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The paper redefines workplace spirituality (WS/WPS) by transcending the existential vacuum (in psychiatric terms a sense of lack of meaning of human existence and thus of work), leading to the development of workplace creativity, productivity and satisfaction, targeting operational profitability and organizational optimization.

Spirituality is analyzed philosophically, following the Nietzschean definition in response to Schopenhauer’s primordial suffering. Philosophical syncretism yields a viable organizational culture change model of spiritualizing the workplace. For this purpose, specific techniques are proposed which are combined with those already applied to various large companies and organizations.

Spirituality in the workplace acts as a catalyst for developing beneficial qualities by increasing employee job satisfaction, organizational efficiency and business profitability, when equally responding to stakeholders’ needs.

The suggested change model holistically fosters organizational, operational, individual and collective effectiveness through work place spirituality redefined.

For the first time spirituality in the workplace is discussed under a brand new perspective, resulting in an interdisciplinary emerging model, contributing to the field by providing guidance to academics and practitioners to its auspicious implementation through organizational culture change.

Some educators and teachers, when seeking to adopt a new pedagogy or technology, neglect to search for motivation. What will motivate the learner to accept and participate in any new method or technology offered by others? Based on personal experience, realistic observations, and literature reviews, we find that many educators and teachers suggest new pedagogy or technology for different purposes without consulting the ultimate beneficiary, who is the learner. Such behavior often creates resistance on the part of learners that negatively affects the desired outcomes.

From the lessons learned, for teachers in higher education (HE) to succeed in introducing or adopting a new pedagogy, such as active learning or modern technology, the learners' opinions must be explored, their points of view recognized, and their involvement in decision-making encouraged. We start by telling them what they should learn (curriculum, objectives, and content), then suggesting new pedagogy and technology and searching for consensus with the majority to get the required motivation. Active learning pedagogy is no exception here.

This chapter contributes to highlighting the importance of motivation for the success of active learning practices. Aiming to encourage educators and teachers to search for motivation before adopting a new project, pedagogy, or technology. This study offers a strategy to guide active learning practices in HE. We expect a positive impact of active learning practices in (HE) when such strategy (i.e., seeking motivation) is not neglected. The content analysis approach was adopted to collect data, and the data was analyzed by Excel. Finally, some recommendations were made.

A significant number of criminal and deviant acts are investigated by nonpolice actors. These include private investigators who charge fees for their services, professional services firms such as firms of accountants who also charge fees, in-house investigators employed by private organisations and in-house investigators of public sector organisations who are not sworn police officers. Some of these investigators, such as private investigators, have been exposed in unethical activities such as illegal surveillance and blagging to name some. In this respect, this study aims to uncover the ethical orientations of investigators using cluster analysis.

This study is based upon an online survey of private investigators predominantly in the UK, i.e. investigators beyond the public police. An innovate statistical inferential analysis was used to investigate the sample which resulted in the development of three ethical orientations of such investigators.

Based upon a survey response from 331 of these types of investigators this study illustrates the extent they engage in unethical activities, showing a very small minority of largely private investigators who engage in such activities.

A unique feature of this study is the use of an innovative statistical approach using an unsupervised machine learning model, namely, TwoStep cluster analysis, to successfully group and classify respondents based on their ethical orientation. The model derived three types of ethical orientation: ethical, inbetweeners and risk takers.

Over the years, the impact of the business cycle on firm strategy has been neglected in the area of strategic management and remains one of the most important but least developed research streams in management scholarship. Studies in this area are scattered across time and domains, therefore, there is a need to consolidate this fragmented literature to provide a comprehensive review and thus avenues for further research. This study aims to address this gap.

In this study, the systematic literature review (SLR) method is used to select and examine research articles in the area of firm responses and decisions during recession. This SLR examines 127 studies and carries out a thematic synthesis of the literature.

Based on the SLR and thematic synthesis of the literature, the themes identified in this study include – severity of recession impact (Theme 1); firm specific characteristics (Theme 2); resource adjustment activities (Theme 3); and firm performance (Theme 4), based on these themes and analysis this paper maps and proposes various relationships and linkages in this research domain that can be explored further for the development of scholarship in this field of study.

This paper fulfills the need for a systematic review of the extant literature on firms’ responses during recession. The study synthesizes literature and carries out a thematic analysis from 1980 till the period February 2024 to provide directions to advance this domain of literature.

Brand storytelling is an effective marketing tool. However, when choosing whether to tell more or tell less, it remains unclear which of these two narrative styles is most effective. This study aims to examine whether blank-leaving(less) leads to favourable brand attitudes and compares its effects on consumers’ story immersion, to non-blank-leaving(more).

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, a single-factorial design was used with 252 participants assigned at random to one of two narrative conditions: blank-leaving or non-blank-leaving. Study 2 replicated Study 1 and investigated the moderating role of implicit mindsets.

The results show that a blank-leaving narrative style increases favourable brand attitudes. Consumers present deeper immersion in the brand story that uses blank-leaving, as compared to non-blank-leaving, leading to a more favourable brand attitude. Furthermore, this effect is stronger for individuals with growth mindsets.

Telling the brand story using a blank-leaving narrative style is more effective in catching consumers’ attention than non-blank-leaving. In particular, a blank-leaving narrative is a good approach for targeting consumers who have a growth mindset.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to investigate and compare the effects of blank-leaving and non-blank-leaving narrative styles on brand attitudes in the context of storytelling marketing.

The purpose of this study is to explore the sustainability of innovations introduced during the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic in remote and rural primary care advanced clinical practice.

The methodology includes an exploratory qualitative study of eight key stakeholders from Scottish remote and rural primary care advanced practice (three policymakers and five advanced practitioners). Data were collected using semi-structured interviews during 2022 and analysed thematically.

Advanced practice in remote and rural primary care is characterised by a shortage of doctors, close-knit communities and a broad scope of practice. Covid-19 catalysed changes in the delivery of healthcare. Innovations which participants wanted to sustain include hybrid working, triage, online training and development, and increased inter-professional support networks.

Findings provide valuable insights into how best to support remote and rural advanced practice which may have implications for retaining healthcare professionals. They also identified useful innovations which could benefit from further investment.

Given current healthcare workforce pressures, identifying and sustaining innovations which will support and retain staff are imperative. Hybrid consultations and online access to training, development and support should be sustained to support the remote and rural advanced practice workforce. Further research should explore the sustainability of innovations introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic in other care contexts.

The purpose of this study is to reduce the application of petroleum in automobile paint industry by replacing it with bio-based castor oil along with nano fillers to synthesize automobile base coat (BC).

Bio-based polyurethane (PU) coating applicable in automobile BC was synthesized by using modified castor oil incorporated with nano silica (NS) and titanium-based pigment particles. The influential characteristics of the coating was studied by carrying out cross-cut tape test, abrasion resistance, pencil hardness, lap-shear, thermo gravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic mechanical analysis and acid, alkali and oil resistance tests.

Incorporation of NS particles, along with titanium-based pigment particles in optimized ratio into the paint matrix, increases the mechanical, chemical and oil resistance properties and hydrophobicity of the BC, and the findings are compared with the petro-based commercial BC.

There is no significant improvement in thermal properties of the paint matrix, and it is less thermally stable than the commercial BC.

The paint developed through this study provides a simple and practical solution to reduce the petro-based feed-stock in automobile paint industry.

The current work which reports the use of ecofriendly PU BC for automobile paint applications is novel and findings of this study are original.

The purpose of this study is to document and analyze the success story of YouTube as a social network site in a competitive market, offering important academic and managerial implications.

Historical methods were used for investigation. This study applies the Resource-Advantage theory to identify key events in the history of YouTube from archival documents and evaluates and synthesizes the evidence to recount the channel’s evolution.

YouTube faced challenges from competitors across various industries since its launch. It has used its global user base and technological skills to develop innovative market offerings for users, contributors and marketers. YouTube built long-term relationships with stakeholders, continuously adapted to external changes and initiated internal alignments to compete in multiple industries. Over time, despite several changes in the competitive landscape, YouTube has grown into a successful media firm, competing across traditional broadcasting, gaming, live TV streaming and SNS industries. It is an exciting tale in the history of social networking.

This study significantly contributes to the marketing history of social network sites and platform-specific scholarship by applying the Resource-Advantage theory to document the evolution of YouTube.