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Understanding people’s intentions to be an internet entrepreneur is an important issue for educators, academics and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale to measure internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy.

Based on an analysis of 356 responses, a scale of internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy is validated in accordance with established scale development procedures.

The internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy scale has 16 items under three factors (i.e. leadership, technology utilization and internet marketing and e-commerce). The scale demonstrated adequate convergent validity, discriminant validity and criterion-related validity. Nomological validity was established by the positive correlation between the scale and, respectively, internet entrepreneurship knowledge and entrepreneurial intention.

This study is a pioneering effort to develop and validate a scale to measure internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The results of this study are helpful to researchers in building internet entrepreneurship theories and to educators in assessing and promoting individuals’ internet entrepreneurial self-efficacy and behavior.

This study responds to the need in social entrepreneurship research for more empirical studies to clarify the meaning of social value. Specially, it aims to explore the meaning of social value communicated on social media (SoMe) within the local context of a social enterprise (SE).

A multimodal social semiotic approach was applied to several hundred Facebook posts of a Finnish SE providing elderly care solutions, complemented by secondary data from high-quality press sources.

Building on Young’s (2006) dimensions of social value and Hidalgo et al.’s (2021) theorisation of social capital in social entrepreneurship, the authors find that an SE draws on multiple levels of social capital on SoMe to express the meaning of the social value it creates.

Although limited to one case, this study provides a deep contextual understanding of how SEs can give meaning to social value and leverage social capital on SoMe to do so.

The authors offer a contextually embedded framework for SEs to communicate social value through media. This approach enables SEs to engage stakeholders more effectively and improve the quality of support for local initiatives.

Improvements in SEs’ ability to communicate social value will increase their legitimacy, thus enhancing their prospects to survive and create sustained social value.

The authors strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of social value by being among the first to empirically describe its connection to social capital in an SE, thereby deepening previous studies on subjective social value. Methodologically, this study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to apply social semiotics to research on SEs.

This study aims to examine how external and internal conditions drive the impact of circular economy mechanism by decomposing into three policy networks in terms of reduce, reuse and recycle, to better understand the contingency model of climate change and effect of firm size on subsequent performance.

Drawing on circular economy network and resource-based view (RBV)-network-resilience strategy framework, a pooled longitudinal cross-sectional data model is developed using a sample of 4,050 Taiwanese manufacturing multinational corporations (MNCs) making foreign direct investment between 2013 and 2018. Structural equation modeling analysis is used to comprehensively examine and investigate each circular economy policy network in the context of climate change and firm size. Post hoc multigroup analysis (MGA) is also conducted.

MGA shows that the reduce policy network is positively and negatively related to manufacturing know-how and production size, respectively. The impact of reuse policy network can enhance the competence of large firms. The recycle policy network is more prominent in terms of competence enhancement of climate change.

MNCs are seeking to build circular economy policy networks to a greater extent, given climate change pressure and guidelines.

This study adds to the circular economy and RBV-network-related literature on climate change and interactions to enhance performance, echoing the recent call on the sustainability of the circular economy of MNCs.

Aiming at the lack of explanatory power of traditional industrial organization theory in cross-border competition, by introducing the idea of ecological niche, the authors aim to explore the competitive situation of platform-based enterprises when they operate in multiple fields.

With the help of ecological niche theory, construct the niche width and niche overlap index of typical enterprises in the platform economy, and find out the advantages and the intensity of competition through comparative analysis.

In an environment of cross-border competition, large enterprises have significant competitive advantages, and the fierce competition is concentrated among medium-sized enterprises.

The conclusions of this paper not only provide new insights for explaining the phenomenon of cross-border competition in the platform economy, but also provide theoretical reference for the anti-trust enforcement practice in the platform economy.

Job satisfaction is essential in understanding turnover intentions. Previous studies reveal that highly educated hospitality employees generally have lower levels of job satisfaction, indicating that the antecedents of job satisfaction may be different from hospitality managers and frontline employees. This study compared the different antecedents of job satisfaction for housekeeping managers and employees.

This study used a mixed-methods approach for a two-part study. The researchers recruited housekeeping managers for the exploratory survey. The results of open-end questions helped us build a custom dictionary for the text mining of comments from Glassdoor.com. Finally, a multilinear regression of themes from housekeeping employees’ ratings on Glassdoor.com was conducted to understand the antecedents of job satisfaction for housekeeping managers and employees.

The results of the exploratory survey indicated that the housekeeping department has an urgent need for organizational support and training. The text-mining revealed organizational support impacts both managers and frontline employees, while training impacts managers more than employees. Finally, the regression analysis showed compensation, business outlook, senior management, and career opportunity impacted both groups. However, work-life balance only influenced managers.

With a large number of employees at low salaries, housekeeping departments have a higher-than-average turnover rate for lodging. This study is among the first to compare the antecedents of managers’ and frontline employees’ job satisfaction in the housekeeping department, extending Social Exchange Theory. It provides suggestions for the housekeeping department to decrease turnover intentions.

The wake of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic had caused substantial disruptions to the usual delivery of healthcare services. This is because of restrictive orders that were put in place to curb the spread of the infection. Palliative care services in Brunei also face challenges to deliver effective services during this period. However, the impact of advanced illnesses on patients' health and end-of-life care are issues that cannot be planned, postponed or cancelled. Hence, the palliative care team needs to continue to deliver effective palliative care services. As Brunei faced its second pandemic wave in August 2021, crucial adaptations were made to ensure palliative care service was not disrupted. This reflective case study aims to discuss the adaptations made in providing palliative care during this era of disruptions.

This study explores the impact of ethical and authentic leadership on employees' workplace perceptions, focusing on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), trust in leader, commitment, employee voice and empowerment in independent hotels across two contrasting Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) clusters: Germanic and Middle-Eastern clusters. It examines how national culture influences these relationships in the hospitality industry.

Data were collected from 1,678 employees in independent hotels in the Germanic European cluster (Germany and the Netherlands) and the Middle-Eastern cluster (Qatar and Turkey) using selective and snowball sampling techniques. Hypotheses were tested using two-stage structural equation modelling.

Ethical leadership significantly affects employee voice in Germany and the Netherlands but not in Qatar and Turkey. Authentic leadership positively influences employee voice in Qatar, Turkey and Germany but does not significantly impact trust in leader in any of the four countries. The study underscores the role of cultural dimensions, particularly power distance, in shaping these relationships.

This research contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of ethical and authentic leadership on key organisational variables in culturally diverse contexts within the hospitality industry. The findings highlight the necessity of considering national culture in leadership practices and suggest practical implications for independent hotels to adapt their leadership approaches to enhance employee outcomes. Future research should explore cultural dimensions as moderators in organisational relationships.

The bridge expansion joint (BEJ) is a key device for accommodating spatial displacement at the beam end, and for providing vertical support for running trains passing over the gap between the main bridge and the approach bridge. For long-span railway bridges, it must also be coordinated with rail expansion joint (REJ), which is necessary to accommodate the expansion and contraction of, and reducing longitudinal stress in, the rails. The main aim of this study is to present analysis of recent developments in the research and application of BEJs in high-speed railway (HSR) long-span bridges in China, and to propose a performance-based integral design method for BEJs used with REJs, from both theoretical and engineering perspectives.

The study first presents a summary on the application and maintenance of BEJs in HSR long-span bridges in China representing an overview of their state of development. Results of a survey of typical BEJ faults were analyzed, and field testing was conducted on a railway cable-stayed bridge in order to obtain information on the major mechanical characteristics of its BEJ under train load. Based on the above, a performance-based integral design method for BEJs with maximum expansion range 1600 mm (±800 mm), was proposed, covering all stages from overall conceptual design to consideration of detailed structural design issues. The performance of the novel BEJ design thus derived was then verified via theoretical analysis under different scenarios, full-scale model testing, and field testing and commissioning.

Two major types of BEJs, deck-type and through-type, are used in HSR long-span bridges in China. Typical BEJ faults were found to mainly include skewness of steel sleepers at the bridge gap, abnormally large longitudinal frictional resistance, and flexural deformation of the scissor mechanisms. These faults influence BEJ functioning, and thus adversely affect track quality and train running performance at the beam end. Due to their simple and integral structure, deck-type BEJs with expansion range 1200 mm (± 600 mm) or less have been favored as a solution offering improved operational conditions, and have emerged as a standard design. However, when the expansion range exceeds the above-mentioned value, special design work becomes necessary. Therefore, based on engineering practice, a performance-based integral design method for BEJs used with REJs was proposed, taking into account four major categories of performance requirements, i.e., mechanical characteristics, train running quality, durability and insulation performance. Overall BEJ design must mainly consider component strength and the overall stiffness of BEJ; the latter factor in particular has a decisive influence on train running performance at the beam end. Detailed BEJ structural design must stress minimization of the frictional resistance of its sliding surface. The static and dynamic performance of the newly-designed BEJ with expansion range 1600 mm have been confirmed to be satisfactory, via numerical simulation, full-scale model testing, and field testing and commissioning.

This research provides a broad overview of the status of BEJs with large expansion range in HSR long-span bridges in China, along with novel insights into their design.

Vision, audition, olfactory, tactile and taste are five important senses that human uses to interact with the real world. As facing more and more complex environments, a sensing system is essential for intelligent robots with various types of sensors. To mimic human-like abilities, sensors similar to human perception capabilities are indispensable. However, most research only concentrated on analyzing literature on single-modal sensors and their robotics application.

This study presents a systematic review of five bioinspired senses, especially considering a brief introduction of multimodal sensing applications and predicting current trends and future directions of this field, which may have continuous enlightenments.

This review shows that bioinspired sensors can enable robots to better understand the environment, and multiple sensor combinations can support the robot’s ability to behave intelligently.

The review starts with a brief survey of the biological sensing mechanisms of the five senses, which are followed by their bioinspired electronic counterparts. Their applications in the robots are then reviewed as another emphasis, covering the main application scopes of localization and navigation, objection identification, dexterous manipulation, compliant interaction and so on. Finally, the trends, difficulties and challenges of this research were discussed to help guide future research on intelligent robot sensors.

Longitudinal studies have shown that consumer satisfaction has increased over the last 15 years, whereas trust and loyalty have decreased during the same period. This finding contradicts the trust–value–loyalty model (TVLM), which posits that higher satisfaction increases consumers' trust, value and loyalty levels. To explain this counterintuitive trend, this study draws on models of trust formation to integrate the stereotype content model and the TVLM. It argues that consumers' occupational and industry stereotypes influence their trust, value and loyalty judgments through their trusting beliefs regarding frontline employees and management practices/policies.

The study was conducted among 476 consumers who were randomly assigned to one of five service industries (apparel retail, airlines, hotels, health insurance or telecommunications services) and asked to rate their current service provider from that industry.

The results suggest that both occupational and industry stereotypes influence consumers' trusting beliefs and trust judgments, although only the effects of industry stereotypes are transferred to consumers' loyalty judgments.

The results of the study indicate that industry stereotypes have become increasingly negative over the last decades, which has a dampening effect on the positive effects of satisfaction.

This study provides guidelines for practitioners regarding the management of frontline employees and the development of consumer trust, value and loyalty.

This is the first study to propose and test an explanation for the counterintuitive trend concerning customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty. It is also the first to examine the roles of multiple stereotypes in the relationship between consumers and service providers.