Waste management has become a pressing environmental, social, and economic issue. In Ghana, the government has decentralized the waste management system to include private sector actors as key players to improve the collection, disposal, and recycling of waste. With this development, a heterogeneous population of entrepreneurs has engaged in waste recycling, achieving mixed results in terms of performance. The aim of this paper is to identify shared personality traits and characteristics of entrepreneurs that make certain firms engage in waste recycling more innovatively than others. An extensive literature review was used to identify these personality traits and characteristics, which were then modeled using upper echelon theory (UET) to investigate their impact on innovation performance. A regression analysis approach was adopted based on the data collected from 157 entrepreneurs’ founders, co-founders, and shareholders among the waste recycling firms in Ghana selected for the annual Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development (SEED) Award competition. The key contribution of this research is to better understand the relationship between entrepreneur traits and innovation performance. Given the fact that in small start-ups, the founder plays the most important role, this paper serves as a foundation for defining individual-level factors critical in sustaining sustainable innovation performance in the waste recycling sector. The results of this study will help shareholders and policymakers better understand and implement strategies for determining and selecting innovative waste recycling entrepreneurs.

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One of the most important ways to improve, update, and sustain teachers’ skills in an institution is via training. Nonetheless, despite the resources invested in training, learners’ mobilization of new learning after they return to work does not always reach expectations, in part because of a lack of learning transfer assessment tools. This study investigated the psychometric properties of the learning transfer inventory system (LTSI) in assessing the teachers’ transfer of COVID-19 prevention measures in Thai public school institutions. Participants were a sample of 700 in-service teachers (females = 54.8%; mean age = 36 years, SD = 15.41) who completed training on health code guidance for COVID-19 prevention in school. Results following confirmatory factor analysis, a test of the measurement invariance and measurement of the latent mean difference across gender, of the instrument yielded support for the hypothesized 16-factor structure. Empirical support for discriminant and convergent validity was strong. Additionally, we found a significant latent mean difference between male and female teachers related to the constructs peer support, supervisor sanction, and training design. The LTSI appears to yield valid and reliable scores for measuring the learning transfer of Thai teachers following in-service training.