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This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of external financing needs on the relationship between the disclosure level of integrated reporting (IR) and firm value using evidence from Egypt.

This study uses a panel regression analysis for a matched sample of 50 companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange (EGX), specifically from EGX100. The sample covers four years (2017–2020). The current study uses content analysis to measure IR and Tobin’s Q as a proxy for firm value.

The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between the disclosure level of IR and firm value. In addition, the authors find that external financing needs moderate the relationship between IR and firm value. It is concluded that the higher the disclosure level of IR content, the higher the firm’s value, and that this relationship strengthens in firms with high needs for external financing.

Several practical implications can be derived from the results of the current study. Policymakers and regulators can impose mandatory requirements for IR in Egypt. It also opens new insights for board members, managers, analysts and auditors in forming financing decisions based on annual reports.

The present study has a novel insight from a developing country and significant contributions to the extant literature. The study provides empirical evidence from an emerging economy and an insight into how external financing can be used for firms with different levels of IR. It also provides a comprehensive disclosure index to estimate the level of IR.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of heat adaptation, pH adjustment, and the combination pretreatments to the resistance of Lactobacillus paracasei SNP2 in heat shock and spray drying.

Sub-lethal and lethal temperature range of L. paracasei SNP2 was determined by enumeration of cell survival after incubation at 37-55°C for 30 min. A certain temperature from sub-lethal range was selected for heat adaptation. Heat adaptation (H), pH adjustment (pH), and combination of pretreatments (pH-H) were applied prior to heat shock and spray drying.

The selected condition for heat adaptation and heat shock is 44°C, 30 min and 55°C, 15 min, respectively, based on the sub-lethal and lethal temperature range. By heat shock, cells in the whey-sucrose medium showed cell death of 2.05 log cycles, lower than cell death in the MRS medium of 4.84 log cycles. The pretreatments showed slight increase of heat resistance in cell grown in whey sucrose. The effect of H, pH, and pH-H pretreatments highly increase heat resistance of cell grown in MRS indicated by cell death of 4.27, 3.79, and 2.43 log cycles, respectively, which is much lower than control. The pretreatments showed no significant effect to L. paracasei SNP2 survival to spray drying.

This is the first study of L. paracasei SNP2 resistance to heat shock and spray drying. This paper also enriches information about application of whey sucrose as a growth medium and a heating medium.

This study aims to explore the strategies that service providers use to facilitate marketplace accessibility, and identify the key challenges in that process. The authors do so to develop a roadmap towards improved accessibility and disability inclusion in the marketplace.

The authors conducted eight semi-structured interviews with service providers (curators, visitor service coordinators and access managers) at museums who run access programmes for customers with visual impairment (VI), along with an embodied duo-ethnography of those programmes.

Service providers foster autonomous, embodied and social access. Resource constraints, safety concerns and exposed differences between customers compromise access. To overcome these challenges, service providers engage in three inclusionary strategies – informing, extending and sensitizing.

This service provider- and VI-focus present limitations. Future research should consider a poly-vocal approach that includes the experiences of numerous stakeholders to holistically advance marketplace accessibility; and apply the marketplace accessibility findings upon different disabilities in other marketplace contexts.

This study offers a roadmap for policymakers and service providers on: which types of access should and can be created; what challenges may be encountered; how to manage these challenges; and, thus, how to advance accessibility beyond regulations.

This study contributes a service provider perspective on marketplace accessibility that goes beyond removing “disabling” barriers towards creating opportunities for co-creation; an approach towards marketplace accessibility that fosters inclusiveness while considering the inherent challenges of that process; and an illustration of posthumanism’s empirical value in addressing issues of accessibility in the marketplace.

This paper aims to increase the knowledge of the run-in process of lubricated contacts in hydraulical pumps. When performing EHL simulations of tribological contacts, the surface influence needs to be taken into account. This experimental measurement wants to investigate the amount of change of the flow factors in the first hour of run of tribological contacts.

An experimental test bench is used to run-in several samples. After several minutes of running, samples are removed and the surface structure is captured using a digital microscope. With the measured data, flow factors are calculated.

The findings were clear that flow factors are highly direction-dependent, especially shear flow factors in radial directions experience almost no change. Overall, influence of the surface structure of up to 30% compared to a flat surface can be registered.

This paper helps to choose application-oriented values for the simulation of tribological contacts.

This empirical study aims to examine the association between gender-diverse boards and corporate carbon emissions and estimates the effect of board gender diversity on stock price reactions to climate activism. This study contributes to the inconclusive literature on the link between gender-diverse boards and firms' financial performance by examining a single and plausibly isolated channel of association (i.e. attention to climate change).

The authors use parametric and non-parametric panel data techniques to examine the association between gender-diverse boards to corporate carbon emission. The system generalized methods of moments (SYS-GMM) estimator is used to address endogeneity concerns. The authors use the event study methodology to examine difference in stock price reactions to climate activism.

The results show that high board gender diversity is associated with lower corporate carbon emissions and higher stock returns to climate activism.

This is the first study to isolate public attention to climate change as a relevant channel through which gender-diverse boards have an impact of firms' financial performance. This study is timely and important due to the immediate threat of global warming and the recent introduction of mandatory board gender quotas in many countries around the world.

The purpose of this paper is to show these effects in an abstracted micro gap test bench. Because of stronger emission laws, the ambition to raise the rail pressure in common-rail systems from the current 2500 bar to 3000 bar is a given. The pressure increase will allow fine atomization of fuel and therefore more efficient combustion. But within the technical system of the high-pressure pump, stronger thermal stresses of the piston–cylinder contact are expected. A pressure drop from such a high level causes high temperature gradients due to energy dissipation.

For a detailed examination, the critical piston–cylinder contact has been investigated in an abstracted test bench with a flat parallel gap and an equivalent thermo-elastohydrodynamic simulation model.

The simulation results show good accordance to the measurements of pressures, temperatures and leakages for pressures up to 3000 bar. Comparison with elastohydrodynamic lubrication results outlines the need to consider temperature and pressure effects viscosity and solid deformation for the simulation and design of tribological contacts at high pressures.

This paper describes a simulation method with high accuracy to investigate tribological contacts considering temperature effects on solid structures and the fluid film. The thermo-elastohydrodynamic lubrication simulation method is valid not only for piston–cylinder contacts in high-pressure pumps but also for journal bearings in combustion engines.

The paper represents a starting point of a broader research project in strategic start-up communication. The main purpose of this study is to demonstrate the current state of research in this area and to compare those insights with an explorative study on the start-up ecosystem.

A neo-institutional framework is combined with the dual narrative framework of strategic communication and emergence to explain the emergence of strategic communication in this organizational field (start-up ecosystems). Research questions are derived from a systematic literature review and subjected to exploratory testing in two different qualitative surveys, with experts and investors, reflecting an external perspective, and with start-ups themselves.

Results from the literature review and the explorative interviews with expert external actors indicate eight areas in which start-ups face strategic communication challenges: the basic orientation of strategic communication, branding, external image, stakeholder relations, allocation of financial resources, owner centricity, human resources and internal communication. External consultants and funders recommend highly planned approaches like target group-oriented communication, well thought-out positioning with uniform messages and precisely applied communication channels. However, the internal perspective of start-ups presents a contrary picture based on emergent products of strategic communication.

The study indicates the importance of both the emergence in strategic start-up communication and the demonstration of planned strategic communication. Investigating a whole start-up ecosystem in a country regarding the emergence of strategic communication forms, practices and products offers potential for cross-country comparative research.

The findings indicate key challenges of strategic communication of start-ups. Bearing in mind these key challenges when founding a start-up can make a difference in the success of the start-up.

The article presents the first systematic literature review in the area of strategic start-up communication and a theoretical framework for further investigation. Moreover, the results of the explorative study demonstrate the importance of the different forms of planning and emergence in strategic start-up communication. Hence, this paper provides practical implications for practitioners working and investing in the start-up ecosystem.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on entrepreneurial orientation (EO) with a focus on the interplay between the individual and firm level for embedding EO pervasively within organisations.

Comprising 356 individual employees from five companies collected from June to September 2015, this investigation uses structural equation modelling.

The results show significant indirect effects from individuals’ EO on firm’s performance, mediated by both individuals’ performance and firm’s EO.

While the construct of EO is strengthened with a multi-level approach, the authors also stress the organisational homogeneity of EO.

Consequently, the EO instrument can be used as a strategic tool to evaluate an individual’s orientation towards entrepreneurship to facilitate firm performance.

Finally, the EO instrument can be used as a strategic tool to evaluate an individual’s orientation towards entrepreneurship to facilitate firm performance.