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The purpose of this research is to investigate the use of Twitter in business as a medium for knowledge sharing and to crowdsource information to support innovation and enhance business relationships in the context of business-to-business (B2B) marketing.

This study uses a combination of methodologies for gathering data in 52 face-to-face interviews across five countries and the downloaded posts from each of the interviewees' Twitter accounts. The tweets were analysed using structural topic modelling (STM), and then compared to the interview data. This method enabled triangulation between stated use of Twitter and respondent's actual tweets.

The research confirmed that individuals used Twitter as a source of information, ideas, promotion and innovation within their industry. Twitter facilitates building relevant business relationships through the exchange of new, expert and high-quality information within like-minded communities in real time, between companies and with their suppliers, customers and also their peers.

As this study covered five countries, further comparative research on the use of Twitter in the B2B context is called for. Further investigation of the formalisation of social media strategies and return on investment for social media marketing efforts is also warranted.

This research highlights the business relationship building capacity of Twitter as it enables customer and peer conversations that eventually support the development of product and service innovations. Twitter has the capacity for marketers to inform and engage customers and peers in their networks on wider topics thereby building the brand of the individual users and their companies simultaneously.

This study focuses on interactions at the individual level illustrating that Twitter is used for both customer and peer interactions that can lead to the sourcing of ideas, knowledge and ultimately innovation. The study is novel in its methodological approach of combining structured interviews and text mining that found the topics of the interviewees' tweets aligned with their interview responses.

Novels, short stories, plays, and poetry can help us understand the character traits, abilities, and contexts of leadership in ways that didactic methods cannot. I present examples of the use of literature in its several forms to stimulate thought and discussion and to enrich the understanding of the characteristics and dynamics of leadership. I consider the character traits of honesty, courage, adherence to principles, respect, ego, humility, calmness, and perseverance, and the abilities to listen, to select good people, and to know oneself. I also identify some of the conditions and contexts of leadership, such as chance, environment, interdependence, and the roles of heroes, mentors, and peers. These examples from literature are not intended to be authoritative but rather illustrative, with the intent that they will encourage others to seek and use their own examples in the process of understanding leadership and becoming good leaders.

The field of scientific research on small and medium-sized family businesses has been growing exponentially and the aim of this paper is to systematize the body of knowledge to develop an agenda for the future.

Adopting comparative bibliometric analyses on 155 articles (from 1989 until 2018) the authors provide a systematic assessment of the scientific research about small family firms, unveiling the structure and evolution of the field. Bibliographic coupling, co-citation analysis and co-occurrence analysis are adopted to identify the most influential studies and themes.

Four clusters of research are reviewed: succession in family SMEs, performances of family SMEs, internationalization of family SMEs and organizational culture of family SMEs.

This paper contributes to the field of family SMEs by providing a systematic analysis of the scientific knowledge. Reviewing those clusters allows to providing avenues and reflections for future research and further practice.

This study aims to assess the effect of both apigenin-loaded zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnONPs) and apigenin only against cisplatin (CP)-induced experimental cardiotoxicity.

A total of 32Wister rats (male) were randomly divided (n = 8) into four groups. Normal control group, CP group received CP (20 mg/kg); treated group I received CP and then received apigenin (0.78 mg/kg/day) orally; treated group II received CP and then received apigenin loaded ZnONPs. At the end of the experiment (10 days), samples were extracted from each rat for the assessment of complete blood picture, lipid profile, atherogenic indices, oxidative status, inflammatory and cardiotoxicity markers as well as histological examination.

The results indicated that CP produced significant alterations in the complete blood picture, lipidemic profile, atherogenic indices, antioxidation capacity and cardiac inflammatory markers as well as function enzymes as compared with the control group. Administration of apigenin only showed a non-significant change in the atherogenic indices, oxidative status and cardiotoxicity parameters, indicating incomplete cardio-protection against CP upon. Additionally, all the observed alterations in CP group were reversed when apigenin nanoparticle at lower dose was used with ZnONPs which was also confirmed by histopathological investigation.

The apigenin loaded ZnONPs exert protective effects against CP-induced experimental cardiotoxicity and improved cardiac function, suggesting a potential adjuvant role of apigenin nanoparticles against cardiotoxicity.

The growth of mental disorders and their costs represents a public health challenge. This study aims to explore how a social club can help mitigate its impact through arts and sports workshops.

Using the social return on investment (SROI) methodology, the impact of the social club is evaluated by identifying stakeholders and quantifying their contributions. In addition, the relationship between patients’ attendance and the reduction of relapses and medication consumption is explored.

The SROI showed a positive return on investment, €12.12 per euro invested. This ratio indicates that the social club generates social value well above its initial costs. On the other hand, two stakeholders were identified as higher impact generators, and it was confirmed that sports activities generate more social and economic impact than art activities – however, the positive effects of art activities last longer over time. The study revealed a positive relationship between social club attendance and relapse reduction. Almost 90% of the participating users reported no relapses or emergency hospitalizations during the past year of attendance. In addition, a substantial decrease in medication dosage was observed. These results suggest that social clubs help stabilize mental health and reduce the burden on health-care systems.

The case study highlights the vital role of social clubs in supporting people facing mental health issues. Policymakers and health-care providers can use this knowledge to invest in more effective and sustainable mental health support activities.

Nonlinear solution approaches for inverse problems require fast simulation techniques for the underlying sensing problem. In this work, the authors investigate finite element (FE) based sensor simulations for the inverse problem of electrical capacitance tomography. Two known computational bottlenecks are the assembly of the FE equation system as well as the computation of the Jacobian. Here, existing computation techniques like adjoint field approaches require additional simulations. This paper aims to present fast numerical techniques for the sensor simulation and computations with the Jacobian matrix.

For the FE equation system, a solution strategy based on Green’s functions is derived. Its relation to the solution of a standard FE formulation is discussed. A fast stiffness matrix assembly based on an eigenvector decomposition is shown. Based on the properties of the Green’s functions, Jacobian operations are derived, which allow the computation of matrix vector products with the Jacobian for free, i.e. no additional solves are required. This is demonstrated by a Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno-based image reconstruction algorithm.

MATLAB-based time measurements of the new methods show a significant acceleration for all calculation steps compared to reference implementations with standard methods. E.g. for the Jacobian operations, improvement factors of well over 100 could be found.

The paper shows new methods for solving known computational tasks for solving inverse problems. A particular advantage is the coherent derivation and elaboration of the results. The approaches can also be applicable to other inverse problems.

The role of managerial assumptions in the formulation of organizational strategies has been well recognized by previous studies, yet in marketing literature, the effect of such imperative on marketing practice choice tends to be ignored. Therefore, this paper aims to empirically investigate how management assumptions fit with the choice of marketing practices, and how such fit affects performance.

A model is developed and tested using survey methodology, and the data are analyzed using the partial least square (PLS) approach.

The results show that different marketing practices were coupled with different frames of reference, resulting in viable matching profiles.

Given the novelty of the approach adopted in this study, conclusions about association and not causation are drawn. In addition, the study is restricted to Qatar which may reduce the generalizability of its findings and conclusions.

The findings will help managers to examine carefully the internal logic of their marketing-related profiling, where coherent variables will enhance performance.

To one’s knowledge, this paper reports a work in an area not previously researched. In addition, this study is one of the rare papers that examines unobserved heterogeneity using the PLS-structural equation modeling (SEM) in the field of marketing.

Consumer ethnocentrism (CE) is a matter of interest for marketers over the decades. However, buying intentions toward domestically produced household electronic products in developing and underdeveloped countries have not been examined sufficiently. Hence, this study investigated the consumers' ethnocentrism and attitude toward domestically-produced household electronic goods. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of consumer demographic attributes on ethnocentrism and its moderating effect on choosing domestically produced household electronic goods in the context of Bangladesh.

Primary data have been collected from a sample of 172 respondents using a mall-intercept survey. Consumers' ethnocentrism level has been measured using CETSCALE on a five-point Likert scale. ANOVA and t-test were performed to compare different demographic groups regarding ethnocentrism levels. This study also applied the qualitative method by applying a manual approach.

The result shows that consumers' ethnocentrism levels do not vary with gender and income level. However, other demographic attributes, like occupation, age and education level, play a considerable role in CE tendency.

The study is one of the few that examines the consumers' ethnocentrism and attitudes toward electronic products produced in a developing country. The researchers expect that the outcome of the study would contribute to the domestic manufacturer focusing more rigorously on producing electronic products that would be accepted locally as well as globally.

The experiments of this study investigated the effect of the subgrade degree of saturation on the value of the stresses generated on the surface and the middle (vertical and lateral stresses). The objectives of this study can be identified by studying the effect of subgrade layer degree of saturation variation, load amplitude and load frequency on the transmitted stresses through the ballast layer to the subgrade layer and the stress distribution inside it and investigating the excess pore water pressure development in the clay layer in the case of a fully saturated subgrade layer and the change in matric suction in the case of an unsaturated subgrade layer.

Thirty-six laboratory experiments were conducted using approximately half-scale replicas of real railways, with an iron box measuring 1.5 x 1.0 × 1.0 m. Inside the box, a 0.5 m thick layer of clay soil representing the base layer was built. Above it is a 0.2 m thick ballast layer made of crushed stone, and on top of that is a 0.8 m long rail line supported by three 0.9 m (0.1 × 0.1 m) slipper beams. The subgrade layer has been built at the following various saturation levels: 100, 80, 70 and 60%. Experiments were conducted with various frequencies of 1, 2 and 4 Hz with load amplitudes of 15, 25 and 35 kN.

The results of the study demonstrated that as the subgrade degree of saturation decreased from 100 to 60%, the ratio of stress in the lateral direction to stress in the vertical direction generated in the middle of the subgrade layer decreased as well. On average, this ratio changed from approximately 0.75 to approximately 0.65.

The study discovered that as the test proceeded and the number of cycles increased, the value of negative water pressure (matric suction) in the case of unsaturated subgrade soils declined. The frequency of loads had no bearing on the ratio of decline in matric suction values, which was greater under a larger load amplitude than a lower one. As the test progressed (as the number of cycles increased), the matric suction dropped. For larger load amplitudes, there is a greater shift in matric suction. The change in matric suction is greater at higher saturation levels than it is at lower saturation levels. Furthermore, it is seen that the load frequency value has no bearing on how the matric suction changes. For all load frequencies and subgrade layer saturation levels, the track panel settlement rises with the load amplitude. Higher load frequency and saturation levels have a greater impact.

This study aims to evaluate the role of the prevailing currency systems in achieving (or departing from) the socio-economic objectives of a progressive and just society; i.e. featuring stability and equitable distribution of wealth.

After documenting historical developments in currency systems, the study reviews the Islamic perspective on the matter. Features of an ideal currency system are listed and then a critical evaluation of existing currency systems – fiat, banking and cryptocurrency – is undertaken.

It is found that existing currency systems – fiat, banking and cryptocurrency – are not compatible with the socio-economic objectives of a forward-looking, progressive society, which upholds transparency and justice as its core values. The study documents that Sharīʿah norms have no preference or dislike for any of the existing currency systems. Any prudent currency system compatible with the objectives of the Islamic financial system (i.e. stability and equitable distribution of wealth) is acceptable. A single international reserve currency (with country-specific legal tendering) is subject to the risk of destabilisation across global markets.

This paper recommends autonomy of central banking, the spending of seigniorage for the welfare of community members, development of asset-backed currencies (following ṣukūk structures), as well as multiple international reserve currencies and joining of hands by professionals and Sharīʿah scholars to design a currency system compatible with the Islamic financial system. This paper’s recommendation is against the adoption of cryptocurrency that lacks the backing of real assets.

The study contributes to the literature by evaluating the compatibility of existing currency systems in the achievement of socio-economic objectives of a welfare state which seeks to uphold justice and equitable resource distribution as core values in the financial system.