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Access to clean drinking water is a major encumbrance in developing countries. In Ghana, urban water supply is below internationally recognised standards, especially among the urban poor, sub-urban and rural communities. Stakeholders and institutional inefficiencies may be hindrances facing the Ghanaian water supply process. Therefore, this study aims to appraise the motivational factors and outcome of stakeholders’ engagement and identify the factors that influence effective institutional management of urban water supply in Ghana.

Sequential exploratory mixed methods were adopted and analysed to proffer answers to the research questions. Nineteen participants and 521 respondents were sampled for the qualitative and quantitative phases.

Findings reveal that the institutional processes and stakeholder engagement significantly influence the effectiveness of the management of urban water supply in Ghana. Findings identified 35 motivational factors and categorised them into the health of the population, socio-economic, technological and innovation trends, policy reform and adaptive governance. Also, the 22 institutional factors identified were categorised into three groups: regulatory framework, ethics for managing water supply and the culture of managing water supply.

Besides the study addressing the theoretical gap regarding which variables are germane in influencing the effective management of urban water supply, the study may be among the top studies that have appraised the role of stakeholders in the institutional management of urban water supply in Ghana.

In this study, the authors propose a novel digital twinning approach specifically designed for controlling transient thermal systems. The purpose of this study is to harness the combined power of deep learning (DL) and physics-based methods (PBM) to create an active virtual replica of the physical system.

To achieve this goal, we introduce a deep neural network (DNN) as the digital twin and a Finite Element (FE) model as the physical system. This integrated approach is used to address the challenges of controlling an unsteady heat transfer problem with an integrated feedback loop.

The results of our study demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed digital twinning approach in regulating the maximum temperature within the system under varying and unsteady heat flux conditions. The DNN, trained on stationary data, plays a crucial role in determining the heat transfer coefficients necessary to maintain temperatures below a defined threshold value, such as the material’s melting point. The system is successfully controlled in 1D, 2D and 3D case studies. However, careful evaluations should be conducted if such a training approach, based on steady-state data, is applied to completely different transient heat transfer problems.

The present work represents one of the first examples of a comprehensive digital twinning approach to transient thermal systems, driven by data. One of the noteworthy features of this approach is its robustness. Adopting a training based on dimensionless data, the approach can seamlessly accommodate changes in thermal capacity and thermal conductivity without the need for retraining.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the adoption of big data analytics (BDA) in the Tanzania banking industry by investigating the influence of technological, environmental and organizational (TOE) factors while exploring the moderating role of perceived risk (PR).

The study employed a qualitative research design, and the research instrument was developed using per-defined measurement items adopted from prior studies; the items were slightly adjusted to fit the current context. The questionnaires were distributed to top and middle managers in selected banks in Tanzania using the snowball sampling technique. Out of 360 received responses, 302 were considered complete and valid for data analysis. The study employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to examine the developed conceptual framework.

Top management support and financial resources emerged as influential organizational factors, as did competition intensity for the environmental factors. Notably, bank size and perceived trends showed no significant impacts on BDA adoption. The study's novelty lies in revealing PR as a moderating factor, weakening the link between technological readiness, perceived usefulness and the intent to adopt BDA.

This study extends literature by extending the TOE model, through examining the moderating roles of PR on technological factors. Furthermore, the study provides useful managerial support for the adoption of BDA in banking in emerging economies.

This study aims to comparatively measure the impact factors of financial inclusion and their spillover effects for Belt and Road countries using panel data from 57 countries in 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2021 and relevant indicators from three dimensions: availability, usage and quality to construct a digital empowerment index of financial inclusion.

A spatial Durbin panel model is constructed to empirically test the impact mechanism of financial inclusion under digital empowerment.

Results reveal that improving a country’s quality of regulation, technology and residents’ financial literacy significantly contributes to the development of its financial inclusion, while improving its neighboring countries’ financial literacy also boosts its financial inclusion development. This study provides theoretical support for evaluating the development level of inclusive finance in “Belt and Road” countries, promoting the development of inclusive finance and alleviating the problem of financial exclusion.

This study is original as it creates a research paradigm for “Belt and Road” countries, enabling systematic testing and comparative analysis of inclusive finance development. It incorporates traditional and digital services, evaluating them based on sharing, fairness, convenience and specific group benefits. An inclusive financial index is constructed using the coefficient of variation and arithmetic weighted average methods. Additionally, it introduces a more rational analysis approach for the influence mechanism and spatial effect, using an economic geography nested matrix and spatial Durbin model to explore spatial effects in inclusive finance.

The purpose of this article is based on the unit patent license fee model in the closed-loop supply chain.

This paper analyzes the impact of the bundling strategy of the retailer selling new products and remanufactured products on the closed-loop supply chain under the condition that the original manufacturer produces new products and the remanufacturer produces remanufacturing products.

The results show that alternative products can be bundled, and in many cases, the bundling of remanufactured products and new products is better than selling alone.

If the retailer chooses bundling, for the remanufacturer, when certain conditions are met, the benefits of bundling are greater than the separate sales at that time; for the original manufacturer, when the recycling price sensitivity coefficient is high, the bundling is better than separate sales.

Early research on overqualification suggested that overqualification is primarily associated with negative attitudes and behavior. As a consequence, hiring practitioners were advised against hiring overqualified job applicants. However, recent studies have revealed that there are several potential positive consequences of overqualification. Given this change in perspective on overqualification, we examine how hiring practitioners nowadays look at overqualified job applicants, and what their considerations are for hiring an overqualified job applicant or not.

We have interviewed 33 hiring practitioners to examine their attitudes and considerations toward hiring overqualified job applicants.

Results show that hiring practitioners are aware of potential positive as well as negative consequences of overqualification and consider a variety of factors to assess how beneficial hiring an overqualified candidate will be. These factors fall under three categories: Individual considerations, interpersonal considerations and contextual considerations.

We show that overqualification is not a stigma anymore and that the decision to hire an overqualified job applicant or not depends on a mixture of factors that are carefully considered. Two of these three considerations transcend the individual level (i.e. the overqualified person), whereas most research and theories on the consequences of overqualification do not go beyond the individual level. As such, our findings call for more theory and research on interpersonal and contextual factors shaping the consequences of overqualification.

Global climate change speeds up ice melting and increases flooding incidents. China launched a sponge city policy as a holistic nature-based solution combined with urban planning and development to address flooding due to climate change. Using Weibo analytics, this paper aims to study public perceptions of sponge city.

This study collected 53,586 sponge city contents from Sina Weibo via Python. Various artificial intelligence tools, such as CX Data Science of Simply Sentiment, KH Coder and Tableau, were applied in the study.

76.8% of public opinion on sponge city were positive, confirming its positive contribution to flooding management and city branding. 17 out of 31 pilot sponge cities recorded the largest number of sponge cities related posts. Other cities with more Weibo posts suffered from rainwater and flooding hazards, such as Xi'an and Zhengzhou.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to explore the public perception of sponge city in Sina Weibo.

Climatic changes caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions are an urgent challenge for all regions around the globe while the livestock sector is an important source of GHGs emissions. The adoption of low-carbon manure treatment technology (LMTT) by farmers is emerging as an effective remedy to neutralize the carbon emissions of livestock. This paper aims to incorporate environmental literacy and social norms into the analysis framework, with the aim of exploring the impact of environmental literacy and social norms on farmers' adoption of LMTT and finally reduce GHGs emission and climate effects.

This research survey is conducted in Hebei, Henan and Hubei provinces of China. First, this research measures environmental literacy from environmental cognition, skill and responsibility and describes social norms from descriptive and imperative social norms. Second, this paper explores the influence of environmental literacy and social norms on the adoption of LMTT by farmers using the logit model. Third, Logit model's instrumental approach, i.e. IV-Logit, is applied to address the simultaneous biases between environmental skill and farmers’ LMTT adoption. Finally, the research used a moderating model to analyze feasible paths of environmental literacy and social norms that impact the adoption of LMTT by farmers.

The results showed that environmental literacy and social norms significantly and positively affect the adoption of LMTT by farmers. In particular, the effects of environmental literacy on the adoption of LMTT by farmers are mainly contributed by environmental skill and responsibility. The enhancement of social norms on the adoption of LMTT by farmers is mainly due to the leading role of imperative social norms. Meanwhile, if the endogeneity caused by the reverse effect between environmental skill and farmers’ LMTT adoption is dealt with, the role of environmental skill will be weakened. Additionally, LMTT technologies consist of energy and resource technologies. Compared to energy technology, social norms have a more substantial moderating effect on environmental literacy, affecting the adoption of farmer resource technology.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, a novel attempt is made to examine the effects of environmental literacy and social norms on the adoption of LMTT by farmers, with the objective of identifying more effective factors to increase the intensity of LMTT adoption by farmers.

This research aims to examine the US–China policy shift from Obama to Biden emphasizing the centrality of Taiwan question in the geostrategic competition with Beijing and its prospect if the US strategy remains unchanged.

A conceptual framework is outlined, illustrating how the US grand strategy is driven by the ideological foundation of Exceptionalism. The paper highlights the associated US policy changes that evolved from Obama to Trump and then Biden to advance Washington's strategic interests in its rivalry with China over Taiwan.

Biden's policy led to an escalating geopolitical competition with Beijing over Taiwan to maintain US supremacy. The Biden administration is more stringent than the previous administrations on the Taiwan question and there is the conviction that the USA must not back down on Taiwan because the alternative will be a retraction of US world primacy to Beijing. With Washington's persistent hegemonic strategy, the US–China confrontation over Taiwan seems inevitable.

The research highlights how the Biden administration managed a perpetuated Ukraine crisis and forged unprecedented high-level ties with Taiwan, indicating the administration's determination to exacerbate contentions with Beijing over Taiwan rather than de-escalate.

Highly committed, motivated and engaged employees assure organizational success and competitiveness. The study aims to examine the association between human resource development (HRD) practices and employee engagement with organizational commitment as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 760 employees of 13 star-rated hotels comprising 5 (five-star) and 8 (four-star). The data supported the hypothesized relationships. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the proposed model and hypotheses. Construct validity and reliability were established through confirmatory factor analysis.

The results indicate that HRD practices and affective commitment are significantly associated. HRD practices and continuance commitment were shown to be non-significantly associated. HRD practices and normative commitment were shown to be non-significantly associated. Employee engagement and organizational commitment are significantly associated. The results further show that organizational commitment mediates the association between HRD practices and employee engagement.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research's hotel industry focus and cross sectional data.

The study's findings will serve as valuable pointers for stakeholders and policymakers of the hotel industry in the adoption, design and implementation of proactive HRD interventions to keep highly engaged and committed employees for organizational competitiveness and sustainability.

By evidencing empirically that organizational commitment mediates the nexus between HRD practices and employee engagement, the study extends the literature.