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Extant studies in entrepreneurship have explored factors that influence the birth and growth of start-up firms; however, there appears to be a dearth of studies examining the influence of founders' ambidextrous orientation on start-ups' success, especially their speed of attaining the coveted status of a “unicorn start-up” – which is considered a mega success in practice. This study examines whether and how founding teams’ collective ambidextrous orientation influences their respective start-ups’ pace of becoming a “unicorn”.

This study empirically analyses 220 interviews by the founders of 83 Indian unicorns in examining the influence of the founding teams’ collective exploration-exploitation capability on their firms' speed to achieve the “unicorn” status. The Cox Hazard model was used to test the hypothesized relationships, and linear ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to test the robustness of the results.

The authors find a strong positive relationship between founding teams’ ambidextrous skills and the speed of becoming a unicorn. The study results suggest that the founding teams’ collective exploratory skills may be more influential in their start-up’s speed to unicorn status vis-à-vis their exploitative skills.

This study finds that the founding teams’ ambidextrous orientation and exploratory skills accelerate their start-up’s speed to becoming a unicorn, contributing to the academic discourse on the “unicorn” phenomenon, which is widely acknowledged as a grand success status for start-ups—especially technology and venture capital funded start-ups—among the practitioners. This study contributes to the academic discourse on firm capabilities and founding-team-related antecedents of start-up success by raising a new dimension of the founding team’s ambidextrous orientation.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe how the affinity space concept has been used to frame learning via social media, and call for and discuss a refresh of the affinity space concept to accommodate changes in social media platforms and algorithms.

Guided by a sociocultural perspective, this paper reviews and discusses some ways the affinity space concept has been used to frame studies across various contexts, its benefits and disadvantages and how it has already evolved. It then calls for and describes a refresh of the affinity space concept.

Although conceptualized 20 years ago, the affinity space concept remains relevant to understanding social media use for learning. However, a refresh is needed to accommodate how platforms have changed, algorithms’ evolving role in social media participation and how these technologies influence users’ interactions and experiences. This paper offers three perspectives to expand the affinity space concept’s usefulness in an increasingly platformized and algorithmically mediated world.

This paper underscores the importance of algorithmic literacy for learners and educators, as well as regulations and guidance for social media platforms.

This conceptual paper revisits and updates a widely utilized conceptual framing with consideration for how social media platform design and algorithms impact interactions and shape user experiences.

This study aims to explore a new restaurant category’s development from birth to maturity, thereby explaining the rationale for category innovation strategies.

The authors conducted a qualitative case study analysis of the New Chinese-style Fusion Restaurant category’s development from birth to maturity. Thematic analysis was conducted on data collected from semi-structured interviews and textual information.

A new restaurant category’s maturation is determined by the formation of society’s shared knowledge about the category’s crucial attributes, which is an outcome of market participants’ category-related social practices. The authors develop a novel, four-stage framework for the socialized construction of this shared knowledge: a knowledge creation (KC), knowledge diffusion (KD), knowledge integration (KI) and knowledge structuralization (KS). This knowledge evolution along this KC–KD–KI–KS sequence can holistically describe the category maturation process. This framework can help understand the rationale for a restaurant category’s maturation by analyzing the interrelationships among market participants’ social practices, knowledge-related activities and market development.

This study explains how market participants’ knowledge-related activities facilitate a new restaurant category’s maturation. This can help restaurant managers cope with increasingly homogeneous competition by applying a category-innovation strategy.

This study extends product categorization research on restaurants by articulating a product category’s maturation process from a knowledge perspective.

The purpose of the paper is to examine study probes into the association between work–family balance (WFB) and workplace wellbeing (WWB), as there has been a dearth of studies in this domain. Furthermore, the study deciphers the mediation and moderation effect of work engagement (WE) and turnover intent, respectively, on this primal relationship.

The present study undertakes a quantitative analysis of full-time regular employees (n = 334) in the USA, with a minimum experience of two years in current employment. The data was collected in two phases to minimize common method bias. The collected data was analysed via structural equation modelling.

Results indicate a positive association between WFB and workplace well-being. The mediation effect of WE on the primal association between WFB and workplace wellbeing is also substantiated. Though turnover intent failed to moderate this association between WFB and WWB; but mitigated the linkage between WE and workplace wellbeing.

The study demonstrates that the direct relationship between WFB and WWB is more pronounced than its indirect association. This insight could help organizations to design policies that include WFB; which can further accelerate WWB and work immersion attitudes amongst employees. Finally, this paper illustrates that employee attrition can be controlled by championing a climate of WE and WWB.

The present investigation offers an insight into the direct association between the WFB and workplace well-being of employees; and the pivotal role of WE in the whole nexus, an investigation which has been largely ignored, in the past. Furthermore, it refutes the effect of negative constructs like turnover intention, in the presence of positive associates like WE and WFB; which is an important lead for both practitioners and theorists.

Typhoons, storm surges and sea-level rise pose major risks to life and livelihoods in Southeast Asia and demand state-level action. However, the prominence and frequency of these symptomatic disasters often divert attention from underlying systemic and situational issues. The purpose of this paper is a normative and conceptual one. It makes the case for a grounded and disaggregated human security approach for decoding complex relationships of risk, power, politics, inequality and mistrust that underpin problems we seek to address.

This paper’s approach situates the emergence of the human security paradigm and its connections to human development, sustainable economic growth and rights-based protections in historical context. It then draws on observations across the region over a number of years combined with a review of relevant research to detail how the vulnerability and exposure to disaster of at-risk communities extend beyond random or natural events. Having established that a focus on the immediate characteristics of disaster limits our frames of reference and the utility of subsequent responses, it proceeds to analyse the political, environmental and economic drivers amplifying exposure to disaster in Southeast Asia.

The findings reveal that the vulnerability and insecurity experienced by at-risk communities are not wholly random or exclusively the result of natural, unavoidable events. Exposure to disasters is also shaped by various situational factors, including habitat loss, dispossession, displacement, marginalisation and limited opportunities. Incorporating a more holistic human security perspective can bring into focus the less visible forces and interests that amplify vulnerability to hazard risk for affected individuals and communities in the region.

This is an original paper that underscores the conceptual and methodological importance of a grounded and disaggregated human security approach to grasp the disaster-prone territories of risk in contemporary Southeast Asia and for advancing appropriate responses.

This study aims to discern and refine the role of emotional intelligence (EI) in the development of customer orientation among banking employees in Morocco. This analysis seeks to enhance understanding about the significance of this emotional skill within the Moroccan banking sector.

The research embraces an interpretivist philosophical perspective to gain insight into the subjective meanings and experiences of study participants. The methodology employed is qualitative, involving data collected from semi-structured interviews conducted with 21 front-office bank employees. The analysis of the data was conducted through employing thematic analysis.

The findings of this study conclude that emotional intelligence fosters and stimulates customer orientation for bank employees. The perception, understanding and effective management of emotions – both those of the contact personnel and their customers – enable employees to better comprehend customer reactions. They experience heightened empathy through the impact of accumulated professional experience, adapt their behaviors according to the emotional state of the customer, maintain a positive relationship with them and ultimately gain their confidence.

This study offers clear theoretical explanations and conceptualizations that have identified and linked pertinent literature on the topic. It focuses on a salient subject, investigating how emotional intelligence influences the customer-oriented behavior of front-office bank employees. Notably, this study represents one of the first attempts to explore this relationship within the Moroccan context. As a result, it contributes to the enhancement of managerial practices and human resource policies, thereby fostering a more productive and harmonious working environment.

Nanotechnology (NT) advancements in personal protective textiles (PPT) or personal protective equipment (PPE) have alleviated spread and transmission of this highly contagious viral disease, and enabled enhancement of PPE, thereby fortifying antiviral behavior.

Review of a series of state of the art research papers on the subject matter.

This paper expounds on novel nanotechnological advancements in polymeric textile composites, emerging applications and fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

As a panacea to “public droplet prevention,” textiles have proven to be potentially effective as environmental droplet barriers (EDBs).

PPT in form of healthcare materials including surgical face masks (SFMs), gloves, goggles, respirators, gowns, uniforms, scrub-suits and other apparels play critical role in hindering the spreading of COVID-19 and other “oral-respiratory droplet contamination” both within and outside hospitals.

When used as double-layers, textiles display effectiveness as SFMs or surgical-fabrics, which reduces droplet transmission to <10 cm, within circumference of ∼0.3%.

NT advancements in textiles through nanoparticles, and sensor integration within textile materials have enhanced versatile sensory capabilities, robotics, flame retardancy, self-cleaning, electrical conductivity, flexibility and comfort, thereby availing it for health, medical, sporting, advanced engineering, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, military, automobile, food and agricultural applications, and more. Therefore, this paper expounds on recently emerging trends in nanotechnological influence in textiles for engineering and fight against COVID-19 pandemic.

The internet has evolved into an indispensable platform for seeking health information, particularly among transgender individuals. With an abundance of online resources available, extensive research into the credibility and reliability of this information is essential, as concerns about the quality of online resources persist. Transgender individuals are drawn to online health information due to the anonymity it offers, providing them with a sense of freedom from social isolation and the discomfort of experimenting with their transgender identity. However, it is crucial to assess the accuracy and reliability of the transgender health information available on the internet. This article aims to evaluate the quality of online transgender health resources by utilizing ten credibility indicators, along with six indicators to assess the veracity of the content.

A total of 179 online resources were meticulously reviewed after excluding any unnecessary and irrelevant ones, to ensure a comprehensive assessment.

The findings suggest that among the chosen resources, none of them meet all the criteria for maintaining high standards of accuracy and reliability in health information. In other words, none of these sources completely adhere to the established measures for ensuring that the information they provide is trustworthy and of high quality in the context of health.

The study provides valuable insights into the online realm of transgender health information, revealing both the strengths and weaknesses of the existing resources. By pinpointing areas that need enhancement and showcasing commendable practices, this research strives to promote a more knowledgeable and supportive online environment for individuals in search of transgender health information.

While some hydrogen (H₂) products are available in the industrial market, new clean H₂ applications are considered critical alternatives in decarbonization efforts. As suppliers need to understand how business customers conceive the value of hydrogen, this paper aims to investigate how the value of hydrogen is described in the published evidence and to identify or propose specific tools to assess its value.

An integrative literature review is developed to synthesize studies on the value of hydrogen to identify the main value categories. Then, the authors create a novel guideline by linking three value dimensions: 1) the product-oriented value (including sustainability), 2) the elements of B2B value and 3) the concept of goal-oriented value.

This paper categorizes the aspects of value discussed so far in the literature, suggesting conceptualizing the value of H₂ value-in-use based on economic, environmental, social and technological categories. The missing value categories from the marketing perspective are related to perceived value. A comprehensive guideline for assessing the value of H₂ for business customers was developed to address that gap. The guideline can evaluate hydrogen from a multicategory perspective and compare new hydrogen products with alternatives.

First, the authors present the value of hydrogen in the B2B marketing discussion. Second, the authors propose four hydrogen value categories based on the current state-of-the-art. Third, the authors developed the multicategory guideline for assessing the value of hydrogen products for business customers (VH₂-BC).