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The purpose of the study is to examine how risk factors contribute to the occurrence of defects in a process. By analyzing these risk factors in relation to process quality, the study aims to help organizations prioritize their resources and efforts toward addressing the most significant risks. These challenges, integrated with the emerging concept of Quality 4.0, necessitate a comprehensive risk assessment technique.

Fuzzy logic integrated with an analytic network process is used in the process failure mode and effects analysis for conducting risk identification and assessment under uncertainty. Through a mathematical model, the linkage of risk with Six Sigma is established and, finally, a value–risk matrix is developed for illustrating and analysing risk impact on process quality.

A case study on fused filament fabrication demonstrates the proposed methodology’s applicability. The results show its effectiveness in assessing risk factors’ impact on Six Sigma metrics: defects per million opportunities/sigma level.

By integrating qualitative assessments and leveraging available data, this approach enables a more comprehensive understanding of risks and their utilization for an organization’s quality improvement initiatives.

This approach establishes a risk-centric Six Sigma assessment method in accordance with the requirement of ISO 9001:2015 and in the context of Quality 4.0.

Recent research has garnered increasing attention to Quality 4.0, yet its implementation poses significant challenges across various industries. This study aims to identify and analyze the factors influencing Quality 4.0 implementation, considering their types and interactions. It offers solutions to facilitate the adoption of Quality 4.0 within Iran’s home appliance industry.

This research involved identifying the factors impacting Quality 4.0 implementation through a comprehensive review of relevant literature and the evolution of Quality 4.0. To evaluate the present status of these factors, data were gathered from the top ten manufacturing companies in Iran’s home appliance industry.

The study revealed that Perceived Saving Time emerged as the primary factor influencing changes in one of the backward scenarios of Perceived Saving Cost. Additionally, the research findings indicate that enhancements in the Vision and Strategy factor trigger a cascade effect across multiple factors, ultimately resulting in improvements in Knowledge and Awareness of Quality 4.0.

This research’s outcomes offer valuable insights for implementing Quality 4.0 and provide a novel perspective for researchers engaged in quality management.

The purpose of this study is to comprehensively analyse and compare equity crowdfunding (ECF) regulations across 26 countries, shedding light on the diverse regulatory frameworks, investor and issuer limits and the evolution of ECF globally. By addressing this research gap and providing consolidated insights, the study aims to inform policymakers, researchers and entrepreneurs about the regulatory landscape of ECF, fostering a deeper understanding of its potential and challenges in various economies. Ultimately, the study contributes to the advancement of ECF as an alternative financing method for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups, empowering them to access much-needed capital for growth.

The study used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) model for a systematic literature review on global ECF regulations. Starting with 74 initial articles from Web of Sciences and Scopus databases, duplicates were removed and language criteria applied, leaving 42 articles. After a thorough full-text screening, 20 articles were excluded, resulting in the review of 22 papers from 2016 to 2022. PRISMA’s structured framework enhances the quality of systematic reviews, ensuring transparency and accessibility of findings for various stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners and policymakers, in the field of ECF regulations.

This study examines ECF regulations across various countries. Notably, the UK has advanced regulations, while the USA adopted them later through the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. Canada regulates at the provincial level. Malaysia and China were early adopters in Asia, but Hong Kong, Japan, Israel and India have bans. Turkey introduced regulations in 2019. New Zealand and Australia enacted laws, with Australia referring to it as “crowd-sourced equity funding”. Italy, Austria, France, Germany and Belgium have established regulations in Europe. These regulations vary in investor and issuer limits, disclosure requirements and anti-corruption measures, impacting the growth of ECF markets.

This study’s findings underscore the diverse regulatory landscape governing ECF worldwide. It reveals that regulatory approaches vary from liberal to protectionist, reflecting each country’s unique economic and political context. The implications of this research highlight the need for cross-country analysis to inform practical implementation and the effectiveness of emerging ECF ecosystems. This knowledge can inspire regulatory adjustments, support startups and foster entrepreneurial growth in emerging economies, ultimately reshaping early-stage funding for new-age startups and SMEs on a global scale.

This study’s originality lies in its comprehensive analysis of ECF regulations across 26 diverse countries, shedding light on the intricate interplay between regulatory frameworks and a nation’s political-economic landscape. By delving into the nuanced variations in investor limits, investment types and regulatory strategies, it unveils the multifaceted nature of ECF regulation globally. Furthermore, this research adds value by comparing divergent perspectives on investment constraints and offering an understanding of their impact on ECF efficacy. Ultimately, the study’s unique contribution lies in its potential to inform practical implementation, shape legislative frameworks and catalyse entrepreneurial ecosystems in emerging economies, propelling the evolution of early-stage funding practices.

Considering the problems faced by the home appliance industry in Iran, such as the increase in waste, lack of information transparency and lack of traceability of manufactured products, etc. the companies in the home appliance industry are moving toward Industry 4.0 and have been prompted to use it. On the other hand, the adoption of Industry 4.0 is associated with challenges that may lead to the failure of the adoption project and the bankruptcy of home appliance manufacturers. This study identified the challenges in the implementation of Industry 4.0 on current status and provided suitable solutions to overcome the identified challenges.

In this study, a review of the literature and background of Industry 4.0 identified the challenges that influence the adoption of Industry 4.0. To measure the current status of the identified challenges, the opinions of experts in the Iranian home appliance industry were used. To find solutions to the challenges in the adoption of Industry 4.0 in the Iranian home appliance industry, a fuzzy cognitive mapping and scenario design were used.

The results of this study show that to face the challenge of data sharing, skilled personnel should be effectively promoted among workers in the home appliance industry. The results of this study also show that the barriers to cooperation should be removed to reduce the impact of the IT Security Concerns challenge.

This paper is the first article that identifies the challenges and effective solutions for implementing Industry 4.0 in the home appliance industry.

The measurement of women's economic welfare and exploring its underlying factors have been undervalued in the context of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. This study addressed this gap by focusing on assessing women's subjective economic welfare and its socioeconomic and cultural determinants in the education and health sectors within Mardan, Northern Pakistan.

The study used stratified random sampling techniques for the selection of sample respondents and collected data through a well-structured questionnaire. To measure women’s economic welfare, the study utilizes Lorenz curves, the Gini index, the Sen Social Welfare function and an individual's gross monthly income. Furthermore, the ordinary least squares method was utilized to analyze the determinants of economic welfare.

The findings show greater income inequality and a lower welfare level for women in the education sector compared to the health sector. Likewise, the study identifies several key determinants, such as age, educational qualification, job experience, respect for working women, outside and work-place problems and the suffering of family members of working women for their economic well-being.

This study makes valuable contributions to the literature by focusing on the cultural perspective of Pakhtun women in Mardan and providing a context-specific understanding of subjective economic welfare. Additionally, the authors collected first-hand data, which gave an original outlook on working women's current economic welfare level. Furthermore, this study undertakes a comparative analysis of working women's welfare in the health and education sectors. This comparison offers a more accurate portrayal of the challenges and opportunities specific to these occupations.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0246

A significant increase in the number of private sector banks has intensified the level of competition in the Indian banking industry (IBI). This increase in the number of banks has a considerable impact on the existing players, which calls for prioritizing customer satisfaction (CS) and enhancing bank reputation (BR). Our study seeks to investigate the enablers of CS and BR in the IBI.

The study adopted a cross-sectional design for gathering responses from retail bank customers across the selected banks through a structured questionnaire. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized to evaluate direct and indirect linkages among the identified constructs by examining mediating and moderating effects.

The study puts forward crucial antecedents of CS and BR. The findings exhibit that perceived trust (PT) and relationship commitment (RC) magnify CS and BR, respectively, while CS amplifies repurchase intention (RI). The study advances that BR and CS partially mediate between the underlying constructs. In addition, fairness and risk exhibit moderating effects between CS and customer repurchase intention (CRI) and BR and CRI.

The study illustrates the crucial enablers of BR, CS and CRI that may assist banking professionals in enriching customer experience and holding on to their customers.

There is a shortage of research on RC, service innovation (SI) and BR in the IBI. Accordingly, our study builds on the prior studies by considering these constructs using a comprehensive conceptual framework by extending the application of signaling theory (ST) in the banking domain and scrutinizing the dual moderating effects of fairness and risk.

This paper presents a developed BIMxAR application, an integration of building information modeling (BIM) with augmented reality (AR) linked with real-time online database to support the building facility management work. The primary aim of this research was to develop and empirically examine the applicability of a BIM-based AR (BIMxAR) application in building facility management.

The BIMxAR application was developed and experimented with maintenance work of a university laboratory building. The experiment consisted of a comparison of supportive maintenance tasks performed using the traditional approach and the BIMxAR approach by 38 university students. The time taken to complete each task was recorded and analyzed using statistical analyses to compare the performance between the tasks completed using each approach.

The results indicated that the group using the BIMxAR application approach completed the tasks correctly in a significantly shorter time compared to that using the traditional approach. The findings supported the applicability of the developed BIMxAR application and the improvement of the building facility management tasks when using the proposed approach.

This paper presents a methodological approach in developing a mobile application that integrates BIM with AR for facility management work, leveraging real-time information exchange through a cloud-based platform. The paper also provides empirical evidence that demonstrates how the integration between BIM and AR could be achieved and implemented to help facilitate building maintenance tasks.

Despite enormous literature on Human Resource Management (HRM) practices in the context of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As), researchers have not come up with a synthesis that integrates the role and importance of HRM practices during M&As. This study aims to identify, analyse and synthesise existing literature to discover associated HRM practices that facilitate organisational change during M&As.

Bibliometric analysis is performed using 473 research articles entailing 871 authors from 62 countries (published in Scopus and WoS listed journals), followed by a thematic cluster analysis using bibliographic coupling. The analysis is performed using different means as citation analysis, cluster analysis and keyword analysis to reveal the most significant publications, authors, keywords, trends and future research questions.

The results are primarily descriptive and aim at capturing a panoramic view of what was already written on the topic so far. The bibliometric analysis is conducted using different means like citation analysis, cluster analysis and keyword analysis to reveal the most significant publications, notable authors, keywords, current research trends and future research questions. Further, the bibliographic coupling analysis led to the identification of the following six clusters: (1) coping strategies during and post-M&As; (2) changes in individual and organisational identification during and post-M&As; (3) role of cultural and transformational leadership in M&As success; (4) HRM practices to develop employee capabilities post-M&As; (5) case studies and success stories of M&As; and (6) organisational readiness for M&As.

This study has theoretical and practical implications and suggests future research directions. The authors also propose an abstruse model for HRM practices during M&A process for further investigation.

This is the first bibliometric study to explore the vast extant literature in M&A research related to the role of HRM practices in the execution of successful M&As.

This article analyzes research on digital transformation in the tourism sector, providing insights into leading work, authors, journals, trends and future research opportunities. However, limited in-depth research exists on this topic, and the existing studies lack an understanding of its development, scope and relevant areas.

The study utilized the Scopus database to identify 61 articles on digital transformation in the tourism sector. The research employed VOSviewer software to analyze publication and citation structure, incorporating bibliometric variables like co-authorship, co-citation network, keywords co-occurrence network and bibliographic coupling.

The study yielded valuable insights from top-cited articles, revealing their contributions to digital transformation in tourism research. It also highlighted publication trends and the impact of authors, journals and studies and conducted co-occurrence, co-authorship and bibliographic analyses to identify key trends and issues in the tourism sector. The study calls for further examination of the digital revolution in tourism research and outlines future opportunities for researchers in this area.

To enhance the comprehensiveness of data collection, it is recommended that researchers consider including publications from databases such as WOS (Web of Science), Dimensions and PubMed in addition to the Scopus database. This broader inclusion of sources can provide different network structures and valuable insights from the field of digital transformation in the tourism sector.

The research provides substantial value to the study of digital transformation in tourism by focusing on bibliometric data from the Scopus database for the period from 2017 to 2022. By analyzing this data, it identifies significant trends in digital transformation within tourism research. Additionally, the study uncovers new areas of digitization in the tourism sector, further enhancing its value and relevance.

This paper aims to conceptualize and define a construct of brand pride and develop a measurement instrument for the construct.

A scale development procedure comprising a qualitative prestudy and four quantitative studies for item generation and content validity, scale refinement using exploratory factor analyses, scale confirmation using confirmatory factor analysis and scale validity using PLS-SEM is followed to develop the measure of brand pride.

The scale development procedure yields a two-dimensional measurement instrument for brand pride with affective and utilitarian dimensions. The proposed scale is reliable and has convergent, discriminant and nomological validity.

This study highlights the need to study brand pride by reviewing literature from both psychology and marketing. The definition and conceptualization of brand pride help uniquely identify and describe the phenomenon. By developing a scale to measure the construct of brand pride, this study will enable research into the phenomenon, its causes and effects and its significance for consumer–brand relationships.