Christian Harrison

The study critically examined the effect of the pandemic and lockdown on the performance and operations of farmers' markets in Southwest, Nigeria. Primary data were used and the information was sourced using questionnaires. A multistage sampling technique was used to randomly select farmers for the study. Descriptive statistics, budgetary technique and two-stage least squares regression were used for the analysis. The results showed that age, revenue, perceived COVID-19 effect, household size, experience, market space acquisition, and frequent visits to farmers markets were the significant factors that influenced the performance of the farmers in the study area. Challenges faced by the farmers after lockdown on farmers markets were increased price, high cost of farm input, reduced quantity of farm products and high transportation cost. Therefore, there should be more government intervention/assistance programs as a way of assisting the farmers to boost food production and alleviate poverty in the area.

Africa needs sustainable leadership to confront its unique challenges and capitalise on its potential. Thus, this chapter presents African leadership instances from diverse fields. This study aims to analyse the need for sustainable leadership in Africa using a systematic literature review. The PRISMA approach was adopted to perform the literature review. This was accomplished by looking through peer-reviewed databases, such as JSTOR, ProQuest and African Journals Online (AJOL), for manuscripts to find relevant data unique to the African context. After a thorough search, studies that did not meet the study’s objective were removed from consideration throughout the review phase. In light of this, the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist was used to ensure that the publications chosen for this review were evaluated for quality assessment and bias minimisation. The systematic literature review identified grey areas from previous studies on socioeconomic development through infrastructure projects, inclusive governance, entrepreneurship, inequality reduction, human development and terms of employment for sustainable leadership in Africa.

While the past decade has witnessed the emergence of more studies dedicated to Africa and an emphasis on the significance of paying attention to issues across the continent, the search for more answers demands extending the reach of contemporary scholarly work. The Emerald Handbook of African Studies works to ‘break down’ hinges on the issues limiting Africa’s development. In fact, more dialogue and debates across subject areas will help refine our knowledge towards investigating pertinent and analogous issues.

Filling this gap in existing scholarship, Omeihe and Harrison distinctly and carefully curated an exploration of thematic areas, (general concerns, entrepreneurship and Economic Institutions, intersections of culture and society, politics and systems of behaviour), which generations of scholars, practitioners and policy makers can resonate with and apply in their work.

The Emerald Handbook of African Studies forces one to rethink the very nature of African research, serving as a catalyst for new fresh thought and acuminating our understanding of the social world.

Purpose - In this era of rapid technological advancement, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged
as a crucial factor in reshaping organisational dynamics, notably in the realm of leadership. This
systematic literature review (SLR) aims to investigate the emerging relationship between AI and
leadership, focusing on defining AI-powered leadership, identifying prevalent themes, exploring
challenges, and uncovering research gaps within the relevant literature.
Design/methodology/approach - A sample of 73 papers was chosen after carefully applying the
inclusion and exclusion criteria to 1387 research articles that were initially sought. Using the
methodological framework presented by Denyer and Tranfield (2009), our study adopted a fourstep procedure to obtain insights from the corpus of literature. The papers were analysed by
employing content and thematic analysis to address four key questions.
Findings - The review explores various definitions of AI-powered leadership proposed in the
literature base

Purpose -
This paper critically examines the distributed leadership literature, identifying its conceptual foundations, thematic developments, and research gaps. Synthesizing existing studies aims to advance theoretical and practical understandings of distributed leadership across diverse contexts.

Design/methodology/approach -
A rigorous three-step systematic literature review (SLR) process was employed to analyze 111 peer-reviewed studies published between 2002 and 2022. This approach integrates descriptive and thematic analyses to address key research questions on distributed leadership's conceptualization, thematic trends, and research gaps.

Findings -
The review highlights distributed leadership as a dynamic and context-dependent concept, emphasizing its social, collaborative, and performance-driven dimensions. Three primary themes emerged: behavioral perspectives, contextual influences, and performance implications. Gaps were identified in empirical, theoretical, population, and methodological domains. These include insufficient research in noneducational sectors, limited exploration of distributed leadership's applicability in developing nations, and the need for empirically validated frameworks and qualitative methodologies.

Originality/value -
This review is among the first to systematically map distributed leadership's evolution across multiple contexts using an SLR approach. It provides a robust synthesis of the field, offering a validated baseline for future research. The study's methodological rigor and its focus on underexplored areas contribute significantly to advancing the discourse on distributed leadership.

This chapter provides an essential foundation for the volume. It introduces the overarching themes and constituent chapters, outlining the diverse methodological approaches used within the book. This chapter situates leadership development within the evolving field, examining its current challenges and the state of scholarship and practice today.
It offers a critical overview and outlook for future studies in leadership and leadership development, identifying emerging questions and research opportunities. This forward-looking perspective sets the stage for the volume's exploration of leadership as a dynamic and multifaceted field. It encourages readers to consider leadership development from critical perspectives that challenge traditional norms, inviting them to engage with new models and approaches to meet the demands of today's complex, diverse, and changing environment.

Entrepreneurial leadership (EL) is a growing research phenomenon. The recent expansion of EL research is attributed to competencies acquired by entrepreneurial leaders for identifying and exploiting business opportunities as well as navigating complex business challenges. Despite this growing attention, only a limited number of studies have addressed EL learning and development, with no prior exploration of how EL can be learned and developed in teams empirically. In response, this qualitative study conducted semi-structured interviews with 40 entrepreneurial leaders (in 18 teams) selected through purposive sampling and examined learning experiences of entrepreneurial leaders associated with University Business Incubators (UBIs) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan. The empirical insights revealed that EL learning in teams is a complex and multifaceted process, and entrepreneurial leaders can enhance their knowledge, skills, and capabilities through various strategies, including classroom-based, project-based, social, and self-regulated learning. The evidence emerging from this study informs policy and practice while broadening the theoretical scope of EL by incorporating a team-based conceptualisation into EL development.

This empirical study explored how actors in specific human resource practices (HRPs) such as line managers (LMs) impact employee productivity measures in the context of Financial Institutions (FI) banks.
This cross-country study adopted a qualitative methodology. It employed semi-structured interviews to collect data from purposefully selected 12 business-facing directors (BFDs) working in the top 10 banks in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. The data collected was analysed with the help of the trans-positional cognition approach (TPCA) phenomenological method.
The findings of a TPCA analytical process imply that in the UK and Nigerian FIs the BFDs line managers? human resources practices (LMHRPs) resulted in a highly regulated workplace, knowledge gap, service operations challenges, and subjective quantitatively driven KPIs, considered service productivity paradoxical elements. Although the practices in the UK and Nigeria FIs had similar labels, their aggregates were underpinned by different contextual issues.
To support line managers in better understanding and managing financial institutions BFDs productivity measures and outcomes, we propose the Managerial Employee Productivity Operational Definition? (MePoD) framework as part of their toolkit. This study will be helpful for banking sectors, their regulators, policymakers, other financial institutions? industry stakeholders, and future researchers in the field.
Within the context of the UK and Nigeria?s FIs, this study is the first attempt to understand how line managers? human resource practices impact BFDs productivity in this manner. It confirms LMHRPs result in service productivity paradoxical elements with perceived or lost productivity implications.