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This study aims to construct a mental health service system for middle school students in the post-COVID-19 era with the framework of Six Sigma DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve and control) and analyze the influencing factors of the mental health service system to study the implementation strategies of quality-oriented mental health services in middle schools.

This study was conducted in Tianjin, China, from September to November 2022, and 350 middle school students from Tianjin Public Middle School were selected as subjects. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data. In this study, the Six Sigma DMAIC method, sensitivity analysis method, exploratory factor analysis and principal component analysis were used to analyze the mental health services provided to middle school students.

Based on the Six Sigma DMAIC framework, this study indicates that the contribution rate of the mental health service process factor is the largest in the post-COVID-19 era. The mental health cultivation factor ranks second in terms of its contribution. Mental health quality and policy factors are also important in the construction of middle school students’ mental health service system. In addition, the study highlights the importance of parental involvement and social support in student mental health services during the post-COVID-19 era.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, a study on middle school students’ mental health in the post-Covid-19 era has not yet been conducted. This study developed a quality-oriented mental health system and analyzed the influencing factors of mental health for middle school students based on data analysis and the Six Sigma DMAIC method.

With a focus on undergraduate music major students in China, the study sought to examine how higher music education institutions prepare professional knowledge, professional skills and soft skills in relevance to music students' employability.

The quantitative survey engaged 359 music students from five music institutions in Western China to report their perceptions toward music curriculum related to employability. The current study examined whether their perception varied based on their gender, location, school, educational background and professional option purpose.

Perception differences in the music curriculum were observed across gender, schools, educational background and professional option purpose. School differences were the most significant among all five factors, followed by professional option purpose, educational background and gender. The location difference was insignificant among the five factors. There were insufficient opportunities for community and industrial engagement in higher music education.

The current study provides an insight into the higher music education curriculum for employability preparation in current China. This is one of the limited empirical studies in Western China to investigate music students' perceptions of professional knowledge and skills and the soft skill line with employability. The findings can serve as a reference for prospective employees in the music industry, policymaking and curriculum design and future research.

While companies worldwide are largely comprised of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a significant amount of management accounting (MA) research focuses on larger organisations, thus leaving MA practice in SMEs relatively under-researched. This paper aims to examine MA adoption (MAA) and its interfaces with MA challenges and business performance from a small business perspective.

A sample of 502 small businesses is investigated with an embedded mixed methods research design comprised of qualitative content analysis, factor analysis and analysis of variance.

Up to 78% of small businesses are facing MA challenges that stem from organisation, systems, personnel and/or resources. Based on the present findings, MA challenges do motivate small businesses to at least consider investing in MAA as small businesses facing challenges are more likely to acquire systems and services than those reporting no issues at all. Hence, small business managers seem to not only recognise where their challenges lie, but also seek ways to improve the situation through MAA. The analysis also reveals that companies with the highest MA know-how have the best average solvency, suggesting that small businesses indeed benefit from MAA. Interestingly, the performance at medium levels of know-how declines while investments increase, revealing a “decreasing solvency phenomenon”. Potential explanations are, e.g. the MA not fitting the company’s exact needs, or information usability and use being limited by poor MA understanding.

The originality of the research lies in exploring the interfaces between MA challenges, MAA and small business performance using distinctive embedded mixed methods research design.

This paper aims to investigate the donor characteristics of Muslim donors and fills the gap by empirically surveying Muslim donors from Kuwait. The authors believe their sample choice to be of importance due to the stark contrast between the Kuwaiti and Asian environment, of which much of the literature’s findings on Muslim donor behavior was based on.

The characteristics studied include demographics, socioeconomics, individual attitudes, trust perceived generosity among others identified in the literature. Data was gathered by disseminating 320 surveys to better understand which variables have significant influence on an individual’s charity behavior. Statistical analysis using regression method was used to analyze the data.

The findings report that fundraising campaigns, perceived financial security are significant and there is also a significant association between certain charity activities and gender. The findings have implications on market segmentation and promotional strategies aimed toward similar donor profiles and for the charities soliciting Zakat who are based in the Gulf Cooperation Council region.

The contributions of this manuscript further the knowledge of donor behavior and thus enrich the body of work within research that explores the role of marketing in philanthropic and non-profit organizations. This study provides deeper insights into the Muslim’s donor behavior and from a managerial standpoint, facilitates on how to target them effectively when soliciting donations or raising funds for campaigns within Muslim communities, an area that has received little attention from research investigating marketing for nonprofit organizations.

The contemporary business environment is characterised by an increasing reliance on artificial intelligence, automation, optimisation, efficient communication and data-driven decision making. Based on the limited academic literature that examines the managerial perspective on enterprise chatbots, the paper aims to explore organisational needs and expectations for enterprise chatbots from a managerial perspective, assesses the relationship between managerial knowledge and managerial opinion regarding enterprise chatbots, and delivers a framework for integrating chatbots into the digital workforce.

The paper presents a quantitative design. An online, self-administered survey yielded 111 valid responses from managers in service and manufacturing organisations based on convenience and snowball sampling strategies. Given the nature of the data and the research questions, the research was conducted using principal component analysis, parallel analysis, correlation, internal consistency and difference in means tests.

This research explores the managerial perspective on enterprise chatbots from multiple perspectives (i.e., adoption, suitability, development requirements, benefits, barriers, performance and implications), presents a heat map of the average level of chatbot need across industries and business units, highlights the urgent need for education and training initiatives targeted at decision makers, and provides a strategic framework for successful chatbot implementation.

This study equips managers and practitioners dealing with enterprise chatbots with knowledge to effectively leverage the expected benefits of investing in this technology for their organisations. It offers direction for developers in designing chatbots that align with organisational expectations, capabilities and skills.

Insights for managers, researchers and chatbot developers are provided. The work complements the few academic studies that examine enterprise chatbots from a managerial perspective and enriches related commercial studies with more rigourous statistical analysis. The paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on decision-making in the context of technology development, integration and education.

Along their journey to achieve exponential growth, startups must process a vast amount of information and make quick decisions, reevaluate and adjust strategies and simultaneously redesign their organization along with the venture lifecycle. This paper delineates the evolution of startups' organizational design and identifies the influencing factors in every phase of the lifecycle.

This study adopts an explorative qualitative approach using a multiple case study methodology for six Indonesian startups. Indonesia is chosen as an emerging country in Southeast Asia with tremendous growth in digital startup businesses.

The research findings suggest that, as they experience exponential growth, startups strive to manage the tension between being structured and being flexible and hence remain innovative by combining management-centric and employee-centric approaches. In particular, this study identified three main factors that potentially influence the evolution of startups' organizational design: founders, investors and the characteristics of business and market.

The present study focuses mainly on Indonesian digital startups and does not fully explain how the influencing factors work in each phase of the venture journey.

This study offers practical contributions for startups pursuing business growth by focusing on the importance of balancing the tension between structured and flexible organizational design and placing more attention on founders, investors and business-market characteristics.

This empirical study is among the first to delineate nuances of organizational design evolution during the startup lifecycle by adopting an explorative qualitative method.

Foreign markets possess different characteristics to domestic ones; this means that dynamic marketing capabilities (DMCs) should be adjusted. This paper aims to understand how these DMCs enable firms to achieve greater legitimacy in international markets.

This research uses a qualitative approach based on in-depth interviews in collaboration with an association of exporting firms.

Findings suggest five areas of DMCs to improve organizational legitimacy overseas: flexibility, relationship management, local market sensitivity, anticipation and exemplariness. Those capabilities should be combined and will play a different role depending on the implementation phase of the external company. Resource allocation and capability development should follow an integrative approach emphasizing proximity, adaptability, alliances, engagement and credibility to reach differentiation in foreign markets.

The originality is mainly focused on the cohabitation and strong synergies between DMCs and legitimacy. This aspect is particularly relevant because legitimized companies have higher levels of survival, which is fundamental in the international venture.

This study aims to identify different consumer segments to address the strategies that can be adopted by companies and policymakers to increase the consumption of safer foods and reduce the negative externalities caused by pesticides. More than 3,000 consumers were involved in the survey, of which more than 1,000 completed in all parts.

The complexity of the topic required a multidimensional approach. Therefore, the authors modelled the decision support system by proposing a decision rule-based approach to analyse consumers' food purchasing choices. More precisely, the authors referred to the dominance-based rough set approach (DRSA).

Based on the DRSA results, three consumer segments were identified: green consumers, integrated pest management (IPM)-informed and active consumers, and potential low-pesticide consumers for which different policy implications have been highlighted.

Despite the high number of survey respondents, further research should seek to obtain data from a more balanced sample. Furthermore, different methods of analysis could be applied and the results compared.

Identification and promotion of managerial and public policies to increase the consumption of low pesticide food.

The main social implications can be summarised in the greater knowledge and awareness of the environmental aspects related to food, recognition of the intrinsic quality and/or functionality of food.

The authors contribute to the literature in two ways. First, the authors refer to the DRSA, an innovative approach in the context of consumer analysis. Second, based on the decision rules, the authors identify three consumer segments to which specific tools can be addressed.