Search results

This study proposes a novel method utilising a speech-word pair bipartite network to examine the correlation structure between members of parliament (MPs) in the context of the UK- China relationship.

We construct MP-word pair bipartite networks based on the co-occurrence relationship between MPs and words in their speech content. These networks are then mapped into monopartite MPs correlation networks. Additionally, the study calculates correlation network indicators and identifies MP communities and factions to determine the characteristics of MPs and their interrelation in the UK-China relationship. This includes insights into the distribution of key MPs, their correlation structure and the evolution and development trends of MP factions.

Analysis of the parliamentary speeches on China-related affairs in the British Parliament from 2011 to 2020 reveals that the distribution and interrelationship of MPs engaged in UK-China affairs are centralised and discrete, with a few core MPs playing an integral role in the UK-China relationship. Among them, MPs such as Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, David Cameron, Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Howell of Guildford formed factions with significant differences; however, the continuity of their evolution exhibits unstableness. The core MP factions, such as those led by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and David Cameron, have achieved a level of maturity and exert significant influence.

The research has several limitations that warrant acknowledgement. First, we mapped the MP-word pair bipartite network into the MP correlation network for analysis without directly analysing the structure of MPs based on the bipartite network. In future studies, we aim to explore various types of analysis based on the proposed bipartite networks to provide more comprehensive and accurate references for studying UK-China relations. In addition, we seek to incorporate semantic-level analyses, such as sentiment analysis of MPs, into the MP-word -pair bipartite networks for in-depth analysis. Second, the interpretations of MP structures in the UK-China relationship in this study are limited. Consequently, expertise in UK-China relations should be incorporated to enhance the study and provide more practical recommendations.

Firstly, the findings can contribute to an objective understanding of the characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations, thereby informing adjustments of focus accordingly. The identification of the main factions in the UK-China relationship emphasises the imperative for governments to pay greater attention to these MPs’ speeches and social relationships. Secondly, examining the evolution and development of MP factions aids in identifying a country’s diplomatic focus during different periods. This can assist governments in responding promptly to relevant issues and contribute to the formulation of effective foreign policies.

First, this study expands the research methodology of parliamentary debates analysis in previous studies. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study the UK-China relationship through the MP-word-pair bipartite network. This outcome inspires future researchers to apply various knowledge networks in the LIS field to elucidate deeper characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations. Second, this study provides a novel perspective for UK-China relationship analysis, which deepens the research object from keywords to MPs. This finding may offer important implications for researchers to further study the role of MPs in the UK-China relationship.

This study proposes a novel scheme for analysing the correlation structure between MPs based on bipartite networks. This approach offers insights into the development and evolving dynamics of MPs.

New product development (NPD) is necessary for business sustenance and customer satisfaction. Six Sigma and Design for Lean Six Sigma (DLSS) efficiently employ the repetitive stages for NPD, leading to quality performance and profitability. This study aims to map the quality performance through NPD attributes through the Lean methodology.

The data on NPD were collected from 267 respondents from manufacturing companies to map the relationship between Six Sigma and DLSS for NPD. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to confirm model fit, while structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the empirical data for framework testing. The study included nine variables and fourteen hypotheses identified from the literature.

The statistical results of this study show that NPD attributes such as innovation, marketing, organization, customer, product and technology positively influence the Lean Six Sigma structured improvement process (LSSSIP) and DLSS. Moreover, integrating these attributes in Lean planning enhance quality performance. This empirical investigation's findings indicate that ten of the 14 hypotheses were supported, giving the study a strong foundation.

The data collection was limited to northern India; therefore, the results may not be generalizable to other areas of the world.

NPD involves handling technical issues and factors such as cost, operational bottlenecks, economic changes, competitors' strategy and company policy. This study helps understand the various NPD parameters and their relationship to Lean, which enables an effective NPD implementation strategy.

The current philosophy of NPD calls for a concurrent engineering approach; therefore, the entire organization must be part of this process. This study uses the holistic framework by optimizing NPD with Lean Six Sigma (LSS) principles. The study is unique in that, to date, research does not integrate NPD attributes with the objectives of LSS to develop an efficient NPD implementation strategy.

In recent years, Yoga practice has seen a rapid rise in popularity with many positive consequences, both physical and mental attributed to its practice. Ashtanga Yoga has been less well researched in this area and is the specific focus on this work. The aim of this study is to investigate the possible positive impact of long-term Ashtanga Yoga on psychological well-being.

In total, 213 long-term Ashtanga Yoga practitioners were asked to complete the positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment (PERMA) 23 scale (Butler and Kern, 2016) which measures psychological well-being. The values given by these individuals were then compared against a larger sample of 31,966 representative of the general population.

Scores were then compared with a PERMA data set representative of the general population (see Butler and Kern, 2016), primarily using a test of difference to compare samples. Secondly, the causal relationship between time spent in practice upon well-being scores.

Findings indicated that those individuals engaged in long-term Ashtanga Yoga practice significantly outperformed the control group on all dimensions of psychological well-being.

This work has demonstrated specific benefits to the practice of Ashtanga Yoga on psychological well-being. Yoga is a form of exercise that is now widely available across the globe, and as such, represents an accessible form of physical practice, which has important psychological benefits.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work investigating differences in psychological well-being profiles using PERMA, as a function of Yoga practice.

Tourists’ resource integration both offers opportunities and presents challenges to tourism service providers. Focussing on the tour guide perspective, the purpose of this paper is to explore how tour guides experience knowledge/information-based asymmetry in encounters with tourists and identifies the roles and coping strategies used by guides to facilitate service co-production.

Critical incident technique is used in qualitative interviews with 47 tour guides in Scotland, broadly representative of the Scottish tour guiding context. 107 critical incidents were analysed, with an average of 2.32 incidents per interview. Narrative analysis of the incidents was performed inductively in four iterative steps using QSR NVivo.

Three resource asymmetry incident categories are identified: probing – Guide-Oracle is questioned by inquiring tourists and copes through diverting, evasion, and follow-up strategies; learning – Guide-Magpie learns from expert tourists through acknowledging and co-delivery; and negotiation – Guide-Diplomat with greater knowledge helps misguided tourists save face through appeasing, following the official line and tactfully correcting.

The paper contributes to service co-production research in tourism by theorising about contexts where knowledge/information asymmetry exists between tour guides and tourists, particularly where fluid power relations between guides and knowledgeable tourists occur or where misguided tourists co-produce the service by prioritising own meanings. Findings highlight the importance of soft skills and other non-content capabilities of guides, and suggestions are offered for effective training and resource sharing/ learning initiatives for tour guiding services.

游客资源整合为旅游服务提供商提供了机遇, 同时也带来了挑战。本文以导游视角为重点, 探讨了导游在与游客接触中如何体验知识/信息不对称, 并识别了导游用于促进服务共同生产的角色和应对策略。

本研究采用关键事件技术（CIT）进行质性访谈, 对象为苏格兰的47名导游, 广泛代表苏格兰导游环境。分析了107个关键事件, 每次访谈平均2.32个事件。对事件的叙述分析在QSR NVivo中通过四个迭代步骤进行归纳性分析。

确定了三个资源不对称的事件类别：1）探询 - 导游-神谕被询问, 通过转移、回避和后续策略来应对询问的游客; 2）学习 - 导游-喜鹊通过承认和共同交付从专业游客中学到经验; 3）协商 - 导游-外交官以更多知识帮助误导的游客保全体面, 通过安抚、追随官方路线和巧妙纠正来应对。

本文通过理论化导游和游客之间存在知识/信息不对称的情境, 特别是在导游和知识丰富的游客之间存在流动权力关系的情况下, 或者误导的游客通过优先考虑自己的意义来共同生产服务的情境, 为旅游服务的共同生产研究做出了贡献。研究结果强调了导游的软技能和其他非内容能力的重要性, 并提出了关于为导游服务提供有效培训和资源共享/学习倡议的建议。

La integración de recursos de los turistas ofrece oportunidades y presenta desafíos para los proveedores de servicios turísticos. Centrándose en la perspectiva de los guías turísticos, este artículo explora cómo los guías turísticos experimentan una asimetría basada en conocimiento/información en encuentros con turistas, e identifica los roles y estrategias de afrontamiento utilizados por los guías para facilitar la coproducción de servicios.

La técnica de incidentes críticos (CIT) se utiliza en entrevistas cualitativas con 47 guías turísticos en Escocia, ampliamente representativos del contexto de los guías turísticos escoceses. Se analizaron 107 incidentes críticos, con una media de 2,32 incidentes por entrevista. El análisis narrativo de los incidentes se realizó de forma inductiva en cuatro pasos iterativos utilizando QSR NVivo.

Se identifican tres categorías de incidentes de asimetría de recursos: 1) Sondeo: los turistas interrogan a Guide-Oracle y lo afronta mediante estrategias de desvío, evasión y seguimiento; 2) Aprendizaje: Guide-Magpie aprende de turistas expertos a través del reconocimiento y la entrega conjunta; y 3) Negociación: el guía-diplomático con mayor conocimiento ayuda a los turistas descarriados a salvar las apariencias apaciguándolos, siguiendo la línea oficial y corrigiendo con tacto.

El artículo contribuye a la investigación de la coproducción de servicios en el turismo al teorizar sobre contextos donde existe asimetría de conocimiento/información entre guías turísticos y turistas, particularmente donde ocurren relaciones de poder fluidas entre guías y turistas conocedores, o donde turistas equivocados coproducen el servicio priorizando propios significados. Los hallazgos resaltan la importancia de las habilidades interpersonales y otras capacidades de los guías no relacionadas con el contenido, y se ofrecen sugerencias para iniciativas efectivas de capacitación e intercambio de recursos/aprendizaje para los servicios de guías turísticos.

This study aims to assess the nexus among oil price (OP), renewable energy consumption (REC) and trade balance (TB) for India using annual time series data for the time period 1985–2019. In particular, the authors examine whether REC improves India's TB in the context of high oil import dependence.

The study uses autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) bound testing approach that has the advantage of yielding estimates of long-run and short-run parameters simultaneously. Moreover, the small sample properties of this approach are superior to other multivariate cointegration techniques. Fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) are also applied to test the robustness of the results. The causality among the series is investigated through block exogeneity test based on vector error correction model.

The findings based on ARDL bounds testing approach indicate that OPs exert a negative impact on TB of India in both long run and short run, whereas REC has a favorable impact on the TB. In particular, 1% increase in OPs decreases TBs by 0.003% and a 1% increase in REC improves TB by 0.011%. The results of FMOLS and DOLS corroborate the findings from ARDL estimates. The results of block exogeneity test suggest unidirectional causation from OPs to TB; OPs to REC and REC to TB.

The study underscore the importance of renewable energy as a potential tool to curtail trade deficits in the context of Indian economy. Our results suggest that the policymakers must pay attention to the hindrances in augmentation of renewable energy usage and try to capitalize on the resulting gains for the TB.

Climate change is a major challenge for developing countries like India. Renewable energy sector is considered an important instrument toward attaining the twin objectives of environmental sustainability and employment generation. This study underscores another role of REC as a tool to achieve a sustainable trade position, which may help India save her valuable forex reserves for broader objectives of economic development.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that probes the dynamic nexus among OPs, REC and TB in Indian context. From a policy standpoint, the study underscores the importance of renewable energy as a potential tool to curtail trade deficits in context of India. From a theoretical perspective, the study extends the literature on the determinants of TB by identifying the role of REC in shaping TB.

Considering the standards developed by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), this study aims to examine whether the link between material sustainability and financial performance depends on the extent to which the company is oriented toward stakeholders.

To test the predictions, 13,942 firm-year observations from 43 different countries are used, covering the period from 2010 to 2019. Using a hand-mapping approach to match the indicators suggested by the SASB with those of the ASSET4, the authors realize that there are 170 material sustainability indicators among 466 indicators of the ASSET4. The authors use three different methods to verify if the materiality matters, including the alphas obtained from the Fama and French factor models, comparing the average abnormal returns of the portfolios and the bootstrapped Cramer technique.

The findings show that companies investing in material sustainability activities perform better than those investing in immaterial activities. Also, consistent with the theoretical foundations, the authors find that the effect of investing in material sustainability activities is more pronounced in stakeholder-oriented countries than that in shareholder-oriented countries. The results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests.

Owing to COVID-19 in late 2019, data from 2020 to 2022 have not been used to obtain reliable results.

The results obtained in the current research provide valuable guidance for investors to make investments considering the degree of materiality of sustainability activities in different industries. It also helps managers to increase the company’s financial performance, make efficient decisions related to investment in sustainability activities and find investment strategies on the material sustainability issues in their industries.

This study provides a clearer understanding of investment in sustainability activities in different industries by separating material and immaterial sustainability activities in stakeholder and shareholder-oriented countries, and the results obtained can change the perspective of investors and company managers regarding investing in such activities in different countries. Investing in more materiality sustainability activities than the immateriality dimension can be new opportunities for companies to achieve predetermined goals, help retain and attract business partners or be a source of innovation for new product lines or services. Internal morale and employee engagement may increase while increasing productivity and firm performance. This discussion opens the way for future research.

This study provides insight into the effect of investing in material and immaterial sustainability activities in different industries on the company’s performance in shareholder and stakeholder-oriented countries.

This study aims to empirically examine the influence of Islamic corporate social responsibility (ICSR) on social welfare moderated by financial fraud.

The method used was the mix method. The number of respondents was 410. They combined the moderate regression analysis with PROCESS Andrew F Hayes to test the research hypothesis. After conducting the survey, it was continued by conducting interviews with the village community and the head of the village.

The first finding of this study is that ICSR has a significant positive effect on social welfare. The second finding is that financial fraud weakens the influence of ICSR on social welfare. The results of the interviews also confirmed the two findings of this study.

The high level of bias in answering the questions is due to the low public knowledge of ICSR. In addition, the interviews still needed to involve the oil and gas companies and government.

The main implication is improving social welfare, especially for those affected by offshore oil drilling. Furthermore, stakeholders are more sensitive to the adverse effects of financial fraud. Finally, to make drilling companies more transparent and on target in implementing ICSR.

The main novelty in this research is using of the mixed method. In addition, applying financial fraud as a moderating variable is rarely studied empirically.

Despite the growing interest in the field, the literature overlooks how supply chains influence or interact with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To fill this gap, this study aims to assess the influences of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) on the implementation of the UN SDGs.

A systematic literature review of 97 publications was carried out by using the Web of Science database and the support of ATLAS.ti software. In addition, this research also explored how the top 20 Forbes companies are aligned with the SDGs by analysing their sustainability reports.

The findings suggest that the literature and the analysed companies primarily concentrate on certain SDGs while neglecting others, revealing potential areas of interest for future research. Based on the findings, the study provides valuable insights into the connections between SSCM and the UN SDGs, highlighting the potential benefits of SSCM in reducing environmental, social and economic pressures and contributing to sustainable development. It also identifies areas where further research and policy development are needed to maximise the potential benefits of SSCM.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, no other studies have conducted a comprehensive exploration of the literature linking SSCM and the SDGs framework. Moreover, the study differs from others since it combines research data with practical information from company reports, to identify specific issues related to supply chain management.

The purpose of this study is to explore and model the strategies to overcome the barriers of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation in Indian small manufacturing enterprises (SMEs).

In this research, 31 strategies of LSS implementation in SMEs have been identified through detailed literature review and out of them, 13 are finalized using statistical tools like CIMTC and Importance-Index analysis. Moreover, the consistency of finalized strategies was examined through reliability test using SPSS software version 22. The finalized strategies are modelled through interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and classified them using MICMAC based on their driving and dependency power.

The key findings of this techno-managerial study are identification and modelling of 13 strategies to overcome adoption challenges of LSS in context of Indian SMEs. The usage of ISM-MICMAC approach provides the guidance to industrialist consider the mutual interaction of strategies during planning and scheduling for LSS projects.

Due to human involvement and judgements, there may be chance of biasness and subjectivity during construction of self-interaction matrix. Also, the number of identified strategies to overcomes barriers of LSS adoption may vary by altering nature, scope and region of research.

Literature is full of studies regarding LSS barriers and its rankings. Also, few studies explored the solutions of LSS barriers and prioritized them. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, our study is very rare to witness which expose the strategies to overcome the barriers and frame the mutual interaction are per the driving and dependence power of strategies. The application of ISM-MICMAC approach suggests a roadmap for implementing LSS approach efficiently through considering developed ISM model of strategies in context of SMEs.

This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of the interdisciplinary literature on drones in last-mile delivery (LMD) to extrapolate pertinent insights from and into the logistics management field.

Rooting their analytical categories in the LMD literature, the authors performed a deductive, theory refinement SLR on 307 interdisciplinary journal articles published during 2015–2022 to integrate this emergent phenomenon into the field.

The authors derived the potentials, challenges and solutions of drone deliveries in relation to 12 LMD criteria dispersed across four stakeholder groups: senders, receivers, regulators and societies. Relationships between these criteria were also identified.

This review contributes to logistics management by offering a current, nuanced and multifaceted discussion of drones' potential to improve the LMD process together with the challenges and solutions involved.

The authors provide logistics managers with a holistic roadmap to help them make informed decisions about adopting drones in their delivery systems. Regulators and society members also gain insights into the prospects, requirements and repercussions of drone deliveries.

This is one of the first SLRs on drone applications in LMD from a logistics management perspective.