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A flexible agile assembly system requires an open architecture integration environment that is mechatronic device and computer platform independent. An interactive environment allows the users to step through programs and acquire immediate feedback from the system and is most suitable for the development of mechatronic systems used on the shop floor. Ch, an embeddable C/C++ interpreter, was developed for mechatronic‐independent task‐level programming. An experimental mechatronic system with an IBM 7575 Robotic Arm and a National Instruments' motion control board has been developed to demonstrate the capabilities and the ease in integrating mechatronic devices in Ch, which is freely available for downloading.

The purpose of this study is to determine the main challenges that IT security practitioners face in their organizations, including the interplay among human, organizational, and technological factors.

The data set consisted of 36 semi‐structured interviews with IT security practitioners from 17 organizations (academic, government, and private). The interviews were analyzed using qualitative description with constant comparison and inductive analysis of the data to identify the challenges that security practitioners face.

A total of 18 challenges that can affect IT security management within organizations are indentified and described. This analysis is grounded in related work to build an integrated framework of security challenges. The framework illustrates the interplay among human, organizational, and technological factors.

The framework can help organizations identify potential challenges when implementing security standards, and determine if they are using their security resources effectively to address the challenges. It also provides a way to understand the interplay of the different factors, for example, how the culture of the organization and decentralization of IT security trigger security issues that make security management more difficult. Several opportunities for researchers and developers to improve the technology and processes used to support adoption of security policies and standards within organizations are provided.

A comprehensive list of human, organizational, and technological challenges that security experts have to face within their organizations is presented. In addition, these challenges within a framework that illustrates the interplay between factors and the consequences of this interplay for organizations are integrated.

Social robots are invading our daily lives. Recently, thanks to artificial intelligence, humanoid social robots have been developed and influence individuals on social media. This paper aims to understand the perception of luxury consumers regarding human-like virtual influencers (VI) in a multicultural context.

Conducting a qualitative method, the authors interviewed 32 Chinese and French consumers of luxury products from the Gen-Z and millennial generation about their perception of human influencers and human-like VI after following them on social media specific platforms.

Using source credibility theory, this research unveils the different ways in which consumers perceive human-like VI according to their physical or content attractiveness, expertise, similarities and trustworthiness. The results suggest that the perception of human-like VI by millennials and Gen-Z is closely related to their cultural setting and their familiarity of the technology in a luxury context.

Considering Gen-Z and millennials' willing for para-social interactions and given the importance to the credibility of the source or the emotions displayed by VI, the intercultural empirical setting of this study introduces the ambivalence of the perception of social robots versus human-like influencers in a luxury digital context.

The purpose of the study is to assess if a policy of female inclusive education should be complemented with a policy of female ownership of bank accounts to fight female unemployment. The study therefore examines how female ownership of bank accounts moderates the incidence of female education on female unemployment.

The focus is on 44 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 2004–2018 and the empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions. The interactions are tailored such that female ownership of bank accounts influences the effect of female inclusive education on female unemployment.

From the empirical findings it is evident that female ownership of bank accounts does not effectively moderate female education in order to reduce female unemployment unless complementary policies are considered. The complementary policies should be in view of boosting the interaction between female education and female bank account ownership in increasing employment opportunities for the female gender and by extension, reducing female unemployment. The invalidity of the moderating effect is robust to the inclusion of more elements in the conditioning information set as well as accounting for other dimensions of endogeneity such as simultaneity and the unobserved heterogeneity. Policy implications are discussed.

This study contributes to the extant literature by assessing how female ownership of bank accounts complements female inclusive education to reduce female unemployment.

In this study, the impact of access to electricity on poverty reduction for Botswana is examined using the annual data from 1990 to 2021. The study was motivated by the need to establish if access to electricity could be a panacea on poverty reduction in Botswana. Given that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals deadline is fast approaching, and Botswana being one of the signatories, is expected to end poverty in all its forms – Goal 1. Establishing the role that electrification plays in poverty alleviation, helps in refocusing Botswana’s poverty alleviation strategies on factors that have high impact on poverty. The main objective of this study, therefore, is to investigate the relationship between poverty alleviation and access to electricity in Botswana.

The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to investigate the nature of the relations. Two poverty proxies were used in this study namely, household consumption expenditure and life expectancy.

The study found access to electricity to reduce poverty in the long run and in the short run, regardless of the poverty measure used. Thus, access to electricity plays an important role in poverty alleviation and Botswana is recommended to continue with the rural and urban electrification initiatives.

The study explores the impact of access to electricity on poverty reduction in Botswana, a departure from the current studies that examined the same relationship using energy consumption in general. This is on the back of increasing dependence of economic activities on electricity as a major source of energy.

This study aims to examine how the starting of business by females can be promoted by assessing critical levels of microfinance institutions (MFIs) penetration that policymakers must endeavor to maintain and/or attain in order for female unemployment not to represent a constraint in the doing of business. A constraint in doing business is understood in terms of the procedure that a woman has to go through to start a business.

The focus of the study is on 44 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004–2018, while the empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions.

The following findings are established. The validity of tested hypotheses is exclusively apparent in the lowest and highest quantiles of the conditional distribution of the procedure women have to go through to start a business. MFI penetration levels needed to reverse the unfavorable incidence of female unemployment in doing business are provided. These are minimum MFIs penetration thresholds that are required in order for female unemployment not to negatively affect the procedure that a woman should go through to start a business.

The study complements the extant literature by assessing critical microfinance penetration levels that are needed to promote female doing of business, contingent on existing levels of female doing of business.

This study aims to contribute to the extant literature by assessing how microfinance institutions (MFIs) affect female entrepreneurship, contingent on female unemployment levels.

The study focuses on 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004–2018. The empirical evidence is based on interactive quantile regressions, which put emphasis on nations with high, low and intermediate levels of business constraints. The analysis is tailored to provide avoidable female unemployment levels in the implementation of policies designed for MFIs to promote female business ownership.

The hypotheses that MFIs are favorable for female business owners and some critical rates of female unemployment should be avoided in order for the favorable incidence to be maintained is exclusively valid in the 10th quantiles of the cost of business by females and time to start-up a business by females. Policy implications are discussed.

This study has complemented the extant literature by providing actionable female unemployment critical masses that governments can act upon in tailoring the relevance of MFIs in the doing of business by females.

This article aims to analyse the spatial and temporal evolution of multidimensional poverty in Brazil's North Region and its relationship with territorial, economic and population dynamics.

A multidimensional poverty index (MPI) was calculated using the Alkire-Foster method and a spatial econometric model was estimated. The data come from population censuses conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for the years 1991, 2000 and 2010.

The results show a decrease in multidimensional poverty over the period analysed. However, they show this reduction occurred in a heterogeneous way in time and space, with emphasis on microregions in which, despite a reduction in the rate, the percentage of the population considered multidimensionally poor remained high during the 30 years of the study.

The quality of available data.

It is possible to point out that public policies focused on improving infrastructure in medium-sized locations tend to have two positive effects: first, making production and consumption more accessible and sustainable for local communities, given that currently the cost of transport and logistics are factors that hinder socioeconomic development; second, to reduce the pressure of demand that this population of small and medium-sized locations exerts on public services currently offered only in larger locations. Although the logic of concentrating most public services in the largest cities makes sense in terms of economic efficiency, the particularities of the northern region and the recognition of its environmental importance point to the need for incentives for more spatially distributed economic activity.

From the paper results, it is possible to think about more local public policies which are able to improve people's lifes without to damage the environment.

This is the first study on multidimensional poverty that covers the entire North region of Brazil (Amazon region) and that contemplates both the temporal and spatial dynamics of poverty.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2021-0699.

The present study investigates the nexus between health performance dynamics and economic growth in 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2004–2018.

Four health performance dynamics are used, notably: total life expectancy, male life expectancy, female life expectancy and risk of maternal death. The empirical evidence is based on quantile regressions (QRs) in order to put into perspective the conditional distribution of economic growth.

The following findings are established: (1) total life expectancy and male life expectancy increase economic growth exclusively in the 10th and 90th quantiles of economic growth; (2) female life expectancy boosts economic growth in the 90th quantile of economic growth and (3) the risk of maternal death reduces economic growth in the 75th and 90th quantiles of economic growth. Policy implications are discussed.

The study complements the literature on the nexus between health performance and economic growth by assessing the nexuses throughout the conditional distribution of economic growth.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between microfinance institutions (MFIs) governance and performance.

Using a sample of 215 MFIs from six South Asian countries over the period from 2005 to 2009, the authors examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) duality, board size, female CEO, urban market coverage, bank regulation and lending type on financial and social performance of MFIs.

The findings provide evidence that, on the one hand, empowered CEO, large board size and individual lending improve the MFI financial performance and, on another hand, bank regulation and serving in the urban market have a significant association with MFIs’ social performance. In an additional analysis, the authors also test this relationship before, during and after the financial crisis of 2007. During crisis period, MFIs’ individual lending reduces the operational cost and bank regulation increases the average loan size in South Asian MFIs.

Those studies that are presented in the literature review conclude their result on the bases of global, European, East African and specific to some countries sample. There is no study presented in the whole literature on South Asian sample, in which all countries really face the problem of poverty.