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Brand gestalt has emerged as a crucial concept in marketing and branding, denoting the holistic perception and overall impression that consumers develop about a brand. This concept gains significance as it serves to measure the overall identity of a brand. Despite its importance, both empirical and theoretical exploration of this concept remains limited, particularly in the context of place branding. The present study aims to bridge the theoretical gap surrounding the interplay between brand gestalt, tourist attitude and loyalty within the city branding domain. In particular, it aims to comprehensively explore the dimensional impact of city brand gestalt (CBG) on tourist attitude, satisfaction and loyalty.

The primary data were collected through a self-administered online questionnaire containing 35 items, developed and adapted from the literature review. A total of 314 samples of Bitung City visitors were recruited, resulting in a 79% response rate. Structural equation modeling was performed using SmartPLS 3 to validate the research hypotheses.

The findings of the study indicate that CBG has a substantial and positive influence on tourist attitudes, satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, it was discovered that tourist attitude and satisfaction play a partial mediating role in the relationship between CBG and tourist loyalty.

This study is a seminal contribution to understanding the link between CBG, tourist attitude, satisfaction and loyalty. It offers valuable insights for city destination management in designing strategies and interventions to foster positive tourist attitudes, increase satisfaction and sustain loyalty. In particular, it emphasizes the necessity of ongoing investments in maintaining a positive holistic brand experience (i.e., brand gestalt) that aligns with evolving expectations. The study highlights the need to develop a compelling narrative and consistent messaging tailored to the target audience's values and aspirations. Additionally, it underscores the importance of providing exceptional sensory experiences that appeal to the target audience.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is among the first to examine the role of brand gestalt in the context of city branding. Understanding the holistic interaction of the four brand gestalt elements – story, sensescape, servicescape and stakeholders – is crucial for fostering tourists' positive attitudes, satisfaction and loyalty toward urban destinations. The proposed CBG model offers a conceptual framework to guide future research in city branding.

With the goal to indicate the importance of human–nature connection in designing workplaces, the authors investigated the effects of direct and indirect biophilic indicators on the well-being and performance of employees of an organization. The main question is what is the effect of biophilic components on the well-being and performance of employees.

To answer the research questions, the authors designed and validated an instrument to evaluate correlation between biophilic components with well-being and performance. The participants include 160 employees of one organization. For the data analysis, both descriptive statistical and inferential statistics were used. Pearson's correlation test and ANOVA were conducted to explain the relationship between variables.

The results indicated that biophilic components have significant positive relationships with the well-being of the employees, but no significant relationship was found between biophilic components and the performance of the employees. Using the ANOVA test, biophilic indicators that have a positive and significant effect on the well-being and performance of employees were determined. The natural scenery and warm colors has significant positive effects on social well-being, and the usage of natural landscape posters in the working rooms has a positive and significant relationship with psychological well-being. The natural lighting has a positive and significant relationship with the employees' counterproductive work behavior.

Most of the questionnaires of this research were filled electronically because of the health protocols during pandemic. Almost 70% of the organization's employees had less than 5 years of work experience, which can be considered one of the interfering factors. In addition, the authors only used the questionnaire as a tool for collecting information in this study. There are other forms of information that can be explored through observations, interviews or experiments. Another limitation of this study is the lack of significant diversity in the investigated environments. Finally, the numbers of male and female participants of this study were not equal. The authors suggest studying both genders with an almost equal ratio so that the differences and needs of both groups can be understood.

The designed questionnaire is a validated instrument that can be used by other researchers to evaluate the biophilic design of workplace. These findings can also be useful for managers, companies and organizations in making decisions to improve the working environment and increase the well-being and performance of their employees.

The social effects of biophilic design in the workplace are significant as well. The use of biophilic components can foster a sense of connection between employees and their workplace, creating a positive social environment that supports collaboration and communication. Additionally, a biophilic workplace can promote a positive company culture that values the health and well-being of its employees, which can contribute to employee retention and satisfaction.

In this study, to determine the effects of the biophilic indicators on dimensions of employees' well-being and performance, an instrument is designed and validated.

This paper aims to clarify how business education has and should incorporate more resources, policies and stakeholder engagement towards the incorporation of sustainability, by conducting a literature review on sustainability in business and international business education and proposing future opportunities for researchers and practitioners.

The authors take a systematic, qualitative analysis approach to evaluate multidisciplinary literatures on sustainability in business education. The authors identify 192 qualifying papers published in 68 journals between 2015 and 2023.

The authors propose five categories of education solutions. Four of them are integrated, in two macro–micro levels: university (stakeholders and shared-mindset change) and student (pedagogical methods and curriculum); and one at meso level: international business (holistic integration) serving to unify the university and student levels.

The review highlights the value of applying a holistic approach and interdisciplinary pedagogical methods in future research on sustainability education in business school to effectively prepare future business leaders to contribute to a more sustainable future.

Insights from this review can usefully guide scholars and programme directors in their future research and administrative efforts towards business curriculum design, stakeholder management and policy-making.

The findings highlight how by embracing holistic perspectives, proper policies and self-awareness, business education shapes the mindsets and skill sets of the next generation of socially conscious practitioners.

The review stands out as one of the few that offers a forward-looking trajectory for the adaptation of international business education in response to sustainability challenges, through a holistic perspective.

This qualitative study discusses the importance of effective leadership practices in connecting the macro-, meso-, and micro-contexts in which school leaders operate, considering the colonial and apartheid history of South Africa and the current era of neoliberal philosophies by exploring the degree to which school leaders in historically disadvantaged schools in Western Cape Province use an edupreneurial approach to steer their schools in new directions. The school leaders, especially in historically disadvantaged Colored schools, are expected to be more autonomous and accountable for making the school environment conducive to performance standards and improved learning results. The study uses an edupreneurial leadership approach as a theoretical lens to explore entrepreneurial agency, together with the educational leadership approach of school principals as a consequence of neoliberal policies.

This study focuses on secondary schools in historically Colored communities in Western Cape Province through semi-structured interviews with four purposively selected school principals and four teachers from four different schools in the Western Cape Province.

Education and training programs should focus on cultural values and practices to enhance the efficacy of these schools. Furthermore, an entrepreneurial mindset and spirit are aspects that can be encouraged in a culturally sensitive manner. The edupreneurial leadership approach in developing countries has a distinctive nature.

This study contributes to forging an understanding of how neoliberal trends influence school leadership practices in developing countries, especially the leadership work of school principals across public schools in the Western Cape Province in South Africa.

This study examines the factors influencing educational aspirations among adolescents in secondary and high schools across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan (officially Kyrgyz Republic), and Tajikistan, with a focus on their aspirations for higher and postgraduate education. Through an analysis of a sample comprising 1360 students from grades 7 to 11, the research explores the likelihood of these students pursuing tertiary education.

The ordered logit regression models were used to analyze the impact of variables related to family background, including parents’ education, family support and SES, and school grade. Additionally, the Exploratory Factor Analysis was utilized to distill a smaller set of underlying factors or constructs from the measured variables.

The findings indicate that the mother's education level is significantly more influential compared to the father's education in shaping adolescents' aspirations for higher and postgraduate education in the Central Asian context. Additionally, hypotheses concerning the influence of family socioeconomic status (SES), family support, and grade-level differences on adolescents' higher educational aspirations have only been partially confirmed.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, no prior research work has indicated a significant impact of a mother's education on the educational aspirations of her offspring in the Central Asian region. This trend is consistent with the concept of educational hypogamy, wherein mothers possess higher educational levels than fathers, a phenomenon that is gaining prominence in contemporary family dynamics.

This study investigated what are the effective leadership styles and practices that boost employees’ work outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of facilities management professionals (FMPs).

Three predominant leadership styles (transformational, transactional contingent reward and disaster management) were operationalized into 38 leadership practices (X variables) and 8 work outcomes (Y variables). The explanatory sequential research design was adopted. Online questionnaire survey was first conducted on FMPs who managed facilities during the critical periods of COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore. In-depth interviews were then carried out with subject matter experts to elaborate on the quantitative findings.

During the pandemic, FMPs were significantly stressed at work, but also experienced significant job satisfaction and satisfaction with their leaders/supervisors. Statistical results revealed a range of leadership practices that are significantly correlated with FMPs’ work outcomes. One leadership practice is critical as it affects 4 of the 8 FMPs’ work outcomes - frequently acknowledging employees’ good performance during the pandemic.

The study explored 3 leadership styles. There are other styles like laissez faire and servant leadership that might also affect work outcomes.

Based on the findings, suggestions were provided to organizations that employ FMPs on how to improve their work outcomes during a crisis such as a pandemic.

The novelty is the discovery that in the context of a global disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the most relevant leadership styles to boost employees’ work outcomes are transactional contingent reward and disaster management leadership. The study adds to knowledge by showing that not one leadership style is superior – all 3 styles are complementary, but distinct, forms of leadership that need to work in tandem to boost FMPs’ work outcomes during a crisis such as a pandemic.

In November 2022, the commercial company, OpenAI, launched ChatGPT. Since then, university students have rapidly become regular users of this artificial intelligence (AI) platform. One reason for this is the powerful capability of this generative AI tool to produce textual content, which in many cases, is almost indistinguishable from human-generated content. Another reason is that ChatGPT easily gives anyone access to knowledge. However, there is a problem as the vast majority of its users have no idea how this AI platform works and thus overlook the importance of thinking critically about information communicated in ChatGPT. While some call for banning this generative AI tool, this study aims to provide evidence that science classrooms can become scenarios where students find explicit, concrete, and realistic opportunities to critically evaluate scientific information generated by ChatGPT.

An intervention study was conducted with 55 students (26 females and 29 males, 17–24 years old) during a university Spanish-English bilingual science course taught within an active learning environment. The data consist of the written critiques of the students about Spanish-English bilingual scientific texts produced by ChatGPT.

Results indicate that the intervention had a positive effect on students’ abilities to construct sound arguments in Spanish and in English while judging the quality of scientific texts produced by this AI bot. Moreover, the findings suggest that the intervention enriched students’ skills to make improvements to texts produced by this generative AI tool.

The evidence provided in this study contributes to the exploration of possibilities to help students become critical users of ChatGPT.

Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the effects of servant leadership and despotic leadership on employees’ happiness at work (HAW) through job crafting.

To test the hypothesized relationships, the data were collected from 309 Pakistani employees. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The findings showed that servant leadership is an optimal leadership style for creating employees’ HAW. In addition, job crafting was found to mediate the effects of servant leadership on employees’ broad-based positive attitudinal outcome (HAW). Moreover, results showed that despotic leadership negatively influences employees’ HAW through job crafting.

This study is novel as it investigates how newer forms of positive (servant) and negative (despotic) leadership styles influence employees’ multidimensional attitudinal outcome (HAW) via job crafting. By doing so, this research extends the nomological network of servant leadership, despotic leadership, job crafting and HAW.

Work-study programmes aim to support young adults transitioning from tertiary education to work and contribute to enhancing their employability. The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed analysis of the learning experiences of trainees in work-study programmes within the broad field of engineering.

The data gathering procedures used interviews with participants of a specific work-study programme and conducting thematic analyses to identify and understand the motivations of these adults for enrolling in work-study programmes and their associated workplace learning experiences. Fifty-two alumni of electrical and logistics engineering programmes completed 12 months of a separate work-study programme and consented to participate in an hour-long interview. They elaborated upon their work-learn experiences to explicate their work-learn needs and challenges in those interviews.

Findings include workplaces facilitated skills development through providing combinations of work tasks comprising both routine and novel work assignments; challenging circumstances at the workplace provided trainees with opportunities to develop adaptive capacities; and engaging in non-routine work processes fosters integration into the engineering workplace community.

The findings contribute to the existing literature by exemplifying how routine engineering activities are practical affordances through which engineering trainees construct knowledge and dispositions for engaging in challenging, non-routine engineering work. Such experiences are crucial in preparing trainees for advanced roles in logistics or electronic sectors.

This study aims to prepare an imprinted composite membrane with grafted temperature-sensitive blocks for the efficient adsorption and separation of rhenium(Re) from aqueous solutions.

PVDF resin membrane was used as the substrate, dopamine and chitosan (CS) were used to modify the membrane surface and temperature-sensitive block PDEA was grafted on the membrane surface. Then acrylic acid (AA) and N-methylol acrylamide (N-MAM) were used as the functional monomers, ethyleneglycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as the cross-linker and ascorbic acid-hydrogen peroxide (Vc-H₂O₂) as the initiator to obtain the temperature-sensitive ReO4⁻ imprinted composite membranes.

The effect of the preparation process on the performance of CS–Re–TIICM was investigated in detail, and the optimal preparation conditions were as follows: the molar ratios of AA–NH₄ReO₄, N-MAM and EGDMA were 0.13, 0.60 and 1.00, respectively. The optimal temperature and time of the reaction were 40 °C and 24 h. The maximum adsorption capacity of CS–Re–TIICM prepared under optimal conditions was 0.1071 mmol/g, and the separation was 3.90 when MnO4⁻ was used as the interfering ion. The quasi first-order kinetics model and Langmuir model were more suitable to describe the adsorption process.

With the increasing demand for Re, the recovery of Re from Re-containing secondary resources becomes important. This study demonstrated a new material that could be separated and recovered Re in a complex environment, which could effectively alleviate the conflict between the supply and demand of Re.

This contribution provided a new material for the selective separation and purification of ReO4⁻, and the adsorption capacity and separation of CS–Re–TIICM were increased with 1.673 times and 1.219 time compared with other Re adsorbents, respectively. In addition, when it was used for the purification of NH₄ReO₄ crude, the purity was increased from 91.950% to 99.999%.