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Based on a relationship marketing approach, this paper aims to study the influence of social media use on salesperson performance and its underlying mechanisms from the perspective of salespeople in B2B settings.

To test the proposed model, the authors used structural equation modeling with a sample of 196 French B2B salespeople. Moreover, to explore the moderating effect of emotional management between social media use and relationship quality, the authors used the Hayes macro PROCESS for SPSS and the Johnson–Newman’s floodlight method.

The authors confirm the direct role of social media use on salesperson performance, and its indirect role through the parallel mediation of social proximity and relationship quality. The empirical study provides evidence for the moderating effect of emotional management on the relationship between social media use and relationship quality.

Companies should promote the use of social media to increase both the sales and creative performance of salespeople. Moreover, salespeople with low to moderate abilities to manage other people’s emotions benefit strongly from the use of social media, as this directly increases their relationship with their customers.

The research complements the conceptualization of salesperson performance as a combination of sales performance and sales creativity and shows that emotional management is an asset for social media users to develop valuable business relationships.

This study aims to develop and test a framework for studying the failure of new women entrepreneurs in the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector.

Using a sample of 114 unsuccessful entrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda, this study aimed to identify key failure factors of women-owned SMEs. This study used mixed methods where quantitative data were analysed using the principal component approach with Varimax rotation to reduce the variables to only three clusters.

The study findings revealed that the failure of women-owned SMEs results from the entrepreneur’s inability followed by the enterprise incompetence, which are both internally controllable factors and the inauspicious business environment. These findings contribute to the validity of the dynamic capability theory by explaining how well internal and external factors must stay glued together to avoid failure among women-owned SMEs, something that was not yet previously well documented so far.

New SMEs are considered a noteworthy constituent of Rwandan development. Unfortunately, most new SMEs, in general, do not grow; their failure rate is high (70%), which raised many worries for both researchers and policymakers as to why this occurs at this stage of business growth. Therefore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this paper is the first to analyse the reasons for the failure of Rwandan women-owned SMEs in the service sector. These findings are important because they suggest that policies designed to reduce the incidence of SMEs’ failure should take account of the two main factors influencing failure among women entrepreneurs.

Many studies have analysed the impact of various variables on the ability of companies to raise capital. While most of these studies are sector-agnostic, literature on the effects of macroeconomic variables on sectors that established over the last 20 years like property technology and financial technology, is scarce. This study aims to identify macroeconomic factors that influence the ability of both sectors and is extended by real estate variables.

The impact of macroeconomic and real estate related factors is analysed using multiple linear regression and quantile regression. The sample covers 338 observations for PropTech and 595 for FinTech across 18 European countries and 5 deal types between 2000–2001 with each observation representing the capital invested per year for each deal type and country.

Besides confirming a significant impact of macroeconomic variables on the amount of capital invested, this study finds that additionally the real estate transaction volume positively impacts PropTech while the real estate yield-bond-gap negatively impacts FinTech.

For PropTech and FinTech companies and their investors it is critical to understand the dynamic with mac-ro variables and also the real estate industry. The direct connection identified in this paper is critical for a holistic understanding of the effects of measurable real estate variables on capital investments into both sectors.

The analysis fills the gap in the literature between variables affecting investment into firms and effects of the real estate industry on the investment activity into PropTech and FinTech.

This paper aims to investigate the formation of an inter-organizational collaboration network that made it possible to repair 2,516 mechanical respirators that were inoperative in Brazil during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A qualitative approach was used in a single case study with semi-structured interviews. The interviewee selection process was non-probabilistic through snowball sampling.

The results suggest that society, through different social groups with their different roles, can organize itself quickly through the formation of collaborative networks, and this organizational configuration can be an alternative for facing crises where actions isolated would be insufficient or slow to urgently address complex situations.

This paper aims to (1) demonstrate that society, through different social groups with their different roles, can organize itself quickly through the formation of collaborative networks; (2) favor the understanding and dynamics of the formation of a network; and (3) contribute to a possible replication of this initiative in future contexts.

The case portrays an unprecedented formation of a collaboration network involving more than 144 organizations that mobilized quickly in a complex context of a pandemic and that generated remarkable results through the reintroduction of equipment that were responsible for the preservation of thousands of lives during the year from 2020.

The study aims to examine the impact of intellectual and social capital in funding businesses.

The study made use of fixed-effects panel data models with a sample of 142 countries from the five continents during the period 1998–2018.

It was found that human capital (HC), relational capital, structural capital and social capital play a role in investors’ decisions to fund a business. The study revealed that investors’ funding decisions in low human development index countries are based mainly on education, while those in high human development index countries are based mainly on the creativity component of HC and on relational, structural and social capital.

The study needs to be replicated using firm-level data within each country. Moreover, the search for new proxies for intellectual and social capital (although the list of variables is exhaustive) both at the country and firm level, constitutes an interesting avenue for future research.

Countries should pay attention to intellectual and social capital to encourage business activity. In particular, low human development countries should strengthen HC, such as the school enrollment rate, with early entrepreneurial training and increase research and development investments, while high human development countries should continue to foster strategic alliances, protect intellectual property and maintain or increase the level of trust in the country.

The study contributes to literature by being the first to explore such a variety of intellectual and social capital variables from a country-level perspective.

El estudio tiene como objetivo examinar el impacto del capital intelectual y social en la financiación de las empresas.

Utilizamos modelos de datos de panel de efectos fijos con una muestra de 142 países de los cinco continentes durante el periodo 1998-2018.

Encontramos que el capital humano (CH), el capital relacional, el capital estructural y el capital social juegan un papel en las decisiones de los inversionistas para financiar un negocio. Encontramos que las decisiones de financiamiento de los inversionistas en los países con bajo índice de desarrollo humano se basan principalmente en la educación, mientras que las de los países con alto índice de desarrollo humano se basan principalmente en el componente de creatividad del CH y en el capital relacional, estructural y social.

Sugerimos replicar el estudio utilizando datos a nivel de empresa dentro de cada país. Por otra parte, la búsqueda de nuevos indicadores de capital intelectual y social (aunque nuestra lista de variables es exhaustiva) tanto a nivel de país como de empresa, constituye una vía interesante para futuras investigaciones.

Los países deben prestar atención al capital intelectual y social para fomentar la actividad empresarial. En particular, los países con bajo desarrollo humano deberían fortalecer el CH, como la tasa de matriculación escolar, con una formación empresarial temprana y aumentar las inversiones en investigación y desarrollo, mientras que los países con un alto nivel de desarrollo humano deberían seguir fomentando las alianzas estratégicas, proteger la propiedad intelectual y mantener o aumentar el nivel de confianza en el país.

El estudio contribuye a la literatura al ser el primero en explorar tal variedad de variables de capital intelectual y social desde una perspectiva a nivel de país.

Academic integrity in tertiary education is a global concern. This chapter describes academic integrity in Australian universities and proposes an “it takes a village” framework to guide universities toward a re-evaluation of academic integrity education. It takes a village to raise a child – a child needs role models and positive influences from multiple people for healthy growth and development. With regard to academic integrity, the parallel is that the entire university community needs to be involved to foster development of students of integrity. The institution and its community need to provide structures, multiple positive and effective learning experiences, and clear guidelines to support both staff and students. In this chapter, we argue that academic integrity needs to be seen as a complex system, one in which everyone involved has responsibility to develop and maintain a culture of integrity and one which supports a student throughout their academic journey.

This study aims to propose an approach towards reducing differences between national economies and living standards existing between the world’s wealthiest and least affluent nations.

A systemic review identifies the impeding purpose as proposed above: an entirely new initiative.

The efforts recommended are vital for preserving the human species and ensuring the integrity of our planet. For both the future of the human species and the planet itself, it is essential to reduce the divide between wealthy and poor. Now is the time to give force to the types of implementation necessary to meet these combined goals.

This essay avoids dissecting problems of current geopolitical and ideological character. Despite their sometimes contentious nature, they are often reduced by intelligent diplomacy.

The study proposes a holistic approach to bridging the North-South divide.

This study aims to explore the role of rebel group legitimacy and ideology in durable peace (DP) following peace agreements to end civil wars. It builds on earlier research showing that justice and civil society involvement are critical in achieving DP. This study adds the impacts of rebel group activities and support on DP. Activities include service delivery and mobilization. Support is gauged with outcomes of presidential and parliamentary elections held following peace agreements.

Five data sets were used to measure the key variables: DP, inclusive commissions (IC), legitimacy symmetry (electoral outcomes), service delivery and ideological mobilization. A measure of rebel group integration in the political system was also constructed. Impacts of the integration, legitimacy and ideology variables were assessed with a hierarchical regression model (HRM). This study begins with a base model drawn from earlier research showing the key predictors were procedural justice (PJ) and IC. The authors ask about the extent to which the rebel group variables contribute additional variance to the prediction of DP.

The main contributors to the prediction of DP were PJ, IC and integration in the political system. None of the legitimacy or mobilization variables added significant variance to the prediction. Only one of the mobilization variables, forced recruitment, was significant. The decision to integrate into the political system following the agreement did not mediate the relationship between PJ in the negotiation process and DP. Results of a factor analysis showed that DP, PJ, IC and integration formed a cluster with strong loadings on the first factor.

The negative results for the legitimacy and mobilization variables may not be the last word on rebel group influences. Lack of support for the key hypotheses spurs attempts to discover other sources that contribute to the survival of rebel group actors in the political system and, in turn, to DP.

The issues raised by this study contribute to debates about ways to attain peaceful relations among competing groups following a civil war. It appears that attention to factors inside and around the negotiation process (PJ, ICs and conversion) may be more important than rebel group activities outside of these processes. The results call attention, in particular, to the important role played by political integration. From a policy perspective, it would be useful to develop levers for encouraging rebel groups to emerge as political actors in the post-agreement environment.

Developing measures of the symmetry of rebel group legitimacy and integration in the context of a comparative case study are the primary original contributions of this study. Furthermore, the mode of analysis (HRM) is novel in this literature. This approach builds on and extends the earlier research on factors influencing DP.

The purpose of this study is to develop an operational level decision support system model for air traffic controllers (ATCos) within the framework of the Flexible Use of Airspace (FUA) concept to enable more efficient use of airspace capacity. This study produces a systematic solution to the route selection process so that the ATCo can determine the most efficient route with an operational decision support system model using Dijkstra’s Shortest Path Algorithm.

In this study, a new decision support system model for ATCos in decision-making positions was recommended and used. ATCos use this model as a main model for determining the shortest and safest route for aircraft as an operational-level decision support system. Dijkstra Algorithm, used in the model, is defined step by step and then explained with the pseudocode.

It has been determined that when the FUA concept and DSS are used while the ATCo chooses a route, significant fuel, time and capacity savings are achieved in flight operations. Emissions resulting from the negative environmental effects of air transportation are reduced, and significant capacity increase can be achieved. The operational level decision support system developed in the study was tested with 55 scenarios on the Ankara–Izmir flight route compared to the existing fixed route. The results for the proposed most efficient route were achieved at 11.22% distance (nm), 9.36%-time (min) savings and 837.71 kg CO₂ emission savings.

As far as the literature is reviewed, most studies aimed at increasing airspace efficiency produce solutions that try to improve rather than replace the normal process. Considering the literature positioning of this study compared to other studies, the proposed model provides a new systematic solution to the problems that cause human-induced route inefficiency within the framework of the FUA concept.