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Social commerce (s-commerce) offers community-based platforms that facilitate customer-to-customer interactions and the development of customers' social shopping-based experience. While prior research has addressed the role of customer engagement (CE) in boosting s-commerce-based sales and performance, insight into the effect of s-commerce attributes on CE remains tenuous. Addressing this gap, this study examines the role of specific s-commerce attributes (i.e. community, collaboration, interactivity and social dynamics) on CE, which is, in turn, proposed to impact customers' repurchase- and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) intention.

A web-based survey was deployed to target users of a popular s-commerce platform, Etsy.com. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was, then, used to analyze the survey data collected from 390 users.

The results reveal that the four examined attributes positively affect CE. The findings also demonstrate CE's positive effect on customers' repurchase- and eWOM intention.

Though CE has been identified as a key s-commerce performance indicator, little remains known about the role of specific s-commerce attributes in driving CE, as, therefore, explored in this research. Specifically, the authors examine the role of s-commerce-based community, collaboration, interactivity and social dynamics on CE. Their analyses also corroborate that CE, in turn, drives customers' post-purchase (i.e. repurchase/eWOM) intention. Managerially, our findings can be used to develop more engaging s-commerce platforms.

Social enterprises have proven to play a vital role in the transitions towards inclusive labour markets and sustainable economies. Yet, they often struggle to flourish within traditional economic systems due to the dual mission of pursuing social and commercial goals, leading to inherent tensions for social entrepreneurs. This study aims to explore tensions within work integration social enterprises (WISEs) arising from their dual mission and engagement with multiple stakeholders.

Interviews with representatives from ten Dutch WISEs were conducted to understand their day-to-day challenges. The typology by Smith and Lewis (2011), focusing on learning, belonging, organising and performing tensions, was used for data analysis.

The study reveals tensions between social impact and commercial viability, with organisational challenges being predominant. Also, there is an observed temporal pattern in tension prominence: early stages emphasise belonging, organising and performing tensions, while learning tensions become more prominent as enterprises mature.

This study offers insights into tensions within WISEs, highlighting the complexity of managing multiple identities in a multi-stakeholder context. By drawing on practical experiences, it contributes nuanced understanding to existing literature.

The number of university students seeking mental health support is rapidly increasing. To provide additional psychological support to students accessing well-being services, this study aimed to pilot a mental health Web application (app) called Orpheus®.

Guided by student consultations, a multi-methods approach was adopted, including an examination of in-app data, chart reviews of routinely collected student information and interviews with mental health practitioners. Usage data were analysed descriptively. Changes in mental health outcomes were examined using means, standard deviations and reliable change indices for anxiety and depression scores. Inductive and deductive thematic analysis was conducted on qualitative data from staff interviews and student feedback.

A total of 26 students registered an account with 39 completed app visits. On 37 of the 39 (94.9%) occasions, students reported reductions in the intensity of unwanted negative emotions. Statistically significant reductions in the average pooled anxiety and depression scores were observed. Of the 15 students who completed pre- and post-routine outcome measures, between 20% and 60% showed reliable and meaningful symptom improvements. Students reported that the app was helpful and easy to set up and use, with no adverse events. Practitioners highlighted barriers and facilitators related to the technology features, situational contexts and individual differences.

Integrating Orpheus in real-world settings resulted in promising implementation processes, potential for future uptake and positive outcomes. However, ongoing research, staff training and app testing are needed to further improve the implementation processes for digital mental health interventions.

This study builds on previous discussion of an important area for both academics and academic journals – the issue of reviewers inappropriately asking for (or “coercing”) citation of their own work. That situation creates an opportunity for (hopefully a small number of) academics to engage in unethical behaviour, often with the goal of increasing their citation count. This study aims to draw attention to this often-overlooked issue, critically considering potential reviewer motivations and offering possible remedies.

This study reviews literature and critically discusses this issue, offering a typology for coercive citation suggestions and sharing previously unpublished commentary from Editors of leading journals.

This study provides a typology of reviewer motivations for coercing citations, suggests potential remedies and considers the positive and negative impacts of these suggestions.

This study identifies an area known from multiple discussions to be important to academics and Editors, where many want changes in journals’ practices. In response, this study provides recommendations for easy changes that would decrease the opportunity for unethical behaviour by reviewers and also, for some journals, improve the quality of reviews.

This study aims to explore students’ perceptions of the use of an artificial intelligence-generated content avatar (AIGC avatar) within a learning management system (LMS).

This qualitative research involved seven postgraduate students. Data were collected through individual, in-depth interviews. The videos of the AIGC avatar, created using Leonardo, ChatGPT and Heygen, were uploaded to the LMS to communicate with students for the purposes of a welcome note, assignment guide, assignment feedback, tutorial reminders and preparation as well as to provide encouragement and study tips. Students were interviewed at the end of the semester.

The findings of this study indicated that the majority of participating students held positive perceptions regarding the use of the AIGC avatar in the LMS. They reported that it enhanced their perceived instructor’s social presence and motivation to learn. The assignment guide and feedback were particularly valued by the participants. While some students noted the AIGC avatar’s lack of naturalness, others appreciated the clear and professional speech it delivered.

The study was confined to seven students from a single course at one institution, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Future research could involve a larger and more diverse group of participants.

The findings may offer education providers an alternative solution for engaging students in an LMS.

This study highlights the potential of AIGC avatars to replace text-based communication in LMS and enhance students’ perceived instructor social presence.

Within minutes, our group, who had no prior introduction, began to learn the value of emerging from a relational space of (re)presenting and (re)storying our experiences. “I” became “We”, which became “Us”

Recently, the seventh bi-annual conference of the World Federation for Teacher Education 2023 focused on the theme of “Re-imagining Teacher Education: From Words to Action.” During the session on métissage as methodology, participants from four different countries, three ethnic backgrounds and gender and sexual differences were invited into dialogue to explore the nuances of our identities, academic positions and life experiences.

Doing métissage as novices, our subsequent discussion problematized the perpetuation of procedural narratives that contested the Cartesian cuts of methodological normalcy.

Sharing our stories of self in our group we referenced how institutional frameworks had shaped and were reconstructing contexts for our being and belonging in the academy. In our narrating vulnerability we were once again located in telling relations to do with identity, power and social being. Jones (2015, p. 8) has asked. “Other than dry academic reports, how can we retell these stories in sensitive and ethical ways to wider audiences? How do the stories themselves inspire creativity in retelling them? How can we involve participants in the retelling of their stories?”

As a fairy tale is adapted to fit with current cultural discourses, drastic changes occur. One of these changes is the erasure of the old man. The wise old man, the doddering old fool, and many more tropes that older men fill have been altered. The eccentric Merlin and the mad Hatter have been replaced with younger versions in Merlin (2008–2012) and the Syfy miniseries Alice (2009). While the grandfather is technically found in Disney's Once Upon a Time in the form of Rumpelstiltskin, it is rarely discussed. In the Beauty and the Beast (2017), Maurice is no longer the town oddity as he goes from tinkering with odd inventions, to being a music box maker. His creativity and quirky idiosyncrasies have been erased.

This chapter delves into this disappearance of the older man in modern fairy tale adaptations, and the repercussions this has in the representation for the older man. Furthermore, this chapter seeks to show how toxic ageist notions in Hollywood have impacted the role of the old man as he is replaced with the stereotypical younger man, due to the increased objectification of men in film and the subsequent conformity to the ‘ideal masculine form’. This objectification can be seen through the slow ‘reinvigoration’ of the Mad Hatter from Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951) to the Hatter in Syfy's Alice (2009), Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter, Tarrant Hightopp, in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), and finally Sebastian Stan's Mad Hatter in Once Upon a Time (2011–2018).

Female smallholder farmers in low-income countries face barriers to accessing capital and commodity markets. While agricultural cooperatives provide services that contribute to the income and productivity of small-scale producers, evidence of cooperatives' social and economic empowerment of female smallholders remains limited. We apply Sen's capability approach to female entrepreneurs' socioeconomic empowerment to examine whether women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative from rural western Uganda benefits their social and economic position within their household. First, we study the relationship between women's cooperative participation and their household coffee sales and savings. Second, we investigate the link between women's cooperative participation and their intra-household decision-making and whether the inclusion of the husband in his wife's cooperative strengthens or lowers women's decision-making power.

We carry out a case study of a hybrid coffee and microfinance cooperative that promotes social innovation through the integration and empowerment of female smallholders in rural Uganda. Using a cross-sectional survey of 411 married female cooperative members from 26 randomly selected self-help groups of Bukonzo Joint Cooperative and 196 female non-members from the identical area, employing propensity score matching, this paper investigates the benefits of women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative in the Rwenzori Mountains of western Uganda. We present and discuss the results of our case study within an extensive literature on the role of institutions in collective action for women's empowerment.

Our findings provide new empirical evidence on female smallholders' participation in mixed cooperatives. Our results indicate that women's participation in microfinance-producer cooperatives appears to be a conditional blessing: even though membership is linked to increased women's intra-household decision-making and raised household savings and income from coffee sales, a wife with a husband in the same cooperative self-help group is associated with diminished women's household decision-making power.

The focus of this study is on female coffee smallholders in an agricultural cooperative in rural western Uganda. In particular, we focus on a case study of one major coffee cooperative. Our cross-sectional survey does not allow us to infer causal interpretations. Also, the survey does not include variables that allow us to measure other dimensions of women's empowerment beyond decision-making over household expenditures and women's financial performance related to savings and income from coffee cultivation.

Our empirical results indicate that female smallholders' cooperative membership is associated with higher incomes and coffee sales. However, husband co-participation in their wives' cooperative group diminishes wives' decision-making, which suggests that including husbands and other family members in the same cooperative group may not be perceived as an attractive route to empowerment for female smallholders. For these reasons, an intervention that encourages the cooperation of both spouses and that is sensitive to context-specific gender inequalities, may be more successful at stimulating social change toward household gender equality than interventions that focus on women's autonomous spheres only.

While the literature thus far has focused on microfinance's potential for women's empowerment, evidence on agricultural cooperatives' affecting women's social and economic position is limited. First, our findings provide novel empirical evidence on the empowering effects of women's participation in a self-help group-based coffee cooperative in rural Uganda. Second, our data allows us to explore the role of husbands' participation in their wives' cooperative and SGH. We embed our hypotheses and empirical results in a rich discussion of female entrepreneurship, microfinance and cooperative literature.

This is an account of student experiences with the 2020/2021 Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Manufacturing and Design (WiSTEM²D) intervention programme at the University of Limerick (UL).

The WiSTEM²D programme supports female undergraduate students undertaking science, technology, engineering, mathematics, manufacturing and design (STEM²D) courses, helping them develop and grow in their degrees, research and beyond.

During the programme, data were gathered from students in the form of qualitative information, which was used to analyse perceptions of the programme. This analysis revealed that students found the WiSTEM²D programme beneficial to them and that it improved their confidence levels, career knowledge and overall networking abilities.

WiSTEM²D is one of several initiatives globally that are attempting to empower and encourage women to be active in STEM.