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This study provides an up-to-date review of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies and guidance for selecting the most appropriate ones for specific applications, taking into account the main features, strengths, and limitations of the existing options.

A literature review on AM technologies was conducted to assess the current state-of-the-art. This was followed by a closer examination of different AM machines to gain a deeper insight into their main features and operational characteristics. The conclusions and data gathered were used to formulate a classification and decision-support framework.

The findings indicate the building blocks of the selection process for AM technologies. Furthermore, this work shows the suitability of the existing AM technologies for specific cases and points to opportunities for technological and decision-support improvements. Lastly, more standardization in AM would be beneficial for future research.

The proposed framework offers valuable support for decision-makers to select the most suitable AM technologies, as demonstrated through practical examples of its utilization. In addition, it can help researchers identify the limitations of AM by pinpointing applications where existing technologies fail to meet the requirements.

The study offers a novel classification and decision-support framework for selecting AM technologies, incorporating machine characteristics, process features, physical properties of printed parts, and costs as key features to evaluate the potential of AM. Additionally, it provides a deeper understanding of these features as well as the potential opportunities for AM and its impact on various industries.

This paper aims to examine the effect of governance mechanisms (board size, board independence, duality, the Sharia board size, Sharia board meetings and ownership concentration) on the performance of insurance providers of distinguishable Muamalah contracts (wakalah and hybrid), moderated by the length of senior leaders’ servicing time.

The full sample includes 21 listed Takaful companies divided into two subsamples – 12 insurance wakalah contracts offered in the South East Asian (SEA) countries and 9 insurance hybrid contracts offered in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries over the period of 2012–2018. The methodology is informed by Baron and Kenny’s (1986) moderation process approach.

The results of this study indicate that the larger the size of directors’ board and the higher the number of outside directors, the greater the SEA wakalah Takaful insurance performance. Nondual functions and a larger size of Sharia board along with a highly-concentrated ownership structure have a positive effect on the Takaful insurance performance in both the SEA and GCC regions. Furthermore, the higher the Sharia board meetings, the higher performance of all types of Takaful insurance providers in the sample. As for the moderating effect of the director’s seniority, it is found to negatively moderate the relationship between the governance mechanisms and the Takaful performance in both regions.

This paper highlights that the leader’s entrenchment stands as an obstructing factor impeding the governance mechanisms from enhancing Takaful performance. Thus, it serves to contribute to clearly understanding the appropriate governance mechanisms usefully fit for a Takaful insurance effective performance, applying the wakalah and hybrid contract types. Such a contribution should be appreciated by the concerned regulators engaged in setting up limited serving periods for the directors whereby the Takaful insurance practice could be efficiently managed and supervised.

Social media is a product that is co-created by consumers and multinational enterprises, that partially manage the customer experience and that has garnered significant attention in the field of international marketing. However, international marketing scholars have yet to address the societal costs of the use of social media, even as academics in other disciplines and business leaders are raising alarm that social media has created a digital ecosystem that may harm individuals within the global market. The objective of this research is to examine the generalizability of the relationship between the use of social media and the prevalence of depression across countries.

Employing social cohesion theory and the social network approach of the strength of ties, this work examines the relationship between the use of social media and time spent on social media at the country level and the prevalence of depression. The authors examine this issue within a 28-country, eight-year, unbalanced panel dataset, accounting for cultural, economic and structural factors.

The authors find that as more people within a country use social media, the prevalence of depression in that country increases. However, the authors also find that as the average time spent on social media in a country increases the deleterious relationship between the use of social media and the prevalence of depression diminishes.

Answering the calls in the international marketing literature for a greater understanding of the externalities (i.e. consumer well-being effects) of marketing activities of multinational companies, this study demonstrates the varying relationships of the use of and time spent on social media and the prevalence of depression at the population level, across a wide variety of countries, thus also contributing to the effort to improving generalizations from multi-country comparisons in international research.