ESG strategies in tourism enterprises: A systematic review and systems-based synthesis of sustainable management practices

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure becomes vital for banks to be transparent and accountable for their investments and lending decisions to shareholders, regulators, and society. The potential enhancement of shareholder value through ESG disclosure is still inconsistent. Empirical studies on the association between ESG disclosure and financial performance are mixed and limited in emerging economies. This study aims to examine whether ESG disclosure impacts the financial performance of 24 Vietnamese commercial banks in terms of return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and net interest margin (NIM). The study uses the feasible generalized least squares estimation method based on panel data from 2018 to 2022. The study employs content analysis on 12 themes related to environmental, social, and governance pillars to score policy disclosure based on the Fair Finance Guide Methodology. The results highlight the positive effects of ESG policy disclosure, individual environment disclosure (E), and individual governance disclosure (G) on bank financial performance. Notably, ESG, E, and G have the largest influence on ROE, with coefficients of 0.051, 0.036, and 0.027, respectively, at a 5% significance level. However, the study does not provide evidence of a statistically significant association between social disclosure and financial performance. These results provide empirical evidence for regulators and bank managers to shape ESG policies and practices aligning with international standards.

Acknowledgment
ESG disclosure score of 11 banks as primary data in this study is conducted under the project coordinated by the Fair Finance Vietnam coalition, as part of Fair Finance International.

Academic resilience and emotional intelligence are considered important personal resources for furthering students’ academic performance. However, many educational organizations seem to trivialize the performance implications of these constructs in teachings and curriculum. Consequently, it can decrease not just their academic performance but also their employability, as they lack the generic competencies to adapt and survive in a stressful context. Even so, empirical evidence on integrating academic resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance remains unexplored in the Nigerian university context. Therefore, the study aimed to investigate the linkages between academic resilience, emotional intelligence, and academic performance in Nigeria. The partial least square (PLS) modeling method was utilized for testing the stated hypotheses with data collected from 179 final year undergraduate students in the regular B.Sc. Business Administration and B.Sc. Marketing program at Delta State University, Nigeria. From the PLS results, the study reported that academic resilience was positively related to emotional intelligence (β = 0.125, p = 0.007), academic resilience (β = 0.231, p = 0.000) and emotional intelligence (β = 0.260, p = 0.000) were positively related to academic performance, and emotional resilience mediated the positive relationship between academic resilience and academic performance (β = 0.057, p = 0.005). While academic resilience predicted academic performance, it also predicted emotional intelligence, which affected academic performance significantly and positively.

Informal Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in their respective economies over the world particularly in the African continent. This paper reviews various theories on SMEs towards understanding the potential of the informal sector in the context of African countries. The paper uses a theoretical approach for the purpose of assessing the challenges that have affected the development of the informal SMEs sector over the years in both the developing and developed world. Economically developing countries in Africa pose unique challenges to informal SMEs development compared to the developed countries. The paper reviews the theories that define the rise to informality in Africa by identifying the key determinants for the emergence of informal SMEs. A conceptual framework for assessing informal SME’s potential for Africa is developed. The conceptual framework is based on the Fishbone diagram developed by Kaoru Ishikawa (1986). This paper discusses the intricacies of the applicability of the proposed conceptual framework to assess the potential of the informal SMEs in Africa and the way forward for the formalization debate.