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This study aims to explore the role of rebel group legitimacy and ideology in durable peace (DP) following peace agreements to end civil wars. It builds on earlier research showing that justice and civil society involvement are critical in achieving DP. This study adds the impacts of rebel group activities and support on DP. Activities include service delivery and mobilization. Support is gauged with outcomes of presidential and parliamentary elections held following peace agreements.

Five data sets were used to measure the key variables: DP, inclusive commissions (IC), legitimacy symmetry (electoral outcomes), service delivery and ideological mobilization. A measure of rebel group integration in the political system was also constructed. Impacts of the integration, legitimacy and ideology variables were assessed with a hierarchical regression model (HRM). This study begins with a base model drawn from earlier research showing the key predictors were procedural justice (PJ) and IC. The authors ask about the extent to which the rebel group variables contribute additional variance to the prediction of DP.

The main contributors to the prediction of DP were PJ, IC and integration in the political system. None of the legitimacy or mobilization variables added significant variance to the prediction. Only one of the mobilization variables, forced recruitment, was significant. The decision to integrate into the political system following the agreement did not mediate the relationship between PJ in the negotiation process and DP. Results of a factor analysis showed that DP, PJ, IC and integration formed a cluster with strong loadings on the first factor.

The negative results for the legitimacy and mobilization variables may not be the last word on rebel group influences. Lack of support for the key hypotheses spurs attempts to discover other sources that contribute to the survival of rebel group actors in the political system and, in turn, to DP.

The issues raised by this study contribute to debates about ways to attain peaceful relations among competing groups following a civil war. It appears that attention to factors inside and around the negotiation process (PJ, ICs and conversion) may be more important than rebel group activities outside of these processes. The results call attention, in particular, to the important role played by political integration. From a policy perspective, it would be useful to develop levers for encouraging rebel groups to emerge as political actors in the post-agreement environment.

Developing measures of the symmetry of rebel group legitimacy and integration in the context of a comparative case study are the primary original contributions of this study. Furthermore, the mode of analysis (HRM) is novel in this literature. This approach builds on and extends the earlier research on factors influencing DP.

This paper explores the potential that block teaching offers to enhance employability in the context of large-scale classes. It suggests that block teaching, with its condensed structure, necessitates curriculum innovation, fosters participatory learning and peer-to-peer networking, and has been shown to increase student focus and enhance engagement and attainment, especially amongst diverse learners. As these are the same challenges that large-scale teaching faces, it is proposed that intensive modes of delivery could be scaled up in a way that may help to mitigate such problems as cohorts in business schools continue to increase in size.

The paper is based on secondary research and provides an overview of literature that looks at block teaching, followed by that which explores the challenges of large-scale teaching contexts. It compares and contrasts the gaps in both to suggest a way that they could be combined.

The paper provides key insights into changes in the contemporary landscape of teaching within UK business schools, which have seen increasingly large cohorts and draws out the key strengths of intensive modes of delivery, which include helping students to time manage effectively, encouraging curriculum innovation and the creation of participatory learning opportunities as well as providing closer personal relationships between students and staff. Outlining some of the well-documented issues that can arise when teaching larger cohorts, the paper suggests that scaling up blocked delivery may offer a new way help to overcome them.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results are subject to generalisation. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions in large-scale teaching scenarios.

This paper includes implications for the development of innovative modes of teaching in the context of large cohorts, an experience that is increasingly common amongst British business schools and beyond.

This paper brings together two bodies of literature for the first time – that of intensive modes of teaching and that focuses on large-scale teaching contexts – for the first time to show how the former may help to overcome some of the key issues arising in the latter.

Recently, there has been a shift toward the embodied energy assessment of buildings. However, the impact of material service life on the life-cycle embodied energy has received little attention. We aimed to address this knowledge gap, particularly in the context of the UAE and investigated the embodied energy associated with the use of concrete and other materials commonly used in residential buildings in the hot desert climate of the UAE.

Using input–output based hybrid analysis, we quantified the life-cycle embodied energy of a villa in the UAE with over 50 years of building life using the average, minimum, and maximum material service life values. Mathematical calculations were performed using MS Excel, and a detailed bill of quantities with >170 building materials and components of the villa were used for investigation.

For the base case, the initial embodied energy was 57% (7390.5 GJ), whereas the recurrent embodied energy was 43% (5,690 GJ) of the life-cycle embodied energy based on average material service life values. The proportion of the recurrent embodied energy with minimum material service life values was increased to 68% of the life-cycle embodied energy, while it dropped to 15% with maximum material service life values.

The findings provide new data to guide building construction in the UAE and show that recurrent embodied energy contributes significantly to life-cycle energy demand. Further, the study of material service life variations provides deeper insights into future building material specifications and management considerations for building maintenance.

The purpose of this study is shed light on the underlying forces behind entrepreneurship within a regional innovation system (RIS) in a remote rural region. The authors examine the following questions: Which are the main underlying forces behind the entrepreneurial process in a rural RIS characterized by traditionally low-tech, small-scale businesses? How can the development of a low-tech regional innovation system be conceptualized?

The design of the study is based on entrepreneurship theory. Data analysis followed practices used in phenomenography, a research approach used to analyse and identify commonalities and variations in populations' perceptions of a certain phenomenon. Data are composed using semi-structured interviews and a database composed of company information of all firms in the population.

A proactive mobilization of regional stakeholders and resources can be an important driving force behind the entrepreneurial process and generation of a rural RIS. Innovation can be generated within low-tech industries turning the rural context into an asset. An RIS in a remote rural context can be initiated and orchestrated by regional authorities, but knowledge brokering and orchestration can also be managed by networks of small-scale businesses brought together by mutual benefit and common interests.

Regional innovation systems theory is most often used to study high-tech industries. But by combining regional innovation systems with rural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship context theory is a fruitful avenue to understand the role of rural entrepreneurship in regional development, even in remote and peripheral regions. Innovation does not need to entail high-tech international environments; it can appear as the result of efforts in low-tech industries in rural and remote environments. The authors’ findings need to be scrutinized; therefore, the authors call for more research on regional innovation systems in rural environments.

It is possible for regional authorities to orchestrate a development process through the actions of a strong regional agent but also by supporting the creation of networks of small businesses that are built on trust and common interests.

This study contributes to the literature with a new perspective to the study of entrepreneurship and of regional innovation systems. Entrepreneurship research with focus on rural contexts most often highlight limits to entrepreneurship and see entrepreneurship as “just running a business”. A perspective that starts from innovation and innovative behaviour, despite the rural context and embedded resources, helps to generate new knowledge that can enrich the understanding of entrepreneurship and also be the foundation for more precise business development policies in rural settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the fast growth of online music festivals. This paper explores how festivalgoers' experience affects their satisfaction and drives their loyalty to re-attend online music festivals in China.

Based on an understanding of the music festival experience and the characteristics of live-streamed performances, this paper investigates five factors that affect festivalgoers' satisfaction and loyalty, namely the music experience, ambience experience, separation experience, social experience and novelty experience. The relationships between festivalgoers' experience, satisfaction and loyalty are also explored using structural equation modelling techniques.

The empirical results suggest that four of the above-mentioned five factors of the online music festival experience directly affect festivalgoers' satisfaction and loyalty. The online mode is a rapid adaptation of and preferred alternative to offline music festivals, whilst the creation of the experience, along with satisfaction with and loyalty to the online music festival, are determined by different factors compared to offline modes. Overall festival satisfaction positively enhances the relationship between festivalgoers' experience and loyalty to online music festivals.

This study offers a range of practical and managerial implications for organisers of online music festival, similar activities such as live-streaming concerts and stage performances and hybrid events.

This study explores a phenomenon that has evolved quickly since COVID-19 and will, potentially, have an ongoing and enduring impact on the music festival sector. It differentiates the understanding of festivalgoers' experience in online and offline modes, which is a new addition to the literature. It also enriches the theoretical understanding of the experience of, satisfaction with and loyalty to online music festivals.

There is evidence that spirituality at the workplace has positive effects on work outcomes, and there are different models conceptualizing the construct. To date, there is no discussion highlighting how digitalization is affecting workplace spirituality and vice versa. The present review tries to close this gap by discussing the psychological dynamics in light of digitalization and spirituality in the context of work.

This is a conceptual discussion based on an extensive narrative review. The conceptual design is further tested with a real-life case study.

The result is a model that may guide future research, which consists of the four highly interdependent domains, namely psychology (with the dimensions of emotion, cognition and behavior), digitalization (with the dimensions of platforms, data and algorithms), spirituality (with the dimensions of meaning, self-transcendation and belonging), as well as the workplace (with the dimensions of work tasks, location, community and culture and values). The discussion includes implications for the future of work, suggestions for management decisions and potential future research directions.

To date, there are many discussions about digital transformation and a limited amount of them have invested in analyzing psychological dimensions. The application to spirituality and the workplace – especially when the two are combined – is almost wholly absent, which makes the present discussion both innovative and original.

The study aims to determine whether audited organizations experience differences between external audits and official controls.

A survey among 100 organic food producers was conducted to explore differences regarding the usability of external audits and official controls. The survey was conducted in 2020 using the computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) method supplemented by the computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) method. Organizations processing organic farming products in Poland were chosen for the study.

Three primary benefits associated with external audits and official controls were identified, i.e. (1) enabling and initiating activities related to the improvement of the organization, (2) improving the financial performance of the organization and (3) enhancing credibility. For most organizations, the assessment of these features was at the same level for both external audits and official control. However, if these assessments differed, commercial audits were assessed at a higher level than official controls.

The study is limited to only one specific type of manufacturing organization and one European country.

The literature review shows some conceptual differences between audits and official controls, but the results of this study show that the business environment does not perceive these differences as significant. Thus, the value of the study is reflected in the conclusion that both external audits and official controls are considered useful and credible approaches to monitoring the quality within the organization, which allows us to state that external evaluation is generally seen as an opportunity to improve the performance of the organization.

The purpose of this study was to examine how well a strength-based program grounded in positive psychology principles can advance the practical critical thinking skills of those pursuing the teacher training course.

This study used a single-group pre-test post-test design with 35 teacher-trainees from the Bachelor of Education course. The two-and-a-half-week strength-based program used the values in action survey to identify strengths. Pre- and post-test scores, measured with the Cornell Critical Thinking Test – Level Z, underwent Statistical Package for Social Sciences analysis including paired samples t-test for subcomponent and overall composite analysis.

Analysis of the pre- and post-test scores demonstrated a statistical significance in the critical thinking scores obtained by the teacher-trainees. Post-test scores were consistently significant. Out of the elements of critical thinking, induction, meaning, observation and credibility were more prominent. Deduction and assumption identification were also having a significant effect.

Most critical thinking programs focus on evaluating specific teaching methods for improving critical thinking skills. In education, positive psychology studies often center on students’ well-being, attention spans and academic success, aligning with wellness programs. Despite the importance of strengths in positive psychology, there is a lack of research on using a strength-based approach to boost critical thinking skills. This study aims to enhance teacher-trainees’ critical thinking by leveraging their individual strengths, moving away from traditional instructional strategies.

This study aims to explore how the absorptive capacity of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) facilitates increased acquirer performance in industry exploration and technology exploration cross-border acquisitions (CBAs).

The research context for this study is Brazilian EMNEs and their CBAs. The final database contains 101 CBAs.

The authors find that industry exploration strategies negatively affect financial performance, but technology exploration strategies have a positive effect. The acquirer’s absorptive capacity can exacerbate the negative effects, except in instances of technology exploration strategies, where there is a demonstrable benefit from the acquirer’s absorptive capacity.

The study contributes first by providing a more nuanced understanding of the effects of absorptive capacity on postacquisition performance, depending on the type of knowledge explored. Second, by drawing on EMNE learning perspectives, the authors demonstrate the versatility of absorptive capacity in emerging markets.