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The purpose of this paper is to explore smallholder agricultural financing in Ghana’s Northern region by identifying farmers’ preferred traditional and innovative financing methods and estimating the determinants of use of innovative financing methods.

This paper presented a list of documented traditional financing methods to farmers during in-depth interviews and employed descriptive statistics to summarize choice and amounts sourced from traditional methods. Two questions from the survey revealed a felt need for extra financing sources for credit-rationed farmers. Farmers with positive responses to either or both questions were classified as “users of innovative financing”. The authors then used a probit model to examine factors that influence decisions to use innovative financing method.

Farmers’ own savings, reinvesting past season’s profits and financing maize production with income from other commercial crops were the most popular traditional methods. The authors found complementary relations between formal and informal lending systems in the rural financial market. Smallholders also took farm and non-farm “by-day” jobs to raise income for farm investment and/or joined Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) specifically to take advantage of possible credit opportunities. These two latter methods were operationalized in this study as innovative agricultural financing. The results show that access to credit, social capital and market participation increased the likelihood of using innovative financing methods. Alternatively, farmer group membership, diversity in crop production and being a household head diminished the likelihood of innovative financing use.

The activities of VSLAs can be regulated and expanded to spread its benefits to more farmers. Also, creating avenues for dry season labour market participation in the region could enable farmers raise capital for farm investment.

This study explores existing practices and farmer innovations to agricultural financing and, by so doing, deviates from the vast literature focussing mainly on microcredit provisioning as the main model of smallholder agricultural financing in Africa.

The construction industry has actively attempted to tackle the low-productivity issues arising from inefficient construction planning. It is imperative to understand how construction practitioners perceive technology integration in construction planning in light of emerging technologies. This study intended to uncover unique experimental findings by integrating 4D-building information modelling (BIM) to virtual reality (VR) technology during construction planning among construction professionals at light steel framing (LSF) projects.

The building industry participants were invited to provide inputs on two different construction planning methods: conventional and innovative methods. The conventional method involved the participants using traditional platforms such as 2D computer-aided design (CAD) and physical visualisation of paper-based construction drawings for the LSF assembly process with a Gantt Chart tool to complete construction planning-related tasks for the targeted project. Comparatively, participants are required to perform the same tasks using more innovative platforms like 4D-BIM in a VR environment.

A Charrette Test Method was used to validate the findings, highlighting an improvement in usability (+10.3%), accuracy (+89.1%) and speed (+30%) using 4D BIM with VR compared to the conventional paper-based method. The findings are also validated by a paired t-test, which is supported by the rationality of the same findings. This study posits positive results for construction planning through the utilisation of modern practices and technologies. These findings are significant for the global construction industry facing low productivity issues, delays and certainty in terms of building delivery timelines due to poor construction planning.

This new blend of technologies—combining 4D BIM and VR in industrialised construction projects—potentially directs future initiatives to drive the efficiency of construction planning in the building lifecycle. The interactive BIM-based virtual environment would purposefully transform construction planning practices in order to deliver modern and more certain building construction methods with a focus on prefabrication processes.

The Covid-19 period has led to defining changes in the teaching process. Therefore, it is essential to explore how teachers have approached these changes, what experiences they have gained and what they have tried to change. This study aims to elucidate how innovative practices were applied in teaching – which was influenced by emergency remote teaching (ERT) – and better understand teachers' experiences related to these practices.

The phenomenology design, a qualitative research model, was executed in the current study. Phenomenological inquiry aims to interpret people's experiences about a specific concept designated as a phenomenon. Creswell (2020) classified two types of phenomenology: interpretive and descriptive. Interpretive phenomenology was employed in the current study as researchers collected data from individuals experiencing the phenomenon, collected and interpreted the data via excluding their own experiences.

As a result of the data interpretation, four themes related to experiences of innovative teaching practices during ERT were discovered: interpretation of innovative teaching, innovative teaching practices, needs related to innovative teaching and challenges to innovative teaching. The categories related to the interpretation of innovative teaching include positive and negative interpretation. The categories related to the second theme, innovative teaching practices, consist of characteristics of innovative teachers and innovative teaching practices employed. The categories related to the third theme, needs related to innovative teaching, are the need for guidance, training and technological infrastructure. The categories related to the fourth and final theme, challenges to innovative teaching, are barriers related to the teacher, barriers related to the learner and those related to the environment.

This study discovered that for teachers to practice innovative teaching, they must develop themselves, keep up-to-date and develop lifelong learning skills. Hung and Li (2017) reached a similar conclusion to the findings of this study: teachers' professional development is positively related to innovative teaching skills at a high level. The participating teachers stated that they had to rapidly improve their technological competency. It is thought that teachers developing their technological competencies will contribute to both ERT and face-to-face education at the end of the Pandemic.

This study aims to describe and examine the effectiveness of the mathematics-based learning method, called Accountamatics (Accounting from Mathematics perspective). The Accountamatics method is rooted in the principles of double-entry bookkeeping and the rules of debits and credits, which were initially documented by Luca Pacioli, a Mathematics Professor, in a mathematics book.

This study uses a quasi-experimental design, spanning a duration of one semester, to examine its research objectives. The participants included 230 students from the Faculty of Economics and Business in Indonesia, who were accredited by AACSB. Control variables, including gender, majors and study backgrounds, were taken into consideration. The data was analyzed using a linear regression test, followed by a comparative t-test.

The study findings show a significant positive impact of the Accountamatics method on student performance when compared to traditional learning approaches. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the control variables examined in the study did not have a significant effect on student performance. Thus, it can be inferred that the implementation of the Accountamatics method has a beneficial effect on the academic performance of college students.

The study findings provide valuable insights for faculty members in higher education institutions, highlighting the potential benefits of incorporating mathematics-based teaching in accounting as an alternative approach for business students. These findings contribute to the existing knowledge on innovative teaching methods that can enhance the study of accounting within the business curriculum.

Over the span of around 25 years, extensive research has been conducted to compare traditional teaching methods with innovative approaches. However, the results have not consistently shown that the innovative methods outperform their traditional counterparts. In response to this, the Accountamatics method has been developed, building upon the fundamental knowledge in accounting that has been used since 1494. Despite its historical significance, this method is sometimes regarded as limited to technical knowledge in the modern era.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process, and analyse the implementation of constructability improvement and innovation result during the planning and design for seawater intake structure of fertilizer plant project.

The research methodology approach is case study method at the project level. This constructability improvement process was investigated by using constructability implementation checklists, direct observation, documented lessons learned analysis and key personnel interviews.

The case study shows that the implementation of constructability during planning and design stage for this seawater intake structure has increased the project performance as well as improved the schedule by five months (14.21 percent) and reduced the project cost by 15.35 percent.

This case study was limited to three previous seawater intake projects as references and one new method seawater intake structure at a fertilizer plant project.

A constructability improvement checklist using theory and lessons learned for the specific construction project was documented.

The findings support the relevant study of constructability and provide specific lessons learned for three previous projects and one of the new methods of the construction project and which are documented by the company.

The global prominence of languages and Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which supports the necessity of German proficiency for the nation’s socioeconomic evolution, necessitate a deeper understanding of German teaching in Saudi international schools. This study delves into the influence of various teaching strategies on students' German writing skills. The research particularly focuses on traditional and innovative methods and considers the factors that drive these teaching approaches.

Data were collected from 304 students in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, through a questionnaire. The relationships between teaching strategies and students' German writing abilities were analyzed using regression techniques.

The results indicate that both traditional and innovative teaching strategies positively influence students' writing skills. The regression analysis shows that the independent variables (traditional teaching strategies, innovative teaching strategies and factors influencing teaching strategies) collectively account for 68.9% of the variation in students' German writing skills. Even though a variety of techniques influence students' academic performance, the study’s findings indicate that several strategies – such as self-evaluation, pair work, oral feedback, grammar instruction and translation – have a major impact on students' German writing abilities.

This research brings unique insights into the German teaching realm of Saudi international schools, emphasizing the harmony between Vision 2030 goals and effective teaching methodologies. It elucidates the considerable influence of both traditional and innovative strategies on student writing outcomes. For educators in Saudi Arabia’s international educational environment, the study’s findings underline the importance of adopting student-centric approaches in the writing process, ensuring students evolve as proficient writers. Additionally, the research underscores the significant role of variables affecting teaching strategies, spotlighting their pivotal role in shaping student outcomes.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationship between organizational tenure and employee innovative behavior and the influence of culture difference and status-related moderators (i.e. status hierarchy and status stability) on the linkage.

By using a meta-analysis method that included 76 empirical studies, this study examines the relationship of organizational tenure and innovative behavior. In this study, 79 samples (N = 21659) derived from 76 empirical studies that met the inclusion criteria in the meta-analysis.

The results show that organizational tenure has a weak positive effect on employee innovative behavior (r = 0.04), and status hierarchy, position tenure, culture difference and measurement ways influence the relationship between the two. In addition, a three-way interaction among status hierarchy, position tenure and organizational tenure is found to jointly affect innovative behavior; specifically, for those who are low in status hierarchy and short in position tenure, their organizational tenures are positively related to innovative behavior, but for those with a longer position tenure in organizations, their organizational tenure may relate to innovative behavior negatively, whatever their status hierarchies are (high or low). This study is helpful in providing theoretical foundation and practical skills to such issues regarding how to trigger innovative behavior efficiently at different career stages.

Limitations include tenure range of participants and no longitudinal samples in our studies. Future research should examine more contextual factors which influenced the relationship between organizational tenure and innovative behavior.

The results of this study show that long organizational tenure is not negatively related to innovative behaviors. For managers, do not ignore the contribution of long-tenured employees to innovation. Through promotion or job rotation to increase employees’ job satisfaction and innovative willing.

To authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine status attribute class variables in the relationship between organizational tenure on innovative behavior. The study is helpful in providing theoretical foundation and practical skills to such issues regarding how to trigger innovative behavior at different career stages correctly.

This paper aims to present and compare a new method, improvement gap analysis (IGA), with two different versions of importance-performance analysis (IPA) – original IPA and diagonal IPA – focusing on how each method evaluates the possible impact of incremental innovations on customer satisfaction.

Two studies were carried out, one with users of mobile phones and another with users of a fitness centre. Mobile phone users answered questions about 24 attributes, of which six were incremental innovations at the time of the research. Users of the fitness centre answered questions about 16 attributes, of which three were incremental innovations.

Both case studies show that diagonal IPA overcomes two limitations of original IPA, in terms of IPA's failure to address: the high correlation between stated importance and customer satisfaction and the non-linear relationship between attribute performance and customers’ satisfaction. However, diagonal IPA is unable to identify the possible impact of incremental innovations on customer satisfaction. Thus, IGA is formulated to overcome both the problems with original IPA and the limitation of diagonal IPA.

The new method, IGA, uses expected customer dissatisfaction as a measure of attribute relevance. Its relationship with other methods used to evaluate attribute importance should be studied in the future.

The paper presents a new method (IGA) that is able to overcome problems of original and diagonal IPA methods and is also able to identify the possible impact of incremental innovations on customer satisfaction.

This article aims to compare the LiDAR handheld mobile laser scanner (HMLS) scans with traditional survey methods, as the tree gauge and the hypsometer, to study the efficiency of the new technology in relation to the accuracy of structural forest attributes estimation useful to support a sustainable forest management.

A case study was carried out in a high forest located in Tuscany (Italy), by considering 5 forest types, in 20 different survey plots. A comparative analysis between two survey methods will be shown in order to verify the potential limits and the viability of the LiDAR HMLS in the forest field.

This research demonstrates that LiDAR HMLS technology allows to obtain a large amount of valuable data on forest structural parameters in a short span of time with a high level of accuracy and with obvious impact in terms of organisational efficiency.

Findings could be useful for forest owners highlighting the importance of investing in science and technology to improve the overall efficiency of forest resources management.

This article adds to the current knowledge on the precision forestry topic by providing insight on the feasibility and effectiveness of using precision technologies for monitoring forest ecosystems and dynamics. In particular, this study fills the gap in the literature linked to the need to have practical examples of the use of innovative technologies in forestry.

Heuristic algorithms have been widely used in different types of optimization problems. Their unique features in terms of running time and flexibility have made them superior to deterministic algorithms. To accurately compare different heuristic algorithms in solving optimization problems, the final optimal solution needs to be known. Existing deterministic methods such as Exhaustive Search and Integer Linear Programming can provide the final global optimal solution for small-scale optimization problems. However, as the system grows the number of calculations and required memory size incredibly increases, so applying existing deterministic methods is no longer possible for medium and large-scale systems. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel deterministic method with short running time and small memory size requirement for optimal placement of Micro Phasor Measurement Units (µPMUs) in radial electricity distribution systems to make the system completely observable.

First, the principle of the method is explained and the observability of the system is analyzed. Then, the algorithm’s running time and memory usage when applying on some of the modified versions of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 123-node test feeder are obtained and compared with those of its deterministic counterparts.

Because of the innovative method of step-by-step placement of µPMUs, a unique method is developed. Simulation results elucidate that the proposed method has unique features of short running time and small memory size requirements.

While the mathematical background of the observability study of electricity distribution systems is very well-presented in the referenced papers, the proposed step-by-step placement method of µPMUs, which shrinks unobservable parts of the system in each step, is not discussed yet. The presented paper is directly applicable to typical problems in the field of power systems.