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In March 2020 the United Nations published an open brief for the creative community to propose interventions to the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. However, when faced with unprecedented wicked problems such as these, the rigour of design and creative processes can tested. COVID-19 has demonstrated how important human centred design responses are in understanding the worldviews and ecosystems of users. Ad hoc design responses or design hacks have demonstrated that they have a role to play in how we create our future individual, community and societal ecosystems.

In terms of age friendly design, this pandemic makes us envision what should be, furthermore, how we could create better products and services through technology. For our ageing communities “Cocooning” and other social restriction measures have exposed technological deficiencies for the needs of older people and opens up questions of our future preparedness for a growing ageing society. Now more than ever, designers need to understand the behavioural mind-set of older people in their own ecosystem and understand existing mental models.

In this opinion piece we posit what acts of design hacking can lead us to greater understanding of users mental models and therefore better understanding of technology needs for both older and younger adults. While presenting various examples of how design hacking is conducted by citizens and participants alike, it shows that it offers designers differing perspectives, experiences and inspiration for technology.

The construction and operation of buildings is a major contributor to global energy demand, greenhouse gases emissions, resource depletion, waste generation, and associated environmental effects, such as climate change, pollution and habitat destruction. Despite its wide relevance, research on building-related environmental effects often fails to achieve global visibility and attention, particularly in premiere interdisciplinary journals – thus representing a major gap in the research these journals offer. In this article we review and reflect on the factors that are likely causing this lack of visibility for such a prominent research topic and emphasise the need to reconcile the construction and operational phases into the physical unity of a building, to contribute to the global environmental discourse using a lifecycle-based approach. This article also aims to act as a call for action and to raise awareness of this important gap. The evidence contained in the article can support institutional policies to improve the status quo and provide a practical help to researchers in the field to bring their work to wide interdisciplinary audiences.

This study aims to analyze communication from the perspective of social marketing, positive emotions, and the topics chosen by Spanish tourist destinations to show their destination image. Additionally, this research shows a message classification model, based on the aforementioned characteristics, that has generated a greater impact, offering clarity to tourism managers on the type of content they should publish to achieve greater visibility.

The methodology used in this work combines content analysis and data mining techniques. The classification tree using the chi-square automatic interaction detector (CHAID) algorithm was selected to determine predictors of like behaviour.

The results show that the predictor variables have been emotions, social marketing and topics. Also, the characteristics of the messages most likely to have a high impact are those related to emotions of joy or happiness, their purpose is behavioural, and they talk about rural, cultural issues, special dates, getaways, or highlights of a town or city for something specific.

This study is the first to analyze the content of the tweets shared by destination tourism managers from a social marketing, positive emotions, and sustainability perspective, determining the possible predictors of likes on Twitter. The authors contribute to the literature by deepening the understanding of how social marketing and the positive emotions promoted drive a more significant impact in tourism communication campaigns on social media. The authors provide destination managers with a way better to understand the variables relevant to users in tourism content.

This paper adopts an intellectual capital perspective to investigate the role of owners who are ethnic minorities in the foreign market expansion performance of SMEs, and in particular considers the human capital dimension of intellectual capital.

Based on the empirical investigation of a sample of 10,326 small- and medium-sized US high-tech manufacturing enterprises, the authors’ results reveal a positive relationship between the number of foreign markets where these SMEs operate and their financial performance, and that this effect is reinforced by the presence of ethnic minority owners, as ethnic minorities constitute a valuable source of intellectual capital which bring value to firms.

The authors’ findings reveal the importance of intellectual capital in an SME’s leadership position, specifically in terms of having individuals from normally disadvantaged groups as owners. In this sense, policymakers are crucial in supporting the inclusion of ethnic minorities in SME ownership, through advantageous treatment in firms, for example.

The study presents practical implications for managers seeking foreign market expansion. In addition, when defining ownership structure (e.g., in the start-up phase), the role of human capital, in the form of ethnic minorities, should not be neglected, especially if an SME intends to operate or is already operating in different national contexts.

The authors’ results provide important insights into the positive effect of human capital on SME foreign market performance. The idea of a moderating role played by owners from ethnic minorities suggested here contributes to the literature on human capital and is one of the first attempts to consider this moderating factor in this relationship, especially in the SME context.

The purpose of this study is to understand how neuroscientific tools are used and discussed in ongoing research on strategy in organizations.

The authors used a bibliometric study of bibliographic pairing to answer the research question. They collected data from the Web of Science and Scopus databases using the keywords “neuroscience*,” “neurostrategy*” and “neuroscientific*.”

This study presents a framework that relates fundamental aspects discussed in current research using neuroscientific tools: Neuroscience and its research tools in organizations; emotions and information processing; interdisciplinary application of neuroscientific tools; and moral and ethical influences in the leaders' decision-making process.

The inclusion of neuroscientific tools in Strategic Management research is still under development. There are criticisms and challenges related to the limitations and potential to support future research.

Despite recognizing the potential of neuroscientific tools in the mind and brain relationship, this study suggests that at this stage, because of criticisms and challenges, they should be used as support and in addition to other traditional research techniques to assess constructs and mechanisms related to strategic decisions and choices in organizations.

Neuroscientific methods in organizational studies can provide insights into individual reactions to ethical issues and raise challenging normative questions about the nature of moral responsibility, autonomy, intention and free will, offering multiple perspectives in the field of business ethics.

In addition to presenting the potential and challenges of using scientific tools in strategic management studies, this study helps create methodological paths for studies in strategic management.

The development of Research Management and Administration (RMA) in Europe is strongly connected with the development of the Science and Technology (S&T) policy of the European Union (EU). These policies were the result of a continuous debate between the member states and the European Commission and European Parliament.

Although there is no data on the early development of RMA, there are some publications on the history of the development of the S&T policy in Europe: the excellent publication ‘A History of European Union Research Policy’ by Luca Guzzetti (Guzzetti, 1995). Guzzetti’s book investigates the history of EU research policies from 1948 up to the preparation of the Fourth Framework Programme (FP) (1994–1998).

The RMA aspects are constructed mainly by oral history complemented with some written sources. The history shows a gradual development of the profession unevenly spread in time and European geography. This has mainly with the EU enlargement in the same period, when new member states were connected to the FP. The profession started with a few colleagues’ way back in the eighties of the last century as financial people were dealing with the first European financial reporting up to the present day where RMA is becoming a field of work attracting many new colleagues.

This study aims to investigate how attributes associated with local food (intrinsic product quality; local support) motivate purchase behaviour. Previous research assumes heterogeneity in consumer motivation, but this has never been formally assessed. As such, the influence of local food attributes in motivating product use is integrated into a model in which consumer values and personal characteristics/situational variables are specified as moderators.

Eight hypotheses are tested using data collected from a quota sample of respondents recruited via an online panel of 1,223 shoppers. A three-stage analysis is used using structural equation modelling. Moderation effects are tested using both latent interactions and multiple-group analysis.

Shoppers purchase local food more frequently as a consequence of local support rather than intrinsic product quality. Unpicking these relationships reveal that local support has an amplified effect when local identity is higher, and when the shopper is either female or of an older age (55 years plus). Surprisingly, the influence of intrinsic product quality is equivalent by gender, age and location (rural/urban).

Marketers promoting locally produced foods should focus on both the intrinsic attributes of local food as well as the role it plays within the local community. The latter is more likely to be successful with communications aimed at women and older consumers.

With previous studies focusing on how local food attributes influence favourable consumer behaviours, the current study unpicks these relationships by examining heterogeneity in responses. This is the first study to concurrently use attributes, values and personal characteristics/situational variables in explaining shopping behaviour for local food.

In order to better optimize the internal management system of book publishing and to cope with the changes in the external market environment, the purpose of this paper is to carry out cross-border publishing with the help of a transmedia storytelling model to realize the transformation and upgrading of the industry. Focusing on the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, the moderating effect of the innovation environment on different variables is assessed.

This paper proposes several feasible hypotheses based on existing research. The research data came from 365 managers of Chinese book publishing organizations, and the scale was validated by Cronbach’s a, composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE). Reliability and validity were verified, and correlation and regression analyses were used to test the impact of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model on business performance and to analyze the moderating role of the innovation environment.

The results show that the book publishing transmedia storytelling model (content production, technology integration, organizational innovation, marketing integration) helps to improve business performance (market performance, financial performance), and the innovation environment has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, which provides a guarantee for the transformation and upgrading of book publishing. The market information reflected in the innovation environment has a certain role in promoting the innovation and business performance of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model.

The empirical evidence provides a theoretical link between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, but there are still some shortcomings, and more factors, such as equity structure, government subsidies and research and development investment, should be included in future research. In addition, the scope of the research should be broadened on this basis to make the results of the data analysis more objective.

This paper introduces the transmedia storytelling model and deeply analyzes the relationship between the book publishing transmedia storytelling model and business performance, which is of great practical significance for optimizing the application and service quality of book publishing, prolonging the industrial chain, enhancing the interaction and participation of users and perfecting the business management system of the book publishing industry.

The application and research of the book publishing transmedia storytelling model are imperfect. Therefore, this paper not only helps to promote the innovation of book publishing organizational structure and improve the management system of business performance, but also may help to improve the innovation environment of book publishing enterprises and promote the diversification of industrial structure.

The lack of critical thinking in new graduates has been a concern to the nursing profession. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an innovative, evidence-based skills fair intervention on nursing students' achievements and perceptions of critical thinking skills development.

The explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was employed for this study.

The findings indicated participants perceived the intervention as a strategy for developing critical thinking.

The study provides educators helpful information in planning their own teaching practice in educating students.

This study aims to investigate the decline of American hegemony as one of the most prominent crises of the modern world order, from a broader perspective that transcends narrow traditional interpretations. The paper assumes that the September 11 events in 2001 have launched the actual decline in American hegemony. Tracing the evolution of US global strategy over the past two decades, the study seeks to analyze the main causes and repercussions of the decline of US hegemony, which would provide a bird’s eye view of what the current global system is going through.

The study investigates the decline in American hegemony through a longitudinal within-case analysis which focuses on the causal path of decline in hegemony in the case of the USA, since the events of September 11, 2001, and tries to identify the causal mechanisms behind this decline. Following George and Bennet (2005), the study uses process tracing to examine its research question. Process-tracing method seeks to identify the intervening causal process – causal chain or causal mechanisms or the steps in a causal process – that leads to the outcome of a particular case in a specific historical context (Mahoney, 2000; Bennet and Elman, 2006). The study chose this method, as it offers more potential for identifying causal mechanisms and theory testing (George and Bennet, 2005); it opted for a specific procedure, among the variety of process-tracing procedures listed by George and Bennet, which is the detailed narrative presented as a chronicle, accompanied by explicit causal hypotheses. Using this process tracing procedure, the study assumes that American hegemony has witnessed dramatic changes in the aftermath of critical junctures, particularly the events of September 11, 2001, and the financial crises, 2008, which contributed significantly to this decline. Consequently, it traces the impact of these events on the state of American hegemony, in light of the review of contributions of different theories on hegemony in the field of international relations, both traditional and critical. Consequently, introducing the theoretical framework used in the study (the four-dimensional model of hegemony), which transcends criticisms of previous theories.

The crises of the modern world order and the decline of American hegemony – being the main manifestation of such crises – revealed the inability of the traditional and critical approaches reviewed in the study to interpret this decline and those crises. The reason behind that was the inability of these interpretations to reflect the various dimensions of American hegemony and its decline since the September 11 events. This highlights the importance of using the four-dimensional model, which combines different factors in the analysis and has proved to be an appropriate model for studying the case of American hegemony and its decline after the events of September 11, as it deals with the phenomenon of hegemony as a social relationship based on specific social networks.

Despite the currency and relevance of the decline of US hegemony for both the academic and political world, the topic needed to be analyzed systemically and addressed in a thorough scientific way. Through the application of theoretical concepts into the analysis of empirical data, this study contributes to a field where too often the discourse about decline of American hegemony is led without the required theoretical or conceptual considerations.