Search Results (4,117)

Rapid urbanization and the growth of data-driven planning have increased the need for tools that support integrated, transparent, and accountable urban governance. While Building Information Modeling (BIM) is well established in project delivery, its potential role in city-scale governance remains underexplored. This study conducts a structured qualitative evidence synthesis informed by PRISMA reporting principles and comparative case analysis to investigate how BIM, in combination with GIS, IoT, and AI, intersects with emerging digital governance practices. Through a synthesis of peer-reviewed research and documented case studies, the review evaluates how BIM supports data integration, interoperability, decision-making, regulatory compliance, collaborative governance, and sustainability. The findings suggest that BIM functions as a governance-support infrastructure when embedded within coordinated institutional frameworks, standardized data environments, and interoperable digital ecosystems. Based on these insights, the paper proposes a conceptual framework that organizes BIM governance into technical, institutional, social, and ethical–regulatory dimensions. The review suggests that BIM’s governance potential depends on institutional alignment, regulatory clarity, and sustained organizational capacity, rather than technological capability alone. Full article

Sustainable pedagogical reform requires more than teacher preparedness; it depends on how school leaders interpret and coordinate the conditions that enable change. This focus is particularly critical in contexts where Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is introduced within predominantly traditional, exam-oriented pedagogical environments, requiring careful consideration of leadership’s perception of system-level readiness to support such shifts. This study investigates how Chinese K–12 school leaders conceptualize readiness for institution-wide implementation of PBL. Using Q methodology with 42 school leaders, four distinct leadership logics were identified: leadership-mediated cultural readiness through recognition, belief-driven pedagogical practice, externally anchored system-level readiness, and experientially grounded cultural readiness. These viewpoints reveal different ways leaders prioritize cultural alignment, belief formation, structural coordination, and experiential learning when organizing reform conditions. Despite these differences, participants showed several areas of shared positioning, particularly around coordination, expertise-based responsibility distribution, evaluation alignment, and adaptive responses to reform conditions. The findings extend change readiness research beyond teacher-focused perspectives by demonstrating how leaders interpret readiness as a multidimensional and system-level phenomenon. By illuminating distinct leadership logics for coordinating reform within centralized governance contexts, this study highlights the importance of aligning beliefs, professional relationships, institutional structures, and student learning improvement goals to support sustainable pedagogical transformation. Full article

Recent advances in large language models, tool-using agents, and financial machine learning are shifting financial automation from isolated prediction tasks to integrated decision systems that can perceive information, reason over objectives, and generate or execute actions. The paper develops an integrative framework for analysing agentic finance: financial market environments in which autonomous or semi-autonomous AI systems participate in information processing, decision support, monitoring, and execution workflows. The analysis proceeds in three steps. First, the paper proposes a four-layer architecture of financial AI agents covering data perception, reasoning engines, strategy generation, and execution with control. Second, it introduces the Agentic Financial Market Model (AFMM), a stylised agent-based representation linking agent design parameters such as autonomy depth, heterogeneity, execution coupling, infrastructure concentration, and supervisory observability to market-level outcomes including efficiency, liquidity resilience, volatility, and systemic risk. Third, it presents an illustrative empirical application based on event studies of AI-agent capability disclosures and heterogeneous market repricing. It argues that the systemic implications of AI in finance depend less on model intelligence alone than on how agent architectures are distributed, coupled, and governed across institutions. The empirical application is intentionally exploratory: it does not validate the full AFMM but shows how one observable expectations channel can be studied using public data. In the near term, the most plausible equilibrium is bounded autonomy, in which AI agents operate as supervised co-pilots, monitoring systems, and constrained execution modules embedded within human decision processes. Full article

The accelerating global energy transition has substantially increased demand for critical minerals such as copper, nickel, and lithium, positioning mining firms as key actors in the decarbonization of energy systems. However, the expansion of mineral extraction raises important sustainability challenges because mining activities remain highly energy- and carbon-intensive. This study investigates whether green innovation can simultaneously improve environmental performance and financial performance in critical mineral mining firms and examines the moderating role of institutional governance. Using a balanced panel of 35 publicly listed mining companies from Australia, Canada, Chile, Brazil, and Indonesia over the period 2015–2024, the analysis applies fixed-effects panel regressions complemented by dynamic specifications and multiple robustness tests, including alternative variable definitions and System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation. The results show that green innovation significantly reduces carbon intensity, indicating that environmental investments in renewable energy integration, electrification, and process efficiency contribute to improving emissions performance in mining operations. Green innovation also enhances firm financial performance, although the benefits emerge gradually over time, suggesting delayed financial gains followed by long-term efficiency improvements. Furthermore, governance quality strengthens the positive relationship between green innovation and firm performance, highlighting the importance of institutional environments in shaping the economic returns of sustainability strategies. By providing firm-level evidence across major mineral-producing economies, this study contributes to the literature on critical minerals, environmental finance, and the institutional dimensions of the just energy transition. Full article

Background: Parental practices that support autonomy, provide structure, and foster warm relationships are associated with greater satisfaction of students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In minority educational contexts, however, students’ psychological need satisfaction is also shaped by broader sociocultural conditions that may create additional pressures and sources of chronic stress. Within such environments, parental support may function as a protective factor that helps students cope with educational and cultural demands. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore how parental support contributes to the satisfaction of students’ basic psychological needs within a minority educational context where students from the Greek minority attend a bilingual school operating within a Turkish educational framework. Methods: A qualitative design was employed using three focus groups conducted in a minority school located in Gökçeada, Türkiye: one with parents (N = 5), one with lower secondary school students (N = 6), and one with upper secondary school students (N = 6). Interview questions were developed on the basis of Basic Psychological Needs Theory. Data were analyzed thematically by five members of the research team. Results: Findings indicated that parental support influenced students’ need satisfaction through practices related to autonomy (e.g., trust, space for mistakes), competence (e.g., encouragement, comparison), and relatedness (e.g., emotional presence, empathy). However, these practices were not experienced in a uniform way. Rather, their meaning and impact were shaped by contextual conditions associated with minority status, including bilingual educational demands, limited resources, and close-knit community dynamics. Conclusions: The study suggests that in minority school settings, parental support operates not simply as a general interpersonal resource but as a contextually mediated protective process. By showing how sociocultural and institutional conditions shape the enactment and experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, the findings extend existing BPNT research beyond majority settings and offer a more context-sensitive understanding of students’ psychological need satisfaction. Full article

Parental involvement is widely recognized as a key component of effective schooling, particularly in educational environments that emphasize community, developmental continuity, and holistic pedagogy. Alternative education models such as Waldorf schools have expanded internationally, yet empirical evidence on how parents perceive and structure their experiences within these institutions remains limited. This study investigates parental perceptions of Waldorf education in Hungary through a nationwide questionnaire survey of 585 parents whose children attend Waldorf schools. To explore the latent structure of parental evaluations, Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted, followed by Confirmatory Factor Analysis to test the stability of the resulting model. The analyses identified four coherent dimensions of parental experience: Trust and Pedagogy, Community and Engagement, Perceived Long-Term Educational Prosperity, and Information and Transparency. Additional analyses examined how these dimensions vary according to institutional characteristics, parental participation in school community activities, and intentions regarding long-term enrollment. The results indicate that pedagogical trust constitutes a relatively stable evaluative dimension across institutions, while perceptions related to community engagement, long-term educational prospects, and transparency are more strongly associated with institutional maturity. Parents who intend to remain in Waldorf education until the completion of upper secondary schooling report consistently higher evaluations across all dimensions. By empirically identifying the structure of parental experiences in a European alternative education context, the study contributes to research on parental engagement, school choice, and the institutional cultures of alternative schooling. Full article

This study examines how regulatory heterogeneity in digital services trade relates to the carbon intensity of bilateral trade flows. Using a structural gravity framework estimated with Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML), we analyzed 10,719 bilateral observations from the Eora Multi-Region Input–Output (MRIO) database over 2014–2020. Bilateral gaps in the OECD Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (DSTRI) were used as the main measure of regulatory heterogeneity, and the overall gap was decomposed into infrastructure-related hard barriers and institutional soft barriers. The results suggest that digital regulatory gaps are associated with a higher carbon intensity in trade while also being associated with lower total embodied emissions through reduced trade volumes. This indicates that lower aggregate emissions under regulatory divergence may reflect contraction in trade activity rather than genuine environmental improvement. The decomposition analysis further suggests that infrastructure-related misalignment is more closely associated with carbon inefficiency, whereas institutional divergence operates mainly through its association with trade volume. In addition, environmental policy stringency in the importing country appears to strengthen the positive association between institutional regulatory gaps and carbon intensity, consistent with the possibility of regulatory overload. The study contributes to the sustainability literature by showing that carbon intensity provides a more informative indicator of sustainable trade performance than aggregate emissions alone in fragmented regulatory environments. It also suggests that digital governance, trade policy, and environmental policy should be considered together in promoting more sustainable forms of international trade, particularly in the context of emerging policy frameworks such as WTO digital trade negotiations, OECD digital governance initiatives, and carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs). Full article

Today, financial institutions’ architecture does not rely on one single technology. Instead, it uses a multi-technology approach in order to cover modern requirements and, at the same time, remain relevant. It integrates technologies such as relational databases, Big Data for analysis, and Cloud environments for distributed capacities within a complex data architecture. At the same time, due to European data governance regulations, governance mechanisms such as encryption, pseudonymization, and incremental versioning must be applied on each architectural layer in order to comply with strict European governance rules. In this study, the impact of data governance is assessed by applying these mechanisms from the data-ingestion level, using diverse data types such as structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, across relational databases, Big Data analysis, and Cloud distributed systems. In doing so, metrics such as execution time, CPU, and memory usage are assessed in order to properly evaluate the impact of governance mechanisms on financial systems. The results show that governance can be successfully integrated, provided these mechanisms are embedded at the architectural level, ensuring that performance, scalability, and compliance are maintained across the entire processing pipeline. Full article

Open Educational Resources (OER) are widely promoted as mechanisms for expanding access to knowledge and supporting sustainability in higher education. Yet their long-term viability remains constrained by fragmented governance, unstable funding arrangements, weak faculty incentives, policy gaps, and uneven digital infrastructure. This article develops a conceptual and policy-oriented framework that reconceptualizes OER as sustainable knowledge commons embedded within higher education systems rather than merely repositories of open content. Using an integrative review and thematic synthesis of global scholarship on OER sustainability, commons governance, and higher education policy, the study identifies four interrelated governance dimensions: institutional embedding, participatory stewardship, equitable access and inclusion, and long-term resource sustainability. The analysis shows that sustainable OER ecosystems depend not only on open licensing and technological platforms but also on coherent policy design, institutional alignment, academic recognition structures, and collaborative governance arrangements. Each dimension is associated with indicative governance mechanisms and policy indicators such as institutional OER strategies, faculty incentive programs, and shared digital infrastructure. The framework also recognizes institutional diversity, emphasizing that governance models must be adapted to different policy environments, academic cultures, and stages of OER adoption across higher education systems. By conceptualizing OER as governable knowledge commons, the article clarifies how open knowledge initiatives can con-tribute to social equity, educational resilience, and sustainable transformation in higher education. Full article

Micro-public space (MPS) regeneration is typically evaluated at the point of delivery, yet long-term performance depends on whether everyday stewardship can be sustained thereafter. This study reframes neighbourhood social capital as a governance–environment signal reflecting coordination capacity and examines whether residents’ willingness to participate in post-regeneration co-management is primarily appraisal-driven (perceived value, attitude, and perceived behavioural control) or coordination-driven via a residual direct channel consistent with routine governance. A cross-sectional survey of adults residing within walkable catchments of five regenerated MPS sites in Nan’an District, Chongqing, China ($N=477$), was conducted. An integrated Stimulus–Organism–Response × TPB model was estimated using WLSMV with ordered categorical indicators; indirect effects were assessed via bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals. Coordination capacity was strongly associated with perceived value, participation attitude, and perceived behavioural control. In the joint model, only perceived value retained a statistically reliable positive association with stewardship willingness, whereas the incremental contributions of attitude and perceived behavioural control were negligible once the stimulus was included. A residual direct association from coordination capacity to willingness persisted beyond the appraisal block, supporting a direct-dominant interpretation; bootstrap analyses yielded no robust evidence for mediation (BCa 95% CIs crossed zero). These findings suggest that sustaining regenerated micro-spaces requires low-friction governance designs that minimise coordination costs, reinforce soft accountability, and render institutional responsiveness visible to residents. Full article

The integration of Building Information Modeling [BIM] and Digital Twins [DT] has emerged as a central driver of digital transformation in the architecture, engineering, and construction sector. Yet, its systemic impact remains constrained by conceptual fragmentation and uneven institutional adoption. This study synthesizes contemporary BIM–DT scalability and each to identify dominant technological and application dimensions, examine the governance conditions shaping scalability, and develop an analytical framework that advances understanding beyond technology-centered syntheses. A two-stage analytical design was employed, combining bibliometric keyword co-occurrence analysis of 1295 Scopus-indexed records with systematic qualitative synthesis of 56 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2020 and 2025, following PRISMA guidelines. Six interrelated analytical dimensions characterize the current BIM–DT research landscape: BIM–DT integration advancements and applications; interoperability and visualization; safety enhancement; energy efficiency; data-driven decision making; and stakeholder collaboration. Across these dimensions, a persistent misalignment emerges between technological capability and organizational readiness, with deficiencies in standards, governance, and sociotechnical coordination constituting the principal barriers to large-scale deployment. The findings reframe BIM–DT convergence not as a discrete technological upgrade but as the emergence of a coordinated socio-technical information ecosystem spanning the full building lifecycle. By foregrounding governance conditions, data stewardship, and institutional coordination, this study extends understanding of how digital twins expand BIM from design coordination to operational governance and establishes a foundation for more systematic implementation of intelligent, resilient, and sustainable built-environment systems. Full article

Background: During the flu season, there is an increase in absenteeism due to illness, a drop in productivity, and a greater risk of the virus spreading among workers. Thus, the Italian Ministry of Health recommends vaccination for essential service workers. The University of Salerno, in collaboration with the local health authority of Salerno, offers free vaccination to its employees. Methods: A public health methodology for seasonal influenza vaccination in the workplace is presented—specifically in the university setting—with the aim of identifying individual, contextual, and organizational elements of the model that have promoted vaccination uptake. An ad hoc questionnaire was used (October–December 2025) to survey 399 academic employees, investigating seasonal influenza vaccination in the following aspects: recent personal experiences, motivations, vaccination experiences at university, sources of information, considerations regarding national and local vaccination campaigns, and level of vaccine confidence (VCI). Results: Seasonal influenza vaccination at the University is appreciated for its compatibility with working hours (66.1%), the availability of a platform that allows flexible booking (56.9%), the perception of safety in the environment (31.6%), the fact that the vaccine is free (17.4%), and the involvement of office/laboratory colleagues (5%). Participants appreciate the model and would apply it to other vaccinations at the University and in other institutional settings. A significant relationship (F = 7.24; df = 1; p < 0.05) exists between confidence in the vaccine and the sense of security experienced when receiving the vaccine in the workplace. Data analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS v.28 software. Conclusions: The model proposed can be applied to other institutional contexts, simplifying and facilitating access to vaccines by implementing vaccination campaigns tailored to specific work environments. Full article

The European Union (EU) relies heavily on voluntary tax compliance, yet evidence on how tax literacy (TL) and tax education (TE) relate to tax morale (TM) and voluntary tax compliance or compliance intentions (VTC) remains fragmented across partly disconnected strands of the literature. This systematic review examined EU-relevant evidence on the stakeholder contexts in which TL/TE are discussed in relation to TM and VTC, with particular attention to schools, communities, and public institutions. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020, searches in Scopus and Web of Science (2000–2025) applied two complementary query streams focused on TL/TE and TM/VTC-related mechanisms. The searches identified 1327 records; after deduplication and screening, 402 studies were included. Based on structured coding of titles, abstracts, and author keywords, the review maps patterns of emphasis and framing rather than causal effects. Public-institutional and education-related contexts were the most frequently signposted stakeholder environments, while digital and outreach-oriented delivery cues were more visible than classroom-based cues. Trust and fairness/justice dominated the explanatory vocabulary. Overall, the review supports an ecosystem-oriented interpretation of stakeholder coordination in EU tax literacy research. Full article

This study examines the economic consequences associated with the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the Iraqi banking sector. Motivated by growing evidence that the outcomes of IFRS adoption depend on institutional and market conditions, the study focuses on a bank-based emerging economy characterized by relatively underdeveloped capital markets and evolving enforcement mechanisms. Using a balanced panel of 24 banks listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange over the period 2014–2018, the analysis exploits the mandatory IFRS adoption in 2016 within a before–after regulatory framework. Panel regression techniques are employed to examine the associations between IFRS adoption and stock market liquidity, firm value, information asymmetry, and the cost of debt, while controlling for bank-specific characteristics and macroeconomic conditions. The results indicate that IFRS adoption is positively significantly associated with stock market liquidity, and negatively significantly associated with information asymmetry, consistent with improvements in the informational environment of Iraqi banks following enhanced disclosure and comparability. The findings also reveal a positive and significant relationship between IFRS adoption and the cost of debt, suggesting higher perceived financial risk by creditors. In contrast, no statistically significant association is observed between IFRS adoption and bank market valuation, highlighting the limited sensitivity of equity prices to accounting reforms in thin and institutionally constrained markets. Overall, the study contributes to the literature on the economic consequences of IFRS adoption by providing evidence from an underexplored emerging market and a highly regulated banking sector. The findings underscore the role of institutional context in shaping the outcomes of accounting standard convergence and offer policy-relevant insights for regulators and standard-setters in bank-oriented financial systems. Full article

This paper utilizes panel data of Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2006 to 2022 and measures regional digital infrastructure by the number of internet broadband access ports per capita. It systematically examines the moderating role of digital infrastructure in the relationship between labor protection policies and firms’ labor productivity. The findings are as follows: (1) Digital infrastructure exhibits a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the Labor Contract Law and firms’ labor productivity. This conclusion remains generally robust across multiple robustness tests and endogeneity treatments, and the direction of the results remains consistent after applying an instrumental variable approach to alleviate endogeneity concerns. (2) The digital transformation channel exhibits a negative relationship, indicating that compliance pressure associated with the institutional reform generates a short-term “crowding-out effect” on firms’ digital investment; the human capital channel shows a positive relationship, indicating that digital infrastructure strengthens the institutional effect by improving the level of urban human capital. (3) The moderating effect is particularly pronounced in cities with strong digital industry foundations, abundant fiscal resources, and firms that have not received government digital subsidies. These results provide empirical support for optimizing the supporting environment of labor protection policies, accelerating digital infrastructure development, and enhancing enterprise adaptability to institutional changes. Full article