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This paper aims to address what it means to brand a city as “smart”. In other words, what ideas, understandings and actions are mobilized by the discourse of smart cities in a particular context.

Taking a brand interpretive approach, this paper uses deconstructive criticism to understand the performativity of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities and to expose hegemonic power structures and the various colonizations that disenfranchise consumers and citizens of the Global South.

This paper finds that the branding of smart cities within the Brazilian Charter for Smart Cities is largely performative and rhetorical in nature. The authors identify those dimensions of the smart city that are materialized by this branding performance. For example, the authors identify how the Charter calls forth issues around technological solutionism, sustainability and social inclusion. At the same time, the analysis draws attention to the dimensions of smart cities that are disguised by such performances.

The implications of the work suggest that the authors need to understand the designation “smart city” as a branding performance. More research is required in context to determine in exactly what ways smart city projects are being implemented.

Rather than adhering only to the rhetoric of smartness, cities have to work hard to make smartness a reality – a smartness constructed not just on technical solutions but also on human solutions. That is, the complexity of urban issues that are apparently addressed in the move to smartness demand more than a technological fix.

The research offers a novel lens through which to view smart cities.

This paper aims to provide a full introduction, new classification, comparison and investigation of the challenges as well as applications of layerless 3D printing, which is one of the industry 4.0 pioneers.

Given the significance and novelty of uniform 3D printing, more than 250 publications were collected and reviewed in an unbiased and clear manner.

As a result, the majority of uniform parts printed in polymer form are known up to this point. In a novel division for better researchers’ comprehension, uniform printing systems were classified into three categories: oxygen inhibition (OI), liquid lubrication (LL) and photon penetration (PP), and each was thoroughly investigated. Furthermore, these three approaches were evaluated in terms of printing speed, precision and accuracy, manufacturing scale and cost.

The parameters of each approach were compared independently, and then a practical comparison was conducted among these three approaches. Finally, a variety of technologies, opportunities, challenges and advantages of each significant method, as well as a future outlook for layerless rapid prototyping, are presented.

This study aims to evaluate the applicability of Ferreira and Otley’s (2009) framework in describing and explaining the structure and components of performance management systems (PMSs).

Data are gathered through semi-structured interviews and by analyzing the company’s annual reports, electronic records and printed documents. To enhance the understanding of the observed performance management (PM) practices, the study utilizes Burns and Scapens’ (2000) institutional framework.

The findings reveal that the selected case company operates a relatively advanced PMS with objectives, techniques and procedures that transcend the conventional boundaries of performance measurement. While the analysis of the case materials shows certain alignments with the chosen theoretical framework, the PM practices observed within the company and its strategic business units also highlight certain gaps in the conceptualization of the framework.

The results and interpretations in this study are derived from a single case company, which restricts the ability to generalize the findings across a broader range of organizations. However, the study’s findings are expected to contribute to the theory-building of PM frameworks.

The study’s findings may help bridge the gap between PM theories and real-world business practices, providing feedback on how PMSs are applied in practice and their usefulness and relevance to practitioners.

This study’s insights may inspire researchers in the field of management accounting (MA) to continue developing more integrated theoretical frameworks and to delve further into the study of PM and management control (MC) practices.

This study aims to empirically examine the influence of transformational leadership on job satisfaction in Jordanian commercial banks through knowledge sharing as a mediator. The data were collected from 232 employees and then analyzed through regression analysis using SPSS. The results revealed that there is a significant influence of transformational leadership on job satisfaction, as well as a significant influence of knowledge sharing on this relationship. These findings imply that if managers adopt transformational leadership, their subordinates can be satisfied with their jobs, specifically if they facilitate knowledge sharing. This study sheds light on improving organizational performance and employee engagement in a specific context and provides excellent direction for future contributions.

This chapter proposes an in-depth exploration of the role of governmental guidelines and lodge contributions in establishing sustainable wildlife-related tourism in specific Tourism Development Areas (TDAs) in Zambia. The study focuses on two prioritized TDAs, namely Luangwa Valley (South and North Luangwa National Park) and Lower Zambezi (Lower Zambezi National Park), which are renowned wildlife-related tourism destinations in Zambia. The chapter aims to bridge the existing research gaps in the implication of ecotourism in Africa, with a specific focus on Zambia, while highlighting the significance of responsible travel and ecotourism in the sustainable development of these areas.

In the state of Hawaii, it has been shown that certain ethnic minority groups, such as Filipinos and Pacific Islanders, suffer disproportionally high rates of cardiovascular disease, evidence that local health-care systems and governing bodies fail to equally extend the human right to health to all. This study aims to examine whether these ethnic health disparities in cardiovascular disease persist even within an already globally disadvantaged group, the houseless population of Hawaii.

A retrospective chart review of records from Hawaii Houseless Outreach and Medical Education Project clinic sites from 2016 to 2020 was performed to gather patient demographics and reported histories of type II diabetes, obesity, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and other cardiovascular disease diagnoses. Reported disease prevalence rates were compared between larger ethnic categories as well as ethnic subgroups.

Unexpectedly, the data revealed lower reported prevalence rates of most cardiometabolic diseases among the houseless compared to the general population. However, multiple ethnic health disparities were identified, including higher rates of diabetes and obesity among Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders and higher rates of hypertension among Filipinos and Asians overall. The findings suggest that even within a generally disadvantaged houseless population, disparities in health outcomes persist between ethnic groups and that ethnocultural considerations are just as important in caring for this vulnerable population.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study focusing on ethnic health disparities in cardiovascular disease and the structural processes that contribute to them, among a houseless population in the ethnically diverse state of Hawaii.

Frugal innovation (FI) is a mechanism companies use to create value from limited resources, aiming to meet the needs of a broad customer segment in emerging markets. This study investigates the impact of FI on sustainable development (SD) in Libya. Data from 112 employees of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) were analyzed using WarpPLS software and structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that while two factors – low cost of frugal innovation (LCFI) and creation of an ecosystem for frugal innovation (CEFI) – do not significantly affect SD, the core functions of frugal innovation (CFFI) significantly impact SD. This work is among the first empirical studies to explore business models for FI and their influence on SD in Libya, contributing to the theoretical and empirical literature on the topic.

Transformational leadership marked a departure from traditional transactional leadership approaches by emphasising the leader's ability to inspire and elevate followers beyond self-interest. Researchers have sought to understand how transformational leadership influences organisational culture, employee motivation and performance. The objective of this chapter is to perform a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, aiming to identify pivotal works, prominent authors and to delineate future avenues for research in the realm of transformational leadership. We conducted a bibliometric analysis using author keywords from the Web of Science database. Bibliographic coupling, co-word analysis and thematic analysis were made to identified key clusters in the field of research from 1987 to 2023. Our analysis unveiled the segmentation of research into four distinct clusters while also pinpointing emerging and niche themes within the literature. Additionally, we identified trending topics, offering valuable insights for future research directions. The findings from our research underscore a clear direction for the future of transformational leadership studies. It is evident that the field is expanding into new and dynamic areas, particularly in response to the transformative influences of Artificial Intelligence, digital communication and the global emphasis on environmental sustainability.