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With the global market for advanced technology-driven customer service set to soar, understanding the complicated relationship between advanced technology and customer purchase behaviour is paramount. While prior research has touched upon the impact of technology on purchase processes in some aspects, this study investigates the specific features of advanced technology that shape customer purchase intention in greater depth. By investigating when and under what conditions customers choose advanced technology-based purchases, this research sheds light on the evolving landscape of consumer decision-making and it seeks to quantify the transformative power of advanced technology in driving customer purchase intentions.

This study aimed to optimize the dyeing scheduling process with uncertain job completion time to reduce resource consumption and wastewater generation, and while reconciling the conflicting objectives of minimizing the makespan and the need to limit the production on specific machines to minimize rework.

We employed a UNISON framework that integrates fuzzy decision tree (FDT) to optimize dyeing machine scheduling by minimizing the makespan and water consumption, in which the critical attributes such as machine capacity and processing time can be incorporated into the scheduling model for smart production.

An empirical study of a high-tech textile company has shown the validity and effectiveness of the proposed approach in reducing the makespan and water consumption by over 8% while high product quality and efficiency being maintained.

High-tech textile industry is facing the challenges in reducing the environmental impact of the dyeing process while maintaining product quality and efficiency for smart production. Conventional scheduling approaches have not addressed the relationship between machine groups and reworking, resulting in difficulty in controlling the makespan and water consumption and increasing costs and environmental issues. The proposed approach has addressed uncertain job completion via integrating FDT into the scheduling process to effectively reduce makespan and wastewater. The results have shown practical viability of the developed solution in real settings.

This chapter presents an international review of the experiences of children and parents regarding care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic profoundly impacted children and families, magnifying the influence of governmental policies, socio-economic disparities and cultural contexts on children's experiences and exacerbating global inequalities. Vulnerable families faced increased challenges affecting children's rights and well-being, while the transition to digital learning highlighted the critical need for equitable access to technology. Despite extensive documentation of these challenges, research focusing on the pandemic's impact on young children's development, well-being, socialization and learning opportunities, as well as the experiences of parents/carers, remains limited. This scarcity stems from the pandemic's constraints on research activities, requiring reliance on online methods and the increased burdens on parents/carers, making participation in research more challenging.

Employing the PRISMA 2020 method for a literature review, this chapter aggregates international research findings on the subject, examining the impacts of COVID-19 on health and well-being, knowledge of the pandemic, effects on learning, educational strategies, online activity engagement and collaboration with Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services. It concludes with a synthesis of insights and recommendations drawn from the reviewed literature.

The chapter contributes to a comprehensive framework for understanding the pandemic's impact on young children and their families, emphasising the importance of targeted interventions, equitable resource distribution and ongoing support for the ECEC sector to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.

Although buying firms increasingly adopt supplier development to help suppliers enhance their ability to deal with environmental issues, little is known about the mechanisms by which buyer-led environmental supplier development (ESD) affects the environmental management capabilities (EMC) of suppliers. Focusing on the supplier perspective and specifically on the role of psychological mechanisms at the supplier level, the authors adopt the stimulus–organism–response framework from functionalist psychology to investigate the mediating role of environment-related supplier perceived relationship value in the association between ESD, in the form of environmental requirements and audits (indirect development – ID) vs. direct development projects (direct development – DD), and supplier EMC.

The authors used structural equation modeling and regression analysis to test the hypotheses using survey data from 221 supplying organizations in China.

Results reveal that each of the three considered dimensions of the environment-related supplier perceived relationship value (i.e. economic, strategic and co-creation) helps enhance EMC. However, while DD influences positively all three dimensions, ID has a positive effect on only the economic and strategic dimensions. Moreover, the mediation analysis suggests that, while DD affects EMC both directly and via the three dimensions of environment-related supplier perceived relationship value (partial mediation), ID affects EMC only through its impact on environment-related supplier perceived relationship economic and strategic value (full mediation).

The study sheds light on the psychological mechanisms that drive suppliers’ involvement in green supplier development activities. By doing so, it contributes to the understanding of ESD practices and processes and their effectiveness.

Historically, global events have always provided a setback to the existing mechanism of any business operation. The magnitude of such variation may be different from industry to industry but sustainable outlook afterwards any global crisis calls for a re-look into strategies. Similar experience persisted when sudden drop of brick-and-mortar stores during corona crisis came into picture. Post corona, the entire working style of supply chain companies revisited a virtual set-up. The delivery partners like Dunzo, Blinkit, Zypp, Delhivery, Ecomexpress have transformed the way logistics used to work before COVID-19. On the other hand, recent Russia–Ukraine war has posed further global challenges like that of food shortage, supply challenges, global inflation, recessionary trends worldwide. An investor earlier confident of exponential wealth creation in supply chain companies may have to rethink about resilient strategies while creating a portfolio with companies from supply chain industry. In the present study, a comparative analysis has been made by use of exponential Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to explore the impact of both these crisis on returns from supply chain companies. The output of this chapter shall be beneficial for investors, asset management companies, investment brokers and other portfolio managers.

This paper explores the Entrepreneurial Well-Being (EWB) of expatriate entrepreneurs in China. Through the analysis of their contextualised lived experience across the entrepreneurial journey, the paper proposes a novel theorisation of EWB.

This study adopts an interpretivist approach of abductive reasoning to analyse the data from 50 in-depth interviews conducted with expatriate entrepreneurs in China. Expatriate entrepreneurs are confronted with enhanced challenges in their host country, leading to particular emotional engagement with the entrepreneurial journey.

Findings show the importance of life situations, emotions and relatedness in the entrepreneurial process and the EWB of expatriate entrepreneurs. Theorising from their lived experiences, the paper presents EWB as a dynamic process. It further theorises this process as a constant, ongoing interaction and integration between the self and world, in an interplay of being and becoming. Such theorisation contributes first to advancements in the EWB literature, with a stronger emphasis on the entrepreneurial aspect. The paper also contributes to discussions on contextualised entrepreneurship by stressing the role of emotions and relatedness in the pursuit of EWB.

Entrepreneurship is a global phenomenon, which is often presented as a suitable alternative career path for migrant and expatriate individuals. However, the importance of EWB for entrepreneurs requires further attention from policy-makers, support institutions and entrepreneurs themselves. By theorising EWB as a processual journey of being and becoming and the relation between the self and world, this paper opens avenues for innovative support policies and practices aiming at developing the full potential of individuals in entrepreneurship and promoting both the happiness index and the global index of society.

This study aims to investigate the role of negative media coverage of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in deterring tax avoidance. Inspired by media agenda-setting theory and legitimacy theory, this study hypothesises that an increase in ESG negative media coverage should cause a reputational drawback, leading companies to reduce tax avoidance to regain their legitimacy. Hence, this study examines a novel channel that links ESG and taxation.

This study uses panel regression analysis to examine the relationship between negative media coverage of ESG issues and tax avoidance among the largest European entities. This study considers different measures of tax avoidance and negative media coverage.

The results show that negative media coverage of ESG issues is negatively associated with tax avoidance, suggesting that media can act as an external monitor for corporate taxation.

The findings have implications for policymakers and regulators, which should consider tax transparency when dealing with ESG disclosure requirements. Tax disclosure should be integrated into ESG reporting.

The study has social implications related to the media, which act as watchdogs for firms’ irresponsible practices. According to this study’s findings, increased media pressure has the power to induce a better alignment between declared ESG policies and tax strategies.

This study contributes to the literature on the mechanisms that discourage tax avoidance and the literature on the relationship between ESG and taxation by shedding light on the role of media coverage.

This chapter explores how perceived product innovation influences brand loyalty among UK Apple users, extending the technology acceptance model. Using a quantitative approach, data were collected from 101 respondents via an online survey and analysed using SPSS. Objectives included examining the mediating role of perceived product usefulness and ease of use, exploring the relationship between product/brand attitudes and brand loyalty and assessing gender's impact on loyalty perceptions. Findings reveal a significant positive relationship among variables, with perceived product usefulness and ease of use jointly mediating the link between product innovation and attitude, affecting brand loyalty. Gender was found to have no moderating effect. The research contributes by highlighting these mediating effects and deepening understanding of product innovation's impact on loyalty. Managerially, prioritising innovation, usefulness and ease of use can enhance satisfaction and loyalty. Future research could explore additional variables to enrich understanding further.

In acoustic detection technology, optical microcavities offer higher detection bandwidth and sensitivity than traditional acoustic sensors. However, research on acoustic detection technologies involving optical microcavities has not yet been reported. Therefore, this paper aims to design and construct an underwater acoustic detection system based on optical microcavities and study its acoustic detection technology to improve its performance.

Based on the principles of optical microcavity acoustic sensors, a signal-detection circuit was designed to form a detection system in conjunction with a laser, an optical waveguide resonator and an oscilloscope. This circuit consists of two modules: a photodetection module and a filter amplification module.

The photodetection module features a baseline noise of −106.499 dBm and can detect device spectral line depths of up to 2410 mV. The gain stability of the filter amplification module was 58 dB ± 1 dB with a noise gain of −107.626 dBm. This design allows the acoustic detection system to detect signals with high sensitivity within the 10 Hz−1.2 MHz frequency band, achieving a maximum sensitivity of −126 dB re 1 V/µPa at 800 Hz and a minimum detectable pressure (MDP) of 0.37 mPa/Hz^1/2, corresponding to a noise equivalent pressure (NEP) of 51.36 dB re 1 V/µPa.

This study designs and constructs a broadband underwater acoustic detection system specifically for optical waveguide resonators based on the sensing principles of silicon dioxide optical waveguide resonators. Experiments demonstrated that the signal detection module improves the sensitivity of underwater acoustic detection based on optical waveguides.

This study examined the factors that affect attitudes and intentions for sustainable adoption of mobile financial services (MFS) in Nigeria.

The study expands the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by incorporating constructs like perceived service quality, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived credibility, perceived trust and attitude. It includes an empirical analysis with 382 participants and qualitative insights from semi-structured interviews to investigate the challenges and opportunities associated with MFS adoption in Nigeria.

The findings show that perceived service quality, perceived usefulness and attitude positively influence the adoption of MFS. However, perceived ease of use and perceived credibility have little impact on adoption. Qualitative insights from Study 2 shed light on the challenges and opportunities as well as the reasons behind the insignificant effects of perceived ease of use and perceived credibility.

This research stands out by using a mixed-methods approach, blending quantitative and qualitative analysis to provide a more detailed understanding of the factors influencing MFS adoption.