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This study aims to propose and demonstrate a practical application of a new three-part holistic sensory evaluation (HSE) method for textiles and apparel based on the senses of sight, touch, hearing and smell. HSE method development was carefully documented, described and successfully applied to evaluate sensory characteristics and consumer perceptions and acceptance of bacterial cellulose (BC), a novel sustainable material for apparel.

In Part One of the HSE method, research participants described the material in their own words based on the senses of sight, touch, hearing and smell. In Part Two, they rated the intensities and their linking for 25 predetermined attributes describing BC. Part Three measured participants’ overall liking of BC and its perceived suitability for apparel and accessories.

Application of the HSE method resulted in an in-depth understanding of BC material. Areas for material improvements and positive characteristics were identified, providing direction for further development. Consumers found BC suitable for accessories and outer-layer garments but not for apparel.

Sensory evaluation of textiles and apparel has traditionally focused on the senses of touch and sight. The new HSE method allows evaluating the full range of sensory characteristics of materials/products and holistically assessing consumer perceptions. The method is especially useful for novel materials and wearable technology. BC has gained increased interests as a novel sustainable material, yet consumer studies have been lacking. This study reports a comprehensive evaluation of BC material from consumer perspective.

In 2014, the Health Service Executive (HSE) in Ireland published its Safeguarding National Policy and Procedures (HSE, 2014). Under this policy, all agencies providing services through the social care directorate must ensure a robust culture of safeguarding is in place. Concurrent to this has been a move in social policy, practice and research to include the voice of the service user, both in terms of planning and reviewing services. (e.g. HIQA, 2012; Flanagan, 2020) This article examines whether service users with intellectual disabilities want to be involved in safeguarding plans and, if so, how that can be supported. Using focus groups service users demonstrated their knowledge of safeguarding as a concept, how they felt about the issues raised, and, crucially what they felt they would like to see happen next in addressing a safeguarding incident or concern. The focus groups took place in a large organisation providing residential services, day services, independent living supports and clinical supports. Engaging service users in planning and responding to safeguarding concerns is a fundamental principle of human rights legislation, both nationally and internationally. This study aims to highlight that it is both possible and desirable to engage fully with service users using a range of simple communication tools. For this to be implemented as routine practice in services providing support for people with intellectual disabilities, authentic leadership is required. Services will need to devote time, human resources and will need champions to get on board with the necessary culture shift.

Qualitative research examined peoples’ “lived experiences” and knowledge of safeguarding. Focus groups were used with thematic analysis highlighting common themes throughout, as guided by Braun and Clarke (2006). There were two objectives: Objective 1: measuring participant’s understanding of the safeguarding process. Objective 2: compare the potential differences between safeguarding plans devised by the participants in the focus groups, versus plans devised by trained designated officers responsible for safeguarding within the service.

Four principal themes emerged – 1. participants understanding of safeguarding; 2. restorative justice; 3. consent; and 4. high levels of emotional intelligence and compassion. Participants demonstrated that they could and did want to be involved in safeguarding planning and showed little variation in the plans compared to those completed by trained staff.

The study was completed with a small sample size in a single service in one area. It may not represent the lived experiences and knowledge of safeguarding in other services and indeed other countries. The video may have led to some priming; for instance, the Gardai in the footage being called may have resulted in the participants stating that contacting Gardai should be part of the plan. After the video was shown, there was a heightened awareness of safeguarding. This may indicate that participants are aware of safeguarding but unsure of the terminology or how to discuss it out of context.

For this to be implemented as routine practice in services providing support for people with intellectual disabilities, authentic leadership is required. Services will need to devote time and human resources and will need champions in the safeguarding arena to get on board with the shift in culture required.

While there did not appear to be many barriers to listening to participants, to progress this as a standard practice a very real shift in culture will be needed. It is important for practitioners to ask: Is the vulnerable person aware that this concern has been raised? What is known of the vulnerable person’s wishes in relation to the concern? To truly engage with service users in safeguarding plans these questions need to be more than a “tick box” exercise. This process needs to be fully embedded into a culture that promotes a person-centred, rights-based, inclusive approach as a standard rather than a one-off project. Some structural changes will be needed regarding the time given to designated officers, and what resources they can access (such as speech and language therapy). However, the real difference will be made by services operating authentic leadership that champions engagement on this scale, to fully answer the question posed by the researchers at the beginning of this report, “Whose safeguarding is it anyway?”

There appears to be little evidence of service user engagement in terms of planning and processing safeguarding responses, either in research or anecdotally.

Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is an evidence-based employment model, effective in supporting individuals with severe mental health difficulties to gain competitive employment. Irish mental health policy recognises its value and IPS is being rolled out in a national programme. Employment is recognised an important contributor to mental health recovery and social inclusion. However, research on IPS has tended to focus on competitive job outcomes. The purpose of this study was to explore the non-vocational outcomes of IPS in an Irish context.

A qualitative research approach was used to interview participants taking part in IPS within community mental health teams. Twelve interviews were included in the data analysis process which was informed by a thematic analysis approach.

Participants experienced increased confidence and positivity, both within a work context and whilst job seeking. More purposeful time use, participation in activities and engagement with society were also experienced by those employed and those at the job search stage of IPS.

This study contributes to the literature about the non-vocational benefits of IPS within an Irish context, highlights the mental health recovery benefits of taking part in IPS and supports the need for ongoing development of IPS throughout mental health services in Ireland.

This study aims to investigate the impact of working from home and its duration on job satisfaction.

The analysis was conducted on a representative panel data set from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey - Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) for 2016–2021 using endogenous regression models. The impact of working from home on job satisfaction before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and separately for men and women, was analysed.

Working from home was found to positively affect job satisfaction in the Russian labour market. From 2016 to 2021, men and women who worked from home were more satisfied with their jobs than their counterparts who did not work from home. The positive impact of working from home on job satisfaction was observed before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, remote workers (RWR) putting in more than eight hours per day reported lower job satisfaction.

Working from home can be considered as a measure to combat unemployment, increase employment and improve the utilisation (distribution) of human resources. Further research is required to analyse the impact of health issues and the need to care for young children or infirm persons on job satisfaction in remote work. A more detailed analysis is required of the factors that affect the job satisfaction of women who work remotely.

To ensure that labour productivity increases and not decreases, employers are advised to develop more detailed working arrangements and labour management for RWRs. Especially for such assigned workers, task control regulations must be developed. To increase the motivation of individuals to work remotely, overtime should be paid at a higher rate.

Unclear working time regulations lead to overwork, irregular working hours and burnout. For RWRs, this leads to lower job satisfaction and a consequent drop in productivity.

The empirical investigation is based on a representative panel of Russian data with six waves. Wide ranges of job characteristics were incorporated as determinants. The problem of causality was investigated. For models with an endogenous regressor, instrumental variables were tested and selected.

This paper aims to present commentary on adult safeguarding designated officers’ (nominated senior staff members in the Health Service Executive and its funded services) in Ireland readiness for online learning and their perception of the blended approach used in their training and considers the implications of this for practice.

In total, 233 designated officers were surveyed. A self-administered online survey comprising of two instruments was used. The questionnaire combines two previously validated tools measuring readiness for online learning and perceptions of blended learning. Minor modifications were made to account for local circumstance and language. Demographic questions relevant to the survey population were added. The response rate was 49%.

Designated officers regarded specified competencies for online learning as important to very important with highest importance placed in time management. Designated officers expressed they were confident to very confident in their ability to accomplish all competencies in online learning. The highest confidence was in the technical competencies. Designated officers are demonstrating high readiness for online learning. Designated officers reported positively on online contributions and on blended learning workload. The scores indicate positive perceptions of the blended learning experience. Responses to an open-ended question were largely positive with some suggestions for improvement made.

Findings have helped inform planning and development of the Health Service Executive’s adult safeguarding training for designated officers with changes made since this survey was undertaken.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first time a survey was undertaken of designated officers in Ireland with a view to improving safeguarding training. Recommendations for adaptions to the blended designated officer programme were proposed and subsequently accepted and implemented.

The purpose of this study is to define and develop a new technological development path for latecomer firms in developing countries.

An analytical framework for development based on the technological capability (TC) dimensions is developed and examined in the drilling sector. Since the process of TC accumulation is dynamic, the case study approach is the best method for an exploratory theory-building study. Through a comparative case study of two Iranian drilling contractors, a new path for the technological development of latecomer oil service companies is proposed.

The study of two cases indicates that despite having similar scope and levels of TC, one of them demonstrated superior technical performance. To address this difference, the concept of operational efficiency is introduced which is considered the outcome of increasing the depth of TC.

Although upgrading the level of technological and innovation capability is an important path for technological development, latecomers that suffer from various disadvantages can perform their routine activities with superior performance and develop through their basic operational/production capabilities. Also, specialized indicators designed for assessing the level and depth of TC in the drilling industry have important insights for evaluating the technological and competitive position of oil service companies.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study takes the first step in defining and elaborating on the concept of depth of TC as a development path for latecomers. It also introduced a novel approach to the global operational/production efficiency frontier as a target for their catch-up.

This paper focuses on the factors related to faculty workload in the context of resource scarcity to examine whether there is a relationship between them and grade inflation.

As for methodological novelty, the authors created an indicator of students' expectations about grades that is related to grade inflation and conducted regression analysis using cluster-robust error correction based on this indicator.

The results suggested that proper workload allocation among the faculty can mitigate grade inflation. Namely, such measures as control for concurrent courses, the length of courses and the labor intensity of the faculty are suggested for grade inflation prevention.

Academic literature posits that a steep increase in average grades might cause a long-term depreciation of the quality of higher education. This article is, therefore, focused on various factors connected with grade inflation in higher education. The authors highlighted problems associated with teaching evaluation imperfections, academic norm transformation and workload intensity.

The primary objective of this research is to provide a precise interpretation of the constructed machine learning model and produce definitive summaries that can evaluate the influence of investor sentiment on the overall sales of non-fungible token (NFT) assets. To achieve this objective, the NFT hype index was constructed as well as several approaches of XAI were employed to interpret Black Box models and assess the magnitude and direction of the impact of the features used.

The research paper involved the construction of a sentiment index termed the NFT hype index, which aims to measure the influence of market actors within the NFT industry. This index was created by analyzing written content posted by 62 high-profile individuals and opinion leaders on the social media platform Twitter. The authors collected posts from the Twitter accounts that were afterward classified by tonality with a help of natural language processing model VADER. Then the machine learning methods and XAI approaches (feature importance, permutation importance and SHAP) were applied to explain the obtained results.

The built index was subjected to rigorous analysis using the gradient boosting regressor model and explainable AI techniques, which confirmed its significant explanatory power. Remarkably, the NFT hype index exhibited a higher degree of predictive accuracy compared to the well-known sentiment indices.

The NFT hype index, constructed from Twitter textual data, functions as an innovative, sentiment-based indicator for investment decision-making in the NFT market. It offers investors unique insights into the market sentiment that can be used alongside conventional financial analysis techniques to enhance risk management, portfolio optimization and overall investment outcomes within the rapidly evolving NFT ecosystem. Thus, the index plays a crucial role in facilitating well-informed, data-driven investment decisions and ensuring a competitive edge in the digital assets market.

The authors developed a novel index of investor interest for NFT assets (NFT hype index) based on text messages posted by market influencers and compared it to conventional sentiment indices in terms of their explanatory power. With the application of explainable AI, it was shown that sentiment indices may perform as significant predictors for NFT sales and that the NFT hype index works best among all sentiment indices considered.

The oil and gas industry form the main resource of economy in Iraq and constructing any project in such sectors requires a huge amount of expenses due to the unique requirements that oil and gas facilities required in such projects. Therefore, adopting an appropriate technological approach such as building information modeling (BIM) which is unfortunately not adopted yet in Iraq is essential to successfully deliver these projects. Thus, this paper aimed to introduce BIM to Iraq through Basra Oil Company (BOC) which is one of the biggest public oil and gas companies in Iraq.

The related literature of journals articles, conference proceedings and published reports have been reviewed. As a result, firstly: a hypothesis has been derived that is “If Basra Oil Company (BOC) adopts and applies BIM approach instead of the 2D approach currently used to manage its projects, the company can overcome several constraints in managing its projects that associated with such 2D traditional approach”; secondly: homogenous, consistence and reliable web-based questionnaire has been designed as its Cronbach’s alpha equal to 0.897 and 0.711 for BIM benefits and barriers, respectively. This questionnaire distributed to the BOC related professionals to test such hypothesis by investigating their readiness and accepting of BIM approach and to rank BIM barriers based on five-point Likert scale.

Based on the analysis using IBM SPSS Statistics 26 of 115 responses, almost 50% of the respondents had experience 11–15 years, while 22.6% had experience more than 15 years in oil and gas industry construction projects. Those participants were from diverse engineering majors that are: 4.3% Architectural Engineers, 31.3% Civil Engineers, 20% Mechanical Engineers, 22.6% Electrical Engineers and 21.7% from other engineering majors. The respondents’ departments demography was 16.5% of design department, 12.2% of construction department, 20.9% of Project Management Department, 12.2% of Maintenance department, 4.3% of HSE Department, 13% of Production Department and 20.9% of “Other Department.” The study resulted in 1: accepting BIM approach to be an alternative of current 2D-traditional approach used by the company to manage and construct its projects, since mean of collected data is (4.4332), Kruskal–Wallis H test significance values were 0.398 and 0.372; and ANOVA test significance values were 0.433 and 0.599 among Engineering Majors groups and Company’s Department groups, respectively. 2: Disclosed and sequenced BIM barriers in the company based on their criticality. 3: verifying reliably how BIM attributes are important to oil and gas construction projects in Iraq, 4: the company top management and company policies are the most critical potential factors to hinder or adopt and implement BIM in the company, 5: while cost is not seen a critical barrier to implement BIM in the oil and gas sector.

The limitation of this study is the excluding of decision makers of BOC, thus more profound future studies need to be conducted where top management and decision makers are involved, particularly the present study demonstrated that support of company top management is the most critical factor which can help the company to adopt (BIM).

The study concludes that BIM approach is valuable for managing projects in oil and gas sector in Iraq and identify the originality in output by using the research method. This noble study provides a leverage for enhanced research to adopt and implement building information modeling (BIM) in Iraq as the study originally demonstrates benefits and identifies the critical barriers in BIM implementation to push the boundaries toward adopt Digitalization and reduce CO2 emission in Iraqi oil and gas sector. The study can be used as evidence and platform to encourage professionals and practitioners to present more sophisticated tools of BIM in the oil and gas industry, especially for facility and operation management. These findings achieved via oil and gas experts, and it is first time to achieve such findings from a case study in Iraqi oil and gas sector.

This paper aims to discuss the firm productivity premium for servitized firms. It discusses servitization across the product value chain and estimates the effects of the range and extent of servitization on productivity premium in manufacturing firms.

This paper develops a conceptual framework and tests the hypotheses on the effects of servitization on productivity premium using linear regression models with a sample of 20,837 Russian manufacturing firms gathered from the Ruslana Bureau van Dijk database and the Russian customs service.

Servitized firms exhibit higher total factor productivity and labor productivity. The labor productivity premium increases with the number of services offered. However, the impact of services on productivity varies along the product value chain: postmanufacturing and postsales services enhance productivity premium, while manufacturing and back-office services diminish them. The effect of establishment services remains ambiguous.

This paper offers an analytical framework for firms to assess their servitization strategies. These strategies should be gradual, focused on enhancing firm efficiency rather than being an end goal. Firms should initiate the process by introducing services at the postproduction and postsales stages of the product creation chain to achieve productivity premium.

The paper extends the evidence on firm-level productivity drivers and contributes to the servitization theory. A servitization strategy should be portfolio-based, considering both the potential gains and losses in productivity resulting from the implementation of specific services.