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Gig workers form the backbone of any crowdsourcing platform where they showcase their talent and choose a job of their choice and freedom. The study explores the role of information quality (IQ) and social-mediated dialogue (SMD) in evaluating gig worker engagement and productivity on crowdsourcing platforms. The authors also propose to understand how gig worker productivity could be improved under the moderating effect of game elements.

A conceptual model was developed and empirically tested by integrating media richness theory and dialogic public relation theory. Data were collected from gig workers that are involved in crowdsourcing activities for the past three years. An overall sample of 346 gig workers contributing to at least one of the crowdsourcing platforms was collected. The authors tested the hypotheses using Warp PLS 7.0. Warp PLS 7.0 uses partial least square (PLS) structured equation modeling (SEM) and has been used widely to test path analytical models.

Results reveal that the information quality plays an essential role in the SMD, thereby fostering gig workers' productivity and engagement, which could be improved in the presence of game elements due to their nature of supporting rewards. However, engagement in the platform leading to improved productivity was not supported.

The study lays practical foundations for crowdsourcing platforms as it sets the importance of both IQ and dialogic communication channels. The two-way communication between gig workers and the platforms via accurate, timely, valuable and reliable information forms the key to the task's success. The introduction of the right game element will help to achieve better engagement and productivity.

This study also offers a new dimension to media richness theory and dialogic public relation theory in crowdsourcing platforms. The results would help platform designers and gig employers understand gig workers' quality and performance in a platform economy. The study uniquely positions itself in the area of crowdsourcing platforms by using game elements.

To guide the stable radius clearance choice of water-lubricated bearings for single screw compressors, this paper aims to analyze the effects of turbulence and cavitation on bearing performance under two conditions of specified external load and radius clearance.

A modified Reynolds equation considering turbulence and cavitation is adopted, based on the Jakobsson–Floberg–Olsson boundary condition, Ng–Pan model and turbulent factors. The equation is solved using the finite difference method and successive over-relaxation method to investigate the bearing performance.

The turbulent effect can increase the hydrodynamic pressure and cavitation. In addition, the turbulent effect can lead to an increase in the equilibrium radius clearance. The turbulent region exhibits a higher load capacity and cavitation rate. However, the increased cavitation negatively impacts the frictional coefficient and end flow rate. The impact of turbulence increases as the radius clearance decreases. As the rotating speed increases, the turbulence effect has a greater impact on the bearing characteristics.

The research can provide theoretical support for the design of water-lubricated journal bearings used in high-speed water-lubricated single screw compressors.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-01-2024-0029/

With the recent increasing relevance of sustainability, multinational enterprises are faced with divergent stakeholder demands and persistently shifting priorities. This study aims to examine stakeholders’ perceptions of the sustainability performance of a gold mining subsidiary in Ghana.

Using a purposive sampling technique, the authors interviewed managers and employees of the case enterprise, officials of regulatory institutions and host community members on their perceptions of the case enterprise’s sustainability performance. The authors triangulated the opinions expressed by these stakeholders with data from annual reports. The data were analysed through the lens of stakeholder theory.

The authors found that while members of the host community and the regulatory institutions were keenly interested in the case enterprise’s social and environmental activities, they perceived their performance as unimpressive, considering the economic benefits derived from the mining operations. On the contrary, the managers and employees of the case enterprise were satisfied with their environmental compliance and social intervention programmes, even though the company’s economic position had declined. The authors submit that the variations in the sustainability performance perceptions among the stakeholders are due to the lack of a deeper understanding of the other stakeholders’ expectations.

To equitably satisfy diverse stakeholder expectations, the study highlights the role of stakeholder collaborations in understanding the expectations of more salient stakeholder groups such as community members and employees, as well as the lesser salient groups such as academics. It also demonstrates the fluidity of sustainability and its benefits in designing a consensual sustainable management strategy. This implies that managers of the case mining enterprise make the necessary efforts to meet the diverse stakeholder needs while attaining their primary objective of creating wealth for shareholders.

Compared to advanced economies, studies on sustainability performance in emerging economies are limited. Nonetheless, these limited studies leave out stakeholder perceptions, focusing more on quantitative performance indicators. Using thematic and content analyses, the authors investigate stakeholder perceptions on the sustainability performance of a case mining subsidiary operating in Ghana. The study focused on Ghana because it is ranked with South Africa as the top two producers of gold in Africa. Nonetheless, unlike South Africa, Ghana faces more sustainability challenges from the mining sector due to weak institutions in enforcing sustainability standards.

This research aims to determine to what extent corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions developed by bank entities in Spain improve the vulnerable customers' emotions and quality perception of the banking service. Consequently, this increases the quality of their relationship regarding satisfaction, trust and engagement.

Data from 734 vulnerable banking customers were analyzed through structural equations modeling (EQS 6.2) to test the relationships of the proposed variables.

Vulnerable customers' emotional disposition exerts a strong influence on their perceived service quality. The antecedent effect is concentrated primarily on the CSR towards the client, with a residual secondary weight on the CSR towards society. These positive service emotions are determinants of the outcome quality perceived by vulnerable customers, directly in terms of higher satisfaction and trust and indirectly through engagement.

This research contributes to understanding how financial service providers should adapt to the specific characteristics and needs of vulnerable clients by adopting a strategy of approach, personalization and humanization of the service that seems to move away from the actions implemented by the banking industry in recent years.

This study has adopted a theoretical and empirical perspective on the impact of CSR on service emotions and outcome quality of vulnerable banking customers. Moreover, banks can adopt a dual conception of CSR: a macro and external scope toward society and a micro and internal scope toward customers.

This paper aims to derive a model that explores how the interplay between knowledge integration capability and innovation impacts strategic orientation, leading to the attainment of sustainable competitive advantage. The study considers the constituents of strategic orientation, namely, customer orientation, competitor orientation and technology orientation, as the basis for achieving sustainable competitive advantage. The study suggests that the firm’s capacity for integrating external and internal knowledge shapes how strategic orientation influences sustainable competitive advantage through service innovation.

This empirical research relies on qualitative and quantitative data gathered from telecom professionals to assess how knowledge integration and service innovation influence sustained competitive advantage. Structured equation modeling is used to examine the model and its interrelationships.

The research establishes significant relationships between strategic orientations, knowledge integration capability, service innovation and sustainable competitive advantage. Knowledge integration capability and service innovation are found to mediate the relationship between strategic orientations and the achievement of sustainable competitive advantage.

The study highlights the significant contribution of a firm’s knowledge integration capability in driving service innovation, especially in technology-intensive service industries facing hypercompetition. It also advocates prioritizing technology orientation and integrating knowledge from internal and external sources for competitive advantage.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to model the effect of knowledge integration capability and service innovation on strategic orientation-led sustainable competitive advantage.

By examining types of literacies taught by public libraries and the modes through which these programs were offered, this study aims to explore how public libraries might integrate data literacy training for the general public into existing library educational programs.

This study examined programs offered in 30 US public libraries during 2019 and 2020 to better understand types of literacy education announced to the public through library website listings and Facebook Events pages.

While public libraries offered educational programs in literacy areas ranging from basic reading and writing to technology, vocational skills, health literacy and more, data literacy training was not widely offered. However, this study identified many already-existing programs highly compatible for integrating with data literacy training.

This study offered new insights into both the literacies taught in public library programs as well as ways for public libraries to integrate data literacy training into existing educational programming, in order to better provide data literacy education for the general public.

Employee burnout is increasingly coming under attention due to its negative impact on employee well-being and organisational effectiveness. This study, a systematic review, aims to evaluate the role of servant leadership and its mediators in preventing and mitigating against burnout experiences in organisations.

A preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analyses (PRISMA) was conducted using three databases, Academic search Complete, Embase and Scopus, in addition to bibliography searches. Articles were included if they reported on primary data, in English from inception to 2023. The mixed methods critical appraisal tool was used to assess the quality of articles, and a narrative synthesis was used to report results.

The search strategy yielded 4,045 articles, of which (N = 17), with total sample size of (N = 10,444) are included. Findings suggest that servant leadership is predictive of burnout, and that several mediators impact this relationship. Most studies were conducted in health care (n = 8) and banking (n = 3), and while the quality of the studies was mostly high (64%), the methods used were mainly descriptive and cross-sectional, which limits the extent to which causality can be inferred. A theory of change is provided based on the findings from this review and integrated with the extant literature on servant leadership theory, and can be used by organisations to support the policy, training and practice of servant leadership to reduce burnout.

Servant leadership is predictive of burnout; however, further research needs to be undertaken in this important emerging area.

The present study explored the young women's lived experiences of discrimination and othering based on skin tone in two rural localities of Uttarakhand , State of India. The authors used intersectionality as the theoretical lens for this study.

The authors have adopted an interpretive phenomenological study in the conduct of this research. The authors interviewed twelve female participants in person using a semi-structured interview schedule. The data were analysed using the six-stage data analysis process of interpretive phenomenological analysis.

The study's findings underline the experiences of stigma, negative self-concept, marriage is a complex reality, media's influence and skin whitening is the first and last resort. Dark-skinned women experience stressful life events due to their skin tone and society's prejudice favouring white and fair skin tones. The experiences of bullying, social shame, guilt and low esteem were also vivid.

This study reveals women's exposure to negative experiences of skin-tone-based discrimination prevalent in Indian society. This is one of the first kinds of such study in India that captures the dark-hued women's recurrent phenomenon of discrimination in their daily lives. It further shows that skin-tone bias and discrimination are widely prevalent and practised despite the claims that Indian society is free from skin-tone biasedness and subsequent discrimination.

This paper aimed to determine the self- and co-regulation influences on the community of inquiry (CoI) for collaborative online learning.

A quantitative survey was used on a sample of (N = 626) enrolled postgraduate students in a South African Open Distance and e-Learning (ODeL) university. The measuring instruments were the CoI and the shared metacognitive surveys. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to determine the association and influence of self- and co-regulation on the CoI.

The results indicated that self- and co-regulation related to the CoI (teaching, cognitive and social) presences. In addition, the results revealed that self- and co-regulation influence the CoI presences. Self-regulation had the highest influence on teaching and cognitive presence, while co-regulation influenced social presence.

The study’s convenience sampling method from a single university limited the applicability of the findings to other online learning environments.

Higher educational teachers who encourage student self- and co-regulation may enhance their online teaching, cognitive and social presence when studying online. The research’s findings may be valuable to teachers to enable them to provide a more collaborative and interactive online learning environment and promote productive online communities.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge about the relationship between teaching, social and cognitive presence and self- and co-regulation within the CoI framework. Furthermore, there has also been limited research focussing on the dynamics of shared metacognition within the CoI framework in an ODeL context.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of perceived risk (perceived susceptibility and perceived severity), self-efficacy and individual differences (personal innovativeness and mobile payment knowledge) on consumers’ intention to use contactless mobile payment services (MPS). Additionally, it also empirically tested the moderating effect of hygiene consciousness in the proposed conceptual model.

The present research developed a conceptual model based on the health belief model (HBM) and diffusion of innovation theory (DOI) to empirically assess whether and how perceived risk, self-efficacy and individual differences influence consumer intention to use contactless MPS. The data was collected using the survey method from 251 smartphone users and analyzed with structural equation modeling. The moderating role of hygiene consciousness was studied in the relationship that self-efficacy and personal innovativeness shares with consumers’ intention toward contactless MPS.

The results of this study disclose that among all precursors of consumers’ intention toward contactless MPS, only perceived severity, self-efficacy, personal innovativeness and mobile payment knowledge positively affect consumers’ intention to use contactless MPS. However, the effect of perceived susceptibility on consumers’ intention toward contactless MPS was found to be non-significant. The results further depict that hygiene consciousness acts as a moderator in driving consumers’ intention toward contactless mobile payment services.

The HBM model and DOI, which incorporate perceived risk, self-efficacy, individual differences and hygiene consciousness, give light on the factors influencing consumer intention to use contactless MPS in a pandemic situation such as COVID-19. The study will provide useful insights to marketers on how to frame their strategies in the aftermath of pandemics, as the contactless mobile payment method may be perceived as a defensive behavior during and after pandemics.

The study will provide useful insights to marketers on how to frame their strategies in the aftermath of pandemics, as the contactless mobile payment method may be perceived as a defensive behavior during and after pandemics.

By uniting perceived risk, self-efficacy and individual differences with consumers’ intention toward contactless MPS in a conceptual model, along with examining the moderating role of hygiene consciousness, this work responds to the calls for upcoming research concerning mobile payment systems as means of future payment. Thus, it offers an understanding of particular consumer motivations that may guide consumers’ intention toward contactless MPS through the theoretical lens of HBM and DOI.