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This study examines the dualities of digital services – that is, how customers’ favorite everyday digital services can positively and negatively contribute to their well-being. Thus, the study describes the meanings of favorite digital services as part of customers’ everyday lives and the types of well-being to which such services can contribute.

We used a qualitative research approach through semi-structured interviews conducted in 2021 to collect data from 14 young adults (22–31 years old) who actively used digital services in their daily lives.

Our findings revealed that customers’ favorite everyday digital services can contribute to their mental well-being, social well-being, and intellectual well-being. Within these three dimensions of well-being, we identified nine dualities of digital services that describe their positive and negative contributions: (1) digital escapism versus digital disruption, (2) digital relaxation versus digital stress, (3) digital empowerment versus digital subjugation, (4) digital augmentation versus digital emptiness, (5) digital socialization versus digital isolation, (6) digital togetherness versus digital exclusion, (7) digital self-expression versus digital pressure, (8) digital learning versus digital dependence, and (9) digital inspiration versus digital stagnation.

These findings suggest that everyday digital services have the potential to contribute to customer well-being in various aspects – both positively and negatively – accentuating the need for service providers to decipher the impacts of their offerings on well-being. Indeed, understanding the relationship between digital services and customer well-being can help companies tailor their services to customers’ needs. Companies that prioritize customer well-being not only benefit their customers but also create sustainable growth opportunities in the long run. Further, companies can use the derived information in service design to develop marketing strategies that emphasize the positive impacts of their digital services on customer well-being.

Although prior transformative service studies have investigated the well-being of multiple stakeholders, such studies have focused on services related to the physical and healthcare domains. Consequently, the role of everyday digital services as contributors to customer well-being is an under-researched topic. In addition, the concept of well-being and its various dimensions has received limited attention in previous service research. By investigating everyday digital services and their multidimensional contribution to customer well-being, this study broadens the perspective on well-being within TSR and aids in refining a more precise conceptualization.

The study investigates factors like media, tribal, religious and party politics' influence on Nigerias’ 2023 presidential election choice. It confirms dominant social media platforms and examines their influence on election polls, e-participation and political candidate choice. The main objectives of this study are to: investigate if tribal, religious and party politics affect the respondent’s choice of a presidential candidate, ascertain the respondent's most used social media platform for political engagement and determine how social media platforms influenced the election polls during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election.

A sample size of 384 registered voters was used to survey three states in Southeast Nigeria hinged on the technological acceptance model, the instrumentalist theory of ethnicity and the theory of reasoned action.

The study found that tribal politics did not influence political candidates during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election. However, religious and party politics influenced their choices as well as X (Twitter), found as the most used and most influential social media platform vital for enhancing participatory democracy and informing people at real-time.

The researchers experienced challenges such as ensuring that the respondents filled the questions appropriately to reduce the number of void questionnaires and a funding problem since they had yet to receive any grant to enhance the study.

The study commends improved Internet connectivity and accessibility among the citizens for increased political engagement on social media. It also recommends that the Nigerian government enforce the rule of law in politics to enable diverse tribes and religions to experience democratic e-participation and development without marginalisation or subjugation by incumbent power. The findings affirm that social media is apt in political communication during the 2023 presidential elections in Nigeria. The study is a contribution to knowledge, timely and original.

The need for robust governance standards in financial institutions requires no overemphasis. However, instances of governance failures have been a recurring global phenomenon. This paper examines the key elements of governance in financial institutions, evaluates reasons for failures and suggests ways to strengthen governance and prevent such failures.

The author follows a descriptive design and a behavioural approach to understand the governance issues in financial institutions.

The author identifies key elements of governance, and the potential reasons for failures and highlights that the structure of boards, thrust on the adoption of best practices and regulatory guidelines are necessary but not sufficient to ensure failsafe governance standards. The author emphasises the need for recognition of behavioural factors and a focus on continuous monitoring and red flagging of the conduct of key stakeholders by the third and fourth lines of defence. An effective whistle-blower policy, a clear focus on organisational culture and the subjugation of individuals to the systems can improve the robustness of the governance standards in financial institutions.

To the best of the author's knowledge and belief, the observations and suggestions made in the paper are original. The paper contributes by offering a nuanced perspective for strengthening governance in financial institutions.

This paper examines the relationship between the institution’s organizational work-life-balance (WLB) policies and practices and subsequent challenges faced by Nigerian workers. The paper argues that institutions shape WLB practices (and policies), and thus, constitute WLB challenges.

Relying on qualitative, interpretive approach, and the institution-based view of organizational practice, the study investigates the relationship between institutions, WLB practices/policies, and subsequent challenges that female workers undergo, using 25 semi-structured interviews.

The findings reveal Nigeria’s unique institutional context frames and foster challenges for female workers. Also, it was identified that institutional and sociocultural pressures on female employees demonstrate that consequent challenges, while common to female workers in other countries, are more intense and challenging in Nigeria because of its peculiar institutions and context.

This study offers an opportunity to unpick how institutions are important in understanding organizational practices as part of wider social structures, which influence organizational realities, including WLB. The qualitative, exploratory approach undertaken can limit generalizing the findings.

This study contributes to the emerging concept of WLB discourse from the developing countries’ perspective. It also reveals how WLB discourse differs from nonwestern context and emphasizes previously identified challenges that female workers experience based on WLB practice. The study also sheds light on how institutions shape organizational practice.

The article aims at exploring the challenges and possibilities of cooperation of higher education in a Latin American social, political and cultural context that faces historical difficulties of integration, as well as the potential contribution of academic cooperation for global citizenship.

The paper presents a general overview of networks and international centers of academic cooperation of higher education in Latin America. The analysis comprises objectives, countries, stakeholders, activities, projects and scope. The study is based on literature on internationalization, regional integration and the development of higher education, as well as on empirical gathered with networks/centers and key actors in the field. This study was carried out as a mixed qualitative method design. Firstly, a systematic review of a literature corpus of studies produced by Latin-American scholars was performed. Semi-structured interviews were then carried out with a group of scholars who are members of networks.

The findings include a review of the role of higher education in a politically fragmented reality, a panorama of major networks and international centers of academic cooperation with emphasis on internationalization of higher education, as well as their connections. The are highlighted examples of successful initiatives of cooperation and, based on interviews, there is presented a preliminary view on cooperation and trust building from professionals in higher education in Latin America.

In the last decades, with the growing interest and need for internationalizing higher education, many universities have organized or joined networks and international centers. The article will contribute for mutual knowledge of these spaces, their shortcomings and potentials, thus creating conditions for dialogue among them, as well as with universities in other continents.

In this introductory chapter, we discuss the impetus for this edited book. We introduce activist, critical and feminist criminological theorizing and research on gender, intersectionality, criminalization, and carceral experiences. The scene is set for the chapters to follow by providing a general overview of gender, criminalization, imprisonment, and human rights in Southeast Asia with particular attention being paid to Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Philippines. We consider trends and drivers of women’s imprisonment in the region, against the backdrop of the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders, also known as the Bangkok Rules, which were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly just over a decade ago. We reflect on the dominance of western centric feminist (and malestream) criminological works on gender, criminalization and imprisonment, the positioning of Southeast Asian knowledge on the peripheries of Asian criminology and the importance of bringing to light, as this book does, gendered activist scholarship in this region of the world.

The paper aims to expand on the works well documented by Joy Boulamwini and Ruha Benjamin by expanding their critique to the African continent. The research aims to assess if algorithmic biases are prevalent in DALL-E 2 and Starry AI. The aim is to help inform better artificial intelligence (AI) systems for future use.

The paper utilised a desktop study for literature and gathered data from Open AI’s DALL-E 2 text-to-image generator and StarryAI text-to-image generator.

The DALL-E 2 significantly underperformed when it was tasked with generating images of “An African Family” as opposed to images of a “Family”. The pictures lacked any conceivable detail as compared to the latter of this comparison. The StarryAI significantly outperformed the DALL-E 2 and rendered visible faces. However, the accuracy of the culture portrayed was poor.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further. The implications, however, are that more inclusion is warranted to help address the issue of cultural inaccuracies noted in a few of the paper’s experiments.

The paper is useful for advocates who advocate for algorithmic equality and fairness by highlighting evidence of the implications of systemic-induced algorithmic bias.

The reduction in offensive racism and more socially appropriate AI can be a better product for commercialisation and general use. If AI is trained on diversity, it can lead to better applications in contemporary society.

The paper’s use of DALL-E 2 and Starry AI is an under-researched area, and future studies on this matter are welcome.

The purpose of this study is to identify sociodemographic factors that are predictive of the level of everyday sadism (SAD) in the business area.

A survey was conducted on 424 graduate and postgraduate students from business schools in Brazil and the USA. SAD was quantified by the assessment of sadistic personality proposed by Plouffe Saklofske and Smith (2017). The variables included age, gender, managing experience, education and nationality.

The average level of SAD was low. SAD was negatively associated with gender, age and nationality and positively associated with managing experience and education.

As individuals ascend professionally and academically, they display higher levels of everyday sadism. Depending on the context, dark personalities can cause either benefit or harm to the company's business and to society. However, the literature shows that seeking pleasure and dominance with no regard for consequences affects the business area directly or indirectly.

Very few studies have addressed everyday sadism in the business area, let alone evaluated predictive factors and discussed possible implications.