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This paper aims to describe a study of interactive and collaborative behaviours of software product development teams across horizontal, geographical and value chain boundaries. The objective is to understand the influence of boundary on these behaviours.

This paper is a questionnaire‐based study of 63 software product‐development teams.

The study shows, that interactive behaviour is used more by teams as compared to collaborative behaviour while developing software products. The interactive behaviour is not influenced by the boundary crossed, while collaborative behaviour is influenced by the boundaries crossed.

The study is relevant for practitioners and researchers. Collaboration is considered important for product development, but the study shows that it is not used extensively. Researchers can look into why low level of collaborative behaviour has been exhibited.

Chatbot technology is growing swiftly across the banking and finance industry. The study aims to explore the influence of Task-Technology Fit (TTF), system suitability, perceived usefulness, social influence and satisfaction on respondents’ continuance intention among the chatbot-users. A total of 250 responses were collected using a structured questionnaire via social media across India. The measurement model was proposed based on the system usability (SUS) and TTF model with other constructs, and the hypothesis was tested using a structural equation model. The findings of the study highlighted and confirmed the association among five constructs: TTF, SUS, perceived usefulness, social influence, on satisfaction and continuance intention in the context of chatbots usage in banking.

Purpose: Entrepreneurship is one of the best ways towards self-sufficiency and poverty alleviation for women in a country without guaranteed employment. The research contributes and provides reasons for supporting women’s entrepreneurship, as although it is well-documented that women’s entrepreneurship increases economic growth, other approaches need attention, especially those related to sustainability.

Need for the study: Women have superior emotional intelligence, resilience, and capacity to maintain a healthy work–life balance; women make better business and entrepreneurial leaders. Many businesses see encouraging women to join the workforce as a key to achieving sustainability goals. This study will provide valuable insights into the role of female entrepreneurs in driving sustainable business practices in the USA and India – rural India and urban India.

Methodology: The chapter adopts a descriptive research design methodology in conducting a thorough literature review on the evolution of women entrepreneurship in India. The case-based approach has been adopted to depict women entrepreneurs and their growth stories. The analysis is based on qualitative analysis of secondary data and primary data. This research proposes exciting revelations regarding the trend of women entrepreneurship in India and, from a global perspective, challenges women entrepreneurs face in organised and unorganised sectors in India and policies in different countries that promote women entrepreneurship towards sustainability.

Findings: Women business owners in India help the economy thrive, reduce poverty, and have a greater chance of shaping India’s destiny. This chapter looks at how entrepreneurial actions affect cultural morals and values. Women’s business growth rates vary from country to country, and this variation is influenced by the fact that countries can be broadly categorised as either developed or developing.

Purpose: This study links SDG goal 9 of industry, innovation strategies and another infrastructural environment to branding relating to destination and interactive marketing. Digital marketing tools with various applications aim to offer hi-tech services to customers in interactive marketing services, namely multiple goods and services, data and innovative techniques in the tourism and travel sector. Exploring the study would add to the existing literature supporting interactive marketing procedures and destination branding. Branding relating to destinations fosters tourists around the globe facilitating economic growth and development and supporting the local economies.

Need for the Study: It is observed from the literature that very few studies have been identified across the globe from various researchers on the interactive marketing and destination branding that ensures brand loyalty and reassesses the intent of the tourists just before the epidemic pandemic in the form of COVID-19. Artificial Intelligence, as part of information technology, offers various interactive marketing services in the form of different social media marketing strategies, attractive websites for tourists and travel providers and image building on destination branding. This study would help fill the marketing gap, which results in branding relating to destination, brand loyalty and reassessing the intent of various tours and travel plans just before the pandemic.

Methodology: The study focused on the literature, demonstrating the stimulus organism methodology and examining the impact of potential marketing strategy, which is interactive focusing on the destination branding, loyalty relating to the brand and also procedures to revert with the intent that would motivate and facilitate the customer’s confidence showering the loyalty relating to the brand in the travel and tourism sector.

Findings and their Practical Implications: The study revealed that the marketing relating to interactive methodologies in the hi-tech digital approaches ought to be carried out to create opportunities for prospective tourists willing to get information about various tourists destinations with the help of various marketing techniques such as different social media applications, easy access of websites for accessing the tourist destinations and relevant information, accessing images pertinent to the tourism destinations with the ease of chat box and providing suitable audios and video sources to the potential customers.

The aim of this paper is to examine educators' perceptions of service quality in secondary schools. Research into service quality in a secondary educational context is somewhat scant, and where investigations have been undertaken, very little has been conducted from the educators' perspectives.

A focus group was conducted to elicit attributes of service quality that were deemed important by educators of state secondary schools. The study utilises focus group findings and modifies the SERVQUAL to develop a research instrument, EDUSERV, which measures educators' expectations and perceptions of service quality in secondary schools in Mauritius.

Exploratory factor analysis was used to group the service attributes into latent “service factors” and the statements loaded on five factors. Consequently, the EDUSERV instrument was found to be reliable and valid to measure service quality in a secondary education environment. Regression analysis was also used to examine the relationship between quality dimensions and overall satisfaction.

This is the first stage of a comprehensive study, the model was tested only with educators in Mauritius, and this is the major limitation. Future research direction is desired for conducting the study using the same instrument on students and school management.

The research has important managerial implications as the findings will assist secondary school management and policy makers in identifying areas which require attention so as to improve the level of service quality in secondary education.

The paper presents a model which can be used to evaluate service quality in secondary education.

This paper assesses the impact of a pioneering and unique initiative by Hindustan Lever Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of Unilever Ltd through its Project Shakti program. The study used qualitative interviews of women microentrepreneurs participating in this program about personal and occupational issues. Our analysis suggested several themes such as entrepreneurial development, economic empowerment, and social empowerment.

The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is still at a growing stage in developing economies, so this research aims to examine a novel causal link between CSR (disclosure and expenditure) and competitive advantage (CA), by including competitive intensity (CI) as a moderator.

The panel data of non-financial firms were collected for eight years (2013–2020). This study used distinct proxies of CA, including adjusted firm return on assets and adjusted firm Tobin's q, and a third proxy used to discover the combined validity of the findings. The CSR disclosure was measured by developing an index, while the amount of CSR expenditure was collected from firms' annual reports.

The empirical results of Arellano–Bond estimator showed that CSR disclosure and expenditure have a positive and significant impact on CA. This relationship is also tested with CI as a moderator, the results of moderation showed that CI strengthens the relationship between studied variables.

This research tries to bridge the gap between CSR and CA through CI. It is also an addition to the existing literature by addressing the issue of CA generated from CSR activities. This study also explores the area of CA with three different types of proxies with the moderating effect of CI.

Whilst a modest number of investigations have been undertaken concerning nanofluids (NFs), the exploration of fluid flow under exponentially stretching velocities using NFs remains comparatively uncharted territory. This work presents a distinctive contribution through the comprehensive examination of heat and mass transfer phenomena in the NF ND–Cu/H₂O under the influence of an exponentially stretching velocity. Moreover, the investigation delves into the intriguing interplay of gyrotactic microorganisms and convective boundary conditions within the system.

Similarity transformations have been used on PDEs to convert them into dimensionless ODEs. The solution is derived by using the homotopy analysis method (HAM). The pictorial notations have been prepared for sundry flow parameters. Furthermore, some engineering quantities are calculated in terms of the density of motile microbes, Nusselt and Sherwood numbers and skin friction, which are presented in tabular form.

The mixed convection effect associated with the combined effect of the buoyancy ratio, bioconvection Rayleigh constant and the resistivity due to the magnetization property gives rise to attenuating the velocity distribution significantly in the case of hybrid nanoliquid. The parameters involved in the profile of motile microorganisms attenuate the profile significantly.

The current simulations have uncovered fascinating discoveries about how metallic NFs behave near a stretched surface. These insights give us valuable information about the characteristics of the boundary layer close to the surface under exponential stretching.

The novelty of the current investigation is the analysis of NF ND–Cu/H₂O along with an exponentially stretching velocity in a system with gyrotactic microorganisms. The investigation of fluid flow at an exponentially stretching velocity using NFs is still relatively unexplored.