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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 5 April 2024

Kai Rüdele, Matthias Wolf and Christian Ramsauer

Improving productivity and efficiency has always been crucial for industrial companies to remain competitive. In recent years, the topic of environmental impact has become…

Abstract

Purpose

Improving productivity and efficiency has always been crucial for industrial companies to remain competitive. In recent years, the topic of environmental impact has become increasingly important. Published research indicates that environmental and economic goals can enforce or rival each other. However, few papers have been published that address the interaction and integration of these two goals.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, we identify both, synergies and trade-offs based on a systematic review incorporating 66 publications issued between 1992 and 2021. We analyze, quantify and cluster examples of conjunctions of ecological and economic measures and thereby develop a framework for the combined improvement of performance and environmental compatibility.

Findings

Our findings indicate an increased significance of a combined consideration of these two dimensions of sustainability. We found that cases where enforcing synergies between economic and ecological effects were identified are by far more frequent than reports on trade-offs. For the individual categories, cost savings are uniformly considered as the most important economic aspect while, energy savings appear to be marginally more relevant than waste reduction in terms of environmental aspects.

Originality/value

No previous literature review provides a comparable graphical treatment of synergies and trade-offs between cost savings and ecological effects. For the first time, identified measures were classified in a 3 × 3 table considering type and principle.

Details

Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7835

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 April 2024

Marcus Wayne Johnson, Anthony Johnson, Langston Clark, Jonathan E. Howe, Traveon Jefferson, Dionte McClendon, Brandon Crooms and Daniel J. Thomas

This study aims to stimulate scholarly attention and practical application pertaining to individuals recognized as “Docs.” Through conducting a comprehensive analysis and…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to stimulate scholarly attention and practical application pertaining to individuals recognized as “Docs.” Through conducting a comprehensive analysis and acquiring a profound understanding of its many connotations, the objective is to shift attitudes and approaches concerning those who are seen to possess knowledge and value within society.

Design/methodology/approach

For this study, culturally relevant pedagogies were used as theoretical frameworks in addition to Sankofa and concept explication being used as methodologies.

Findings

The authors identified three themes: (1) honorary cultural practice-community nomination of “professahs” and “docs,” (2) (Black) robinhoods – cultural signifiers of distinction and relatability and (3) docs as catalysts – elevating community via consciousness, trust and mentorship as significant understandings of this distinction.

Originality/value

The study emphasizes the importance of “Docs” in both academic and social contexts. The role of “Docs” serves to alleviate potential conflicts of being a Black intellectual. This study further reveals the ways in which Docs align with, promote or possibly undermine established frameworks of thought. Finally, this study provides institutions with opportunities to consider strategies for the utilization, recognition and integration of individuals who are frequently overlooked or undervalued.

Details

Journal for Multicultural Education, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2053-535X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 July 2023

Minhazur Rahman Rezvi and Md Rakib Hossain

Online hate speech (OHS) is becoming a serious problem worldwide including in Bangladesh. This study aims to understand the nature of OHS against religious groups and explore its…

Abstract

Purpose

Online hate speech (OHS) is becoming a serious problem worldwide including in Bangladesh. This study aims to understand the nature of OHS against religious groups and explore its impact on their social life and mental health.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative approach was followed and 11 in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted with the selected OHS victims. This study conducted a semi-structural interview using Google Form following the design questionnaire for selecting IDIs participants.

Findings

This study found that religious minorities experience online hatred through online media by the major religious group in Bangladesh. Natures of OHS are commenting on social media posts, sharing hateful memes and sending private messages using slang language targeting religious identity, religious food habits and ethnic identities. Victims were offended, abused and bullied by unknown persons, their university friends and colleagues. Victims of OHS did not take any action against it due to fear of insecurity. Victims of OHS felt low-minded, helpless and anxious after the experience of OHS; they felt more insecure and vulnerable socially and mentally.

Originality/value

The findings of this study suggest that policymakers identify the nature of OHS and take proper steps for reducing the frequency of OHS in Bangladesh. To combat the OHS, authorities have to make legal enforcement equal for everyone.

Details

Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9342

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 April 2023

Habtamu Mekonnen and Sefi Mekonen

Ecotourism has emerged as a new hope of the tourism sector and is expected to overcome past pitfalls of mass tourism. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess the…

Abstract

Purpose

Ecotourism has emerged as a new hope of the tourism sector and is expected to overcome past pitfalls of mass tourism. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assess the potentials and challenges of ecotourism development in the historic and sacred sites of North Shewa Zone, Ethiopia.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected through interview, household questionnaire, field observation and focused group discussion. The collected data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS version 23) and Excel.

Findings

Based on household’s perception, churches and monasteries were mentioned as the main (17.58%) ecotourism attractions that have crucial role in ecotourism development in the area followed by biodiversity resources (17.23%) and Holy Water (16.01%). These existing ecotourism potentials and opportunities were discussed on the basis of five dimensions, i.e. historical and sacred attractions, biological attractions, cultural attractions, infrastructures and institutional potentials. The mean score values of a five-point Likert scale level of agreement or disagreement of respondents were between 2 and 4.5, implying overall responses of respondents spread between agree and strongly agree.

Originality/value

The findings reveal that although the historic and sacred sites of the area have potential ecotourism opportunities, different anthropogenic activities are affecting its development. The researchers recommended awareness creation programs, promotion of sites, development of infrastructures, employments of well-trained professionals and allocation of sufficient budgets as a mechanism to use the ecotourism potential and solving the existing challenges.

Details

International Journal of Tourism Cities, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-5607

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 January 2024

Christoph Barmeyer and Tobi Rodrigue

This paper aims to study historical intercultural transfer by examining the case of the Mouvement Desjardins, a Quebec, Canada-based cooperative bank founded in 1900 by Alphonse…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to study historical intercultural transfer by examining the case of the Mouvement Desjardins, a Quebec, Canada-based cooperative bank founded in 1900 by Alphonse Desjardins. The aim of the cooperative was to support the hitherto marginalized French–Canadian population and to initiate their economic and entrepreneurial activities.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors focus on a historical single-case analysis. This conducts them to analyse primary data from letters exchanged between Alphonse Desjardins and European actors, as well as company documents of the Groupe Desjardins.

Findings

The intercultural transfer of the cooperative bank model and its implementation in North America as a successful, self-sustaining model is owing to recontextualization and strategic decisions of the social entrepreneur Alphonse Desjardins based on intensive written correspondence with European bank directors who promoted the cooperative system.

Research limitations/implications

This research instigates an impulse to extend our knowledge of intercultural transfer by looking into other historical cases to provide validation or add subtleties to our understanding of intercultural transfer dynamics.

Originality/value

This paper expands the current understanding of intercultural transfer and its powerful influence, namely, how an implemented cooperative bank system can contribute through successful recontextualization to institutional change and societal improvements. It also provides new insights into the creation and growth of social enterprises based on shared values within communities and coordinated strategic intentions across communities.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 March 2023

Antonijo Marijić and Marina Bagić Babac

Genre classification of songs based on lyrics is a challenging task even for humans, however, state-of-the-art natural language processing has recently offered advanced solutions…

Abstract

Purpose

Genre classification of songs based on lyrics is a challenging task even for humans, however, state-of-the-art natural language processing has recently offered advanced solutions to this task. The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding and application of natural language processing and deep learning in the domain of music genre classification, while also contributing to the broader themes of global knowledge and communication, and sustainable preservation of cultural heritage.

Design/methodology/approach

The main contribution of this study is the development and evaluation of various machine and deep learning models for song genre classification. Additionally, we investigated the effect of different word embeddings, including Global Vectors for Word Representation (GloVe) and Word2Vec, on the classification performance. The tested models range from benchmarks such as logistic regression, support vector machine and random forest, to more complex neural network architectures and transformer-based models, such as recurrent neural network, long short-term memory, bidirectional long short-term memory and bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT).

Findings

The authors conducted experiments on both English and multilingual data sets for genre classification. The results show that the BERT model achieved the best accuracy on the English data set, whereas cross-lingual language model pretraining based on RoBERTa (XLM-RoBERTa) performed the best on the multilingual data set. This study found that songs in the metal genre were the most accurately labeled, as their text style and topics were the most distinct from other genres. On the contrary, songs from the pop and rock genres were more challenging to differentiate. This study also compared the impact of different word embeddings on the classification task and found that models with GloVe word embeddings outperformed Word2Vec and the learning embedding layer.

Originality/value

This study presents the implementation, testing and comparison of various machine and deep learning models for genre classification. The results demonstrate that transformer models, including BERT, robustly optimized BERT pretraining approach, distilled bidirectional encoder representations from transformers, bidirectional and auto-regressive transformers and XLM-RoBERTa, outperformed other models.

Details

Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2514-9342

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 November 2023

Joanna Batt and Michael Lee Joseph

Conversations around diversity, race and science fiction and fantasy films/television have sparked in response to recent casting decisions made in the upcoming live-action The

Abstract

Purpose

Conversations around diversity, race and science fiction and fantasy films/television have sparked in response to recent casting decisions made in the upcoming live-action The Little Mermaid, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi (Deggans, 2022; Romano, 2022). Backlash against casting of actors of Color in these genres highlights racial projects where a cultural memory of whiteness comes up against multicultural change. The authors of this paper feel that there is great potential in using current-day racial issues around fantasy films/television to explore these racial projects with students in social studies classes (Omi and Winant, 2014).

Design/methodology/approach

Using a qualitative textual analysis (Peräkylä, 2005), the authors examined online news media outlets addressing the casting of actors of Color in the aforementioned media pieces. After reviewing over twenty articles, the authors determined two major themes that would serve as the findings.

Findings

In this paper, themes of nostalgia for an imagined ‘way things were’ and future-based fears of how things will become emerged from the analysis, revealing a need for engaging students in the history of sci-fi and fantasy media, and the existing, diverse histories of storytelling featuring multiple races.

Originality/value

The authors argue that examining racial projects found in contemporary sci-fi and fantasy casting are chances for students to understand complex racial histories and how they blend into current-day cultural landscapes, and are opportunities to practice analysis of real-life racial histories and richly-imagined fantasy worlds, noticing how and why the two often collide when it comes to race.

Details

Social Studies Research and Practice, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1933-5415

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 October 2023

Oluseye Olugboyega, Obuks Augustine Ejohwomu and Emmanuel Dele Omopariola

As the foundation for understanding the dynamics of the construction sector's corruption, this study examines building contractors' experiences of the stifling of moral, communal…

Abstract

Purpose

As the foundation for understanding the dynamics of the construction sector's corruption, this study examines building contractors' experiences of the stifling of moral, communal and cultural values in the name of modern social and religious principles.

Design/methodology/approach

This study's objective was accomplished in two phases. First, a theoretical model was constructed. The theory is then tested using structural equation modeling in the second section. The theory suggests that, based on social norm and institutional theories, social disquietude and religious manipulation influence the interaction and types of corruption in the Nigerian construction sector. From this theory, it was deduced that social malaise (hypothesis 1) and religious manipulations (hypothesis 2) mediate the processes and forms of corruption in the construction sector. To validate the hypotheses, a structural equation model (SEM) was developed and tested.

Findings

Native intelligence, new values, social quests and poverty are the social malaises that are profoundly responsible for corruption manifestations in the construction industry. The findings confirmed that construction stakeholders are heavily influenced financially and spiritually by religious organizations. Construction stakeholders engage in corrupt activities as a result of the ravenousness and self-interest bestowed on them by religious manipulation and the significant contribution of social malaise. The study admits that social engineering is required to integrate local wisdom and values into Nigerian society in order to mitigate the negative consequences of social unrest and religious manipulations.

Research limitations/implications

This study has contributed to a branch of the literature on corruption in the construction industry that aims to identify the hidden factors that drive the sector's corruption dynamics. It has shown how many different problems in society and religious beliefs can make building contractors more likely to be dishonest. In order to improve project delivery, this study emphasized the importance of investigating the relationship between religious affiliations, religious doctrines and domination and religious competition on corruption in the construction industry.

Social implications

Following the findings of this study, the majority of construction stakeholders place their trust in unmerited favor, “spirit money,” prosperity gospels and the payment of offerings and “seed money” to win contracts. This implies that construction stakeholders will most likely be deceptive in their dealings, increasing the quantity of certified work, increasing variation claims and engaging in collusion. This is because their faith in inconceivable favors and the exchange of offerings for blessings would lead them to perceive fraudulent practices as a favor.

Originality/value

This study is unique in that it sought to determine whether construction stakeholders' corrupt tendencies stem from religious manipulations and complex social systems.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 23 October 2023

Welcome Kupangwa, Shelley Maeva Farrington and Elmarie Venter

This study aims to investigate the favourable conditions that influence transgenerational value transmission (TVT), value acceptance and value similarity between generations in…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the favourable conditions that influence transgenerational value transmission (TVT), value acceptance and value similarity between generations in indigenous African business-owning families.

Design/methodology/approach

This study adopts a multiple case study design and draws on semi-structured face-to-face interviews to collect data from participants in seven indigenous Black business-owning families located in South Africa. The software ATLAS.ti was utilised to manage the data and reflexive thematic analysis was undertaken.

Findings

The analysis reveal four themes describing how transmission factors facilitate favourable conditions for successful TVT in IBSA business-owning families, namely, authoritarian parenting, a loving and connected family relational climate, the continuous reinforcement of autonomy during childhood development and family authenticity in the face of societies dominant values climate. Furthermore, value similarity is perceived to exist among the different family generations in the business-owning families.

Originality/value

This study is among the first to adopt the value acquisition model to empirically examine successful TVT and examine the extent of value similarity or dissimilarity, using the business-owning family as the unit of analysis. Novel contributions to family business literature and practices are proposing a model for TVT in an African context and studying relationships from a business-owning family perspective. The model for TVT could be used to socialise the NextGen members into value sets and behaviours that help business-owning families preserve their entrepreneurial legacy and family business longevity.

Details

Journal of Family Business Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2043-6238

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 January 2024

Si Qian, Yinpu Zhang and Pengzhou Kuai

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of a team’s personality faultlines on entrepreneurial performance. Additionally, this paper verifies the moderating effect of…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of a team’s personality faultlines on entrepreneurial performance. Additionally, this paper verifies the moderating effect of shared leadership on the connection between the two varies. The authors focus on the upper echelons theory and social identity theory as well as personality faultlines in entrepreneurial teams.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey was conducted using data collected in China. Data from 618 members from 144 new venture teams were collected to examine the authors’ hypothesis.

Findings

The authors find a U-shaped relationship between the strength of entrepreneurial teams' personality-faultline and entrepreneurial performance. Additionally, shared leadership negatively moderates this U-shaped relationship. Specifically, when the entrepreneurial team has a high level of shared leadership, both the positive and negative relationships between the strength of the personality faultlines and entrepreneurial performance are weaker.

Originality/value

The research offers important theoretical and practical implications for the formation of entrepreneurial teams.

Details

Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0953-4814

Keywords

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