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Linked data can provide unique insights into both the need for social care services and the outcomes of intervention. Crucially, these insights will be based on much more representative coverage of the population of people receiving social care than is achieved by surveys and they are not subject to the reporting bias that can arise in relation to stigmatised services.

The opportunities are expanding for linking together routine administrative data from different public services, e.g. health care, social care, education and criminal justice. These linked data can be used for research in trusted research environments which are very secure and where no researcher can identify individuals. Work is rapidly developing using children’s social care data.

Much of the data linkage research using children’s social care data is being conducted by data scientists and medical researchers without knowledge of the sector, and very few social care or social work specialists who have that knowledge are involved in these studies.

This viewpoint piece argues the need for social care and social work research to embrace data linkage. What is needed is an integration of methods expertise in linked data and substantive knowledge of children’s social care work. The arguments are illustrated with reference to some recent research in Wales.

The purpose of this article is to determine the regional economic factors and bank characteristics that significantly contribute to changes in bank liquidity. We also seek to identify regions that may be most susceptible to liquidity tightening.

For this article we use data on deposits from commercial banks, Federal Reserve survey data and indicators of regional and agricultural economic conditions. We specify a panel regression with fixed effects to model how liquidity at agricultural banks has changed and to identify the most significant drivers.

Our results suggest that small banks and banks with branch networks located in areas more concentrated in agricultural production bear the greatest risk of reduced liquidity.

Prior to the pandemic and more recently, lower deposit growth, combined with strong demand for agricultural loans, has led to reductions in liquidity at agricultural banks. Lower liquidity could reduce credit availability for farm borrowers and increase risks for banks that must rely on alternative sources of funding to meet loan demand.

Previous research has shown that exogenous shocks from other economic sectors, such as energy, can significantly affect bank liquidity, but research is limited on how agricultural bank liquidity is affected by downturns in the agricultural economy and other regional economic factors. Another contribution is this paper’s analysis of regional disparities in bank liquidity.

This article explores the implications of virtual social spaces for conceptualizing community engagement in the practice of architecture and design by critically analyzing multidisciplinary approaches to conceptualizing community namely space, place, and context to envision social spaces of virtual community engagement by architects and designers.

This conceptual article utilized narrative literature review as the primary method for conducting a transdisciplinary theoretical integration. First, the authors defined the metaverse as all manner of human-technological interaction. Second, the authors discussed theories of place from architecture, social geography, and human ecology and employed neoecological theory to describe the interactional processes inherent in research and practice with virtual communities. Finally, the authors documented specific types of virtual engagement strategies in architectural research and practice.

Virtual environments provide varied opportunities for effective collaborations among architects, designers, and community members. The primary strategies identified by the literature review of virtual community engagement were collaborative, augmented reality, and situated digital experiences. In addition, researchers have found that the most effective community engagement bridges interactions in the physical space and digitally mediated interactions.

The authors advocate for increased research towards understanding how the expanded availability of more complex technological tools, such as future versions of artificial intelligence (AI) software, may further layer the landscape of community engagement in ways that may be unpredictable and currently less understood. Additional research is also needed to address participants' perspectives in virtual community engagement and explore how the building of communities in the meta-context is felt, lived, and understood by those who act in them.

The availability of new technological tools and digital platforms challenges diverse professionals to expand their community-engaged practice into the metaverse. Although not every community has broadband Internet or software access, many physical locations whether community centers, libraries, schools, or one’s own home may serve as safe spaces for novel virtual engagement experiences by individuals and groups. Digital engagement can increase opportunities for involvement from persons who are home-bound, lack transportation or child-care to attend in-person community events, or may desire the anonymity afforded by virtual engagement.

Virtual environments can provide varied opportunities for effective collaboration among architects, designers, and community members by overcoming physical or nonphysical barriers to in-person engagement. For example, recent case studies of civic and community organizations have successfully integrated physical and virtual community engagement during the global COVID-19 pandemic by overcoming physical or nonphysical barriers to in-person engagement. Community development theorists have referred to such contexts as a “post-place community” in which individuals find solidarity through digital global networks.

This article theorizes virtual community engagement in the metaverse from a transdisciplinary perspective and coins the innovative concept of meta-contexts to describe a global “post-place” community. Integrating theories of place from architecture, social geography, and human ecology guides an original review of effective strategies for meta-contextual digital community engagement by architects and designers.

With the recent conclusion of the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) 28 in the United Arab Emirates, this study aims to investigate the tweeting behaviour of firms surrounding COP events. The authors analyse the environmental, social and governance (ESG) tweets from the COP 26 and COP 27 events, aiming to deepen the understanding of the complex relationships between social media communication, industry characteristics and financial performance. This timely analysis is critical for assessing how the latest global discussions on climate change are influencing corporate communication strategies on sustainability, offering fresh insights into the evolving dynamics of ESG engagement in the context of these pivotal international meetings.

In this study, the authors embrace a grounded theory approach to gain insights into the ESG and sustainability initiatives presented by companies on social media, with an intensified focus on climate change discourse. Leveraging advanced social media analytics, this study expands its scope by conducting a thorough examination of ESG-related tweets from Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 companies. In addition, the authors explore the relationships between such communication efforts and financial performance, applying an advanced cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) model. This methodological enhancement enables a more sophisticated understanding of how ESG communication on Twitter correlates with, and potentially influences, a firm’s market valuation and financial health, offering invaluable insights into the strategic importance of digital sustainability discourse.

The research findings introduce four novel distinct groups – Unengaged, Catalysts, Cautious and Shapers – based on firms’ proactive or reactive sustainability communication patterns. The results explore the potential impact of COP event locations on tweeting behaviour, proposing that conferences held in different regions, such as Asia versus Europe, may elicit varied reactions from S&P 500 firms. Despite no significant inter-industry differences in tweeting habits, the authors discover a significant link between firms’ financial metrics, specifically CARs, and their categorised communication styles. The results challenge the simplistic view that higher social media engagement leads to positive financial outcomes, suggesting instead that lower financial performance may drive firms to adopt more extreme communication patterns, possibly as a strategic move to enhance corporate legitimacy.

This study offers new insights into how companies use social media during significant climate change events, namely, COP events. By classifying firms according to their ESG communication approaches, the results reveal uncharted correlations between how companies communicate on social media, namely, Twitter, and the correlation to financial performance.

Intermodal freight transport (IFT) promises to reduce freight transport emissions by combining multiple transport modes. Emerging digital platforms seek to address the increasing complexity that arises from a combination of transport modes, yet the understanding of their business models remains limited. This study provides in-depth insights into the current characteristics and future dynamics of IFT platform business models.

Using an inductive qualitative research approach, we gathered data from 19 semi-structured interviews. Based on this empirical data, we derived a comprehensive business model taxonomy, identified distinct platform archetypes and explored their future dynamics.

Four platform archetypes are identified: Marketplaces and Self-Brokers facilitate easy booking by matching supply and demand. Data Hubs and Collaboration Hubs digitize data exchange between IFT actors. While Marketplaces and Data Hubs are operated by digitally dominated entrants, Collaboration Hubs and Self-Brokers are launched by intermodal incumbents as a digital extension of their physical transport services. Platforms operated by intermodal incumbents with a considerable customer base possess strategic advantages, potentially outperforming the business models of digitally dominated entrants in the future.

Although this study focuses on the German IFT market, the developed taxonomy sets the ground for qualitative research of other platform-based business models and encourages the validation of our findings through quantitative research.

By being the first to comprehensively systematize IFT platform business models and their future dynamics, our study creates an in-depth understanding of how digital platforms can contribute to a modal shift from road freight transport to environmentally friendly IFT.

This paper aims to explore the general flaws in the theorization of Islamic economics, particularly its failure to incorporate substantive morality into its framework. Since a considerable number of Islamic economic studies remain within the bounds of instrumental morality, this paper seeks to propose an alternative understanding of Islamic economics by emphasizing the essential role of Islamic moral economy (IME) through substantive morality.

The study critically examines the theorization of Islamic economics through a discursive methodology. The adopted method and strategy allow for the discursive evaluation of conceptual developments within the field of modern Islamic economics. It proposes an authentic definition of IME by outlining its paradigmatic framework of political economy, value system, axiomatic approach and operational principles.

Islamic economics has been theorized in a reactive and reflexive manner, aiming to provide an alternative to the neoclassical hegemonic discourse. However, it has largely neglected its inherent moral dimension, focusing instead on instrumental morality and failed to embed substantive morality into its system. By introducing an alternative reading of Islamic economics, this study presents IME as a distinct economic model that centers substantive morality in its theorization.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by offering a novel perspective on Islamic economics that challenges the prevalent instrumental approach and emphasizes the importance of substantive morality. It provides a comprehensive framework for understanding IME as a distinct economic model, thereby enriching the discourse on Islamic economics with an authentic and morally grounded paradigm.

With the rise in demand and adoption of smart city initiatives, it is imperative to plan the railway infrastructure, as it will have a huge positive impact if adequately integrated into the planning process. Given the complexities involved, a whole systems thinking framework provides a useful platform for rail transport planners.

This paper proposes a simple, adoptable framework utilising systems thinking concepts and techniques taking into cognisance the key stakeholders. Milton Keynes in the United Kingdom is the adopted case study.

Selected systems thinking tools and techniques are adopted to develop a framework for mapping stakeholders and attributes when developing sustainable rail transport systems, taking note of their core functionalities and the complex systems wherein they exist.

The desire to build future (smart) cities is to effectively match infrastructural resources with a rapidly growing population, and the railway sector can play a strategic role in building a much more competitive low-carbon-emission transport system, which is a driving force for sustainable development.

The urban rail service has become vital to urban development as railway stations serve as hubs for sustainable mobility to meet local requirements. Moreover, it takes extra effort to input railway development into smart city plans, as it is a herculean task to get governments to focus on it with clarity of purpose in passing legislation.

The developed framework reduces complexities when planning and designing rail transport systems compared to many of the existing reductionist planning approaches. The simplicity of the framework would also make it easily adoptable by a wide range of users.

This paper explores the relationship between droughts and U.S. agricultural sector profitability in select U.S. regions. We also examine the extent to which the farm safety net, including direct government payments and the federal crop insurance program, may compensate for the impacts of drought on farm sector profitability.

Fixed effect regressions estimate the relationship between drought and profitability for the farm sector. The analysis uses a panel of annual, state-level net farm income and its subcomponents (from the USDA, Economic Research Service) and state-level annual drought measures constructed from county crop damage days (as reported in the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States, or SHELDUS). SHELDUS includes Severe (D2) or more intense drought shocks for the states east of the Rocky Mountains, and these states provide the focus for our analysis.

Market net farm income negatively correlates with the drought measures. This relation is partially driven by the increase in production expenses during drought episodes. Further, sales from inventories tend to increase during drought periods. A significant share of damages to sector performance are offset by federal crop insurance program indemnities. Finally, our results show that drought impacts and the effects of the farm safety net are distributed differently across geographic regions.

To our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to examine drought impacts on the components of agricultural profitability, including the farm safety net and production expenses, at the sector level.

This paper comprehensively investigates the lack of youth involvement in the intricate tapestry of urban policymaking in the Jordanian context. It attempts to present and illustrate the obstacles, challenges, hindrances and complexities facing engaging youth in urban planning in Jordan. Participants aged 18–24 were the primary focus of the investigation, as Jordan's population is predominantly youthful, with approximately 70% of the population under the age of 30.

The research methodology adopted in this study is a mixed-methods approach, which integrates both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analytical techniques to provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the research problem.

Youth involvement in Jordan's urban policymaking is limited and inconsistent. Most notably, the prevalence of adultism emerges as the predominant and most substantive impediment, exerting a considerable influence on constraining the agency of young Jordanians in shaping urban policy.

Detailed examples can be developed to offer discerning elucidations relevant to each frame of reference.

A total of 12 discernible barriers emerged from a systematic deductive thematic analysis of primary data.

This comprehensive inquiry highlights the pervasive gaps in support for youth participation in urban policymaking within the administrative framework and across Jordanian society. Subsequent quantitative analysis was employed to strengthen the external validity of the research findings, thereby enhancing the generalizability of the qualitative insights. By employing Jordan as a case study, this paper significantly contributes to the expanding corpus of scholarly work on planning processes and practices within the Global South and the Arab world.

Agricultural banks likely respond differently to economic downturns compared to nonagricultural banks. Limited previous research has examined the performance of agricultural banks under economic crisis and in the presence of banking regulations. This study aims to explore agricultural banks' responses to economic and regulation shocks relative to nonagricultural banks.

This study uses bank-quarter level data from 2002 to 2022 for virtually all commercial banks in the U.S. In this research, the Z-score measures the bank’s default risk, the return on assets measures bank profitability and changes in amount of farm loans indicate the wider impact on the agricultural sector. Effects of the financial crisis, Basel III reforms to banking regulation and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on these banking measures are assessed using distinct empirical frameworks. The empirical estimations use various subsamples based on bank types, bank sizes and time periods.

Economic downturns are associated with fluctuations in returns and the risk of default of commercial banks. Agricultural banks appeared to be more resilient to economic downturns than nonagricultural banks. However, Basel III regulated agricultural banks were more likely to fail amidst the pandemic-related economic shocks than the regulated non-agricultural banks.

This study examines the resiliency of agricultural banks during economic downturns and under postfinancial crisis regulation. This is one of the first empirical works to analyze the effectiveness of Basel III regulation across bank types and sizes considering the COVID-19 pandemic. The key finding suggests that banking regulation should consider not only size heterogeneity but also the heterogeneity in lending portfolios.