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This study aims to develop a conceptual framework for the role of chief financial officer (CFO) in an ever-changing environment. As previous research focused on responding to specific crises, there have been theoretical and practical gaps in the role of CFO. The study's goal is to fill a critical gap by developing a comprehensive and integrated set of roles to assist the CFO in a constantly changing environment.

Using a grounded theory approach, semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted with 21 CFOs from various industries in Thailand, including foreign multinational corporations and domestic companies with international operations. CFOs were asked how they frame their roles in the face of an ever-changing environment and how they prepare for the future.

The iCFO model is developed, which identifies the critical “core” roles of the CFO in securing the business foundation, as well as the “future opportunities” roles that function as growth engines for long-term business strength. The research delves into the importance of integrity, ethical mindset and corporate governance in the role of the CFO. The iCFO model is designed to help guide future research and provide practical applications for CFOs in both domestic and international contexts. The term “core” refers to the CFO’s primary responsibilities, which include driving profitability, managing risks and optimizing business performance. The “future opportunities” component focuses on the roles that CFOs can play in strengthening the future of business by optimizing investment efficiency, driving digital transformation and being the CEO’s business partner. The findings also emphasized “integrity,” which must encompass all decisions, actions or recommendations made by the CFO.

The study offers unique perspectives on an emerging economy, providing new insights. Through interviews with 21 CFOs, it contributes empirical evidence on the development of roles in accounting and finance, emphasizing good governance practices. The findings highlight the integrated role of the CFO and their self-reflection on their value within the company. Significantly, the study's implications are relevant and applicable to a global audience, particularly in developing economies that prioritize growth. Future studies could incorporate integrated thinking into the iCFO model to address social, environmental and economic factors, making it more universally relevant. Additionally, exploring the adoption of the chief value officer context in developing markets could enable CFOs to expand their focus beyond financial metrics, embracing a comprehensive approach to value creation. By integrating these concepts into the iCFO model, CFOs can effectively drive sustainable and impactful business outcomes on a global scale.

Develop a comprehensive framework for assessing the knowledge organization systems (KOSs), including the taxonomy of Wikipedia and the ontologies of Wikidata, with a specific focus on enhancing management and retrieval with a gender nonbinary perspective.

This study employs heuristic and inspection methods to assess Wikipedia’s KOS, ensuring compliance with international standards. It evaluates the efficiency of retrieving non-masculine gender-related articles using the Catalan Wikipedian category scheme, identifying limitations. Additionally, a novel assessment of Wikidata ontologies examines their structure and coverage of gender-related properties, comparing them to Wikipedia’s taxonomy for advantages and enhancements.

This study evaluates Wikipedia’s taxonomy and Wikidata’s ontologies, establishing evaluation criteria for gender-based categorization and exploring their structural effectiveness. The evaluation process suggests that Wikidata ontologies may offer a viable solution to address Wikipedia’s categorization challenges.

The assessment of Wikipedia categories (taxonomy) based on KOS standards leads to the conclusion that there is ample room for improvement, not only in matters concerning gender identity but also in the overall KOS to enhance search and retrieval for users. These findings bear relevance for the design of tools to support information retrieval on knowledge-rich websites, as they assist users in exploring topics and concepts.

This chapter reports on findings from a wider research project undertaken in Portugal. It focuses on the views of school principals with respect to (new) policy on the school curriculum. School principals have to balance conflicting goals and to manage tensions of implementation, particularly in a context of intense school reform. As policy gatekeepers and interpreters, school leaders have a pivotal role to play in how policies are framed, managed, and discussed in the context of their schools. Data presented in this text are drawn from a wider 3-year study. Findings point to the existence of contradictory elements in the principals' accounts. In general, they are critical of the new curriculum policy and question the adequacy of the conditions currently existing in schools to put it into operation. Overall, the regulatory and centralized orientation stands in sharp contrast to the very essence of the policies that call for local, contextualized, and innovative solutions. Such findings need to be analyzed within a centralized and bureaucratic education system in which a logic of control and standardized management of education still dominates.

Educational sustainability has acknowledged the value of transformation, which offers an opportunity of researching and rethinking how appropriate and successful educational practices in an active learning environment could help prepare students for jobs that do not yet exist. So, to meet the job market needs, it became essential to focus on designing more context-specific programs where interdisciplinary courses are provided. The interdisciplinary courses are based on integrating different disciplines where there is a blur between the borders of the disciplines to shift the focus from structured courses to cooperation with external entities. In addition, the interdisciplinary programs allow students to choose modules from across subjects and encourage cooperation with staff from different departments. Thus, the purpose of this chapter is to present a framework of how transformation in education requires key drivers such as transformational visions, faculty commitments, students' engagement, resources (i.e. curriculum), and external relations to develop the values and competencies that the future professionals will need in the attempt to make decisions aiming at reaching a more sustainable world.

Higher education institutions are undergoing a change in their teaching–learning practices, with the core goal of giving students the necessary skills and competencies to succeed in a complex and uncertain society. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of business simulation as a pedagogical strategy for teaching 21st-century competencies to undergraduate students. The study looks at students’ self-perception on how business simulation impacts future skills such as entrepreneurship, employability and sustainability.

The research incorporates a one-week workshop for undergraduate business students using AnyLogic business simulation. For this study, a 24-item skills-based survey was used as the instrument for eliciting input about students’ self-perceptions. To measure the impact of business simulation on overall student learning, a theoretical framework was developed and tested using SmartPLS version 4 for construct reliability, validity and hypotheses testing.

Based on the students’ feedback, the finding shows that most of the 24 soft skills were facilitated by the business simulation used. The simulation significantly affects the development of entrepreneurial and employable skills. On the contrary, it has little effect on enhancing sustainability skills. In addition, the study suggests that factors like gender and expertise had little overall impact on the results.

The most apparent practical implication of this study is that business schools should focus more on skill development by stressing on experiential teaching methods like business simulation to help students build various skills and become more prepared for the actual world of business.

The research presents fresh empirical data that add to the continuing discussion on active learning in business education and assist educators in avoiding some potential drawbacks of these innovative teaching techniques. With the right direction and criticism throughout the simulation, this learning experience has shown to be useful for everyone involved.

Although there has been considerable growth in the higher education systems of Turkey and China in about the last two decades, there is still a room for development in enabling equity in all regions, increasing opportunities and resources regardless of socio-economic status or gender differences. Students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have enough tools to change their fate for the better due to the accumulated barriers they face. Given this background, the chapter discusses how the barriers to equitable HE admissions relate to each other and which one has a greater negative impact over the Accumulated Conversion Barriers Modal we propose defined by personal, discriminatory, institutional, and geographical barriers. The perspectives of Turkish and Chinese HE stakeholders were examined through 21 in-depth interviews that were subjected to content analysis and interpreted in a comparative style using the lens of Capabilities Approach of Sen. We also offer policy suggestions to increase students’ conversion capacities for better outcomes to serve both the national and the international educational contexts owing to the adaptable nature of our modal to other countries experiencing similar issues in their higher education systems.

This study aims to examine consumers' purchasing and consumption behavior regarding big data embedded in packaged food post-Covid-19. The second purpose is to determine whether consumer purchasing behavior varies depending on the variety and volume of big data on food packages.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate consumer sentiment regarding big embedded data in packaged foods during purchasing. Based on samples from packaged foods sold in international chain stores, interview data collected from 24 participants were subjected to systematic analytical procedures.

The results revealed that before Covid-19, consumers had positive thoughts about the expiration date, brand, and product contents but did not care much about other data. At the same time, post-Covid-19, there were changes in their attitudes and behaviors on this issue. Post-Covid-19, it has been observed that consumers have positive attitudes and behaviors toward human health and food safety issues regarding unprocessed big data in packaged foods.

This study provides a different perspective on consumer purchasing behavior through big data on packaged foods post-Covid-19. Embedded information in packaged foods provides important data regarding consumer purchasing behavior. As a powerful source of consumer sentiment, this data also provides a reference for consumer purchasing decisions.

This paper aims to explore the role of personal relationships (friendships) in mitigating knowledge hiding behaviour between managers.

This study uses a phenomenological methodology by studying seven UAE-based firms. Furthermore, 30 semi-structured (15 dyadic) interviews with senior managers are undertaken. The senior managers were chosen from multiple industries including plastic, frozen food, logistics, etc.

Based on 30 semi-structured interviews and comprehensive data analysis, results reveal that the development of personal relationships between managers results in higher interpersonal trust, mutual loyalty, higher cooperation, strong mutual goals and cultivation of reciprocity. The result further states that these factors diminish knowledge hiding behaviour between them.

This study has some limitations. First, this study explores behavioural patterns concerning the United Arab Emirates culture only. Second, the results presented in this study should be quantitatively tested to demonstrate their generalizability.

Firms can use this study’s findings to understand how and why personal relationships between managers within firms diminish knowledge hiding behaviour.

There is a dire need for research exploring how knowledge hiding can be mitigated in firms. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the role of personal relationships in the knowledge hiding literature.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, classify and analyse temporality in information systems development (ISD) literature.

The authors address the temporality and ISD research gap by using a framework – which classifies time into three categories: conceptions of time, mapping activities to time and actors relating to time. The authors conduct a systematic literature review which investigates time in ISD within the Senior Scholars' Basket, Information Technology & People (IT&P), and top two information systems conferences over the past 20 years. The search strategy resulted in 9,850 studies of which 47 were identified as primary papers.

The results reveal that ISD research is ill equipped for contemporary thinking around time. This systematic literature review (SLR) contributes to ISD by finding the following gaps in the literature: (1) clock time is dominant and all other types of time are under-researched; (2) contributions to mapping activities to time is lacking and existing studies focus on single ISD projects rather multiple complex ISD projects; (3) research on actors relating to time is lacking; (4) existing ISD studies which contribute to temporal characteristics are fragmented and lack integration with other categories of time and (5) ISD methodology papers lack contributions to temporal characteristics and fail to acknowledge and contribute to time as a multifaceted interrelated concept.

This work has developed the first SLR on temporality in ISD. This study provides a starting point for ISD researchers and ISD practitioners to test commonly held temporal assumptions of ISD researchers and practitioners.

Religious and secular pilgrimages present rich opportunities for investigating information activities in an original and intriguing context. While the Information Science community has previously shown interest in digital expressions of religion and spirituality, discussion on pilgrimage is at a nascent stage. The purpose of this study is to conduct an in situ investigation of how pilgrims record, curate, and share their experiences.

A field ethnography was conducted while walking with, observing and interviewing pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago, a popular European pilgrimage and UNESCO World Heritage route. Data collected from 25 semi-structured interviews and participant observations were thematically analysed within a theoretical framework combining Stebbins' contemplation and Nature Challenge Activity in serious leisure and Hektor's model of information behaviour.

This study expands the interpretation of pilgrimage by introducing new insights into pilgrims, different types of mobilities, spaces and objects, and social interactions. By using field ethnography and close-up observations of praxis, pilgrimage is analysed as a socio-technical process and discussed literature within and beyond Information Science. The work presents new understandings of the interplay between spirituality, embodied information practices, physical and online social interactions, analogue and digital media before, during and after these journeys and legacy aspirations.

The study is original in its combination of theoretical models and their ethnographic in situ application. It contributes to a more in-depth, in-the-field understanding of how pilgrims document their experiences via a rich palette of old and new media, the dynamics of using digital technologies during such physical and inner journeys and pilgrims' sharing practices. Implications for serious leisure and information practices are discussed, from theoretical to practical challenges and opportunities offered by pilgrimage experiences.