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Untimely responses to emergency situations in urban areas contribute to a rising mortality rate and impact society's primary capital. The efficient dispatch and relocation of ambulances pose operational and momentary challenges, necessitating an optimal policy based on the system's real-time status. While previous studies have addressed these concerns, limited attention has been given to the optimal allocation of technicians to respond to emergency situation and minimize overall system costs.

In this paper, a bi-objective mathematical model is proposed to maximize system coverage and enable flexible movement across bases for location, dispatch and relocation of ambulances. Ambulances relocation involves two key decisions: (1) allocating ambulances to bases after completing services and (2) deciding to change the current ambulance location among existing bases to potentially improve response times to future emergencies. The model also considers the varying capabilities of technicians for proper allocation in emergency situations.

The Augmented Epsilon-Constrained (AEC) method is employed to solve the proposed model for small-sized problem. Due to the NP-Hardness of the model, the NSGA-II and MOPSO metaheuristic algorithms are utilized to obtain efficient solutions for large-sized problems. The findings demonstrate the superiority of the MOPSO algorithm.

This study can be useful for emergency medical centers and healthcare companies in providing more effective responses to emergency situations by sending technicians and ambulances.

In this study, a two-objective mathematical model is developed for ambulance location and dispatch and solved by using the AEC method as well as the NSGA-II and MOPSO metaheuristic algorithms. The mathematical model encompasses three primary types of decision-making: (1) Allocating ambulances to bases after completing their service, (2) deciding to relocate the current ambulance among existing bases to potentially enhance response times to future emergencies and (3) considering the diverse abilities of technicians for accurate allocation to emergency situations.

In demand-driven markets, customer value, sometimes called perceived use value or consumer surplus, is defined by the customer rather than the firm. The value a firm can appropriate, its profits, is driven by the customer’s willingness to pay for the value they receive, adjusted by costs. This paper introduces a conceptual framework that helps understand value creation and appropriation in demand-driven markets and shows how to influence them through strategic decision-making.

This paper uses an axiomatic approach combined with an extended analytical formulation of the jobs-to-be-done framework to contextualise demand-driven markets. It mathematically derives implications for managerial decision-making concerning selecting customer segments, optimising customer value creation and maximising firm value appropriation in a competitive environment.

Rooting strategic decision-making in the jobs-to-be-done framework allows distinguishing between what customers want to achieve (goal), what product attributes need to be satisfied (opportunity space/constraints) and what value creation criteria related to features are important (utility function). This paper shows that starting from a job-to-be-done, the problem of identifying which customer segments to serve, what product to offer and what price to charge, can be formulated as an optimisation problem that simultaneously (rather than sequentially) solves for the three decision variables, customer segments, product features and price, by maximising the value that a firm can appropriate, subject to maximising customer value creation and constrained by the competitive environment.

Applying the derived results to simultaneously deciding which customer segments to target, what product features to offer and what price to charge, given a set of competing products, allows managers to increase their chances of winning the competitive game.

This paper shows that starting from a job-to-be-done and simultaneously focusing on customers, product features, price and competitors enhances firm profitability. Strategic decision-making is formulated as an optimisation problem based on an axiomatic approach contextualising demand-driven markets.

This paper aims to examine the processes of sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) and the influence they have on shaping perception from disclosures. Given the evidence of inconsistencies and ambiguities in assurance processes, this paper examines how legitimacy is attained and maintained at different stages of SRA.

Evidence collected from 23 semi-structured interviews with assurance providers (APs), consultants, professionals and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (non-APs) was used to conduct a thematic analysis from the perspectives of interviewees.

APs and non-APs are united in recognising the value of SRA, although, perspectives on transparency between the two groups differ. Experience and industry knowledge are essential to SRA delivery with non-APs preferring accounting APs. Nevertheless, non-APs are concerned about the role of companies in deciding assurance scope, as it can affect scrutiny. APs favour data accuracy (as opposed to data relevance) assurance due to team dynamics and internal review influences, with the latter also restricting assurance innovation. APs are interested in accessing better evidence and stakeholder engagement evaluations. Providing advisory services was not rejected by all APs. The perspectives of APs and non-APs demonstrate how progress in SRA has gained pragmatic legitimacy with noticeable gaps that serve to undermine attainment of moral legitimacy.

SRA is a developing practice that will adopt changes as it continues to mature; some of these changes could impact findings in this research. General perspectives on SRA were sought from interviewees, this affected the ability for an in-depth focus on any of the range of interesting SRA issues that arose over the course of the research. Interviews were conducted with relevant parties in the SRA space that operate in the UK. Perspectives from parties outside the UK were not solicited.

Companies make an important decision to commission SRA. Findings in this research have highlighted specific non-APs issues of concern that can be useful in structuring operations and reporting regimes to facilitate assurance procedures. The findings will also be helpful to APs as they can direct more emphasis on stakeholder concerns towards demonstrating greater stakeholder accountability. Regulatory and standard setters can enact appropriate policies that can potentially drive the practice forward for assessment of cognitive legitimacy.

The findings provide relevant account of stakeholder voices on the quality of corporate disclosures that has a direct effect on the wellbeing of communities and sustainability of societies. Collective stakeholder input on expectations can shape sustainability discourse.

This research demonstrates the applicability of financial audit quality indicators in SRA processes, extends the debate around the effectiveness of new audit fields and highlights the challenges of maintaining legitimacy with different audiences.

This study aims to scrutinize existing end-user comprehension regarding e-wallet technology through an examination of apparent usefulness, ease of use and levels of trust, and how these factors may influence a consumer’s attitudes toward the adoption of this new payment method.

The quota sampling method was used, and residents over the age of 22 years were targeted in online and offline questionnaires, and partial least squares-structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

This study indicates that existing consumer mindsets and intentions to adopt new technology, such as the e-wallet, are greatly influenced by their perception of the practicality of the product, its ease of use and their levels of trust in the technology to protect their online safety, privacy and economic affairs. Contrastingly, those participants who were offered deferred reimbursements and those given no information were demonstrably less likely to adopt the new service.

The study sample was from a developing nation – Saudi Arabia. Similar cohorts from developing and developed countries could provide a unique cross-nation comparison.

This study stresses the importance of thoroughly explaining and demonstrating an innovative technology to customers while simultaneously promoting the product. Consumers can be encouraged to use and evaluate the new technology by providing inducements, such as effective reimbursement policies.

This paper contributes to literature by critically reflecting on the question: What are the factors influencing customer intentions to adopt the e-wallet, and how do the guarantee of reimbursement and the time frame following unauthorized use influence consumer adoption intentions when deciding to use the new payment technology?

This study aims to explore the potential impact of country-level governance in corporate financing structures.

A two-step system generalized method of moment was used due to the endogeneity issue. The whole sample comprises 3,761 firms in five economies – China, India, Pakistan, Singapore and South Korea – from 2007 to 2016.

The results indicate that the debt option for financing is not favorable under governments with an adequate governance arrangement. However, there is a direct and significant link between country governance and equity financing because in adequate governance arrangements, the possibilities of information asymmetry are minimal and businesses consider equity a more appropriate and safer financing instrument. In contrast, firms prefer to trade-credit financing in poor governance economies, which confirms an adverse link between trade credit and adequate governance.

The country’s governance should be considered a sensitive matter when deciding about corporate financing.

This arrangement of variables has not been previously analyzed in the literature, suggesting the study’s novelty.

This study analyses the concept of happiness management based on the empirical validation of the interactions between emotional wage, organisational justice and happiness at work. It complements a holistic view of the management models used in recent corporate governance. This perspective explores the dimension’s emotional wage mediating role and influences on organisational justice and happiness at work. The effect of organisational justice on happiness at work is also analysed.

A quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive and correlational study is proposed. A sample of 502 workers in the education sector in Costa Rica was selected. A structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was developed to test the proposed theoretical model. The SPSS-AMOS 23 and SmartPLS 4 computer programs are used for this purpose.

The results show that emotional wage has a positive impact on happiness at work and that it mediates positively between organisational justice and happiness at work. Developing organisational policies to include these variables as necessary resources for corporate governance is recommended.

The first limitation of this study is due to the type of sampling, which was purposive. The kind of population and the time of execution of this study were determining factors when deciding on the mode of application of the instrument. However, an attempt to reduce the bias associated with this element could be made by expanding the sample to as many respondents as possible. The second limitation was that the data were collected within a specific time frame. Longitudinal studies address Thcould. The third limitation stems from the scarcity of literature on happiness management. In this regard, this type of research currently needs to be explored in emerging economies. It makes it difficult to determine whether the empirical results obtained in this paper can be generalised to other territories in the global village. Moreover, the last limitation is that the authors of this research have only explored the moderating role of emotional pay in the relationship between the dimensions of organisational justice and happiness at work. It would be interesting to consider other mediating variables to have a clearer picture of the organisational justice–happiness at work construct from the happiness management approach.

As already indicated throughout this research, emotional wage, organisational justice and happiness at work are constructs that positively drive employee satisfaction, motivation and well-being. Human talent management strategies undertaken by organisations should encourage the adaptation of actions that stimulate employees' quality of life, corporate social responsibility and ethical management practices to be more competitive in today’s markets. It requires implementing the dynamic management models that provide internal customers with a high sense of belonging, job satisfaction and commitment to their professional performance. In other words, this will require robust leadership styles and corporate cultures that stimulate employee creativity, loyalty and innovation. For this reason, management of organisations must implement human resources policies to attract and retain creative talent through happy leadership. It requires, among other things that the philosophy of happiness management becomes a critical strategic resource for companies to promote nonfinancial benefits for employees, including emotional wage (Ruiz-Rodríguez et al., 2023).

In the current business environment, there has been a transformation in leadership styles, motivation and the development of a sense of belonging in organisations' human capital. Based on this trend, the study of happiness management becomes a social strategy to improve the conditions, in which the organisations compete to attract highly demanded human capital. It is why this research contributes elements that have an impact on citizenship by proposing the management models based on happiness at work and quality of life.

This study adds to the happiness management literature by including emotional wage, organisational justice and happiness at work in human resources and strategic management. It also contributes to the academic debate on the need to formulate organisational cultures that empower workers in their professional performance based on happiness and positive emotions.

Educational institutions are investing heavily in the internationalization of their campuses to attract global talent. Yet, highly skilled immigrants face persistent labor market challenges. We investigate how immigrant academics experience and mitigate their double precarity (migrant and academic) as they seek employment in higher education in Canada.

We take a phenomenological approach and draw on reflective interviews with nine immigrant academics, encouraging participants to elaborate on symbols and metaphors to describe their experiences.

We found that immigrant academics constitute a unique highly skilled precariat: a group of professionals with strong professional identities and attachments who face the dilemma of securing highly precarious employment (temporary, part-time and insecure) in a new academic environment or forgoing their professional attachment to seek stable employment in an alternate occupational sector. Long-term, stable and commensurate employment in Canadian higher education is out of reach due to credentialism. Those who stay the course risk deepening their precarity through multiple temporary engagements. Purposeful deskilling toward more stable employment that is disconnected from their previous educational and career accomplishments is a costly alternative in a situation of limited information and high uncertainty.

We bring into the conversation discussions of migrant precarity and academic precarity and draw on immigrant academics’ unique experiences and strategies to understand how this double precarization shapes their professional identities, mobility and work integration in Canadian higher education.

This paper aims to clarify the resistance degree of group road logistics to flood disaster resilience. The paper measures the resilience of group road logistics by establishing network structure model. The purpose of this study is to improve the resilience of road log.

This paper adopts Delphi method to collect data, interviews mainly flood management experts and supply chain risk management experts, and then analyzes the data through the network structure model combined with interpretative structure model (ISM) and analytical network process (ANP).

The results show that flood frequency and drainage systems are the main factors affecting the resilience of road transport logistics in urban areas. These research results provide useful guidance for the effective planning and design of urban road construction and infrastructure.

However, the main factors affecting the resilience of road transport logistics are likely to change with the development of factors such as climate, economy and environment. Therefore, in future work, the authors' research will focus on the further application of this evaluation method.

The results show that the impact of flooding on the four dimensions of road logistics resilience varies. This shows that in deciding what intervention measures are to be taken to improve the resilience of the road network to flooding, various measures need to be considered.

This paper provides a more scientific analysis of the risk management ability of the road network in the face of floods. In addition, it also provides a useful reference for urban road planners.

This paper addresses a clear need to study how to build models to improve the resilience of road logistics in flood risk.

This research attempts to examine bank dividend policy in Indonesia by applying the life cycle theory of dividends.

This research used secondary data gotten from two sources: banks’ annual financial statements from 2005 to 2019 and the number of observation samples was 510 from 42 banks. Random Effects Logit Model (RELM) is used to detect the influence of independent variables on Propensity to Pay Dividends (PPD) and Random Effects Tobit Model (RETM) is used to test the influence of independent variables on Dividend Payout Ratio (DPR).

The RELM results show that Retained Earnings to Total Equity (RE/TE), Retained Earnings to Total Asset (RE/TA) and bank age have a positive impact on the propensity to pay dividends (PPD) while bank growth (GRW) has a negative impact. The RETM results reveal that RE/TE, ROA and bank size have a positive impact on the dividend payout ratio (DPR) while GRW has a negative impact. This analysis also discovers that the capital adequacy ratio (CAR) and Non-performing Loans (NPL) is one important factor considered by banks in Indonesia in determining their dividend policy.

This study contributes to enriching literature in finance, especially in the life cycle theory of dividends. Also, it can be a guide to consider by investors before deciding to put their shares in banks in Indonesia.

Research on bank-specific life cycle theory is very difficult to find, especially in the Indonesian context, so this research can enrich the body of knowledge on dividend decisions.