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The surface characteristics of thermally and chemically modified wood, such as surface roughness, surface free energy (SFE) and wettability, are important properties that influence further manufacturing processes such as gluing and coating. The aim of this paper was to determine the influence of the surface roughness of thermally and chemically modified teak wood on their SFE, wettability and bonding quality for water-based acrylic and solvent-based alkyd varnishes. In addition, durability against subterranean termites in the field of these modified teak woods was also investigated to give a valuable information for their further application.

The woods tested in this study were fast-growing teak woods that were prepared in untreated and treated with furfuryl alcohol (FA), glycerol maleic anhydride (GMA) and thermal. SFE values were calculated using the Rabel method. The wettability values were measured based on the contact angle between varnish liquids and wood surfaces using the sessile drop method, and the Shi and Gardner model model was used to evaluate the wettability of the varnishes on the wood surface. The bonding quality of the varnishes was measured using a cross-cut test based on ASTM 3359-17 standard. In addition, durability against subterranean termites in the field of these modified teak woods was also investigated according to ASTM D 1758-06.

The results showed that furfurylated and GMA-thermal 220°C improved the durability of teak wood against termites. The furfurylated teak wood had the roughest surface with an arithmetic average roughness (Ra) value of 15.65 µm before aging and 27.11 µm after aging. The GMA-thermal 220°C treated teak wood was the smoothest surface with Ra value of 6.44 µm before aging and 13.75 µm after aging. Untreated teak wood had the highest SFE value of 46.90 and 57.37 mJ/m² before and after aging, respectively. The K values of untreated and treated teak wood increased owing to the aging treatment. The K values for the water-based acrylic varnish were lower than that of the solvent-based alkyd varnish. The untreated teak wood with the highest SFE produced the highest bonding quality (grades 4–5) for both acrylic and alkyd varnishes. The solvent-based alkyd varnish was more wettable and generated better bonding quality than the water-based acrylic varnish.

The originality of this research work is that it provides evaluation values of the durability and SFE. The SFE value can be used to quantitatively determine the wettability of paint liquids on the surface of wood and its varnish bonding quality.

To elaborate the nature of fact-checking in the domain of political information by examining how fact-checkers assess the validity of claims concerning the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and how they support their assessments by drawing on evidence acquired from diverse sources of information.

Descriptive quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 128 reports written by the fact-checkers of Snopes – an established fact-checking organisation – during the period of 24 February 2022 – 28 June, 2023. For the analysis, nine evaluation grounds were identified, most of them inductively from the empirical material. It was examined how the fact-checkers employed such grounds while assessing the validity of claims and how the assessments were bolstered by evidence acquired from information sources such as newspapers.

Of the 128 reports, the share of assessments indicative of the invalidity of the claims was 54.7%, while the share of positive ratings was 26.7%. The share of mixed assessments was 15.6%. In the fact-checking, two evaluation grounds, that is, the correctness of information and verifiability of an event presented in a claim formed the basis for the assessment. Depending on the topic of the claim, grounds such as temporal and spatial compatibility, as well as comparison by similarity and difference occupied a central role. Most popular sources of information offering evidence for the assessments include statements of government representatives, videos and photographs shared in social media, newspapers and television programmes.

As the study concentrated on fact-checking dealing with political information about a specific issue, the findings cannot be extended to concern the fact-checking practices in other contexts.

The study is among the first to characterise how fact-checkers employ evaluation grounds of diverse kind while assessing the validity of political information.

Fact-checking is a process of seeking and displaying facts to confirm or counter uncertain information, which reduces the spread of fake news. However, little is known about how to promote fact-checking posts to online users on social media. Through uncertainty reduction theory and message framing, this first study examines the effect of fact-checking posts on social media with an avatar on online users' trust, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. The authors further investigate the congruency effects between promotional message framing (gain/loss/neutral) and facial expressions of the avatar (happy/angry/neutral) on online users' trust, attitudes, and behavioral intentions in the second study.

The authors conducted two studies and statistically analyzed 120 samples (study 1) and 519 samples (study 2) from Facebook users.

Results showed that including the neutral facial expression avatar in fact-checking posts leads to online users' greater trust and more positive attitudes. Furthermore, the congruency effects between loss message framing and the angry facial expression of the avatar can effectively promote online users' trust and attitudes as well as stronger intentions to follow and share.

This study offers theoretical implications for fact-checking studies, and practical implications for online fact-checkers to apply these findings to design effective fact-checking posts and spread the veracity of information on social media.

This study aims investigate the effects of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) on communication pace and processing time reduction through the mediation of organizational agility. The study also investigates the moderating role of technological attitude (TA) on the relationship between e-HRM and organizational agility.

The data was collected from 331 information and communication technology (ICT) companies – one respondent from each company working in the Human Resource Management (HRM) department. The data was analyzed through the partial least square structural equational model (PLS-SEM) using WarpPLS7.0 software to test the study’s hypotheses.

We found that e-HRM has positive significant effects on communication pace and processing time reduction through the mediation of organizational agility. Furthermore, TA is found to be positively moderating the relationship between e-HRM and organizational agility.

The study adds significant value to the existing knowledge base on e-HRM by providing empirical insights about the role of e-HRM in optimizing the communication pace and processing time of today’s businesses.

The study also provides invaluable insights to practitioners to replace conventional HR systems with e-HRM to better perform HR functions by optimizing communication pace and processing time in the current fast-paced era.

E-HRM has become an issue of great significance in the contemporary corporate landscape to improve operational efficiency. Despite its widespread adoption in the corporate world, empirical evidence on e-HRM, particularly on its consequences, is still inconclusive.

The paper provides a step-by-step guide in the guise of a roadmap for service improvement initiatives using importance performance map analysis (IPMA).

To empirically illustrate how IPMA can be applied to any service industry, three sectors are considered; sports and fitness (study A), hospitality (study B) and higher education (study C). Following the proper selection of measuring instruments and their evaluation using structural equation modeling-partial least squares (Smart-PLS), IPMA is applied to identify those attributes having strong total effects (high importance) over the targeted construct (satisfaction) but which also have low average latent variable scores (low performance).

For sports and fitness (study A), the physical aspects and programme quality require managerial attention. For the hospitability sector (study B), it is service commitment, interaction quality and internal sense of happiness. Whereas for higher education (study C), it is administrative quality as well as the element of transformative quality, namely the university’s role in adding to its students’ emotional stability, which needs the attention of the top management.

This study provides researchers and practitioners with a roadmap for applying PLS-SEM and IPMA for continuous service quality improvement. The roadmap extends upon Ringle and Sarstedt’s (2016) work. It highlights critical decisions that need to be considered in the pre-analytical stages of the IPMA application, i.e. at the research design phase in selecting the most appropriate service quality measurement model specifications. It not only contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence to advance theory development in the quality management field but also has implications for the practitioners in any service sector on where to focus their attention for an effective service improvement.

In today's advanced economy, there is a broader presence of information revolution, such as artificial intelligence (AI). AI primarily drives modern banking, leading to innovative banking channels, services and solutions disruptions. Thus, this chapter intends to determine AI's place in contemporary banking and stock market trading.

Stock market forecasting is hampered by the inherently noisy environments and significant volatility surrounding market trends. There needs to be more research on the mantle of AI in revolutionising banking and stock market trading. Attempting to bridge this gap, the present research study looks at the function of AI in banking and stock market trading.

The researchers have synthesised the literature pool. They undertook a systematic review and meta-synthesis method by identifying the major themes and a systematic literature review aided in the critical analysis, synthesis and mapping of the body of existing material.

The study's conclusions demonstrated the efficacy of AI, which has played a robust role in banking and finance by reducing risk and operational costs, enabling better customer experience, improving regulatory complaints and fraud detection and improving credit and loan decisions. AI has revolutionised stock market trading by forecasting future prices or trends in financial assets, optimising financial portfolios and analysing news or social media comments on the assets or firms.

AI's debut in banking and finance has brought sea changes in banking and stock market trading. AI in the banking industry and capital market can provide timely and apt information to its customers and customise the products as per their requirements.

As per the vision of promoting agricultural collectives, the government of India promoted the farmer producer organization (FPO). However, with the fast growth of FPOs, there is an issue with performance measurement. This study is aimed at the development of performance metrics for the FPOs.

In the first stage, we selected the measures from a secondary literature review and identified 11 parameters. Further, the Delphi round was conducted in the second stage with 26 experts working with FPOs and they were asked to rank these parameters. Based on the weightage of each parameter, the most important parameters were decided. The mean ranks and deviations of the performance parameters were analyzed. The hypothesis test and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance have been further used to validate the performance parameters. In the third stage, based on the inputs from the experts, a questionnaire was designed, and the data was collected from chief executive officers (CEOs) of the FPOs to identify the most important performance parameters.

The experts identified governance, financial support and professional management as important measures for FPOs. In the second round of the study, finance and governance were identified as the most important factors. It is important to note that finance and governance were the two most important factors in making an FPO successful. Finally, a 100-point metric was developed in seven major heads.

This study will be advantageous for all the stakeholders involved in the promotion of FPOs, including FPOs themselves, funding agencies providing funds to FPOs, skill-building organizations, etc.

This paper is one of its kind to develop a 100 points metrics for performance evaluation of FPOs.

Endorsement marketing has been widely used to generate consumer attention, interest and purchase decisions among targeted audiences. Internet celebrities who become famous on the Internet are dependent on strategic intimacy to appeal to their followers. Our study aims to examine how multiple exposures to Internet celebrity endorsements influence consumers’ click and purchase decisions in the context of influencer marketing.

Based on a unique and representative dataset, the authors first model consumers’ choices for clicks and purchases with two panel fixed-effect logit models linking clicks and purchases with the frequency of exposure to Internet celebrity endorsement. To further control the endogeneity produced by the intercorrelation between the click and purchase models, the authors also adopt the two-stage Heckman probit structure to jointly estimate the two models using Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Robustness checks confirm the effectiveness of the models.

The results suggest that Internet celebrity endorsement plays a significant role in bringing referral traffic to e-commerce sites but is less helpful in affecting conversion to sales. The impact of repetitive Internet celebrity endorsements on consumers’ click decisions is U-shaped, but the role of Internet celebrities as online retailers will “shape-flip” this relationship to a negative linear relation.

Our study is the first to investigate the repetitive exposure effect of Internet celebrity endorsement. The results show a contradictory pattern with a wear-out effect of repetition in the advertising literature. This is the first study to show how the endorsing self, which is a common business model in influencer marketing, moderates the effectiveness of influencer marketing.

Building permitting is mostly a manual, labor intensive and time-consuming process. Initiatives for streamlining the process are not always helpful since they often fail to address the core problems within the process. A framework for modeling the permitting process can be useful to identify bottlenecks, core challenges and best practices. Hence, the authors aim to demonstrate and validate a previously suggested workflow for permit process modeling using the permitting process in Israel as a test case.

The authors implement qualitative expert interviews for data acquisition. The collected data are then processed for a qualitative data analysis. The results of the analysis are then validated using a focus group workshop in the field of building permits. In the test case the focus group consisted of Israeli experts.

The authors present a detailed overview of the as-is building permit process in Israel and the existing challenges. Through this test case, the authors found that the framework is applicable in different countries and that it can provide valuable insights into the core problems within the process. In addition, application of the same framework in different countries can provide comparable results that would allow the authors to identify best practices.

The major contribution of this work is the development and validation of a framework for building permitting process modeling which can be used to identify existing challenges and bottlenecks in the process. Implementing a structured and unified approach provides an opportunity to easily compare processes in different countries to identify best practices.