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In the context of investment decisions, the intricate interplay between exogenous shocks and their influence on investor confidence significantly shapes their behaviors and, consequently, their outcomes. Investment decisions are influenced by uncertainties, exogenous shocks as well as the sentiments and confidence of investors, factors typically overlooked by decision-makers. This study will meticulously examine these multifaceted influences and discern their intricate hierarchical nuances in the sentiments of industrial entrepreneurs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Employing the robust framework of the generalized linear latent and mixed models (GLLAMM), this research will thoroughly investigate individual and group idiosyncrasies present in diverse data compilations. Additionally, it will delve deeply into the exogeneity of disturbances across different sectors and regions.

Relevant insights gleaned from this research elucidate the adverse influence of exogenous forces, including pandemics and financial crises, on the confidence of industrial entrepreneurs. Furthermore, a significant discovery emerges in the regional analysis, revealing a notable homogeneity in the propagation patterns of industrial entrepreneurs' perceptions within the sectoral and regional context. This finding suggests a mitigation of regional effects in situations of global exogenous shocks.

Within the realm of academic inquiry, this study offers an innovative perspective in unveiling the intricate interaction between external shocks and their significant impacts on the sentiment of industrial entrepreneurs. Furthermore, the utilization of the robust GLLAMM captures the hierarchical dimension of this relationship, enhancing the precision of analyses. This approach provides a significant impetus for data-informed strategic directions.

The study seeks to conduct an empirical investigation on the impact of entrepreneurship education (EE) through its components, i.e. entrepreneurial knowledge (EK) and business planning (BP) on entrepreneurial intentions (EI) in India.

An electronic questionnaire was used to collect data from 340 engineering students and partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the collected data.

The findings revealed that EK and BP have no direct impact on EI, however, they have an indirect influence through attitude towards entrepreneurship (ATE) and perceived behavioral control (PBC), whereas subjective norms (SN) have no mediation impact on the relationships.

This research has been conducted on students of engineering background only, future studies can be carried out by incorporating more attitudinal and environmental determinants with larger data sizes from diverse educational streams.

This study is of immense significance to policymakers and educational establishments in designing the purposefully designed EE courses that can drive the entrepreneurial intentionality of students.

The study adds to the paucity of research on the systematic elaboration of EE construct underlining the specific impact of EK and BP as EE dimensions on students' EI. To the best of authors' awareness, this kind of investigation has not been conducted in indian higher educational institution (HEI) context.

This study aims to examine the impact of Lean 4.0 practices on value co-creation in the dairy ecosystem.

Data collection were carried out through a questionary application with 126 professionals linked to the dairy ecosystem, including milk producers, milk cooperatives and milk transporters. The data were analyzed using Cluster Analysis, Mann-Whitney test and Chi-Square test.

A strong relation was found between the use of Lean 4.0 tools and the increase in operational performance, in addition to milk quality. Moreover, it can be noted that the use of digital technologies from Industry 4.0 has a strong relation with dairy production optimization, in other words, it is possible to be more efficient in the dairy process via Lean 4.0 adoption.

The study is limited to analyzing the Brazilian dairy ecosystem. The results presented may not reflect the characteristics of the other countries.

Once the potential empirical impacts of the relation between Lean 4.0 and value co-creation are elucidated, it is possible to direct strategies for decision-making and guide efforts by researchers and professionals to deal with the waste mitigation present in the dairy sector.

Lean 4.0 proves to be a potential solution to improve the operational performance of the dairy production system. Lean 4.0, linked to value co-creation, allows the integration of the production sector with consumers, through smart technologies, so new services and experiences can be provided to the consumer market. Additionally, the consumer experience can be stimulated based on Lean 4.0, once the quality specification is highlighted based on data science and smart management control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyzes the interrelationship between the Lean 4.0 philosophy and the value co-creation in the dairy ecosystem. In this sense, the study reveals the main contributions of this interrelation to the dairy sector via value co-creation, which demonstrates a new perspective on the complementarity of resources, elimination of process losses and new experiences for the user through digital technologies integrated with the Lean Thinking approach.

The purpose of this paper is to meet Dr Joyce Shaffer, PhD, ABPP, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Washington.

This case study is presented in two sections: a positive autoethnography written by Joyce Shaffer, followed by her answers to ten questions.

In this positive autoethnography, Shaffer shares her life story and reveals numerous mental health and positive aging recommendations and insights for us to reflect on.

This is a personal narrative, albeit from someone who has been a clinical psychologist and active in the field of aging for many decades.

A pragmatic approach to aging is recommended. According to Shaffer, “those of us who can recognize the beat of the historical drummer can harvest the best of it and learn from the rest of it.”

Positive aging has strong social implications. Shaffer considers that it is not only about maximizing our own physical, mental, emotional and social health but also about maximizing that of others, to make our world a better place for everyone.

Positive aging can be experienced despite adversity. As Shaffer says, “Adversity used for growth and healed by love is the answer.”

The purpose of this study is to discuss the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) favorable attitude toward the financial sector’s digital transformation and the development of FinTech due to the rise of financial technology. FinTech blends innovation and technology to provide financial inclusion to stakeholders through various new products and services such metaverse and artificial intelligence.

A quantitative research approach was used to empirically validate the suggested research model by using 260 Emirates-based banking authorities and administrators’ data.

The findings indicate that FinTech adoption had a substantial impact on the competitiveness and performance of the UAE banking industry during COVID-19 times. The research indicates that adequate FinTech implementation and alignment with technology management directly influence the performance of the UAE’s banking sector in difficult times.

This study is critical because the UAE banking sector serves diverse nationalities, and its success is contingent on FinTech and its competitive edge.

This study aims to investigate how sustainability and ethics are being addressed both by the literature and companies. Furthermore, it seeks to identify the specific strategies that these companies use to foster ethical behaviour and promote sustainability in their business operations.

The study entails a bibliometric analysis and a set of case studies from a sample of companies working in different industry sectors. Based on these tools, it analyses whether – and how – enterprises are placing an emphasis on sustainability and ethics as part of their businesses. In addition, the selected companies' unethical practices or socially irresponsible corporate activities were investigated and presented.

The findings suggest that using an ethics perspective can be a valuable tool in improving the accuracy and correctness of business decision-making. In addition, the paper has identified the fact that sustainability standards can be used to improve customer satisfaction as many important issues are addressed. Finally, the paper highlights the importance of ethical considerations when designing and implementing sustainability standards at enterprises and the need for regulatory guidance in this regard.

The paper addresses the need for studies on how sustainability and ethics are being discussed by both the literature and companies. The paper presents some elements that can be used as possible corporate indicators for a wider implementation of sustainability and ethics objectives in enterprises.

Following behavioral finance and monetary wisdom, the authors theorize: Decision-makers (investors) adopt deep-rooted personal values (the love-of-money attitudes/avaricious financial aspirations) as a lens to frame critical concerns (short-term and long-term investment decisions) in the immediate-proximal (current income) and distal-omnibus (future inheritance) contexts to maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity across context, people and time.

The authors collected data from 277 active equity traders (professional money managers and individual investors) in Pakistan’s two most robust investment hubs—Karachi and Lahore. The authors measured their love-of-money attitude (avaricious monetary aspirations), short-term and long-term investment decisions and demographic variables and collected data during Pakistan's bear markets (Pakistan Stock Exchange, PSX-100).

Investors’ love of money relates to short-term and long-term decisions. However, these relationships are significant for money managers but non-significant for individual investors. Further, investors’ current income moderates this relationship for short-term investment decisions but not long-term decisions. The intensity of the aspirations-to-short-term investment relationship is much higher for investors with low-income levels than those with average and high-income levels. Future inheritance moderates the relationships between aspirations and short-term and long-term decisions. Regardless of their love-of-money orientations, investors with future inheritance have higher magnitudes of short-term and long-term investments than those without future inheritance. The intensity of the aspirations-to-investments relationship is more potent for investors without future inheritance than those with inheritance. Investors with low avaricious monetary aspirations and without inheritance expectations show the lowest short-term and long-term investment decisions. Investors' current income and future inheritance moderate the relationships between their love of money attitude and short-term and long-term decisions differently in Pakistan's bear markets.

The authors help investors make financial decisions and help financial institutions, asset management companies, brokerage houses and investment banks identify marketing strategies and investor segmentation and provide individualized services.

Professional money managers have a stronger short-term orientation than individual investors. Lack of wealth (current income and future inheritance) motivates greedy investors to take more risks and become more vulnerable than non-greedy ones—investors’ financial resources and wealth matter. The Matthew Effect in investment decisions exists in Pakistan’s emerging economy.

Drawing insights from institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether and to what extent banks have reconfigured their management control systems (MCSs) in response to growing institutional pressures towards sustainability, understood as environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The authors conducted an exploratory study at the three largest Italian banking groups to shed light on changes made in MCSs to account for ESG issues. The analysis is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with managers from the sustainability and controls areas, as well as from other relevant operational areas particularly concerned with the integration process of ESG issues. Additionally, secondary data sources were used. The Malmi and Brown (2008) MCS framework, consisting of a package of five types of formal and informal control mechanisms, was used to structure and analyse the empirical data.

The examined banks widely implemented numerous changes to their MCSs as a response to the heightened sustainability pressures from regulatory bodies and stakeholders. In particular, with the exception of action planning, the results show an extensive integration of ESG issues into the five control mechanisms of Malmi and Brown’s framework, namely, long-term planning, cybernetic, reward/compensation, administrative and cultural controls.

By identifying the approaches banks followed in reconfiguring traditional MCSs, this research sheds light on how adequate MCSs can promote banks’ “sustainable behaviours”. The results can, thus, contribute to defining best practices on how MCSs can be redesigned to support the integration of ESG issues into the banks’ way of doing business.

Overall, the findings support the theoretical assertion that institutional pressures influence the design of banks’ MCSs, and that both formal and informal controls are necessary to ensure a real engagement towards sustainability. More specifically, this study reveals that MCSs, by encompassing both formal and informal controls, are central to enabling banks to appropriately understand, plan and control the transition towards business models fully oriented to the integration of ESG issues. Thereby, this allows banks to effectively respond to the increased stakeholder demands around ESG concerns.

This study examines the public participation in the implementation of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approach for urban development. HUL has six Critical Steps and four Tools Categories relating to community engagement, knowledge and planning, regulatory system and financial instruments. The HUL public participation component has materialized variably across the adopting cities, challenged by the local implementation capacity. In response, we have singled out two research questions revolving around the participants’ characteristics and participation methods.

This study instrumentalizes case studies as a research methodology and thematic literature as a theoretical context. The HUL projects for Ballarat, Australia and Cuenca, Ecuador have been selected as sources of published information because they exhibit comparative differences in completing community engagement. We have compared the community engagement accounts of the two cities.

The Ballarat and Cuenca HUL project accounts point out to commonalities and variances in responding to the HUL public participation mandate. The findings for the participants’ characteristics involve project setting, participants categories and participants empowerment; the findings for the participation methods involve initial preparation, domestic and international expertise and public conversation.

The results of the study help define public participation practices in HUL project implementations. The results present an opportunity for city officials, HUL project planners and field administrators for making informed decisions particularly in relation to the two public participation domains, the participants’ characteristics and the engagement methods.

This study aims to analyze the effects of socialization mechanisms (belief system and peer mentoring) on managers’ job engagement and their desire to have a significant impact through work, that is, the desire to substantially improve or facilitate the lives of others by performing their work. The study also examines the moderating role of organizational identification.

A survey was conducted with middle and lower-level managers at one of the largest banks in Brazil, the BankCo. The authors obtained a sample of 201 respondents and tested the research hypotheses with structural equation modeling. The authors also performed a complementary data analysis with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

The results suggest that belief systems and peer mentoring directly promote job engagement and indirectly promote desire to have a significant impact to a better world through work (through full mediation of job engagement). The effects of job engagement on desire to have a significant impact through work are even greater when managers have high organizational identification. Finally, several causal combinations are sufficient for high levels of desire to have a significant impact through work.

Beyond studies that examine how organizational mechanisms influence employee outcomes (e.g. performance), this study explores how socialization mechanisms can promote desire to have a significant impact through work. Thus, the authors demonstrate how organizational core values, mission statement and peer mentoring collaborate for managers to develop altruistic behavior, that is, directly related to other human values, such as empathy and ethics, being able to contribute to a world better.

This study developed and empirically tested a model that connects socialization mechanisms, job engagement, organizational identification and managers’ desire to have a significant impact through their work. Therefore, the paper provides insights into the relevance of socialization mechanisms for orchestrating managers’ proactive and altruistic behaviors.