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Controversy has long swirled over the claim that Donald Trump's base has deeply rooted authoritarian tendencies, but Trump himself seems to have few doubts. Asked whether his stated wish to be dictator “on day one” of second term in office would repel voters, Trump said “I think a lot of people like it.” It is one of his invariable talking points that 74 million voters supported him in 2020, and he remains the unrivaled leader of the Republican Party, even as his rhetoric escalates to levels that cautious observers now routinely call fascistic.

Is Trump right that many people “like” his talk of dictatorship? If so, what does that mean empirically? Part of the answer to these questions was apparent early, in the results of the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES), which included survey questions that we had proposed which we drew from the aptly-named “Right-Wing Authoritarianism” scale. Posed to voters in 2012–2013 and again in 2016, those questions elicited striking responses.

In this chapter, we revisit those responses. We begin by exploring Trump's escalating anti-democratic rhetoric in the light of themes drawn from Max Weber and Theodor W. Adorno. We follow this with the text of the 2017 conference paper in which we first reported that 75% of Trump's voters supported him enthusiastically, mainly because they shared his prejudices, not because they were hurting economically. They hoped to “get rid” of troublemakers and “crush evil.” That wish, as we show in our conclusion, remains central to Trump's appeal.

This study employs S-D Logic to examine the hotel booking behaviors of individuals, with a focus on the impact of service customization on service cancellation. Additionally, the moderating role of social co-creation is explored to provide further insight.

The paper draws on booking data from two hotels: a resort hotel with 40,060 recorded bookings, including 11,122 cancellations, and bookings from a city hotel with 79,330 bookings, including 33,102 cancellations.

The result reveals that bookings with higher levels of initial customization, such as special requests, are more likely to be modified later and less likely to be canceled. Interestingly, while multi-adult bookings were found to have a higher cancellation rate than individual bookings, the effects of customization commitment were more pronounced for multi-adult bookings.

This paper is the first to establish a connection between service customization, the number of adults on a booking and the likelihood of cancellation, thus providing new empirical evidence for the emergence of customization effects in services. Additionally, the study identifies important contingencies based on the number of consumers in a booking.

The Pacific Island nation of Fiji, spanning 100s of islands, has been characterised by both geographical and ethnic divisions between, mainly, Indigenous Fijians and Fijians of Indian descent. The latter took shape in quite blatant forms in the island nation's historical tendency towards ethnic politics but has also been enacted across its sporting traditions. Today, while ethnic politics still exists to a degree, encouraged by ethnopolitical entrepreneurs, the reality is more nuanced. Divisions remain not only along the popularised lines of ethnicity but also across hierarchical, class and gender boundaries that have received somewhat less scholarly attention. This nuance is visible in the performance and packaging of Fijian sport and through the meanings that local people attach to it. This chapter, therefore, draws upon the experience of ethnographic fieldwork within and across Fijian subcultures with a focus on rugby and soccer. Inclusive of participant observation and interviews with diverse Fijian sporting stakeholders from differing intersections of local sport and society, the key threads above will be untangled to reveal a more three-dimensional and collective impression of contemporary Fiji.

Against social cognitive and social exchange theories, this research paper aims to investigate the significance and interaction between perceived knowledge, involvement, trust and brand community engagement in brand communities (BC).

BC participants (n = 503) completed a cross-sectional survey for this research. Analysis was performed using PLS-SEM via SmartPLS (v. 4.1.0.2) and the novel Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA).

An integrative KITE model with positive and significant relationships of key BC constructs was established. The perceived BC knowledge influenced involvement and engagement. Furthermore, the constructs of involvement and trust were discovered to have a positive and significant impact on engagement, with trust having a substantial effect on BC engagement. The indirect effects of the trust construct via the BC knowledge and BC involvement constructs were also significant.

This research advances the existing conceptual approaches by introducing knowledge as the key BC constructs. The study illustrates that members’ knowledge about a BC facilitates their involvement in the BCs. The vital role of trust is revealed in the KITE model, as it is significantly related to BC knowledge, BC involvement and BC engagement with at least medium to large effect sizes. Notably, the role of trust is enhanced as it is the only necessary must-have (instead of “should-have”) condition to achieve high levels of BC engagement. Furthermore, the KITE model provides insights for marketers to develop a valuable BC.

Despite the positive impact of professional learning communities (PLCs) in improving teaching practices, many teachers still struggle to effectively integrate information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their teaching and learning. Drawing from human capital theory and spillover effects, this paper examines how teachers PLCs can facilitate ICT integration.

Using a qualitative methodology, the researchers designed a phenomenological study. From semi-structured interviews, data were collected from 15 selected secondary school teachers from four selected secondary schools in Tanzania.

The study revealed that teachers use various strategies to enhance ICT integration in teaching practices, namely, community collaboration, practice-based approaches to ICT integration and the utilization of digital learning tools in instructional practices. Furthermore, the results showed several constraints on the ability of teachers’ PLCs to encourage ICT integration. These constraints were divided into three parts, i.e. major challenges at the macro, meso and micro levels.

The paper has the potential to inform policy and practice, particularly in the area of PLCs. Also, it helps to better understand the changing practices with ICTs through PLCs when there are insufficient resources for ICT integration.

To support teachers in using ICTs in their instructional practices, it is essential to build their capacities through PLCs to increase their confidence and competence in ICT integration.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges of implementing accountable artificial intelligence (AI) systems in India, focusing on the need for algorithms to justify their decisions, especially in subjective and complex scenarios. By analyzing various government projects, documented biases and conducting empirical case studies and experiments, the study highlights the limitations of AI in recognizing the nuances of India’s unique social landscape. It aims to underscore the importance of integrating political philosophy to ensure that AI systems are held accountable within India’s sociopolitical context, urging policymakers to develop frameworks for responsible AI decision-making.

The research adopts a mixed-methods approach to address the five research questions. It begins with an extensive literature review, focusing on AI’s transformative potential, algorithmic bias and accountability in the Indian context. Data is collected from 15 AI use cases in health care, education and public safety, 13 government automated decision tools and five bias cases, including facial recognition and caste-based discrimination. Additionally, ten case studies and three experiments on ChatGPT are analyzed. Content analysis is used to interpret and categorize the data, identifying patterns and themes. Specific case studies and experiments on autocompletion in search engines further support the findings.

The study revealed significant limitations in current AI systems when applied to India’s complex socio-cultural landscape. Analyzing 15 AI applications and 13 government projects, the research identified multiple instances of algorithmic bias. Experiments with Google’s autocomplete and ChatGPT showed that these systems often reinforce social stereotypes and struggle with nuanced, subjective situations. The findings emphasize the accountability gap in AI-driven decisions, highlighting the need for rigorous oversight, particularly in welfare projects where errors could lead to severe consequences. The study recommends developing regulatory frameworks, improving AI design and raising public awareness to address these challenges.

In the context of complex societies like India, a pressing concern arises: who should assume responsibility for the repercussions stemming from algorithmic failures to comprehend subjective complexities? To this end, there exist no serious scholarly works toward which present paper tries to shed new insights. It draws upon insights from the corpus of political philosophy literature, encompassing both classical and contemporary notions of responsibility, and seeks to establish connections between these concepts and the unique sociopolitical structure of India. The work is unique in the focus of the paper and is original in the direction projected.

Despite politicians sometimes playing an active agentic role in firms’ resource dependency and in the outcomes of corporate political activity (CPA), there is limited research on the supply-side dynamics of political markets and the contingent role of normative institutions. This study aims to examine the relationship between managerial regulatory engagement (MRE) − a type of CPA − and access to bank finance, and how this relationship is moderated by country-level religiosity and religion policy regime.

Using data from over 37,000 firms in 43 sub-Saharan African countries and drawing on resource dependency and institutional theories, the authors deploy robust and sophisticated statistical analyses to test their hypotheses.

This study finds that MRE has a positive impact on access to bank finance. This effect is stronger in countries with more formal religion restriction where morality does not inhibit politicians’ discriminatory behaviour. However, this effect is weakened in countries where high levels of religiosity and more formal religion support curtail amoral rent provision.

These findings shed light on how firms’ use of CPA to manage resource dependency is affected by the influence of institutional religiosity on the agency of politicians. This study offers important theoretical contributions to the literature and generate useful implications for managers and policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the appropriateness of equal weights estimation (sumscores) and the application of the composite equivalence index (CEI) vis-à-vis differentiated indicator weights produced by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The authors rely on prior literature as well as empirical illustrations and a simulation study to assess the efficacy of equal weights estimation and the CEI.

The results show that the CEI lacks discriminatory power, and its use can lead to major differences in structural model estimates, conceals measurement model issues and almost always leads to inferior out-of-sample predictive accuracy compared to differentiated weights produced by PLS-SEM.

In light of its manifold conceptual and empirical limitations, the authors advise against the use of the CEI. Its adoption and the routine use of equal weights estimation could adversely affect the validity of measurement and structural model results and understate structural model predictive accuracy. Although this study shows that the CEI is an unsuitable metric to decide between equal weights and differentiated weights, it does not propose another means for such a comparison.

The results suggest that researchers and practitioners should prefer differentiated indicator weights such as those produced by PLS-SEM over equal weights.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to provide a comprehensive assessment of the CEI’s usefulness. The results provide guidance for researchers considering using equal indicator weights instead of PLS-SEM-based weighted indicators.

The study aims to present a systematic literature review (SLR) to understand the current status of research on social media usage among the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). The purpose of this study is to identify the research gaps in this domain and review future research agendas by using theory, context, characteristics and methods [TCCM] framework.

An SLR, keywords co-occurrence and TCCM analysis were used to analyse and synthesize insights from 44 studies gained from Web of Science and Scopus databases.

The findings suggest that the USA and India are popular contexts for studying BOP. The BOP population uses social media to gain utilitarian, hedonic and social values. Further, social media can help BOP explore “entrepreneurship” opportunities, value co-creation and bring innovations.

This study expands the intellectual boundaries of social media at BOP and suggests multidisciplinary research. Additionally, adopting novel theoretical lenses helped determine social media's impact on BOP.

The study aims to investigate the nomenclature of structural versus non-structural building adaptation measures taken by occupants of residential properties located in flood-prone areas of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, to verify whether they are adapted or maladapted relative to their level of flood exposure and underscore the role of disaster resilience in property management.

Using the survey research strategy, the uptake of structural and non-structural adaptation measures in spatially distributed areas of Port Harcourt was descriptively analyzed and tested to identify significant variation in the uptake of adaptation measures relative to increasing flooding levels, using a one-way ANOVA.

The study outcome reveals that there are some distinctive features of buildings in Port Harcourt which provide wet-proofing structural adaptation qualities while dry-proofing structural adaptation measures are not adequate. However, although some key structural adaptation measures were adapted relative to the levels of flood exposure, most structural features of the buildings do not vary relative to flooding levels, indicating maladaptation even with increasing flood risk. The uptake of non-structural measures is also inadequate and maladapted relative to changes in the level of flood exposure, despite their non-intrusive and low-cost nature. Overall, the findings imply that maladaptation is more prevalent.

The study provides a descriptive snapshot of the nomenclature of property-level flood risk adaptation in residential buildings, while highlighting the maladaptive tendencies/behavior of property occupants, within a metropolitan setting in the developing world, necessary to inform policy and provide sensitization for fostering disaster resilience in property management.