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This study examines whether US effective tax rates on foreign income of US multinationals (MNCs) vary according to the favorability of US macroeconomic conditions relative to those of non-US countries. We use the pre-Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 regime as our setting and present evidence that US effective tax rates on foreign earnings are higher (lower) in periods when macroeconomic conditions in the US are favorable (unfavorable) relative to those elsewhere in the world. These results imply that firms seek to maximize after-tax returns when making asset allocation decisions, even when faced with US repatriation tax costs. We provide further evidence indicating that our primary results vary predictably according to certain firm characteristics, namely the ability to acquire funds for investment through less expensive means than repatriation of foreign profits, high intangible asset intensity, and tax aggressiveness. Finally, we show that economic uncertainty in the US counters the positive effects of favorable US macroeconomic conditions on US effective tax rates on foreign earnings. Our findings have implications for the policy debate around the US taxation of foreign earnings and provide a (partial) explanation for the observed lower-than-expected levels of repatriation activity following the implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

This study aims to examine Braille usage among consumers with visual impairments, investigating motivations and addressing inherent challenges.

Drawing insights from 16 semistructured interviews with individuals experiencing blindness, this study reveals nuanced aspects of Braille utilization.

Three key motivations for Braille usage are identified: as a coping mechanism for functional needs and to combat stigma; as an embodied experience contributing to pleasure; and as a heritage embodying a culture of visual impairment. Obstacles include cultural and financial barriers to learning, incomplete retail transcriptions limiting practicality and spatial congestion issues.

This study underscores Braille’s dual function as both coping mechanism and cultural heritage. By highlighting obstacles, it sheds light on challenges faced by consumers with visual impairments, facilitating advocacy and promoting inclusive retail practices. Originality lies in recognizing diverse motivations and experiences among Braille users, offering insights for enhancing tactile engagement in the marketplace.

This study examines potential ways to break the inequality reproduction circle faced by ethnic minority health workers and sustained by key performance indicators (KPIs)-centred management in the National Health Service (NHS) in England. It does so through the lens of signalling theory.

Three years panel data for 2018–2020 covering 207 hospitals was compiled from the annual NHS staff survey and matched with relevant administrative records. Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed hypotheses at the organisational level.

The moderated mediating model reveals that persistent racial discrimination by managers and coworkers can disadvantage the career progression of ethnic minority health workers, which in turn reinforces and reproduces economic and health inequalities among them. More importantly, we show how the collective agreement that the senior management team acts (SMTA) on staff feedback can break this vicious circle.

While our research focuses on the not-for-profit health care sector, it opens important opportunities to extend the proposed model to understand organisational inequality and how to address it.

Perceived SMTA can send strong signals to reduce deep-rooted discrimination (race, gender, age, etc.) through resource allocations and instrumental functions. This is also a way to address the current staff burnout and shortage issues in the healthcare sector.

This article reveals why the purpose of organisations that provide public service to reduce social inequality was comprised during their business-like operations and more importantly, how to reflect their foundational purpose through management practice.

This study offers a way forward to resolve one of the unintended consequences of KPI-centred management in the not-for-profit sector through unpacking the process of inequality reproduction and, more importantly, how it is possible to break this vicious circle.

In this chapter, we consider collaborative models of engaged research in comparison to models of team science that include persons with lived experience of the topic area as team members. ‘Co-led’, ‘co-design’ and ‘co-research’ are all terms used in the literature with distinct, but not precise, definitions and approaches. These collaborative models tend to describe methods that allow those with lived experience to be treated differently than other academic members of the research team. Power imbalances between those with lived experiences and researchers persist in such models, in spite of researcher efforts. For example, persons with lived experience are often described as being compensated with gift cards which may be welcomed but can be perceived as diminishing their role and contribution. In contrast, participatory team science involves persons with lived experience as full members of the research team. In the model that we propose, power is balanced through mutual planning and consensus-based decision-making. We contend that using participatory team science advances research through egalitarian consideration of team members' perspectives of the research problem and the designs necessary to knowledge development.

Given the importance of interdisciplinary research in addressing wicked problems, this paper aims to explore the development of and prospects for interdisciplinary research through evidence gained from academic accountants in Australia.

Extant literature is complemented with interviews of accounting academics in Australia to reveal the challenges and opportunities facing interdisciplinary researchers and reimagine prospects for the future.

Evidence indicates that accounting academics hold diverse views toward interdisciplinarity. There is also confusion between multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the journals in which academic accountants publish. Further, there is mixed messaging among Deans, disciplinary leaders and emerging scholars about the importance of interdisciplinary research to, on the one hand, publish track records and, on the other, secure grants from government and industry. Finally, there are differing perceptions about the disciplines to be encouraged or accepted in the cross-fertilisation of ideas.

This paper is novel in gathering first-hand data about the opportunities, challenges and tensions accounting academics face in collaborating with others in interdisciplinary research. It confirms a discouraging pressure for emerging scholars between the academic research outputs required to publish in journals, prepare reports for industry and secure research funding, with little guidance for how these tensions might be managed.

The purpose of the article is to contribute to the body of research on digital transformation among members of the supply chain operating in an emerging economy. This paper researches the digital transformation trends happening across Vietnamese supply chains, by investigating the current adoption rates, predicted impact levels and financial investments being made in key Industry 4.0 technologies.

By using a semi-structured online survey, the experiences of 281 supply chain professionals in Vietnam were captured. Subsequently, statistical techniques examining variances in means, regression analysis and Monte Carlo simulation were applied.

The findings of this study offer a comprehensive understanding of Industry 4.0 technology in Vietnam, highlighting the prevalent technologies being prioritized. Big data analytics and the Internet of things are expected to have the most substantial impact on businesses over the next 5–10 years and have received the most financial investment. Conversely, Blockchain is perceived as having less potential for future investment. The study further identifies several technological synergies, such as combining advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and the Internet of things to build effective and flexible factories, that can lead to more comprehensive solutions. It also extends diffusion of innovation theory, encompassing investment and impact considerations.

This study offers valuable insights into the impact and financial investment in Industry 4.0 technologies by Vietnamese supply chain firms. It provides a theoretical contribution via an extension of the diffusion of innovation theory and contributes toward a better understanding of the current Industry 4.0 landscape in developing economies. The findings have significant implications for future managerial decision-making, on the impact, viability and resourcing needs when undertaking digital transformation.

The aim of this paper, which analyses the use of sports celebrities in advertising discourse, is to understand the strategic use to which brands put them in their commercial and corporate communication on Instagram.

To this end, a content analysis was performed on the Instagram posts of the brands Santander, Movistar, Red Bull and Iberdrola during the period 2021-2022.

The results indicate that, strategically speaking, these brands use the celebrity endorsement strategy to pursue emotional objectives and to adopt a position depending on the type of user. Likewise, these findings show that they single out uniqueness as the principal celebrity characteristic, while also mainly leveraging sports values, especially competence. These values represented by sports celebrities are markedly social in nature, which implies that they enjoy a degree of public recognition that is transferred to the brand to which they lend their image.

The conclusions connect celebrity endorsers with strategic branding issues and aspects of sports.

An empirical approach is followed here to study the representation of sports celebrities in the advertising of well-known brands linked to the sports world.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered technologies are revolutionising the landscape of education, ushering in a myriad of possibilities and challenges. This article delves into the dual nature of AI-driven tools in education, spotlighting pivotal advancements like automated grading, personalised learning algorithms, online monitoring, content filtering, AI-based learning tools, Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) and standardised testing (ST) platforms. Ultimately, the examination reveals a spectrum of advantages, risks and considerations associated with AI-driven educational applications. Employing the PRISMA protocol, this study systematically reviews peer-reviewed literature concerning the implementation and ethical implications of AI in higher education. The analysis incorporates 36 scholarly articles, uncovering the entrepreneurial advantages of AI, such as tailored learning experiences, self-assessment opportunities, heightened efficiency, skill enhancement and reduced educational disparities. Concurrently, the research identifies potential hazards, including user profiling, plagiarism, academic integrity breaches and excessive reliance on technology that may hinder creative learning dynamics. Crucial concerns emerge, encompassing the possible devaluation of educators' roles, privacy issues inherent in personalised learning platforms and the intrusive nature of online surveillance. Additionally, the study highlights biases embedded within AI algorithms and apprehensions regarding job displacement within the academic community. To steer AI integration responsibly within higher education, the investigation explores ethical frameworks and models, offering pragmatic suggestions for institutions. Recommendations advocate for a balanced approach, emphasising judicious AI utilisation and the formulation of institutional policies. This chapter's distinctiveness lies in its innovative stance, striving to reconcile the technical and entrepreneurial benefits of AI applications with the preservation of creativity in higher education contexts.

The paper covers the topic of power strategies between actors and the interplay between the service ecosystem and the actor(s), and vice versa. The paper addresses the lack of conceptual development concerning power considerations beyond dyadic, rigid and role-based models found in general marketing literature. Further, the paper opens the area of power relationships, using the service ecosystem as conceptual framework.

The paper has a systemic and sociological view on service-ecosystems using mainly Giddens' structuration theory. Service-dominant logic literature from 2004 to 2021 is systematically reviewed for power issues and qualitatively analyzed. Mayring's step model of, firstly, inductive and, secondly, deductive category development is applied. Subcategories were identified, subsumed and finally grouped into five categories to increase the level of abstraction.

The article investigates power considerations and enables marketers to create power through (1) imbalance, to find strategies and counterstrategies for (2) actor's behavior, to understand the (3) actor's embeddedness within a service ecosystem and its dynamic nature, to learn about (4) institutions and actor's institutional work. A set of seven propositions is presented for the conceptualization of power strategies in a service ecosystem.

The consideration of power on different levels supports both the zooming-in and zooming-out to observe and understand the power phenomena in a service ecosystem. Seven propositions about episodic as well as systemic power relations are presented. Power is conceptualized in service ecosystem as transformative capability of an actor to intervene on institutions and in some way alter them, recognizing that power relations are co-created, dynamic and context-dependent.

The article recognizes different levels (micro-meso-macro) of power considerations and helps practitioners and marketers to create power through (1) imbalance, find strategies and counterstrategies for (2) actor's behavior, understand the (3) actor's embeddedness within a service ecosystem and its dynamic nature, learn about (4) institutions and actor's institutional work. This enables managers to find an appropriate choice of action in their specific context to transform the service ecosystem(s) they are embedded in.

As all social systems are power systems, a service ecosystem can only be fully understood by integrating the elementary concept of power. As such, power considerations within actor strategies and the service ecosystem are relevant to improve the understanding of transformation of the service ecosystem. Power, in the sense of the transformative capability of actors, changes the social and material world.

Power issues are important to understand the “hows” of resource integration in service ecosystems and its transformation or stability.

This study aims to explore the values, resilience and innovation of four food businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic and their responses to the chaotic environment they find themselves in. It also evaluates whether there is evidence of a thriving food in tourism environment propelling these businesses forward within an innovative regenerative tourism system.

A descriptive and comparative case study approach is used using a holistic design with four in-depth interviews for each business over 18 months. A thematic analysis of the qualitative data provides answers to the key research questions and informs our understanding of the ecosystems in which food businesses reside.

The findings indicate that an internal business ecosystem with a strong value base and effective networks across a range of stakeholders enhances resilience. The crisis refocused and stimulated a variety of innovations.

An ethos of collaboration and cooperation for food businesses provides opportunities for a shared future where it is implemented.

A values-based food in tourism system that gives back to communities potentially creates an external environment that better supports small food businesses; however, the place of food in tourism and the food story of Aotearoa New Zealand continues to lack clarity.

The exploration of four food businesses in the time of crisis provides new insights into the multidirectional inter-related factors that either drive success or hinder it.