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Connecting autonomous drones to ground operations and services is a prerequisite for the adoption of scalable and sustainable drone services in the built environment. Despite the rapid advance in the field of autonomous drones, the development of ground infrastructure has received less attention. Contemporary airport design offers potential solutions for the infrastructure serving autonomous drone services. To that end, this paper aims to construct a framework for connecting air and ground operations for autonomous drone services. Furthermore, the paper defines the minimum facilities needed to support unmanned aerial vehicles for autonomous logistics and the collection of aerial data.

The paper reviews the state-of-the-art in airport design literature as the basis for analysing the guidelines of manned aviation applicable to the development of ground infrastructure for autonomous drone services. Socio-technical system analysis was used for identifying the service needs of drones.

The key findings are functional modularity based on the principles of airport design applies to micro-airports and modular service functions can be connected efficiently with an autonomous ground handling system in a sustainable manner addressing the concerns on maintenance, reliability and lifecycle.

As the study was limited to the airport design literature findings, the evolution of solutions may provide features supporting deviating approaches. The role of autonomy and cloud-based service processes are quintessentially different from the conventional airport design and are likely to impact real-life solutions as the area of future research.

The findings of this study provided a framework for establishing the connection between the airside and the landside for the operations of autonomous aerial services. The lack of such framework and ground infrastructure has hindered the large-scale adoption and easy-to-use solutions for sustainable logistics and aerial data collection for decision-making in the built environment.

The evolution of future autonomous aerial services should be accessible to all users, “democratising” the use of drones. The data collected by drones should comply with the privacy-preserving use of the data. The proposed ground infrastructure can contribute to offloading, storing and handling aerial data to support drone services’ acceptability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper describes the first design framework for creating a design concept for a modular and autonomous micro-airport system for unmanned aviation based on the applied functions of full-size conventional airports.

Characteristics of leaders whose behaviour is visceral include taking action based on instinct rather than intellect and exhibiting coarse, base and often negative emotions. Despite the challenge of precisely defining the nature of visceral behaviour, the purpose of this paper is to provide insight into this less attractive side of boardroom life.

Following a literature review of the research into the negative behaviour leaders exhibit, the paper highlights four forms of visceral behaviour based on focused and intimate qualitative case studies involving the experiences of those on the receiving end of that behaviour within a boardroom context.

Based on interviews with an international sample of five chief executive officers (CEOs), plus three subordinates with substantial profit and loss responsibility, the study reveals a distinctly human experience from which no one is exempt. The idiosyncratic nature of the visceral behaviour experienced resulted in each study participant's unique experience. The authors conclude that leaders need to adopt specific measures in order to control and reduce the darker human tendencies.

The experiences of study participants are presented in four case studies, providing insight into their experiences whilst also protecting their identity. The study participants were drawn from a sample of companies operating globally within a single sector of the manufacturing industry. The concepts the authors present require validating in other organisations with different demographic profiles.

The paper presents a model based on two dimensions – choice and level of mastery – that provides the reader with insight into the forms of visceral behaviour to which leaders succumb. Insight enables us to offer managers strategic suggestions to guard against visceral behaviour and assist them in mitigating its worst aspects, in both those with whom they work and themselves.

This paper questions the validity of traditional scientific method for the study of human learning and proposes five postulates for the advancement of a conversational science. It considers how an evolving capacity for lifelong learning has been constrained by inappropriate research methods and educational practice leading to a learning deficit in the population. Over 25 years of action research offers solid evidence for the humanisation of science as a conversational research process which respects the individual as a unique meaning constructing, self‐organising learning (SOL) entity. A learning conversation pedagogy which enables learners to act as personal scientists and action researchers and a SOL Systems Seven for a community of action researchers is outlined. Finally, the paper considers how SOL entities can function as catalysts for new forms of ORDER with a potential for the emergence of a new species of learning and of being human.

The quality of the customer journey has become a critical determinant of successful service delivery in contemporary business. Extant journey research focuses on the customer path to purchase, but pays less attention to the touchpoints related to service delivery and consumption that are key for understanding customer experiences in service-intensive contexts. The purpose of this study is to conceptualize service journey quality (SJQ), develop measures for the construct and study its key outcomes.

The study uses a discovery-oriented research approach to conceptualize SJQ by synthesizing theory and field-based insights from customer focus group discussions. Next, using consumer survey data (N = 278) from the financial services context, the authors develop measures for the SJQ. Finally, based on an additional survey dataset (N = 239), the authors test the nomological validity and predictive relevance of the SJQ.

SJQ comprises of three dimensions: (1) journey seamlessness, (2) journey personalization and (3) journey coherence. This study demonstrates that SJQ is a critical driver of service quality and customer loyalty in contemporary business. This study finds that the loyalty link is partially mediated through service quality, indicating that SJQ explains loyalty above and beyond service quality.

Since service quality only partially mediates the link between service journey quality and customer loyalty, future studies should examine alternative mediators, such as customer experience, for a more comprehensive understanding of the performance effects.

The study offers concrete tools for service managers who wish to understand and develop the quality of service journeys.

This study advances the service journey concept, demonstrates that the quality of the service journey is a critical driver of customer performance and provides rigorous journey constructs for future service research.

Existing research on customer journeys has tended to focus on the customer’s purchase decision-making and firm-controlled touchpoints, overlooking indirect touchpoints where customer resources and behaviors influence the firm and other actors, beyond financial patronage. This article develops the concept of engagement journeys and discusses their implications on journey design and management.

This conceptual article synthesizes the customer journey and engagement literature to delineate the concept of engagement journeys. Insights from engagement research are reflected in the current journey management orthodoxy to provide novel implications for the management of engagement journeys.

The engagement journey is defined as the customer’s process of diverse brand-related resource investments in interactions with the brand/firm and/or other customers, reflecting the customer’s cognitive, emotional and behavioral disposition. The analysis outlines the manifestations and nature of different types of touchpoints along the engagement journey, and the novel requirements for journey management.

The developed conceptualization opens up new avenues in both journey and engagement research.

Some commonly held assumptions regarding journey quality and management do not hold true for engagement journeys, so there is a need for new approaches.

Despite the proliferation of both journey and engagement research, only a handful of studies have considered the link between the concepts. The proposed novel conceptualization of an engagement journey breaks free from a predominant focus on purchase decisions. The analysis of engagement journeys and their management advances both customer journey and engagement research.

The aim of this paper is to describe the opportunity for public relations professionals in the new communications environment

The authors developed a point of view, and conducted secondary research to confirm and supplement it.

The communications environment has changed. The new climate requires organizations to engage in a two‐way dialog with their constituencies. “Push” communication has lost effectiveness. In this environment, people trained in public relations are in a unique position to take the lead in forming communications strategies for their organizations or clients.

This work is based on the authors' personal views of the current communication environment, and is supported by the views of many of the leading players in the public relations world.

The most satisfying and interesting human learning game‐of‐life is probably a conversation where there is a common will among the participants to promote understanding of our world despite possibly large differences in knowledge and experience. Gordon Pask took conversational learning as more than a general metaphor for humanly significant learning. He identified the essential minimal characteristics of the entities and relationships involved and formalised all that into a recursive learning theory of very broad scope. Over the years, Pask and his various System Research associates validated conversation theory by embodying it in a number of (n‐) person‐machine systems (SAKI, CASTE, THOUGHTSTICKER, TDS, etc.), and by doing case studies with various kinds of learners and tutor‐learners learning and teaching through these interfaces. Reviews some interesting aspects of conversation theory, including both its remarkable insights and some limitations. Concludes that there are good reasons for expecting that the implications of Pask’s approach to educational cybernetics will continue to be explored for many years to come.