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Facilitating members' continual participation in a community is crucial for ensuring the community's long-term survival. However, knowledge regarding whether member similarity is related to member participation and the mechanism underlying this relationship is limited. Drawing on similarity–attraction, social exchange and social identity theories, this study explored the influences of different facets of similarity (i.e. value, personality and goal similarity) on group norm conformity, group identity and social participation.

Data were collected from 444 Taiwanese members of social networking sites (SNSs), and structural equation modeling was employed to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The results revealed that value similarity directly affected group norm conformity but did not directly affect group identity; personality similarity influenced group identity but not group norm conformity. Goal similarity had positive influences on group norm conformity and group identity. Moreover, group norm conformity had direct and positive influences on group identity and social participation; group identity also had a positive influence on social participation.

On the basis of the aforementioned findings, this study contributes to the understanding of factors facilitating SNS members' participation from the perspective of similarity. These findings can serve as a reference for SNS administrators to facilitate social participation by emphasizing member similarity.

This study aims to demonstrate what myths of and about science are reproduced in this popular cultural work (movie – “Oppenheimer”). This is done by examining the unconscious hegemonic positions supported by the reproduction of stereotypical and mythical images of science.

Content/Text Analysis: The conceptual analysis of a cultural text – a film (“Oppenheimer”) – through a theoretical apparatus (B. Latour’s theory).

The film demonstrates its reproduction of three distinct elements. Firstly, it exhibits classic scientistic clichés pertaining to technoscience. Secondly, it highlights the replication of the individualized monomyth about the (super) hero, leading to the exclusion of the intricate conditions of technoscience’s existence. Lastly, the film aligns with the Californian ideology, as proposed by Barbrook.

The value of the text is twofold: (1) To show that the classical approaches of Bruno Latour are still relevant. (2) To show what hidden premises and myths about technoscience are being propagated through a work of pop culture (the film “Oppenheimer”) and, in effect, to show what kind of influence of cultural hegemony is at work here.

Know your customer (KYC), accounting standards, issuance, clearing, and trade settlement became the major barrier to implement accounting, accountability and assurance process in supply chain finance (SCF). Blockchain technology features have the potential to solve accounting problems. This research focuses on exploring how blockchain technology provides solutions to overcome the barriers of accounting process in SCF. The benefits, opportunities, costs and risks related to blockchain adoption are also explored.

Multi-case study and qualitative methods are used with a framework based on blockchain role to overcome the accounting process barriers. Ten blockchain projects in SCF and 29 interviews of participants as a unit of analysis are considered.

The findings indicate that blockchain technology offers solutions to solve accounting, accountability and assurance problems in SCF. Validity, verification, smart contracts, automation and enduring data on trade transactions potentially solve those barriers. However, it is also necessary to consider costs such as implementation, technology, education and integration costs. Then there are possible risks such as regulatory compliance, operational, code development and scalability risk. This finding reflects the current status of blockchain technology roles in SCF.

This study unveils blockchain's SCF accounting potential, emphasizing multi-case method limitations and future research prospects. Diverse contexts challenge findings' applicability, warranting cross-industry studies for deeper insights. Addressing selection bias and integrating quantitative measures can enhance understanding of blockchain's accounting impact.

Accounting professionals can get an idea of the future direction and impact of blockchain technology on accounting, accountability and assurance processes.

This study provides initial findings on the potential, costs and risks of blockchain that is beneficial for parties involved in SCF, especially for banks and insurance underwriters. In addition, the findings also provide direction for the contribution of blockchain technology to accounting theory in the future.

Consumers are assumed to engage in external information search only after exhausting their internal information sources. Guided by the accessibility/diagnosticity and ease-of-retrieval frameworks, and the elaboration likelihood model, the current study investigates this phenomenon.

To test the relationships between internal information accessibility/diagnosticity and the importance of external search, and the moderating role of involvement in these relationships, 308 responses were collected on Amazon MTurk. Then, structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data.

The analyses showed that while accessibility and diagnosticity of internal information have an impact on external information search, involvement with the product class has a consequential moderating effect on these relationships. In particular, in the low-involvement group, only the diagnosticity of internal information had a negative effect on external information search. On the contrary, in the high-involvement group, only accessibility of internal information had a negative effect.

These findings highlight the possibility of drawing erroneous conclusions resulting from not incorporating involvement, in conjunction with information accessibility and diagnosticity, in the study of the consumer external information search behavior.

The findings also imply that if practitioners aim to prime consumers to engage in external information search, they need to take into account that the effects of internal information's accessibility and diagnosticity on consumers' external search behavior may be different depending on their levels of involvement.

This study's results showed that without considering the moderating effect of involvement, spurious conclusions may be made about the relationships between accessibility and diagnosticity of internal and external information importance. This finding may explain the discrepancy between the accessibility/diagnosticity and ease-of-retrieval frameworks, thus enriching the literature.

Technology is revolutionizing the management logic of service systems. The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, is challenging interaction between humans and machines changing the service systems’ value co-creation configurations and logic. To envision possible future scenarios, this paper aims to reflect upon how the humans’ use of AI technology can impact value co-creation.

The study is developed, at a conceptual level, using selected elements from managerial and marketing theoretical frameworks interested in value co-creation – Service-Dominant Logic, Service Science and Viable Systems Approach (VSA) – used as interpretative tools to reframe value co-creation in the digital age.

The interpretative approach adopted and, in particular, the new VSA notion of Intelligence Augmentation (IA), in the perspective of the information variety model, shed new light on value co-creation in the digital age framing a possible “IA effect” that can empower value co-creation in complex decision-making contexts.

The study provides insights useful in the design and management of service systems suggesting a rethinking of the view of AI as a means for mainly increasing the smartness of service systems and a new focus on the enhancement of the human resources contribution to make the service systems wiser.

The paper provides a refocused interpretative view of the interaction between humans and AI that looks at a possible positive impact of the use of AI on humans in terms of augmented decision-making capabilities in conditions of complexity.

This paper aims to show the possibilities of implementing the idea of sustainability in the context of energy transformation using the concept of an industrial cluster. The implementation of the idea of sustainability is of particular importance from the perspective of the functioning of the meta-organisations involved in the implementation and promotion of decarbonisation processes. Industrial clusters, as collective actors initiating collective actions and providing complex governance structures, seem to have a great fit with regard to the needs of disseminating and implementing the idea of sustainable development, also in conjunction with energy development.

Empirical evidence is derived from a case study of Mazovia Clustes ICT (MC ICT). Based on the experience of this cluster, this study wants to show the evolution of the industrial cluster through the prism of its growing activity in supporting energy transition. The authors conducted the research in the period 2022–2023 using in-depth personal interviews and an analysis of the secondary data. The primary technique for data analysis and interpretation was conventional qualitative content analysis.

As a result of this study, the authors have distinguished three main areas of cluster activity covering the strategic, operational/project and institutional levels. Within the first area, the cluster’s efforts focused on the development of a strategy and involvement in lobbying and co-legislating. The second area refers to the cluster’s activity in the carrying out of national and transnational projects on the creation and implementation of various energy solutions. The activities undertaken in the third area include support for the development of start-ups in the field of energy and involvement in the launch of an energy cluster and the development of distributed energy in Poland. Although the strategic and operational/project levels are characterised by a commonality of activities and goals, there is additionally a commonality of interests at the institutional level.

This paper has its limitations, which primarily relate to the small research sample (the choice of a case study as the main research strategy) and the methods used (qualitative research). Therefore, it is impossible to generalise the results to the entire population of clusters.

This paper has considerable practical value, as the results of this study may be relevant for public authorities interested in implementing energy transition through industrial clusters. The activities described can also be a source of inspiration for other clusters interested in shaping pro-environmental attitudes.

The cluster’s activities are closely linked to the three pillars of sustainable development, including the social pillar. The solutions developed within the cluster in the context of energy development are aimed not only at increasing energy efficiency and protecting the environment but also at broader social welfare.

This paper makes an additional contribution to the state-of-the-art of the industrial cluster concept by linking it to the idea of sustainable development, in the context of energy transformation. In addition, it sheds new light on issues related to cluster co-operation, combining the case of the industrial cluster with the very fresh and as yet poorly described idea of the energy cluster.

This study investigates how employees' experience of resource-depleting workplace loneliness may steer them away from performance-enhancing work efforts as informed by their propensity to engage in negative work rumination. It also addresses whether and how religiosity might serve as a buffer of this harmful dynamic.

The hypotheses tests rely on three-round survey data collected among employees who work in various organizations in Pakistan – a relevant country context, considering the importance of people's religious faith for their professional functioning and its high-uncertainty avoidance and collectivism, which likely make workplace loneliness a particularly upsetting experience.

An important channel through which a sense of being abandoned at work compromises job performance is that employees cannot “switch off” and stop thinking about work, even after hours. The role of this explanatory mechanism is mitigated, however, when employees can draw from their religious beliefs.

For human resource (HR) managers, this study pinpoints a notable intrusion into the personal realm, namely, repetitive thinking about work-related issues, through which perceptions of work-related loneliness translate into a reluctance to contribute to organizational effectiveness with productive work activities. It also showcases how this translation can be subdued with personal resources that enable employees to contain the hardships they have experienced.

This study helps unpack the connection between workplace loneliness and job performance by detailing the unexplored roles of two important factors (negative work rumination and religiosity) in this connection.

Non-verbal communication (NVC) remains largely understudied despite its importance in today's fast-paced and cross-cultural management and research landscape. This article is significant because it reveals valuable insights into NVC, which represents 65–93% (Mehrabian, 1981) of communication and has the potential to considerably increase management effectiveness and efficiency by providing leaders and researchers with the knowledge they need to understand and handle diversity with competence.

This article draws on social identity theory (SIT) (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) and rapport management theory (RMT) (Brown and Levinson, 1987) to analyse illustrative interview extracts of co-occurring verbal and NVC from an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study focussed on understanding how London-based Romanian migrant entrepreneurs experience acculturation.

Romanian migrant entrepreneurs use a variety of verbal and non-verbal communication approaches in their acculturation narratives, providing depth and occasionally shifting meaning. These tactics include repeating verbal discourse with non-verbal clues, replacing verbal communication with non-verbal gestures, complementing verbal communication and juxtaposing non-verbal cues with verbal descriptions.

This study makes a valuable contribution to the fields of qualitative organisational management and entrepreneurial studies by addressing the lack of methodological tools available for analysing non-verbal language in interpretative research. This study presents a systematic technique for assessing non-verbal language symbols that has been developed through face-to-face interviews. The article utilises the first-hand interview experience of a Romanian co-researcher to demonstrate the significance of NVC in the transmission of meaning and the formation of identities amongst Romanian migrant entrepreneurs. These findings contribute to a better understanding of organisational management and research practices, particularly about this understudied entrepreneurial minority of Romanian businesses in London, by helping researchers and managers better grasp the cultural and contextual meanings communicated non-verbally. The article holds significance in the context of cross-cultural and organisational management practices.

This paper aims to study antiques enthusiasts’ perspectives on the recent stagnancy in the antiques market, along with their suggestions on how the antiques trade can forge a more secure path forward.

Using a qualitative analysis approach through netnography, this paper examines archived comments of antiques enthusiasts on a “r/antiques” subreddit.

This research studies connoisseurs’ insights into the reduction in antiques sales experienced by a wide cross-section of sellers, particularly independent and small business retailers. Specifically, the results of this paper’s discourse analysis show that technological advances on one hand and socioeconomic factors (e.g. income, family structure and lifestyle) on the other hand have had a significant negative impact on demand for antiques. In addition, specific attributes such as authenticity and sustainability emerged as potential key marketing elements for invigorating the broader public’s interest in purchasing antiques.

Despite their significant insights into the antiques market, antiques enthusiasts have not received the academic attention they deserve. Through discourse analysis of comments in an online antiques community, this paper draws attention to the vulnerabilities of antiques markets to a protracted climate of slow sales, while highlighting potential strategies on how to turn the tide for struggling antiques stores.

This paper is intended to assess the developments conducted on the master plan of Old Najaf, mainly in three areas: the Imam Ali Holy Shrine and its surroundings, the Great Market Area and the location of the Town of Visitors.

In order to analyse the implementation of the transformation phases in Old Najaf, the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) technique was used to identify and organise the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats related to the examined case study of the city's historic centre. At the first stage, all available data (photographs, maps, documents and reports) were collected from different sources, including previous studies by governmental institutions, departments and agencies. Ultimately, the SWOT analysis was used for each identified phase in the morphological evolution of the historic centre. This can offer an opportunity to observe the implications of urban planning practices in Old Najaf from the mid-20th century to the present day. In order to identify the well-organised urban design practices and appropriate strategies, the implemented studies and projects were examined by the four factors of the SWOT analysis.

The current results have revealed important urban transformations, already made and/or ongoing, of those aforementioned three main areas, which imply a great loss of the city's traditional character and urban heritage. Further, the environmental and socio-economic issues should be involved in the analysis to evaluate how they have influenced the current outcomes of Old Najaf in relation to the urban configuration and orientation.

The rich cultural and architectural heritage of Al-Najaf historic centre is dramatically neglected and seriously threatened to be lost. Hence, conservation on both tangible and intangible levels is urgently needed. It is the first paper which focussed on this problem and tries to learn from the British Conservation Experiences in this field.