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Literature on the relationship between social performance and economic performance of social enterprises has long been inconclusive. This paper aims to investigate whether and, if so, how social performance contributes to economic performance of social enterprises. Specifically, drawing from the resource-based view and signalling theory, the study examines how the development of reputation, which enables social enterprises to signal the enterprises' stakeholders' commitment towards social causes, mediates the relationship between the two.

Employing a quantitative research design, data were collected from a sample of 164 social enterprises in the UK and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results illustrate that whilst the direct relationship between social and economic performance is inconclusive, social performance contributes indirectly to improve economic performance through improving social enterprise reputation.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first of this kind in the context of social enterprises which sheds light on the long-standing conflicting literature on the relationship between the dual objectives (i.e. social and economic) by providing reputation as the mediating variable.

The study aims to examine the validity of the gender affinity effect on social media throughout election campaigns.

This paper examines the role of gender in political discourse, using citizens' conversations on Facebook in the days leading up to Israel's 2021 elections as its case study. The analysis measured the engagement generated by male and female politicians in citizens' publicly open Facebook discussions (N = 1875) using a trend-tracking software. The analysis uses t-tests to examine differences in engagement between conversations about male versus female politicians and between posts written by male versus female authors. In addition, a two-way ANOVA analysis was conducted in an attempt to understand the shared impact of both the politicians' gender and posts authors' gender on the posts' engagement.

The study reveals that although more posts discuss male politicians, posts dealing with female politicians expressed significantly more support towards those politicians. The analysis also highlights that women tend to write more supportive posts and that most of their posts deal with female politicians. Furthermore, interaction effect analysis revealed that women's posts about female politicians generate more engagement in terms of likes, comments and number of participants than posts written by women that deal with male politicians.

The findings should encourage women politicians to run their campaigns via social media.

The study presents the first social media analysis for gender affinity effect and highlights the importance of the effect in online political communication studies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2022-0199

Adam Smith sees religion both as having a useful and a dangerous role. People create gods to explain what they do not understand and appease their desire of justice when human justice is perceived to fail. These are socially useful functions of religion. But when religion is used as a political tool and is used for state capture purposes, then it becomes a dangerous and destructive force in society.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the nonlinear relationship between electricity consumption (EC) and electricity transmission losses (ETL) in Ghana. Also, we examined how ETL moderate the effect of EC on economic growth in Ghana from 1980 to 2021.

We used timeseries data from 1980 to 2021 within an autoregressive distributed lag framework to analyze the links among ETL, EC and economic growth in Ghana.

Findings show the existence of an asymmetric long-run relationship between EC and ETL. Also, the negative effects of ETL on EC are bigger in the long run. In addition, ETL and EC combine to reduce economic growth, in the long run, providing evidence for the energy-led growth theory in Ghana. Population and inflation were also found to have a significant effect on economic growth in Ghana.

We examined the nonlinear nexus of EC and ETL, which extant studies have ignored in discussing the link between EC and economic growth. Again, we showed that ETL reduces EC causing a reduction in economic growth.

The ongoing economic impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic upon national and international economies has provided a novel set of challenges and barriers for organisations; particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This has led to an increased focus on sustainable decision-making and long-term survival and growth strategies, such as internationalisation opportunities, for SMEs during obscure times and fluctuating economies. Thus, examining how SMEs within ambiguous economies are adopting innovative decision-making to continue to sustain and grow their enterprises provides a vital perspective and understanding of not only enterprise survival but enterprise growth during times of economic uncertainty. This chapter proposes a conceptual framework that explores internationalisation opportunities through an intersectional lens. The framework depicts that intersectionality as an enabler during ambiguous times for Maldivian women entrepreneurs generates innovative decision-making towards internationalisation as part of sustainable growth practices. The conceptual framework offers theoretical implications for empirical studies of an inductive or deductive nature and offers pragmatic importance for women entrepreneurs considering internationalisation through sustainable growth during obscure times and fluctuating economies. This chapter contributes to the growing body of knowledge in the field of international entrepreneurship, particularly innovative decision-making, and sustainable growth through internationalisation opportunities of women entrepreneurs, whilst advancing our understanding of gender and entrepreneurship studies. Studying innovative decision-making and sustainable growth practices of women entrepreneurs additionally provides a new perspective on intersectional works within entrepreneurial growth during uncertain times.

This chapter frames the digital age transformation journey for sustainability from the lenses of transformation skills and competencies required for future work. It provides a synopsis of the digital transformation considering digital technologies, connecting digital transformation to future work and reflections on the new digital age to sustainability issues. In detail, this chapter comprehensively reviews digital technologies transformation skills, including digital skills and integrated skills for the digital economy linked to integrated skills. This chapter takes into consideration the possible effects from a competency point of view from the domains on issues like: global independence, trust, a shift in skills and ways of work, commitment to justice, improving the know-how, financial inclusion, data and data privacy that are critical imperatives for sustainability. Developing a digital economy requires integrated sustainable development competencies; this chapter considers combined skills for digital transformation in triple connecting points of human skills, business skills and digital building blocks skills to argue for sustainability. Because attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires input from different quotas globally, sustainable competencies are needed to ensure individuals work cohesively through new-age digital technologies. This chapter further highlights emerging competencies such as critical thinking, appreciative equity, open communication and acting on collective well-being as imperatives transforming digital disruptions. The final section of this chapter puts into perspective the implication of required digital technologies for the future of work and its significance on the need to reskill and retool. It concludes by reflecting on opportunities and challenges for crucial consideration towards creating a sustainable digital age.

Green building (GB) is an important aspect of sustainable development that advocates for practices that enhance the health and well-being of the occupants and communities with minimal impact on the environment. The adoption of the GB concept is low in most developing countries. This study aimed at assessing the extent of the adoption of GB concepts in Kakamega municipality as a case study. The study sampled 64 respondents which consisted of 15 professionals in the building industry and 49 commercial and residential buildings within the municipality. The results indicated that at least 80% of the professionals were aware of GB concepts of water efficiency, energy efficiency, sustainable materials, sustainable site practices, and indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Water efficiency practices that were widely adopted in commercial and residential buildings were rainwater harvesting and the use of efficient plumbing fixtures. The energy-saving measures adopted were switching off appliances when not in use, use of energy-saving bulbs, and solar energy. The majority of the respondents felt that the indoor air quality was fair. Resource reuse was not widely adopted which could be attributed to a lack of policy or legislation. Low impact development (LID) design of vegetated storm conveyance and rain gardens (bioretention and porous/permeable pavements) was adopted in 42.9% of the buildings. Research into the use of sustainable materials is recommended for wider application as a GB concept. The study recommends the promotion of GB through incentives to enable wider adoption among the owners and developers. Furthermore, GB legislation and certification programs need to be adopted in Kenya. This study was largely based on Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria and thus further studies are required on other assessment tools and methods.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both of stock prices and investor's sentiment in China during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.

In this study, the ADCC-GARCH model was used to analyze the asymmetric volatility and the time-varying conditional correlation among the Chinese stock market, the investors' sentiment and its variation. The authors relied on Diebold and Yilmaz (2012, 2014) methodology to construct network-associated measures. Then, the wavelet coherence model was applied to explore the co-movements between these variables. To check the robustness of the study results, the authors referred to the RavenPack COVID sentiments and the Chinese VIX, as other measures of the investor's sentiment using daily data from December 2019 to December 2021.

Using the ADCC-GARCH model, a strong co-movement was found between the investor's sentiment and the Shanghai index returns during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study results provide a significant peak of connectivity between the investor's sentiment and the Chinese stock market return during the 2015–2016 and the end of 2019–2020 turmoil periods. These periods coincide, respectively, with the 2015 Chinese economy recession and the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Furthermore, the wavelet coherence analysis confirms the ADCC results, which revealed that the used proxies of the investor's sentiment can detect the Chinese investors' behavior especially during the health crisis.

This study provides two main types of implications: on the one hand, for investors since it helps them to understand the economic outlook and accordingly design their portfolio strategy and allocate decisions to optimize their portfolios. On the other hand, for portfolios managers, who should pay attention to the volatility spillovers between investor sentiment and the Chinese stock market to predict the financial market dynamics during crises periods and hedge their portfolios.

This study attempted to examine the time-varying interactions between the investor's sentiment proxies and the stock market dynamics. Findings showed that the investor's sentiment is considered a prominent channel of shock spillovers during the COVID-19 crisis, which typically confirms the behavioral contagion theory.

Despite many years of academic research into organisational integration and effectiveness, organisations still struggle to successfully implement strategy and achieve competitive advantage. However, the rapid evolution of marketing technologies such as big data, marketing analytics, artificial intelligence and personalised consumer interactions offer potential for an integrated marketing communication technological capability that aligns and integrates an organisation. Programmatic advertising is one such integrated marketing communication (IMC) technology capability, applying and learning from customer information and behaviours to align and integrate organisational activity. The literature on programmatic is embryonic and a conceptual framework that links its potential to organisational effectiveness is timely. This paper aims to develop a framework showing the potential for programmatic advertising as an IMC technology capability to enhance organisational integration and performance.

An exploratory methodology gained insight from 15 depth interviews with senior marketing executives from both organisations and external advertising agencies.

Four elements of a programmatic integrated organisation were identified and aligned with seven marketing activity levers to deliver firm performance measures.

This research contributes to theory, affirming IMC as a capability and positioning programmatic as a means of organisational integration.

The model also offers guidance for practitioners looking to integrate programmatic into their organisation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to look at programmatic from an IMC perspective and as a means of organisational integration. It is also the first to apply Moorman and Day’s (2016) model to explore organisational integration and programmatic, developing a new model, specifically contextualised for programmatic advertising.