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There is currently a shortage of applications for the role of principal. There are a range of factors contributing to this, one of which may be the considerable levels of stress and burnout reported by principals and deputy principals. Distributed leadership may offer some solutions to this challenge. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of distributed leadership from a role sustainability perspective of school principals and deputy principals.

This paper follows a qualitative interpretivist approach based upon 15 semi-structured interviews with principals and deputy principals working in Irish post-primary schools. Data were analysed via thematic analysis.

Results indicate challenges to the sustainability of the role of senior school leaders comprising administrative overload, policy proliferation and challenges due to the complexity and breadth of the role of these school leaders. It was reported that engagement with distributed leadership could aid the sustainability of participants in their roles and the importance of focusing on well-being practices was also highlighted.

Recommendations include the need to reconsider policy proliferation and the need to reconceptualise school leadership. Further consideration regarding how distributed leadership can aid the sustainability of the role of senior school leaders, without adversely contributing to the already busy role of schoolteachers is also recommended.

The findings of this study are valuable as they reflect previous findings relating to the current challenges to sustainable school leadership as well as highlight distributed leadership as a potential aid to mitigate against these challenges.

Research excellency has long been the dominant paradigm in assessing academic quality and hence a prime determinant of academic careers. Lately, this approach to academic performance has come under higher scrutiny for its narrow focus on the individual, promoted an exclusive, performance-oriented talent management and inhibiting collaboration, transparency and societal involvement.

As a response to the limitations of the excellency policy, this chapter examines the emergence of open science as a transformative force in the academic world. Open science represents a paradigm shift, emphasizing the importance of transparency, and increased societal engagement in the academic process. It opens up the possibility to include the context dimension, multiple stakeholders and a more diverse set of development and performance indicators.

This chapter stresses the urgent need to realign our system of recognition and rewards with the premise of open science and with talent management. By highlighting the disconnect between current recognition mechanisms and the values of universities, this chapter emphasizes the necessity of transformative changes at institutional and systemic levels.

To provide concrete insights into the implementation of these changes, this chapter explores a case study of Utrecht University. This specific example showcases how strategic decisions at an institute level allow navigation of the complexities of recognizing and rewarding open science practices. The Utrecht University case study serves as an inspiration for other institutions seeking to embrace open science and adapt their policies and practices accordingly.

Recently, there has been a shift toward the embodied energy assessment of buildings. However, the impact of material service life on the life-cycle embodied energy has received little attention. We aimed to address this knowledge gap, particularly in the context of the UAE and investigated the embodied energy associated with the use of concrete and other materials commonly used in residential buildings in the hot desert climate of the UAE.

Using input–output based hybrid analysis, we quantified the life-cycle embodied energy of a villa in the UAE with over 50 years of building life using the average, minimum, and maximum material service life values. Mathematical calculations were performed using MS Excel, and a detailed bill of quantities with >170 building materials and components of the villa were used for investigation.

For the base case, the initial embodied energy was 57% (7390.5 GJ), whereas the recurrent embodied energy was 43% (5,690 GJ) of the life-cycle embodied energy based on average material service life values. The proportion of the recurrent embodied energy with minimum material service life values was increased to 68% of the life-cycle embodied energy, while it dropped to 15% with maximum material service life values.

The findings provide new data to guide building construction in the UAE and show that recurrent embodied energy contributes significantly to life-cycle energy demand. Further, the study of material service life variations provides deeper insights into future building material specifications and management considerations for building maintenance.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.

Previous studies have postulated that an advance payment system (APS) positively impacts the contractor's working capital and is paramount to ensuring an efficient and effective project cash flow process. However, scant research has been undertaken to empirically establish the cash flow performance and domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance.

The epistemological design adopted a positivist philosophical stance augmented by deductive reasoning to explore the phenomena under investigation. Primary quantitative data were collected from 504 Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) registered contractors (within the grade bandings 1–9) in South Africa. A five-point Likert scale was utilised, and subsequent data accrued were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Emergent findings reveal that the mandatory use of an APS does not guarantee a positive project cash flow, an improvement in organisational performance or an improvement in project performance.

The ensuing discussion reveals the contributory influence of APS on positive cash flow and organisational performance, although APS implementation alone will not achieve these objectives. Practically, the research accentuates the need for various measures to be concurrently adopted (including APS) towards ensuring a positive project cash flow and improved organisational and project performance.

There is limited empirical research on cash flow performance and the domino effect of APS on project and organisational performance in South Africa, nor indeed, the wider geographical location of Africa as a continent. This study addresses this gap in the prevailing body of knowledge.

The objective of this research is to analyze how omnichannel consumer journey design (OCJD) influences the online customer experience (OCE) and e-satisfaction in consumers' multirooming behavior (searching for information in online and offline channels and purchasing the product online).

The problem-solving theory and experiential marketing perspective are the theoretical background that enables the establishment of five hypotheses. A survey is conducted on multiroomers who had purchased a product online, following an online and offline research journey.

The results showed that OCJD directly and indirectly (through online consumer experience) influences e-satisfaction. Females and younger individuals exhibited higher levels of e-satisfaction.

First, this research analyzes consumers' multichannel search strategies. Second, the consumer journey is incorporated into the study of multichannel retailing. Third, an emergent typology of cross-channel free-riding behavior is analyzed: multirooming.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of family involvement in ownership and governance on the quality of internal auditing.

Leveraging a hand-collected data set of listed family firms from 2014 to 2020, this study uses regression analyses to investigate the impact of family ownership, family involvement on the board, family CEO and the generational stage of the family business on the quality of internal auditing.

The results provide evidence that family ownership is positively associated with the quality of internal auditing, while later generational stages of family businesses have the opposite effect. Additional analyses reveal that the presence of a sustainability board sub-committee moderates the relationship between generational stages of family businesses and the quality of internal auditing function.

This paper does not consider country-institutional factors and other potentially family-related antecedents or governance factors that may affect the quality of internal auditing.

The results are informative for investors and non-family stakeholders interested in understanding under which conditions family-related factors influence the quality of internal auditing functions.

This study offers fresh evidence regarding the relationship between family-related factors and the quality of internal auditing and board sub-committees that moderate such a relationship in family businesses.