A Macroeconomic and Cultural Perspective

1. Abeer Pervaiz[1][1] 2. Mohammad Saud Khan[2][2][⇑][3] 1. 1Libera Universita di Bolzano-Bozen, Italy 2. 2University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark 1. Mohammad Saud Khan, Institute of Marketing and Management, Strategic Organization Design Unit, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, Odense M, 5230, Denmark. Email: mohammadsaud19{at}gmail.com This study aims at understanding entrepreneurial relations between Pakistani and Western entrepreneurs. It emphasizes the concept of national culture and tries to determine how Pakistani entrepreneurs are able to manage relations with their foreign clients in an economic downturn. The qualitative study consists of interviews conducted with various entrepreneurs of Pakistan. Political instability emerged as a major trial that most entrepreneurs faced, which in turn lead to reluctance, reliability, and trust issues among foreign investors. Despite cultural differences and economic challenges, Pakistani entrepreneurs are willing to work hard to maintain their relationships with foreign entrepreneurs. [1]: #aff-1 [2]: #aff-2 [3]: #corresp-

Social Media Big Data Analytics for Demand Forecasting: Development and Case Implementation of an Innovative Framework

Social media big data offers insights that can be used to make predictions of products' future demand and add value to the supply chain performance. The paper presents a framework for improvement of demand forecasting in a supply chain using social media data from Twitter and Facebook. The proposed framework uses sentiment, trend, and word analysis results from social media big data in an extended Bass emotion model along with predictive modelling on historical sales data to predict product demand. The forecasting framework is validated through a case study in a retail supply chain. It is concluded that the proposed framework for forecasting has a positive effect on improving accuracy of demand forecasting in a supply chain

Human–agent team dynamics: a review and future research opportunities

Humans teaming with intelligent autonomous agents is becoming indispensable in work environments. However, human–agent teams pose significant challenges, as team dynamics are complex arising from the task and social aspects of human–agent interactions. To improve our understanding of human–agent team dynamics, in this article, we conduct a systematic literature review. Drawing on Mathieu et al.’s (2019) teamwork model developed for all-human teams, we map the landscape of research to human–agent team dynamics, including structural features, compositional features, mediating mechanisms, and the interplay of the above features and mechanisms. We reveal that the development of human–agent team dynamics is still nascent, with a particular focus on information sharing, trust development, agents’ human likeness behaviors, shared cognitions, situation awareness, and function allocation. Gaps remain in many areas of team dynamics, such as team processes, adaptability, shared leadership, and team diversity. We offer various interdisciplinary pathways to advance research on human–agent teams

Exploring impacts of project leaders’ written expressions in virtual and fluid projects: The role of personality and emotion

This paper aims to tackle challenges of managing projects in highly virtual and fluid contexts, characterized by diversity, dispersion, digital dependence, unstable membership, and dynamic coordination and configuration. We investigate project leaders’ personality and emotion expressed in written expression and examine their impacts on collaboration outcomes. IBM Watson Personality Insights and Tone Analyzer were adopted to assess the leader’s personality and emotion. A computation model to classify collaboration patterns into taskwork-related and teamwork-related communication is under development. We report preliminary findings based on 417 weekly meetings between October 2018 and February 2020 in 8 open-source software teams around WordPress. The research results have the potential to inform researchers and practitioners about what personality profiles and emotions should be considered to foster collaboration in virtual and fluid projects. It is possible to extend the boundary condition of the traits school of leadership for project management in the new context

Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017

A double burden of malnutrition occurs when individuals, household members or communities experience both undernutrition and overweight. Here, we show geospatial estimates of overweight and wasting prevalence among children under 5 years of age in 105 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from 2000 to 2017 and aggregate these to policy-relevant administrative units. Wasting decreased overall across LMICs between 2000 and 2017, from 8.4% (62.3 (55.1–70.8) million) to 6.4% (58.3 (47.6–70.7) million), but is predicted to remain above the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025. Prevalence of overweight increased from 5.2% (30 (22.8–38.5) million) in 2000 to 6.0% (55.5 (44.8–67.9) million) children aged under 5 years in 2017. Areas most affected by double burden of malnutrition were located in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Our estimates provide a new perspective to researchers, policy makers and public health agencies in their efforts to address this global childhood syndemic

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries