The ethical and responsible use of conversational artificial intelligence in public communication has become increasingly important because interactive systems can strengthen understanding and persuasion while raising concerns about transparency, user autonomy, and the responsible governance of artificial-intelligence-mediated communication. Previous research has not sufficiently established whether conversational artificial intelligence differs from static online media in counter-attitudinal climate communication in ways that are relevant to ethical standards, information credibility, and responsible persuasive influence. The study aims to examine whether conversational artificial intelligence, relative to static online media, is associated with differences in perceived understanding, argument persuasiveness, influence on perspective, and explicit self-reported opinion change, while accounting for initial attitude certainty. The analysis uses a non-randomized quasi-experimental online survey of 100 respondents conducted in 2026, with 50 participants exposed to ChatGPT and 50 to static online media, across four environmental topics: veganism, nuclear energy, recycling, and electric vehicles. The statistical analysis combines Welch independent-samples tests with Holm correction, Mann–Whitney tests, psychometric assessment, heteroscedasticity-robust regressions, ordered and binary logistic models, propensity-score overlap weighting, heterogeneity tests, and temporal sensitivity analysis. The largest difference concerned argument persuasiveness: the mean score was 3.56 under ChatGPT versus 2.66 for static media, yielding a 0.90-point difference, Hedges’ g of 0.823, and p < 0.001, while the adjusted coefficient reached 1.122 with p < 0.001. Perceived understanding was also higher in the ChatGPT condition, at 4.04 versus 3.52, with a 0.52-point difference, Hedges’ g of 0.520, and a Holm-adjusted p-value of 0.031; the adjusted high-response probability was 89.9% for ChatGPT versus 56.0% for static media. Perspective influence showed a smaller unadjusted difference of 0.42 points, but the heteroscedasticity-robust adjusted coefficient reached 0.634 with p = 0.002, and the adjusted high-response probability was 68.6% for ChatGPT versus 38.6% for static media, whereas explicit opinion change remained the least robust outcome, and the overall post-exposure composite was 0.500 points higher under ChatGPT with p = 0.0045 and Hedges’ g of 0.578. These findings provide a basis for future research and practical guidance on responsible artificial-intelligence-mediated communication by demonstrating differentiated associations with understanding, perceived persuasiveness, and reported opinion-related responses, while highlighting transparency, source credibility, argument quality, and user autonomy as important considerations for the responsible deployment of conversational systems.
Business leadership has become a critical determinant of talent sustainability in contemporary organizations, particularly for retaining Generation Z employees whose career expectations emphasize meaningful work, autonomy, development, and responsible organizational practices. Although previous studies have examined agile and transformational leadership separately, limited empirical evidence compares their relative power in shaping work passion and employee retention among Generation Z employees. This study compares the effects of agile leadership and transformational leadership on employee retention and tests the mediating role of work passion in these relationships. The empirical analysis was based on survey data collected from 101 Generation Z employees working in private banking institutions in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; 65.35% of respondents were female, 72.28% were aged 24 to below 28 years, and 81.19% held bachelor’s degrees. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) implemented in SmartPLS, including indicator reliability, internal consistency, convergent and discriminant validity, R-square analysis, HTMT testing, path modelling, and bootstrapped mediation analysis with 5,000 resamples. The measurement model demonstrated strong statistical quality, with factor loadings ranging from 0.693 to 0.906, Cronbach’s alpha values from 0.917 to 0.959, composite reliability from 0.932 to 0.965, AVE values from 0.633 to 0.775, and HTMT ratios below 0.807, confirming robust reliability and validity. The structural model showed substantial explanatory power, accounting for 55.9% of the variance in work passion and 64.6% of the variance in employee retention, which confirms the analytical strength of the proposed leadership-retention model. Transformational leadership was the strongest predictor of work passion (β = 0.573; t = 8.257; p < 0.001), clearly outperforming agile leadership (β = 0.289; t = 3.762; p < 0.001), while work passion strongly increased employee retention (β = 0.463; t = 5.560; p < 0.001). Direct-effect testing further showed that both transformational leadership (β = 0.240; t = 2.791; p = 0.005) and agile leadership (β = 0.230; t = 3.181; p = 0.002) significantly enhanced retention, but transformational leadership produced the stronger total influence. Mediation analysis confirmed that work passion significantly transmitted the effects of transformational leadership (β = 0.265; t = 4.154; p < 0.001) and agile leadership (β = 0.134; t = 3.122; p = 0.002) on retention, with the transformational pathway almost twice as strong. The findings advance business leadership research by demonstrating that Generation Z retention depends not merely on adaptive leadership practices, but on leadership behaviors capable of creating work passion, emotional attachment, and sustainable organizational commitment.
Business leadership and business ethics are becoming decisive determinants of strategic readiness for international business expansion in the construction sector under institutional uncertainty, post-crisis recovery, and increasing requirements for transparency, accountability, and partner trust. Although prior studies have examined construction-sector development, export potential, and strategic management, insufficient attention has been devoted to integrated assessment approaches that combine economic capacity, institutional embeddedness, leadership quality, and ethical reliability within a unified analytical framework. This study aims to develop an integrated methodological model for assessing the strategic readiness of construction enterprises for international business expansion through the prism of business leadership and business ethics. The empirical basis combines statistical and analytical data on the construction sector for 2021–2026, including construction output, market recovery dynamics, segment development trends, price pressure indicators, and institutional support factors derived from open statistical and industry sources. The methodology integrates systematic and comparative analysis, structural-logical modeling, index construction, min-max normalization, theory-driven weighting, scenario modeling, and economic-mathematical formalization within the author-developed ISR-FEA-CE model. The model aggregates five weighted blocks, namely economic-export capacity, strategic capability, institutional-partnership readiness, business leadership, and business ethics, into a single integral index with weights of 0.25, 0.20, 0.20, 0.20, and 0.15, respectively. Scenario calculations demonstrate a substantial sensitivity of strategic readiness to leadership and ethical parameters. The results indicate that the transition from fragmented to high readiness is determined not only by economic-export capacity but also by the coordinated development of strategic planning, institutional cooperation, leadership quality, and ethical reputation. The findings further suggest that strengthening leadership and ethical dimensions may enhance the ability of enterprises to participate in international reconstruction and development projects. The proposed ISR-FEA-CE model contributes to business leadership, business ethics, and responsible management research by transforming these categories into measurable analytical variables and providing a methodological tool for assessing readiness, identifying weak strategic areas, comparing development scenarios, and supporting managerial decision-making in the construction sector. The scenario-based results should be interpreted as illustrative and require further empirical validation on a broader sample of construction enterprises.
Business leadership in tourism startups is becoming a decisive condition for transforming sustainable business practices into competitive advantage and stronger financial performance, because responsible tourism and resource efficiency shape long-term venture survival. Prior research has mainly examined sustainability and performance in established hospitality firms, whereas the statistical mechanism through which sustainable practices become financially valuable in early-stage tourism ventures through competitive advantage remains insufficiently quantified. This study aims to test the direct effect of sustainable business practices on financial performance and to estimate the mediating role of competitive advantage in tourism startups. The calculations are based on questionnaire data collected from March 2024 to January 2025 from 441 founders, co-founders, managers and employees representing 127 recognised tourism startups in Uttarakhand, India, operating in hospitality, wellness, experiential travel, food services and related tourism activities. The empirical design used a five-point Likert scale, reliability analysis, outer-loading assessment, composite reliability, average variance extracted, Fornell–Larcker criterion, Heterotrait–Monotrait Ratio analysis, bootstrapping, mediation testing, Stone–Geisser predictive relevance analysis and partial least squares structural equation modelling in SmartPLS 3.0. The measurement model showed strong reliability and validity: Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.893 to 0.934, composite reliability from 0.921 to 0.943, average variance extracted from 0.582 to 0.701 and all Heterotrait–Monotrait Ratio values remained below 0.85. The structural model demonstrated that sustainable business practices significantly affect financial performance, with a standardised coefficient of 0.190, t-statistic of 2.867 and explanatory power of 0.597. A stronger relationship was identified between sustainable business practices and competitive advantage, with a standardised coefficient of 0.869, t-statistic of 57.608, effect size of 3.071 and explanatory power of 0.754, showing that sustainability is transformed mainly through market positioning and differentiation. Competitive advantage had a significant effect on financial performance, with a standardised coefficient of 0.602 and t-statistic of 8.732, while the indirect effect through competitive advantage reached 0.523 and the variance accounted for value of 73.3 per cent confirmed partial mediation. Predictive relevance strengthened the model, with Stone–Geisser values of 0.750 for competitive advantage and 0.502 for financial performance, both indicating large predictive effects. The findings show that business leadership in tourism startups creates financial value not merely by adopting sustainable practices, but by converting them into measurable competitive capabilities, offering a statistically grounded basis for entrepreneurial decision-making and startup policy.
The growing importance of leadership processes in organizational behavior highlights the need to examine how leaders’ role modeling and political skill shape employee proactivity and performance. Although job crafting has received increasing scholarly attention, limited empirical evidence explains how leaders’ role modeling influences both approach and avoidance crafting and how leaders’ political skill conditions these relationships in multilevel organizational settings. This study examines the effect of leaders’ role modeling on subordinates’ approach crafting, avoidance crafting, and work performance, along with the moderating role of leaders’ political skill. Time-lagged, multi-source data were collected from 314 subordinates nested within 54 managers/teams in India. Subordinates reported leaders’ role modeling and their own job crafting, whereas managers reported their own political skill and rated subordinates’ work performance. Data were analyzed using reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, CR, AVE, Fornell–Larcker assessment, HTMT ratios, null-model diagnostics, random-intercept multilevel modeling, simple slope analysis, and multilevel mediation analysis using SPSS version 20, Amos version 21, and MLMed. Null-model diagnostics indicated meaningful team-level clustering, with ICC(1) values ranging from 0.101 to 0.113 and design-effect values ranging from 1.487 to 1.542. The results showed that leaders’ role modeling positively predicted approach crafting (B = 0.297, p < 0.001) and negatively predicted avoidance crafting (B = −0.225, p < 0.001). Approach crafting positively predicted work performance (B = 0.357, p < 0.001), whereas avoidance crafting negatively predicted work performance (B = −0.298, p < 0.001). Leaders’ political skill did not significantly moderate the role modeling–approach crafting relationship (B = 0.071, p = 0.305), but it strengthened the negative relationship between role modeling and avoidance crafting (B = −0.143, p = 0.039). Multilevel mediation further showed that approach crafting (indirect effect = 0.076, p < 0.001) and avoidance crafting (indirect effect = 0.031, p = 0.012) partially mediated the relationship between leaders’ role modeling and work performance. The findings extend social learning and job crafting research by showing that leaders’ role modeling operates as a behavioral cue for productive work redesign, while political skill is especially relevant in reducing avoidance-oriented crafting. The study offers implications for leadership development, ethical political skill training, employee proactivity, and performance enhancement.
Ethical leadership, academic integrity, conscious citizenship, and democratic engagement have become increasingly important priorities for higher education institutions preparing students to live and work in environments characterized by technological disruption, misinformation, and social uncertainty. Existing studies typically examine academic integrity, student success, or civic engagement separately without exploring how these dimensions interact to foster ethical and responsible citizenship. This study aims to explore how universities and instructors can promote integrity, complex thinking, and conscious citizenship through teaching practices, assessment design, and institutional support mechanisms. The analysis builds on findings from two large empirical projects: the Diversities of Resilience (DofR) project, comprising 690 eligible survey respondents and 27 interviews conducted in Canada between 2016 and 2018, and the Partnership on University Plagiarism Prevention (PUPP) project, which generated 6,021 survey responses, involved 561 interview and focus-group participants, and collected directed writing-task data across 32 universities in Canada, the United States, and Europe between 2021 and 2025. The study uses a mixed-methods approach combining descriptive statistics, subgroup comparisons, thematic coding, and cross-project synthesis grounded in anti-racist, post-colonial, intersectional, and social justice perspectives. Findings from both projects demonstrate the importance of professors in promoting student success and providing support, highlighting the significance of ethical leadership among professors and instructors in higher education. Statistical evidence from the PUPP project indicates that organizational and structural factors are stronger predictors of misconduct than the rejection of ethical norms. Moreover, respondents in both projects reported feeling underprepared for university-level academic demands. Qualitative and quantitative findings from the PUPP project reveal deficiencies in academic writing, citation practices, and information-processing skills, reinforcing the importance of pedagogical interventions aimed at strengthening complex thinking and reflective judgement. The study provides an evidence-based foundation for future research on ethical leadership, conscious citizenship, and democratic engagement and offers practical guidance for designing learning environments that simultaneously strengthen academic integrity, student success, and responsible participation in democratic communities.
The institutionalization of ESG reporting has made accountants’ ethical judgment a core issue for business ethics, ethical leadership, corporate accountability, and ethical corporate culture. Yet prior studies have not sufficiently quantified how professional competencies, digital verification, corporate ethical culture, and institutional pressure jointly shape accountants’ ethical resilience and ESG reporting quality. This study aims to develop and empirically validate a structural model explaining the behavioral, institutional, and technological drivers of reliable ESG disclosure. Methodologically, the paper utilizes a secondary quantitative and qualitative analysis of an extensive empirical dataset originally compiled by the Green Transition Office (NGO DiXi Group). The authors' independent analytical contribution consists of data restructuring, statistical processing, PLS-SEM modeling, and empirical interpretation. The modeled dataset comprises survey microdata from 420 Ukrainian enterprises from industry (32%), agriculture (24%), finance (18%), energy (14%), and services (12%), contextualized by transcripts from 12 institutional interviews and four expert focus groups. The hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), with reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, multicollinearity, mediation, and predictive relevance assessed through Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, AVE, VIF, HTMT, path coefficients, indirect effects, and Stone-Geisser Q². The measurement model demonstrated strong statistical robustness: Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.88 to 0.93, composite reliability from 0.91 to 0.95, AVE from 0.68 to 0.78, VIF from 1.69 to 2.61, and the maximum HTMT value was 0.821. The structural model showed substantial explanatory power, with R² = 0.76 for ESG reporting quality, R² = 0.71 for ethical corporate culture, and R² = 0.64 for ethical resilience of an accountant. The strongest significant relationship was between institutional pressure and ethical corporate culture (β = 0.63, t = 11.44, p < 0.001), while ESG training had the largest effect on accountants’ ethical resilience (β = 0.56, t = 9.18, p < 0.001), confirming education as the main driver of ethical competence. Digital verification improved ethical resilience of an accountant (β = 0.41, t = 7.02, p < 0.001), ethical resilience increased ESG reporting quality (β = 0.32, t = 5.41, p < 0.001), and ethical corporate culture strengthened ethical resilience of an accountant (β = 0.38, t = 6.27, p < 0.001). Mediation analysis confirmed that training affects ESG reporting quality through the ethical resilience (β = 0.18, p < 0.001), whereas ethical corporate culture influences reporting quality through ethical resilience of an accountant (β = 0.10, p < 0.01), validating the chain “training → ethical resilience → data quality → trust → reporting quality.” Predictive relevance was supported by Q² values of 0.31 for ethical corporate culture, 0.44 for ethical resilience, and 0.39 for ESG reporting quality. The survey also showed that 87% of Ukrainian enterprises support ESG implementation, 77% report a shortage of qualified specialists, 71% lack ESG knowledge, 68% face data-collection problems, and 89% require additional training. The findings provide a quantitative framework for strengthening business ethics, ethical leadership, ESG governance, and reporting assurance.
Business leadership increasingly relies on the ability of organizations to create durable stakeholder relationships through positive brand experiences, trust-building mechanisms, and psychologically driven consumer engagement among Generation Z consumers. While brand loyalty has been widely examined, limited evidence exists regarding the combined operation of experiential, relational, and psychological mechanisms within leadership-oriented brand management, particularly in emerging markets. This study investigates the direct effect of brand experience on brand loyalty, the mediating role of brand trust, and the moderating role of psychological ownership. The analysis is based on survey data collected from 403 female Generation Z consumers in Bangladesh with at least one year of beauty-product usage experience. Empirical testing was performed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 4.0, supported by reliability, validity, collinearity, mediation, moderation, and predictive relevance assessments. The measurement model demonstrated strong statistical quality, with factor loadings ranging from 0.71 to 0.89, Cronbach’s alpha values between 0.84 and 0.95, composite reliability above 0.88, Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values from 0.63 to 0.78, and Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) statistics below 2.51. The structural model exhibited substantial explanatory power, accounting for 37.4% of the variance in brand trust and 40.2% of the variance in brand loyalty. Positive Stone–Geisser’s Q-square predictive relevance value (Q² values) of 0.370 and 0.295 confirmed robust predictive relevance. The econometric results revealed a strong positive effect of brand experience on brand loyalty (β = 0.53, t = 13.79, p < 0.001) and an even stronger effect on brand trust (β = 0.61, t = 18.73, p < 0.001), identifying experiential value as the principal driver of relationship development. Brand trust significantly influenced loyalty (β = 0.33, t = 6.90, p < 0.001), while the indirect effect of brand experience through trust remained highly significant (β = 0.20, t = 6.31, p < 0.001), confirming a stable partial mediation mechanism. Furthermore, psychological ownership significantly strengthened the trust–loyalty relationship (β = 0.20, t = 3.46, p < 0.001), demonstrating that trust generates considerably stronger loyalty outcomes when consumers perceive the brand as personally meaningful. The findings indicate that effective business leadership and consumer relationship management depend on the simultaneous development of experiential value, trust-based interactions, and psychological ownership. By integrating mediation and moderation mechanisms within a single explanatory framework, the study contributes robust quantitative evidence to the business leadership literature and provides practical guidance for leadership-oriented brand management, stakeholder engagement, and long-term loyalty-building strategies among Generation Z consumers.
Successful digital transformations and project governance in public sector organizations now rely heavily on business ethics and responsible management. Despite years of research into project management, empirical evidence indicates that ethical project management (EPM) is associated with conventional Information Technology (IT) project management, correlating with greater success. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine whether EPM practices moderate the relationship between conventional IT project management and IT project success. The study surveyed 287 stakeholders, including project managers, IT directors, and Project Management Office (PMO) staff, from six judicial sector institutions in Morocco using a structured questionnaire. Data were processed using SPSS Version 27.0 and PROCESS Macro Version 4.2, which included exploratory factor analysis, hierarchical regression analysis, and moderator analysis. The results confirm the strong validity of the measures (Cronbach's alpha = 0.88 to 0.94). Conventional IT project management explains project success (β = 0.58, p < 0.001, R² = 0.572) and the introduction of EPM provides an additional effect (β = 0.24, p < 0.001, R² = 0.619). The interaction term confirms the moderating effect of EPM (β = 0.21, p < 0.001, ΔR² = 0.084, R² = 0.703). Simple slope analysis indicates that EPM increases the strength of this relationship more than two times when the level of EPM implementation is high (β = 0.53) versus low (β = 0.25). EPM is a measurable, organizational capability that is positively related to project management performance, which can be applied to ethics training and performance management within public sector project teams. The results of this research result in both practical and theoretical conclusions. Theoretically speaking, this research has an impact on the project management literature by supporting the idea that ethical project management has an influence on project management as an Organizational Capability Portfolio that enhances the ability of project managers to carry out the tasks of project management that are consistent with standard practices, especially in public sector organizations where there is a high focus on accountability and transparency. Practically speaking, in order to implement ethical project management successfully, Judicial sector organizations that are being transformed into digital organizations must focus on developing an ethics-oriented governance system in addition to the usual standards of governance, which is based on operationally-oriented governance, through the use of tools such as a code of conduct or ethics training, which will be administered through the PMO (Project Management Office) function.
Ethical escalation in artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled business leadership has become a central issue for business ethics because digitally globalized firms increasingly make consequential decisions through data infrastructures, platform rules, and vendor systems that operate across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. Previous literature offers important principles for stakeholder responsibility, responsible innovation, and algorithmic accountability, yet it gives limited guidance on the exact point at which a legally permissible digital practice should be moved from ordinary managerial approval to documented ethical review. The purpose of this theoretical paper is to develop a new authorial concept that gives leaders a disciplined way to recognize, assess, and govern this escalation problem without reducing ethical judgment to compliance or technical scoring. The proposed Ethical Friction Threshold Model (EFTM) defines ethical friction as the ethically relevant tension created when digital practices cross boundaries of law, culture, organizational control, or stakeholder voice, and it combines boundary triggers, stakeholder exposure mapping, seven assessment dimensions, a boundary multiplier, an ethical threshold index, threshold classification, governance action, and learning records. The scientific novelty of the model lies in its explicit transformation of diffuse cross-boundary ethical tension into a transparent leadership threshold that links stakeholder voice, contestability, and value-chain responsibility to specific escalation decisions. Unlike principle catalogs, risk management standards, or audit checklists, the model identifies when ethical concern becomes strong enough to require explanation, redesign, pause, executive escalation, or board review while still preserving contextual judgment and written justification. The model reveals that ethical risk in digital globalization often grows not from a single severe feature but from the accumulation of moderate concerns across stakeholder exposure, power imbalance, jurisdictional distance, data opacity, decision irreversibility, weak contestability, and diffused responsibility. It also shows that learning from appeals, complaints, audits, and post-deployment monitoring should revise later trigger definitions, weighting choices, and safeguards so that accountability develops through repeated leadership decisions rather than a one-time approval event. The article opens a path for future case studies, expert panels, scenario experiments, and sector-specific governance tools in business ethics, digital leadership, marketing, procurement, finance, and platform management.
Artificial intelligence is transforming labor markets not only through technological change but also through new risks of social inequality, discrimination, and unequal access to suitable employment for tertiary-educated workers. Previous studies have mainly examined artificial intelligence adoption, skills transformation, labor-market mismatch, and responsible artificial intelligence governance separately, while the direct association between national artificial intelligence vibrancy and age-specific overqualification in labor markets remains insufficiently explained from the perspective of business ethics, social justice, and discrimination. This study aims to examine whether artificial intelligence-driven national development is associated with overqualification in European labor markets and to interpret this relationship through the perspectives of ethics and leadership in artificial intelligence, social justice, social competence, and human-centered digital transformation. The empirical analysis uses panel data for 18 European countries over 2017–2024, combining Eurostat overqualification rates with Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence’s Artificial Intelligence Vibrancy indicators and applying fixed-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors. The baseline results show that the Artificial Intelligence Vibrancy Score per capita is positively associated with overqualification among workers aged 15–64 and 35–64, with coefficients of 0.040 and 0.022, respectively, while the coefficient for workers aged 25–34 is positive but not statistically significant. The component-level model indicates that research and development per capita is positively associated with overqualification among the 15–64 and 35–64 groups, with coefficients of 0.206 and 0.235, whereas Economy per capita is negatively associated with overqualification across all age groups, with coefficients of -0.045, -0.089, and -0.035. The Public Opinion model shows a positive association with overqualification for the 15–64 and 25–34 groups, with coefficients of 0.778 and 0.320, while Talent per capita is strongly negative for younger workers, with a coefficient of -2.268. The lagged models reveal the strongest association after one year, with coefficients of 0.066, 0.054, and 0.057 for the three age groups, suggesting that artificial intelligence-related mismatch may reflect a transitional gap between technological development, ethical governance, social competence formation, and inclusive labor market adaptation. These findings open new perspectives for future research and practice in business leadership, responsible artificial intelligence governance, and socially just digital transformation by showing that overqualification can serve as an early warning indicator of unequal adaptation, discrimination risks, and insufficient recognition of human competencies in artificial intelligence-intensive labor markets.
Ethical and transparent governance has become increasingly important because clean-energy transformation depends on institutional quality, investor confidence, and the capacity of public authorities to create predictable conditions for sustainable innovation. This article aims to assess whether ethical and effective institutional governance creates favorable conditions for the development of green and digital energy start-ups. The study uses an unbalanced panel of 144 countries and economies over 2000–2023, combining data from the IEA Energy Start-up Data Explorer and the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators, and applies PPML models with country- and year-fixed effects, one- and two-year lags, multicollinearity diagnostics, and quadratic specifications. The results show that green start-up counts are not significantly associated with any WGI indicator in contemporaneous, one-year or two-year lagged models, suggesting that green start-up formation is less directly linked to short-term institutional variation. For digital start-up counts, Political Stability is consistently positive and significant: a one-point increase is associated with approximately 20.7% higher expected digital start-up activity in the contemporaneous model, 13.9% in the one-year lag model and 12.1% in the two-year lag model. Rule of Law becomes significant only in lagged models, with a one-point increase associated with approximately 16.9% higher expected digital start-up activity after one year and 39.1% after two years. For green energy finance, Voice and Accountability is associated with approximately 21.4% higher early-stage green funding. In comparison, Government Effectiveness is associated with approximately 4.7% higher early-stage and 3.8% higher later-stage green funding. Quadratic models reveal governance thresholds, including 67.26 for Voice and Accountability and 74.84 for Rule of Law in green start-up formation.
GovTech and digital governance have become critical instruments for strengthening ethical public leadership, transparency, fairness, security, and institutional resilience during war, crisis, and post-war reconstruction. This study aims to systematize the scientific debate on the role of GovTech in building an ethical, transparent, fair, digital, and secure state, with particular attention to public trust, accountability, privacy, cybersecurity, and reconstruction-oriented governance. The study applies a PRISMA-guided bibliometric analysis of Scopus-indexed publications, using Biblioshiny to examine publication dynamics, citation impact, influential sources and authors, thematic evolution and conceptual structure. The initial Scopus search identified 308 records; after document-type limitation and title–abstract screening, the final corpus included 212 publications from 163 sources covering 2003–2026. The field shows clear acceleration, with an annual growth rate of 9.75%, while the strongest increase in scientific production occurred in 2024–2025; the polynomial trendline explains 85.11% of the variation in annual publication output. Citation analysis shows that the corpus averages 10.12 citations per document, with Whyte (2013) as the most globally cited publication (161 citations). The most productive source was the ACM International Conference Proceeding Series with 17 publications, whereas the International Review of Administrative Sciences had the highest citation impact (280 citations). Thematic and factorial analyses reveal a shift from e-services, privacy and data processing towards e-governance, Ukraine, transparency, digital government, cybersecurity and public administration. At the same time, the direct link between GovTech and post-war reconstruction remains underdeveloped.
Ethical leadership and organizational ethical climate are increasingly recognized as important factors for preventing workplace misconduct and sustaining organizational integrity. Although previous studies have separately examined ethical leadership, ethical climate, and unethical organizational behavior, limited empirical research has investigated their integrated effects on organizational broken windows within the framework of broken windows theory. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effects of employees’ perceptions of ethical leadership and organizational ethical climate on perceptions of organizational broken windows. In addition, the mediating role of organizational ethical climate in the relationship between ethical leadership and organizational broken windows was examined. The empirical data were collected in Türkiye between March and April 2026 from 356 white-collar employees working in both public and private-sector organizations, using convenience sampling. Participants were employed in sectors including healthcare, education, and manufacturing. Data were collected using a structured survey questionnaire and analyzed using validity and reliability analyses, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and structural equation modeling (SEM) using SPSS and AMOS. The findings revealed that perceived ethical leadership negatively affected perceptions of organizational broken windows (β = –0.30, p
In the context of emerging markets, technology startups operate in an environment of high uncertainty, institutional volatility, and limited information, where success is not dependent on the viability of one product idea but on the ability to continuously identify and capitalize on viable opportunities. Yet, the internal capabilities that enable this process, including entrepreneurial alertness and the organizational conditions that sustain it, remain poorly understood, especially within the context of Egypt. This research paper aims to explore the impact of the agile mindset on opportunity recognition within technology startups in Egypt, including the mediating effect of innovation culture as an enabling organizational factor for opportunity recognition. To this end, the research draws on data collected among 501 participants working within 81 technology startups, where agile mindset is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of learning spirit, collaboration exchange, empowered self-guidance, and customer co-creation; innovation culture is defined as consisting of collaboration breadth, risk tolerance, and allocation of resources for experimentation; and opportunity recognition is defined as a two-step construct of opportunity identification and evaluation, all tested through structural equation modeling. The results indicate that the agile mindset is a significant predictor of both innovation culture (β = 0.550, p < 0.001) and opportunity recognition (β = 0.266, p < 0.001). In addition, innovation culture positively influences opportunity recognition (β = 0.294, p < 0.001) and therefore partially mediates the relationship between agile mindset and opportunity recognition. The indirect effect of the agile mindset on opportunity recognition was significant (β = 0.161, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.108, 0.220]). Sector, startup size, and startup age did not emerge as significant control variables. The findings demonstrate that agile being acts as a dynamic capability-forming process, whereby mindset-based behavior becomes institutionalized through innovation culture, which in turn facilitates opportunity recognition in uncertain and fast-changing environments. Accordingly, startup leaders and stakeholders should consider embedding routines such as cross-functional retrospectives alongside cultural enablers such as psychological safety and iterative customer engagement to strengthen opportunity recognition and enhance entrepreneurial performance within technology startups.
Wartime business relocation has become a critical issue as displaced enterprises in Ukraine increasingly influence the economic trajectories of host communities. Previous research has mostly examined refugee entrepreneurship, emergency business support, or macroeconomic recovery. At the same time, the community-level mechanisms for displaced business embeddedness remain insufficiently explained. This study aims to identify how the adaptive capacity of relocated businesses, the absorptive capacity of host communities, and the economic effects of relocation shape community perceptions of post-displacement business integration. The empirical calculations are based on a sociological survey conducted in partnership with the All-Ukrainian Association of Amalgamated Territorial Communities in Ukraine in August-September 2024, covering 141 territorial communities from 22 regions, reflecting variation in relocation experience, expected business stay, perceived barriers, institutional support, and local economic outcomes. The research applies a mixed-method research approach with a structured survey, descriptive statistics, factor-based composite indices, and binary logistic regression to estimate the probability of a predominantly positive community assessment of relocated businesses, while statistical processing is organized around community-level indicators of economic effect, banking and institutional support, barriers, settlement intentions, and community type. The results show that 47.5% of host communities assessed the impact of relocated businesses as predominantly positive. In comparison, 27.0% reported no visible impact and 24.8% found it difficult to provide a clear assessment, which confirms that post-displacement integration remains uneven across local territories. The strongest empirical pattern concerns the economic effect index – its coefficient equals 2.9273, the odds ratio is 18.6780, and the result is statistically significant at p < 0.001, indicating that visible contributions to employment, entrepreneurial activity, fiscal capacity, and local market development sharply increase the likelihood of a positive community-level perception. By contrast, banking and institutional support do not demonstrate an independent statistically significant effect, with an odds ratio of 0.8350 and p = 0.6235, suggesting that formal support mechanisms matter mainly when they are converted into tangible local economic outcomes rather than being perceived as valuable in themselves. The model also shows that barriers, expected duration of stay, and community type are not statistically significant predictors after economic effects are controlled for, while the overall specification demonstrates strong within-sample explanatory capacity, with McFadden’s pseudo-coefficient of determination reaching 0.5756. Further research will be focused on outcome-based relocation policy and design instruments that strengthen the economic embeddedness of relocated businesses.
Digital public administration is increasingly important for ethical governance because it can strengthen transparency, accountability, and trust in public institutions. Previous studies have usually examined digital government maturity, budget transparency, and institutional trust as separate dimensions of public governance, while insufficient attention has been paid to their cross-country interaction from the perspective of business ethics, responsible public leadership, and accountability-oriented digital transformation. The aim of this study is to examine whether countries with more mature GovTech ecosystems demonstrate higher levels of budget transparency and stronger trust-related institutional outcomes, with particular attention to the role of digital public administration in strengthening accountability, integrity, and ethical governance. The empirical analysis is based on a cross-country dataset of 111 countries for 2022 and applies descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, ordinary least squares regression, and diagnostic testing using the GovTech Maturity Index, the Open Budget Index transparency score, and the Corruption Perceptions Index. The descriptive statistics show substantial cross-country variation: the mean GovTech Maturity Index equals 0.594, the mean Open Budget Index transparency score is 45.748, and the mean Corruption Perceptions Index equals 39.180. The correlation analysis confirms statistically significant positive relationships between GovTech maturity and budget transparency (r = 0.575, p < 0.001), GovTech maturity and institutional trust (r = 0.530, p < 0.001), and budget transparency and institutional trust (r = 0.517, p < 0.001). Regression results show that GovTech maturity explains 33.1% of cross-country variation in budget transparency, with a positive coefficient of 57.491 and an F-statistic of 53.84. GovTech maturity also explains 28.1% of variation in trust-related institutional outcomes, with a positive coefficient of 36.250 and an F-statistic of 42.57, confirming that digital government capacity is more directly connected with fiscal openness than with institutional trust. The findings open further perspectives for business ethics, public-sector leadership, and responsible digital governance by showing that GovTech maturity should be studied not only as a technological capacity indicator but also as a measurable institutional mechanism for strengthening transparency, accountability, integrity, and trust-oriented public administration.
The banking sector in emerging economies is gradually aligning with sustainability priorities. However, despite increasing emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR)-driven green financing, there is limited evidence on how green financing translates into sustainable business outcomes. Prior evidence shows that energy-efficient equipment and green policies can influence banks’ environmental performance, but CSR-related green loans and green projects may not always show significant effects. This study examines how corporate social responsibility mediates the relationship between green financing and sustainable business performance in the banking sector. Primary survey data was collected from banking professionals in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, in the year 2025. After filtration and screening, 391 valid responses were used for analysis. A cross-sectional research design was applied following the quantitative approach. The measurement and structural relationships were examined using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) under bootstrapping with 10,000 resamples to test direct and indirect effects. The findings indicate that green financing has a positive and significant direct effect on sustainable business performance (β = 0.155, p = 0.005). Similarly, green financing also shows a strong positive influence on corporate social responsibility (β = 0.574, p < 0.001), and corporate social responsibility significantly increases sustainable business performance (β = 0.597, p < 0.001). The mediation results exhibit a significant indirect effect of green financing on sustainable business performance through corporate social responsibility (β = 0.342, p < 0.001), which shows that corporate social responsibility meaningfully transmits green financing benefits into sustainability-oriented performance. The study concludes that green financing enhances sustainable business performance in the banking sector, but its impact becomes stronger when banks institutionalize corporate social responsibility practices. Future studies could investigate the causal relationship with serial mediating effects and moderating effects, including the constructs such as business ethics, green innovation, corporate governance, etc., between the relationships.
The relevance of examining financial inclusion and electronic payment systems is increasing in the context of economic and digital inequalities, which shape trust, fairness, and the ethical functioning of contemporary financial ecosystems across different institutional environments. However, existing research does not sufficiently explain how these inequalities influence the relationship between digital financial development and actual inclusion outcomes, particularly in terms of participation and equitable access within financial ecosystems. The purpose of this study is to analyse the impact of electronic payment systems, internet accessibility, and economic development on financial inclusion through a comparative perspective of the European Union, Bulgaria, and Kazakhstan. The empirical basis comprises time-series data for the period 2010–2024, obtained from central banks and international financial databases, reflecting the evolution of digital financial services, macroeconomic conditions, and the diffusion of financial access across the analysed economies. The study employs econometric time-series techniques, including the Augmented Dickey–Fuller test for stationarity, correlation analysis, and Granger causality testing, implemented using EViews software. The results reveal a strong positive relationship between financial inclusion and gross domestic product per capita (0.961), as well as between financial inclusion and internet accessibility (0.828), indicating the structural importance of economic and infrastructural factors. In contrast, the relationship between payment system penetration and financial inclusion is weak (–0.017), suggesting that infrastructure alone does not ensure inclusive outcomes. Granger causality results demonstrate only limited short-term effects of digital payment usage on financial inclusion (p = 0.082 for Bulgaria and p = 0.109 for Kazakhstan), while no significant long-term causal relationships are observed. These findings indicate that financial inclusion depends primarily on active participation in digital financial systems rather than mere availability of infrastructure, highlighting the role of behavioural and institutional conditions. The study contributes to understanding how reducing economic and digital inequalities, strengthening trust, and ensuring fair access can support the ethical development of financial ecosystems and inform policy and regulatory practices in diverse economic contexts.
Effective business leadership, corporate integrity, and ethical financial advisory within emerging markets heavily rely on understanding the behavioral mechanisms driving investor behavior. While behavioral finance frequently examines isolated distortions in developed nations, empirical evidence regarding the joint prevalence of multiple biases within the Tunisian financial ecosystem remains sparse. To address this gap, this study quantifies cognitive and emotional biases among Tunisian individual investors, mapping how demographic and portfolio profiles dictate vulnerability to specific psychological distortions. Utilizing primary data from a structured 2023 survey, 100 active individual investors were sampled via snowball configurations across professional and online networks. Participation was strictly limited to individuals actively managing personal portfolios, spanning equities, fixed income, alternatives, and foreign exchange, ensuring firsthand exposure to financial decision-making. The survey instrument leveraged 15 scenario-based indicators across belief-perseverance, information-processing, and emotional dimensions, with data evaluated in SPSS using frequency distributions and chi-square diagnostics. Empirical results establish a distinct hierarchy of behavioral distortions: framing bias is most widespread (64%), followed by illusion of control (60%), conservatism (52%), and loss aversion (50%), proving that four major biases manipulate at least half of the market participants. This comparative architecture confirms that information-processing and belief-perseverance cognitive errors heavily dominate purely affective or emotional reactions, validating the study’s second hypothesis that Tunisian investors are primarily constrained by distorted information interpretation. Furthermore, chi-square cross-tabulations expose critical demographic heterogeneity: male investors constitute 70% of illusion-of-control and 67% of framing instances; respondents under 45 represent 69% of framing and 62% of loss-aversion cases; and investors with under a decade of experience account for 64% of framing and 60% of illusion-of-control occurrences. Portfolio segmentation confirms that equity and alternative-asset exposure yields the highest bias sensitivity, with investment type displaying significant chi-square associations across conservatism, framing, loss aversion, and illusion of control. Ultimately, these insights offer a quantified foundation to enhance organizational culture, protect consumer interests, refine investor education, and elevate ethical standards in emerging market leadership.
