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The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative picture of the state of the art of the literature on digitalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as an enabler for their internationalisation process and as a comprehensive view of the specific domains impacted by digital technologies as well as their repercussions on the international outreach.

A systematic review which leverages a descriptive analysis of extant literature and an axial coding technique has been conducted to shed light on the current knowledge and to identify primary research areas and future research lines.

The research indicates that digitalisation impacts the internationalisation of SMEs in three specific domains: (1) internationalisation through the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) technologies and e-commerce platforms; (2) international expansion through the digitalisation of value chain activities and (3) international outreach through knowledge acquisition on digital platforms.

The value of this study is threefold. First, the authors attempt to systematically review the literature on SMEs digitalisation and internationalisation and provide a holistic perspective on the intertwining of these two research streams. Second, the authors propose a novel conceptualisation on the dimensions of SMEs digitalisation as enablers to internationalisation. Third, the authors put forward promising future lines of research.

1. Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

2. Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

3. Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

4. Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

5. SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.

Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.

This chapter examines the six smart city dimensions that serve as pillars in smart city projects. These dimensions are crucial in the development and evaluation of smart city initiatives, representing key areas for consideration. This chapter offers a detailed analysis of the smart city ecosystem, focusing on the governance, environment, people, living, mobility, and economy dimensions. It challenges the prevailing media portrayal of the smart city strategy and engages in the current academic debate surrounding these dimensions. This chapter defines, discusses, and explains each dimension, incorporating case studies from cities such as Copenhagen, San Francisco, Lisbon, and Barcelona. It also includes interviews and factual data to highlight the internal implementation and objectives of the smart city within each dimension. This chapter provides a comprehensive understanding of the smart city ecosystem, its implementation, and the potential benefits and challenges associated with each dimension.

This study aims to apply the appreciative inquiry approach (AI) to develop a tourism strategy for poverty alleviation in marginalised communities. The focus is to provide practical insights for leveraging tourism to drive positive socio-economic change for the impoverished, using Rosetta, a port city in Egypt with cultural and historical significance, as a case study.

This qualitative applied study uses the four-D phases of AI and thematic analysis to strategise tourism development in Rosetta. Through interviews, focus groups and field visits, the study identifies tourism potential, stakeholder aspirations and actionable strategies for sustainable development. The approach prioritises a bottom-up, community-centric and stakeholder-involved process, aiming for inclusive and equitable growth.

The study revealed Rosetta’s underutilised tourism potential, emphasising heritage tourism. Although tourism offers some economic benefits, its impact on alleviating poverty in Rosetta remains limited. A holistic strategy for tourism development in Rosetta is proposed for economic growth and poverty reduction, focusing on sustainable management, local empowerment, enhanced marketing, improved infrastructure and diversified tourism offerings.

While AI is not new in qualitative studies, the novelty of this study lies in its application to tourism planning for poverty alleviation in a marginalised community like Rosetta, introducing a comprehensive tourism strategy with an original framework applicable to comparable destinations. The study’s significance is emphasised by providing actionable strategies for policymakers, valuable insights for practitioners and enriching the discourse and methodology on pro-poor tourism for academics, representing a step towards filling the gap between theoretical concepts and practical strategies.

Preservice English teachers are expected to use literary theories and criticism to read and respond to literary texts. Over the past century, two of the most common approaches to literary encounters in secondary schools have been New Criticism – particularly the practice of close reading – and Rosenblatt's transactional theory, both of which have been expanded through critical theorizing along the way. Elucidated by data produced in iterative experiments with Frost's “The Road Not Taken,” the authors reconceptualize the reader, the text, and close reading through the critical posthuman theory of reading with love as a generative way of thinking outside of the habitual practices of European humanisms.

In “thinking with” (Jackson and Mazzei, 2023) desiring-machines, affect, Man and critical posthuman theory, this post qualitative inquiry maps how the “The Road Not Taken” worked when students plugged into it iteratively in processes of reading with love, an affirmative and creative series of experiments with literature.

This study mapped how respect for authority, the battle of good v evil, individualism and meritocracy operated as desiring-machines that channeled most participants’ initial readings of “The Road Not Taken.” In subsequent experiments with the poem, the authors demonstrate that reading with love as a critical posthuman process of reading invites participants to exceed the logics of recognition and representation, add or invent additional ways of being and relating to the world and thereby produce the possibility to transform a world toward greater inclusivity and equity.

The authors reconceptualize the categories of “the reader” and “the text” from Rosenblatt’s transactional theory within practices of reading with love, which they situate within a critical posthuman theory. They eschew separating efferent and aesthetic reading stances while also recuperating practices of “close reading,” historically associated with the New Critics, by demonstrating the generativity of critically valenced “close reading” within a Deleuzian process of reading with love.

The new ways to complete financial transactions have been developed by setting up mobile payment (m-payment) platforms and such platforms to access banking in the financial mainstream can transact as never before. But, does m-payment have veiled consequences? To seek an answer, the research was undertaken to explore the dark sides of m-payment for consumers by extending the theory of innovation resistance (IR) and by measuring non-adoption intention (NAI).

Three hundred individuals using popular online m-payment apps such as Paytm, PhonePe, Amazon Pay and Google Pay were surveyed for the primary data. IBM AMOS based structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data.

Each m-payment transaction leaves a digital record, making some vulnerable consumers concerned about privacy threats. Lack of global standards prevents consumers from participating in the m-payment system properly until common interfaces are established based on up-to-date standards. Self-compassion (SC) characteristics such as anxiety, efficacy, fatigue, wait-and-see tendencies and the excessive choice of technology effect contribute to the non-adoption of m-payment.

This study proposes a threat model and empirically explores the dark sides of m-payment. In addition, it also unveils the moderator's role of SC in building the structural relationship between IR and NAI.

This study aims to assess the sociopsychological impact that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu’s (BJJ) can have on the subjective wellbeing of practitioners.

Data was collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews (N = 8) and were analysed using thematic analysis by taking an inductive approach.

Improvements in the wellbeing of practitioners can be made via focusing on specific known constructs which have previously shown to increase subjective wellbeing. They included the development of mental toughness, progression towards meaningful goals and/or healthy habits and behaviours and the forming and maintaining of positive social relationships.

The present work demonstrates the psychological benefits of BJJ practice on several psychological wellbeing targets, albeit in a modest sample size.

The heightened emphasis on mental wellbeing in the general population has added increasing pressure on mental health services (Steptoe et al., 2015; Diener et al., 2018; Johnson et al., 2018; Wicking & Dean 2020). Therefore, it is of theoretical and practical advantage to explore novel ways to help individuals with both their mental health and wellbeing.

The present study seeks to add to an emerging field of research which proposes that intentional activities such as BJJ can be integrated alongside traditional approaches to therapy in their promise to help those recovering from mental health issues.

This study aims to evaluate the quality of a speech and language therapy (SLT) swallow service provided to adults with intellectual disability (ID) by exploring the process and outcome factors; to explore the process of what is done to and for the patient including identifying dysphagia, choking and pneumonia risk, typical interventions and management; examine clinical outcomes; and explore the relationship of outcomes with risk factors, satisfaction with the service and the impact of the service on the number of choking incidents and admissions to acute hospital with swallow concerns.

There were three specific work packages: (1) collecting and scrutinising patient data from the clinical record for adults with ID referred to the SLT swallow service over a six-month period. The researcher created aims, defined the limits to achieve the aims, designed a standardised data collection form, set out where data was in the clinical record, piloted, set limits for collection and trained reviewers; (2) gathering experience and satisfaction surveys from patients, caregivers and referrers over the six-month study period; and (3) monitoring choking adverse incident reports and hospital admission with swallow concerns for the whole ID population.

Choking and hospital admission were the main reasons for referral, and pneumonia risk significantly predicted dysphagia impairment. The research highlighted common dysphagia risk factors, interventions and recommendations for this population. The SLT swallow service is a quality service that is highly valued by patients, their caregivers and referrers. The service achieves significant clinical improvements, helps identify dysphagia and provides management to reduce associated risks.

This study found common dysphagia risk factors, interventions and recommendations; it also found that the therapy outcome measures/Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy online outcome tool was a meaningful outcome measure, and that pneumonia risk significantly predicted dysphagia impairment, all of which could inform the identified dysphagia research priorities for this population.

Naming usual care in treatment and recommendations could help ensure a fair service and could help form quality indicators. People with ID, their caregivers and staff generated valuable ideas for improvement, and further involvement work could create a logic model for the service. Other future work could explore the use of screening tools, increase multidisciplinary team working, improve access to instrumental assessments, raise awareness of swallowing and promote important oral health and medication reviews. By using this information to shape quality improvement work and policies, one can work toward addressing high health-related inequalities and preventable deaths associated with dysphagia in this vulnerable population.

It may be useful to raise awareness that adults with ID age earlier and that one should not exclude them from older people’s services because of an age threshold, often set higher than their life expectancy. This study highlighted a possible inequality of access issue for adults with ID who do not have direct care or day care staff. There is a need to increase access to awareness training so caregivers and general practitioners can recognise swallow difficulties and know how to make a referral for a swallow assessment.

Overall, the evaluation of the swallow service to adults with ID suggests that SLT have a quality service for adults with ID that is highly valued and provides significant clinical improvements. By building on these strengths, SLT could extend the reach, influence and impact of their services to help those adults with ID who have emerging swallow difficulties or who do not access the service.

The purpose of this study is to define and investigate the governance requirements of supply chain finance (SCF).

A qualitative analysis of 849 news articles published in UK newspapers (2000–2022) using the Gioia method.

SCF governance relies on developing capacities for reflexive scrutiny at two stages: (1) prior to entering into an SCF relationship and (2) during its operation. Based on the notion of SCF as a complex adaptive system, we theorise SCF governance requirements as a dual-layered semipermeable boundary. The semipermeability of the two layers allows for a dynamic exchange between the SCF system and its environment. The first layer is the capacity to selectively enable or control the entry and access of certain actors and practices into the SCF system. The second layer is a capacity for ongoing scrutiny of the SCF operation and its development. Further, we identify five aspects of governance to be enabled, i.e. enhancing adaptability, building confidence, improving efficiency, advancing technology and promoting transparency; and four aspects to be controlled, i.e. preventing abuse of power, curbing fraud risk, constraining operational risk and restricting risky extensions to SCF practices.

Our dynamic framework can guide supply chain (SC) members in making decisions about whether to participate, or continue to operate, in an SCF relationship. Moreover, the findings have implications for policymakers and authorities who oversee entry/access and the involvement of SCF providers, particularly, fintech firms.

The study contributes to both the SC and governance literature by providing a systematic analysis of what SCF governance has to accomplish. Our novel contribution lies in its analysis of SCF governance based on a complex adaptive system approach, which expands the existing literature where SCF is described in rather static terms. More specifically, it suggests a need for a dynamic duality of SCF governance through the semipermeable boundary that selectively enables and controls certain SCF actors and practices.

Personality characteristics have a significant impact on the economic segment of women entrepreneurs. Due to gender biases or other factors, women entrepreneurs are fewer in India than in other countries. The purpose of this study is to identify the personality factors and challenges that affect their growth and success.

Logistic regression was used to show the impact of personality characteristics and firm performance and the moderating effect of challenges between personality characteristics and firm performance.

The findings revealed a significant impact of personality factors on firm performance, the absence of moderating effects of challenges and the presence of a mediation effect of enterprise age and enterprise location.

This research will help policymakers adopt policies and plans to reduce obstacles and challenges so that the economic conditions of women’s entrepreneurship can transform.

Women in the 21st century still live in a male-dominated patriarchal society because they face the problem of financial capital.

The results show the impact of personality traits and challenges on the firm performance of women’s entrepreneurship.