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This study aims to determine the barriers hindering the incorporation of blockchain technology (BCT) in two key service industries – hotel and health care – as well as to assess their readiness for implementing BCT after overcoming the barriers.

The barriers of this study are determined through two phases: a review of prior literature and obtaining expert opinions, which are then analyzed to identify specific barriers that are impeding the incorporation of BCT. Moreover, to generate a blockchain implementation reluctance index (BIRI), this study presents an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) that uses graph theory and matrix approach (GTMA). The permanent function in the GTMA approach is computed using the PERMAN algorithm. Finally, to compare the readiness of the hotel and health-care industries to adopt BCT, the BIRI values are plotted and evaluated.

The barriers identified by this study are listed under five major headings, namely, financial, operational, behavioral, technical and legal. This study revealed that the operational and technical barriers of BCT are critically hindering its widespread integration in hotel and health-care industries. Furthermore, on comparing the BIRI values of both industries, the result suggested that the hotel industry needs to work more on these barriers to effectively incorporate BCT. Besides the comparison, the BIRI values clearly indicate that both industries have to put a lot of effort into the mitigation of the barriers found by this study to successfully integrate BCT.

The experts’ opinions are used to evaluate the identified barriers, which raises the chance that the opinions are prejudiced based on the experts’ perspectives and ideologies. The sensitivity of decision-maker loads toward preference outcomes is not analyzed in this manuscript. Therefore, any recent sensitivity analysis may be considered a prospective field for future research. This study applies a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, IVIFS–GTMA, which limits the evaluation of the influence caused by individual barriers on the integration of BCT in the hotel and health-care industries. Henceforth, in future investigations, alternative MCDM methods may be used to analyze individual barriers.

According to the findings, if the hotel or health-care industry aims to incorporate BCT in its supply chain operations, it is recommended to emphasize more on the operational barriers along with the technical and behavioral barriers. The barriers mentioned in this manuscript can be used as guidance for developers in their development activities, such as scalability concerns, establishment costs, the 51% attack and the inefficient nature of BCT. Furthermore, they may address the potential users’ negative perceptions about security, privacy, trust and risk avoidance through creatively developed blockchain solutions to promote BCT implementation.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that identifies barriers toward BCT incorporation in the major service industries, i.e. hotel and health care. Moreover, this is the first study that compares the preparedness of the hotel and health-care industries to determine the industry that requires more work to implement BCT.

Current open innovation (OI) and external knowledge search (EKS) research primarily shows a positive linear relationship between EKS and innovation at an individual level. However, organizational scholarship argues that excessive EKS may harm innovation. This study combines the knowledge-based view (KBV) and attention-based view (ABV) to articulate a nonlinear theory of EKS and innovation at the individual level.

The authors constructed a multi-sourced dataset covering 59,798 USA pharmaceutical patents spanning from 1975 to 2014 and employed negative binomial fixed-effect models to examine theoretical hypotheses.

We find a significant concave curvilinear relationship between EKS and innovation quantity as well as innovation quality at an individual level. An individual’s knowledge breadth and depth moderate the relationship between EKS and innovation, such that the threshold at which EKS has diminishing returns for individual innovation is higher for inventors with a broad range of knowledge and those with deeper expertise in the domain where they are innovating.

Managers should guide inventors toward a moderate investment of time and effort in EKS and should caution against over searching. Besides, managers should recognize that an inventor’s capacity for EKS is determined in part by their breadth of knowledge across various domains as well as the depth of knowledge they have in the knowledge domain where they are innovating.

We provide both parties with a clearer understanding of when EKS can begin to deteriorate an individual’s innovation performance why that deterioration occurs, and we also highlight two individual-level knowledge characteristics to take into consideration when deciding when to cease the EKS process.

This study provides a novel holistic understanding of OI and knowledge management for policymakers and organizations to nourish innovation dynamism and make the best of knowledge stocks in the community, which in turn will create endless power for sustainable social change and inclusive development.

This study contributes to OI theory by highlighting the non-linear nature of the relationship between EKS and innovation on an individual level. This represents a fundamental shift in theory on EKS and individual innovation by suggesting a major rethinking of how the two concepts relate, revealing the dark side of EKS in knowledge management if inventors engage in excessive EKS. Likewise, our study’s incorporation of the ABV informs KBV scholarship by highlighting the role of the limited attentional capacity of individuals in firm knowledge management.

This study intends to conceptually and technically examine the literature on work integrated learning (WIL) through a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis. The present study addresses eight distinct research questions: (1) descriptive features of the extracted literature on WIL, (2) publications trends and thematic evolution in the field of WIL, (3) the most relevant and high-impact sources on WIL, (4) the most global cited articles on WIL, (5) the most relevant and high-impact authors on WIL, (6) the most relevant countries on WIL, (7) outcomes of Bradford’s Law of Scattering and Lotka’s Law of Scientific Productivity and (8) trending research avenues for future studies in the field of WIL.

The present study employed systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis mapping techniques to analyze 1,295 articles extracted from the Scopus database. The analysis utilized Biblioshiny software and VOSviewer software as the primary tools.

The findings reveal that WIL constitutes a steadily expanding subject discipline, showcasing a notable 23.28% annual growth in scientific production spanning from 2002 to 2023 (July). Australia, South Africa and Canada emerged as the most productive countries within the field of WIL, as evidenced by their cumulative scientific production. The thematic map of keyword analysis suggests several burgeoning avenues for future researchers in the WIL domain, including education, reflective practices, curriculum, employability skills, international students, learning and self-efficacy.

This study contributes to the WIL discourse by providing a comprehensive literature review. The present study’s findings hold significance for graduates, universities, employers, the higher education industry, policymakers, regulators and the broader community.

Given the general consensus that creativity is a crucial driving force for innovation and progress, understanding how to promote it would benefit individuals, companies, society and academia. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the independent and contingent impact of individuals’ personality traits, team-member exchange (TMX) and gender on stimulating creativity.

The study uses a survey-sample of 639 university students (51.96% women) between the ages of 17 and 50. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated reliability and validity of its measures. To test hypotheses, using structural equation modeling, hierarchical regression analyses were performed.

Results show that four of the five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience) and TMX positively influence creativity. There are no significant differences between men’s and women’s creativity. High TMX reinforces the influence of extraversion on creativity, while low TMX harms this relationship. High extravert women are more creative than high extravert men, while low extravert men are more creative than low extravert women. Low emotionally stable women are more creative than low emotionally stable men, while high emotionally stable men are more creative than high emotionally stable women. There are differences in how women and men take advantage of their openness to experience when TMX is considered. That is, while women take advantage of openness to experience for any value of TMX, men only increase their creativity as openness to experience increases for low values of TMX.

Like all studies, ours has some limitations that provide opportunities for future research. First, care should be taken when generalizing these findings to other contexts. We use data from Spanish individuals, specifically university students. While they are suitable for testing our hypotheses, future studies should establish whether the general tendencies that we observe hold true for other kinds of people from Spain and other countries. Even more, this paper’s perspective might be biased by the authors’ country of origin (south Europe) in terms of gender. According to Hofstede (2001) south European and South American countries are more masculine than other cultures (Mensa and Grow, 2022). Therefore, analyzing these questions in different cultures (countries and settings) would facilitate the generalization of the results. Second, the data we use is mainly cross-sectional so strict causality cannot be inferred. The theory we use assumes specific causal directions, but alternative causal relationships cannot be ruled out. Finally, ideally, we should have controlled for additional variables that might influence the relationships in our model.

This paper has practical implications, as it demonstrates that neither gender is more creative than the other. It goes a step further, explaining how men and women can leverage their personality traits to be more creative. Moreover, since TMX could reinforce the impact of personality traits on creativity, this paper could help managers better organize teams and companies that want to be more innovative by taking into account the personality traits of their employees and how to get the best out of women and men.

Traditionally, women have considered creativity to be a man’s thing. The results of this work favor society, demonstrating that women are just as creative as men and that through personality traits and TMX, both men and women can be more creative. These results help to reduce the gender gap and may favor women’s place in today’s society.

This work offers academic and practical implications. The main contributions to the creativity and gender literatures are the following: (1) Women are as creative as men. (2) High extravert and low emotionally stable women are more creative than men. (3) High open to experience women with high TMX are more creative than men at any level of TMX. For practitioners, the understanding of what personality traits have higher impact on creativity depending on the levels of TMX for women and men could help companies and politicians in hiring the most suitable people, especially for those positions where creativity is needed. This would increase the quality of their human capital, allowing them to get the most out of their human resources, from the very beginning of the employment relationship.

During the supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19, logistics service providers (LSPs) have invested heavily in innovations to enhance their supply chain resilience capabilities. However, only little attention has been given so far to the nature of these innovative capabilities, in particular to what extent LSPs were able to repurpose capabilities to build supply chain resilience. In response, using the concept of exaptation, this study identifies to what extent LSPs have discovered and utilized latent functions to build supply chain resilience capabilities during a disruptive event of high impact and low probability.

This conceptual paper uses a theory building approach to advance the literature on supply chain resilience by delineating the relationship between exaptation and supply chain resilience capabilities in the context of COVID-19. To do so, we propose two frameworks: (1) to clarify the role of exaptation for supply chain resilience capabilities and (2) to depict four different exaptation dimensions for the supply chain resilience capabilities of LSPs.

We illustrate how LSPs have repurposed original functions into new products or services to build their supply chain resilience capabilities and combine the two critical concepts of exploitation and exploration capabilities to identify four exaptation dimensions in the context of LSPs, namely impeded exaptation, configurative exaptation, transformative exaptation and ambidextrous exaptation.

As one of the first studies linking exaptation and supply chain resilience, the framework and subsequent categorization advance the understanding of how LSPs can build exapt-driven supply chain resilience capabilities and synthesize the current literature to offer conceptual clarity regarding the varied implications and outcomes linked to the repurposing of capabilities.

This study aims to understand and analyze the aspects influencing students’ attitudes and behavior toward the use of metaverse in education. The metaverse is currently viewed as technology with immense prospects. However, the practice of the metaverse for educational motives is rarely deliberated.

To assess the effect of the metaverse on students' knowledge and use of resources, general interests and attitudes toward the metaverse in education, a survey was conducted. The collected data were analyzed using a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the first phase to address the various validity parameters. In the second phase, path analysis of the model was performed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The study investigated how students intended to behave while using the metaverse for learning. The attitude toward adopting metaverse as technology is influenced by perceived utility and simplicity of use. This leads to behavioral intention as well. Studies reveal that the aspect of perceived usefulness is considered to be more significant in assessing the intention of use.

This quantitative study contributes to the literature on metaverse, which is in the growing stage. In the educational sector, the existing studies are scarce; hence, the addition to the literature on metaverse is quite significant in the education domain.

The study benefits the students and the academicians because metaverse is largely considered an integral part of technology platforms, which has to be included in the learning systems eventually. There are few courses where the use of metaverse is already initiated at an introductory level, thus opening a broad spectrum of opportunities at all levels. It can provide scholars access to a massive array of resources, including multimedia presentations, interactive objects that support the delivery of lessons, videos, images and audio recordings.

This study adds to the existing literature by examining the impact of metaverse in education. The research focused on the students pursuing higher education who were mostly aware of metaverse and were open to the idea of learning and understanding through technology inclusion.

The purpose is to replicate and extend Ambulkar et al.’s (2015) work testing resource reconfiguration as a mediator of the supply chain disruption/firm resilience relationship and testing risk management infrastructure as a moderator. This study extends the work of Ambulkar in that it uses analysis of survey data gathered from manufacturing firms during an actual disruption event (COVID-19). The previous work is also in extended in that the authors include a pandemic disruption impact variable and supply chain performance is an expanded model.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling techniques were used to analyze data gathered from 184 US manufacturing managers during the height (Summer 2021) of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two of four of Ambulkars et al.’s (2015) hypotheses were confirmed as relevant to firm resilience during the pandemic while two were not confirmed. Results also show that supply chain disruption orientation, risk management infrastructure and resource reconfiguration combine to improve firm resilience, which in turn improves supply chain performance while mitigating the disruption impact of COVID-19.

Previous work is replicated and extended, using data from an actual disruption event (COVID-19). This study presents a more comprehensive model using a newly developed and validated scale to measure pandemic impact and including supply chain performance.

This study aims to examine the volume of ehealth literacy documents during 2006–2022, and the nature of citation of ehealth documents by country, organizations, sources and authors.

The study adopted a bibliometric approach. Bibliographic data was collected on citation of ehealth documents by country, organizations, sources and authors from Scopus and mapped and visualized the citations using VosViewer.

A total of 1,176 documents were produced during 2006–2022, indicating a high rate of document production in this sub-discipline. Among the 102 countries that contributed documents on the subject, 58 qualified for the analysis. The USA had the highest number of cited documents on eHealth literacy, followed by Canada and Australia. The average publication year for the USA was 2018, with 348 publications and an average of 24.12 citations. Canada had a high average citation count of 44.69. Furthermore, the document examined citations by organizations.

The research implications of the study suggest that eHealth literacy is an actively growing field of research, with a substantial impact on the academic community, and researchers should focus on collaboration with high-impact institutions and journals to increase the visibility and recognition of their work, while also paying attention to the need for more research representation from African countries.

The study’s findings indicate a high rate of document production and growing interest in eHealth literacy research, with the USA leading in the number of cited documents followed by Canada, while Canadian eHealth literacy research receives relatively higher citation rates on average than the USA.

The study’s originality lies in its examination of citation patterns and global contributions to eHealth literacy literature, offering valuable insights for researchers. It identifies key authors, high-impact journals and institutions, providing valuable guidance for collaboration. The research highlights a growing interest in eHealth literacy, underscoring its potential impact on public health and digital health interventions.

Despite extensive research on supply chain management (SCM), the literature lacks a perspective to empirically assess the importance of poverty alleviation in social business. Using resources dependence theory, the purpose of this study is to analyze to ascertain whether financial innovation has a powerful solution for business sustainability and, hence, poverty alleviation in developing countries. This study reviews the financial innovations offered by Dompet Dhuafa Republika in integrated supply chain management (ISCM) of smallholder livestock business through Tebar Hewan Kurban (Spreading Sacrificial Animals) program to overcome capital and marketing problems at the farmer level and distribute Qurban meat to the recipients.

This study was conducted using descriptive qualitative method. The data were obtained through a field survey, by interviewing two crowdfunding-based investment companies, 250 partner farmers, program managers and assistants, marketing partners, donors/consumers/person who sacrifice and Mustahik (recipients of Qurban meat) involved in program implementation, using purposive sampling method. Focus group discussion was conducted with selected panelists to validate the results of the field survey.

The results of this study showed that the Tebar Hewan Kurban program provides greater benefits to farmers, while increasing the distribution of Qurban meat to be more equitable. The role of moneylenders and middlemen can also be eliminated. Donors feel satisfied because their goals are fulfilled in the Qurban ritual. Program implementers and investors also got decent returns. ISCM is very feasible to be developed on a wider scale, to improve the welfare of farmers or fishermen.

This study used a set of samples of the assisted areas from only one institution, which may lead to institution-specific results. Although the sample is small, the results of this study are expected to provide new insights into the implementation of the Qurban, which will provide more profits and benefits for partner farmers. In broader practice, the program flow is worth considering compared to similar programs in other institutions, in Indonesia or abroad. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, the field survey and focus group discussion were carried out online.

The results show that ISCM is able to increase the income of farmers. Practically, this program can be duplicated in similar institutions, as well as in government or non-government organizations, in Indonesia and abroad, that have the same context and activity.

This study offers several social contributions by exploring how and why ISCM can eliminate the role of moneylenders and middlemen, increasing the small farmers' income, providing reasonable profits to parties involved in marketing and satisfying donors and equitable distribution of Qurban meat.

This study contributes to the literature by confirming the higher impact of ISCM in social business on poverty alleviation. Therefore, this paper provides an alternative solution to increase the income of small farmers through the supply of animals for Qurban or other religious rituals through ISCM arrangements.

This study investigates the impact of large-scale teaching in higher education on students’ preparedness for the workforce within the context of evolving labour market demands, the expansion of higher education and the application of high-impact teaching strategies. It synthesizes perspectives on employer work readiness, the challenges and opportunities of large-scale teaching and strategies for fostering a dynamic academia-industry feedback loop. This multifaceted approach ensures the relevance of curricula and graduates’ preparedness while addressing the skills gap through practical recommendations for aligning teaching methodologies with employer expectations.

The research methodically examines the multifaceted challenges and opportunities inherent in large-scale teaching. It focuses on sustaining student engagement, maintaining educational quality, personalizing learning experiences and cultivating essential soft skills in extensive student cohorts.

This study highlights the critical role of transversal skills in work readiness. It also uncovers that despite its challenges, large-scale teaching presents unique opportunities. The diversity of large student groups mirrors modern workplace complexities, and technological tools aid in personalizing learning experiences. Approaches like peer networking, innovative teaching methods, real-world simulations and collaborative resource utilization enrich education. The importance of experiential learning for augmenting large-scale teaching in honing soft skills is emphasized.

This manuscript contributes to the discourse on large-scale teaching, aligning it with employer expectations and the dynamic requirements of the job market. It offers a nuanced perspective on the challenges and opportunities this educational approach presents, providing insights for crafting engaging and effective learning experiences in large cohorts. The study uniquely integrates experiential learning, co-creation in education and industry-academia feedback loops, underscoring their importance in enhancing student work readiness in large-scale teaching.