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Firms are struggling to gain competitive advantage to resist the ever-increasing global market pressures. Many strategic management studies have identified several essential pillars of building firm’s strategy, often highlighting positive relationships between the use of human resources and the firm performance (Collins & Clark, 2003; Wright et al., 2005). Thus, human capital as the stock of productive knowledge and skills embodied in individuals is a crucial strategic production factor. Knowledge and human resource are intrinsically related concepts since it is people who can learn, generate, utilise and disseminate knowledge in collaborative networks. Knowledge is a primary input in the innovation process, and the ability to use knowledge is crucial in achieving high innovation performance and the strategic competitive advantage (Bock, Opsahl et al., 2012).

The world’s population continues to increase rapidly, and, within the next 30 years, more than half of all people will choose to live in large urban centers (Faria et al., 2018). This has led to a number of problems, such as congested people and transportation traffic and increased pollution that produces climate change. The concept of “smart” cities has emerged as a way to deal with these issues, in which these cities are defined as an ecosystem that seeks to improve citizens’ quality of life through a combination of technology, sustainability, and physical infrastructures (Estrada et al., 2018). Smart cities have to use new technologies ranging from the Internet of Things (IoT), which facilitates connections between everything, to home automation (i.e., the ease with which citizens can manage daily routines through their homes).

The issue of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) caused by multinational companies is a potential important impediment to tax collections. Because tax planning schemes utilized gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax jurisdiction where there is insufficient of no economic activity (Hines, 2014; OECD, 2017). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has estimated the general annual revenue loss of USD 100 to 240 billion due to the BEPS OECD (2017). Dharmapala and Riedel (2013) focused on tax motivated income shifting between parent companies and their affiliates. The parent companies have almost 60% affiliates established in low-tax jurisdictions. It resulted in profit shifting from the high-tax parent companies’ jurisdictions to the low-tax affiliates’ jurisdictions where the profit is taxed with the lower tax rate.

Today’s highly volatile business environment has initiated a wide variety of changes within organizations of all industries (Hurn, 2012). Change dynamics, in general, is likely to increase in organizational context due to: Digital and innovation disruption; Shifting social and demographic trends; Growing knowledge-based economy and knowledge workforce development; More sophisticated customer needs; and Global economic integration and liberalization. Regardless of its root-cause, it has been argued that change occurs in various shapes, forms and intensity (Jarrett, 2008). Accordingly, many authors recognize that key factor of an organization’s effectiveness lie in the ability to adapt to ever-present change, while successful change management became a pattern for organizational survival and long-term sustainability.

An important health financing issue facing Canada and other OECD countries (OECD, 2017) are the health consequences of obesity. Statistics Canada (2014) reports that 51.6% of adult Canadians were overweight or obese in 2009 compared to 53.6% in 2013. The proportion of Canadians who are overweight differs by sex, with 59.2% of Canadian males overweight in 2009 compared to 62% in 2013 and 43.9% of females overweight in 2009 compared to 45.1% in 2013. These increases have led to calls for policies to control obesity (see Clark et al., 2014). These rates of obesity are based on the body mass index (BMI) which is the ratio of weight (in kilograms) to the square of height (in meters). Cranfield (2007) uses the Canadian Community Heath Survey (CCHS) to examine the determinants of the body mass index (BMI) of Canadians.