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The growing uses of digital technologies have been creating several new business opportunities. Recently, a new concept has emerged in the literature, the “digital entrepreneurship ecosystem” (DEE). However, it has been empirically understudied. Thus, this study aims to analyze the influence of DEE on entrepreneurial activity. The meta-organization theory was used as a perspective of analysis. A quantitative methodology was applied in a sample that includes data from 28 European countries through the generalized method of moments. It was concluded that the DEE pillars, informal and formal institutions, market conditions, physical infrastructure, human capital and talent and networking and support positively influence entrepreneurial activity. It was also found that the variables knowledge, creation and dissemination and finance have a negative impact on entrepreneurial activity. Several theoretical and empirical contributions are also left for the various stakeholders. The present study is original, as no known studies analyze the influence of DEE on entrepreneurial activity in European countries from the perspective of meta-organization theory.

The interest for collaboration among small and mediumsized enterprises and innovation has been highlighted, in recent times, due to the acceleration of technological changes and to increasing international competitiveness. Many small firms, with rigid structures and weak entrepreneurial dynamics, experienced difficulties in becoming innovators. Some of these firms can adopt collaborative agreements because these relationships enable them to get the necessary innovative activities, know-how, and exploit opportunities, which they cannot achieve alone. This study examines the motives for the formation of collaborative agreements in industrial Portuguese SMEs and presents some empirical evidence concerning collaboration as an important vehicle for the innovativeness of these small firms. The findings were based on a sample of 92 firms/collaborative agreements.

In Senegal, the government has encouraged private investment in agriculture and biofuel production since the 2000s, generating several attempted or effective large-scale land acquisitions by domestic and international investors. In reaction to these projects, local groups of opponents have joined forces with national peasant organizations, civil society associations, and think tanks to resist perceived land grabs. This article examines the emergence of this social movement and explains why anti-land grabs campaigns were successful in halting some projects, but not successful in others. I argue that four main factors are at play: a strong mobilization of local populations measured by group cohesion and level of determination; the assistance of national and international NGOs in scaling up protests beyond the local level; the capacity of opponents to harness the support of influential elites and decision-makers; and the legal status of the land under contention. This paper draws on an analysis of secondary data, qualitative interviews, and field observations carried out in Senegal for several months from 2013 to 2018.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the occurrence of terms to identify the relevant topics and then to investigate the area (based on topics) of hospitality services that is highly associated with relationship quality. This research represents an opportunity to fill the gap in the current literature, and clarify the understanding of guests’ affective states by evaluating all aspects of their relationship with a hotel.

This research focuses on natural opinions upon which machine-learning algorithms can be executed: text summarization, sentiment analysis and latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). Our data set contains 47,172 reviews of 33 hotels located in Las Vegas, and registered with Yelp. A component-based structural equation modeling (partial least squares (PLS)) is applied, with a dual – exploratory and predictive – purpose.

To maintain a truly loyal relationship and to achieve competitive success, hospitality managers must take into account both tangible and intangible features when allocating their marketing efforts to satisfaction-, trust- and commitment-based cues. On the other hand, the application of the PLS predict algorithm demonstrates the predictive performance (out-of-sample prediction) of our model that supports its ability to predict new and accurate values for individual cases when further samples are added.

LDA and PLS produce relevant informative summaries of corpora, and confirm and address more specifically the results of the previous literature concerning relationship quality. Our results are more reliable and accurate (providing insights not indicated in guests’ ratings into how hotels can improve their services) than prior statistical results based on limited sample data and on numerical satisfaction ratings alone.

This research proposes to organise and distil this massive amount of data, making it easier to understand. Using data mining, machine learning techniques and visual approaches, researchers and managers can extract valuable insights (on guests' preferences) and convert them into strategic thinking based on exploration and predictive analysis. Consequently, this research aims to assist hotel managers in making informed decisions, thus improving the overall guest experience and increasing competitiveness.

This research employs natural language processing techniques, data visualisation proposals and machine learning methodologies to analyse unstructured guest service experience content. In particular, this research (1) applies data mining to evaluate the role and significance of critical terms and semantic structures in hotel assessments; (2) identifies salient tokens to depict guests' narratives based on term frequency and the information quantity they convey; and (3) tackles the challenge of managing extensive document repositories through automated identification of latent topics in reviews by using machine learning methods for semantic grouping and pattern visualisation.

This study’s findings (1) aim to identify critical features and topics that guests highlight during their hotel stays, (2) visually explore the relationships between these features and differences among diverse types of travellers through online hotel reviews and (3) determine predictive power. Their implications are crucial for the hospitality domain, as they provide real-time insights into guests' perceptions and business performance and are essential for making informed decisions and staying competitive.

This research seeks to minimise the cognitive processing costs of the enormous amount of content published by the user through a better organisation of hotel service reviews and their visualisation. Likewise, this research aims to propose a methodology and method available to tourism organisations to obtain truly useable knowledge in the design of the hotel offer and its value propositions.

This study explores auditors’ professional attitudes and behaviours. It tests the influence of public interest commitment, independence enforcement beliefs and organisational ethical culture on auditors’ acceptance of and engagement in practices that compromise their objectivity. The study is based on survey responses of 122 Spanish auditors. To analyse the combined effect of the variables under study, variance-based structural equation modelling (partial least squares, PLS) was employed. The results suggest that the regulatory efforts to improve auditors’ behaviours by enforcing independence rules have been internalised by auditors. The results also reinforce the need to instil the societal responsibilities of professional auditors, since auditors’ public interest commitment is related to their ethical decision making. Furthermore, this study reveals that firms’ ethical cultures influence auditors’ commitment to the public interest, as well as their ethical decision making. The study raises practical implications for auditing professionals, regulators and audit firms. Understanding auditors’ beliefs and behavioural patterns is critical to proposing mechanisms that enhance their ethical behaviours, which could ultimately enhance audit quality. The chapter contributes to the field by analysing the combined effect of the regulatory framework and organisational context on auditors’ professional values and behaviours.

This paper aims to describe a method for combining perceived community support, relationship quality and the extended technology acceptance model in the same empirically derived associative network. The research also examines the moderating role of accumulation of knowledge (based on beliefs and opinions) derived from social interactions.

The Pathfinder algorithm is a valid approach for determining network structures from relatedness data. Such a graphical representation provides managers with a comprehensible picture of how social behaviours relate to loyalty-based dimensions.

As the benefits of community participation and integration might be differently evaluated by new and long-term users, the research examines the associative network by levels of user familiarity. This study indeed contributes to the analysis of enduring social bonds with respect to individuals’ decision-making processes, as it provides details representing specific relationships between diverse concepts based on true-loyalty.

The application of Pathfinder to the study of online social services and user behaviour appears to have potential for unveiling the structures of social network sites members and designing successful strategies for prospective community managers.

This is the first study to the author’s knowledge that empirically tests a theory-grounded framework for integrating individual characteristics and relational driver and focuses on associative structures evidenced as a representation of the most salient loyalty-based concepts by also studying the moderating effects of familiarity.

The aim of this work is to investigate the relationship among rheology, tribology and traditional standardized technological parameters of lithium lubricating greases.

Lubricating greases having the same composition but differing in processing protocols have been manufactured and characterized in order to isolate the rheological behaviour from the formulation.

Some successful empirical correlations between rheological (viscous and viscoelastic) and technological standardized parameters, with the friction factor obtained from a ball‐disc tribometer, have been established in order to elucidate the role of the rheological behaviour of lubricating greases on the friction process. In addition to this, an energetic evaluation of the structural degradation of greases during the friction process has been carried out by performing stress‐growth experiments. Thus, the storage energy density, which is related to the grease capacity to accumulate energy in the elastic deformation, and the limiting energy density, which represents the dissipation of energy in the flow process, have been satisfactorily correlated with the friction factor.

The complex rheological behaviour of lubricating greases, the extreme deformations and the high‐shear stresses resulting in a tribological contact imply that it is difficult to develop a model to describe their behaviour in an elastohydrodynamic lubricating contact.

This paper provides a resource of practical data to be applied in tribological systems.

As the world of healthcare changes rapidly, healthcare leaders and managers must hone their leadership competencies in order to remain effective in their organizations. With changes such as the Affordable Care Act, increasing medical school costs, decreased graduation rates, and increased needs for care, how are current and future healthcare leaders adapting? In light of the large-scale changes in the healthcare field in recent years, the purpose of this study was to investigate which National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL) competencies were referenced by exemplary healthcare leaders as most important for success in today’s changing healthcare environment. Interviews were conducted with 26 mid- and upper-level healthcare leaders identified by the C-level executives in their organizations as exemplary performers. Change leadership, self-development, talent development, and team leadership were the top four NCHL competencies most frequently referenced, with thematic analysis revealing additional underlying themes in the exemplary leaders’ dialogue.

This chapter focuses on the importance of social media for pop culture fans. A web survey for fans of the Twilight Saga is implemented, using the concepts of cognitive, affective, and evaluative social identity and personal, product, and situational involvement. The purpose is to examine to what degree social identity and involvement can explain pop culture fans’ future intention to travel, make recommendations to others, and use social media. Findings show that pop culture fans use social media to a large extent and that these means are important for making decisions about traveling and event participation. Moreover, the chapter shows that involvement dimensions are more important than social identity dimensions to explain future intention to travel, to recommend to others, and to use social media.