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The government of Ghana since independence has undertaken steps to develop educational infrastructure setup. This notwithstanding, the educational sector is beset with challenges such as low-quality education and low enrolment rates in Senior High Schools (SHS) of children from large households, among others. Given the myriad of challenges bedevilling the education sector, there have been calls for collaboration among public leaders to promote education. The paper, therefore, examines traditional leaders' roles in promoting quality education in Ghana.

Through a desk review approach, the study examines the role of traditional leaders in promoting quality education in Ghana. This approach was adopted due to its flexible nature.

The study found that traditional leaders have provided educational materials and resources to deprived schools. They have established scholarship schemes for needy but brilliant students, promoted gender parity in education, constructed educational facilities and promoted a healthy teaching environment.

The paper provides stakeholders in Ghana’s educational sector with the opportunity to review educational policies and include traditional leaders to influence educational policies. The recommendations call for support from the GETFUND and Scholarship Secretariat of Ghana to assist community-initiated projects and scholarship schemes established by traditional leaders.

The paper provides evidence to support the importance of traditional leadership, which has come under criticism from a democratisation perspective in contemporary times.

This paper aims to examine whether information technology (IT) managers’ virtual listening, as rated by their high-tech employees, affected turnover behaviour beyond a new constellation of variables, some of which have never been researched as antecedents of turnover behaviour, particularly during a pandemic or crisis. Namely, the main aim, among others, is to answer the research question: does IT employees’ perception of the quality of their supervisors’ virtual listening in the pandemic and crisis era, when employees and managers work remotely, will negatively affect turnover behaviour? If yes, in which constellation of antecedents the virtual listening effecting on turnover behaviour?

Logistic regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses via SPSS 26 and PROCESS (Model 6). The variance inflation factor was calculated to test multicollinearity. Interaction was tested using the Hayes and Preacher PROCESS macro model. The researchers also used the J-N technique test (Johnson–Neyman via process). The supplemental analysis used also PROCESS MACRO (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA, 2023) Model 4 and Bootstrap test.

The findings show that perceptions of supervisors’ virtual listening quality as rated by their employees moderated the relationship between organisational deviance as a type of organisational misbehaviour (OMB) and turnover behaviour and had the strongest effect on turnover behaviour beyond other key predictors (organisational deviance as a type of misbehaviour, turnover intention, job satisfaction, embeddedness and alternatives in the labour market). Alternatives to current work moderated the association between the perception of managers’ virtual listening behaviour as rated by their employees and turnover behaviour. Specifically, when alternatives in the labour market were high or medium, the perceived quality of managers’ virtual listening reduced turnover behaviour. Finally, the perception of the IT employees supervisors’ virtual listening moderated the relationship between organisational deviance and turnover intention among high-tech employees.

Evaluating supervisor listening in the high-tech firm may have value in terms of its relationship to outcomes such as retaining employees, turnover intention and especially turnover behaviour. The effect on turnover behaviour and of that new constellation of antecedents on turnover behaviour when people work remotely was not researched yet and important for the post COVID-19 era. Additionally, in contrast to most studies of turnover, this study also focus on the positive aspects of turnover and especially turnover behaviour to organisations in general and especially to high-tech firm and not just the negative aspect as was researched until now. Another contribution is the finding that when employees perceived their managers’ virtual listening quality as high, the effect of deviance as a type of OMB on turnover behaviour was positive. Namely, the listening as a moderator and turnover assisted in making the organisation cleaner from inappropriate behaviour. Additionally, when alternatives in the labour market are high or medium, perceived quality of virtual listening of managers as rated by their employees can reduce turnover behaviour. This virtual listening–turnover relationship and the moderator of alternatives to current work had not previously been found in the turnover literature and this is also significant a contribution to the turnover and withdrawal literature.

This paper aims to seek accounting graduates' perspectives on the demand for accounting in their workplaces, on the gaps in accounting education (AE), and on the future of the accounting profession, inspired by the new definition of accounting proposed by Carnegie et al. (2021, 2022, 2023a), to adopt a strong focus on sustainable development goals (SDGs) in AE to inculcate tertiary students with the skills that lead them to approach and apply accounting as a multidimensional technical, social and moral (TSM) practice.

The online qualitative survey was distributed to 100 randomly selected New Zealand accounting graduates in order to gather insights from their workplaces. All responses from the 30 graduates who completed the questionnaire underwent qualitative analysis using Leximancer software, which automatically identifies high-level concepts and insights and offers interactive visualizations without bias.

The graduates’ experiences underscore the ongoing significance of technical skills in the New Zealand workplace. They emphasized the lack of non-technical skills training, stressed the necessity of diverse business knowledge and highlighted the importance of automation and digital skills.

The implications for transforming AE involve adopting an activist approach to integrate a TSM perspective into teaching and learning and being open to an interdisciplinary approach to expose tertiary students to the impact of accounting on sustainable development, including collaboration with professional bodies for real-world experiences.

The importance of engaging with SDG-related narratives is stressed to stimulate further discussion, debate and research aimed at identifying practical solutions for AE as a facilitator for SDGs in realizing accounting as a TSM practice.

Exploring the determinants of a winery brand reputation (BR) and how those determinants interact is vital for the sustainable development of wineries as well as the growth of the wine industry as a whole. This study aims to test an integrated model to better understand the observed measurement constructs of winery brand reputation, including collective reputation (CR), wine label (WL), expert opinion (EO), social media advertising (SMA) and consumer wine knowledge (CWK).

In-depth interviews, an expert panel review and a pilot study were conducted to examine and improve the observed variables. A questionnaire survey was conducted as the main data source for the study. A total of 616 valid questionnaire responses were collected from 102 cities in mainland China and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan from December 2021 to April 2022. Structural equation modeling was conducted for the data analysis.

This study supported 9 of the 18 proposed theoretical hypotheses. WL, EO and SMA had positive effects on BR. CWK was found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between expert opinions/social media advertising and brand reputation.

The results of this study can guide wine practitioners, researchers and administrators in brand development, label regulation and consumer education.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to examine the determinants of winery brand reputation among Chinese wine consumers. This study explains the mechanism of winery brand reputation, demonstrating the dynamics and effects of the observed measurement constructs on brand reputation.

Pre-positioning and distributing relief items are important parts of disaster management as it simultaneously considers activities from both pre- and post-disaster stages. This study aims to address this problem with a novel mathematical model.

In this research, a bi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to tackle pre-positioning and distributing relief items, and it is formulated as an integrated location-allocation-routing problem with uncertain parameters. The humanitarian supply chain consists of relief facilities (RFs) and demand points (DPs). Perishable and imperishable relief commodities (RCs), different types of vehicles, different transportation modes, a time window for delivering perishable commodities and the occurrence of unmet demand are considered. A scenario-based game theory is applied for purchasing RCs from different suppliers and an integrated best-worst method-technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution technique is implemented to determine the importance of DPs. The proposed model is used to solve several random test problems for verification, and to validate the model, Iran’s flood in 2019 is investigated as a case study for which useful managerial insights are provided.

Managers can effectively adjust their preferences towards response time and total cost of the network and use sensitivity analysis results in their decisions.

The model locates RFs, allocates DPs to RFs in the pre-disaster stage, and determines the routing of RCs from RFs to DPs in the post-disaster stage with respect to minimizing total costs and response time of the humanitarian logistics network.

The purpose of this paper is to support potential users of thematic analysis (as outlined by Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke). Researchers with the intention of applying thematic analysis are advised to consider the theoretical framework of their work and how differing ontological and epistemological standpoints influences their approach to thematic analysis.

This paper considers aspects of the work that has been done around thematic analysis to guide future potential users. The flexibility, recipe-like use and ease of thematic analysis are discussed, along with guidance being offered to avoid the seemingly common trip hazards of navigating the approach.

Users of thematic analysis seemingly continue to cite Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis whilst repeatedly contradicting the guidance of their work.

Readers of this paper that intend on using thematic analysis will be redirect to further learning, personal reflection and adjustments to the way in which they engage with, utilise and report their qualitative work using Braun and Clarke's approach to thematic analysis.

It is possible that past research that has been reported as using Braun and Clarke's approach to thematic analysis has been misinterpreted, misunderstood and misused. This as a result of researchers potentially having failed to embrace the need to engage in reflexive, epistemological and ontologically clear processes during the use of thematic analysis.

While Braun and Clarke's approach to thematic analysis seems to have developed a significant level of popularity and use, the finer but impactful understanding of the approach has been overlooked. Other work has been done in relation to thematic analysis but there has not been anything to support thinking and learning around the suitable, accurate and knowledgeable use of the approach.

This paper describes the development of a digital role play game (RPG) designed to help construction apprentices to better communicate with their supervisors about issues with the potential to impact on their physical and psychological health and safety.

A participatory approach was adopted to utilise the knowledge and insights of the target users to inform the digital RPG development. Apprentices and supervisors were interviewed to identify characteristics of effective supervisor-apprentice communication, which became the RPG’s learning objectives. The scenarios constructed in the RPG were drawn from lived experiences shared by the apprentices in the interviews. During the development process, consultations were conducted with an advisory committee comprising of apprentices and supervisors to improve the realism of the RPG scenarios.

Three scenarios were developed for the RPG. In each scenario, players are asked to make decisions at various interaction points about how the characters should respond to the unfolding and challenging situations. Scripts were developed for the game, which were acted out and motion captured to animate digital MetaHuman characters embedded in a virtual construction site. Two example situations are introduced in this paper to illustrate the development process.

To our knowledge, the RPG introduced is one of the first applications of digital game-based training in the construction industry. The adoption of a participatory design approach ensures that the game content relates to real-world experiences. The digital RPG is highly interactive and engaging in nature and presents a novel approach to developing “soft” skills in construction.

This study aims to dissect the multifaceted impact of ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation, specifically within civil engineering testing and calibration laboratories. To achieve this, it intends to explore several key objectives: identifying the prominent benefits of accreditation to laboratory performance, understanding the advantages conferred through participation in proficiency testing schemes, assessing the role of accreditation in enhancing laboratory competitiveness, examining the primary challenges encountered during the accreditation process, investigating any discernible adverse effects of accreditation on laboratory performance and evaluating whether the financial cost of accreditation justifies the resultant profitability.

This study employs a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews with 23 industry professionals—including technical managers, quality managers, external auditors and clients. Thematic analysis, guided by Braun and Clarke’s six-stage paradigm, was utilized to interpret the data, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the accreditation’s impact.

Findings reveal that accreditation significantly enhances operational processes, fosters quality awareness and facilitates continuous improvement, contributing to greater client satisfaction. In addition, standardized operations and rigorous quality controls further result in enhanced performance metrics, such as staff capability and measurement accuracy. However, the study also uncovers the challenges of accreditation, including high resource costs and bureaucratic hurdles that can inhibit innovation and slow routine operations. Importantly, the research underscores that the impact of accreditation on profitability is not universal, but contingent upon various factors like sector-specific regulations and market demand. The study also highlights sector-specific variations in the role of accreditation as a marketing tool and differing perceptions of its value among clients. It further emphasizes the psychological stress of high-stakes evaluations during audits.

This study represents the first in-depth investigation into the impact of ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation on civil engineering testing and calibration laboratories, directly contributing to the enhancement of their quality and operational standards. Providing actionable insights for laboratories, it underscores the importance of weighing accreditation costs and benefits and the necessity for a tailored approach to the unique market and regulatory landscapes they operate in.

This study aims to investigate the behavior of different types of stone columns, including the short and floating columns, as well as the ordinary and the geosynthetic encased stone columns (OSC and GESC). The effectiveness of the geosynthetic encasement and the impact of the installation using the lateral expansion method on the column performance is evaluated through a three-dimensional (3D) unit cell numerical analysis.

A full 3D numerical analysis is carried out using the explicit finite element code PLAXIS 3D to examine the installation influence on settlement reduction (ß), lateral displacement (U_x) and vertical displacement (U_z) relative to different values of lateral expansion of the column (0% to 15%).

The findings demonstrate the superior performance of GESC, particularly short columns outperforming floating counterparts. This enhanced performance is attributed to the combined effects of geosynthetic encasement and increased lateral expansion. Notably, these strategies contribute significantly to decreasing lateral displacement (U_x) at the column’s edge and reducing vertical displacement (U_z) under the rigid footing.

In contrast to previous studies that examined the installation effect of OSC contexts, this paper presents a comprehensive investigation into the effect of geosynthetic encasement and the installation effects using the lateral expansion method in very soft soil, using 3D numerical simulation. The study emphasizes the significance of the consideration of geosynthetic encasement and lateral expansion of the column during the design process to enhance column performance.

Taking into consideration the current human need for agricultural produce such as rice that requires water for growth, the optimal consumption of this valuable liquid is important. Unfortunately, the traditional use of water by humans for agricultural purposes contradicts the concept of optimal consumption. Therefore, designing and implementing a mechanized irrigation system is of the highest importance. This system includes hardware equipment such as liquid altimeter sensors, valves and pumps which have a failure phenomenon as an integral part, causing faults in the system. Naturally, these faults occur at probable time intervals, and the probability function with exponential distribution is used to simulate this interval. Thus, before the implementation of such high-cost systems, its evaluation is essential during the design phase.

The proposed approach included two main steps: offline and online. The offline phase included the simulation of the studied system (i.e. the irrigation system of paddy fields) and the acquisition of a data set for training machine learning algorithms such as decision trees to detect, locate (classification) and evaluate faults. In the online phase, C5.0 decision trees trained in the offline phase were used on a stream of data generated by the system.

The proposed approach is a comprehensive online component-oriented method, which is a combination of supervised machine learning methods to investigate system faults. Each of these methods is considered a component determined by the dimensions and complexity of the case study (to discover, classify and evaluate fault tolerance). These components are placed together in the form of a process framework so that the appropriate method for each component is obtained based on comparison with other machine learning methods. As a result, depending on the conditions under study, the most efficient method is selected in the components. Before the system implementation phase, its reliability is checked by evaluating the predicted faults (in the system design phase). Therefore, this approach avoids the construction of a high-risk system. Compared to existing methods, the proposed approach is more comprehensive and has greater flexibility.

By expanding the dimensions of the problem, the model verification space grows exponentially using automata.

Unlike the existing methods that only examine one or two aspects of fault analysis such as fault detection, classification and fault-tolerance evaluation, this paper proposes a comprehensive process-oriented approach that investigates all three aspects of fault analysis concurrently.