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The primary purpose of this study is to determine if the main character is a shapeshifter and, if so, how does the tale contribute to shapeshifting lore.

The focus of the study is confined to a version of the tale that appears in Jane Yolen's Folktales From Around the World (1986) and on summaries of other versions of shapeshifting tales when needed. Support for the findings is provided by an examination of the observations and rhetorical techniques employed by what appears to be an unreliable narrator and selected knowledge and practices from a variety of academic disciplines.

The research findings neither confirm nor deny that the main character is or is not a shapeshifter.

Instead, the critical reading confirms the traditional characterization of folktales as coming from diverse folk roots and disappearing or changing as they circulate through geographical space and narrative time.

It also implies that the tale has outgrown its practical and social folk roots and now extends far beyond that of traditional shapeshifting or literary folktales.

By bringing to light the racial and gender fears, ignorance and emotional and physical violence that lurk just below the surface of the society from which serpent-woman emerges, the study creates a haunting vision of the embedded biases that lurk just below the surface of many societies.

To this author's knowledge, this is the first study of this tale to appear in publication. The findings need further investigation.

This paper aims to identify the relationships among critical success factors (CSFs) for lean six sigma (LSS) implementation in higher education institutions (HEIs).

An extensive literature review was conducted to design the survey instrument, which the authors later administered in Mexican public HEIs to identify the existing relationships among the CSFs and their impact on the benefits obtained from implementing LSS projects. The data were empirically and statistically validated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Additionally, the authors applied the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique on SPSS Amos to validate the nine hypotheses supporting the research.

The results suggest that the success of LSS projects in HEIs is highly bound to a serious commitment from top management and several interrelated factors.

The main limitations of the study are that the research is cross-sectional in nature and regional in focus. Namely, the data used to validate the structural model were gathered from a small representative subset of the study population – i.e. Mexican public HEIs – and at a specific point in time.

The results reported here represent a reference framework for HEIs worldwide that wish to continuously improve their processes through LSS improvement projects.

This study proposes a statistically validated model using the SEM technique that depicts the relationships among LSS CSFs in HEIs.

Based on two dominant perspectives, team climate and knowledge integration, on team innovation, this study aims to propose a moderated mediation model to examine the interactive effect of inter-team trust and goal clarity on team innovation through knowledge inflows into a team. Considering the two perspectives at the same time will provide a more complete picture on our understanding on team innovation.

The research model is tested on 150 retail teams of a large apparel firm. Data are collected from two separate surveys, one to store managers and one to store staff members. Moderation mediation regression analysis is conducted on the survey data.

The regression analysis identified both a positive direct effect of goal clarity on innovation, and a negative moderating effect of goal clarity on the mediation of knowledge inflows between inter-team trust and innovation. In other words, inter-team trust is positively related to team innovation through knowledge inflows when goal clarity is low.

In this study, the authors identify an indirect and negative role of goal clarity on team innovation, and examine the mechanism and boundary of inter-team trust on team innovation. Managers are advised to foster a trusting environment and be aware of cognitive bias in their teams so that their teams can be more innovative.

While the Olympic Games are always under the spotlight, the Paralympic Games are somehow ignored. This paper aims to invite the general public to think about the para-athletes and the differential treatments they received.

Among the participating countries, many of them were unable to win a single Olympic or Paralympic medal. When the dependent variable is left-censored, ordinary least squares regression is asymptotically biased downwards. In the literature, researchers typically employ the maximum likelihood Tobit model to take care of the censoring problem. However, some researchers argue that the Hurdle model has an advantage over the Tobit model in identifying the determinants of winning Olympic medals. Following their wisdom, this paper employs both the Tobit and Hurdle models in analysis.

The empirical evidence gathered in this paper suggests that population size, host status and average years of schooling are the big three socio-economic determinants when it comes to winning medals at the Paralympic Games and Olympic Games. The findings support the hypothesis that sports talent is randomly distributed and a large country has a higher chance to have talented athletes or para-athletes winning the Olympic medals. The strong host advantage also showed up in the following Paralympics but was not so strong at the next Olympics.

This paper not only examines the relationship between various social, economic and political factors in determining the success of a nation in the Paralympic Games but also attempts to identify possible non-traditional determinants.

This study aims to review recent advances towards the implementation of ANN and NLP applications during the budgeting phase of the construction process. During this phase, construction companies must assess the scope of each task and map the client’s expectations to an internal database of tasks, resources and costs. Quantity surveyors carry out this assessment manually with little to no computer aid, within very austere time constraints, even though these results determine the company’s bid quality and are contractually binding.

This paper seeks to compile applications of machine learning (ML) and natural language processing in the architectural engineering and construction sector to find which methodologies can assist this assessment. The paper carries out a systematic literature review, following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines, to survey the main scientific contributions within the topic of text classification (TC) for budgeting in construction.

This work concludes that it is necessary to develop data sets that represent the variety of tasks in construction, achieve higher accuracy algorithms, widen the scope of their application and reduce the need for expert validation of the results. Although full automation is not within reach in the short term, TC algorithms can provide helpful support tools.

Given the increasing interest in ML for construction and recent developments, the findings disclosed in this paper contribute to the body of knowledge, provide a more automated perspective on budgeting in construction and break ground for further implementation of text-based ML in budgeting for construction.

Drones have become an important element within hospitality and tourism. The purpose of this study is to identify the corpus of knowledge and create a research agenda that establishes appropriate guidelines for future study of drone application in hospitality and tourism.

This work has been undertaken using a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative and qualitative research and includes a review of the literature related to the study of drone use in hospitality and tourism.

The mixed-methods review identified gaps in the research, potential areas of study to enhance the scientific literature and potential uses of drones in tourism and hospitality for researchers, consumers and industry professionals.

This study makes an original contribution by establishing an integrated framework, which led to a synthesis of the research corpus and provided a holistic conceptualisation of the relationship between tourism and drones. In addition, the research agenda proposed will help boost and consolidate this emerging field of research.

无人机已经成为接待和旅游中的一个重要元素。本研究的主要目的是确定知识库, 并建立一个研究议程, 为未来无人机在酒店和旅游业的应用研究建立适当的指导方针。

这项工作采用了混合方法, 将定量和定性研究结合起来, 包括对与酒店和旅游业中无人机使用研究有关的文献进行回顾。

混合方法审查确定了研究中的差距、加强科学文献的潜在研究领域, 以及研究人员、消费者和行业专业人士在旅游和酒店业的无人机应用潜力。

这项研究通过建立一个综合框架做出了原创性的贡献, 它综合合成了研究语料库, 并对旅游和无人机之间的关系提供了一个整体的概念化。此外, 提出的研究议程将有助于促进和巩固这一新兴的研究领域。

Los drones se han convertido en un elemento importante dentro de la hostelería y el turismo. El objetivo principal de este estudio es identificar el corpus de conocimiento y crear una agenda de investigación que establezca las directrices adecuadas para el estudio futuro de la aplicación de los drones en la hostelería y el turismo.

Este trabajo se ha realizado utilizando un enfoque de métodos mixtos que combina la investigación cuantitativa y cualitativa e incluye una revisión de la literatura relacionada con el estudio del uso de drones en hostelería y turismo.

La revisión de métodos mixtos identificó lagunas en la investigación, áreas potenciales de estudio para mejorar la literatura científica y potencial de las aplicaciones de los drones en el turismo y la hostelería para investigadores, consumidores y profesionales del sector.

Este estudio aporta una contribución original al establecer un marco integrado, que conduce a una síntesis del corpus de investigación y proporciona una conceptualización holística de la relación entre el turismo y los drones. Además, la agenda de investigación propuesta contribuirá a impulsar y consolidar este campo de investigación emergente.

Tourism in Coimbra today is influenced by the fact that the Univer(s)city was distinguished as a World Heritage Site in 2013. The number of visits has grown very significantly in recent years, but the diversification of the tourist offer is still weak and unable to take advantage of existing resources. This paper aims to present genealogy tourism as an alternative urban cultural tourism in Coimbra.

Methodology involved mapping the Jewish culture elements in the city of Coimbra, and a route was outlined and proposed.

Genealogy tourism resources are identified in the historic centre of the city. These alternative spaces need urban rehabilitation and (re)functionalisation, which allowed the authors to rethink tourism in Coimbra. They are the motivation to visit for all urban cultural tourists, especially Israelis/Jews, and provide contact with places where the experiences of ancestors combine with the history and memory of places, with recent discoveries and the elements of Jewish culture in the city.

It is concluded that the quantity, diversity, authenticity and singularity of the heritage resources that bear witness to the Jewish presence in Coimbra are sufficient assets to create a route, to enrich the tourist experience in the city and to include the destination in the Sephardic routes.

Equipment performance helps the manufacturing sector achieve operational and financial improvements despite process variations. However, the literature lacks a clear index or metric to quantify the monetary advantages of enhanced equipment performance. Thus, the paper presents two innovative monetary performance measures to estimate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance by isolating the effect of manufacturing fluctuations such as product mix price, direct and indirect characteristics, and cost changes.

The research provides two measures, ISB (Improvement Saving Benefits) and IEB (Improvement Earning Benefits), to assess equipment performance improvements. The effectiveness of the metrics is validated through a three stages approach, namely (1) experts' binary opinion, (2) sample, and (3) actual cases. The relevant data may be collected through accounting systems, purpose-built software, or electronic spreadsheets.

The findings suggest that both measures provide an effective cost–benefit analysis of equipment performance enhancement. The measure ISB indicates savings from performance increases when equipment capacity is greater than product demand. IEB is utilised when equipment capacity is less than product demand. Both measurements may replace the unitary cost variation, which is subject to manufacturing changes.

Manufacturing businesses may utilise the ISB and IEB metrics to conduct a systematic analysis of equipment performance and to appreciate the financial savings perspective in order to emphasise profitability in the short and long term.

The study introduces two novel financial equipment performance improvement indicators that distinguish the effects of manufacturing variations. Manufacturing variations cause cost advantages from operational improvements to be misrepresented. There is currently no approach for manufacturing organisations to calculate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance while isolating production irregularities.

The purpose of this study is to determine the interactions between factors such as organizational learning, feedback about errors, punitive response to errors and communication quality in hospitals in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Colombia when adopting a culture of quality and safety (CQS) in patient care.

Based on a literature review, a self-administered questionnaire was developed and used to collect data from 417 Saudi respondents affiliated with hospitals and 483 Colombian respondents at the beginning of the pandemic. Structural equation modeling is used in this study to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results show a solid and significant predictive relationship between feedback about errors and the CQS in both countries (Colombia: b = 0.55, p < 0.001; KSA: b = 0.44, p < 0.001), but a very low and insignificant predictive relationship between no punitive response to errors and CQS (Colombia: b = –0.02, p > 0.05; KSA: b = 0.05, p > 0.05).

This study demonstrates the importance of organizational learning in fostering a CQS in the health-care sector in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Colombia. Recent unprecedented policy actions motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as social distancing, lockdowns and safety practices enforcement, have further highlighted this concern. Moreover, attention to the dimensions addressed in this study is required for accreditation purposes in organizations seeking to promote a CQS. Overall, this research highlights the vital role of safety and quality practices among health-care organizations, which has significant policy implications, especially in the current period of high uncertainty.

This paper contributes to the theory and practice in the health-care sector by extending the current knowledge of the impact of the quality of communications, non-punitive response to errors and feedback about errors in organizational learning and safety culture, and by presenting a novel, quantitative methodology seldom used for these topics.

This study aims to obtain insights based on empirical evidence that identify the key drivers and obstacles that lead companies to (re)/enter markets and distinguish the different paths SMEs take. This also provides deeper insights into internationalisation, success, failure and the potential for the re-internationalisation of the SMEs.

The authors used a qualitative research methodology based on six case studies and with recourse to semi-structured interviews with the senior managers of exporting SMEs.

The results report that SMEs with major investments deployed in their internationalisation processes, through recourse to high levels of bank financing, in association with the COVID-19 pandemic period, were not able to successfully overcome the process of internationalisation and culminating in their own bankruptcies.

This study shows how, despite such failures, the attractiveness and reputation of the brand, supported by the strategic vision and perseverance of new investors (entrepreneurs), enabled the rebirth of the brands and opening the door to their re-entering international markets.

Este estudio pretende obtener perspectivas basadas en pruebas empíricas que identifiquen los motores y obstáculos clave que llevan a las empresas a (re)/entrar en los mercados y distinguir los distintos caminos que siguen las PYME. Asimismo, se profundiza en la internacionalización, el éxito, el fracaso y el potencial de reinternacionalización de las PYME.

Los autores utilizaron una metodología de investigación cualitativa basada en seis estudios de casos y con recurso a entrevistas semiestructuradas con altos directivos de PYME exportadoras.

Los resultados informan de que PYMEs con grandes inversiones desplegadas en sus procesos de internacionalización, a través del recurso a altos niveles de financiación bancaria, en asociación con el periodo de pandemia COVID-19, no fueron capaces de superar con éxito el proceso de internacionalización y culminaron en sus propias quiebras.

Este estudio muestra cómo, a pesar de tales fracasos, el atractivo y la reputación de la marca, apoyados por la visión estratégica y la perseverancia de los nuevos inversores (empresarios), permitieron el renacimiento de las marcas y abrieron la puerta a su reentrada en los mercados internacionales.

Este estudo procura obter insights com base em evidências empíricas que identifiquem os principais drivers e obstáculos que levam as empresas a (re)/entrar nos mercados e distinguir os diferentes caminhos percorridos pelas PME . Isso também fornece insights mais profundos sobre internacionalização, sucesso, fracasso e o potencial para a re-internacionalização das PMEs.

Os autores utilizaram uma metodologia de investigação qualitativa baseada em seis estudos de caso e com recurso a entrevistas semiestruturadas a quadros superiores de PME exportadoras.

Os resultados dão conta de que as PME com grandes investimentos efetuados nos seus processos de internacionalização, através do recurso a elevados níveis de financiamento bancário, em associação com o período de pandemia COVID-19, não conseguiram ultrapassar com sucesso o processo de internacionalização e culminando na sua própria falências.

Este estudo mostra como, apesar de tais falhas, a atratividade e a reputação da marca, apoiadas na visão estratégica e na perseverança de novos investidores (empreendedores), permitiram o renascimento das marcas e abriram as portas à sua reentrada nos mercados internacionais.