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Handicraft entrepreneurs often lack the marketing funding needed to achieve brand awareness and, ultimately, sales. While positive word-of-mouth (WOM) from customers can bridge the funding gap, handicraft entrepreneurs may not have knowledge of how to generate WOM effectively. The purpose of this study is to examine role of self-schema and brand love in generating positive WOM in a developing country research context, namely, South Africa.

This study used a quantitative approach. A survey was completed by 250 South African respondents who purchase handmade home décor items. The interrelationships between constructs were analysed using covariance-based structural equation modelling.

Self-schema and brand love are instrumental in generating positive WOM, albeit via different underlying mechanisms. Brand love mediates the relationships between self-schema (inner- and social self) and positive WOM.

This paper contributes to the entrepreneurial marketing (EM) field theoretically by providing a needed customer perspective for EM strategies from a developing country. Moreover, by considering underlying cognitive and emotional processes that underpin WOM, the authors demonstrate how handicraft entrepreneurs can use customers as a resource in their marketing strategy. Practical recommendations for handicraft entrepreneurs and policymakers are also offered.

Considering the size and intricate nature of defense supply chains (DSC), there exists a need for a conceptual understanding regarding the precise dynamics of collaboration among the various participants engaged in these chains. This paper seeks to address the gap by investigating the practices that enable or inhibit collaborations and the development of new competencies to effectively employ a flexible response to temporary or more sustained surges in demand. Ultimately, the study aims to develop a theoretical framework relevant to the practical implementation and scholarly examination of contemporary military supply chains.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 51 DSC professionals in 7 embedded cases within an enterprise framework. The resulting transcripts were analyzed using constructs and concepts from a supply chain logistics (SC/L) literature analysis and synthesis relevant to our research purpose. Finally, the results were validated by an industry focus group with 12 participants representing the government, military, industry, and academia.

This research produced empirical generalizations that provide in-depth and systematic exploratory insights into collaboration’s meaning and characteristics within the DSC context. This study culminates by introducing a conceptual model and definition of defense supply chain collaboration (DSCC) and concludes by proposing future research directions.

This study makes a novel and empirical contribution to the SC/L body of knowledge by investigating embedded cases through unique access to informants within an enterprise framework that focuses on the antecedent influencing factors of collaboration within the contextual domain of the DSC and positions a future research agenda.

For over 25 years, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has significantly influenced the US sustainable construction through its leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED) certification program. This study aims to delve into how Baton Rouge, Louisiana, fares in green building adoption relative to other US capital cities and regions.

The study leverages statistical and geospatial analyses of data sourced from the USGBC, among other databases. It scrutinizes Baton Rouge’s LEED criteria performance using the mean percent weighted criteria to pinpoint the LEED criteria most readily achieved. Moreover, unique metrics, such as the certified green building per capita (CGBC), were formulated to facilitate a comparative analysis of green building adoption across various regions.

Baton Rouge’s CGBC stands at 0.31% (C+), markedly trailing behind the frontrunner, Santa Fe, New Mexico, leading at 3.89% (A+) and in LEED building per capita too. Despite the notable concentration of certified green buildings (CGBs) within Baton Rouge, the city’s green building development appears to be in its infancy. Innovation and design was identified as the most attainable LEED benchmark in Baton Rouge. Additionally, socioeconomic factors, including education and income per capita, were associated with a mild to moderate positive correlation (0.25 = r = 0.36) with the adoption of green building practices across the capitals, while sociocultural infrastructure exhibited a strong positive correlation (r = 0.99).

This study is beneficial to policymakers, urban planners and developers for sustainable urban development and a reference point for subsequent postoccupancy evaluations of CGBs in Baton Rouge and beyond.

This study pioneers the comprehensive analysis of green building adoption rates and probable influencing factors in capital cities in the contiguous US using distinct metrics.

Prior research seldom explores the different structures of marketing presence in the top management team (MPTMT) and their impact on new product performance. In this paper, we distinguish among three structures of MPTMT: (1) a dedicated MPTMT; (2) a joint marketing and sales MPTMT; and (3) a joint marketing and other operations MPTMT. We then examine how these three structures of MPTMT are related to cross-functional integration in NPD and, subsequently, new product performance.

Path analysis is used to test the model using data collected from 139 U.S. manufacturing firms. We conducted two rounds of survey data collection (with a one-year gap) to assess the potential effect of common method variance.

The results show that, compared with no MPTMT, all MPTMT structures positively affect cross-functional integration in NPD, which, in turn, enhances new product performance. However, joint MPTMT structures have a greater impact than a dedicated MPTMT. Our moderation analysis also reveals that as TMT heterogeneity increases, the effect of dedicated MPTMT diminishes, but the effects of the other two joint structures remain positive and stable.

The model could include alternative mediating organizational processes and performance outcomes.

The findings provide managers with insight on how to configure and leverage marketing influence in the upper echelons in both SMEs and large firms.

The findings of this study highlight the importance of delineating MPTMT structures, understanding how they create value, and specifying their boundary conditions.

To elaborate the nature of fact-checking in the domain of political information by examining how fact-checkers assess the validity of claims concerning the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and how they support their assessments by drawing on evidence acquired from diverse sources of information.

Descriptive quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 128 reports written by the fact-checkers of Snopes – an established fact-checking organisation – during the period of 24 February 2022 – 28 June, 2023. For the analysis, nine evaluation grounds were identified, most of them inductively from the empirical material. It was examined how the fact-checkers employed such grounds while assessing the validity of claims and how the assessments were bolstered by evidence acquired from information sources such as newspapers.

Of the 128 reports, the share of assessments indicative of the invalidity of the claims was 54.7%, while the share of positive ratings was 26.7%. The share of mixed assessments was 15.6%. In the fact-checking, two evaluation grounds, that is, the correctness of information and verifiability of an event presented in a claim formed the basis for the assessment. Depending on the topic of the claim, grounds such as temporal and spatial compatibility, as well as comparison by similarity and difference occupied a central role. Most popular sources of information offering evidence for the assessments include statements of government representatives, videos and photographs shared in social media, newspapers and television programmes.

As the study concentrated on fact-checking dealing with political information about a specific issue, the findings cannot be extended to concern the fact-checking practices in other contexts.

The study is among the first to characterise how fact-checkers employ evaluation grounds of diverse kind while assessing the validity of political information.

The objective of this study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the existing literature on organizational deviance to assess how far this concept has progressed since its introduction in the domain of organizational behavior.

This study employs bibliometric methodologies (citation analysis, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence of author keywords) using VOSviewer. The Scopus database was used, as it is the largest database of scholarly literature.

The findings indicate the character and direction of organizational research over the past two decades. Organizational deviance due to psychological contract breach, organizational deviance in the context of organizational cynicism and organizational deviance in the context of psychological capital are the three major themes in the literature on organizational deviance. In addition, the study highlights the most significant authors, journals, institutions and nations in the field of value co-creation research as well as potential future research areas in this area.

The use of a single database and the inability to contextualize the citation structure of papers revealed by the review are limitations of this study.

This study examines the structure of the literature on organizational deviance and charts the field's evolution over time.

The paper aims to understand the stages of the social innovation process and how it can be used for sustainable development.

This single case study used multiple sources, especially data from extensive field visits and selective in-depth interviews. Direct observation, web content analysis, journals, annual reports and news articles were also used.

The findings show that BRAC institute of skills development (BISD) adopted a unique formula for the social innovation process: problem identification, new idea, design prototype, pilot, perfect and scale up. This study also finds that BISD has a significant socio-economic impact in Bangladesh. The impacts of BISD are associated with several United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 1 on poverty, SDG 4 on inclusive learning, SDG 5 on gender equality and women empowerment, SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth and SDG 16 on social inclusion.

The discussions of this study ultimately pave a clear roadmap for policymakers, practitioners and academics to improve mechanisms for sustainable development through social innovations in emerging countries.

This paper provides a practical application of the social inclusive innovation process theory by which vocational training institutes can scale their sustainable impact. More knowledge is needed on how organisations can implement social innovation projects in emerging countries. This paper provides exploratory evidence to fill this gap. It demands a promising area of interest to investigate further research on the compatibility of social innovation in skills development programmes to gear up the status of an underprivileged community.

This exploratory research aims to unravel how Chinese international students form their decisions regarding the school-to-work transition (sometimes also referred to as the university-to-work transition) when studying abroad.

The authors use the concepts of school-to-work transition and cultural approaches to investigate how Chinese graduate students make career decisions to navigate the school-to-work transition in the context of international mobility. The authors' empirical study is based on 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with Chinese graduate students studying in the Netherlands.

The authors discovered four patterns with two major subgroups among Chinese students studying in the universities in the Netherlands based on their initial intentions: return-return, open-return, open-stay and stay-stay. These patterns made sense when navigating the school-to-work transition: participants experienced varied international experiences, cultural perceptions and acknowledgment influences when enhancing employability and shaping their career decisions. Participants in the return-return and stay-stay groups indicated strong resilience and consistency in achieving their goals and strongly focused on long-term objectives. However, participants' open-return decision demonstrated a thoughtful alignment of personal goals and knowledge of the possible beneficial influence they may have in their home country. Open-stay participants utilized the overseas study opportunity to finalize their decisions and increase their employability in the local labor market, thereby creating a transition from university to work in the host country.

The authors highlight the way Chinese graduate students manage their international experience and provide novel insights into the role played by the cultural characteristics of their home country and host country.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse five biases in the valuation of financial investments using a mental time travel framework involving thought investments – with no objective time passing.

An investment’s initial value, together with any periodic funding cash-flows, are mentally projected forward (at an expected rate of return) to give the value at the investment horizon; and this projected value is mentally discounted back to the present. If there is a difference between the initial and present values, then this can imply a bias in valuation.

The study identifies (and gives examples of) five real-world valuation biases: biased funding cash-flow estimates (e.g., mega infrastructure projects); biased rate of return projections (e.g., market crises, tech stock carve-outs); biased discount rate estimates (e.g., dual-listed shares, dual-class shares, short-termism, time-risk misperception, and long-termism); time-duration misestimation or perception bias when projecting (e.g., time-contracted projections which lead to short-termism); and time-duration misestimation or perception bias when discounting (e.g., time-extended discounting which also leads to short-termism). More than one bias can be operating at the same time and we give an example of low levels of retirement savings being the result of the biased discounting of biased projections. Finally, we consider the effects of the different biases of different agents operating simultaneously.

The paper examines key systematic misestimation and psychological biases underlying financial investment valuation pricing anomalies.