Search Results (1,610)

Sustainability targets for livestock require decision support that is both scientifically credible and operationally usable on farms. This integrative narrative review synthesizes the broader peer-reviewed literature on digital farming, artificial intelligence and machine learning, simulation modeling, optimization, and digital-twin concepts as applied to sustainable dairy systems, and uses selected peer-reviewed dairy studies from one integrated research program as illustrative worked examples that show how these elements can be connected end-to-end. We organize the synthesis around a data-to-decision pipeline that links data foundations and interoperability, governance and trust, analytics, decision engines, and deployment, comparing model classes by data needs, temporal resolution, interpretability, and deployment maturity. Recurring barriers to impact—weak ground truth, data drift, fragmented identifiers, and misaligned incentives—are highlighted alongside the design principles that address them. The contribution of the review is the transferable pipeline framework, demonstrated through worked examples drawn from one integrated research program; the program’s studies appear repeatedly because they together trace decisions across all pipeline layers, not because they constitute the field. We conclude with a practical roadmap and implementation checklist for designing and scaling decision-intelligence systems with transparent tradeoffs and measurable sustainability outcomes. Full article

This case study examines an encryption failure incident involving the exposure of sensitive personal data within a governmental information system environment. The analysis is based on the well-documented data breach that occurred within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, in which a government employee stored a large dataset containing veterans’ personal information on a portable laptop device that lacked adequate encryption protection. Following the theft of the device from the employee’s residence, the personal records of approximately 26.5 million individuals were placed at risk of unauthorized exposure. Rather than interpreting the incident as an isolated technical failure, this study analyzes it through the Swiss cheese model, proposed by James Reason, and formalizes them as Portable Device Data Exposure Chain (PDDEC), showing that the breach resulted from the alignment of weaknesses across multiple layers of defense. The model is compared with two post-2010 endpoint-loss incidents to provide a limited historical back-test and is positioned against data-lifecycle, defense-in-depth, and Zero Trust approaches. The analysis shows that full-disk encryption is now a baseline control rather than a sufficient or novel solution. Hardware-backed key protection, verified boot, endpoint compliance, data-loss prevention, continuous monitoring, and controls for data in use are also required because encryption can be weakened by poor recovery-key governance, authenticated malware, sleep-state memory exposure, cold-boot attacks, and direct-memory-access attacks. The study contributes a reproducible control-point model for analyzing how sensitive data becomes exposed when it is moved beyond centrally managed environments, while explicitly limiting its generalizability to analytically comparable endpoint-loss scenarios. Full article

Supply chain digitalization has increased the need for reliable systems that support transparency, traceability, trust, and structured interorganizational information exchange. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) remains widely used for standardized business transactions, while blockchain offers decentralized verification, data immutability, and stronger data governance. However, blockchain–EDI integration depends not only on technical compatibility but also on organizational capacity, partner alignment, financial resources, and regulatory preparedness. Existing studies mainly examine blockchain benefits and adoption barriers, with limited attention to readiness assessment before implementation. This study develops an analytical framework for evaluating organizational preparedness for blockchain–EDI integration in supply chains. Five readiness dimensions are identified from the literature: technological, organizational, partner, financial, and regulatory readiness. These dimensions are measured using a 0–5 scoring system, combined into a weighted readiness score, and linked to a logistic function that estimates integration success under different complexity levels. Deterministic simulation, Monte Carlo simulation, and sensitivity analysis are used to examine the model. The results show a nonlinear readiness-success relationship under assumed parameter values: low readiness is associated with limited estimated success, medium readiness forms a transition zone, and high readiness supports more stable estimated outcomes. The framework is positioned as a methodological readiness assessment model rather than an empirically validated predictive system. It provides a basis for future empirical calibration, pilot testing, and validation using organizational implementation data. Full article

This study investigates the integration of Circular Economy (CE) principles within the upstream beverage supply chain in Thailand, contextualized against a widening global circularity gap where macro rates have declined to 6.9% compared to 12.2% in the European Union. Moving beyond a general focus on underexplored stakeholders, this qualitative exploratory design examines the critical role of informal governance mechanisms in emerging markets. The research is grounded in a multi-theoretic framework integrating the Resource-Based View (RBV), Social Exchange Theory (SET), and Resource Dependence Theory (RDT). Thematic analysis was conducted on in-depth interviews with 23 key informants covering 18 core supply chain activities. The analytical results generated a three-tier hierarchical framework, culminating in a single overarching selective theme: Collaborative Upstream Resource Recirculation for Systemic Resilience. The findings reveal that circular supply chain performance is driven by the dynamic interplay between relational governance and internal resource capabilities, explicitly demonstrated by grassroots tactical innovations such as modifying production boilers to run on 100% biomass fuel. Relational trust and culturally embedded mechanisms (e.g., Sanya Jai) function as vital substitutes for formal institutional frameworks, enabling Supply Chain Collaboration (SCC) to drive adaptive practices and achieve system-level circular resilience. Full article

Universities are increasingly expected to contribute not only to teaching and research, but also to public-sector innovation, regional development, and digitally enabled governance. This article examines how higher education institutions organize that contribution by comparing two university-based transfer architectures: Smart-EDU Hub @ SNSPA in Bucharest and the distributed transfer portfolio of RheinMain University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSRM). Using a qualitative comparative case-study design based on the document analysis of internal strategy and regulatory documents, institutional webpages, and European policy frameworks, the study analyzes the mission framing, organizational form, program architecture, trust infra-structure, and scaling logic. The documentary analysis indicates that Smart-EDU Hub is formally presented and institutionally organized as a centralized, branded, mission-led platform that bundles conferences, courses, projects, visiting scholars, and publication channels under a recognizable public-facing identity. HSRM, by contrast, is documented as a distributed transfer portfolio linking transfer strategy, dialogue formats, digitally supported teaching, administrative digitalization, continuing education, and AI support services. The comparison should therefore be read as an analysis of formal and publicly documented transfer architectures, not as an evaluation of actual institutional performance, stakeholder experience, or societal impact. The article contributes to Administrative Sciences by conceptualizing university transfer for smart governance as a public-management and governance-design problem. It develops an analytical hybrid transfer-architecture framework in which a visible hub is combined with distributed specialist nodes, shared quality assurance, and explicit safeguards for ethics, cybersecurity, and trustworthy AI. Full article

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) possess strong relational strengths—such as trust, teamwork, and shared leadership—yet often struggle to translate these capabilities into formal Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosures. This study integrates Relational Leadership Theory with Leaderful Practice (LAP) to propose the Leaderful Strategy Model (LSM), examining how collective, concurrent, collaborative, and compassionate practices interact with digital transformation through a proposed process of ‘digital translation’—the process through which informal relational governance may be codified into formal ESG disclosures supporting Perceived ESG Reporting Effectiveness (PER). Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we examined 97 listed SMEs in Italy (n = 43) and Pakistan (n = 54). Multiple regression analysis reveals context-dependent patterns: leadership-driven digital transformation is a significant, uniform predictor of PER across both contexts (beta Italy = 0.608, beta Pakistan = 0.595, p < 0.001). However, relational leadership directly predicts PER in Italy (beta = 0.375, p < 0.001) but shows no significant direct association in Pakistan (beta = 0.177, p = 0.177). Qualitative interviews contextualize these findings by identifying two distinct, institutionally situated pathways of digital translation: a structured Cautious-Facilitation model in the Italian cases and a Pragmatic-Integration model in the Pakistani cases, where accessible tools such as WhatsApp and Google Sheets enable the capture and coordination of informal sustainability practices. Overall, the findings suggest that digital translation may operate as a complementary process in highly structured institutional contexts, while playing a more central enabling role in environments with weaker formal reporting systems. By comparing two contrasting institutional contexts, this study advances context-sensitive theories of digitalized relational leadership and offers practical implications for SMEs and policymakers designing proportionate sustainability frameworks aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Full article

Public Relations (PR) is the strategic role of communication between an organization or public actor and the publics on whose recognition, trust and consent its operation depends. The field encompasses media relations, internal and employee communication, public affairs and government relations, crisis and reputation management, community relations and corporate social responsibility, investor relations, marketing communications, political communication, digital and platform engagement, and the communication of activist and non-governmental organizations. PR scholarship draws on sociology, political philosophy, organizational studies, rhetoric and media studies to examine how organizations construct, sustain and contest their legitimacy in the public sphere. The dominant theoretical framework of the late twentieth century, the Excellence Theory developed by James Grunig and colleagues, defined PR as the symmetrical management of relationships with strategic publics; the field has since broadened to include relational, dialogic, rhetorical, situational, contingent and critical approaches, alongside frameworks grounded in stakeholder theory, institutional analysis and emerging work on public legitimacy. Contemporary PR operates within a hybrid media environment shaped by digital platforms, algorithmic visibility, generative artificial intelligence and the structural erosion of institutional trust. It is simultaneously a professional industry of significant global economic scale and a contested civic function whose democratic role, ethical foundations and disciplinary boundaries remain the subject of active scholarly debate. Full article

Background/Objectives: Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded within diagnostic imaging workflows, reshaping clinical decision-making, health system governance, and regulatory oversight. While technical advances in radiological AI have accelerated, governance mechanisms have struggled to keep pace with issues of bias, transparency, accountability, and lifecycle oversight. This study examines ethical, regulatory, and implementation challenges in AI-enabled diagnostic imaging, building on prior reviews that have often emphasised technical performance by integrating ethical risk domains with governance responses across the AI lifecycle. Methods: This study presents a PRISMA-ScR-informed systematic survey of 156 sources, including peer-reviewed publications, regulatory documents, policy reports, and professional guidance materials (2018–2025), synthesised through thematic analysis and lifecycle mapping spanning data acquisition, model development, deployment, monitoring, and continuous learning. Results: Drawing on both thematic insights derived from the reviewed literature and established ethical and regulatory frameworks, we propose a literature-derived conceptual ethical-governance framework organised around five pillars: equity and bias mitigation, explainability and transparency, accountability and oversight, privacy-preserving infrastructure, and adaptive regulatory alignment. Although illustrated through the Australian healthcare context, the framework is designed to be transferable to federated and multi-jurisdictional health systems. This review further identifies trust quantification as an underdeveloped but essential dimension of clinical AI governance, emphasising the need to integrate measurable indicators such as calibration, clinician–AI concordance, and patient acceptance into lifecycle-based evaluation. Conclusions: By bridging technical, ethical, and policy perspectives, this review proposes a structured conceptual governance framework to support safe, equitable, and trustworthy AI integration in digital health systems. Full article

The phrase “simply do not divine, that is all there is to it” (bu zhan er yi yi 不占而已矣) attributed to Confucius in the Analects has long puzzled scholars in terms of understanding the Yijing. This study reexamines the proposition through a systematic analysis of the Yijing’s cosmology, moral constraints, and cultivation practices. Drawing on the Yizhuan (Ten Wings) and successive commentaries from Han to Song scholars, the paper argues that divination in the Yijing is founded on a cosmological principle: the Yi matches Heaven and Earth, so the hexagram and line images can mirror the order of the cosmos. However, divination is also governed by three moral constraints: jing 敬 (reverence), fu 孚 (sincerity/trust/correspondence), and zhen 貞 (upright steadfastness), which transform it from a technical operation into a discipline of purifying the heart/mind (xin 心). The core finding is that constant virtue (heng de 恒德) renders formal divination unnecessary: when a person cultivates constancy to the point where every action spontaneously accords with the dao of Heaven, the external tools of yarrow and tortoise are transcended. This state is described as “not divining yet divining” (bu zhan er zhan 不占而占). The Yizhuan’s phrase “Be shen 神 to grasp the ineffable and to illuminate spiritually, it is to be sought in the men (who use it)” (shen er ming zhi, cun hu qi ren 神而明之，存乎其人) captures the internalization process through which the practitioner embodies the cosmic order. The study concludes that Confucius’s remark is not a slogan that transforms divination into philosophy but the Yijing’s own highest teaching: the goal of studying change is to become a person who no longer needs to consult the Yijing, because every step is already in rhythm with Heaven and Earth. This interpretation clarifies the Yijing’s distinctive moral philosophy, which neither negates divination nor reduces it to technique, but points toward a form of self-transcendence where the bridge of divination becomes the ground on which one walks. Full article

Sensor networks increasingly combine exposed sensing nodes, optical communication, photonic hardware, near-sensor inference, and distributed infrastructure monitoring. This changes the security problem from protecting packets alone to establishing device provenance, measurement integrity, link confidentiality and availability, trustworthy inference, physical situational awareness, lifecycle control, and governance. This structured review with documented scoping searches examines security by light: mechanisms in which optical or photonic phenomena directly realize, constrain, compute, or observe a security-relevant function. The review synthesizes screened evidence across photonic roots of trust, visible-light communication and LiFi security, photonic intelligence, reservoir and chaotic photonics, and distributed photonic sensing infrastructure. Searches across arXiv, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and Scopus yielded 228 deduplicated candidate records, of which 187 were retained as core evidence and eight as contextual evidence. To avoid overstating heterogeneous photonic work, retained records were separated into direct security evidence, security-adjacent capability evidence, background/framework evidence, and excluded records. The central result is architectural: light-enabled mechanisms are most defensible when they provide explicit, confidence-rated evidence to conventional security engineering. In this paper, confidence-rated evidence means evidence whose security interpretation is tied to a stated asset, adversary or failure mode, evidence role, validation setting, robustness limits, deployment fit, and reproducibility condition. This avoids treating optical novelty, spatial confinement, analog complexity, or high-dimensional dynamics as assurance by themselves. The paper develops an auditable taxonomy, evidence appraisal rubric, mechanism-family synthesis, integration architecture, maturity analysis, and research agenda for incorporating light-enabled mechanisms into secure sensor-networked systems. Full article

Population aging has made aging in place (AIP) a central goal of sustainable welfare and urban governance, yet older adults’ perceived feasibility of remaining in their current home under conditions of vulnerability remains unevenly distributed. This study conceptualizes AIP intention under anticipated mobility limitation as a stratified condition of social sustainability, asking who expects to remain in the community as a supported and recognized member when mobility declines. Using the 2023 National Survey of Older Koreans (N = 9951), it examines older adults’ stated intention to remain in their current residence under mobility limitation through weighted logistic regression. The results show that this intention is structured most strongly by housing inequality: non-owner tenure reduces the likelihood of intending to remain in place, whereas housing satisfaction increases it. Co-residence with adult children is positively associated with this intention, while activities of daily living limitations are negatively associated with it. Beyond material and health conditions, social participation intention and digital adaptability increase the likelihood of intending to remain in place, whereas age discrimination in public institutions reduces it. Government trust is negatively associated with the intention to remain in place. Because the survey does not directly measure older adults’ awareness, availability, evaluation, or use of alternative residential or care facilities, this association is treated only as a discussion point rather than as an empirically tested mechanism: higher institutional trust may be linked to greater openness to publicly supported alternatives. The findings demonstrate that the perceived feasibility of AIP is not merely an individual preference, but an unevenly distributed possibility shaped by housing security, institutional inclusion, and civic capacity. Sustainable aging policy should integrate housing support, anti-discrimination measures, digital inclusion, and community participation. Full article

Sustainable rural tourism governance in the Global South faces a persistent challenge: enabling genuine community participation in destination management while protecting environmental assets and cultural heritage. This study examines participatory governance practices at Kampung Senyum Homestay, Cibeusi Village, West Java, Indonesia, a community-based tourism (CBT) initiative that has sustained operations for over eight years, despite a 60% failure rate among comparable initiatives. A qualitative case study design was employed, with data collected over six months (November 2022–May 2023) through participant observation (12 days), in-depth interviews with 14 stakeholders, and document analysis. Data were analyzed using Miles et al.’s interactive model and critical discourse analysis. Findings reveal three interrelated participation layers shaping tourism governance outcomes: interpersonal engagement fostering horizontal host–guest relationships (89% of tourists report kinship-based experiences); deliberative governance through musyawarah desa enabling community-led environmental stewardship, including the collective rejection of a proposal to bring 100 tourists monthly to protect waterfall ecosystems; and digital storytelling by youth extending local heritage narratives globally (150 posts, 7.2% engagement rate). The study proposes a ‘layered participation’ model demonstrating that tourism sustainability depends on participatory governance mechanisms that build social trust, integrate traditional ecological knowledge, and balance economic development with environmental conservation and cultural heritage management. The study also critically examines structural inequalities, including gender asymmetries, unequal benefit distribution, and linguistic barriers, that persist within participatory governance structures, offering a contextually grounded governance framework for rural tourism destinations in the Global South. Full article

Tourism destinations operate as multi-actor governance environments in which stakeholders interpret sustainability initiatives differently, reflecting their distinct institutional roles. This study applies a diagnostic system dynamics perspective to examine perception asymmetries among governance actors, tourism and hospitality professionals, and local community members across Greek tourism destinations. Drawing on survey data from 466 respondents, one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) comparisons across four perception domains reveal a consistent pattern: stakeholder evaluations differ significantly for HR sustainability practices (F = 114.60, p < 0.001) and organisational support conditions (F = 21.29, p < 0.001), while remaining broadly aligned in assessments of overall sustainability outcomes (F = 0.15, p = 0.861). Interpreted through causal loop reasoning, this is consistent with divergence at the implementation level alongside shared strategic orientations. This combination may be interpreted as indicative of feedback asymmetry together with alignment in outcomes, and carries implications for coordination and institutional trust. The study positions stakeholder perception analysis within the problem-structuring stage of the system dynamics modelling cycle, showing how observed perception patterns may be used to identify areas warranting subsequent system dynamics modelling. In this way, it advances a diagnostic framework applicable to multi-actor governance contexts beyond tourism. Full article

Youth experiencing homelessness and housing instability (YEH) face disproportionate health risks and structural barriers to health equity, which were intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a community-based participatory research study with 21 adolescents (ages 13–17) and transitional-aged youth (ages 18–26) experiencing homelessness or housing instability in San Diego, California, USA. Between February and July 2023, we conducted six “arts-based engagement sessions” (5 in English, 1 in Spanish) that blended expressive arts and focus group approaches to examine how YEH accessed, evaluated, and applied health information, and how trust and material and structural resource constraints shaped engagement with COVID-19 information and prevention guidance. We analyzed data via applied thematic analysis. Participants described how COVID-19 restrictions and economic disruption amplified pre-existing housing precarity, worsening material conditions and mental health. Participants selectively trusted COVID-19 information based on who provided it, how credible it felt, and whether it aligned with their lived experiences. Community-based providers and, for some, churches and cultural or ancestral knowledge were key information sources. Trust in government and public health messaging was conditional and shaped by perceptions of credibility, coherence, and political motivation. Participants described information overload and rapidly changing guidance as overwhelming and often incompatible with their material realities, leading to disengagement, reliance on intuition, or deprioritization of prevention behaviors. Effective communication during future health emergencies must center trusted relational messengers, align guidance with lived realities, and address the structural conditions that shape whether health information can be meaningfully acted upon. Full article

Smart city mobility is increasingly governed by a techno-solutionist logic that prizes data, automation, and efficiency, often at the expense of public trust, social legitimacy, and lived experience. This article argues that the fate of a mobility transition appears to depend less on the sophistication of the technology than on the pace and posture of change. Building on the CalmMobility framework and on Weiser and Brown’s concept of calm technology, it develops the idea of calm smart mobility—a human-paced, options-first approach in which innovation enters everyday life gradually and with credible alternatives already in place, so that residents are not asked to continuously adapt. The framework’s three pillars (Comprehensiveness; Pacing–Sequencing–Inclusion; Future-Readiness) are mapped onto four recurring challenges of smart mobility (Policy Layering, Affective Mismatch, Governance Silos, and the Future-Readiness Gap) and then used as a descriptive analytical lens to characterize seven documented implementations across economic, spatial, mass-transit, service, and platform interventions and four world regions: the Stockholm congestion charge, the London ULEZ expansion, the Barcelona superblocks, Bogotá’s TransMilenio bus rapid transit and Ciclovía, Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon restoration and bus reform, Helsinki’s Whim Mobility-as-a-Service, and Sidewalk Toronto. Presented through a comparison table, a positioning map, and adoption trajectories rather than rankings, the characterization suggests that the provision of alternatives, the sequencing and pace of change, and the genuineness of co-creation are more closely associated with smooth adoption than the type of instrument deployed. The article is conceptual and framework-building. The cases illustrate and probe the framework instead of validating it, and a testable central hypothesis is specified for future empirical work. Calm smart mobility is offered as a transferable, citizen-centred logic for guiding smart city mobility transitions at a human pace. Full article