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The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were developed in 2015 and serve as the main guide for achieving the 2030 Agenda. This paper analyses the impact of corporate governance (CG) and financial performance (FP) on SDG prioritisation, taking FP as a mediating variable and categorising the SDGs by the five pillars (5 Ps) commonly used for this purpose: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership. For this purpose, structural equations (PLS-SEM) were applied, using a sample of 312 Latin-American firms. The study results show there is a positive relationship between FP, CG and SDG prioritisation. Moreover, FP has a partial mediating role in the relationship between CG and SDG prioritisation. This study is innovative in the context of emerging Latin American economies and suggests paths for future research on this topic that would be of interest to academics, regulators and industry professionals. This paper highlights the important role of CG in helping achieve the objectives of the 2030 Agenda in Latin America. Furthermore, the study has implications for policymakers, showing that CG may enhance companies' FP and their commitment to the SDGs. Accordingly, regulators should establish minimum requirements for all companies regarding the structure and practices of CG. The study findings also have implications for stakeholders and responsible investors, suggesting that companies' level of sustainable development can be assessed via their CG policies.

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Studies have shown that energy consumption from economic development leads to an increase in carbon emissions. Emerging economies, as important sources of carbon emissions with high growth potential, play a crucial role in global decarbonisation efforts. However, the spatial pattern and evolution trend of carbon emissions in emerging economies have not been studied in depth. Therefore, this paper uses the improved gravitational model and carbon emission data from 2000 to 2018 to construct a spatial correlation network of carbon emissions in 30 emerging economies around the world, aiming to reveal the spatial characteristics and influencing factors of carbon emissions at the national level. The results show that the spatial network structure of carbon emissions in emerging economies is closely linked, forming a "big network" of interconnection. Amongst them, Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Estonia, etc. are at the centre of the network and play a leading role. Geographical distance, economic development level, population density, and scientific and technological level have a significant impact on the formation of spatial correlation between carbon emissions. Further use of GeoDetector shows that the explanatory power of two-factor interaction on centrality is greater than that of a single factor, indicating that a single economic development cannot well enhance the influence of countries in the carbon emission network, and needs to be combined with factors such as industrial structure and scientific and technological level. These results are helpful to understand the correlation between carbon emissions between countries from the perspective of the whole and part and provide a reference for optimizing the carbon emission network structure in the future.

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Abstract Introduction: Most successful cases of COVID-19 pandemic mitigation and handling have relied on extensive reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). However, many emerging economies have struggled with current molecular testing demands due to economic, technical and technological constraints. Objective: To define a potential diagnostic protocol to increase testing capacity in current and post-pandemic conditions. Methods: We reviewed the literature, patents and commercial applications, for alternatives. Results: We found a good potential in saliva samples, viral inactivation and quick RNA extraction by heating; the use of an isothermal technology such as loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and naked eye test-result visualization by in-tube colorimetry or turbidity. Conclusions: Saliva samples with quick RNA extraction by heating and colorimetric LAMP are promising options for countries with economic and infrastructure limitations.

Resumen Introducción: La mayoría de los casos exitosos de mitigación y manejo de la pandemia de COVID-19 se han dado mediante pruebas basadas en la reacción en cadena de la polimerasa cuantitativa (RT-qPCR por sus siglas en inglés). Sin embargo, muchas economías emergentes han tenido problemas con las demandas actuales de pruebas moleculares debido a limitaciones económicas, técnicas y tecnológicas. Objetivo: Definir un protocolo de diagnóstico potencial para aumentar la capacidad de prueba en las condiciones actuales y posteriores a la pandemia. Métodos: Revisamos la literatura, las patentes y las aplicaciones comerciales, en busca de alternativas. Resultados: Encontramos un buen potencial en muestras de saliva, inactivación viral y extracción rápida de ARN por calentamiento; el uso de una tecnología isotérmica como la amplificación isotérmica mediada por horquillas (LAMP, por sus siglas en inglés) y la visualización del resultado de la prueba a simple vista mediante colorimetría o turbidez en el tubo. Conclusiones: Las muestras de saliva con extracción rápida de ARN por calentamiento y LAMP colorimétrico son opciones prometedoras para países con limitaciones económicas y de infraestructura.

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Purpose: Both psychological empowerment and job stress have been the subjects of great concern, studied mainly in developed countries. In emerging economies, few studies have contributed to the knowledge of the relationship between these two constructs. This study analyzed the relationship between the dimensions of psychological empowerment and job stress in tenured professors from public higher education institutions in Ecuador during 2019, providing insights for achieving better results regarding the productivity and well-being of teachers. This research seeks to bridge the knowledge gap concerning psychological empowerment and job stress within an academic context in an emerging economy. Methods: In this quantitative study, a confirmatory model was proposed. Correlation analysis was used to investigate whether psychological empowerment dimensions are related to job stress. Data were collected from a sample of 200 tenured professors working at public universities located in Zone 3 of Ecuador in 2019. The instrument applied for psychological empowerment was proposed by Spreitzer, composed of four dimensions-meaning, competence, impact, and autonomy. For job stress, the Occupational Stress Inventory-Revised (OSI-R) instrument applied was proposed and revised by Osipow. Results: Through structural equation modeling with partial least squares, it was possible to demonstrate that psychological empowerment reduces levels of job stress only when it is perceived that there is autonomy, fewer limitations, and more freedom. No evidence was identified that other components of psychological empowerment, such as meaning, competence, and impact, are related to job stress. Conclusion: The results indicated that the model used to explain the relationship between these variables had weak predictive power. Furthermore, only one research hypothesis is accepted. Finally, these findings are corroborated and explained by the different perspectives presented by various authors.

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In this research, we build two food systems datasets in Mexico; The first one describes the structure of agricultural production units and the second one describes food security aspects of the rural population in these agricultural production units. We also build a third dataset, consisting of path diagrams and path coefficients (derived from Structural Equation Modeling) that relate the first dataset to the second dataset in the four most populated ecoregions of Mexico. The description of the path models and the insights they bring to the current state of food security in Mexican rural households are detailed in an associated article entitled "Is food security primarily associated with smallholder agriculture or with commercial agriculture?: An approach to the case of Mexico using structural equation modeling" (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103091). The agricultural variables (in the first dataset) include farm size, destination of the farmer's production, cultivation practice / water management, predominant source of income of the household, land tenure type, crop diversity, agricultural surface expansion, and the presence of forest cover. They are based on the primary data of the full, latest available agricultural census in Mexico and corresponding official land use / land cover data. The second dataset consists of four food security indicators designed and built for the first food security model in Mexico that incorporates food availability, food accessibility and food utilization aspects. They include the Food Self-sufficiency Index (the balance between food production and food consumption), the Food Access Index (inversely related to marginalization), the Entitlement to Public Health Care index, and the Undernutrition Infrequency index (related to hospital sickness records). We provide the path tables and diagrams that describe the links between the agricultural structure and food security. These diagrams provide the first nationwide statistical evidence for the prominent role of smallholder agriculture in rural food security at the national level and at ecoregion scale for a country of the global South. In order to further investigate the structure of the agricultural production units and their relationships with socio-economic, territorial and landscape data, artificial intelligence (i.e. data mining and machine learning) techniques could be performed on this compendium of datasets. The food security data may stir the development of more food security models in Mexico in relation to other drivers such as consumption habits and non-agricultural activities of rural households.

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The current knowledge society has driven an unprecedented mobility of people, especially scientists, from emerging economies to developed countries. This mobility can allow the development of human talent and the access to first class infrastructure and resources, but it can also mean a loss for emerging economies due to the phenomenon of brain drain. To counteract this situation, some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have developed models for the articulation of their scientific diaspora in projects and programs, with the aim of exchanging knowledge and capitalizing on human and technical resources to advance science, technology and innovation systems. Likewise, science diplomacy has become a tool for interlinking the work of various actors in order to advance the solution of national, transnational or global problems through scientific advice. Scientific diasporas are vital in new structures of cooperation, enabling them to innovate and solve problems jointly, advising their countries of origin and articulating policies and programs. This research seeks to analyze the interactions and initiatives identified between the organized scientific diaspora from Latin America and the Caribbean and their countries of origin in relation to science diplomacy processes, providing recommendations and proposals for public policy to improve the interaction between the diaspora and the governments of their countries of origin. Results show that diaspora organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean engage with governmental and non-state actors and are active science diplomacy stakeholders promoting the scientific developments of their country or their researchers, as well as enabling access to research resources creating alliances for scientific, institutional and academic collaborations. In the cases studied, these efforts are planned and executed by the diaspora without responding to any science diplomacy strategy of the country. Policies and programs are needed to effectively link the scientific diaspora organizations to the interests of the countries.

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Little has been investigated about Science Diplomacy (SD) in emerging economies, more specifically on governance schemes useful for organizing intersecting actors, practices, conceptions and suggestions of the future in foreign affairs and Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in public administration sectors. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the "texture and nature" of SD initiatives in emerging economies through the eyes of relevant actors involved or reflecting about them in Colombia. The aim of this paper is to propose a general governance scheme for SD in emerging economies and its potential instrumentation for a policy-mix. In Colombia, SD initiatives are very fragmented, and are not part of the priorities of the Colombian state, however the increasing interest of an embryonic practitioner and scholar community working in the topic make necessary this work. A phenomenological perspective combined with a single case study research methodology is used to gain a very accurate description of the state of the situation of SD in Colombia. Policy document review and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 relevant actors to understand the conceptions, practices, and suggestions for the future of SD in Colombia. The study results show that SD actors in Colombia are scattered, practices strongly related to traditional cooperation diplomatic activities and the need to give a function to SD for capacity building, better global intermediation and the development of new knowledge, in particular promoting SD abilities in the scientific community. In addition, data expresses the need to cultivate a multi-stakeholder working group for such a purpose. The study reflects on the need of a policy mix for SD in emerging economies. It proposes a general governance scheme for it, a potential instrumentation founded on research participant future suggestions, and a set of practical recommendations and policy implications. Conclusions and further research questions are set, pointing out the importance of including non-conventional diplomacy actors and knowledge, and the need to inquire rationales behind possible SD policy mixes in the southern world.

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The objective of this article is three-fold. First, it aims at identifying the main teaching practices and information and communication technologies (ICTs) used to teach Operations Management (OM) in emerging economies during COVID-19 outbreak. Second, it investigates the effect of contextual characteristics on the adoption level of those teaching practices and ICTs. Third, this study examines the relationship between the adoption of ICTs and OM teaching practices during COVID-19 outbreak. Expectedly, schools around the world have pivoted to online learning and digital classrooms. Thus, OM lecturers and professors located in emerging economies that have been teaching during COVID-19 outbreak were surveyed. The collected data was analyzed through multivariate techniques. Findings indicate that lecturers and professors have been remarkably adopting specific teaching practices and ICTs to teach OM. Nevertheless, when considering the contextual characteristics of the universities, departments, and lecturers/professors, the adoption level of those practices and ICTs may significantly vary, especially depending on subject type and teaching experience. Moreover, we empirically verified that ICTs positively relate with OM teaching practices in emerging economies, although in a much less extent than expected. This research provides OM instructors guidelines to better plan their courses and subjects in face of extreme disruptive moments, such as the one caused by the COVID-19. Understanding how the concurrent utilization of ICTs and teaching practices helps OM programs to continue developing their activities is particularly important for universities located in emerging economies, since they are more likely to struggle with resources scarcity and more financially humble students.

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Waste pickers (WPs) are considered a strong suggestion to become practical mediators of the circular economy (CE) in emerging economies. This new recommendation intends to strengthen WPs' role in household solid waste management while supporting the establishment of CE. Municipalities often do not recognize WPs as service providers and frequently discriminate against them. In such a challenging situation, could a socio-integrated recycling system with integrated WPs be a robust strategy to boost a CE? Belo Horizonte is a learning platform to answer this research question because this Brazilian city has a long-term commitment to social integration. The work applies the combination of participatory observation, multi-year material flow analysis (MFA), and structural agent analysis (SAA) to identify allocative resources, legitimation, and cultural values that are fundamental to operationalizing CE. The MFA results show a significant increase in waste generation, but not more than 4% of recyclable waste generated could be collected as input for WP cooperatives. The number of WPs registered in cooperatives, the market price of recyclables, and regulatory legislation for packaging products are classified as barriers for the successful extension of a socio-integrated recycling system identified in the SAA. This study suggests that knowing the target group (e.g., city hall and industries) brings opportunities for WPs to disclose niches (based on a small network of agents with expectations and visions) and can potentially create socio-technical regimes to implement a conscious and sustainable CE.

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The objective of this work is to elucidate various essential drugs in the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) countries. It discusses the opportunities and challenges of the existing biotech infrastructure and the production of drugs and vaccines in member states of the BRICS. This research is based on a systematic literature review between the years 2000 and 2014 of documents retrieved from the databases Embase, PubMed/Medline, Global Health, and Google Scholar, and the websites of relevant international organizations, research institutions and philanthropic organizations. Findings vary from one member state to another. These include useful comparison between the BRICS countries in terms of pharmaceuticals expenditure versus total health expenditure, local manufacturing of drugs/vaccines using technology and know-how transferred from developed countries, and biotech entrepreneurial collaborations under the umbrella of the BRICS region. This study concludes by providing recommendations to support more of inter collaborations among the BRICS countries as well as between BRICS and many developing countries to shrink drug production costs. In addition, this collaboration would also culminate in reaching out to poor countries that are not able to provide their communities and patients with cost-effective essential medicines.

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Business opportunities in the household waste sector in emerging economies still evolve around the activities of bulk collection and tipping with an open material balance. This research, conducted in Brazil, pursued the objective of shifting opportunities from tipping to reverse logistics in order to close the balance. To do this, it illustrated how specific knowledge of sorted waste composition and reverse logistics operations can be used to determine realistic temporal and quantitative landfill diversion targets in an emerging economy context. Experimentation constructed and confirmed the recycling trilogy that consists of source separation, collection infrastructure and reverse logistics. The study on source separation demonstrated the vital difference between raw and sorted waste compositions. Raw waste contained 70% biodegradable and 30% inert matter. Source separation produced 47% biodegradable, 20% inert and 33% mixed material. The study on collection infrastructure developed the necessary receiving facilities. The study on reverse logistics identified private operators capable of collecting and processing all separated inert items. Recycling activities for biodegradable material were scarce and erratic. Only farmers would take the material as animal feed. No composting initiatives existed. The management challenge was identified as stimulating these activities in order to complete the trilogy and divert the 47% source-separated biodegradable discards from the landfills.

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Amidst the growing literature on global health, much has been written recently about the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) countries and their involvement and potential impact in global health, particularly in relation to development assistance. Rather less has been said about countries' motivations for involvement in global health negotiations, and there is a notable absence of evidence when their motivations are speculated on. This article uses an existing framework linking engagement in global health to foreign policy to explore differing levels of engagement by BRICS countries in the global health arena, with a particular focus on access to medicines. It concludes that countries' differing and complex motivations reinforce the need for realistic, pragmatic approaches to global health debates and their analysis. It also underlines that these analyses should be informed by analysis from other areas of foreign policy.

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