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This chapter presents a study on the work of commercial diplomats as international business promoters at foreign posts. Research has largely overlooked the actual roles and activities of commercial diplomats in explaining the effectiveness of commercial diplomacy and international business support. In this study, it is assumed that commercial diplomats’ behavior is influenced by informal institutions. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 23 commercial diplomats at foreign posts from different countries were conducted and analyzed. The results show three different types of role behavior and differences in proactivity per type. Informal institutions such as background, skills, and experience, cultural differences, and the working environment suggest to explain the differences in levels of proactive international business support behavior of commercial diplomats. Further research is needed to assert these findings.

The administration of a contract by the architect is necessary to ensure the contract is performed according to the conditions of the contract, compliance with related laws and the practices of the construction industry. With the increasing number of housing projects and the limited number of registered architects in the nation, the architect is unable to be hands-on with every project. Hence, the involvement of graduate architects to reduce the workload in building contract administration (BCA) is required. The purpose of this paper is to develop a BCA framework for graduate architects to enhance their work performance in BCA work and to assist them in moving a step closer to acquiring their professional qualifications.

This study adopted a qualitative method where seven housing projects in Malaysia were selected as case studies to conduct documentation reviews and semistructured interviews. The data collected was analyzed using content analysis to develop the BCA framework. Focus groups were used to validate the framework.

This study summarized there are 5 themes (claims and legal matters management, project management, communication and relationship management, quality assessment and management, and design management) and 11 sub-themes (authority matters, building certification, meetings, coordination checklist, letter-writing, contract documentation, building material, design brief, building sustainability and workmanship quality standard, contractor’s submission and building details) that need to be improved by graduate architects in BCA work.

The contribution of this study to the existing knowledge is the development of a BCA framework that enables graduate architects to get a glimpse of architectural professional practice in reality and better prepare them to confront and resolve problems. Besides, the proposed framework could be incorporated into a pedagogy focusing on methods to support construction contract administrators.

This study aims to examine the perceived values of the metaverse when adopting it in the luxury hospitality business. Based on the cost–benefit perspective, this research provides solid theoretical contributions and actionable managerial recommendations.

An exploratory sequential mixed-method design was used. For the qualitative phase, 21 hotel managers and 24 hotel guests (who often stay in four-star and five-star hotels and resorts) were interviewed after showing them a series of videos about using the metaverse in the hotel business. Based on the results of the qualitative phase, the analytic hierarchy process method was used, and 476 valid questionnaires were analyzed.

The results highlight the perceived benefits (personalized services, immersive experience and positive brand image) and costs (lack of human touch, time and effort and security and privacy) of metaverse adoption for hotel managers and their guests. In addition, the study determines the weight of each value attribute of metaverse adoption for each travel stage (pre-travel, during travel and post-travel).

Regarding metaverse adoption, the research offers practical suggestions for luxury hotels. For instance, the cost of equipment and the time and effort required are perceived costs of metaverse adoption. To address these challenges, hotels may offer free equipment (e.g. VR headsets) and training to their guests to stimulate the use of the metaverse.

This study addresses a gap in the literature by presenting a conceptual framework for examining metaverse adoption in the luxury hotel scenario. Unlike using conventional models like the technology acceptance model or the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology to investigate a technology’s adoption, this study stands out by unraveling the topic through the lens of value proposition. The latter often comes from an efficient value co-creation process, which is indeed shaped by an adequate appreciation of the congruence of perceived values (i.e. perceived benefits and costs) of metaverse from hotel manager and guest perspectives.

Big 4 professional services firms increasingly lay claim to recruiting and including staff of diverse genders, cultures, ages and sexualities. Drawing on Foucauldian insights, this study explores how LGBTIQ+ staff navigated shifting technologies of client power, at the time marriage equality was legislated in Australia.

This article explores changing experiences of LGBTIQ+ staff and allies, through 56 semi-structured interviews undertaken through 2018–2019.

Technologies of client power were central to shaping workplace experiences for LGBTIQ+ staff. However, each firm was also keen to carve unique and bold responses to changing societal attitudes regarding sexuality and gender. These progressive moves did not sit comfortably with all clients, and so this article provides insight into the limitations of client privilege within professional services firms. For staff, this increasing complexity of sometimes opaque, contradictory and shifting technologies of client and firm power, enabled agency to explore a sense of self for some, but continued to exclude others.

Little attention has been directed to exploring challenges for staff of sexual and gendered diversity within professional services firms, or to exploring how staff navigate changing perceptions of client power.

This paper aims to examine the effect of family ownership on the payment method of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals. It also investigates the market reaction around the announcement of these M&A deals.

Archival data of M&A deals of a sample of Taiwanese listed firms during 2008–2018 are collected and examined using probit, event study and OLS models. This study addresses the endogeneity concern using the two-stage least squares statistical technique and Heckman’s two-step estimation method.

This study finds that family firms are more likely to use cash as an exchange medium in M&A deals to avoid the problem of diluting control rights. This study further finds that family firms receive a positive market reaction around the announcement of M&A deals relative to non-family counterparts. The empirical results support the notion that family ownership is a value-creation structure.

The findings provide additional evidence-based insights into the debate about family ownership with the aim of informing policy and offering practical recommendations to expand the US-based literature.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to provide empirical evidence on the impact of family ownership on payment method choice in M&A activities in Taiwan. It also provides novel evidence that family firms experience value gains when taking M&A investment decisions relative to non-family firms.

In the design of anisotropic materials, such as advanced fibre‐reinforced composites, the failure envelope has a crucial role. A geometrical representation of the envelope is of particular value to investigate the highly anisotropic nature of the strength of the material. This provides the design engineer with a visualization of the failure envelope by graphically representing it using a CAD package. Use is made of both stress‐based and strain‐based polynomial failure criteria and examples are given of changes in the failure envelope due to changes in fibre orientation for a high strength graphite/epoxy composite lamina.

This paper aims to investigate the connectedness of Islamic Stock Markets in five regional financial systems, namely, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe (EU), GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and APAC (Asia-Pacific Countries), and across different asset classes (i.e. bonds, gold and crude oil).

This methodology is inspired by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) and Barunlik and Krehlik (2017) for performing dynamic variance decomposition network and for studying time–frequency dynamics of connectedness at different frequencies.

Results show that the nature of connectedness over the past decade is time–frequency dynamics. The decomposition of the total volatility spillovers is mostly dominated by the long-run component. Furthermore, dominant regions are the largest contributors of spillover index, with the lowest contribution in the system coming from the GCC market. Results also reveal a slightly higher volatility spillover index of Islamic than conventional equity indexes. Finally, the system that encompasses commodities and Islamic finance instruments, generates the much lower volatility spillover.

The findings have significant implications for portfolio managers who are interested in being able to predict asset returns, as well as for policymakers who are concerned with market stability.

The purpose of this paper is to review studies on mathematical optimization of the sustainable gasoline supply chain to help decision-makers understand the current situation, the exact dimensions of the problem and the models provided in the literature. So, a more realistic mathematical optimization model can be achieved by fully covering all dimensions of the supply chain of this product.

To evaluate and comprehend the mathematical optimization of the sustainable gasoline supply chain research area, a systematic literature review is undertaken that covers material collection, descriptive analysis, content analysis and material evaluation steps. Finally, based on this process, 69 related articles were carefully investigated.

The results of the systematic literature review show the main areas of the published papers on mathematical optimization of sustainable gasoline supply chain problems and the gaps for future research in this field presented based on them.

This approach is subject to limitations because the protocol of the systematic review of the research literature only included searching for the considered combination of keywords in the Scopus and ProQuest databases. Furthermore, the protocol used in this paper restricts documents to English.

The results have significant implications for both academicians and practitioners in this field. It can be useful for academics to comprehend the gaps and future trends in this field. Also, for practitioners, it can be useful to identify and understand the parts of the mathematical optimization model, which can help them model this problem effectively and efficiently.

No systematic literature review has been done in this field by considering gasoline to the best of the authors’ knowledge and delivers new facts for the future development of this field.