Designing Circular Economy (CE) educational programmes to a diverse group of learners presents challenges and opportunities. This paper shares insights from the development of a CE educational programme for disadvantaged learners through the BLUEPRINT project. It explores the pivotal role Business Schools in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) play by serving as a bridge between business and society in the transition to a CE. Through the lens of pedagogical approaches from education for sustainable development (ESD) theories, the paper discusses CE educational programmes and explores the barriers at a learner, academic institution, and stakeholders level. It presents the benefits of co-creation for the design of CE educational material to equip learners with the skills required to deal with the ever-changing landscape in our society, environment, and economy. The paper makes recommendations on the application of ESD to turn challenges into opportunities for HEI when developing CE educational materials for the community which require a different approach to those for the HEI curriculum.

Moll, Marwala, and Ntlatlapa highlight salient criticisms of terminologies and definitional uncertainties associated with the term ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (4IR). Scientific research on technological change seems to suggest a need for theoretical synthesis to address a failure of 4IR notions to consider the central role of a revolution in the scientific/knowledge creation process itself – that is seemingly a causal driver of current technological and societal changes. The term ‘Fifth Industrial Revolution’ might helpfully be used to differentiate 4IR debates from those deriving from revolutionary changes in science itself that may underlie our current trajectory of technological change.

Purpose Social exchange theory predicts that perceptions of employee/employer exchange relationships may change as employees add educational qualifications. Literature also suggests that more innovative individuals, who are particularly important to organisations, may be more likely to change jobs. The purpose of this study is to test how the innovativeness of an individual differs in its contribution to retention when subjected to different mediating and moderating influences indicated in the literature, for a cohort of employees that are undertaking degree studies while working. Design/methodology/approach To test theory that suggests certain implications for employee turnover, the part-time studies unit of a large South African university offering degree studies by evening classes was sampled, yielding 323 useable responses, with a response rate of about 30%. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to test a theoretical model predicting certain mediating and moderating influences on the relationship between individual innovativeness and turnover intentions. Findings Individuals with higher innovativeness self-report higher turnover intentions, which seem to be reduced by the mediating effects of perceived supervisor support and job satisfaction. Perceptions of distributive justice and core self-evaluations, which may be associated with an individual's evaluation of the social exchange relationship, are found to directly enable retention. Originality/value A model of moderation and mediation relationships between employee innovativeness and turnover intentions is derived from the literature and tested, offering novel insights into how to retain valuable staff in this context.

The rise of circular economic thinking in academic literature can be traced back to Boulding’s work on open and closed systems in the 1960s. Since then, the Circular Economy (CE) has been developed as a model to facilitate environmentally sustainable production and consumption, as well as economic and social prosperity. Recent geopolitical destabilising events such as Covid-19, and the war in Ukraine, have further increased the urgency of finding practical solutions to the climate crisis. In this paper we will explore industrial transformation, and how it can best adapt to a more circular and greener landscape from the perspective of economic activity and social prosperity. Training, or retraining of the workforce with the new skills they will need must be targeted and part of a unifying strategy, locally, nationally, and ultimately, globally. We present a conceptual paper on this theme and present initial work carried out to co-design and deliver training to disadvantaged individuals; working with local authorities, community charities and social enterprises and focusing on the grassroots of the drive to promote and establish the system wide changes needed to shift from linear to circular economic practice.

According to the Solow paradox, the impact of the computer age can be seen everywhere but in the productivity statistics. Despite much debate about productivity gains promised by technologies associated with the 'fourth industrial revolution,' these are largely yet to materialise. Paradoxically, not only has there been a global productivity growth slowdown but also a decline in research and development (R&D) productivity: a 'burden of knowledge' effect. Given the potentially catastrophic costs of research failure and the inability of the scientific discovery system to anticipate fully and find a solution to the coronavirus pandemic, the purpose of this paper is to apply a detailed conceptual review methodology to understand better the fundamental causes of the global productivity growth slowdown. Challenging prevailing assumptions in the literature, the original contribution of the paper is a theoretical analysis that suggests a root cause of the global production growth slowdown may be a burden of knowledge effect associated with innovation failure. A causal ordering of relevant causes is discussed, and hypotheses are derived. Implications are derived for research management, and for policy regarding how a decline in global productivity growth might be arrested by remedying the burden of knowledge effect.

Background: This review article sets out to identify certain critiques of growth accounting, development accounting and cross-country growth regressions. These critiques provide insights relevant to the usefulness and policy relevance of these methods. Aim: The aim of this article was to critically review literature and to provide a synthesis of this literature, deriving certain arguments to contribute to further research. Method: This article takes the form of a critical review essay. Results: Growth accounting, development accounting and cross-country growth regressions all have some limitations and knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses may be helpful for those who are undertaking transdisciplinary social science research using these methods. These methods seem to suffer from similar criticisms levelled at neoclassical thinking, which need to be considered more seriously in the literature. Conclusion: Further research should explore how such methods might complement each other to improve validity of research findings.

Given that the first, second, and third industrial revolutions might be defined by their radical impact on productivity, and that the productivity gains promised by the 'fourth industrial revolution' have largely failed to materialise in the productivity statistics, particularly in total factor productivity, this article discuses certain theory that predicts the next radical increase in productivity, and that suggests ways to enable it. In doing so, a proposed research agenda is made explicit, with the goal of reversing the set of global declining trends in productivity growth, research productivity, and the failure of emergent technologies to contribute to these forms of productivity. The goal of this proposed research agenda is to uncover and predict the source of the next radical increase in productivity, and given its importance, this research agenda is taken to relate to what might be usefully called the 'fifth industrial revolution'.

The 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' test (RMET) has been translated and tested in many cultural settings. Results indicate that items show variability in meeting the original psychometric testing criteria. Individuals from non-Western cultures score differently on the RMET. As such, questions arise as to the cross-cultural validity of the RMET. This study tested the English version of the RMET, that consists almost exclusively of White faces, at a large South African university to determine its validity in a culturally diverse context. A total of 443 students from a range of different demographic backgrounds completed the instrument. Students were selected using simple random sampling. 30 out of the 36 items continued to show satisfactory psychometric properties. Further evidence shows significant differences based on race and home language in both overall scores and item level scores. Black race and African home language respondents show lower RMET scores and different item level perspectives on certain mental states. The current RMET is not inclusive. It requires stimuli reflecting more races and cultures. This lack of diversity is likely to be influencing and biasing results and psychometric properties. The continued exclusion of racial stimuli such as Black race is also promoting a systemic discriminatory instrument. These results have cultural implications for how we interpret and use the RMET.

Burden of knowledge perspectives suggest returns to investments in research decline over time, notwithstanding technological change. Given countervailing theoretical predictions, components of innovative capability, namely a country's total research and development expenditure as well as its technological and scientific output, are tested for contributions to per capita growth. To do so, longitudinal data is tested across the years 2003 to 2016 for 78 countries to derive generalizable insights. Scientific output has a U-shaped relationship with growth for countries above a threshold quantile level of growth. Innovative capability components have no time trend with growth. Overall, findings offer some support for burden of knowledge perspectives that question assumptions that innovative capability is necessarily associated with growth across most countries of the world.

This book shows how Critical Management Studies (CMS) scholarship is starting to develop a character of its own in South Africa. It attests to CMS slowly gaining momentum and acquiring an identity of its own amongst South African scholars. However, management studies in South Africa is dominated by capitalist ideology and positivist methodology. Although Interpretive scholarship has gained some momentum, it still falls within the parameters of ‘mainstream’, capitalist thinking. Scholarship outside the domain of capitalist thinking, such as critical scholarship, remains sorely underexplored. Being entrenched in the positivist tradition is arguably a major Achilles’ Heel for the progression of management as a field of inquiry. CMS presents a vehicle for alternative epistemologies to be heard in the management discourse. With its focus on power imbalances, struggles for emancipation from oppression, and distrust of capitalism, CMS provides the peripheral point of view with a voice. CMS presents a space where scholars can engage with South African realities surrounding political, cultural, social, and historic contexts and issues in management. This book is promoting CMS to the scholarly community, to show that there are exciting possibilities being offered by a different approach to management scholarship. This book also forms part of a larger project of growing CMS in South Africa, and is a collection of original works by academics actively working in CMS, following various methodological approaches which can be categorised into two broad methodological categories, namely, conceptual work and empirical work following an Interpretive approach.

PurposeIn the wake of certain corporate scandals, many stakeholders are questioning if current high levels of executive remuneration, world-wide, are in fact related to company performance. After the implementation of King III in 2010, there has been an expectation that governance has improved in South African companies. If so, empirical testing should find executive remuneration to be positively related to forms of performance that reflect an increase in company value, like Tobin's Q, or return on assets, rather than measures such as total revenue.Design/methodology/approachAgency theory predicts that if executive remuneration is not carefully designed to maximise the value of the company, executive directors will tend to maximise revenue instead. To test this prediction, hand-collected panel data from Johannesburg Stock Exchange company reports are linked to company performance data to test this prediction, across the years 2010–2017, post King III.FindingsResults challenge certain important assumptions. Generalised method of moments tests find total revenue, rather than value added measures of performance such as Tobin's Q or return on assets, to predict executive director remuneration. This is notwithstanding the significance of Tobin's Q in testing based on ordinary least squares. Implications of these findings for the field are derived and discussed.Originality/valueUnique findings suggest that complacency about the relationships between executive director compensation and company performance is unwarranted. In light of a decline in the country's international rankings on the quality of its corporate governance, a renewed focus on the effectiveness of human resource compensation strategy may be necessary in this context.

Global evidence suggests that, for many countries, manufacturing typically has an inverted U-shaped relationship with development. But unlike the historical experience of most developed countries, for most developing countries the turning point of this relationship is occurring sooner in the development process, and at substantially lower levels of income. This is termed ‘premature deindustrialization’. The consequences of this may be particularly important if such countries can no longer rely on manufacturing-led development. Why are some countries more industrialized, or more deindustrialized, than other comparable countries? To explore these issues, this chapter uses panel-data econometric techniques to analyse the determinants of the share of manufacturing in GDP, across countries and across time. Domestic determinants include investment, government consumption, population size, human capital, democracy, and natural resource endowments. External determinants include trade openness, capital account liberalization, and exchange rate depreciation.

Literature suggests many countries across the world are facing a growing political backlash against the consequences of deindustrialisation. Intensifying anti-globalisation sentiment associated with this backlash has important implications for international business. In the absence of empirical evidence, it is however unclear to what extent deindustrialisation has contributed to a recent slowdown in the rate of growth of globalisation. Considering the importance of this knowledge, this paper tests predictions in the literature that this slowdown has to some extent been caused by deindustrialisation (declining country shares of manufacturing's output in gross domestic product). Granger and generalised method of moments findings suggest some support for these predictions. On the basis of the findings, it is argued that compensation should be prioritised for those that stand to lose due to deindustrialisation. Further research is also called for, to explore other 'root' causes of current anti-globalisation movements, and to address them, before consequences spill over into a post COVID-19 era of uncertainty for international business.

This working paper builds on a body of previous work that suggests novel ways to stop a pandemic when the data needed to stop it is only available after its onset. This previous work points to a theoretical framework, namely probabilistic innovation theory, that suggests that there are ways to radically improve the probabilities of finding solutions to complex scientific problems, including in biomedical research- in the form of real time biomedical research. This paper extends this work to make a conceptual argument that there is a danger that current lockdowns can shut down the global economy in the same way as an engine can seize without lubrication, by cutting rather than slowing the actions of supply chains. This is described here as the physics of the coronavirus outbreak- the economic forces of momentum and inertia, that need to be modelled to better understand the consequences of breaking supply chains by implementing indiscriminant lockdowns (lockdowns that do not discriminate between those that have recovered and those that have not). There is currently little debate about the inertial forces that will need to be overcome in order to re-start economic activity after the pandemic. Scenarios of 90% unemployment seem to be absent from current debates, no doubt in order to boost much needed morale. Research is urgently needed into the consequences of a state transformation of many of the world’s economies- from dynamic system states to static states as lockdowns terminate much economic activity. It is argued here that lockdowns can save lives and minimize economic harm if they are discriminate - if they allow all recovered workers to quickly re-enter the economy - to work and travel - while locking down the uninfected and the ill. Poor management of this process may prove catastrophic, a serious consequence of a lack of testing of recovered persons. Indiscriminate lockdowns may break supply chains, particularly in poor countries, where recovered persons remain locked down. Indiscriminant lockdowns are particularly concerning in very poor areas with high population density when governments have insufficient means to feed people whose survivalist means have been shut down, often brutally by police and military. Wealthy countries should offer urgent help as soon as they are in a position to do so. This paper also echoes an increasingly widespread call to suggest that a very large scale biomedical crowdsourcing award would be effective in shifting activity out of already productive and profitable biomedical research activities into uncertain COVID-19 research. It seems that an award of no less than about 1000 billion dollars would be needed obtain the necessary economies of scale across the biomedical system. Such a large scale effort might be necessary, because the costs of research are borne by those seeking a solution. Governments should collaborate to contribute this award, because what they offer will surely be a lot less than the costs of economic destruction that are increasing exponentially due to lockdowns. They would not have to pay a cent if a solution was not found. Ideas can save lives, but only if they reach the policy makers that are now making decisions that are measured in human lives.

South Africa’s higher education sector experienced widespread protests during the years 2015 and 2016, associated with the #FeesMustFall and#RhodesMustFall movements. Using a sample of 1905 respondents, over these two years, structural equation models are used to test the contributions of academic adjustment to academic performance for first year accounting students, during the time of these protests. Three theoretical models are tested to explore the persistence of historically discriminatory legacy effects. No differences are found by ethnicity for the influence of academic adjustment difficulties on academic performance. Financially disadvantaged students are however found to be more vulnerable to the influence of financial disadvantage ‒ those receiving financial aid score lower in assessments, and their academic performance seems to be vulnerable to the academic environment dimension of academic adjustment. It is concluded that historical legacy effects ‒ at least insofar as they relate to student academic adjustment ‒ may be limited to financial resource constraints. More concerted efforts on the part of university administrators and policy makers may be needed to improve the university environment and increase financial support for those who remain affected by historical socio-economic disadvantage.

A host of existential threats currently face humankind. One important insight from the experience of COVID-19 is that there were unrealised positive externalities associated with investments in research prior to the pandemic. While it is difficult to calculate the costs of these externalities, it may be less difficult to calculate those associated with the next pandemic, if it is an existential one (that could eliminate human life as we know it). If existential, it might urgently warrant maximum investment in the Research/University sector. A virus similar to COVIDthat mutates quickly enough to evade vaccines and antiviral drugs, and which has a higher mortality rate could end human life as we know it. Whereas many insights have been derived from research into Back Swan events in finance, research on Black Swan events that require biomedical and other research readiness is yet in its infancy. This conceptual note therefore argues that research investments in the research sector should be increased substantially to improve this readiness. Before it is too late.

The socioeconomic costs of the current global coronavirus outbreak are difficult to estimate. For many countries these costs may be devastating. The poorest and most vulnerable in human populations may bear the costs of the outbreak disproportionately. The purpose of this note is to pose and try to answer the question: How can we stop this coronavirus outbreak? I suggest that the answers are right in front of us. A verbatim quote from Rees (2014:401) illustrates how we might already be on the right track:It is 300 years since the British government pioneered a new approach to problem-solving. The Longitude Act of 1714 offered a prize of £20,000 (worth more than £1 million today) to anyone who could devise an accurate method to determine a ship's position at sea. Among those on the committee that judged the merit of the entries was the serving Astronomer Royal. History is repeating itself. In 2014, there is a pressing need for the United Kingdom to channel more brainpower into innovation, to jump-start new technologies and to enthuse young people. There are broad societal problems that demand fresh thinking. So Britain is reconvening the historic Longitude Committee, this time with a promised reward of £10 million (US$17 million). Some things are different: in 2014, the challenge to be addressed by the Longitude Prize will be decided not by government officials, but by the public. And some things are the same: as Astronomer Royal, I chair the resurrected committee.If this methodology has already changed the path of history by providing a method to determine a ship's position at sea, then it can surely be used to solve the coronavirus problem. Whereas crowdsourced research and development (R&D) has demonstrated success in contexts of medical research (Callaghan, 2015) there are useful applications of crowdsourcing to obtain economies of scale in research problem solving, according to the principles of networked science (Nielsen, 2012). Why then is this methodology not being used to stop the coronavirus? The problem with this methodology is its need to attract the attention and time investments of experts. A way to do this is to radically increase the value of the prize. A few billion Pounds will simply not cut it. I suggest the following solution.Each country in the world is facing catastrophic costs related to the spreading pandemic. If each country could pledge the estimated costs it will face in the next 36 months as a prize, and if most countries in the world contribute, it is possible to offer a trillion-Pound prize. At this scale, such a prize will surely create an incentive 'shock' to the global R&D system, which will adjust itself around these new incentives. There is much theoretical work in economics and social science that supports this predication (Callaghan, 2016; Callaghan, 2018; Hayek, 1945; Nielsen, 2012).It is perhaps only at this scale that it will be possible to halt the catastrophic spread of the virus, and the socioeconomic turmoil that follows in its wake. The time to act is now, before it is too late.