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The purpose of this paper is to test the capability of a new population‐based optimization algorithm for solving an NP‐hard problem, called “Multiple Knapsack Problem”, or MKP.

Here, the intelligent water drops (IWD) algorithm, which is a population‐based optimization algorithm, is modified to include a suitable local heuristic for the MKP. Then, the proposed algorithm is used to solve the MKP.

The proposed IWD algorithm for the MKP is tested by standard problems and the results demonstrate that the proposed IWD‐MKP algorithm is trustable and promising in finding the optimal or near‐optimal solutions. It is proved that the IWD algorithm has the property of the convergence in value.

This paper introduces the new optimization algorithm, IWD, to be used for the first time for the MKP and shows that the IWD is applicable for this NP‐hard problem. This research paves the way to modify the IWD for other optimization problems. Moreover, it opens the way to get possibly better results by modifying the proposed IWD‐MKP algorithm.

User requests over the cloud are not achievable with one single service, multiple services need to be executed to fulfill what a user asks for. Typically, such services are composed and presented as one global service. Moreover, the same operation can be achieved by multiple services available at different clouds, which can result in different possibilities in composing them. This paper aims to decrease the number of clouds involved in the composition process, so that user requests are satisfied with minimal cost (communication costs, execution time and financial charges).

This paper investigates the use of an intelligent water drops (IWDs) optimization-based algorithm, and an integer linear programming model to optimize the number of cloud bases involved in the composition process. A comparison of the solutions found by these two techniques is presented in the paper.

The obtained results show that the number of cloud bases can be decreased without affecting user satisfaction.

The paper is a first attempt to use the IWDs algorithm for service composition, tested with big-size data.

This study analyses the challenges in implementing lean manufacturing (LM) in the wood and furniture industry. In order to facilitate the smooth implementation of LM practices in this industry, the challenges in terms of its deployment need to be analysed and observed.

Realizing this importance, this study proposes a model, using PLS-SEM, which focusses on dealing with the challenges faced in the implementation of lean in the wood and furniture industry. The model consists of ten challenges that were determined based on a survey involving 46 SMEs companies in Malaysia.

The findings revealed that the implementation of LM is significantly affected by three main issues, namely: knowledge, resources and culture and human attitude. Furthermore, the analyses also highlighted four dominant challenges which are related to culture and human attitude issues – lack of employee commitment, lack of senior management's interest and support, difficult to implement, and LM is viewed as “current trend”. Overall, the ability to deal with the challenges involving factors of knowledge and culture and human attitude determines the success of LM implementation, especially in companies that have limited resources.

This study would help wood and furniture SMEs, government agencies, professional bodies and academics to better understand the challenges when implementing LM practices.

Overall, this study aims at investigating the relationships between the three challenges to better promote LM in the scope under study. Therefore, several activities were proposed to overcome the abovementioned challenges and subsequently contribute to the current body of knowledge.

The outbreak of COVID-19 is one of the most serious health events in recent times. In the business landscape, its effects may be more detrimental to micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) because they tend to have limited financial and human resources to manage the challenges caused by COVID-19. To help MSMEs enhance their resilience, this paper aims to discuss how they can leverage mass collaboration to build social media-based knowledge ecosystems to manage interactions among internal and external stakeholders for knowledge creation and innovation.

The paper proposes a model for MSMEs to build an online knowledge ecosystem and a standalone text analytics tool to use the advanced data analytics, e.g. topic modeling, to analyze and aggregate collective insights. Design science research methodology is used to develop the model and the tool.

Through mass collaboration using social media and advanced data analytics technology, MSMEs can generate new business ideas, leading to enhanced resilience to meet the challenges caused by COVID-19 or other unexpected or extraordinary circumstances, such as natural disasters and financial crises.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first papers in social media adoption for knowledge creation and innovation research, providing detailed approaches for MSMEs to build a knowledge ecosystem on social media and to use advanced data analytics to mine the meaning of the generated data.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model to determine whether organizational climate (OC) mediates the effect of managerial skills (MSs) on business performance in small businesses, such as pharmacies.

The model proposed in this research was tested using separate questionnaires specifically designed for managers, employees and clients. The data set consists of responses from 301 managers, 470 clients and 328 employees from community pharmacies in Tehran, capital of Iran, which were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Although the results indicated no significant direct relationship between MSs and pharmacy performance (PP), they also confirmed that having a context-appropriate set of MSs can positively affect PP via the mediating effect of OC.

This is the first study investigating how MSs improve performance in retail pharmacies. Although this research focuses specifically on small businesses in the pharmaceutical industry, it nevertheless contributes to the literature by showing the importance of OC.

Although a vast amount of research has been started to gauge customer satisfaction using surveys, the influence of COVID-19 on passengers' satisfaction has not received enough attention. Hence, the primary purpose of this research is to determine the dominant themes that emerged from airline travelers' online reviews and to determine attributes that are pertinent to the satisfaction of passengers flying with low-cost carriers (LCC) during the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, this study investigates whether the salient themes of passengers' overall experiences vary by traveler origin, which may give more insight into airline sector market segmentation.

Leximancer software was used to construct concepts from words, followed by themes in the data analysis.

The analyses revealed eight themes in descriptions of “travel experiences” for airline passengers. These are “flights,” “staff,” “service,” “hygiene,” “cancellations,” “legroom,” “COVID-19” and “test”. Negative reviews associated with “cancellations,” “refund,” “waiting” and “baggage” (handling) concepts.

The findings provide important information about airline passengers' overall experiences. Limited studies have comprehensively considered various satisfaction categories of airline travelers using online reviews.

Security has been a critical matter in the development of electronic services. The purpose of this research is to develop a new model to help e-service practitioners and researchers in the evaluation of e-service security and its effect on quality and intention to use e-services.

According to the literature, 13 security dimensions are extracted. Then, exploratory factor analysis is applied to reduce the number of security dimensions. This step is implemented based on end-users’ perception. Afterward, a hierarchical structure of e-service security is established to calculate the weights of security dimensions applying analytical hierarchy process method by contribution of e-service experts and providers. Finally, structural equation modeling using LISREL is applied to test the proposed theoretical model.

Results indicates that confidentiality, integrity, privacy, authentication, non-repudiation and availability are antecedents of consumers’ perceived security in e-service. Considering the high significance of perceived security, it is concluded that enhanced feelings of security will result in improved perception of quality. Furthermore, it is found that users will intend to use e-service if they feel that the quality of e-service is high.

Few studies have been done on users’ adoption behaviors of e-services and even those few have not investigated users’ security perception as a major factor affecting users’ intention to use e-services. Considering the increasing concerns of users about the security of their personal information and how it affects their adoption behaviors, there is a need to conduct more studies on the factors involved in this procedure. In this study, the concept of security from both perspective of objective security and subjective security is evaluated.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the thermal response of the laminar non-Newtonian fluid flow in elliptical duct subjected to a third-kind boundary condition with a particular interest to a non-Newtonian nanofluid case. The effects of Biot number, aspect ratio and fluid flow behavior index on the heat transfer have been examined carefully.

First, the mathematical problem has been formulated in dimensionless form, and then the curvilinear elliptical coordinates transform is applied to transform the original elliptical shape of the duct to an equivalent rectangular numerical domain. This transformation has been adopted to overcome the inherent mathematical deficiency due to the dependence of the ellipsis contour on the variables x and y. The yielded problem has been successfully solved using the dynamic alternating direction implicit method. With the available temperature field, several parameters have been computed for the analysis purpose such as bulk temperature, Nusselt number and heat transfer coefficient.

The results showed that the use of elliptical duct enhances significantly the heat transfer coefficient and reduces the duct’s length needed to achieve the thermal equilibrium. For some cases, the reduction in the duct’s length can reach almost 50 per cent compared to the circular pipe. In addition, the analysis of the non-Newtonian nanofluid case showed that the addition of nanoparticles to the base fluid improves the heat transfer coefficient up to 25 per cent. The combination of using an elliptical duct and the addition of nanoparticles has a spectacular effect on the overall heat transfer coefficient with an enhancement of 50-70 per cent. From the engineering applications view, the results demonstrate the potential of elliptical duct in building light-weighted compact shell-and-tube heat exchangers.

A complete investigation of the heat transfer of a fully developed laminar flow of power law fluids in elliptical ducts subject to the convective boundary condition with application to non-Newtonian nanofluids is addressed.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors that influence patients’ long-term relationship with healthcare providers in healthcare delivery at hospitals.

Data were gathered using 170 patients in a cross-sectional survey with quantitative research methods at a public regional hospital. Results were obtained using descriptive analysis and regression analysis.

Generally, the study found that the health-related factors (the reception of staff, providers’ attitude, waiting time, competence and expertise and the hospital environment) that influence patients’ long-term relationship with the healthcare providers/hospital were statistically significant (p < 0.001). The findings showed that overall 90.0 per cent of the patients were very satisfied with the overall healthcare services at the hospital.

Limited sample size, lack of examination of healthcare providers’ perspectives and non-application of qualitative methods make it difficult to give a true picture of how these can enhance patients’ intent to keep a long-term relationship with the healthcare providers/hospital.

The paper suggests that health policymakers and practitioners need to enhance measures that will make patients satisfied leading to their long-term commitment and cordial relationship with the healthcare providers/hospital.

The study demonstrated how health-related factors will be associated with the patients’ agreement/intent to keep a long-term relationship with their service providers at hospitals. Thus, the overall hypothesis was true that there is a relationship between patients’ satisfaction with the healthcare experienced and their long-term relationship with healthcare providers/hospital.

This is one of the few studies conducted on the topic in the context of Ghana’s health sector. It recommends that there should be a good interpersonal relationship between healthcare providers and patients, as patients’ satisfaction is not based on only receiving treatment at the health facility.