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Quality 4.0 is being presented as the new stage of quality development. However, its overlying concept and rationale are still hard to define. To better understand what different authors and studies advocate being Quality 4.0, a systematic literature review was undertaken on the topic. This paper presents the results of such review, providing some avenues for further research on quality management.

The documents for the systematic literature review have been searched on the Scopus database, using the search equation: [TITLE-ABS-KEY (“Quality 4.0”) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (Quality Management” AND (“Industry 4.0” OR “Fourth Industr*” OR i4.0))]. Documents were filtered by language and by type. Of the 367 documents identified, 146 were submitted to exploratory content analysis.

The analyzed documents essentially provide theoretical discussions on what Quality 4.0 is or should be. Five categories have emerged from the content analysis undertaken: Industry 4.0 and the Rise of a New Approach to Quality; Motivations, Readiness Factors and Barriers to a Quality 4.0 Approach; Digital Quality Management Systems; Combination of Quality Tools and Lean Methodologies and Quality 4.0 Professionals.

It was hard to find studies reporting how quality is actually being managed in organizations that already operate in the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Answers could not be found to questions regarding actual practices, methodologies and tools being used in Quality 4.0 approaches. However, the research undertaken allowed to identify in the literature different ways of conceptualizing and analyzing Quality 4.0, opening up avenues for further research on quality management in the Industry 4.0 era.

This paper offers a broad look at how quality management is changing in response to the affirmation of the Industry 4.0 paradigm.

This paper attempts to investigate the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on the returns and volatility of the United States (US) natural gas futures market.

The study uses secondary data of 996 trading day provided by the US Department of Energy and investing.com websites and applies the event study methodology in addition to the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH) family models.

The findings from the exponential EGARCH (1,1) estimate are the best indication of a significant positive effects of the Ukraine–Russia war on the returns and volatility of the US natural gas futures prices. The cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) of the event study show that the natural gas futures prices reacted negatively but not significantly to the Russian–Ukraine war at the event date window [−1,1] and the [−15, −4] event window. CARs for the longer pre and post-event window display significant positive values and coincides with the standard finance theory for the case of the US natural gas futures over the Russia–Ukraine conflict.

This is the first study to examine the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on natural gas futures prices in the United States. Thus, it provides indications on the behavior of investors in this market and proposes new empirical evidence that help in investment analyses and decisions.

The purpose of this study is to draw from sustainable social innovation theory and the Consumer styles inventory (CSI) instrument to examine secondhand clothing consumption habits for Russia. The secondhand market is the logical outcome of efforts to adopt resale as a facet of sustainable social innovation, with which to drive sustainable decision-making and socially responsible marketing in the secondhand high-end clothing market. Resale represents the cornerstone of business model innovation (BMi) for the retail sector, offering substantial opportunities for retailers who understand changes in consumption behaviour. More cost-effective and arguably greener, the sale of secondhand clothing is expected to be double the volume of fast fashion by 2030 but it remains an understudied field of research in the literature relating to the fashion industry.

Hypotheses are developed from the existing literature. Survey methodology is used to collect data from 250 Russian consumers in the city of Petersburg. The objective is to test the veracity of CSI shopper orientations, focusing on nascent motivations for high-end branded secondhand clothing, to examine sustainable social innovation and resale in an emerging market.

Four new shopping orientations are identified. Based on the empirical data, the authors suggest that five (out of the original eight CSI shopping orientations) are of internal statistical relevance, and that our new orientations are relevant for not only this market, but for neighbouring Eastern European countries too. The findings reflect postmodern evolution in behavioural motivations for Russian consumers, that can inform retail strategy in terms of BMi consumer for harnessing opportunities offered by sustainable social innovation and resale.

Whilst the CSI has been widely used, research for Eastern Europe is limited. Understanding the shopping orientations for sustainable alternatives to newly produced clothing has theoretical and practical implications for improving circularity, post-war entry strategies and countries facing economic downturn. This study contributes novel insights by examining consumer decision-making and shopping orientations in an emerging market.

In this article, we use the film Bridge of Spies – which depicts the case of U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers – and relevant primary sources, particularly Powers' letters from prison, to provide teachers with a case that can engage students with the complexity of the Cold War. Understanding USA–Russia relations is as important today as ever as we watch the tragedy unfold in Ukraine. Using primary sources to reflect on the Cold War can help secondary students understand the historical context of the war in Ukraine as well as how to evaluate and critique sources of information about the war.

The film and personal letters provide insights often not available or obvious when we focus on the political or military history of an event or time period. The Cold War is frequently defined by the rhetoric of the USA and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) governments – but everyday people and citizens had a wider range of views and experiences. The film and letters bring out the humanity of the Cold War.

This article supports secondary teachers in incorporating film and primary sources as teaching tools to study the Cold War while more broadly thinking about these sources as ways to understand the past. The letters used, including those from U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers, help us understand his time in a Soviet prison as well as the behind-the-scenes work to free him as part of a prisoner exchange.

The U-2 Incident and other events of the Cold War provide important context for understanding the Cold War-like tensions between the USA and Russia today. The distrust between these countries has a long history. However, documents like the film and letters discussed here show that there is much more to the bluster of political leaders and the military chess game. There is an important human element to these events and an impact on individuals who are much more than pawns in international diplomacy.

Sharing and obtaining information over social media has enabled people to express their opinions regarding any event. Since the tweets regarding the Russia-Ukraine war were extensively publicized on social media, this study aims to analyse the temporal sentiments people express through tweets related to the war.

Relevant hashtag related to the Russia-Ukraine war was identified, and tweets were downloaded using Twitter API, which were later migrated to Orange Data mining software. Pre-processing techniques like transformation, tokenization, and filtering were applied to the extracted tweets. VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning) sentiment analysis module of Orange software was used to categorize tweets into positive, negative and neutral ones based on the tweet polarity. For ascertaining the key and co-occurring terms and phrases in tweets and also to visualize the keyword clusters, VOSviewer, a data visualization software, was made use of.

An increase in the number of tweets is witnessed in the initial days, while a decline is observed over time. Most tweets are negative in nature, followed by positive and neutral ones. It is also ascertained that tweets from verified accounts are more impactful than unverified ones. russiaukrainewar, ukraine, russia, false, war, nato, zelensky and stoprussia are the dominant co-occurring keywords. Ukraine, Russia and Putin are the top hashtags for sentiment representation. India, the USA and the UK contribute the highest tweets.

The study tries to explore the public sentiments expressed over Twitter related to Russia-Ukraine war.

This study explores a hegemonic alliance and the role of relational forms of accounting and accountablity in the making of contemporary capitalism.

We use the WikiLeaks “Cablegate” documents to provide an account of the detailed machinations between interest groups (corporations and the state) that are constitutive of hegemonic activity.

Our analysis of the “Cablegate” documents shows that the US and Chevron were crafting a central role for Turkmenistan and its president on the global political stage as early as 2007, despite offical reporting beginning only in 2009. The documents exemplify how “accountability gaps” occlude the understanding of interdependence between capital and the state.

The study contributes to a growing idea that official accounts offer a fictionalized narrative of corporations as existing independently, and thus expands the boundaries associated with studying multinational corporate activities to include their interdependencies with the modern state.

The study traces how global capitalism extends into new territories through diplomatic channels, as a strategic initiative between powerful state and capital interests, arguing that the outcome is the empowerment of authoritarian states at the cost of democracy.

The study argues that previous accounting and accountability research has overlooked the larger picture of how capital and the state work together to secure a mutual hegemonic interest. We advocate for a more complete account of these activities that circumvents official, often restricted, views of global capitalism.

I examine Bogdanov’s notion of Tektology within the context of modern communication systems and political agendas.

The practicality of Tektology from the perspective of 21st century sensibilities.

I argue that, like the implications of creating a suitable environment in Red Star, the practicality of enabling tektology in the 21st century is unlikely.

Tektology was an idea created in the early 20th century and the social conditions of that era-especially in Russia. The work associated with it is Stafford Beers VSM – an idea of combining the two was suggested by Jackson in 2023. Clearly, the early ideas rely on the source material of that era which are taken within the context of now. A mixture of early 20th and 21st century references are referred to. To limit such a topic as this to the word limits of the journal necessitates reducing discussion, for example the link between Tektology and Happiness.

It is not possible to test these ideas in a practical sense. The discussion relies upon what Tektology proposes and the way in which ICT is used in the 21 century. The only practical attempt of using technology as a major control system is that of Beer’s Chilean project but Tektolgy was more ambitious; it was aimed at creating a new society. The paper can only relate to observations about the way ICTs are used and controlled presently

The paper highlights the way that communication platforms are used and controlled in western society and elsewhere.

While attempts have been made to link Tektology to modern communication technologies few consider it within the context of 21st century cultural, political and media experience.

Education system stimulates the development of human capital and provides informative signaling allowing to differentiate productivity of individuals. If education system is efficient then higher levels of education usually associated with greater returns on labor market. To evaluate the efficiency of Russian education system we aim to estimate the effect of vocational education and different levels of higher education on wages.

We use data on 8,764 individuals in the years 2019–2021. Our statistical approach addresses two critical issues: nonrandom selection into employment and the endogeneity of education choice. To tackle these problems, we employed Heckman’s method and its extension that is a structural model which addresses the issue of self-selection into different levels of education.

The results of the analysis suggest that there is a significant heterogeneity in the returns to different levels of education. First, higher education, in general, offers substantial wage premiums when compared to vocational education. Specifically, individuals with specialist’s and bachelor’s degrees enjoy higher wage premiums of approximately 23.59–24.04% and 16.43–16.49%, respectively, compared to those with vocational education. Furthermore, we observe a significant dis-parity in returns among the various levels of higher education. Master’s degree provides a substantial wage premium in comparison to both bachelor’s (19.79–20.96%) and specialist’s (12.64–13.41%) degrees. Moreover, specialist degree offers a 7.16–7.55% higher wage premium than bachelor’s degree.

We identify a hierarchical pattern in the returns associated with different levels of higher education in Russia, specifically “bachelor-specialist-master.” These findings indicate that each level of education in Russia serves as a distinct signal in the labor market, facilitating employers' ability to differentiate between workers. From a policy perspective, our results suggest the potential benefits of offering opportunities to transition from specialist’s to master’s degrees on a tuition-free basis. Such a policy may enhance access to advanced education and potentially lead to higher returns for individuals in the labor market.

There are many studies on returns to higher education in Russia. However, just few of them estimate the returns to different levels of higher education. Also, these studies usually do not address the issue of the endogeneity arising because of self-selection into different levels of education. Our structural econometric model allows addressing for this issue and provides consistent estimates of returns to different levels of education under the assumption that individuals with higher propensity to education obtain higher levels of education.

This study aims to examine the impact of renewable energy consumption on agricultural productivity while accounting for the effect of financial inclusion and foreign direct investment in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) countries during 2000–2020.

The study has used the latest data from World Bank and International Monetary Fund databases. The dependent variable in the study is agricultural productivity. Renewable energy consumption, carbon emissions, financial inclusion and foreign direct investment are independent variables. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach was used to examine the short-run and long-run impact of renewable energy consumption, carbon emissions, foreign direct investment and financial inclusion on agricultural productivity.

The findings imply that consumption of renewable energy, carbon emissions and foreign direct investment have a positive impact on agricultural productivity while financial inclusion in terms of access does not seem to have any significant impact on agricultural productivity. Providing farmers, access to financial services can be beneficial, but its usage holds more importance in impacting rural outcomes. The problem lies in the fact that there is still a gap between access and usage of financial services.

Policymakers should encourage the increase in the usage of renewable energy and become less reliant on non-renewable energy sources which will eventually help in tackling the problems associated with climate change as well as enhance agricultural productivity.

Most of the earlier studies were based on tabular analysis without any empirical base to establish the causal relationship between determinants of agricultural productivity and renewable energy consumption. These studies were also limited to a few regions. The study is one of its kind in exploring the severity of various factors that determine agricultural productivity in the context of emerging economies like BRICS while accounting for the effect of financial inclusion and foreign direct investment.

We investigate connections between the development of Fintech and the blue economy from September 14th, 2020, to August 11th, 2023.

In this research, we use a cutting-edge model-free connectedness approach to investigate the relationships between FinTech and blue bond volatility. Our work is the first to investigate the effects of unknown events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine–Russia conflicts, on the interconnection of volatility derived from FinTech development and blue bond volatility.

Our results highlight the two-way relationship between the development of Fintech and the blue economy during our sample period. The net total connectedness shows that the blue economy index is a net shock receiver, especially in late 2021 and the second half of 2022, while most of the fintech indexes in our sample are mainly net shock transmitters. The Ukraine–Russia tension threatens the development of a sustainable blue economy. The development of Fintech plays an important role in promoting the blue economy.

Our results have important policy implications for investors and governments, as well as methods from the spillovers across the various indicators and their interconnections. Sharp information on the primary contagions among these indicators aids politicians in designing the most appropriate policies.

Our paper contributes to the literature in at least four ways. First, as previously stated, our article is the first to investigate the relationship between FinTech and blue bond volatility. Second, this study presented a framework for studying volatility interconnections between distinct variables that is more suited to analyzing these interconnections. In this research, we use a cutting-edge model-free connectedness approach to investigate the relationships between FinTech and blue bond volatility. Third, our work is the first to investigate the effects of unknown events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine–Russia conflicts on the interconnection of volatility deriving from FinTech development and blue bond volatility. Lastly, our research provides a daily dataset for the BNP Paribas Easy ECPI Global ESG Blue Economy UCITS ETF to analyze 50 businesses from various markets that are at the forefront of the responsible application of ocean resources and other ESG standards. The Global X FinTech ETF (FINX) and the ARK FinTech Innovation ETF (ARKF) seek exposure to companies developing financial technology innovations. The development sectors include insurance, investment, fundraising and third-party lending by utilizing cutting-edge mobile and digital technologies. Our time series runs from September 14th, 2020, to August 11th, 2023. By using this database, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the link between the volatilities arising from various markets.