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The harmonized balance between work and family is tough to reach in modern industrial societies because of increasing demands at work and in family settings. Previous studies analyzed work–family culture and its relationship with employees’ job performance without focusing on specific industries. Paralleled with the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs), this study aims to analyze the relationship between work–family culture and employees’ job performance in selected industries in Malaysia. This study surveyed 336 employees working in four industries in Peninsular Malaysia, and data were collected using a self-reported questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using two statistical analyses, i.e., descriptive and inferential statistic multiple linear regression by assisting statistical software, namely SPSS version 26. This study found that organizational time demands, and managerial support have a significant positive relationship with employees’ job performance. Moreover, the career consequences variable does not have a significant effect on employees’ job performance. Therefore, the results provided valuable insights into the work–family culture among employees with family responsibilities. Applied implications for managers are suggested to give full support to the employees while juggling their family matters. This study also contributes to the existing work–family culture literature. After a thorough analysis of this field, the researcher believed that other factors might significantly affect employees’ job performance, such as religiosity, working environment, and integrity in the organizations.

Innovation plays a key role in meeting the challenges of the future, but despite the unprecedented investment in innovation, Portugal has seen a decline in the various indicators that assess the country’s performance. This study aims to answer questions about the state of innovation in Portugal, based on the relevant global and European innovation indicators, comparing the country’s performance with that of Ireland, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. Using secondary data collected from the reports of the last four years, explanatory research was conducted based on statistical and graphical methods in order to establish causal relationships. The areas where the main changes have taken place are presented, highlighting the aspects in which Portugal stands out for superior or poor performance, providing a benchmark for the definition of policies to foster innovation in Portugal. The results demonstrate that institutions, business sophistication, and knowledge and technology score negatively, while creativity stands out as a strength. Environmental sustainability, firms’ investment in innovation, and the impact of innovation on sales are aspects that Portugal needs to improve; human capital and the attractiveness of the R&D system deserve positive remarks. It is fundamental to understand how Portugal is preparing for the future and what the country can learn from others. This study is limited by the specific period in analysis, which could affect causal relationships, and the historical perspective could provide guidelines to the understanding of the relative position of the country. This study contributes new perspectives and knowledge about the state of innovation in Portugal, providing clues to entrepreneurs, policy makers, and the scientific community.

Significant changes in society were emphasized as being required to achieve Sustainable Development Goals, a need which was further intensified with the emergence of the pandemic. The prospective society should be directed towards sustainable development, a process in which technology plays a crucial role. The proposed study discusses the technological potential for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals via disruptive technologies. This study further analyzes the outcome of disruptive technologies from the aspects of product development, health care transformation, a pandemic case study, nature-inclusive business models, smart cities and villages. These outcomes are mapped as a direct influence on Sustainable Development Goals 3, 8, 9 and 11. Various disruptive technologies and the ways in which the Sustainable Development Goals are influenced are elaborated. The investigation into the potential of disruptive technologies highlighted that Industry 5.0 and Society 5.0 are the most supportive development to underpin the efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The study proposes the scenario where both Industry 5.0 and Society 5.0 are integrated to form smart cities and villages where the prospects of achieving Sustainable Development Goals are more favorable due to the integrated framework and Sustainable Development Goals’ interactions. Furthermore, the study proposes an integrated framework for including new age technologies to establish the concepts of Industry 5.0 and Society 5.0 integrated into smart cities and villages. The corresponding influence on the Sustainable Development Goals are also mapped. A SWOT analysis is performed to assess the proposed integrated approach to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Ultimately, this study can assist the industrialist, policy makers and researchers in envisioning Sustainable Development Goals from technological perspectives.

Places affected by urban shrinkage are widely depicted as left behind places characterized by decline and decay. Refugees are generally constructed as victims or ‘dangerous other’. Hence, place-making and negotiations of belonging in shrinking cities are accompanied by multiple layers of stigmatization. Despite this contextual factor and even though many questions related to inter-group relations in shrinking cities are still unanswered, refugee-centered revitalization of shrinking cities is being discussed among city officials, planners and in the scientific community. This paper investigates local discourses on urban shrinkage and refugee arrival as contextual factors for negotiations of place and belonging, and connects to previous studies on the stigmatization of declining cities and the othering of refugees. It uses Nayak’s (2019) concept of re-scripting narratives to analyze whether acts of re-writing apply not only to stigmatizations of place, but marginalized groups as well. The paper finds that while dominant discourses on place are contested and at times re-scripted by local actors, discourses which construct refugees as other are reaffirmed. Confirming previous findings according to which stigma was passed on to other marginalized groups, it concludes that there is a need to consider dominant discourses and their negative impact on social cohesion in debates around refugee-centered revitalization.

The Human Mobility Transition model describes shifts in mobility dynamics and transport systems. The aspirational stage, ‘human urbanism’, is characterised by high active travel, universal public transport, low private vehicle use and equitable access to transport. We explored factors associated with travel behaviour in Africa and the Caribbean, investigating the potential to realise ‘human urbanism’ in this context. We conducted a mixed-methods systematic review of ten databases and grey literature for articles published between January 2008 and February 2019. We appraised study quality using Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklists. We narratively synthesized qualitative and quantitative data, using meta-study principles to integrate the findings. We identified 39,404 studies through database searching, mining reviews, reference screening, and topic experts’ consultation. We included 129 studies (78 quantitative, 28 mixed-methods, 23 qualitative) and 33 grey literature documents. In marginalised groups, including the poor, people living rurally or peripheral to cities, women and girls, and the elderly, transport was poorly accessible, travel was characterised by high levels of walking and paratransit (informal public transport) use, and low private vehicle use. Poorly controlled urban growth (density) and sprawl (expansion), with associated informality, was a salient aspect of this context, resulting in long travel distances and the necessity of motorised transportation. There were existing population-level assets in relation to ‘human urbanism’ (high levels of active travel, good paratransit coverage, low private vehicle use) as well as core challenges (urban sprawl and informality, socioeconomic and gendered barriers to travel, poor transport accessibility). Ineffective mobility systems were a product of uncoordinated urban planning, unregulated land use and subsequent land use conflict. To realise ‘human urbanism’, integrated planning policies recognising the linkages between health, transport and equity are needed. A shift in priority from economic growth to a focus on broader population needs and the rights and wellbeing of ordinary people is required. Policymakers should focus attention on transport accessibility for the most vulnerable.

This study assesses the bibliometric analysis of sustainable waqf development that highlights new topics and provides insightful commentary for the waqf’s strategic growth and ongoing research. This work uses bibliometric analysis to count the number of studies that have been carried out in this domain and determine whether they have advanced knowledge on sustainable waqf development. The study specifically highlights the depth to which academics have investigated these relationships and maps to arrive at a conceptual framework of the area being studied. Bibliometric analysis within 30 years of a publication generally arises in three main areas, namely waqf fundamentals, analysis of cash waqf, as well as studies on the numerous waqf uses in Islamic social finance. Whereas analysis within 107 years shows publications concerning waqf increased after the year 2010, from 2017 onwards, despite the rising number of total publications, total citations decreased. Thus, this study focuses on the current ten years from 2011–2020 and dissects 281 papers to study the dynamic topic for current mass research. Three main areas are highlighted in the early study, namely, sustainable development, regional planning, and information management. At the end of the study, the findings show the state of development and the top trends in influence, as well as the major journals, articles, subjects, authors, and countries. Both scholars and practitioners can benefit from the analysis and graphical presentations since they will be able to better grasp the state of the art of waqf in the experiential and current digital eras.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has faced a persistent fiscal deficit for the last three decades. In the vast literature, a question is still arising: is ASEAN’s fiscal deficit alarming? This study explores the fiscal deficit with different perspectives to provide guidelines for policymakers to answer this question. For this purpose, we offer fiscal causal hypotheses estimates, including the contribution of Government expenditures (GEs) and Government revenues (GRs) towards sustainable economic growth; we then evaluated two additional deficit hypotheses, the impact of fiscal deficit and deficit financing on inflation. This empirical analysis covered annual financial data for the years 1990 to 2019 of ten member countries of ASEAN by applying panel econometric techniques, which include unit root Levin, Lin, and Chu (LLC) and Im, Pesaran, and Shin (IPS) tests; the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model for cointegration; and the Dumitrescu–Hurlin (DH) test for causality. The findings revealed that government expenditures contribute more towards sustainable economic growth while government revenues are inversely related to growth in the long run. The DH causality test supported the fiscal synchronization hypothesis and current account targeting hypothesis in ASEAN. The interest rate is found as a moderator between fiscal and current account deficits. Furthermore, the findings showed that the fiscal deficit of ASEAN could generate inflation while relying on outstanding debt. Overall, our findings concluded that the fiscal deficit of ASEAN is alarming based on the behavior of government revenues, interest rate dynamics, political stability, and outstanding debt in deficit financing.