Study on Chinese Substantive Examination Standard on Concentration of Undertakings from An International Perspective

The role that communication plays in social organization and processes of organizing has received considerable scholarly attention from multiple disciplines over several decades. This paper provides a review of the diverse literature that has sought to contribute to the understanding of communication and its implication for management and organization studies. An analysis of the SCOPUS database for the period 1980-2022 enabled us to cluster reference material and identify five perspectives which emerge from a review of the literature: communication as transfer, discourse, conversation (analysis), narrative, and Communicative Constitution of Organizations. These categories are not intended to be exhaustive, but they do provide a useful critical heuristic for navigating a field of study that might otherwise appear overwhelming. To map the terrain’s theoretical underpinnings, our study also adopted a problematizing approach to the review which revealed various conspicuous conceptual and empirical absences at a ‘field level’ which merit further attention. The paper offers provocations and suggestions that we expect will inform future studies of organizational communication. Possibilities for developing the field include paying attention to: (a) paralinguistic dimensions of communication; (b) communication in relation to actual work practices; (c) monologic communication; and (d) organizational communication in non-Western contexts.

Importance and popularity of the concept of flexibility in the context of work is only matched by its lack of clarity. While it is clearly on the upward trajectory, both as an organizational practice and as a topic for discussions on academic and practitioner fora, it is yet riddled with paradoxes, used to denote different meanings and practices, and therefore confusion as regards flexibility at work is never far away. This entry intends to present the practical importance of flexibility at work, while also demonstrating the complex nature of discussions in which it is imbued and the divergent practices which it is used to designate. It also attempts to provide a critical reflection on the potential trajectory which could lead to alleviating the paradigmatic fractures between different flexibility clusters towards supporting a more seamless practical application and more coherent intellectual environment for exploring it.

The chapter sets out a new theory, underpinning philosophy, and practical approach to decision-making under uncertainty through use of the tool scenario planning. The new approach is based on an alternative to the presently mainstream understanding of rational decision-making based on Rational Choice Theory. The outlined alternative is a combination of frame-sensitive reasoning and if-then conditional prospection. The implications for scenario planning of this alternative understanding of rationality are explored in detail.

The clothing, footwear, and household textiles sectors play a significant role, providing employment opportunities on a global scale. However, they are also associated with a considerable consumption of natural resources, leading to high levels of water pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change. The carbon footprint (CF) of textiles depends generally on fabric types and production processes. Natural fibers such as cotton, wool, and silk, generally have a lower CF when compared to synthetic fabrics such as polyester and nylon, requiring more energy and chemicals during production. In addition, fabrics manufactured through eco-friendly methods, such as closed-loop systems and sustainable production processes, have a significantly lower CF than those produced using conventional means. Accordingly, there is a perceived need for comprehensive studies that investigate the environmental and climate implications of the textile sector. Considering these concerns, a study was undertaken on the topic, encompassing a literature review and data collection so as to present an overview of the environmental impacts and CF associated with the textile sector. The results from the research show that the resource consumption associated with the textile sector, particularly its CF, demands urgent action in order to reduce its impacts. Also, actionable measures are needed so as to reduce the CF of the textile industry. These are described in the paper, along with the obstacles that need to be overcome so as not only to reduce the CF of this sector, but also to pursue the objectives outlined in the sustainable development goals.

This article explores the influence of cultural constraints on entrepreneurial motivations for women entrepreneurs of the Muslim faith. A qualitative approach is taken by drawing from extraordinarily rare interviews with 17 women entrepreneurs who run businesses in the open market in the Northwest region of Pakistan. Push and pull factors were examined in the context of cultural constraints using the lens of post-materialism and dissatisfaction theories. The findings reveal that some entrepreneurs are pulled into entrepreneurship to give something back to local youths and to improve their life chances and/or reduce hardship. In relation to the push factors, some entrepreneurs decided to do something about the harsh circumstances they found themselves in to demonstrate their agency. All were aware of the cultural constraints around them and are highly motivated to overcome these as role models for future generations and to hopefully achieve parity with male peers. This research contributes to the existing literature by providing new insights to the reader in extending the post-materialism and dissatisfaction theories for women Muslim entrepreneurs in Pakistan. Furthermore, it also demonstrates how cultural constraints related to family issues motivate women in a male-dominated society to become entrepreneurs.

This chapter offers an introductory overview of relevant literature at the intersection of poverty and austerity, seeking to frame this edited collection and its unique interdisciplinary contributions. The chapter traces the evolution of, and interconnections between, poverty and austerity politics, reflecting critically on their increasingly pervasive and enduring impacts on individuals, markets and society. To guide the reader, this introduction provides an overview of how the book is organised and each of its chapters, explaining to students and researchers the theories, methods, policy applications and empirical contexts addressed in the book.

In the realm of food and beverage businesses, inflation poses a significant hurdle as it affects pricing, profitability, and consumer’s purchasing power, setting it apart from other industries. This study proposes a novel approach; co-movement clustering, to predict which items will be inflated together according to historical time-series data. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the proposed approach based on real-world data obtained from the UK Office for National Statistics. The predicted results of the proposed approach were compared against four classical methods (correlation, Euclidean distance, Cosine Similarity, and DTW). According to our experimental results, the accuracy of the proposed approach outperforms the above-mentioned classical methods. Moreover, the accuracy of the proposed approach is higher when an additional filter is applied. Our approach aids hospitality operators in accurately predicting food and beverage inflation, enabling the development of effective strategies to navigate the current challenging business environment in hospitality management. The lack of previous work has explored how time series clustering can be applied to support inflation prediction. This study opens a new research paradigm to the related field and this study can serve as a useful reference for future research in this emerging area. In addition, this study work contributes to the data analytics research stream in hospitality management literature.

This innovative study aims to explore how emotion tone presented in a message influences the judgement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) bots. We established a scenario by using vacation rental introduction as input message to conduct experiments to explore the influences. Our findings suggest that AI bots demonstrate preferences on the input message presented in positive tones rather than input message with negative tones. Our pioneering study can serve as a crucial starting point for future studies, in particular opening up fresh avenues for future research endeavours and engenders discussions and debates concerning the development of recommendation system.

Purpose – This research aims to investigate consumers’ construction of food localness through the politics of belonging in a regional context. Design/methodology/approach – Following a socio-spatial lens and considering the ‘realm of meaning’ of place, this research focuses on local consumers’ lived meanings of ‘local’ food choice, and hence adopts a phenomenological approach to the data collection and analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with residents of the Italian region of Marche. Findings – Drawing on Trudeau’s (2006) politics of belonging, we reveal three interconnected themes which show how local consumers articulate a local food ‘orthodoxy’ and how their discourses and practices draw and maintain a boundary between local and non-local food, whereby local food is considered ‘autochthonous’ of rural space. Thus, our participants construct a local food landscape, conveying rural (vs. urban) meanings through which food acquires ‘localness’ (vs. non-‘localness’) status. Practical implications – Our findings provide considerable scope for food producers, manufacturers and/or marketers to differentiate local food products by enhancing consumers’ direct experience of it in relation to rural space. Thus, enabling local food producers to convey rural (vs. urban) meanings to consumers, who would develop an orthodoxy guiding future choice. Social implications – Our findings enable regional promoters and food policymakers to leverage the symbolic distinctiveness of food autochthony to promote place and encourage consumers to participate in their local food system. Originality/value – By utilising the politics of belonging as an analytical framework, we show that the urban-rural dichotomy – rather than being an obsolete epistemological category – fuels politics of belonging dynamics and that local food consumers socially construct food localness not merely as a romanticisation of rurality, but as a territorial expression of the contemporary local/non-local cultural conflict implied in the politics of belonging. Thus, we advance our theoretical understanding by demonstrating that food ‘becomes’ local and therefore, builds on extant food localness conceptualisations.