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The purpose of this paper is to explore the work-life (WL) experiences of live-in women migrant domestic workers (MDWs), who represent a significant proportion of migrant workers globally. MDWs play a key role in enabling the work-life balance (WLB) of others, namely the middle-class households that employ them. Yet, their experiences have largely been invisible in mainstream WL literature. The authors draw on an intersectional approach to frame the WL experiences of this marginalized group of women at the intersection of being secondary labour segment workers, with significant legal and employment restrictions as migrant workers, who work and live in the same place as their employers.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 women MDWs from Indonesia and the Philippines working in Malaysia. The women talked about the meaning of work as MDWs, how they maintain familial connections whilst working abroad, and how they negotiate their WLB as live-in workers. Thematic analysis of the interviews focused on the intersection of the women’s multiple dimensions of disadvantage, including gender, class and temporary migrant-foreigner status, in shaping their accounts of the WL interface.

Three thematic narratives highlight that any semblance of WLB in the MDWs’ lived experience has given way to the needs of their employers and to the imperative to earn an income for their families back home. The themes are: working as MDWs enables the women and their families back home to have a life; the co-existence of WL boundary segmentation and integration in relation to “real” and “temporary” families; and the notion of WLB being centred around the women’s ability to fulfil their multiple duties as MDWs and absent mothers/sisters/daughters.

The study is based on a small sample of live-in women MDWs in Malaysia, intended to promote typically excluded voices and not to provide generalizable findings. Accessing potential participants was a considerable challenge, given the vulnerable positions of women MDWs and the invisible nature of their work.

Future research should adopt a multi-stakeholder approach to studying the WL experiences of women MDWs. In particular, links with non-governmental organizations who work directly with women MDWs should be established as a way of improving future participant access.

The study underscores the existence of policies and regulations that tolerate and uphold social inequalities that benefit primary labour segment workers to the detriment of secondary labour segment workers, including women MDWs.

Extant WL literature is dominated by the experiences of “the ideal work-life balancers”, who tend to be white middle-class women, engaged in professional work. This study offers original contribution by giving voice to a taken-for-granted group of women migrant workers who make other people’s WLB possible. Moreover, the study challenges WL research by underscoring the power inequities that shape the participants’ marginal and disadvantaged lived experience of work, life, family and WLB.

Government social media profiles (GSPs) are increasingly used by government agencies during social crises, and the success of GSPs is highly dependent on netizens’ participation behavior (NPB). Drawing upon the social support theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model to examine the determinants and outcomes of NPB during a social crisis.

To test the research model, a field survey was conducted in the context of Tianjin 2015 explosions in China. The authors adopted a two-step approach to test the models. First, the authors conducted exploratory factor analysis to evaluate the measurement properties of the reflective latent constructs. Then, the authors performed a structural equation analysis to test the hypotheses.

The results show that information support and emotional support are significant determinants of NPB and persona involvement moderates the relationships between them. Additionally, this study reveals that information source preference and increasing enthusiasm for becoming a civil journalist are two critical and significant outcomes of NPB.

There are some limitations in this paper that must be taken into account when interpreting its findings. First, the study is designed on a single profile and concerns a single social crisis. Additionally, future research might consider incorporating factors beyond the individual level, e.g., community social capital (Putnam, 1993). Finally, with the emergence of various IT platforms, such as a government’s own website and online forms, future research can investigate how their characteristics can facilitate other social media platforms’ participation.

This paper offers a number of crucial research implications to the literature of social media in crisis management, thereby contributing to the explanation of NPB on GSPs in the management of social crises. Considering social support as a factor affecting NPB on GSPs, the authors also add personal involvement to the research on the functions of NPB on GSPs and include encouraging civil journalist and making GSPs the principal source of political information.

The research provides participating netizens on GSPs with some suggestions about generating more cost-effective and useful interventions to improve netizen participation levels on GSPs. The findings highlight that governmental social media profiles must focus on continuous development, such as trying best to satisfy the habits of netizens, to motivate netizens to create dependence of information acquisition on the GSPs, called information source preference. On the other hand, the study reminds netizens of the importance of NPB on GSPs during crises and encourages them to act as civil journalist.

First, the study investigated the outcome effect of NPB on GSPs on netizens’ information source preference and civil journalist. Second, this study identifies the determinants of NBPs on GSPs from both the informational and the emotional support perspectives. Third, this study investigates the moderating effects of personal involvement on the relationships between determinants from social support and NPB on GSPs.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

This paper proposes an integrated knowledge visualization and digital twin system for supporting strategic management decisions. The concepts and applications of strategic architecture have been illustrated with a concrete real-world case study and decision rules of using the strategic digital twin management decision system (SDMDS) as a more visualized, adaptive and effective model for decision-making.

This paper integrates the concepts of mental and computer models and examines a real case's business operations by applying system dynamics modelling and digital technologies. The enterprise digital twin system with displaying real-world data and simulations for future scenarios demonstrates an improved process of strategic decision-making in the digital age.

The findings reveal that data analytics and the visualized enterprise digital twin system offer better practices for strategic management decisions in the dynamic and constantly changing business world by providing a constant and frequent adjustment on every decision that affects how the business performs over both operational and strategic timescales.

In the digital age and dynamic business environment, the proposed strategic architecture and managerial digital twin system converts the existing conceptual models into an advanced operational model. It can facilitate the development of knowledge visualization and become a more adaptive and effective model for supporting real-time management decision-making by dealing with the complicated dependence of constant flow of data input, output and the feedback loop across business units and boundaries.

In this chapter, we advance an understanding of entrepreneurial resourcefulness in relation to context by focusing on challenging and sometimes outright hostile environments and the way they shape, and are shaped by, entrepreneurial resourcefulness. Drawing on selective evidence from several projects in post-socialist countries in both Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia and other published research covering these countries, we argue for contextualized conceptualizations of resourcefulness. More specifically we emphasize that temporal, historical, socio-spatial, and institutional contexts are antecedents and boundaries for entrepreneurial behavior, while at the same time allowing for human agency. This is visible in individuals’ actions to negotiate, reenact, and cross these boundaries, and as a result, intentionally or inadvertently contributing to changing contexts. We suggest that resourcefulness is a dynamic concept encompassing multiple practices, which change over time, and it results from a close interplay of multiple contexts with entrepreneurial behavior. We also propose that from a theoretical point of view, resourcefulness not only needs to be contextualized, but it also needs to be explored together with its contextual outcomes – the value it creates and adds at different levels of society.

This case is written for those people who are interested in entrepreneurship, and to generate discussions on the Lean Start-up methodology, as well as other topics related to entrepreneurship and innovation.

It can be used with senior undergraduates, MBAs, EMBAs and senior executives.

In August 2011, Mars Ren and Gene Deng created a technology-based venture, Shanghai Tianhailu Network Information Technology Ltd. Filled with passion, they aspired to be the first “factory outlet” in China' hotel booking industry. To achieve this goal, they developed the Hotelvp app for mobile users. After 6:00 p.m. every day, users could book accommodation online in hotels above three-star standard for that same night at significant discounts. Hotels also benefited because they could sell their unsold room nights at the last minute and improve their revenue management. Ren and Deng were convinced that this win-win idea would take off. Unfortunately, it failed to fully satisfy either the users or the hotels. In spite of the founders' passion and energy, it was still acquired by a much more powerful player in the online sector, JD.com, in early 2014. This case is designed to stimulate in-depth discussions based on the question: What are the key obstacles when launching a startup and how to overcome them?

Through class discussion, it aims at teaching the student how to define and practice a start-up idea successfully by following the “Lean Start-up” methodology and/or take advantage of a practical tool, discovery-driven planning. Specifically, this case intends to teach students how: To identify and define a good start-up idea; To take actions based on the idea/opportunity, iterate and modify it along the way to create new start-ups, and finally lead the new start-ups to grow and succeed; To understand the key concepts, frameworks and theoretical logics of Lean Start-up methodology, and apply it in practice.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for effective crisis response.

The methodology involves a qualitative examination of responses by companies that have been judged by analysts to be varyingly effective. Toyota, for instance, had a poor response to its product quality and recall crisis. Singapore Airlines on the other hand, is often cited as an exemplar for an effective response to the crash of its flight SQ 006 in Taiwan.

This research finds that organizations with a strong commitment to doing the right thing for stakeholders and a high readiness are most likely to effectively respond to crises. Organizations lacking in one of the two critical dimensions (commitment to stakeholders and/or readiness), on the other hand, are likely to have ineffective responses with possible post-crisis losses in competitive (e.g. market share) and financial (e.g. penalties) terms.

The case study methodology implies limitations about generalizability. The framework may also be less useful in crises where there is ambiguity about the genesis of the crisis and its implications, such as the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines’ MH 370 flight.

Since crises are commonplace and can impact any company, the framework can be useful for a wide range of companies.

The proposed framework fills a gap in the understanding about why some companies have effective responses to crises and others do not. Prior literature has often adopted narrower perspectives such as the skills and the personality of the CEO, pre-crisis drills and effective communication strategies post-crisis. This study argues that while these factors are important, they are not sufficiently strategic.

Overhead high-voltage transmission line (HVTL) inspection robots are used to inspect the transmission lines and/or maintain the infrastructures of a power transmission grid. One of the most serious problems is that the load on the front wheel is much larger than that on the back one when the robot travels along a sloping earth wire. Thus, ongoing operation of the inspection robot mainly depends on the front wheel motor’s ability. This paper aims to extend continuous operation time of the HVTL inspection robots.

By introducing a traction force model, the authors have established a dynamic model of the robot with slip. The total load is evenly distributed to both wheels. According to the traction force model, the desired wheel slip is calculated to achieve the goal of load balance. A wheel slip controller was designed based on second-order sliding-mode control methodology.

This controller accomplishes the control objective, such that the actual wheel slip tracks the desired wheel slip. A simulation and experiment verify the feasibility of the load balance control system. These results indicate that the loads on both wheels are generally equal.

By balancing the loads on both wheels, the inspection robot can travel along the earth wire longer, improving its efficiency.

This study examines the antecedents of continuance intention to use mobile payment in the midst of a pandemic. In general, the cognitive-affective-conative (CAC) framework was used as the theoretical base. More specifically, the dynamic interrelationships between the cognitive and affective constructs were derived from a penta-dimensional perspective.

An online survey yielded 307 responses from youths who were utilizing mobile payment through an online survey which were then analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN).

Both positive and negative affective constructs significantly influence continuance intention and can also serve as mediators to the cognitive variables. Interestingly, price savings and referent network size were revealed to be sources of technostress. In addition, despite not having a significant direct influence, price savings should not be overlooked given its indirect significance on continuance intention.

Based on the CAC framework, the constructs were conceptualized according to the respective dimensions to develop this study's research model. It was then used to examine their influences on the continuance intention to use mobile payment in the midst of a pandemic. Moreover, a few novel hypotheses were proposed, and the findings serve to increase the understanding of this subject matter.