and dialogue on regional integration through funding infrastructure projects, as well as the serious trust deficit among member states that has arisen from the on-going territorial and historical disputes.

The rapid digitalisation of business processes and the widespread adoption of remote work since the COVID‑19 pandemic have forced private enterprises to re‑examine the role of human resource management (HRM). Drawing on the resource‑based view, this study investigates how digital HR strategies—covering recruitment & selection, training & development, performance management and digital employee services—affect employee engagement and firm performance in a context where a significant portion of the workforce operates remotely. Using survey data from 150 employees and managers in 50 privately owned firms in Chongqing, China, supplemented by semi‑structured interviews with HR leaders, we develop a digital HR adoption index and test its impact on remote work effectiveness and organisational performance. The results show that higher levels of digital HR adoption positively influence employee engagement, reduce perceptions of relative deprivation and cyberloafing, and enhance remote work effectiveness. Regression analysis further indicates that remote work effectiveness mediates the relationship between digital HR adoption and organisational performance. Qualitative insights highlight the importance of leadership support, training and the integration of platforms such as WeChat Work, DingTalk and Tencent Meeting for managing remote teams. Our findings offer evidence‑based recommendations for private enterprises in emerging economies to align digital HR strategies with remote working arrangements, support employee well‑being and sustain performance.

Effective small and medium enterprise (SME) leadership demands creative solutions to ensure organisations survive and thrive during the turbulent times that COVID-19 continues to bring. This paper explores how SME leaders (in micro and small organisations) prioritise and access the skills and development needed to provide effective and sustainable leadership to organisations, focusing on the role of resilience and the benefits it provides. Participants were selected through purposive and snowballing sampling. Online surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted and provided qualitative data that contributes to an understanding of the role of resilience and the view of participants as to what is needed to effectively respond to a dynamic environment. Evidence shows that SME leaders prioritise learning and development opportunities that provide demonstrable benefits throughout the organisation. Building business resilience remains a fuzzy concept; however, viewing resilience as a multi-level construct offers benefits when designing and delivering development opportunities. It has been found that networking, partnerships, and relationship building promote resilience and may offer a solution to how to embed resilience building into development opportunities that SME leaders value and wish to engage with. This article contributes by illustrating and exploring leadership development within SMEs during a period of unexpected and untested uncertainty. The pandemic caused major shock waves within business communities, and SMEs were significantly affected. The research is limited in that it is expected to be a once-in-a lifetime event, and as such conditions may not be replicable, learning opportunities for other ‘shock’ events are possible. The findings of this paper have relevance to practice in that, while the event may be one-off, shocks to the business environment are not.

Military leadership is currently an extremely popular and important aspect of managing human resources in difficult, changeable, and unpredictable conditions. The solutions used in modernly managed, well-organized, subsidized, and ethically militarized systems become a point of reference and a model for organizations that encounter perturbations in the management of the organization’s human resources. The most important of them are certainly the sense of trust of subordinates in their superiors and the leaders’ responsibility for the level of staff development. The aim of the research undertaken was to verify the thesis that can be formulated in this affirmative sentence: “A modern commander should be honorable, self-confident, and have the ability to influence his subordinates and shape friendly interpersonal contacts in the group he reports.” The literature search in the field of leadership and questionnaire research were aimed at answering the main research question: “What mental properties and behavioural features should characterize a responsible leader in military organizations?”. The work uses the diagnostic survey method, and the interview was conducted using a multi-factor survey questionnaire on a 30-person study group consisting of professional soldiers aged 25–40. The adopted age range of the study group corresponds to the period of active military service, from the age of graduation to the year of termination of active military service. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire is composed of two scales, creating a total of 37 randomly ordered statements in the form of single-choice questions. To analyze the distribution of answers, ranks were used to assess the degree of their compliance with the respondents’ beliefs. Based on the conclusions from the conducted research, we have grounds to believe that professional soldiers expect their leader to be helpful to their subordinates and to ensure that the soldiers are motivated to act and perform their tasks. An important behavior that is expected from the commander is the desire to have a common mission in achieving the goal. Based on the research results, it was found that an undesirable feature is the inconsistency of commanders when pointing out the mistakes of their subordinates, who do not devote interest and time to learning how to avoid mistakes and to improve the competence of their subordinates.

This research study was undertaken to complete a comparative study of the seminal work conducted by Anderson and Ruderman on procedural and distributive justice systems versus unionization. This research was conducted in 2023. The main focus of this research effort was to determine if current U.S. organizations were utilizing any form of justice system in protecting employees’ rights and providing processes that would prevent employees from having a desire to join a union for its protections. Parts of the original survey used by Anderson and Ruderman were used in this study to address the research questions and hypotheses posed for this study. A statistical analysis of the data was conducted, and the results indicated employees have a need for protection in their employment relationship. It is suggested that procedural and distributive justice systems be implemented as an alternative to unionization of employees to meet these employee protections.