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This chapter dwells on the use of music as a metaphorical tool to help organisations grapple with the intricacies of working within an environment that is unstable and more and more prone to rapid changes and the subsequently induced alteration of company focus and direction. This is not to say that strategic planning or delivery is musical but to provide the reader with a distinct and intriguing cognitive aid. Three types of music are considered (classical orchestral, popular music (pop), and jazz). Each metaphor helps to reveal alternative approaches to leadership but more specifically strategic development. This is, moreover, not offered as a template for success just the building of possibilities by using music as a different lens through which to scrutinise the strategic field. Areas highlighted in this reflective chapter are the role music can play to help understand the role of staff collaboration and learning. In addition, an understanding of the ways in which humans remember and relate to dynamic organisational life and the need for anchor-points to help with memory. Music provides both the possibilities of collaboration and soloing, or, put in another way, leadership, and followership as well as the ways in which listening, unlearning and collaboration aid the development of a more emergent, flexible dynamic organisational strategic development and policy.

This research navigates the confluence of data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to revolutionize the management of urban services in smart cities. The study thoroughly investigated with advanced tools to scrutinize key performance indicators integral to the functioning of smart cities, thereby enhancing leadership and decision-making strategies. Our work involves the implementation of various machine learning models such as Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine, Decision Tree, Naive Bayes, and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), to the data. Notably, the Support Vector Machine and Bernoulli Naive Bayes models exhibit robust performance with an accuracy rate of 70% precision score. In particular, the study underscores the employment of an ANN model on our existing dataset, optimized using the Adam optimizer. Although the model yields an overall accuracy of 61% and a precision score of 58%, implying correct predictions for the positive class 58% of the time, a comprehensive performance assessment using the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC-ROC) metrics was necessary. This evaluation results in a score of 0.475 at a threshold of 0.5, indicating that there's room for model enhancement. These models and their performance metrics serve as a key cog in our data analytics pipeline, providing decision-makers and city leaders with actionable insights that can steer urban service management decisions. Through real-time data availability and intuitive visualization dashboards, these leaders can promptly comprehend the current state of their services, pinpoint areas requiring improvement, and make informed decisions to bolster these services. This research illuminates the potential for data analytics, machine learning, and AI to significantly upgrade urban service management in smart cities, fostering sustainable and livable communities. Moreover, our findings contribute valuable knowledge to other cities aiming to adopt similar strategies, thus aiding the continued development of smart cities globally.

Art hotels are increasingly providing an opportunity for creative artists to exhibit their artworks and collections within their premises. This research investigates how some hotels are transforming themselves into important cultural tourism centers. Specifically, its objectives are: (i) to better understand the extent to which travelers are aware about the existence of art hotels and to evaluate their level of interest in art-oriented initiatives; (ii) to determine which attributes and features of art hotels are appreciated by travelers; and (iii) to identify the type of travelers who are willing to stay in art hotels. The findings from a descriptive survey suggest that the incorporation of art into the hospitality industry can attract a diverse customer base and could result in a sustainable competitive advantage for hotels. This study identifies four types of travelers including: Art-Infused Travelers, Art-Seeking Travelers, Art-Indifferent Travelers, and Art-Blind Travelers. These prospective tourists were categorized according to their level of awareness and interest in art hotels and art-related experiences. In conclusion, this contribution implies that artification processes within the hospitality industry can add value to the cultural tourism market. Hence, it also advances future research avenues to academia.

The fifth industrial revolution, known as Industry 5.0, envisions an industry that is innovative, resilient, socio-centric, and competitive while minimizing negative environmental and social impacts, respecting people, the planet, and prosperity. Industry 5.0 is replacing earlier advancements and it is successful because it reaches the pinnacle of perfection. Additionally, machine work saves human workers time and effort. It is built on the concept of fusing digitalization elements from the fourth industrial revolution with Sustainable Development Goals through human-centric solutions, bio-inspired technologies, and secure data transfer. Industry 5.0 mentions about the various opportunities, constraints, and potential directions for future research. Industry 5.0 places less emphasis on technology and focus on human collaboration for progress, it supposed to have a shift in existing paradigm. Industry 5.0 is necessary in contemporary business with the paid technology advancements in order to get competitive advantages as well as economic growth for the manufacturing and it has three drivers: “green transition”, “digital transition”, and “competitive transition”. The goal of green transition is to prevent climate change and environmental degradation. This necessitates changes to current economic growth strategies. The goal of digital transition is to support the circular economy by modernizing digital strategies in terms of digital skills, data, technologies, and infrastructure. Competitive transition aims to convert marketing policies, regulations, standards to increase people's prosperity and business value. It focuses on business and marketing rules that are fair, competitive, innovative, and adaptable.

Although the concept of destination is often described as an economic term that describes places of interest for tourists and visitors, currently, there is still little awareness in the extant literature about regional, city, village, resort, or even standalone tourist destinations. This chapter aims to clarify the meaning of destinations. It distinguishes the differences between common locations and tourist destinations. It uses case studies to describe places, placemaking, and the experiencescapes of various destinations. This contribution implies that tourist attractions differentiate themselves from other places, as they offer accessible attractions with amenities.

This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education. Analysis is framed within the context of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region under China’s sovereignty, and its shifting academic paradigms from a more or less spontaneous philosophy rooted in liberal capitalist economy to embracing neo-statism, which involves market-conforming and state-sponsored approaches to economic and social restructuring whereby the state regulates higher education in support of national integration and global power projection. The statist regulation depends heavily on its deployment of discursive legitimacy, strategic distribution of resources, organizational synergy, and elite cohesion articulated through higher education policy, research projects, and cross-border academic exchange and cooperation. The Hong Kong case suggests that comparative research in higher education should advance from the methodological aspects of the comparative approach to exploring wider theoretical spectrum, for understanding emerging politico-economic factors shaping academic paradigm in comparative contexts. Moreover, scholars who engage in the trendy internationalization in higher education should move beyond the logics of neo-liberalism, and pay closer attention to the new geopolitical realities that are changing the normative and interactive dimensions of international higher education at large.

This chapter discusses the growing use of social media during election campaigns in Ghana. It examines how social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter became preferred tools for voter engagement, mobilisation and campaign for political parties and their presidential and parliamentary candidates in the 2020 elections in Ghana. It establishes that social media are gradually surpassing traditional/legacy media as the preferred media choice for political mobilisation, civic engagement and political communication in Ghana. The chapter reviews the European Union Election Observation Mission (EOM) report through social media affordance lens. This chapter attempts to answer two critical questions: To what extent did political parties and presidential candidates in Ghana use social media in electioneering campaigns during the 2020 elections and, which social media platforms were highly preferred by political parties and presidential candidates in engaging the electorate? The EOM's data indicators show the prominence of Facebook and Twitter as significant in political party campaigns during the period under study. Preliminary analysis also points out that the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and their presidential candidate, Nana Akufo Addo including the opposition National Democratic Congress and their leader, John Dramani Mahama, spent thousands of dollars on Facebook advertisements for extensive voter mobilisation.