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The purpose of this research is to test the effectiveness of integrating Grasshopper 3D and measuring attractiveness by a categorical based evaluation technique (M-MACBETH) for building energy simulation analysis within a virtual environment. Set of energy retrofitting solutions is evaluated against performance-based criteria (energy consumption, weight and carbon footprint), and considering the preservation of the cultural value of the building, its architectural and spatial configuration.

This research addresses the building energy performance analysis before and after the design of retrofitting solutions in extreme climate environments (2030–2100). The proposed model integrates data obtained from an advanced parametric tool (Grasshopper) and a multi-criteria decision analysis (M-MACBETH) to score different energy retrofitting solutions against energy consumption, weight, carbon footprint and impact on architectural configuration. The proposed model is tested for predicting the performance of a traditional timber-framed dwelling in a historic parish in Lisbon. The performance of distinct solutions is compared in digitally simulated climate conditions (design scenarios) considering different criteria weights.

This study shows the importance of conducting building energy simulation linking physical and digital environments and then, identifying a set of evaluation criteria in the analysed context. Architects, environmental engineers and urban planners should use computational environment in the development design phase to identify design solutions and compare their expected impact on the building configuration and performance-based behaviour.

The unavailability of local weather data (EnergyPlus Weather File (EPW) file), the high time-resource effort, and the number/type of the energy retrofit measures tested in this research limit the scope of this study. In energy simulation procedures, the baseline generally covers a period of thirty, ten or five years. In this research, due to the fact that weather data is unavailable in the format required in the simulation process (.EPW file), the input data in the baseline is the average climatic data from EnergyPlus (2022). Additionally, this workflow is time-consuming due to the low interoperability of the software. Grasshopper requires a high-skilled analyst to obtain accurate results. To calculate the values for the energy consumption, i.e. the values of energy per day of simulation, all the values given per hour are manually summed. The values of weight are obtained by calculating the amount of material required (whose dimensions are provided by Grasshopper), while the amount of carbon footprint is calculated per kg of material. Then this set of data is introduced into M-MACBETH. Another relevant limitation is related to the techniques proposed for retrofitting this case study, all based on wood-fibre boards.

The proposed method for energy simulation and climate change adaptation can be applied to other historic buildings considering different evaluation criteria and context-based priorities.

Context-based adaptation measures of the built environment are necessary for the coming years due to the projected extreme temperature changes following the 2015 Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda. Built environments include historical sites that represent irreplaceable cultural legacies and factors of the community's identity to be preserved over time.

This study shows the importance of conducting building energy simulation using physical and digital environments. Computational environment should be used during the development design phase by architects, engineers and urban planners to rank design solutions against a set of performance criteria and compare the expected impact on the building configuration and performance-based behaviour. This study integrates Grasshopper 3D and M-MACBETH.

The intensity of carbon emissions has led to the serious problem of global warming, and the consequences in terms of climatic disasters are gaining increasing attention worldwide. As the energy sector is responsible for most global emissions, developing clean energy is crucial to combat climate change. This study aims to examine the relationship between corporate governance and renewable energy (RE) consumption and explore the interaction between RE production and RE use.

The study adopts an econometric framework of a panel model, followed by the robustness check using alternative methods, including logit regressions. The bivariate probit model is used to analyze the interaction between the decision to use and the decision to produce RE. The analysis is based on a sample of 3,896 firms covering 45 countries worldwide.

The results reveal that appropriate governance mechanisms positively impact RE consumption. These include the existence of a sustainability committee; environmental, social and governance-based compensation policy; financial performance-based compensation; sustainability external audit; transparency; board gender diversity; and board independence. Firms with appropriate governance mechanisms are more likely to produce and use RE than others. Finally, while RE use positively impacts firm value and environmental performance, the authors find no significant effect on current profitability.

This study goes beyond previous research by exploring the impact of multiple governance mechanisms. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first study examining the relationship between RE use and firm value. Overall, the findings suggest that RE transition requires, first of all, establishing appropriate governance mechanisms within companies.

This study aims to explore the impact of board size, board gender diversity and federation age on the likelihood of having a female chair in National Sports Federations (NSF).

A quantitative methodology compares 300 sports boards in five countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK), using data collected from NSF’s websites.

The board size and federation age have no significant impact on having a female board chair when the countries and the percentage of female directors are included in the model. When the number of women is measured in absolute value rather than in relative terms, the only variable that predicts a woman chair is the country. When the model does not include country differences, the percentage of female directors is key in predicting a chairwoman, and when the number of women is used as a variable instead of the percentage, a board’s smaller size increases the odds of having a chairwoman.

There are some limitations to this study which we believe provide useful directions for future research. Firstly, the authors have not considered the role of gender typing in sports activities which explains the extent that women participate in specific sports (Sobal and Milgrim, 2019) and the related perception of such sports in society. The social representation of sports activities classified as masculine, feminine or gender-neutral can hypothetically influence women’s access to that specific federations’s leadership. The authors included the country factor only partially, as a control variable, as the social representation of sports usually goes beyond national boundaries.

This study has implications for sport policymakers and stakeholders, and for institutions such as the IOC or the European Union that implement equality policies. If the aim is to increase female presence in the highest position of a sports board and to achieve gender equality more generally, other policies need to be implemented alongside gender quotas for the sports boards, namely, those specifically related to the recruitment and selection of the sports board chairs (Mikkonen et al., 2021). For example, given the implications of critical mass and its ability to increase more female’s engagement then the role of existing chairs acting as mentors and taking initiative in this objective may be warranted. Furthermore, attention should be paid to the existing gender portfolio of each board and its subsequent influence on recruiting a female chair, regardless of the organization’s age. Knoppers et al. (2021) concluded that resistance to gender balance by board members is often related to discriminatory discourses against women. The normalization of the discourses of meritocracy, neoliberalism, silence/passivity about the responsibility of structures and an artificial defence of diversity emphasise that equality should not only be determined by women (Knoppers et al., 2021).

When countries are included in the model, the results suggest that the social representation of a female board member is different from that of a female board chair.

The originality of the study is that it shows the factors that constrain women taking up a chair position on NSFs. Theoretically, it contributes to existing literature by demonstrating how a critical mass of females on boards may also extend to the higher and most powerful position of chair.

This study aims to capture how the association between a multichannel relational communication strategy (MRCS) and customer performance is contingent upon such customer performance (low- versus high-performance customers) and to reconcile past contradictory results in this marketing-related topic. To this end, the authors propose and validate the method of quantile regression as an unconventional, yet effective, means to proceed to that reconciliation.

This study collected data from 4,934 customers of a private pension fund firm and accounted for both firm- and customer-initiated relational communication channels (RCCs) and for customer lifetime value (CLV). This study estimated a generalized linear model and then a quantile regression model was used to account for customer performance heterogeneity.

This study finds that specific RCCs present different levels of association with performance for low- versus high-performance customers, where outcome customer performance is the dependent variable. For example, the relation between firm-initiated communication (FIC) and performance is stronger for low-CLV customers, whereas the relation between customer-initiated communication (CIC) and performance is increasingly stronger for high-CLV customers but not for low-CLV ones. This study also finds that combining different forms of FIC can result in a negative association with customer performance, especially for low-CLV customers.

The authors tested the conceptual model in one single firm in the specific context of financial services and with cross-sectional data, so there should be caution when extrapolating this study’s findings.

This study offers nuanced and precise managerial insights on recommended resource allocation along with relational communication efforts, showing how managers can benefit from adopting a differentiated-customer performance approach when designing their MRCS.

This study provides an overview of the state of the art of MRCS, proposes a contingency analysis of the relationship between MRCS and performance based on customer performance heterogeneity and suggests the quantile method to perform such analysis and help reconcile past contradictory findings. This study shows how the association between RCCs and CLV varies across the conditional quantiles of the distribution of customer performance. This study also addresses a recent call for a more holistic perspective on the relationships between independent and dependent variables.

This study aims to examine the impact of independent directors' ownership on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. In line with the stakeholder-agency paradigm's prediction, the authors propose that higher independent directors' ownership is associated with higher CSR performance. By drawing on the attention-based view, the authors further examine firm-level conditions that impact the situated attention of independent directors holding high equity ownership as they are active agents.

The authors collected data covering the years 2009–2013 for firms listed in the S&P 500 index. The authors tested the hypotheses using firm fixed-effects models.

The results show that higher independent directors' ownership is associated with higher CSR performance. Prior firm performance and available slack resources are found to have diverse impacts on the association between independent directors holding high equity ownership and CSR performance.

This study highlights the importance of examining the performance-based incentives of independent directors on firms' CSR performance. This study also provides a better understanding of factors impacting independent directors' situated attention as boundary conditions.

The operational framework of external financing in the correlation between the gender of entrepreneurs and firm performance remains to be resolved. This study aims to investigate the mediating effect of external financing on gender-based disparities in private firm performance and to explore its heterogeneity within the Chinese context.

Based on national data from the 10th to 13th Chinese Private Enterprise Survey, this study used a bootstrap-based mediation effect model to analyze the role of external financing as a mediator in the relationship between entrepreneur gender and firm performance.

This study found that external financing is a constructive mediator between entrepreneur gender and firm performance. Heterogeneity analysis revealed that external financing plays a complementary mediation role in the impact of entrepreneur gender on performance in West China. In the tertiary industry, external financing acts as the sole mediator for the impact of gender on firm performance. Notably, this mediating effect is present in non-startups but not in startups.

The findings suggest that external financing can improve the firm performance of female entrepreneurs. Governments and policymakers should strengthen financial support for female entrepreneurs in West China, tertiary industry and non-startup enterprises.

This paper contributes to the literature on gender and corporate governance by shedding light on the mediating role of external financing in the relationship between the gender of business owners and firm performance.

The aim of this study is to empirically explore and analyze the concrete tasks of output measurement and the inherent challenges related to these tasks in a traditional and autonomous professional public work setting – the judicial system.

The analysis of the tasks is based on a categorization of general performance measurement motives (control-motivate-learn) and main stakeholder levels (society-organization-professionals). The analysis is exploratory and conducted as an empirical content analysis on materials and reports produced in two performance improvement projects conducted in European justice organizations.

The identified main tasks in the different categories are related to managing resources, controlling performance deviations, and encouraging improvement and development of performance. Based on the results, key improvement areas connected to output measurement in professional public organizations are connected to the improvement of objectivity and fairness in budgeting and work allocation practices, improvement of output measures' versatility and informativeness to highlight motivational and learning purposes, improvement of professional self-management in setting output targets and producing outputs, as well as improvement of organizational learning from the output measurement.

The paper presents empirically founded practical examples of challenges and improvement opportunities related to the tasks of output measurement in professional public organization.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how general performance management motives realize as concrete tasks of output measurement in justice organizations.

This study aims to examine the moment-to-moment (MTM) effects of in-consumption dynamic comments on consumers' responses to digital engagement and the underlying mechanisms involved, as well as the interactive role of advertisements embedded in short-form online video.

This study uses data extracted from 2,081 videos posted on the prominent Chinese online live platform, Bilibili. The hypotheses are tested using regression models and natural language processing.

The results indicate that the intensity of live comments at the beginning negatively affects users' digital engagement, while a corresponding increase in live comments at the end elicits a positive effect. A linear trend and peak difference in live comments intensity positively affect digital engagement, while the variability of live comment intensity exerts a negative effect. These MTM effects were driven by sentiments of live comments. Furthermore, in-video advertisements are likely to amplify the negative beginning effect on users' digital engagement and mitigate the negative variability of live comments.

This study is the first to examine the direct effects of MTM comments from the online temporal sequence perspective, differentiating the process- and performance-based engagement. The mechanism and interactive role of in-video advertisements were identified. These findings contribute to literature on interactive marketing and provide valuable guidance for influencer marketing.

The optimal payment in the whole operation and maintenance period of water environment treatment PPP projects has become the main approach to realize sustainable development of projects. This study is aimed at constructing an effective payment model for the whole life period of projects to achieve win-win among all stakeholders, so as to provide a theoretical reference and managerial implications for the public sector in the whole operation and maintenance period.

In the whole operation and maintenance period of water environment treatment PPP projects, this article investigates how the public sector optimizes the payment in the whole operation and maintenance period of projects. Firstly, the projects' whole operation and maintenance period is divided into several stages according to the performance appraisal period. And then, the multi-stage dynamic programming model is constructed to design the payment construct model for the public sector in each performance appraisal stage. The payment from the public sector is the decision variable, and the deduction from the private sector is a random variable.

The optimal payment model showed that the relatively less objective weight of public sector leaded to its relatively more total payment and vice versa. Therefore, the sustainable development of the projects can only be ensured when the objective weights both of them should be balanced. Additionally, the deduction from the performance appraisal of private sector plays an important role in the model construction. The larger deduction the private sector undertakes, the smaller profits private sector has. Since the deduction at each stage is a random variable, the deduction varies with the different probability distributions obeyed by the practical deduction in each stage.

The findings from this study have provided theoretical and application references, and some managerial implications are also given. First, the improvement of the pricing system of public sector should be accelerated. Second, the reasonable profit of the private sector must be guaranteed. While pursuing the maximization of social benefits, the public sector should make full use of the price sharing mechanism in the market and supervise the real income situation of the private sector. Third is increasing the public to participate in pricing. Additionally, it is a limitation that the deduction is assumed to conform to a uniform distribution in this study. Other probability distributions on deduction can be essentially further sought, so as to be more line with the actual situation of the projects.

The optimal payment in whole operation and maintenance period of the projects has become an important issue, which is a key to project success. This study constructs a multi-stage dynamic programming model to optimize payment in the whole period of projects. Additionally, this study adds its value through deeply developing the new theories of optimal payment to more suitable for the practical problems, so that to optimize the design of payment mechanism. Meanwhile, a valuable reference for public and private sectors is provided to ensure the sustainable development of the projects.

This study aims to explore how the three types of human resource (HR) practices, encapsulated in the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) model, foster a learning organizational culture (LOC). In doing so, the authors evaluate the centrality of knowledge sharing (KS) in mediating this relationship.

A quantitative survey is undertaken to collect data from managers working in organizations operating in the UK. The authors use several statistical techniques to assess the psychometric properties of the measures and test the hypotheses using multiple regression executed with Preacher and Hayes’ Process macro.

The findings show that the AMO HR practices significantly facilitate the development of a LOC in the workplace, and KS among organizational members amplifies the effects of these HR practices in the process.

A LOC functions as an important source of organizational performance and effectiveness. It enhances the absorptive capacity of the organization to capture, share and transfer knowledge to optimize work. Hence, developing a culture that nurtures organizational learning could be a priority for managing HR. This study, therefore, extends the understanding of the role of AMO HR practices in fostering a learning culture – thus, providing managers with the essential knowledge to improve performance. The study also enriches the literature on HR practices, KS and LOC by integrating these three variables into a unifying framework.