This study intends to explore the idea of a vocational village strategy to foster sustainable rural development. Vocational villages, offering targeted skills training and economic opportunities, present a compelling soft approach to rural development, addressing the need for sustainable livelihoods and community empowerment. Drawing upon the collaborative governance (the penta-helix model); underpinning the social capital perspective; and highlighting the economic, institutional, cultural, environmental, technological, and institutional dimensions of sustainable development, a vocational village strategy is expected to level up village capacities and facilitate modernization. The research was narratively developed through a qualitative methodology using primary and secondary data sources. Primary empirical data was employed to analyze vocational village practices in Panggungharjo Village, Yogyakarta, Indonesia as a representative example. The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) framework provided secondary data to present comparative literature on vocational village development. The findings determined a four-staged vocational village model includes initiation, training, business development, and independence. The success of this model is contingent upon political, bureaucratic, and sociocultural factors (social capital), as well as the effective collaboration of government, academia, industry, and community (penta-helix). This research contributes to the urgency of vocational village practices and models as a viable strategy for achieving equitable and sustainable rural development.

This study aims to develop and validate a strategic model tailored to the unique challenges and contexts faced by micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Ecuador, enhancing their operational efficiency and access to financing. Employing a quantitative approach, the research utilized a non-experimental, cross-sectional design to gather data from a sample of 358 companies. The study revealed that MSMEs are significantly hindered by limited access to financing, lack of managerial skills, and technological gaps. Despite these challenges, MSMEs demonstrated considerable adaptability and resilience, underscoring their critical role in the local economy. The strategic model proposed leverages Porter’s Diamond Model to identify and address the specific competitive and operational challenges encountered by these enterprises. Key findings include the necessity for enhanced financial literacy, simplified regulatory frameworks, and the integration of digital technologies to improve competitiveness. The proposed model focuses on strategic training, fostering innovation, and creating a more supportive financing environment. The implications of this study are profound, suggesting that policymakers and practitioners should streamline regulatory processes, enhance financial and technological support frameworks, and provide tailored training programs. These strategies are intended to bolster the sustainability and growth of MSMEs, contributing to broader economic development. This research contributes to the academic literature by providing empirical evidence on the challenges faced by MSMEs in developing economies and proposing a contextually adapted strategic model to mitigate these challenges, thereby enhancing their economic impact and sustainability.

The study, focusing on Malaysian managers, employs a two-round Delphi research methodology to identify and rank variables influencing their emotional intelligence at work. The research is structured into five key areas, with factors ranked in ascending order of significance. Empathy and emotional resilience are deemed the most important, followed by emotional and self-awareness, work-life balance and stress management, social awareness and relationship management, learning and development, adaptability and continuous improvement, cultural and organizational dynamics, experience, and age. This study sheds light on the variables impacting Malaysian managers’ emotional intelligence skills and provides a ranking of key factors essential for successful development. It not only offers crucial guidance for personal and professional balance but also provides insightful recommendations for understanding and enhancing emotional intelligence skills in the workplace for Malaysian managers and organizations.

The education of Chinese language and culture in the teaching of college Chinese can achieve the goal of cultural education and allow students to improve their thinking in the context of cultural learning. Chinese language and culture education in colleges and universities provides new requirements and new goals for college personnel training. In the whole teaching process, it is necessary to pay attention to the cultivation of students’ values and help students establish a correct humanistic spirit. This paper analyzes the value of Chinese language and culture education in colleges and universities, and discusses the teaching reform of “college Chinese” course “based on Chinese language and culture”.

Application-oriented universities play a vital role in transporting application-oriented talent to regional industries and industries. In this paper, we discuss the significance and path of building experimental centers for economic management in application-oriented universities and highlight their role in student learning, school-business cooperation and social development. At the same time, it summarizes the problems found during the construction of the experimental center at case University and suggests some improvements, which serve as a reference for the construction of economic management experimental centers at similar universities.

This study aims to investigate the difficulties local governments face as a result of the province directly managing county system reform. It reveals the various challenges faced by local governments under the provincial directly managed county reform through a thorough analysis of the history, rationale, and implementation of the reform along with pertinent literature reviews and case studies. It is discovered that the county reform, which is directly governed by the province, has not only significantly altered the functions and organizational structure of local governments, but it has also made their resource allocation, financial strain, and brain drain problems worse. To help local governments deal with the difficulties in the province-directly governed county reform, related remedies, and solutions are finally proposed to handle these issues.