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China has emerged as the world's second-largest economy due to rapid industrial expansion and phenomenal economic growth of China in recent decades. Though, this exponential economic turnaround has been fueled by widespread energy consumption, making China among the largest pollutant emitters in the world. Chinese enterprises have come under greater scrutiny and the Government has mandated Chinese companies to undertake environmental protection investment. This study aims to explore the relationship between environmental protection investment and enterprise innovation by taking evidence from Chinese listed firms.

The data of 2,568 Chinese A-share listed firm-year observations were collected from the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges during 2008–2016. This study employed ordinary least square and panel data fixed effects techniques to ascertain the association between proposed variables.

The authors' findings conjecture the crowding-out effects of environmental investments on enterprise innovation-related expenditures. Furthermore, additional empirical testing reveals that Research and Development (R&D) undertakings of state-owned and politically connected enterprises are not affected by environmental investments. Likewise, corporate innovation activities are not negatively influenced by environmental investments in polluting industries. The study findings offer fresh insights to regulators, corporate managers and stakeholders. The authors' results are robust to alternate econometric specifications and alternate variable specifications.

This study makes the following contributions toward the extant literature. First, the study investigates if there is a crowding-out effect of spending on environmental protection in the current period and the innovation expenditure in the upcoming period. Empirical results confirm that there exists a trade-off between both types of spending, implying that the spending on environmental protection will negatively influence the spending on innovation. Second, the study deepens the analysis in considering other influences in this relationship. For instance, the authors' separately consider the aforementioned trade-off in state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises. The study also examines the mediating influence of corporate political connections and industry attributes, whether or not these influence the relationship between the actual spending on environmental protection and the upcoming spending on innovation.

Key enabling technologies (KETs) are a set of six technological components that work together to address social challenges and build advanced for sustainable economies. Industry 5.0, the next industrial development, is designed to capitalize on specialists' unique creativity while also collaborating with powerful, intelligent, and precise technologies. Industry 5.0 outsourced repetitive and monotonous activities to robots/machines requiring employees to perform activities that involve critical thinking and are based on the 6R (Recognize, Reconsider, Realize, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle), to improve production quality. With numerous supporting technical advancements, advanced and quick manufacturing concentrating on the interaction of machines and humans may be produced. Maintaining healthcare and nursing care, evaluating patients' health requirements using KETs, and giving care with manpower are all major advancements in Industry 5.0 today. Future studies may focus on providing healthcare using mainly technology and, therefore, no human workers. This chapter highlights healthcare advances in Industry 5.0, where KETs and people collaborate to create and innovate. In this framework, the purpose of this chapter is to present the deployment of KETs in the nursing patient care process.

In this chapter, the authors present several current issues that are representative of chinks’ in the armor of university administration today. This study brings into attention the importance of philosophy, society, development and education that serve to strengthen the operational–development nexus in higher education institutions. The objectives are (i) to draw the attention of administrators to these “chinks” in the armor of university operations; (ii) to indicate how their resolution can strengthen the operations–development nexus; and (iii) to encourage continuous reflection on the background of better understandings of a philosophy of management, society, development and education.

This study aims to examine the relationship between digital financial literacy (DFL) and entrepreneurial performance in Sri Lanka. In order to identify the gap, this study has done a systematic literature review. Accordingly, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to bridge this gap. A survey of 385 small and medium business enterprises was conducted in Sri Lanka, and a descriptive analysis, correlational analysis, and partial least squares model was used for data analysis for two models. The first model examines the relationship between DFL and performance and the second model examines Access, Mobile literacy, and social media literacy and performance. Findings of this study includes DFL level is average in Sri Lankan SMEs. The measurement model is evaluated in two models and ensures reliability and validity. The results of the structural model of the first model reveal a positive relationship between DFL and entrepreneurial performance. The second model reveals the positive relationship between access and entrepreneurial performance. This research provides guidance on how DFL can improve SMEs performance which is important to achieve success in current businesses which faced a pandemic situation plus distress situation in Sri Lanka. Based on a systematic literature review, there is no empirical evidence about the relationship between DFL and entrepreneurial performance using the TAM model in the Sri Lankan context perhaps in the international context. This identified gap is bridged in this study in the Sri Lankan context.

The future of human society has to take into account on the one hand, the natural requirements of the society as a whole, and, on the other hand, the influences generated by economic, social, informational factors but also in relation to the environment. Therefore, the future is seen and described in relation to the need to create the conditions for achieving sustainable development goals. The unpredictable evolution and uncertainties of recent years explain the need to include in the decisions of organizations, responsibly applied approaches. In order to achieve and maintain a balance between the interests of various actors on a global scale, it is necessary to practice responsible management, which deals with both the management of current critical issues worldwide, but also in relation to the need to ensure living conditions and the prosperity of future generations. Thus, as an adequate response of companies and organizations of various types to these complex challenges is integrated as a defining element of business strategies a principle of responsible management called social responsibility. This means that, through the elaborated decisions, these companies have to find a way of treatment balanced between the fulfillment of their own financial objectives and the social obligation of the contributions of these entities to the sustainable development of the economy in which they operate. This results, in fact, in the large-scale development and implementation of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). On the other hand, the functioning of all companies in the realities of the present times, characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity & ambiguity (VUCA) requires significant efforts and resources on their part, so that, by collecting an important and comprehensive volume of data, there is the possibility of generating reliable forecasts.

Industry 4.0 with artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, and automation are giving way to Industry 5.0 which places emphasis on workers' well-being, people, and society. The new era accentuates interaction between humans and smart machines to drive prosperity and induce sustainable contribution of industry to society. It must build a resilient economy to cope with future uncertainties or external shocks. Moreover, the sustainability effort of companies demanded by consumers, employees, shareholders, governments, and civil society requires sustainability transformation of business strategies. Applying sustainability principles in product design implies the consideration of a product's entire life cycle. Technologies accelerate sustainable production and support using natural resources efficiently taking into consideration planetary boundaries. This condition also makes for a novel perception of products, including financial products. Under the current circumstances of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, the focus on consumers and recognition of their dominance play a pivotal role in business models to maintain customer relationships. Thus, the digital, sustainable, human-centric industry is emerging. This chapter deals with digital products to enable twin transition and accomplish a sustainable business strategy simultaneously. It examines the reciprocal reinforcement of sustainability and digitalization and discusses the impact of digital sustainability on products. In this sense, this chapter also outlines the business contribution to sustainable development through digitalization. Finally, a holistic model for a hypothetical financial remittance product is offered to demonstrate how a digital product can contribute to sustainable development.

In the current scenario, cybersecurity issues have emerged to be a major challenge for firms to deal with. The increased use of technologies has increased radically the volume and typology of information produced, exchanged, and managed by firms thus creating conditions for cybersecurity incidents or information breaches. In this situation, it becomes paramount for firms to recognize cybersecurity risks and be prepared to prevent them through the implementation of approaches and technologies able to ensure a high level of protection.

In this chapter, we provide a framework for analyzing and managing cybersecurity risks. We employed a case study strategy to understand how the risk analysis process is carried out within an Information Security company. The study and observations obtained from this case study have permitted to define a framework useful for SME to deal with cybersecurity issues.

In the new economy, governed by technological progress and informational abundance, e-government service represents one of the drivers of the digital economy and society. The government and its institutions have the role of stimulating, leading, and controlling the process of transition to the digital society, which is a key component for the future prosperity and resilience of the European Union (EU). With focus on a better functioning of society by improving the citizens' access and use of e-government services, in this work we aim to identify the factors that influence the online interaction of individuals with public authorities in the EU member states. We used panel data for the EU member states in the period 2013–2021 to investigate the determinants of individuals' interaction with public authorities through institutional websites, using clustering regression with fixed effects, which allows both the clustering of the states and obtaining different slope parameters for each cluster. The results indicated the grouping of the EU states in an optimal number of two clusters, and the fixed effects regression clustering pointed out different coefficients for the two clusters, indicating distinct patterns. The main factors that influence the online interaction of citizens with public authorities are related to internet use, education, and government effectiveness, but the impact is different for the two clusters, depending on the specifics of the component countries.