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Food fraud as intentional deception for economic gain relies on a low-tech food value chain, that applies a ‘paper-and-pencil approach’, unable to provide reliable and trusted data about food products, accompanied processes/activities and actors involved. Such approach has created the information asymmetry that leads to erosion of stakeholders and consumers trust, which in turn discourages cooperation within the food chain by damaging its ability to decrease uncertainty and capability to provide authentic, nutritional, accessible and affordable food for all. Lack of holistic approach, focus on stand-alone measures, lack of proactive measures and undermined role of customers have been major factors behind weaknesses of current anti-fraud measures system. Thus, the process of strong and fast digitalisation enabled by the new emerging technology called Industry 4.0 is a way to provide a shift from food fraud detection to efficient prevention. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to shed light on current challenges and opportunities associated with Industry 4.0 technology enablers' guardian role in food fraud prevention with the hope to inform future researchers, experts and decision-makers about opportunities opened up by transforming to new cyber-physical-social ecosystem, or better to say ‘self-thinking’ food value chain whose foundations are already under development. The systematic literature network analysis is applied to fulfil the stated objective. Digitalisation and Industry 4.0 can be used to develop a system that is cost effective and ensures data integrity and prevents tampering and single point failure through offering fault tolerance, immutability, trust, transparency and full traceability of the stored transaction records to all agri-food value chain partners. In addition, such approach lays a foundation for adopting new business models, strengthening food chain resilience, sustainability and innovation capacity.

Although earlier research suggests a positive relationship exists between engaging in entrepreneurial marketing activities and firm performance, there may be contingent issues that impact the association. This investigation unpacks the relationship between entrepreneurial marketing behaviour and firm performance under the moderating role of coopetition, in an immediate post-COVID-19 period.

A resource-based theoretical lens, alongside an outside-in perspective, underpins this study. Following 20 field interviews, survey responses via an online survey were obtained from 306 small, passive exporting wine producers with a domestic market focus in the United States. The data passed all major robustness checks.

The statistical findings indicated that entrepreneurial marketing activities positively and significantly influenced firm performance, while coopetition provided a non-significant moderation effect. Field interviews suggested that entrepreneurs’ attemps to scale up from passive to more active export activities in an immediate post-pandemic period helped explain the findings. Owner-managers rejoined trustworthy and complementary pre-pandemic coopetition partners in the immediate aftermath of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) for domestic market activities. In contrast, they had to minimise risks from dark-side/opportunistic behaviour when joining coopetition networks with partners while attempting to scale up export market activities.

Unique insights emerge to unpack the entrepreneurial marketing–performance relationship via the moderation effect of coopetition, namely, with the temporal setting of an immediate post-COVID-19 period. Firstly, new support arises regarding the likely performance-enhancing impact of owner-managers’ engagement in entrepreneurial marketing practices. Secondly, novel findings emerge in respect of the contrasting role of coopetition in both domestic and export market activities. Thirdly, new evidence arises in relation to a resource-based theoretical lens alongside an outside-in perspective, whereby, strategic flexibility in pivoting facets of a firm’s business model needs effective management following a crisis.

Altruism has an important place in shaping a healthy and developed society for the present and the future. Altruism refers to exhibiting good behavior that does not expect a reward in return. The fact that female entrepreneurs have busy working and private lives and try to be individuals who add value to life while striving for success in this intense tempo increases the investigation of altruism. This study aims to examine the differences in altruistic behaviors of female entrepreneurs according to demographic variables.

The research sample consists of 120 female entrepreneurs belonging to the Turkish community in Kosovo. T-test and one-way ANOVA analysis were applied to examine the difference between altruism and demographic characteristics.

This study determined that age and work experience influence altruism. Female entrepreneurs in the age group of 31+ had higher altruism scores than female entrepreneurs in the 21–24 and 25–30 age group. Additionally, it has been revealed that female entrepreneurs with 10 or more years of work experience have higher altruism scores than female entrepreneurs with under 1 year and 1–3 years of work experience. Findings also demonstrated that marital status, education level and income do not influence female entrepreneurs’ altruistic behaviors.

Results obtained from the research are limited to the responses given by the participants to the survey used within the scope of the research.

As Turkish women are small community living in the country, it was interesting to see that apart from their entrepreneurial spirit do they also have altruistic behavior and how this behavior differs among different demographic characteristics. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research will contribute to the literature as no similar study was done before.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief introduction of the finite difference based parabolic equation (PE) modeling to the advanced engineering students and academic researchers.

A three-dimensional parabolic equation (3DPE) model is developed from the ground up for modeling wave propagation in the tunnel via a rectangular waveguide structure. A discussion of vector wave equations from Maxwell’s equations followed by the paraxial approximations and finite difference implementation is presented for the beginners. The obtained simulation results are compared with the analytical solution.

It is shown that the alternating direction implicit finite difference method (FDM) is more efficient in terms of accuracy, computational time and memory than the explicit FDM. The reader interested in maximum details of individual contributions such as the latest achievements in PE modeling until 2021, basic PE derivation, PE formulation’s approximations, finite difference discretization and implementation of 3DPE, can learn from this paper.

For the purpose of this paper, a simple 3DPE formulation is presented. For simplicity, a rectangular waveguide structure is discretized with the finite difference approach as a design problem. Future work could use the PE based FDM to study the possibility of utilization of meteorological techniques, including the effects of backward traveling waves as well as making comparisons with the experimental data.

The proposed work is directly applicable to typical problems in the field of tunnel propagation modeling for both national commercial and military applications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore, from the view of buyers and sellers, the relationship between the blockchain technology and various important aspects of real estate transactions such as transparency, security and cost reduction.

The present study uses a quantitative research method. For the purpose of this study, a questionnaire with close-ended questions is used. The questionnaire was distributed to both buyers and sellers alike. The study included 1,000 people using the stratified probability sampling. The study uses factor analysis to analyze the relationship between the blockchain technology and other research variables such as such as transparency, security and cost reduction.

The findings of this study indicate that the buyers and sellers perceive that the transparency and cost reduction have the highest influence on the intention to adopt blockchain technology in a real estate transactions system, followed by the security of transactions.

The study has great implications for the real estate transactions system in Kosovo and society in general. The study shows that the blockchain technology can provide for a transparent and errorless interaction between buyers and sellers of real estate. Since smart contracts eliminate the need for third parties in real estate transactions, the cost of transactions shall be considerably reduced due to elimination of intermediaries and due to process speed and efficiency. Finally, the blockchain technology can increase the trust between parties and shall serve as a means to fight corruption and money laundering in real estate investments.

The study is the first quantitative study that studies the causal link between the blockchain technology and important aspects of real estate transactions system such as transparency, security and transaction costs.

This paper aims to provide a framework for a code of ethics related to digital and leading edge technologies.

The proposed ethical framework is anchored in data protection legislation, and results from a combination of case studies, observed user behaviour and decision-making processes.

A concise and user-friendly ethical framework ensures the embedded code of conduct is respected and observed by all employees concerned.

An ethical framework aligned with EU data protection legislation is required.

Certain small businesses do not possess the assets needed to implement a performance-enhancing entrepreneurial marketing orientation (opportunity-driven behaviours focussed on creating value for customers). Although some entrepreneurs cooperate with their competitors (coopetition) to achieve their day-to-day and long-term goals, it is unclear whether these partnerships are advantageous in this capacity. Thus, grounded in the resource-based view, the purpose of this investigation is to examine whether coopetition positively moderates the relationship between an entrepreneurial marketing orientation and financial performance.

Survey responses were obtained from 184 small tourism and hospitality organisations in New Zealand. Following a series of robustness checks, covariance-based structural equation modelling was used to test the elements of the conceptual model.

Unique insights illustrate an entrepreneurial marketing orientation yielding a negative and significant link with financial performance. Nevertheless, this result was potentially related to the entrepreneurial marketing-oriented opportunities that owner-managers pursued within the context of their sector; in particular, situations when employing an individualistic business model constrained certain decision-makers' ability to pursue “growth-oriented” objectives. However, coopetition produced a positive and significant moderating effect, enabling owner-managers to pursue opportunities via collaborative business models facilitating mutually beneficial performance outcomes.

Owner-managers of under-resourced small firms should be careful when implementing entrepreneurial marketing strategies utilising an individualistic business model. For example, they might pursue opportunities that are not viable and/or become over-loaded with market intelligence that they cannot handle. By collaborating with competitors, owner-managers can learn improved ways to operate within their industries, alongside being equipped with new resources and capabilities. In doing so, coopetition can help overcome some of the potential performance-limiting issues owner-managers face by being under-resourced, namely, via employing a collaborative business model.

This current study contributes to the extant literature by evaluating the complexities of entrepreneurial marketing practices. That is, although earlier research has focussed on the performance-driving outcomes of an entrepreneurial marketing orientation, prior studies typically overlook certain moderating factors that could influence this association. By examining the interaction between an entrepreneurial marketing orientation and coopetition on financial performance, new evidence has emerged on how owner-managers of small firms can utilise interfirm collaboration to succeed within their markets, as opposed to struggling to cope with the challenges of an individualistic business model. Specifically, an entrepreneurial marketing orientation is likely to enhance financial performance when under-resourced companies effectively collaborate with their competitors.

This study aims to investigate the ways that human capital influences the strategic orientation variables entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO), which ultimately leverage the firm performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia.

This study used a quantitative method with a total of 274 SMEs in the Regency of Gresik, East Java, Indonesia, as the observable population. Furthermore, the identified samples obtained through the random sampling technique were determined using the Slovin formula with 163 SMEs used for analysis. As the means of analysis, this study used a statistical approach by using PLS-SEM statistics from SmartPLS software. This analytical tool has been proven to be a robust statistical tool that has been used in many marketing studies.

This study found that human capital is a key determinant of EO and MO as strategic orientations of SMEs. Furthermore, this study highlighted that SMEs’ strategic orientations (i.e. EO and MO) provide a valuable thrust that leverages firm performance. Moreover, the role of human capital in leveraging firm performance was found to be significant with the role of the joint effect of EO and MO as mediator. This implies that human capital is not solely a single determinant that leverages SMEs’ performance.

There are few aspects of limitations in this research that could be enhanced by other scholars in the discipline of entrepreneurship. First, the strategic orientation concept being indicated by EO and MO had yet to provide a comprehensive view of strategic orientation. Second, this research used samples that represent the traditional furniture cluster in East Java and had yet to explore other clusters such as food processing and services cluster which may be relevant to the context of SMEs in Indonesia.

As a practical implication, this study would benefit policymakers in Indonesia, such as the Ministry for Cooperatives and SMEs to provide assistance to SMEs to progressively nurture capacity-building through formal and informal education to leverage human capital. Moreover, it could benefit other relevant businesses, such as national banks in Indonesia whose interests are significant, especially in providing financial access to SMEs in Indonesia.

The social implication of this research lay the focus on the suggestion by which SMEs must be able to optimize their capabilities by enhancing levels of human capital particularly for traditionally managed SMEs. The ability to survive external pressures for would be able to contribute to the social well-being of their society as many people are dependent heavily in the operation of the SMEs.

The significance of this study is twofold. Although the use of human capital as a determinant of firm performance has been discussed in the literature, few studies to date has sought to predict human capital with EO and MO as mediators of firm performance. Furthermore, the joint impact of EO and MO as a strategic orientation needs to be holistically explored and explained, particularly in an emerging economy context.

Previous research has indicated that entrepreneurial marketing (EM) positively influences small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) performance. While most studies have examined the relationship in a stable environment, EMs’ effectiveness during environmental instability remains uncertain. Therefore, the study aims to investigate the influence of EM on Indian manufacturing-based SMEs’ performance during the COVID-19-induced environmental instability. Additionally, it explores the mediating role of innovative performance in the relationship between EM and SME performance.

The data were collected by distributing a structured survey questionnaire to 302 owners/managers of SMEs. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The result indicates that EM significantly impacts both innovation and SME performance. Furthermore, the innovative performance partially mediates the link between EM and SME performance. The findings suggest that even within severely affected sectors (manufacturing) during the pandemic, SMEs can achieve growth and innovation through effective EM practices.

This study validates the theoretical notion that EM remains effective even in unpredictable environments such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings offer valuable insights for SMEs seeking innovative strategies to enhance their performance, particularly those in emerging economies.

Prior studies have relied on a single layer of abstraction to analyze the impact of EM. The present study is the first to extend standard construct (EM) conceptualization. Furthermore, it evaluated the efficiency of EM in situations characterized by instability, which is rare in the EM and SME literature.

Current research argues that there is a positive relationship between entrepreneurial marketing (EM) and business performance. However, this relationship has only been discussed in a relatively stable environmental situation and it is not clear whether such a relationship remains positive during environmental turbulence (ET) and whether organizations adopting EM activities during such turbulence, will change their behavior to enhance their performance. Thus, this study aims to examine the relationship between EM and the performance of Egyptian banks. Furthermore, building upon environmental contingency theory, this study examined the moderating role of ET on the relationship between EM and the performance of banks in Egypt.

Data were collected during the period March–June 2020 using a sample of 358 employees working in 20 banks in Egypt. Online surveys and self-administered questionnaires were used to collect the required data during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling using SPSS 25.

The main results of this study indicated that EM and bank performance are positively related. Results also showed that ET and technological turbulence positively moderates this relationship, i.e. this relationship is more robust in highly turbulent business environments than in more stable environments.

This study provides useful managerial and practical implications. Fruitful insights can be communicated to bank managers in Egypt on the importance of EM and its implications for performance. With an increased understanding of EM, bank managers will come to understand that EM is critical for the sustainability and development of their banks.

An extensive review of the existing research material indicates that this is the first study to examine the relationship between EM and Egyptian banking performance and the moderating role of ET, particularly in large organizations.