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The purpose of this study is to summarize various presentations at EBSCO’s Technology Day, held in Manchester (UK) on 21 March 2023. Key topics included library user analytics, linked data, open-source software and library partnerships.

This study reports from the viewpoint of an attendee of the event. This summarises the main issues raised by each presentation and draws out the key learning points for practical situations.

The event focused on some new EBSCO products, including Panorama and BiblioGraph, as well as the open-source FOLIO product. The presenters highlighted technical detail involved in the various tools and drew attention to key issues to consider during product implementations.

This event highlighted key changes in metadata standards, with a shift from MARC to BIBFRAME now a tangible possibility. It highlighted how new library products in the future will be focused on adding value to how a library operates and makes decisions. The event underlined the importance of partnerships between the various actors in the library world, including suppliers.

Leaders lack essential information about their performance from their followers. In light of the frequently encountered error avoidance climate in the police, leaders should actively seek feedback to fill this gap. The purpose of this paper is to explore organizational, personal and situational antecedents of police leaders' daily feedback-seeking behavior.

The authors used a diary study and examined error-management climate, feedback orientation and two situational characteristics, namely daily occasions for feedback-seeking and daily time pressure. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze the N = 188 daily entries from 27 leaders (minimum of three daily entries per leader).

Results show that police leaders seldom seek daily feedback from their followers. A positive (i.e. learning-oriented) error-management climate and occasions for feedback-seeking foster leaders' daily feedback-seeking, whereas no main effects of feedback orientation and time pressure were found. However, time pressure moderated the relationship between occasions for feedback-seeking and daily feedback-seeking, with higher time pressure leading to a weaker relationship.

This is the first study empirically examining feedback-seeking as a key leadership behavior on a daily basis. The results show that organizational conditions promote leaders' feedback-seeking behavior and indicate organizations should foster an error-management climate to promote feedback-seeking of their leaders.

The purpose of this study is to investigate cathodic protection (CP) efficiency in the tidal zone and its associated processes.

Specific features of CP in the tidal zone, that is, persistence of a thin seawater film and insufficient cathodic potential due to ohmic drop, were addressed. In this preliminary study, carbon steel electrodes were polarized at two cathodic potentials (correct or insufficient protection) while immersed in 1 mm or 5 mm thick natural seawater layers. After CP interruption, the protective ability of the layers covering the steel electrodes was studied using various electrochemical methods, including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The layers were characterized by XRD.

The protective ability of calcareous deposits was increased in thin seawater films. Insufficient CP could promote protective aragonite/corrosion products layer.

The combined effects of thin seawater film and applied potential were never addressed, and the conclusions drawn from this preliminary study give new insight on the efficiency of CP in the tidal zone.

The main purpose of this study resides essentially in the development of a new tool to quantify the biomass in the bioreactor operating under steady state conditions.

Modeling is the most relevant tool for understanding the functioning of some complex processes such as biological wastewater treatment. A steady state model equation of activated sludge model 1 (ASM1) was developed, especially for autotrophic biomass (XBA) and for oxygen uptake rate (OUR). Furthermore, a respirometric measurement, under steady state and endogenous conditions, was used as a new tool for quantifying the viable biomass concentration in the bioreactor.

The developed steady state equations simplified the sensitivity analysis and allowed the autotrophic biomass (XBA) quantification. Indeed, the XBA concentration was approximately 212 mg COD/L and 454 mgCOD/L for SRT, equal to 20 and 40 d, respectively. Under the steady state condition, monitoring of endogenous OUR permitted biomass quantification in the bioreactor. Comparing XBA obtained by the steady state equation and respirometric tool indicated a percentage deviation of about 3 to 13%. Modeling bioreactor using GPS-X showed an excellent agreement between simulation and experimental measurements concerning the XBA evolution.

These results confirmed the importance of respirometric measurements as a simple and available tool for quantifying biomass.

Pierre Nelis joined a small group of artists working for a creative entrepreneur who had invented software to produce movies. He brought a great deal of marketing expertise to a team of technology creators, and it was this that ultimately allowed the firm to sell its software to movie industry leaders throughout the world. The firm – Softimage – was bought by Microsoft, which hired Pierre Nelis to oversee the integration process, and later to develop new communications products. Nelis has an outstanding ability to identify the elements needed by a firm to become more effective, and this led him to set up a one-of-a-kind external facilitation programme that went on to become a model for many business growth support organizations throughout the world, but especially in North America and Europe.

Cities remain an understudied unit of analysis for understanding the motives of multinational enterprises’ (MNE) foreign direct investment (FDI), with subnational locations in International Business (IB) research to date predominantly captured via the phenomenon of agglomeration. As regional integration projects, such as the European Union and to a lesser degree NAFTA, increasingly reduce the importance of national institutional environments, this paper argues regional and subnational levels become more important for studying MNE location choice. This paper aims to evaluate the explanatory contribution of regional and subnational levels of analysis to understanding MNE location choice.

A qualitative deductive bottom-up multiple-case study research design is adopted to study the city location choices and FDI motives of six automotive and six commercial banking companies. These purposefully sampled manufacturing and service MNEs have different home countries and regional orientations. Data on their foreign investments across the extended Triad of Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific were collected for the time period of 2000–2021.

Findings suggest that different classes of city tend to attract specific types of FDI and that these patterns might vary across sectors and be influenced by the regional strategic orientations of MNEs. Industry-specific findings reveal the importance of related and support industries and partners in a city location for the automotive MNEs, while the commercial banks seek investment opportunities in cities that allow acquisition targets that have an attractive customer based and will improve their local market knowledge.

The findings provide evidence in support of MNEs in manufacturing and service industries perceiving the attractiveness of three city types in different ways across the Triad regions.

Social sciences have discussed the host–guest relation from many theoretical lenses and perspectives. Violence as well as local crime has been studied as one of the major risks concerning tourism security. Anyway, less attention was given to homeless people and their interaction with foreign or local tourists. The purpose of this paper is oriented to explain how globalization has winners and losers, in which case, as noted, thousands of persons are excluded from the formal labor marketplace or the economic system year by year.

This is a conceptual paper that discusses critically not only the recent advances of sociology in urban tourism but also the connection between homeless people and tourists.

There is an urban underclass formed by those who have been excluded from the economic system. What is more important, such an underclass situates nearby luxury hotels and tourist destinations creating serious contradictions or zones of disputes. These contradictions have been approached by different sociologists since the turn of the 20th century.

The question of sustainability, as well as the idea of liveable cities, and the efficient organization of the city, have occupied a central position in the academic debate, above all after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present paper, the authors put in dialogue the contributions of Marc Auge with Zyggy Bauman toward a new understanding of this postmodern phenomenon.

Based on the metaphor of vagabonds and tourists, we give a snapshot of the problem of homelessness in Buenos Aires city and its effects on the tourism industry. Unlike other English-speaking countries where the cities are actively organized by the state, Buenos Aires city lacks a planned program to regulate and relocate homeless people. They dwell in nonplaces nearby tourists sleeping in the streets near luxury hotels (but for sure escaping any planning or governmental control).

This article aims to explain the role of philosophical anchors and research paradigms in business research, and how they can be extrapolated in the transformative era of automation, digitalization, hyperconnectivity, obligations, globalization and sustainability (ADHOGS) in the midst of disruption, volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (DVUCA).

This article entails a general review based on the 3Es of exposure, expertise and experience, delving into the ontological, epistemological, methodological, axiological and rhetorical aspects of the major research paradigms—i.e. positivism, post-positivism, constructivism, interpretivism and pragmatism—and their interplay with the emergent trends shaping business research.

This article underscores the multifaceted nature of business research in the modern day, with an increasing need for blending, or shifting between, research paradigms to address the complex issues arising from automation, digitalization, hyperconnectivity, obligations, globalization and sustainability (ADHOGS). This article also highlights the nuanced interplay between research paradigms and theoretical perspectives, demonstrating the rich, diverse potential of business research inquiries.

While this article provides a broad overview of the interplay between research paradigms and emerging trends, future research could explore each of these interplays in greater detail, conducting empirical studies or utilizing specific case studies.

Researchers and practitioners should be open to adopting, combining or switching between different paradigms according to the demands of their research questions, context and trends shaping the business landscape, thereby underscoring the need for methodological flexibility and reflexivity in business research.

The shift toward embracing digital transformations and integrating sustainability in business research holds significant implications, driving socially responsible and sustainable business practices at the micro-level, and by extension, industrial revolution and sustainable development at the macro-level.

This article offers a holistic and contextualized view of the philosophy of science and research paradigms for business research, bridging the gap between philosophical foundations and contemporary research trends.

This study aims to present and explain the concept of Metaverse, which will revolutionize nearly every industry and can be regarded as the 3D version of the internet. Especially, the paper explores the “building blocks” of the Metaverse and how it is functioning in a case study.

The Metaverse concept is explained by the Nike–Roblox case study, where the authors explore the customer benefits, that are provided by the Nikeland project.

The Nike–Roblox case study is showing that virtual platforms, content services, consumer and business behavior are the most important and visible “building blocks” to the Nikeland visitors (customers) in the Nike–Roblox alliance. The Metaverse is gaining popularity among the big global brands. It is expected that the big breakthrough for Metaverse will happen when the next layer of brands, the regional and local brands, will start penetrating the Metaverse.

Metaverse will be the new future marketing platform for presenting and giving life to all kinds of brands in the 3D interactive digital space. Metaverse is a digital copy of how we are working in the physical world. In this 3D digital space, the users can come together via avatars that resemble them. This will have an enormous effect on how companies will use the marketing function and how we will communicate with each other in future.

The aim of this study was to investigate the use of software for the automation of academic libraries in Sialkot. This study consisted of three objectives, including recognizing the reasons to adopt the software for library automation, investigating the problems faced by librarians while using library software and identifying the satisfaction level with the attributes of library software.

A quantitative research approach was used to achieve the objectives of this study. A survey was conducted to collect data from the library information science professionals working in the academic libraries of Sialkot. The data was collected from 46 library professionals through a structured questionnaire.

The findings showed that the economic cost of implementation, maintenance and the software providing multilingual support were the major reasons for adoption of software for the purpose of automation. In this study, compliance with the internet, noncooperation in library automation by university/institution, availability of training facilities, insufficient library budget, a lack of financial/economic resources, staff transfer and a lack of consultancy and technical service were identified as major issues when using library automation software. However, the respondents were quite satisfied with the performance of software attributes including circulation modules, easy to use cataloguing modules, reports’ modules, software attributes of administration modules and multilingual facility.

This study persuades library and information science professionals to automate their libraries through the adoption of library software.