This study aims to explore the direct impact of the digital orientation, Internet of Things (IoT) and digital platforms on the sustainable digital innovation in the context of the digital economy and frugal environment. This study also investigated the mediating role of the digital platforms in these relations. The study was based on the quantitative research design and data were collected from the 397 CEOs and managing directors of Small and Medium Enterprises in Pakistan. Correlation and structural equation modeling approaches were applied for the analysis and testing of the hypotheses. Results revealed that the digital orientation, IoT and digital platform are major antecedents of the sustainable digital innovation. Results also show that the digital platforms mediate between both digital orientation-sustainable digital innovation link and IoT-sustainable digital innovation link. The rapid pace of change in the technology has forced the business organizations to think out of box and align their operational mechanism accordingly. The need for the sustainable digital innovation is a major need of the current decade for meeting the increasing demands of the society in a sustainable way. Organizations, especially SMEs, should be able to deal with these challenges and rapid technological transformations through cost effective frugal business models. The frugal innovation is an important element of sustainable digital innovation enables SMEs to reduce resources usage and waste and to enhance sustainable economic activities. In this way, they can develop and gain advantages in this highly competitive digital environment. This is the first study showing the bright harmony of the digital orientation, IoT and digital platforms for achieving the sustainable digital innovation in the rapid evolving digital economy.

Abstract:The Europe 2020 strategy is the EU strategy for sustainable and inclusive growth, for fighting the structural weaknesses of the European economies, and for improving their competitiveness. In this paper, we determined the most important ratios of the Europe 2020 Strategy impacting on economic performance expressed as the growth of the GDP per capita, and on economic competitiveness expressed as the share of the countries' exports in total world exports for some selected Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania) using co-integration tests and OLS panel estimations with a dataset between 2004 (after four of these selected countries acceded to EU) and 2015 (the latest available data for all the ratios we used in our analysis). Our findings show that the tertiary level of education is the most important factor, positively correlated with both endogenous variables mentioned above. Other important factors for achieving the economic performance and competitiveness goals are the school dropout ratio, the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption, and the employment rate.

This study aims to investigate the direct impact of green motives (GM) and green business strategies (GBS) on sustainable development (SD) in the hospitality sector. It explores the direct links between GM and SD. Moreover, the mediating role of GBS between GM and SD was tested. The research relies on the stakeholders’ theory, which states that the organization’s success and future development depends on the satisfaction of stakeholders. Data were collected from 451 top managers and owners from 54 hotels (5, 4 and 3-star hotels) operating in Pakistan. Quantitative analysis including correlation, regression, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model techniques were used. The mediating role of GBS was assessed using the bootstrapping method. Results proved that GM and GBS enable hotel industry to achieve the targets of SD. Finding also proved that GBS act as a mediator between the GM and SD link. The hotel industry needs attention to achieve the targets of SD and customers’ inclination towards more hygienic and environmental issues after the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic situation has forced the hotel industry to adapt GBS initiated through GM. The current research articulated this upcoming issue and offered a SD model for the hotel industry.

The aim of this paper is to find out if the high economic growth rates achieved by the CEE countries are based either on consumption or on investments, considering many exogenous factors that impact on the economic growth and how these factors can contribute to the employment process in the CEE economies to stress if these trends of economic growth and employment are sustainable in the long run. We performed two Panel Least Squares and Pool Least Squares estimations to determine the impact of the exogenous variables on the economic growth (as GDP per capita growth) and on the unemployment rate in the short and long run, depending on the lags of the exogenous variables used in the analysis. We used yearly data series during 2004-2017 for eight selected CEE countries. Our results show that private consumption is positively related with economic growth in the short run, but it doesn't support the job creation process, in the same way as the savings rate can't determine positive effects on the employment. Public spending is strongly and negatively correlated with economic growth and positively correlated with the unemployment rate in the CEE region, while the net export is weakly impacting on the economic growth in the CEE region and doesn't support the employment process in this area. The impact of the domestic investments on the economic growth is weaker in the CEE area than the impact of both private and public spending, but they are positively correlated with the economic growth and negatively correlated with the unemployment rate, while the correlation of the foreign direct investments (FDIs) with both economic growth and unemployment is very weak, as it is the case of net exports. We conclude that the economic growth in the CEE area is mainly based on the private consumption in the short run but the private consumption doesn't support the job creation process either in the long run or in the short run. The qualitative factors included in the analysis by using global competitiveness index (corruption control, bureaucracy, infrastructure quality, governance effectiveness, political stability, ARTICLE HISTORY

In this paper we examined the interaction between greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear energy, coal energy, urban agglomeration, and economic growth in Pakistan by utilizing time series data during 1972–2019. The stationarity of the variables was tested through unit root tests, while the ARDL (autoregressive distributed lag) method with long and short-run estimations was applied to reveal the linkages between variables. A unidirectional association between all variables was revealed by performing a Granger causality test under the vector error correction model (VECM) that was extracted during the short-run estimate. Furthermore, the stepwise least squares technique was also utilized to check the robustness of the variables. The findings of long-run estimations showed that GHG emissions, coal energy, and urban agglomeration have an adversative association with economic growth in Pakistan, while nuclear energy showed a dynamic association with the economic growth. The outcomes of short-run estimations also show that nuclear energy has a constructive association with economic growth, while the remaining variables exposed an adversative linkage to economic growth in Pakistan. Similarly, the Granger causality test under the vector error correction model (VECM) outcomes exposes that all variables have unidirectional association. Furthermore, the outcomes of the stepwise least squares technique reveals that GHG emissions and coal energy have an adverse association with economic growth, and variables nuclear energy and urban agglomeration have a productive linkage to the economic growth in Pakistan. GHG emissions are no doubt an emerging issue globally; therefore, conservative policies and financial support are needed to tackle this issue. Despite the fact that Pakistan contributes less to greenhouse gas emissions than industrialized countries, the government must implement new policies to address this problem in order to contribute to environmental sustainability while also enhancing economic development.