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Blockchain is an innovative and emerging technology that allows the structuring of open data in a secure and decentralized manner. This technology, coupled with artificial intelligence (AI), is a driver of digital transformation that permeates all sectors of the economy. In this context, it becomes relevant to understand the applicability of AI and blockchain in education, more specifically their use in higher education. Thus, the following problem arises: how can blockchain technology and AI be applied to higher education? To answer this problem, the following objective was set: to map by means of a scoping review how AI and blockchain can be applied in education as a technology for higher education. To this end, a bibliometric search was conducted in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases, adopting the PRiSM methodology for scoping review. The results showed that blockchain and AI can be used in higher education through a smart contract that serves to motivate teamwork and student involvement in activities performed in the school context and also to increase machine reliability by establishing a chain of information. It is also concluded that these technologies will help form a generation ready to work in a more collaborative way, adopting attitudes of sustainability in its local and global context for solving complex problems of everyday life in the 21st century.

The purpose of this study was to gather insights from sport marketing professionals and identify key opportunities, challenges and knowledge that sport marketing educators and researchers could utilize in developing curriculum and research agendas.

A qualitative approach was used, and data were collected through in-depth interviews with 15 sport marketing professionals. Participants were asked questions related to the knowledge, skills and experiences that they believe are important for students to have to be successful in the industry, as well as the types of research that would be most useful in their day-to-day work.

Industry professionals noted collaboration, transformation in digital marketing, data and analytics and experiential marketing as key trends facing the industry today. The findings suggest that sport marketing curriculum should focus on soft skill development such as communication, relationship building and empathy alongside hard skill development such as data analysis and storytelling. As well, findings show research areas where scholars can aid practitioners with a focus on consumer insights, technology, measuring ROI and experiential marketing.

With these findings, educators and scholars can better prepare students for successful careers in industry and contribute to the ongoing advancement of the scholarly field. This study serves as a starting point for further research in this area, and it is hoped that it will spark continued collaboration between academia and industry.

The study provides an initial empirical examination of Jin et al.’s (2024) new READINESS model through the expert opinions of crisis communication academics and practitioners. Through this examination, the goal is to understand crisis READINESS and how it relates to other key concepts in the crisis literature, such as preparedness and resilience.

An exploratory quantitative online survey of 30 experts in crisis communication was conducted. Our participant pool consisted of members from the Crisis Communication Think Tank, which is an established crisis thought leadership network (Jin, 2023). Data collection took place in November and December 2023.

Key findings include the dual nature of crisis READINESS as both a process and an outcome, resilience as both a process and an outcome, and preparedness as an antecedent to READINESS. A key distinction between READINESS and preparedness emerged with the former conceived of as a mindset and the latter conceived of as physical tools, training and planning.

Preparedness and resilience alone are not enough to effectively manage crises and risks, and given this, it is important to study READINESS as a concept beyond (yet connected to) preparedness and resilience. It is our hope that the findings can lead to understanding indicators of crisis READINESS and developing crisis READINESS measurement tools which can equip organizations to more effectively manage crises.

Enterprise social media (ESM) are expressive spaces where users exchange emotional workplace communication. While some studies have explored how positive emotions may be contagious, little research explored the notion that negative communication may accumulate on enterprise social media. This study explores perceived negativity bias and its correlates in the context of ESM.

This study relies on survey data collected from 599 employees of a global organization. The response rate was 18.7%. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The results contribute to research on ESM by demonstrating that perceived negativity bias is positively related to feelings of accountability and negatively associated with social support. Furthermore, the results indicate that unmet communication expectations on ESM can have implications for perceived social support beyond online contexts and accountability through perceived negativity bias.

The findings demonstrate how employees' unmet expectations about ESM use increase feelings that a digital environment is disproportionately negative, which may create an “unsafe” space for employees and a fear of being held accountable for their contributions. This study highlights how the Expectation-Disconfirmation Theory provides a fruitful framework for studying enterprise social technologies.

This study suggests that work is not merely a rational endeavor, and that emotions and personal feelings (including negative ones) may shape workplace communication on ESM. We contribute to research on ESM use by using the Expectation-Disconfirmation Theory as a lens to study antecedents and implications of perceived negativity bias.

This paper analyzes the differential experiences of women in the Canadian labour market who hold lower-skilled jobs and have school-age children during two waves of Covid compared with more typical conditions pre-pandemic. The article seeks to test the hypothesis that workers at the intersection of womanhood, motherhood and precarious employment would endure even more disadvantageous labour market outcomes during the Covid pandemic than they did prior to it.

We employ a Gender-Based Plus (GBA+) and intersectionality lens to examine the differential effect of Covid on the effect of the trifecta of being a woman in a lower-skilled job and facing a motherhood penalty from school-age children. We use a Difference-in-Difference framework with Canadian Labour Force Survey (LFS) data to examine the differential effect of two waves of Covid on three labour market outcomes: employment, hours worked and hourly wages.

We find that being a woman in a lower-skilled job with school-age children is associated with lower employment, hours worked and wages in normal times compared to males in those same situations. Such women also face the most severe adjustment consequence from the Covid shock, with that adjustment concentrated on the margin of employment and restricted to the First Wave and not the subsequent Omicron Wave.

The paper studies a specific intersectional group, assesses pre-pandemic, peak-pandemic and late-pandemic differences in labour market outcomes and runs separate estimations for different job skill levels. We also study a more comprehensive list of labour market outcomes than most studies of a similar nature.

The purpose of this paper is to connect emerging conceptions of childhood in the capabilities approach (CA) literature to models of self-directed education in hopes of articulating and defending the educational goal of promoting children's participative capabilities.

This paper offers a conceptual and theoretical exploration of childhood from a CA perspective and seeks to connect it to self-directed education.

The author argues that self-directed education, especially democratic schools in the model of the Sudbury Valley School, is well-suited to the task of promoting children's participative capabilities and that people should, therefore, consider this the kind of education to which children have a right.

By applying the CA framework to self-directed education, this paper makes an original contribution in two directions: first, it offers a new set of theoretical tools for self-directed education scholars; second, it offers capabilities theorists interested in promoting children's participative capabilities with a new model of education.

A key lesson from the COVID-19 pandemic was the extent to which the collapse of tourism activity underlined the sensitivity of the industry with regard to mass and over-tourism. In previous decades, we were aware of the effects of such events as terrorist attacks and environmental disasters; the pandemic provided a display of the fragility of tourism. It represented a wake-up call for us to pause and reflect on whether the type of industry tourism had become, was entirely fit for purpose and to imagine what the ‘new normal’ tourism would be. The problem apparent since the middle of 2022, as pandemic restrictions lessened and tourism destinations re-opened, was that there would be no ‘new normal’ as in many cases there would be a return to the ‘old normal’, as mass tourism destinations refilled with visitors and environmental degradation resumed. The sense of fragility continued, no longer impelled by the pandemic, but by new critical events in the post-pandemic world – war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, the consumer inflation crisis and rising interest rates in advanced economies, and the slowing of real economic growth. In addition, in 2023, we became even more aware of dangers from an over-heating planet – such as floods and extreme weather conditions. The longer-term prospect of many popular tourism resorts being effectively wiped out is no longer an obscure threat but a potentially concrete reality. This chapter will look at how we manage trends towards a more sustainable and responsible form of tourism.