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Total factor productivity (TFP) change is an important driver of long-run economic growth in the construction sector. However, examining TFP alone is insufficient to identify the cause of TFP changes. Therefore, this paper employs the infrequently used Geometric Young Index (GYI) and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to measure and decompose the TFP Index (TFPI) at the firm-level from 2009 to 2018 based on Malaysian construction firms' data.

To improve the TFPI estimation, normally unobserved environmental variables were included in the GYI-TFPI model. These are the physical operation of the firm (inland versus marine operation) and regional locality (West Malaysia versus East Malaysia). Consequently, the complete components of TFPI (i.e. technological, environmental, managerial, and statistical noise) can be accurately decomposed.

The results reveal that TFP change is affected by technological stagnation and improvements in technical efficiency but a decline in scale-mix efficiency. Moreover, the effect of environmental efficiency on TFP is most profound. In this case, being a marine construction firm and operating in East Malaysia can reduce TFPI by up to 38%. The result, therefore, indicates the need for progressive policies to improve long-term productivity.

Monitoring and evaluating productivity change allows an informed decision to be made by managers/policy makers to improve firms' competitiveness. Incentives and policies to improve innovation, competition, training, removing unnecessary taxes and regulation on outputs (inputs) could enhance the technological, technical and scale-mix of resources. Furthermore, improving public infrastructure, particularly in East Malaysia could improve regionality locality in relation to the environmental index.

This study contributes to knowledge by demonstrating how TFP components can be completely modelled using an aggregator index with good axiomatic properties and SFA. In addition, this paper is the first to apply and include the GYI and environmental variables in modelling construction productivity, which is of crucial importance in formulating appropriate policies.

This study investigates the convergence-of-interest and entrenchment effects on the relationship between managerial ownership and financial distress using evidence from the Chinese stock market. It also analyzes whether the relationship is mediated by research and development (R&D) investment.

Using a dataset consisting of 19,059 firm-year observations of Chinese listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges between 2010 and 2020, this study employs both piecewise and curvilinear models.

The results indicate that managerial ownership has a negative association with firm financial distress in both the low (below 12%) and high (above 18%) convergence-of-interest regions of managerial ownership, suggesting that managerial ownership in this region may contribute to improve firm financial status. Meanwhile, managerial ownership has a positive association with firm financial distress in the entrenchment region (12–18%), implying that managerial ownership in the entrenchment region may contribute to impair firm financial status. Furthermore, the results show that R&D investment mediates the association between managerial ownership and financial distress.

This study is the first to provide evidence of a nonlinear relationship between managerial ownership and financial distress, and identify the entrenchment region in the Chinese setting.

This chapter offers a comprehensive review the literature on authentic leadership (AL). The authors employ a bibliometric approach to identify, classify, visualise and synthesise relevant scholarly publications and the work of a core group of interdisciplinary scholars who are key contributors to the research on AL. They review 264 journal articles, adopting a clustering technique to assess the central themes of AL scholarship. They identify five distinct thematic clusters: authenticity in the context of leadership; structure of AL; social perspectives on AL; dynamism of AL; and value perceptions of AL. Velt and Sinkovics assert that these clusters will help scholars of AL to understand the dominant streams in the literature and provide a foundation for future research.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the state of the art in energy efficiency for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), focusing on energy sources, consumption models, energy-efficient locomotion, hardware energy consumption, optimization in path planning and scheduling methods, and to suggest future research directions.

The systematic literature review (SLR) identified 244 papers for analysis. Research articles published from 2010 onwards were searched in databases including Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and Scopus using keywords and search criteria related to energy and power management in various robotic systems.

The review highlights the following key findings: batteries are the primary energy source for AMRs, with advances in battery management systems enhancing efficiency; hybrid models offer superior accuracy and robustness; locomotion contributes over 50% of a mobile robot’s total energy consumption, emphasizing the need for optimized control methods; factors such as the center of mass impact AMR energy consumption; path planning algorithms and scheduling methods are essential for energy optimization, with algorithm choice depending on specific requirements and constraints.

The review concentrates on wheeled robots, excluding walking ones. Future work should improve consumption models, explore optimization methods, examine artificial intelligence/machine learning roles and assess energy efficiency trade-offs.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of energy efficiency in AMRs, highlighting the key findings from the SLR and suggests future research directions for further advancements in this field.

Historically, investments in innovation are perceived as one of the paramount decisions businesses opt to thrive and the impact of such investments on businesses' market performance is well documented in the literature. However, the environmental aspects of making such investments are yet to be addressed by the firms, which in turn, present considerable damage to the environment. Coupling with the natural resource-based view (NRBV) and the stakeholder theory of the firm, this research builds on an earlier work of Khalil and Nimmanunta (2021) in an attempt to examine the link between innovation and firms' environmental and financial value. The authors extend their analysis and document a more consistent approach to measuring environmental innovation which allows the authors to investigate the firms from three additional economies with respect to firms' investments in both traditional and environmental innovations.

The underlying models are tested using the time fixed-effects panel regression by utilizing information from publicly traded companies of ten Asian economies, including Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. The reported sample covers annual firm-level ESG data obtained from Thomson Reuters' Datastream and Refinitiv Eikon during the 2015–2019 period.

This research offers support to the conventional wisdom that innovation is advantageous to the firms' market value. The authors further decompose innovation into traditional innovation and environmental innovation. The findings of this research suggest that traditional innovation is favorable only for the firms' market valuation and traditional innovation is strongly ineffectual for the environment – traditional innovation produces sizeable environmental distress by contributing substantially to carbon emissions. In contrast, the resultant effects of investments in environmental innovation are evident to be instrumental for both firms' financial performance and the environment.

This research has primarily focused on only two components of a company's environmental performance: reduction in carbon emissions (CO2) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Given the complexity of firms' environmental strategies and the multidimensionality of the variable, which encompasses a wide range of corporate behavior in terms of relationships with communities, suppliers, consumers, and broader environmental responsibilities broadening the scope of the study by including other important aspects of environmental sustainability is, therefore, critical.

The findings of this research signify environmental innovation as one of the vital investment approaches as firms can exploit benefits related to the market from firms' sustainable practices, developing eco-friendly processes by introducing steady yet systematic chains of green products and services. Such products and services may have a feature of enhanced functionality with a better layout in terms of improved product life with better recycling options, and lower consumption and exploitation of energy and natural resources. These sustainable practices would be advantageous for the firms regarding the possibility of setting prices above the standard level through establishing green brands and gaining market share of environmentally anxious consumers. For those companies that are striving to take the leading role in the green industry and longing to seek superior returns on the companies' environmental investments, these benefits, in particular, are exceptionally critical to them.

The linkage between firms' financial and environmental performance in the context of simultaneous inclusion of both green and traditional innovations remains unclear and is yet to be investigated by researchers. Thus, this research shed light on the role of environmental innovation and traditional innovation on firms' environmental performance and financial performance. The authors utilize a novel dataset with a clear indication of measuring different elements of innovation that allows us to develop a more robust approach to corporates' environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance metrics having the slightest biases related to transparency and firm size.

The purpose of this study was to understand factors affecting market mavens' use of social media for fashion-related information provision. The study examined market mavens' motivations to share fashion-related information. Specifically, this study investigates the impact of their motivations (i.e. pleasure from helping, a sense of obligation) and technology acceptance model variables (i.e. beliefs about and attitude toward using social media) on intention to use social media for sharing fashion-related information.

An online survey yielded 862 responses from US female respondents. A subset (N = 307) representing those high in market mavenism was used for the study. Structural equation modeling was employed for the analysis.

The results confirmed that market mavens were driven by pleasure from helping and a sense of obligation to share fashion-related information. These motivations and attitude toward using social media to disseminate fashion-related information positively influenced market mavens' intention to use it to disseminate fashion-related information. Furthermore, belief variables (i.e. perceived usefulness, ease of use and enjoyment associated with social media) indirectly impacted this intention.

The study adds to the scant research examining market mavens' motivations for sharing fashion-related information with others and their intention to use social media. It provides valuable insights for fashion retailers looking to enhance the impact of social media marketing through the deployment of market mavens – very knowledgeable, motivated and trusted consumers.

The purpose of this study is to explore the comparative effects of mainstream celebrities and social media influencers on consumer advocacy and relationship intentions. The study also examines the direct and serial mediation effects on those relationships.

The survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 718 respondents throughout Malaysia, with convenience and snowball sampling techniques employed. The data were analyzed based on the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach through the AMOS version 24. The PROCESS MACRO v-4.20 was applied to evaluate mediating effects in the model.

The results reveal that celebrity endorsers' involvement in social media significantly influences the uses of social media, which also impacts the attitudes and, subsequently, consumer relationship and advocacy intentions. The study found that mainstream celebrities and social media influencers effectively promote brands, and it discovered insignificant differences in their effects on the analyzed relationships.

This study has been conducted on consumers in Malaysia; it may have different effects on consumers in other countries.

Brand managers and policymakers may benefit from following the study's guidelines for making consumer relationship and advocacy intentions by celebrity endorsers and uses of social media.

The brand community can benefit from tightening their social bondage by sharing and managing crucial information from celebrities and using social media.

The study explores the effects of mainstream celebrities on consumer relationship and advocacy intentions using social media networks and managing consumer attitudes.

This study examined the factors influencing willingness-to-repurchase for each class of airline service, and integrate the constructs of service quality, satisfaction and willingness-to-repurchase which were rooted on Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) model. The study focuses on the domestic and international arrival of passengers at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos and Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport in Abuja. Information was gathered from domestic and foreign passengers who had post-purchase experience and had used the airline's services more than once. The survey data were obtained concurrently from arrival passengers at two major international airports using an electronic questionnaire through random and purposive sampling techniques. The data was analysed using the ordinal logit model and structural equation model. From the 606 respondents, 524 responses were received but 489 responses were valid for data analysis and reporting and were obtained mostly from economy and business class passengers. The study found that the quality of seat pitch, allowance of 30 kg luggage permission, availability of online check-in 24 hours before the departing flight, quality of space for legroom between seats, and the quality of seats that can be converted into a fully flatbed are the major service factors influencing willingness-to-repurchase economy and business class tickets. Also, it was found that passengers' willingness to repurchase is influenced majorly by service quality, but not necessarily influenced by satisfaction. These results reflect the passengers' consciousness of COVID-19 because the study was conducted during the heat of COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendations were suggested for airline management based on each class.