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The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of religiosity on ethical consumption of consumers. It also aims to measure the mediating effect of materialism and guilt.

The study collected data from 360 Indian consumers through an online survey.

Religiosity was found to have a strong and significant influence on consumers’ ethical consumption behaviour. It was also found that materialism and guilt mediate the relationship between religiosity and ethical consumption. Findings reveal that a higher level of religiosity in consumers guides them to avoid unwanted behaviour such as unethical consumption.

The study provides an insight into the significance of values in ethical consumption decisions. It examines the mediational effect of materialism and guilt between religiosity and ethical consumption.

Marketers can formulate more successful communication strategies by taking into account the level of religiosity of Indian consumers and underlying cultural foundations within the society. Marketers can also use taglines or promotional messages to promote sacrifice for the well-being of the environment.

This research is a guiding step towards studying the influence of religiosity on ethical consumption through guilt and materialism of consumers in an emerging nation.

Organizations are facing several challenges in the current challenging business environment. The current study explores how counterproductive work behavior (CWB) affects bio-medical companies' firm performance in Pakistan. The study considers the mediating role of organizational culture and its impact on CWB and a firm's performance.

Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire. For data collection, 300 questionnaires were distributed among employees working in biomedical companies. Statistical analysis such as descriptive statistics, Pearson moment correlation and structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques was used to analyze the study variable's relationship and its effect on the firm's performance.

The study results revealed that CWB and organizational culture significantly influence firm performance directly and indirectly. Moreover, organizational culture partially mediates the relationship between CWB and companies' performance.

The current study plays a significant role in the firm's policy directions. There are limited research and information accessible to biomedical firms in Pakistan. Counterproductive job habits wind up becoming something that significantly affects the firm performance. This research adds to human resource management, corporate management and the business strategy literature.

This paper aims to provide a valid insight into consumers' minds while considering word of mouth (WOM), brand image and uniqueness as independent variables while considering the tourism industry as the primary stakeholder.

The study adopts qualitative research methods and data collected from 1,033 respondents using convenience sampling methodology. The data are collected from different tourists spots in China and Pakistan. The PROCESS macro was utilized in this study using SPSS version 25.0 to inspect the impacts by using Model 4 and the conditional effects indirectly by utilizing Model 14.

Customer's intimacy, search for novel and unexplored destinations highlight WOM interactions and perceived service value. Service value, interactional justice and professional attitude of hotel management mediated all the given relationships significantly. The brand image does not mediate any significant associations. Perceived service value and brand image predict customer's loyalty, and WOM is the direct measure of their intentions, and these variables are market trend indicators. A tourist's response toward different destinations is described in this study with comparative analysis of Chinese and Pakistani tourists. The study results showed a significantly positive relationship between hotel management professional behavior, customer's loyalty, customer's intimacy and WOM.

The recruited population might not be represented as the broader and larger visitor population, resulting in restricting establishing tactics. Moreover, this study's results provide significant insight into a tourism industry, hence providing a chance to manage customer loyalty better.

This study contributes significantly to the body of knowledge and provides remarkable insight from the managerial perspective. Interactional justice results in significant value for hotel management directors and top management, front desk staff and operatives and front level employees and managers. Consumer sensitivity of fairness in interpersonal dealings calls for behavioral changes in frontline employees, especially those directly dealing with hotel visitors. Hotel staff and management should formulate a system to deal with the demands and needs of visitors. It should describe the rights and obligations of visitors and ensure that each customer is treated equally and with respect. Customers should be motivated to read the survey questionnaires kept in their rooms and offer their views on the services provided. This strategy might increase the customers' sense of empowerment and leading to notions of fairness in individual encounters.

This study provides an insight into the customer's minds while considering essential variables that include WOM, brand image, perceived service value and uniqueness.

The manufacturing paradigm is shifting from being a central system to a distributed system and is increasingly becoming dependent on wide area networks for the management of information services. The information subsystem employed in a manufacturing setting is susceptible to getting congested when used in a wide area network setting during peak hours. The issue of information and control subsystem integration and the characterization of network congestion have been researched in this paper using faded information field architecture.

A wide area network was simulated with all its associated components like routers, switches, gateways, etc. by programming a simulation engine. The simulation engine mimicked a wide area network employed in a manufacturing enterprise.

The architecture holds the promise to address the integration and congestion issues in a manufacturing system by employing autonomous decentralized and autonomous information fading techniques. Results show the effectiveness of the proposed technique in addressing the issue of network congestion in a distributed wide area network.

The issue of information and control subsystems of a manufacturing system has been reported earlier. However, the network‐centric problems like congestion during peak hours of operation have not been addressed in these emerging paradigms. The research reported in this paper focuses on the congestion issue and could be useful to wide area networked manufacturing system designers and managers.

This study's main objective is to investigate the influence of brand credibility on the intention to purchase organic food. In addition, this research studies the moderating role of customer ethnocentricity as well as the mediating role of customer value.

To explore correlations between brand credibility and purchase intentions, cross-sectional data were collected from 433 Indian consumers. The data were analysed by structural equation modelling.

The findings indicate that brand credibility is positively related to purchasing intention. The association between brand credibility and purchasing intentions is partially mediated by customer value. Customer ethnocentrism was also shown to have a negative moderation effect. Healthiness, high quality and sensory properties (i.e. natural taste) were found to be some of the most significant organic food characteristics, according to Indian consumers.

The research is confined to India's geographical area, specifically the National Capital Regions.

To increase the purchase frequency of local or global branded organic food, businesses can include rational features in their marketing method such as the health benefits compared to the conventional product, a better emphasis on environmental safety and the social advantages of organic food.

This study develops an integrative model, including brand credibility (PBG & PBL), to predict organic food purchase intentions. This is an important contribution as, according to the results of the literature review, no previous studies have analysed these relationships.

This study aims to explore how operational coordination affects mass customization capability (MCC) via organizational agility, the double-edged sword effect of customer need diversity and the moderating effect of competitive intensity based on dynamic capabilities perspective.

This study examines the research hypotheses using hierarchical regression analysis by collecting data from 277 Chinese firms.

The results reveal that organizational agility partially mediates the impacts of operational coordination on product-oriented and service-oriented MCC. Customer need diversity is positively related to operational coordination, whereas negatively moderates the relationship between operational coordination and organizational agility. Moreover, competitive intensity negatively moderates the relationship between organizational agility and service-oriented MCC.

This study mainly used perceptual scales to measure organizational agility. There is a need to measure agility through Agility Index which consists of features' combination that enables agility.

Managers would thus do well to integrate business activities with supply chain partners and strive to foster an agile organization. Additionally, managers should take the leadership to assess the customer need and invest time and resources to respond to it when needed even though the response may be difficult.

Although the importance of MCC in meeting personalized customer needs has been recognized, whether and how customer need diversity affects MCC remains unclear. This study provides a framework to study the relationships between customer need diversity and MCC, which deepens our understanding of how to enhance MCC to respond to diverse customer needs.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly overwhelmed our societies, shocked the global economy and disturbed normal business operations. While such impacts of COVID-19 are becoming clearer, the effects of the disease on business operations are more common. This study mainly focuses on identifying the factors that affect the smooth operation of businesses during a pandemic situation.

Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to rate the result index. A total of 40 professionals and experts of different businesses were listed on stock exchanges, and asked to rank the key variables with relative indices and weighting methods.

The results of the AHP successfully assigned weighting scores to all key important factors during the COVID-19 pandemic situation that businesses should focus on, with economic factors receiving the highest score of 60%. Likewise, the other factors that impact values for business operations are reported as social (22%), legal (12.2%), technological (5.16%) and political (0.57%). The results of this study also match with the current policies adopted by different government and nongovernment agencies like the guidelines of the World Health Organization and some most recent research results.

In the hectic and growing environment under COVID-19 pandemic, more contributions are not enough, and it is helpful for the whole business industry and society by stipulating more views. This study aims to overview the global impacts and challenges of COVID-19 pandemic on business operations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of nickel-plated graphene (Ni-GNS) on the microstructure and mechanical properties of 96.5Sn3Ag0.5Cu (SAC305) lead-free solder joints before and after an electro-migration (EM) experiment.

In this paper, SAC305 solder alloy doped with 0.1 Wt.% Ni-GNS was prepared via the powder metallurgy method. A U-shaped sample structure was also designed and prepared to conduct an EM experiment. The EM experiment was carried out with a current density of 1.5 × 104 A/cm2. The microstructural and mechanical evolutions of both solder joints under EM stressing were comparatively studied using SEM and nanoindentation.

The experimental results showed that for the SAC305 solder, the interfacial intermetallic compounds (IMC) formulated a protrusion with an average height of 0.42 µm at the anode after 360 h of EM stressing; however, despite this, the surface of the composite solder joint was relatively smooth. During the stressing period, the interfacial IMC on the anode side of the plain SAC305 solder showed a continuous increasing trend, while the IMC at the cathode presented a decreasing trend for its thickness as the stressing time increased; after 360 h of stressing, some cracks and voids had formed on the cathode side. For the SAC305/ Ni-GNS composite solder, a continuous increase in the thickness of the interfacial IMC was found on both the anode and cathode side; the growth rate of the interfacial IMC at the anode was higher than that at the cathode. The nanoindentation results showed that the hardness of the SAC305 solder joint presented a gradient distribution after EM stressing, while the hardness data showed a relatively homogeneous distribution in the SAC305/ Ni-GNS solder joint.

The experimental results showed that the Ni-GNS reinforcement could effectively mitigate the EM behavior in solder joints under high current stressing. Specifically, the Ni particles that plated the graphene sheets can work as a fixing agent to suppress the diffusion and migration of Sn and Cu atoms by forming Sn-Cu-Ni IMC. In addition, the nanoidentation results also indicated that the addition of the Ni-GNS reinforcement was very helpful in maintaining the mechanical stability of the solder joint. These findings have provided a theoretical and experimental basis for the practical application of this novel composite solder with high current densities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of fullerene (FNS) reinforcements on the microstructure and mechanical properties of 96.5Sn3Ag0.5Cu (SAC305) lead-free solder joints under isothermal ageing and electrical-migration (EM) stressing.

In this paper, SAC305 solder alloy doped with 0.1 Wt.% FNS was prepared via the powder metallurgy method. A sandwich-like sample and a U-shaped sample were designed and prepared to conduct an isothermal ageing test and an EM test. The isothermal ageing test was implemented under vacuum atmosphere at 150°C, whereas the EM experiment was carried out with a current density of 1.5 × 10⁴ A/cm². The microstructural and mechanical evolutions of both plain and composite solder joints after thermal ageing and EM stressing were comparatively studied.

A growth of Ag₃Sn intermetallic compounds (IMCs) in solder matrix and Cu-Sn interfacial IMCs in composite solder joints was notably suppressed under isothermal ageing condition, whereas the hardness and shear strength of composite solder joints significantly outperformed those of non-reinforced solder joints throughout the ageing period. The EM experimental results showed that for the SAC305 solder, the interfacial IMCs formulated a protrusion at the anode after 360 h of EM stressing, whereas the surface of the composite solder joint was relatively smooth. During the stressing period, the interfacial IMC on the anode side of the plain SAC305 solder showed a continuous increasing trend, whereas the IMC at the cathode presented a decreasing trend for its thickness as the stressing time increased; after 360 h of stressing, some cracks and voids had formed on the cathode side. For the SAC305/FNS composite solder, a continuous increase in the thickness of the interfacial IMC was found on both the anode and cathode sides; the growth rate of the interfacial IMC at the anode was higher than that at the cathode. The nanoindentation results showed that the hardness of the SAC305 solder joint presented a gradient distribution after EM stressing, whereas the hardness data showed a relatively homogeneous distribution in the SAC305/FNS solder joint.

The experimental results showed that the FNS reinforcement could effectively mitigate the failure risk in solder joints under isothermal ageing and high-current stressing. Specifically, the FNS particles in solder joints can work as a barrier to suppress the diffusion and migration of Sn and Cu atoms. In addition, the nanoidentation results also indicated that the addition of the FNS reinforcement was very helpful in maintaining the mechanical stability of the solder joint. These findings have provided a theoretical and experimental basis for the practical application of this novel composite solder with high-current densities.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated social risks around the world, highlighting inequalities and eroding social cohesion in and between nations. The challenges posed by this global crisis to world governments can be overcome with cooperation between the public and private sectors. Several studies support the importance of external corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in sharing knowledge with citizens and external stakeholders, with benefits for the company and for society. Few studies have investigated the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and sustainability. This work aims to investigate the influence of the gender variable in the sharing of CSR knowledge, focusing on the area of human rights.

The panel regression analysis was performed on a sample of 660 European companies listed over the years 2017–2020. The hypotheses tested in panel regression were then corroborated by a further test.

The results show a positive influence of women directors in the external disclosure of human rights. Evidence would assign a positive role to gender in sharing knowledge.

The findings offer new insights into the role of gender on KM and sharing. The results show that gender can be a factor that stimulates CSR knowledge. The presence of women directors can be a useful tool to increase the relational capital of the companies and to share knowledge outside the company.

The study contributes to the poor literature between knowledge sharing and sustainability. Evidence would assign a positive role to gender in sharing knowledge.