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This paper explores the intricate interdependencies among core components of airline business models (BMs). In the airline industry, where BMs are complex systems, a successful BM requires an orchestrated configuration of various components. However, there is a paucity of research in BM literature pertaining to the interrelationships among key components of airline BMs.

Employing interpretive structural modelling, we gathered input from experts in Iran to assess the driving power and dependency of elements within airline BMs.

Our findings highlight the significance of operating environment conditions and competitive market dynamics as pivotal external components shaping the foundational structure. Value proposition, customer relationship management, and process monitoring are crucial linkage components that drive power and dependency. Notably, capturing value is positioned with the highest dependency.

We utilised the ISM technique to visualize interdependencies within airline business models, aiding strategic decision-making. Our findings suggest aligning business and operational strategies with market needs ensures effective value creation and capture, maintaining competitive advantage in the airline industry. In addition, our research reveals critical factors affecting value creation and capture, emphasising monitoring the operating environment and competitive market, and strategically managing value propositions and customer relationship initiatives in the airline industry. We advise adapting business models to external changes for sustained growth and recommend regular monitoring of industry trends and customer expectations.

Framed within complexity theory, these insights offer valuable perspectives on identifying and situating critical BM components in the airline industry. The practical implications derived from this study serve as strategic tools for airline managers and potential investors to optimise the design of their airline BMs.

The study aims to identify and understand the underlying behavioral tendencies and motivations influencing investor sentiments and examines the relationship between these underlying factors and investment decisions during the COVID-19-induced financial risks.

The study uses the primary data and information collected from 300 Indian retail equity investors using a nonprobability sampling technique, specifically purposive and snowball sampling. This research uses the insights from Phuoc Luong and Thi Thu Ha (2011) and Shefrin (2002) to delineate behavioral factors influencing investment decisions. Structural equation modeling estimates the causal relationship between underlying behavioral factors and investment decisions during the COVID-19-induced financial risks.

The study establishes that the “Regret Aversion,” “Gambler’s Fallacy” and “Greed” significantly influence investment decisions, and provide a comprehensive understanding of how psychological motivations shape investor behavior. Notably, “Mental Accounting” and “Conservatism” exhibit insignificance, possibly influenced by the unique socioeconomic context of the pandemic. The research contributes to 35% of variance understanding and prompts the researchers and policymakers to tailor investment strategies aligned to these behavioral tendencies.

The findings hold policy implications for investors and policymakers and provide tailored recommendations including investor education programs and regulatory measures to ensure a resilient and informed investment community in the context of India's evolving financial landscapes.

Theoretically, behavior tendencies and motivations have been strongly linked to investment decisions in the stock market. Yet, empirical evidence on this relationship is limited in developing countries where investors focus on risk management. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to document the influence of underlying behavioral tendencies and motivation factors on investment decisions regarding retail equity in a developing country.

Since 2010, the eastern Mediterranean has witnessed a transformative narrative with the discovery of natural gas reserves off the coasts of Cyprus and Israel. This pivotal development has drawn attention to the region, where Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, Turkey, and Greece share maritime borders. The emergence of natural gas has reshaped geopolitical dynamics, and Western countries assume to reduce their reliance on Russia for energy supplies. This chapter explores the magnitude of natural gas discoveries and production in Cyprus and Israel, examining the interconnection of their fields and the ambitious endeavor of laying a 1,900-km underwater pipeline to the Greek island of Crete. Additionally, it highlights the pivotal roles played by key regional actors such as Israel, Turkey, and Egypt in shaping security and energy negotiations. However, Turkey has a significant position in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, but tensions have arisen as neighboring countries seek to limit Turkey’s involvement in regional energy discussions, viewing its policies as a potential threat, thereby exacerbating Turkey’s regional interventions, particularly in Cyprus. Each of these countries in the Middle East is struggling to get more of the cake. Above all, Israel has been a gas importer throughout its history and now dreams of becoming a natural gas exporter to Europe.

The expansion of online shopping aligned with challenging economic conditions has contributed to increasing fraudulent retail product returns. Retailers employ numerous interventions typically determined by embedded perspectives within the company (supply side) rather than consumer-based assessments of their effectiveness (demand side). This study aims to understand how customers evaluate counter-fraud measures on opportunistic returns fraud in the UK. Based on the fraud triangle and the theory of planned behaviour, we develop an empirically informed framework to assist retail practice.

We collected 485 valid survey responses about consumer attitudes regarding which interventions are effective against different types of returns fraud. First, a principal component section evaluates the policies' effectiveness to identify any policy grouping that could help prioritise specific sets of policies. Second, cluster analysis follows a two-stage approach, where cluster size is determined, and then survey respondents are partitioned into subgroups based on how similar their beliefs are regarding the effectiveness of anti-fraud policies.

We identify policies relating to perceived effectiveness of interventions and create customer profiles to assist retailers in conceptualising potential opportunistic fraudsters. Our product returns fraud framework adopts a consumer perspective to capture the perceived behavioural control of potential fraudsters. Results suggest effectiveness of different types of interventions vary between different types of consumers, which leads to the development of propositions to combat the fraud.

This study is unique in assessing the perceived effectiveness of a range of interventions based on data collection and advanced analytics to combat fraudulent product returns in omnichannel retail.

This paper examines how different configurations of societal impact are pursued by purpose-driven organizations (PDOs) and how these configurations align with the application of varying supply chain design (SCD) practices.

This multi-method study uses quantitative data from 1588 B Corps and qualitative data from 316 B Corps to examine how PDOs align SCD with the pursuit of diverse types of societal impact. The authors first conduct a cluster analysis to group organizations based on the impact they create. Second, qualitative content analysis connects impact with enabling SCD elements.

The analysis of the five identified clusters provides detailed empirical insights on influencers, design decisions and building blocks adopted by PDOs to drive a range of societal impacts. Specifically, the nature of the impact pursued affects (1) whether a PDO will be more influenced by a need in the political environment or an opportunity in the industry environment, (2) the relative importance of the design of social flows versus material flows and (3) the need to develop new relational resources with beneficiaries versus leveraging existing capabilities to manage inter-firm processes.

This study responds to calls to disaggregate different dimensions of societal impact and examines the relationship between SCD and a breadth of sustainability impacts for different stakeholders. In doing so, the authors identify four SCD pathways organizations can follow to achieve specific societal impacts. This study is also the first to employ a supply chain perspective in the study of certified B Corps.

We wanted to find out how infant multinationals originating from Poland enact opportunities in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries.

We conducted a comparative case study of four Polish firms operating in SSA.

We found that when entering SSA, studied firms employed effectual decision-making logic. Thus, their internationalization was means-driven, serendipitous, partnership-oriented, based on the “affordable loss” principle and focused on shaping opportunities in SSA, rather than predicting, analyzing and planning any firm-specific assets or capabilities.

We illuminated the nature of the means employed in effectual internationalization and the role of partners (“effectual stakeholders”) in this process. Thus, we contribute to a deeper understanding of how infant multinationals navigate extreme uncertainty in the emerging SSA markets.

Organizations remain a vital sociological topic, but organizational sociology, as a subfield, has evolved significantly since its inception. In this paper, I argue that organization sociology is becoming increasingly disconnected from organizational theory, as currently conceived. The focus of sociological research on organizations has become more empirically grounded in the study of social problems and how organizations contribute to them. Sociologists continue to see organizations as important actors in society that play a role in shaping social order and as contexts in which social processes play out. I propose two main sociological approaches for organizational research, which I describe as “organizations within society” and “society within organizations.” The first approach examines the role of organizations as building blocks of social structure and as social actors in their own right. The second approach treats organizations as platforms and locations of social interactions and the building of community. These approaches are somewhat disconnected from the sort of grand theorizing that characterizes much of organizational theory. I argue that the problem-oriented sociology of these two approaches offers a vital way for organizational scholars to expand and theoretically revitalize the field.

The purpose of this study is to develop a new hybrid method that combines interpretative structural modeling (ISM) and matrix cross-impact multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) to investigate the influencing factors of sustainable infrastructure vulnerability (SIV).

(1) Literature review and case study were used to identify the possible influencing factors; (2) a semi-structured interview was conducted to identify representative factors and the interrelationships among influencing factors; (3) ISM was adopted to identify the hierarchical structure of factors; (4) MICMAC was used to analyze the driving power (DRP) and dependence power (DEP) of each factor and (5) Semi-structured interview was used to propose strategies for overcoming SIV.

Results indicate that (1) 18 representative factors related to SIV were identified; (2) the relationship between these factors was divided into a five-layer hierarchical structure. The 18 representative factors were divided into driving factors, dependent factors, linkage factors and independent factors and (3) 12 strategies were presented to address the negative effects of these factors.

The findings illustrate the factors influencing SIV and their hierarchical structures, which can benefit the stakeholders and practitioners of an infrastructure project by encouraging them to take effective countermeasures to deal with related SIVs.

The sporting body in Indian sports studies has been studied in the context of changing power relations in society, and this essay continues in a similar vein. The significance of sport in India evolved from being used as a means of control by the coloniser to becoming a point of resistance and then a tool for nation-building for the colonised peoples. Post-liberalisation wrought significant changes to the social and cultural landscape and brought with it a singular focus upon the individual, as the idea of the nation receded to the background and the link between sport and self-making became prominent. In the context of the changing cultures of sport and the body from colonial to post-liberalisation India and the growing prominence of sport in popular culture, this chapter turns a critical eye towards the representation of sport in three Nike advertisements between 2007 and 2016 with the understanding that these representations are shaped by the workings of power and ideology in society and therefore provide a window to access the evolution of sports discourse over time. Through this examination, it explores the complex dynamic between the liberation of the postcolonial sporting body from discursive shackles and its evolution – and possible entrapment – into becoming a placard of the neoliberal vision and what this means in terms of the decoloniality discourse.