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The At Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion (AROPE) rate is a key indicator for monitoring poverty in Europe. However, it is not sensitive to the degree to which individuals face multiple deprivations simultaneously. This paper aims to fill this gap by studying the relationship between the three dimensions of the AROPE rate at the lower tail of their joint distribution in Spain in the period 2009–2022.

To capture how the different dimensions of poverty are related at the lower tail of their joint distribution, this paper proposes a multivariate left tail concentration function based on copulas. This function quantifies lower tail dependence at a finite scale, which, for practical purposes, is more suitable than estimating asymptotic measures, and can be represented in a 2D graph, facilitating interpretation and temporal comparisons. This function also provides information on overall dependence, as it is closely related to the Blomqvist’s beta.

There is a considerable risk of clustering of deprivations in Spain, with low positions in one poverty dimension extending to others. This risk increased after the Great Recession but did not decrease with the economic recovery that followed. The crisis linked to COVID-19 did not have a significant impact on the risk of clustering of deprivations. Lower tail dependence provides new valuable insights on the dependence structure of poverty dimensions beyond the analyses based on overall dependence.

This paper provides new theoretical results and a pioneering application of multivariate lower tail dependence measures in welfare economics using non-parametric methods.

Female entrepreneurs in tourism are increasingly asserting themselves, yet there is a need to examine the psychological empowerment dimensions of their entrepreneurial journeys. This study aims to address this gap by defining psychological empowerment typologies of female entrepreneurs operating in challenging socio-economic contexts in urban Zimbabwe.

This research used data from face-to-face and online interviews with 20 female entrepreneurs in urban Zimbabwe.

The study identified four distinct typologies of psychologically empowered entrepreneurs: resilient, collaborative, social change and authentic entrepreneurs. These typologies show unique patterns of intrapersonal, interactional, behavioural and relational empowerment dimensions, highlighting the multidimensional nature of psychological empowerment among female entrepreneurs.

This research makes an original contribution by exploring psychological empowerment typologies among female entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe. It examines the intersection of socio-economic challenges and empowerment dynamics and identifies distinct typologies. These insights provide valuable guidance for policymakers, support organisations and female entrepreneurs to design targeted interventions that enhance entrepreneurial empowerment and promote gender equality.

This study proposes a new framework for business process improvement (BPI) by identifying areas of improvement based on customer complaints.

The proposed framework comprises several stages. The first stage captures the voice of customer (VoC) in the form of customer complaints. The complaints are processed using text mining and sentiment analysis. Negative sentiments indicate areas for improvement by matching words with SERVQUAL dimensions. The FMEA method is used to identify business processes that need to be improved.

The opposing quality dimensions of SERVQUAL can be incorporated into a database for later identifying consumer complaints. FMEA can be used to identify potential failures in aspects that correspond to consumer complaints; therefore, improvement areas can be identified. The proposed framework, applied to a garment manufacturer, shows that the SERVQUAL dimensions, which were originally intended for service companies, can be adapted to manage customer complaints to support BPI in manufacturing companies.

The framework can be used by either the manufacturing or service industries to handle customer complaints and use the complaint analysis results to identify improvement areas to avoid the same complaints occurring in the future.

In this study, the construction of a database based on the SERVQUAL dimension to match sentiment results, where negative sentiment indicates improvement, and the use of FMEA to indicate specific business processes that should be improved is novel and has not yet been proposed by previous studies.