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This study examines the barriers and drivers to student-led mobilization for sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs) across Canada. Findings indicate that the most common barrier to student mobilization was a lack of political opportunities and social capital. In response, the findings indicate that the primary drivers that student-led sustainability groups used to overcome barriers included: sharing framing perspectives to inspire and motivate action across campuses, using social networks to borrow and leverage social capital from other stakeholders, and impacting campus stakeholder behaviors resulting in the creation of a culture of sustainability. Social movement theories have been applied to the barriers and drivers to student-led action in order to provide a deeper understanding of how students mobilize on campuses. The findings suggest that while students may struggle to elicit policy changes across HEIs due to common barriers, their efforts can successfully shift the campus culture of sustainability. This study addresses an identified need for more literature investigating sustainability activism in higher education more broadly and more specifically fills a gap in our understanding of how student activism may contribute to social change.

Prior research has extensively examined how bringing technology from work into the non-work life domain creates conflict, yet the reverse pathway has rarely been studied. The purpose of this study is to bridge this gap and examine how the non-work use of smartphones in the workplace affects work–life conflict.

Drawing from three literature streams: technostress, work–life conflict and role boundary theory, the authors theorise on how limiting employees' ability to integrate the personal life domain into work, by means of technology use policy, contributes to stress and work–life conflict. To test this model, the authors employ a natural experiment in a company that changed its policy from fully restricting to open smartphone access for non-work purposes in the workplace. The insights gained from the experiment were explored further through qualitative interviews.

Work–life conflict declines when a ban on using smartphones for non-work purposes in the workplace is revoked. This study's results show that the relationship between smartphone use in the workplace and work–life conflict is mediated by sensed stress. Additionally, a post-hoc analysis reveals that work performance was unchanged when the smartphone ban was revoked.

First, this study advances the authors' understanding of how smartphone use policies in the workplace spill over to affect non-work life. Second, this work contributes to the technostress literature by revealing how, in specific situations, engagement with ICT can reduce distress and strain.

This qualitative study discusses the importance of effective leadership practices in connecting the macro-, meso-, and micro-contexts in which school leaders operate, considering the colonial and apartheid history of South Africa and the current era of neoliberal philosophies by exploring the degree to which school leaders in historically disadvantaged schools in Western Cape Province use an edupreneurial approach to steer their schools in new directions. The school leaders, especially in historically disadvantaged Colored schools, are expected to be more autonomous and accountable for making the school environment conducive to performance standards and improved learning results. The study uses an edupreneurial leadership approach as a theoretical lens to explore entrepreneurial agency, together with the educational leadership approach of school principals as a consequence of neoliberal policies.

This study focuses on secondary schools in historically Colored communities in Western Cape Province through semi-structured interviews with four purposively selected school principals and four teachers from four different schools in the Western Cape Province.

Education and training programs should focus on cultural values and practices to enhance the efficacy of these schools. Furthermore, an entrepreneurial mindset and spirit are aspects that can be encouraged in a culturally sensitive manner. The edupreneurial leadership approach in developing countries has a distinctive nature.

This study contributes to forging an understanding of how neoliberal trends influence school leadership practices in developing countries, especially the leadership work of school principals across public schools in the Western Cape Province in South Africa.

This research explored the impact that the relatively new role of the Health and Wellbeing Lead upon the health and wellbeing of children and their families at this school.

This case study took place in a primary school (children aged 4–11) in the South-West of England. Data was collected through activities with children, semi-structured interviews with senior staff and parents and a “learning walk”.

Our data suggested that this role provided compassion, unconditional positive regard and respect for parents, factors that are frequently absent from research into parent partnerships in education. The role presented as invaluable in tackling the many mental and physical challenges that parents faced in rearing their children, and in providing their children with the best possible chance of success.

This is a single Case Study and, as such, may or may not be representative of similar schools. We also question to what extent the findings demonstrated the strength of this role per se, or whether the impact could simply be the result of a uniquely caring and passionate individual.

We concluded that this was a role needed in all schools, recognising the key role that parents play in their child’s wellbeing, and the indirect impact that parent mental health can have upon their child’s success.

It is vital that this role is not used as an excuse by the government to further reduce the already denuded Social Services landscape within communities. It is also important that this responsibility does not become yet another burden added to already overstretched teaching staff.

This research presents a fresh perspective on the multiple pressures that parents face and how these can impact upon their child's education.

The smart sustainable cities (SSC) concept has a wide acknowledgement amongst governments and societies that deal with emerging technology and help in developing better urban communities. However, the fact that citizens' participation (CP) is not adherent to the current policies and governance often boosts their aspirations of decision-making to become smart cities. This paper aims to identify SSC variables and, more importantly, rank, categorise and discuss the factors towards implementing SSC by engaging, empowering and enabling citizens to participate in the urban development of SSC.

A comprehensive literature review identified 38 factors in the CP process. Those factors were used to design an online questionnaire administered to the respondents. A total of 164 valid responses were collected. A two-stage statistical analysis was adopted. First, the Relative Importance Index (RII) was used to rank and prioritise the importance of the factors that affect the current policies and agenda. Second, factor analysis was utilised to categorise and group those factors.

This study founds four significant factors that help in implanting SSC: “knowledge of smart sustainable cities”, “awareness of smart sustainable cities”, “willingness of the citizens to participate” and “opinion on the current agenda of the government's role”.

This study has a few limitations which can be considered in future studies. First, the response rate of the participant is relatively low (163), so sampling a larger segment will support the broader perception of the citizens.

The outcome of this paper underlines the need for the successful implementation of smart cities by adopting CP in the process of impacting policies and governance. Particularly, it identifies factors that help cities and policymakers in engaging CP in developing new policies and revising existing policies for promoting SSC.

There is a need to investigate the most critical factors that influence CP for implementing SSC. These factors have not been adequately examined in extant literature.

Due to global systemic changes, the Brittle Anxious Nonlinear Incomprehensible (BANI)-world model has been formed since 2020, which greatly affects the world economic model. To overcome the main challenges, developing countries have to solve the tasks of their sustainable development and flexibility and transparency of various management methods at the microlevel. Outsourcing is regarded as one of such tools. Understanding the origins and development trends of outsourcing services makes it possible to effectively implement the tasks set for business in today's realities and contribute to the development of entrepreneurship and the economy of a country, making the system more sensitive and responsive. This research provides an overview of the development of the market for outsourcing services in Russia based on general information about the global market for outsourcing services and the current trends in Russia. The authors described the main milestones in the history of the formation of the outsourcing market in Russia, which influenced the formation of the main current features of the outsourcing services market. The authors also identified the main problems of the market for outsourcing services in Russia and highlighted the main directions for developing outsourcing.

We investigate the information content of legal contingency disclosures in corporate filings, specifically their usefulness in predicting settlement amounts and mitigation of market response to litigation resolution news.

Using a hand-collected sample of disclosures for settled US securities class action lawsuits, we analyze the contents of the contingent liabilities disclosure before future settlements and classify them into two categories: “pessimistic” and “optimistic” disclosures. We examine whether the tone of disclosure is associated with litigation outcomes, such as settlement amounts and likelihood of incurring material losses, and its effect on market reaction to settlement announcements.

Disclosures with optimistic views on lawsuits are settled for lower amounts, whereas those with more pessimistic views result in higher settlements. Furthermore, while, on average, investors react negatively to litigation resolutions, the market reaction is attenuated (exacerbated) when a prior legal liability disclosure was pessimistic (optimistic). Additionally, investors value disclosure consistency when a litigation outcome is aligned with its legal contingency disclosure. Finally, disclosure consistency is positively associated with managerial ownership as well as the largest shareholder ownership.

This study highlights that the overall tone in legal contingency disclosures is informative and has valuation implications for capital markets. It also highlights the benefits of consistent disclosure, i.e. litigation disclosure aligned with litigation outcomes, as it is viewed positively by investors.

This paper aims to reduce waste management and generate wealth by investigating the novelty of combining chicken feather fiber and bamboo particles to produce hybrid biocomposites. This is part of responsible production and sustainability techniques for sustainable development goals. This study aims to broaden animal and plant fiber utilization in the sustainable production of epoxy resins for engineering applications.

This research used two reinforcing materials [chicken feather fiber (CFF) and bamboo particles (BP)] to reinforce epoxy resin. The BPs were kept constant at 6 Wt.%, while the CFF was varied within 3–15 Wt.% in the composites to make CFF-BP polymer-reinforced composite (CFF-BP PRC). The mechanical experiment showed a 21% reduction in densities, making the CFF-BP PRC an excellent choice for lightweight applications.

It was discovered that fabricated composites with 10 mm CFF length had improved properties compared with the 15 mm CFF length and pristine samples, which confirmed that short fibers are better at enhancing randomly dispersed fibers in the epoxy matrix. However, the ballistic properties of both samples matched. There is a 40% increase in tensile strength and a 54% increase in flexural strength of the CFF-BP PRC compared to the pristine sample.

According to the literature review, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is a novel study of chicken fiber and bamboo particles in reinforcing epoxy composite.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the new technical demands and reliability challenges to printed circuit board (PCB) designs, materials and processes when the transmission frequency increases from Sub-6 GHz in previous generations to millimeter (mm) wave in fifth-generation (5G) communication technology.

The approach involves theoretical analysis and actual case study by various characterization techniques, such as a stereo microscope, metallographic microscope, scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive spectroscopy, focused ion beam, high-frequency structure simulator, stripline resonator and mechanical test.

To meet PCB signal integrity demands in mm-wave frequency bands, the improving proposals on copper profile, resin system, reinforcement fabric, filler, electromagnetic interference-reducing design, transmission line as well as via layout, surface treatment, drilling, desmear, laminating and electroplating were discussed. And the failure causes and effects of typical reliability issues, including complex permittivity fluctuation at different frequencies or environments, weakening of peel strength, conductive anodic filament, crack on microvias, the effect of solder joint void on signal transmission performance and soldering anomalies at ball grid array location on high-speed PCBs, were demonstrated.

The PCB reliability problem is the leading factor to cause failures of PCB assemblies concluded from statistical results on the failure cases sent to our laboratory. The PCB reliability level is very essential to guarantee the reliability of the entire equipment. In this paper, the summarized technical demands and reliability issues that are rarely reported in existing articles were discussed systematically with new perspectives, which will be very critical to identify potential reliability risks for PCB in 5G mm-wave applications and implement targeted improvements.