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Jamun is an underutilised fruit crop of India whose utilization needs to be considerably increased. Despite its impressive nutritional profile and several health benefits, its cultivation is still very limited. Hence, this study aims to highlight the essential nutrients, health benefits and value-added products of jamun fruit and seed.

Major sources of bibliometric information such as Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and Google Scholar were extensively searched with keywords such as nutritional composition of jamun, bioactive compounds, health benefits and jamun-based food products to obtain a database of 317 papers. Thirty four publications met the criteria for review.

Jamun fruit (Syzygium cumini L.) is known for its attractive colour, astringent taste, enormous nutrients and nutraceutical properties; nevertheless, this fruit is seasonal, perishable and underutilised. Furthermore, the fruit is used for the treatment of diabetes and also possess anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, anti-obesity and cardio-protection properties. Investigations were done on the production of value-added food products such as read-to-serve beverages, jam, cookies and cake from jamun due to their several health benefits. The present review was an attempt to provide spotlights on the health benefits and food product applications of jamun fruit and its by-products.

This review systematically collates evidence from various published sources regarding the nutritional profile, development of food products from jamun and their health benefits. The compiled information will help researchers and professional become aware of the significance of jamun fruit and thereby enhances its processing and applications in food systems.

The economic significance of self-help groups (SHGs), a critical community-based initiative based on social capital, is well encapsulated in generating employment opportunities, financial inclusion, empowerment of marginalized communities and economic development. However, these SHGs face multiple operating obstacles and sustainability challenges that have drawn the attention of policymakers and academicians alike. The landscape of SHGs has undergone a significant unfavorable transformation after the post-COVID-19 pandemic, which poses an existential crisis for SHGs. This study aims to explore the sustainability challenges in the post-pandemic landscape of SHGs and identify the factors that drive or deter individuals from joining SHGs.

Initially, six National Cooperative Union of India representatives, the apex body of cooperative societies in India, were approached to understand the current policy framework and probable concerns of SHGs. Based on the interaction, the research agenda was modified to examine the sustainability of SHGs during and after the pandemic. An in-depth semistructured interview of 13 SHG leaders/coordinators and 52 individual members from different regions of India is conducted.

Lack of digital inclusion, restrictions in mobility, impact on health and well-being and infrastructural ecosystem are identified as fundamental (and novel) operational challenges that hinder SHG sustainability post-pandemic. At the member level, entrepreneurial aspirations, a sense of belongingness, social networks and corporate and nongovernment organization (NGO) initiatives are the critical drivers for SHG participation. In contrast, the key deterrents are mistrust, lack of coordination and customer perception.

Although many studies present mixed findings on women’s empowerment through SHGs, much of the research primarily emphasizes individual factors and the challenges faced by women. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to expand the discussion beyond individual experiences to address broader operational challenges, particularly in the post-pandemic context. In doing so, this research aims to assist SHGs in overcoming these challenges and to guide government and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in supporting the sustainable growth of SHGs.

After analysing this case study, students will be able to understand the relationship between compensation, reward management and gig workers’ behaviour; apply the theory of organizational behaviour related to compensation management to address the motivational issues; analyse the challenges in managing the gig workers’ expectations related to compensation; and design innovative ways of retaining gig workers, especially delivery partners among the gig workers.

In April 2022, Riya, who worked as a business development manager at a newly established food delivery app company named “Our Kitchen” (located in Hyderabad, India), attended a meeting where the chief executive officer expressed concern about the difficulty in retaining their delivery partners. The company provided food delivery services to the customers by procuring ordered food from partner restaurants in select Indian cities. The delivery partners of the company worked part-time and received a commission for the hours they worked. With the rising fuel cost, minimal career growth and negligible social security benefits, it was hard for them to continue in their jobs. As a result, there were high attrition rates in the food delivery company. This case study is about the attrition issue being faced by the company and explores various strategies through which Riya could think of retaining the delivery partners so that there was a win-win situation for both parties. The dilemma given in the case study would help in understanding the motivational theories and factors that encouraged delivery partners to work for these jobs.

The case study is ideally suited for discussing human resources concepts, especially problems related to the retention of delivery partners without reducing the profit of the organization. It will help in understanding the motivational factors leading to job satisfaction and how that will help in the retention of delivery partners. The case study can also be used to teach the executives in a management development programme. This will help them to understand the gig workers’ motivational factors and the causes of their attrition.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 6: Human resource management.

In 2020, the Journal of Service Theory and Practice (JSTP), previously titled Managing Service Quality, celebrates its 30th anniversary. This study provides a retrospective of the evolution and contribution of the journal to service research by identifying its major trends, research constituents, factors contributing to citations and thematic structure over its 29 active years (1991–2019). The paper concludes by providing directions and ideas for progressing service research

The study uses the Scopus database to extract JSTP's bibliographic data. It employs bibliometric methods to study the trends of the journal, such as the citation structure and most-contributing authors, institutions and countries. Bibliographic coupling and keyword co-occurrence analyses are used to study the intellectual structure of the journal. Regression analysis discloses the factors influencing citations of JSTP articles. Factors explaining the citation count of JSTP articles include article age, number of author keywords, article length, title length and number of references.

JSTP's influence has grown significantly in the scientific community, which is evidenced by findings relating to the citation counts, the thematic scope/variety and authorship features of the JSTP papers published during the last 30 years. JSTP attracts publications from around the globe, but most contributions come from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Although JSTP has continuously evolved with new and varied themes, a bibliographic coupling analysis clustered JSTP articles into five major clusters.

The limitations of the Scopus database may impact the study's results.

This study is the first to provide a comprehensive review of JSTP since its launch. It is useful to the editorial board and other JSTP stakeholders as well as service scholars alike.

The paper focuses on bridging the existing literature gap on the role of leadership in influencing employee engagement considering the advancement in technologies. With this, the author explores how the three critical elements of service-based companies' business environment-artificial intelligence (AI) success, employee engagement, and leadership are interlinked and are valuable for raising the engagement level of employees.

A purposive sampling strategy was used to select the employees working in the respective companies. The survey was distributed to 150 senior management employees but responses were received from only 56 employees making the response rate 37.33%. Consequently, an empirical examination of these 56 senior management employees belonging to service-based companies based in Delhi NCR using a survey questionnaire was conducted.

The PLS-SEM (partial least squares structured equation modelling) revealed that AI has a positive role in affecting employee engagement levels and confirmed the mediation of leadership. The magnitude of the indirect effect was negative leading to a reduction in total effect magnitude; however, as the indirect effect model has a higher R square value, the inclusion of a mediating variable made the model more effective.

This study contributes to extending the existing knowledge of the academicians about the relationship theory of leadership, AI implementation in organizations, AI association with leadership and AI impact on employee engagement. The author extends the theoretical understanding by showing that more integration of AI-supported leadership could enable organizations to enhance employee experience and motivate them to be engaged. Despite its relevance, due to the limited sample size, focus on a specific geographic area (Delhi NCR) and the constraint of only using quantitative analysis, the findings open the scope for future research in the form of qualitative and longitudinal studies to identify AI-supported leadership roles.

The study findings are beneficial majorly for organizations to provide them with more in-depth information about the role of AI and leadership style in influencing employee engagement. The identified linkage enables the managers of the company to design more employee-tailored strategies for targeting their engagement level and enhancing the level of productivity of employees. Moreover, AI-supported leadership helps raise the productivity of employees by amplifying their intelligence without making technology a replacement for human resources and also reducing the turnover rate of employees due to the derivation of more satisfaction from existing jobs. Thus, given the economic benefit and societal benefits, the study is relevant.

The existing studies focused on the direct linkage between AI and employee engagement or including artificial intelligence as a mediating variable. The role of leadership is not evaluated. The leadership enables supporting the easy integration of AI in the organization; therefore, it has an important role in driving employee engagement. This study identifies the contribution of leadership in organizations by providing the means of enhancing employee satisfaction without hampering the social identity of the company due to the integration of AI.

In 2023, the New England Journal of Entrepreneurship (NEJE) reached its 25th anniversary. To commemorate this major milestone as well as entrepreneurship’s growth as an academic field, the study employs bibliometric methods to provide key trends and research suggestions for entrepreneurship scholars using all original research published in the journal.

The authors perform two predominant bibliometric techniques, performance analysis and science mapping, using all 251 articles published by NEJE from 1998 to 2022.

The authors find that the impact of entrepreneurship research published at NEJE is growing consistently and that the challenge of the future will be to maintain this growth in tandem with greater publication productivity. The authors also find that although most contributions come from authors affiliated with institutions in the USA, there is a global representation from authors who have published in NEJE. Further, the authors found that the major entrepreneurship research themes of articles published in NEJE revolve around general entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial behavior, gender, technology, entrepreneurship education, innovation and value creation and sustainability.

The analysis is restricted to articles published in NEJE and therefore may not be representative of the entrepreneurship field. However, it can serve as a useful resource, particularly for prospective NEJE authors, to gain empirical insights about entrepreneurship research trends and rising topics of interest.

The authors’ work represents the first effort to synthesize research published in NEJE through bibliometric techniques and offers insights about important trends and themes in this rising outlet of the entrepreneurship field.

For additive manufacturing (AM) through laser-based powder bed fusion of polymers (PBF-LB/P), accurate characterization of powder flowability is vital for achieving high-quality parts. However, accurately characterizing feedstock flowability presents challenges because of a lack of consensus on which tests to perform and the diverse forces and mechanisms involved. This study aims to undertake a thorough investigation into the flowability of eight feedstock materials for PBF-LB/P at different temperatures using various techniques.

For ambient temperature assessments, established metrics such as avalanche angle and Hausner ratio, along with the approximated flow function coefficient (FFC_app), are used. The study then focuses on the influence of elevated temperatures representative of in-process conditions. FFC_app and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) are performed and analyzed, followed by a correlation analysis as a holistic approach to identify key aspects for flowability. Furthermore, two feedstock materials are compared with a previous study to connect the present findings to PBF-LB/P processing.

The study revealed intrinsic material properties such as mechanical softening near the melting point to become significant. This partially explains why certain powders with poor ambient temperature flowability are consistently demonstrated to produce high-quality parts. FFC_app and thermal characterization through DSC are identified as critical metrics for optimizing feedstock material characteristics across temperature ranges.

Previous studies emphasized specific characterizations of feedstock material at ambient temperature, presented a limited materials selection or focused on metrics such as shape factors. In contrast, this study addresses a partially understood aspect by examining the critical role of temperature in governing feedstock material flowability. It advocates for the inclusion of temperature variables in flowability analyses to closely resemble the PBF-LB/P process, which can be applied to material design, selection and process optimization.

This study aimed at exploring to what extent social media has educated and shaped public opinion regarding cash waqf. This research comprehensively analyzed the social media content to find the most discussed topic and highlighted the trends in cash waqf literacy.

Twenty-nine videos discussing cash waqf in Indonesia from the YouTube platform were analyzed using NVivo R1 with a content analysis approach.

The research findings revealed that YouTube videos addressing cash waqf were categorized into four distinct clusters: government, ulama/influencers/professionals, nadzir (waqf manager) and TV stations, with the government cluster producing a higher number of videos (n = 11) than the other clusters. The findings also highlighted the limited involvement of nadzir in educating the public about cash waqf, as evidenced by a smaller number of videos (n = 5). Among these videos, the most frequently discussed topics included the utilization of cash waqf (n = 20), promotion of cash waqf (n = 14) and risk management (n = 13). Negative sentiment (n = 262) was observed to exceed positive sentiment (n = 107).

The findings of this study contribute to the fundraising aspect of cash waqf because the inclusivity of digital content in cash waqf campaigns is crucial to raise awareness of the public. In addition, these findings may help waqf managers (nadzir) assess the extent of educational content about cash waqf on YouTube and the public’s response to this content.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the social media content, particularly from YouTube platforms, and public sentiment against cash waqf.