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The influence of digital media and mobile technologies on the interpersonal dynamics of young individuals across various aspects of their daily lives underscores the significant role of digital media in shaping their experiences. Research exploring how individuals engage with mobile applications (m-apps) has revealed the constraining effects of platform norms and politics on users' expressive identities. This chapter examines the evolving landscape of media consumption, engagement and civic participation amidst the proliferation of new media modalities, focussing on m-apps. The authors highlight the pervasive adoption of mobile apps across diverse categories and the escalating temporal investment individuals allocate to these platforms for fostering interpersonal connections. Drawing from a feminist and intersectional perspective, the authors explore how young adults navigate the technicity and imaginaries of m-apps, incorporating them into their daily routines and (re)negotiating their gender and sexual identities. Through the MyGender project, the authors investigate the relationship between m-apps and power dynamics, examining the construction and reconstruction of gender and sexuality across platforms. The findings underscore the need for critical engagement with digital technologies as sociocultural products actively reshaping gender relations and sexual practices. The text ends with an overview of the book, briefly presenting the remaining nine chapters.

Humans now enjoy a better life because of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has a significant impact on the creation of smart cities. Modern applications based on big data, Internet of Things (IoT) systems, and deep learning require extensive use of complex computational solutions. Thus, the following problems arise: (1) what are smart cities? (2) what is AI? (3) How is AI used in smart cities? To respond to this problem, the following objective was set: to map how AI is used in smart cities. For this purpose, a qualitative methodology based on a narrative analysis of the literature was used. It is concluded that AI and smart cities are complementary technologies that can assist cities in tackling difficult issues including public safety, transportation, energy management, environmental monitoring, and predictive maintenance. This chapter’s findings, while broadly applicable, offer valuable insights into the Gulf region’s unique context, where rapid urbanization and technological adoption intersect with cultural and environmental considerations. The integration of AI in smart cities presents a promising avenue for the Gulf region to address its specific challenges and leverage its economic and infrastructural strengths, thereby contributing to the broader goals of innovation, development, prosperity, and well-being as envisioned in the region’s Vision 2040 initiatives.

The purposes of this study were to calculate the confirmatory factor analysis in the measurement model using robust measures (McDonald’s omega and Cronbach’s alpha) to ensure the reliability of the proposed scale and to explore the measurement invariance of the scale per the participants’ gender.

The methodological sample had 408 students from a private university in northern Mexico, of which 200 (49%) were male and 208 (51%) were female; the sample age range was 18–58 years (M = 22.4 years, SD = 6.0). The data analysis included descriptive and normality, dimensionality, reliability and measurement invariance.

The social entrepreneurship competency measurement model showed acceptable adjustment indexes in evaluating the internal structure, reliability and factorial invariance by gender of the study participants.

Even though the contributions of this study are evident, these findings must be taken with caution due to some limitations. First, the proposed measurement model uses a self-reported scale, so it is essential to include other measurement methods with less implicit social desirability. Second, although the sample was intended to be representative, it only drew from a specific geographical area, making it difficult to generalize these findings to culturally diverse areas. Third, this study did not consider other validity measures; for example, concurrent, divergent and predictive, so future studies should consider examining the relationship of social entrepreneurship with other factors.

From the practical perspective, this study provides a parsimonious instrument regarding the number of items included in the measurement model. From the theoretical perspective, the present study contributes to delimiting the dimensions of social entrepreneurship competency.

This study contributes to the field of social entrepreneurship, particularly in the area of construct measurement, by offering a measurement model with solid evidence of internal structure validity, reliability and factorial invariance for the perceived achievement of social entrepreneurship competency.

A learning-focused culture promotes creativity, innovativeness and the acquisition of novel insights and competencies. The study aims to explore the relationship between human resource development (HRD) practice and employee competencies using organizational learning culture as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 828 employees of 37 health care institutions comprising 24 (internationally-owned) and 13 (indigenously-owned). Construct reliability and validity was established through a confirmatory factor analysis. The proposed model and hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation modeling.

Data supported the hypothesized relationships. The results show that training and development and employee competencies were significantly related. Career development and employee competencies were significantly related. Organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between training and development and employee competencies. However, organizational learning culture did not mediate the relationship between career development and employee competencies.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research’s health care focus and cross-sectional data.

The study’s findings will serve as valuable pointers to policy makers and stakeholders of health care institutions in developing system-level capacities that promote continuous learning and adaptive learning cultures to ensure sustainability and competitive advantage.

By evidencing empirically that organizational learning culture mediates the relationship between HRD practices and employee competencies the study extends the literature.

The main purpose of this review is to enhance the understanding of intellectual structure and outlook of management innovation research as an interesting and growing research field.

This systematic literature review examines the question, what is the relationship of management innovation with the performance of companies and with other types of innovation? The work also pursues to summarize theories, contexts, characteristics of the papers and methodologies with the purpose of facilitating further development and opportunities and priorities for future research.

The results suggest that management innovation is an interesting and growing research field; in its relation to different types of innovation and performance, it is a field explored with theoretical approaches, contexts and methodologies that begin to form a consolidated body of knowledge. However, through a critical analysis, this review highlights the gaps in the literature and provides suggestions for future studies to further explore the field. This revision contributes to the literature on management innovation summarizing the findings and contributions of research published in the field and its relationships with innovation and performance. It then identifies three comprehensive research streams, namely, future research on conceptualization, definitions and measurements; research on the level of analysis; and future research on management innovation drivers, antecedents and use as mediator/moderator variables.

Management innovation is an emerging research field that is characterized as a branch of research long ignored by more orthodox lines dedicated to technological innovation and topics in product and service development research.

Companion animals and social media are two important factors of social interaction and well-being among the older population. This study aims to compare social media use and/or having companion animals with respect to sociodemographic variables in conjunction with loneliness, social isolation, depression, satisfaction with life and satisfaction with social support.

This cross-sectional study involves a sample of 250 older community-dwelling adults. The questionnaire comprised sociodemographic, companion animals and social media questions and scales to assess social isolation, loneliness, satisfaction with life and social support and depression. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Four groups emerged: “companion animal/s, no social media” (37.6%); “none” (33.6%); “social media and companion animal/s” (14.4%); and “social media, no companion animal/s” (14.4%). Social media users (with or without companion animals) are the youngest and with higher levels of education; caregivers of companion animals (no social media use) are in-between in terms of age and level of education; and those without companion animals and no social media users are the oldest and with less formal education.

This research examines and compares two key influencers of older adults’ well-being and social interaction (social media and companion animals), that have been researched mostly separately. Findings underlined the cohort effect in the use of social media, suggesting that future older adult cohorts will use more social media whether they have or do not have companion animals.

Female smallholder farmers in low-income countries face barriers to accessing capital and commodity markets. While agricultural cooperatives provide services that contribute to the income and productivity of small-scale producers, evidence of cooperatives' social and economic empowerment of female smallholders remains limited. We apply Sen's capability approach to female entrepreneurs' socioeconomic empowerment to examine whether women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative from rural western Uganda benefits their social and economic position within their household. First, we study the relationship between women's cooperative participation and their household coffee sales and savings. Second, we investigate the link between women's cooperative participation and their intra-household decision-making and whether the inclusion of the husband in his wife's cooperative strengthens or lowers women's decision-making power.

We carry out a case study of a hybrid coffee and microfinance cooperative that promotes social innovation through the integration and empowerment of female smallholders in rural Uganda. Using a cross-sectional survey of 411 married female cooperative members from 26 randomly selected self-help groups of Bukonzo Joint Cooperative and 196 female non-members from the identical area, employing propensity score matching, this paper investigates the benefits of women's participation in a coffee and microfinance cooperative in the Rwenzori Mountains of western Uganda. We present and discuss the results of our case study within an extensive literature on the role of institutions in collective action for women's empowerment.

Our findings provide new empirical evidence on female smallholders' participation in mixed cooperatives. Our results indicate that women's participation in microfinance-producer cooperatives appears to be a conditional blessing: even though membership is linked to increased women's intra-household decision-making and raised household savings and income from coffee sales, a wife with a husband in the same cooperative self-help group is associated with diminished women's household decision-making power.

The focus of this study is on female coffee smallholders in an agricultural cooperative in rural western Uganda. In particular, we focus on a case study of one major coffee cooperative. Our cross-sectional survey does not allow us to infer causal interpretations. Also, the survey does not include variables that allow us to measure other dimensions of women's empowerment beyond decision-making over household expenditures and women's financial performance related to savings and income from coffee cultivation.

Our empirical results indicate that female smallholders' cooperative membership is associated with higher incomes and coffee sales. However, husband co-participation in their wives' cooperative group diminishes wives' decision-making, which suggests that including husbands and other family members in the same cooperative group may not be perceived as an attractive route to empowerment for female smallholders. For these reasons, an intervention that encourages the cooperation of both spouses and that is sensitive to context-specific gender inequalities, may be more successful at stimulating social change toward household gender equality than interventions that focus on women's autonomous spheres only.

While the literature thus far has focused on microfinance's potential for women's empowerment, evidence on agricultural cooperatives' affecting women's social and economic position is limited. First, our findings provide novel empirical evidence on the empowering effects of women's participation in a self-help group-based coffee cooperative in rural Uganda. Second, our data allows us to explore the role of husbands' participation in their wives' cooperative and SGH. We embed our hypotheses and empirical results in a rich discussion of female entrepreneurship, microfinance and cooperative literature.