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This study provides detailed insights into how electricity rationing affects shopping and media consumption in an emerging market context. Given that electricity rationing (also known as load-shedding) is a regular occurrence in many countries, this research brings a unique consumer perspective.

The study employed a qualitative exploratory design to investigate the effect of electricity rationing on shopping and media consumption. A combined convenience and snowball sampling technique was utilised to select 78 households across various locations in South Africa. Through in-depth interviews and thematic analysis, themes were extracted and explained.

The findings showed that, for higher-income households, media consumption remained relatively consistent or increased during load-shedding periods. Middle-income families showed a mixed pattern of media use in response to load-shedding. Lower-income households were found to bear the brunt of media-consumption constraints caused by electricity shortages. Consumers are increasingly switching to streaming alternatives to adapt to the limitations of load-shedding. The availability of streaming platforms on mobile devices and laptops and limited household battery backups allows viewers to sidestep disruptions caused by outages.

While electricity outages are the norm in many countries, the impact on shopping and media consumption is significant. To date, no other research has comprehensively explored the impact of these outages on consumer behaviour in emerging markets.

This study investigated leaders’ decision-making during crises. Using grounded theory research, we explored whether leaders’ use of either individualistic or collectivistic decision-making styles is based on the context of a crisis. In addition, the authors looked into the components of building leaders’ efficacy during a crisis event and gauged their attitudinal and behavioral reactions to the crisis.

The authors conducted interviews with 30 C-suite executives during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic to determine their responses to crises. The authors then used open, axial, and selective coding to examine their data, which was then extracted for representative themes and overarching dimensions. In total, The authors received 12 major themes largely summarizing into 6 overarching dimensions – context of decision-making, leaders’ efficacy, individualistic approach to decision-making, collectivistic approach to decision-making, process of decision-making, and outcomes.

The research presents a decision-making framework clearly bifurcating situations with the need for individualistic and collectivistic decision-making. While, a high level of urgency and scarce resources encouraged leaders to adopt an individualistic approach in which most of the decisions were intuition-based and only high-level stakeholders were involved, the less time urgent and uncertain situation allowed leaders to put significant effort into building their own knowledge systems and involving others. In addition, leaders’ efficacy is understood in terms of their attitudes, readiness and reactions, which further elaborated upon their knowledge systems to allow them to excel in decision-making irrespective of the approaches they chose.

The research has implications for leaders in the decision-making roles to be effective during both individualistic and collectivistic decision-making.

This study aims to capture children’s interpretation of holistic well-being within Irish primary schools and add to the development of a comprehensive systems-informed positive education model.

This study utilized visual participatory research methods, including PhotoVoice and one-on-one interviews, to assess children’s (n = 16) well-being, guided by Von Unger’s comprehensive seven-step framework. Data analysis was anchored within grounded theory, beginning with data collection, initial coding, focused coding and culminating in identifying themes and subthemes. Data were interpreted using the mosaic approach by integrating visual and verbal data.

This analysis uncovered three primary themes that affect student well-being: relationships, space and physical environment and learning and curriculum, each with detailed subthemes. For instance, student–teacher relationships, peer relationships, safety, learning spaces, the creative curriculum including arts and music and the experiential richness of outdoor learning are crucial to students' educational growth and well-being. These aspects are seen as interconnected, shaping a holistic educational experience beyond academic learning to encompass students’ comprehensive well-being. The students' narratives demonstrated that learning is not merely an academic exercise but a vital component of their well-being.

This study significantly departs from traditional educational research by advocating for a dynamic, action-oriented understanding of “well-being.” It challenges the static, possessive interpretations of well-being and introduces the concept of well-being as a fluid and ever-evolving process. This reconceptualization positions well-being as a complex construct, influenced by an intricate web of relationships, spanning human and non-human interactions, organizational and environmental structures, personal desires, behavioral practices and broader societal and cultural frameworks.

Building on the forms of immersion in computer games, this chapter argues that games, whether played alone or with others, require a level of engagement equal to that of immersive artworks. Drawing on concepts from Ernest Adams, Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen, the chapter explores how games and digital worlds engage and immerse the viewer through sensory-motoric, cognitive, emotional and spatial elements. These digital spaces position the audience as both participants and co-creators, similar to immersive art forms dating from the 1950s and 1960s, where the shift from passive spectator to active participant, as seen in the works of Allan Kaprow and the Light and Space Movement, is mirrored in contemporary digital practices. This chapter examines how digital tools and new thinking enable unique opportunities for representation, display, engagement and interpretation, where the concept of an expanded narrative, incorporating active spaces and cross-disciplinary collaboration, is crucial for contemporary digital and new media practice. This chapter explores the intersection of art and VR gaming, using Half-Life: Alyx as a case study to demonstrate immersive engagement. Highlighting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this chapter also discusses how cultural and heritage institutions have adopted technology to engage remote audiences. By linking research with practical examples, the chapter illustrates how VR and gaming push the boundaries of immersive experiences, creating novel opportunities for audience interaction and engagement.

This paper aims to shed light on the threats that young people living in refugee camps face in their use of Facebook. While social media enable a participatory process of communication (Russo et al., 2008), which is based on the agency of the communicator and defined by their own cultural and moral goals (Lee et al., 2023), these platforms can at times be inappropriately pursued if the communicator lacks relevant skills. The outcome of such a pursuit can also inadvertently damage social cohesion in the camp and lead to conflict.

A total of 17 semi-structured interviews were carried out in 2023 with young people between the ages of 20 and 29 living in Kakuma refugee camp. The young refugees were asked questions related to their own behaviour and practices on Facebook and to those of their peers. The focus was specifically on the context of the interactions with other youth in Kakuma and on the camp’s Facebook groups or pages.

Findings reveal that limited knowledge, understanding and awareness of the functioning and affordances of social media platforms such as Facebook are leading young refugees towards multiple risks involved in public online interactions. This has significant negative impacts not only on the lives of the youth who are active on social media in the camp but also on the relationships with their peers and overall community harmony.

A number of studies have identified some of the dangers arising for refugees operating in online spaces, and particularly on social media platforms (see, for example, Tech Transparency Project, 2022; Dekker et al., 2018). Yet, there is a lack of research on the outcomes that young refugees face in their immediate virtual and physical environment as a result of their online behaviour. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to bring to light the nature of the interactions and the dynamics that young, encamped refugees engage in on Facebook and to offer useful reflections that can inform digital literacy efforts carried out by development agencies.

This paper aims to investigate how the build orientation simultaneously affects the tensile properties, geometrical measurements and surface roughness in material extrusion (MEX) produced parts.

An extensive experimental campaign was designed and carried out to elucidate the relationship between the rotation angles (input), defining the part orientation within the build volume, and the (output) variables measured by using 3D models reconstruction, roughness tester and tensile testing machine. Response surface methodology is used to capture the trend of each output relative to the input, while principal component analysis is used to identify relationships among outputs, providing a holistic understanding of how build orientation simultaneously influences mechanical properties, geometrical measurements and surface characteristics.

The study reveals that build orientation significantly affects nearly all output variables, with a pronounced dependency on the out-of-plane rotation angle. A key finding is the inverse correlation between mechanical strength and both geometrical measurements and surface roughness. This indicates that optimizing build orientation can enhance mechanical strength while minimizing geometrical defects.

This research, a newer addition to the existing literature, contributes to the field of additive manufacturing (AM) by offering an innovative analysis of the interaction between mechanical properties, geometric precision and surface roughness in relation to build orientation. It enhances the understanding of MEX processes and provides valuable insights into optimizing build orientation, thereby improving the competitiveness of AM over traditional production methods.

The purpose of this article is to elicit understanding of how forgiveness, religion and spirituality, and relationships can better our lives. It draws from the life of Everett L. Worthington, Jr, a positive psychologist and Commonwealth Professor Emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has published almost 50 books and over 500 scholarly articles or chapters.

This is a case study, followed by a ten-question interview. The core methodology is positive autoethnography which is embraced by Worthington to reveal life lessons from things he has done.

Worthington reveals a life honoring the interwoven lives of people. He has studied forgiveness intensively and finds it to be an essential way of making our way in the world and in a world community that all too often hosts hurt.

An extensive literature has developed to understand what forgiveness is, how it comes about naturally and how the REACH Forgiveness method can help people who struggle to forgive themselves or others, and do it more quickly, thoroughly and frequently. Forgiving has psychological, social, spiritual and physical benefits to the forgiver.

This article is filled with practical information on how to forgive and how to pursue eudaemonia, which Worthington defines as virtue for oneself.

Forgiveness has widespread social implications. Good relationships are those that can help form, maintain, grow and repair when damaged close emotional bonds. Forgiveness helps repair, maintain and grow those bonds.

Worthington has been instrumental in the establishment and growth of the subfield of forgiveness studies and in the study of humility.

Accounting changes that take place in the context of different leadership styles, especially in SMEs, require further investigation. This paper aims to explore how accounting enhances monitoring and control for legalistic leaders and how accounting changes facilitate leadership transition to resolve accounting issues and emotional conflicts within entrepreneurial firms.

This paper adopts a case study in a Chinese entrepreneurial firm to explore the relationship between accounting changes and leadership behaviours rooted in the traditional Chinese philosophies.

Legalistic leaders enhance monitoring and control, through the flow and interpretation of accounting information, to retain power. However, rule-based accounting order, with rewards and punishment, may create emotional conflicts. The difficulties of implementing accounting changes facilitate legalistic leaders to embrace transformational leadership to resolve trust, emotional conflicts and accounting issues.

This paper provides insights into the transition of leadership styles in the process of implementing accounting changes in the Chinese context, which contributes to future comparative leadership and accounting practices with Western philosophies.