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As environmental protection and sustainable development become more widely recognized, greater emphasis has been placed on the significance of green supplier selection (GSS), which can support businesses both upstream and downstream in enhancing their environmental performance while preserving their strategic competitiveness. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a new framework to study GSS.

Firstly, this paper establishes a GSS evaluation criteria system including product competitiveness, green performance, quality of service and enterprise social responsibility. Secondly, based on the spherical fuzzy sets (SFSs), the Average Induction Ordered Weighted Averaging Operator-Criteria Importance Through Inter Criteria Correlation (AIOWA-CRITIC) method is used to determine the subjective and objective weights and the combination of weights are determined by game theory. In addition, the GSS framework is constructed by the Cumulative Prospect Theory-Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (CPT-TOPSIS) method. Finally, the validity and robustness of the framework is verified through sensitivity comparative and ablation analysis.

The results show that Y3 is the most promising green supplier in China. This study provides a feasible guidance for GSS, which is important for the greening process of the whole supply chain.

Under spherical fuzzy sets, AIOWA and CRITIC are used to determine weights of indicators. CPT and TOPSIS are combined to construct a decision model, considering the ambiguity and uncertainty of information and the risk attitudes of decision-makers.

To assess South Africa’s (SA’s) citrus export competitiveness in the global market and identify its macroeconomic drivers.

The Normalized Revealed Comparative Advantage (NRCA) index is employed to measure export competitiveness. An ARDL-EC model is then estimated to identify the macroeconomic determinants of SA’s citrus export competitiveness.

SA’s citrus export competitiveness declined before the mid-1990s and rose thereafter. On balance, the country improved from the fourth to the second most competitive citrus exporter. A long-run relationship was established between the NRCA scores and the real exchange rate and real GDP per capita growth rate. The export price exerted a positive short-run influence on citrus export competitiveness. The rise in SA’s citrus export competitiveness since the mid-1990s was mainly driven by the rising citrus export price and real exchange rate depreciation.

Future research could explore the determinants of SA’s export competitiveness using panel gravity models of bilateral trade flows to isolate the impact of macroeconomic variables and trade restricting/enhancing policies of importing countries.

The article employs the NRCA index, which can measure comparative advantage across space and over time. It is the first to econometrically estimate the macroeconomic determinants of citrus export competitiveness in SA. Application of the ARDL-EC framework yields both short- and long-run effects of macroeconomic variables on export competitiveness.

This study aims to examine how women entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan's male-dominated sectors utilize the concept of positionality to navigate and redefine gender norms, focusing on their engagement with entrepreneurial masculinities and femininities. It explores the transformative potential of their strategic actions on gender dynamics within the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Employing qualitative research through 27 in-depth interviews, this study adopts constructivist grounded theory to delve into how women entrepreneurs interact with gender norms within their entrepreneurial context. This approach highlights the dynamic interplay between gender norms and the strategies employed by women entrepreneurs to navigate these challenges.

The findings reveal that women entrepreneurs actively employ and navigate entrepreneurial masculinities and femininities as strategies to challenge traditional gender roles. Their approaches vary from conforming to, challenging and creatively redefining the gendered expectations encountered in their entrepreneurial journey. This demonstrates their agency in reshaping gender norms and contributing to the diversity of gender performances within the domain of entrepreneurship.

While focused on Kazakhstan, the study's findings suggest broader implications for understanding gender dynamics in entrepreneurship across different cultural contexts. Future research could extend this inquiry to varied sociocultural settings, employing post-structuralist and ethnographic methodologies to further explore the performance of gender roles and the negotiation of belonging in entrepreneurial contexts.

By foregrounding the concept of positionality, this study enriches the dialogue on gender dynamics within entrepreneurship, offering fresh perspectives on the agency of women entrepreneurs in male-dominated sectors. It illustrates how gender identities and performances are not fixed but are actively constructed and negotiated, contributing to the evolving landscape of entrepreneurial masculinities and femininities.

This study aims to explore academic women’s silence from the perspective of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), by examining the triadic influences of the individual, environment and behaviour, which impacts their silence. The study examines how women use personal, proxy and collective agency (Bandura, 2018) to reduce silence.

Interviewing 22 academics (20 women, 2 men) at a leading Polish university, this study used the Gioia et al. (2013) method to analyse the interviews, creating first- and second-order codes and final aggregated concepts.

This study finds, from an environmental perspective, that societal-level gendering, which is underpinned by critical social factors and institutional logics that are part of Poland’s culture promoting gender stereotypes and family values influences women’s silence. There is clear evidence for the regression of women’s rights, which compounds women’s silence. These societal-level factors influence a hierarchical, bureaucratic organizational structure, alongside gender segregation. From an individual perspective, reasons for silence include socialization, fear, women’s lack of power, inequality and self-silencing to mitigate harassment or discrimination. Collective agency was a strongly mentioned theme to help reduce silence, which includes implementing training and development initiatives, creating a safe platform to voice concerns, structural transformation and cultural change.

This study contributes to literature regarding women’s silence by exploring reasons for silence through the lens of Bandura’s social cognitive theory and agentic perspective, which demonstrates how silence could be reduced through collective action, in the understudied context of Poland, which highlights how country context intersects with organizational context and individual experience, influencing women’s silence.

In this study, we aim to investigate entrepreneurial intention (EI) among potential entrepreneurs who were students at Pakistan’s higher education institutes (HEIs) of technical and vocational education and training (TVET).

We used a quantitative and correlational method in this study, and we based its theoretical framework on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the entrepreneurial event model (EEM). We based this study’s findings on 367 samples collected from Pakistan’s HEI TVET students who were potential entrepreneurs.

By employing path analysis, the findings reveal that TPB constructs, such as personal attitudes (PA), subjective norms (SN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC), have a positive and significant effect on EI. The findings show, also, that EEM constructs, such as perceived desirability (PD), perceived feasibility (PF) and propensity to act (PT) are positive and significant predictors of EI. Moreover, self-efficacy (SE) and the quality of TVET (QTT) positively and significantly affect EI.

This study’s findings support the improvement of Pakistan’s HEIs in developing TVET to enhance individuals’ skills and, ultimately, to create employment and socioeconomic circumstances. They also assist Pakistan’s HEIs in developing EI among their TVET potential entrepreneurs to ensure that they are sufficiently equipped for the job markets.

This study’s findings empirically confirm that TPB, EEM, SE and the QTT provide an integrated path for Pakistan’s entrepreneurs.

This study delves into the nuanced relationship between financial constraints, ownership structures (state-owned and foreign) and innovation engagement within China’s A-share market, aiming to uncover how these dynamics vary across different industries and regional contexts.

By retrieving data from various datasets in China (2010–2022), this study analyzed the effectiveness of each variable, employing various dimensions to reflect innovation engagement among Chinese listed companies. Meanwhile, for the measurement of financial constraints, this study tested all four typical ones and opted for the KZ Index, as it is the most suitable for China’s A-share market. Then, by fixing the industry and year effects, the study examined the main and moderating effects. At last, in order to address endogeneity issues and capture the dynamic nature of innovation activities, this study follow the suggestion of Khatib (2024) and employed the two-step system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation.

The results demonstrate that while the government has introduced many policies to promote innovation, state-owned ownership does not consistently enhance innovation engagement as expected, especially when firms are in financial dilemma. Particularly, in Hi-tech industries, foreign ownership demonstrates greater interest and confidence in the innovation capabilities of China’s A-share market. Findings also reveal significant regional heterogeneity in the moderating role of ownership structures. While state-owned and foreign ownerships have a buffering effect against financial constraints in the eastern and western regions, but this effect is notably different in the middle part, even though it is China’s political heartland.

The findings offer a different insight for policymakers and corporate strategists, suggesting that targeted financial and regulatory policies that leverage specific ownership structures can foster innovation in different ways, particularly in financially constrained environments. However, how to stimulate innovation vitality in the middle part of China still requires further research.

Experts may adjust their assessments through communication and mutual influence, and this dynamic evolution relies on the spread of internal trust relationships. Due to differences in educational backgrounds and knowledge experiences, trust relationships among experts are often incomplete. To address such issues and reduce decision biases, this paper proposes a probabilistic linguistic multi-attribute group decision consensus model based on an incomplete social trust network (InSTN).

In this paper, we first define the new trust propagation operators based on the operations of Probability Language Term Set (PLTS) with algebraic t-conorm and t-norm, which are combined with trust aggregation operators to estimate InSTN. The adjustment coefficients are then determined through trust relations to quantify their impact on expert evaluation. Finally, the particle swarm algorithm (PSO) is used to optimize the expert evaluation to meet the consensus threshold.

This study demonstrates the feasibility of the method through the selection of treatment plans for complex cases. The proposed consensus model exhibits greater robustness and effectiveness compared to traditional methods, mainly due to the effective regulation of trust relations in the decision-making process, which reduces decision bias and inconsistencies.

This paper introduces a novel probabilistic linguistic multi-attribute swarm decision consensus model based on an InSTN. It proposes a redefined trust propagation and aggregation approach to estimate the InSTN. Moreover, the computational efficiency and decision consensus accuracy of the proposed model are enhanced by using PSO optimization.

Social value creation (SVC) is the primary emphasis for unifying the various issues in contemporary social entrepreneurship (SE) literature and practice since it highlights the fundamental problem of sustainability in SE business. Accordingly, SVC as an outcome of SE represents the primary drive of social entrepreneurs (SEs). However, SEs encounter multi-dimensional challenges as they work to build their SE businesses and create social value. In the current context of digitally transforming entrepreneurship scenario, this study investigates the role of SE compassion and digital learning orientation (DLO) for SVC ability of SEs.

The study utilized a quantitative survey approach for primary data collection from social entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. A total of 158 valid replies from social entrepreneurs were obtained for the study. Using SmartPLS (3.0), partial least square structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The results validated a model of SVC in which the SE compassion and DLO positively impact the SVC ability in SEs. However, the impact of DLO in moderating the SE compassion - SVC relationship in SEs was not proven.

The study established the role of SE compassion in explaining the distinctive SVC ability in SEs. Meanwhile, given the expanding necessity for SEs to leverage digital technologies for SE missions, the study provides implications for nurturing positive outcomes in terms of SE compassion and DLO outcomes among SEs. This organized knowledge can help entrepreneurs, educators and policymakers better incorporate these concerns in SE education, and social enterprises and entrepreneurs’ developmental initiatives.

This work is pioneering in that it conceptualizes and tests a theoretical framework that links SE compassion, DLO, and SVC in SEs. Meanwhile, the study is the first to operationalize the DLO in entrepreneurs. The study thus generates fresh insights about SVC in SE amid the digitally transforming entrepreneurship scenario.

This study aims to examine the construction of feminine beauty by onnagata kabuki actors in Japan’s history, with a focus on their narratives in modern advertorials about beauty products. The objective is to identify emerging themes in their narratives and to analyze the symbolism and rhetoric used to persuade the audience to enhance traditional feminine “beauty” by using the specific brand in the wake of Japan’s modernization and Westernization.

The study primarily employs semiotic analysis of advertorials in the newspaper and in the kabuki theatre’s program. They are supplemented with images from premodern prints. Visual content is described and analyzed as well.

The narration of the onnagata in the advertorial is the process of “truth-telling,” where the primary concern of the storyteller is persuasion about truth, such as belief in the new method of makeup with the advertised brand, and falsehood, such as belief in the old method of skincare. Four themes and binary oppositions of values emerged from the data: (1) Identity: selves vs others; (2) Material objects, cosmetics: scientific vs primitive; (3) Practice: competent vs incompetent, and (4) Transformations: intentional vs incidental.

The research shows that Japan’s onnagata transvestism tradition and its influences on women’s beauty practice have existed since the premodern period, preceding contemporary cross-gender beauty practices observed in social media.

The purpose of this study is to compare measurement scales of sports fans’ motivations applied to women’s football.

A survey research approach was used to collect 574 valid responses from participants in Brazil and the USA. Three prominent scales – Sport Interest Inventory (SII), Sport Fan Motivation Scale (SFMS) and Motivation Scale for Sport Consumption (MSSC) are were compared using the structural equation modeling technique.

The results indicate that the SII scale demonstrates superior predictive power for variables such as “purchase intention,” “electronic word of mouth,” “identification as a fan” and “interest in women’s football” compared to the SFMS and MSSC scales. The primary motivation among followers and spectators of women’s football in the study was “supporting women’s opportunities” in sport.

While the study is grounded in the most relevant scales pertinent to the theme, the limited academic production on the subject hinders direct comparisons with prior research.

Leveraging the insights from the SII scale, football team managers can refine their marketing strategies by understanding the primary motivations driving women’s football consumption. This knowledge can inform targeted efforts to enhance women’s football consumption, subsequently expanding opportunities for women in the sport.

This study provides valuable information that can inform initiatives aimed at boosting women’s soccer consumption, thereby contributing to increased opportunities for women in the sport.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first attempt to compare scales in the specific context of women’s soccer, contributing with a unique perspective to the development of women’s sports.