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Consumer engagement has become a critical component to many brands' relationship and promotional efforts. Empirical studies have documented the psychological elements that can drive consumers to engage with brands. However, there is a knowledge gap regarding how consumer engagement is influenced by the social environment consumers are embedded in. Taking an egocentric network approach, this study explores the social network factors that affect different dimensions of consumers' online engagement behaviors with a brand.

An online survey with an egocentric network design was employed, and 263 completed responses were collected from college students in US. The dimensionality of consumer engagement was validated using exploratory factor analysis. The hypotheses were tested through three sets of hierarchical regression models.

The results suggest that consumer engagement with a brand was partially shaped by the attributes of consumers' brand discussion networks that emerge from their conversations about a brand with others in everyday life. Specifically, the size, heterogeneity, and density to consumers' discussion networks were associated with certain engagement behaviors.

This study introduces a novel type of network method known as egocentric network analysis to explore and investigate the social network antecedents to consumer engagement behavior. It advances the conception of consumer engagement as a dynamic process influencing and is influenced by consumers' social interactions rather than merely a product of their psychological mechanisms. The study contributes to a social network approach to examining and conceptualizing consumer engagement.

As one of the earliest high-level programming languages, Fortran with easy accessibility and computational efficiency is widely used in the engineering field. The purpose of this paper is to present a Fortran implementation of isogeometric analysis (IGA) for thin plate problems.

IGA based on non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) offers exact geometries and is more accurate than finite element analysis (FEA). Unlike the basis functions in FEA, NURBS basis functions are non-interpolated. Hence, the penalty method is used to enforce boundary conditions.

Several thin plate examples based on the Kirchhoff-Love theory were illustrated to demonstrate the accuracy of the implementation in contrast with analytical solutions, and the efficiency was validated in comparison with another open method.

A Fortran implementation of NURBS-based IGA was developed to solve Kirchhoff-Love plate problems. It easily obtained high-continuity basis functions, which are necessary for Kirchhoff formulation. In comparison with theoretical solutions, the numerical examples demonstrated higher accuracy and faster convergence of the Fortran implementation. The Fortran implementation can well solve the time-consuming problem, and it was validated by the time-consumption comparison with the Matlab implementation. Due to the non-interpolation of NURBS, the penalty method was used to impose boundary conditions. A suggestion of the selection of penalty coefficients was given.

This paper aims to optimize the charging schedule for battery electric buses (BEBs) to minimize the charging cost considering the time-of-use electricity price.

The BEBs charging schedule optimization problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model. The objective is to minimize the total charging cost of the BEB fleet. The charge decision of each BEB at the end of each trip is to be determined. Two types of constraints are adopted to ensure that the charging schedule meets the operational requirements of the BEB fleet and that the number of charging piles can meet the demand of the charging schedule.

This paper conducts numerical cases to validate the effect of the proposed model based on the actual timetable and charging data of a bus line. The results show that the total charge cost with the optimized charging schedule is 15.56% lower than the actual total charge cost under given conditions. The results also suggest that increasing the number of charging piles can reduce the charging cost to some extent, which can provide a reference for planning the number of charging piles.

Considering time-of-use electricity price in the BEBs charging schedule will not only reduce the operation cost of electric transit but also make the best use of electricity resources.

Drawing on work from home (WFH), job demand-control and street-level bureaucracy literature streams, this paper specifically focuses on the emerging trend of WFH for public sector employees in a developing country context of Egypt.

The empirical sample comprises focus group discussions with a total of 40 public sector employees in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used on focus group discussion transcripts to bring out main themes linked to this topic.

Our findings show that employee (marginal discretion power, pharaonism, corruption), citizen (unfamiliarity with digital services) and country (lack of proper info-structure, overstaffing in the public sector)- level challenges hinder and/or slow down the potential for WFH in Egyptian public sector.

A major implication of our paper relates to highlighting the criticality of e-governance and WFH for public sector employees, as well as highlighting multilevel challenges associated with those. At the same time, socio-economic and political consequences of offering such options need to be considered in a country like Egypt where most public organisations are overstaffed, and those employees lack modern day employability skills. Hence, there needs to be an open debate in countries such as Egypt on the consequences of e-governance and WFH and whether it may facilitate delivering citizen services digitally. Also, high power distance culture plays a role in this context, and any change cannot be successful unless that specific aspect is confronted.

This study contributes to the emerging WFH literature by being one of the pioneering studies to offer a multilevel (micro, meso and macro) assessment of this phenomenon in the under-researched fragile developing country’s context.

This study aims to answer the following question: Why might home-based work duties be perceived by female academics as extreme?

We employed a qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews with 33 female academics from three public universities selected from amongst 26 public institutions of higher education in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used to determine the main ideas in the transcripts.

We find that the sudden implementation of home-based work makes the academic duties of female academics extreme. Moreover, the following four factors help explain the extremity/intensity of the home-based work of female academics: mental and physical fatigue resulting from WFH, the inability to adequately meet family commitments when working from home (WFH), poor resources for home-based work and reduced ability to focus on the obstacles facing them in their academic career.

This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resources management and higher education in which empirical studies on female academics WFH and extreme academic duties have been limited so far.

To better understand employees’ preferred extent for working from home (WFH) setting that implies physical distance from clients and co-workers and enhanced physical proximity to others at home, this study, relying on job-demands resources (J-DR) theory, aims to investigate the relationships between this preference with both the perceived increase in emotional job demands and the exposure to childcare demands. Thus, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of perceived job difficulty in the relationship between emotional job demands and the preferred extent for WFH, and the moderating role of gender in the relationship between the number of children and the preferred extent for WFH.

A total of 239 employees who began WFH during the pandemic completed an online survey. Structural equation modelling was conducted to analyse the data and test the hypotheses.

As expected, an increase in emotional job demands had a significant negative indirect association with the preferred extent for WFH, through perceived increase in job difficulty. Furthermore, the number of children was negatively related to the preferred extent for WFH among male but not female employees.

The findings provide insights for promoting employees’ preferred extent for WFH.

The study points to a relationship between emotional job demands and employee attitudes towards WFH in terms of increased job difficulty and the preferred extent for WFH. It also points to the need to investigate the interaction between sex and number of children to understand employees’ preferred extent for WFH.

The purpose of this study is to unpack the relationship between employees’ perceptions of organizational politics and their counterproductive work behaviour, by postulating a mediating role of organizational disidentification and a moderating role of perceived external crisis threats to work.

The empirical assessment of the hypotheses relies on survey data collected among employees who work in a large banking organization.

Perceptions that organizational decision-making is marked by self-serving behaviour increase the probability that employees seek to cause harm to their employer, because they feel embarrassed by their organizational membership. This mediating role of organizational disidentification is especially prominent when they ruminate about the negative impact of external crises on their work.

This study details an important danger for employees who feel upset with dysfunctional politics: They psychologically distance themselves from their employer, which then prompts them to formulate counterproductive responses that likely make it more difficult to take on the problem in a credible manner. This detrimental dynamic is particularly risky if an external crisis negatively interferes with their work functioning.

This study adds to prior research by detailing an unexplored but relevant mechanism (organizational disidentification) and moderator (external crisis threats) by which perceived organizational politics translates into enhanced counterproductive work behaviour.

The present research study aims to conduct a thematic literature review of the negative impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on the tourism industry.

The research study is based on a comprehensive review of prior research by various authors on AI and its negative consequences in the tourism industry.

Research indicates that integrating AI technologies in the tourism industry leads to negative consequences. While AI enhances operational efficiency and personalizes customer experiences, it also presents significant challenges, for example, AI replaces labor and the interaction between the tourist and the service provider decreases. New risks are emerging in various areas of tourism that need to be managed to ensure that they do not have negative impacts.

The paper provides a comprehensive review of the negative impacts of AI technologies on the tourism industry, highlighting the need for a balanced approach that integrates human elements with technological advancements. It offers valuable insights into the potential drawbacks of AI, urging stakeholders to consider these challenges when implementing AI-driven solutions in tourism.

This paper aims to review the studies on intersection control with connected and automated vehicles (CAVs).

The most seminal and recent research in this area is reviewed. This study specifically focuses on two categories: CAV trajectory planning and joint intersection and CAV control.

It is found that there is a lack of widely recognized benchmarks in this area, which hinders the validation and demonstration of new studies.

In this review, the authors focus on the methodological approaches taken to empower intersection control with CAVs. The authors hope the present review could shed light on the state-of-the-art methods, research gaps and future research directions.