Search Results (172)

This study discusses the influence of Digital Leadership (DL) on Sustainable Innovation Performance (SIP) in telecommunications companies. In addition to examining the direct effect of Digital Leadership, the study focuses on the mediating roles of Knowledge Sharing (KS) and Employee Engagement (EE). A sample of 412 employees was collected by a simple cross-sectional survey. A partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was used for analyzing results. The study reveals that Digital Leadership directly and positively enhanced Knowledge Sharing but did not lead to a significant direct influence on Employee Engagement and Sustainable Innovation Performance. Moreover, Knowledge Sharing did not significantly influencing Sustainable Innovation Performance, a condition that was the strongest predictor of Sustainable Innovation Performance emerging from Employee Engagement. The mediation analysis shows that neither Knowledge Sharing nor Employee Engagement mediates the relationship between Digital Leadership and Sustainable Innovation Performance. The objective contribution of this study is to shed light on the idea that Digital Leadership and Sustainable Innovation Performance are not directly related but may instead reflect other circumstances or contextual conditions. The research offers practice advice in showing that Employee Engagement benefits organizational sustainable innovation results by urging companies to consider not only Digital Leadership strategies but also alternative strategies that foster employee involvement. Full article

Data classification and grading is an information governance mechanism through which information resources are categorized, assigned responsibilities, linked to differentiated controls, and updated over time. Using China as the main case, this review examines how classification and grading has been operationalized across regulatory, local public data, and sectoral settings, and where its implementation remains incomplete. This study adopts a structured analytical review design, synthesizing academic studies, national laws and regulatory documents, standards and technical guidance, local public data normative documents, and sectoral implementation instruments, with a focused comparison of governance approaches in China, the United States, and the European Union. The review develops a five-dimensional information governance framework covering information stewardship roles, protected information assets and governance concerns, information categorization criteria and risk logics, differentiated information control mechanisms, and assessment and adaptive updating. The findings show that China has rapidly expanded regulatory and sector-specific arrangements for data classification and grading, especially in public data governance and in sectors such as telecommunications, finance, healthcare, and industry. However, significant operationalization gaps remain, including fragmented standards, weak cross-sector interoperability, uneven information stewardship capacity, limited translation of categories into access, handling, sharing, lifecycle, and audit controls, and underdeveloped feedback and updating mechanisms. By repositioning data classification and grading as information governance rather than only regulatory compliance, this review contributes to research on differentiated data management, information stewardship, and adaptive governance practice. Full article

Critical infrastructures are increasingly Internet-connected cyber–physical systems whose recovery after cyber incidents must satisfy safety, timing, regulatory, and interdependency constraints. Yet, the use of large language models (LLMs) for generating recovery plans remains fragmented across cybersecurity, industrial control, digital twins, and AI assurance research. This review synthesizes that emerging field through a structured critical survey of studies on LLMs in incident response, OT/ICS resilience, and cyber–physical recovery, with a focused perspective on grounding, trust, and assurance mechanisms relevant to recovery-plan generation. It develops an architecture-centric taxonomy spanning prompt-only assistants, retrieval-augmented copilots, graph-aware planners, multi-agent systems, and hybrid verification/simulation pipelines; maps realistic applications across energy, water, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, and telecommunications; and organizes limitations into technical, security, governance, and human-factor categories. Based on this synthesis, the paper proposes the Grounded Recovery Planning Stack as a reference architecture and outlines a staged roadmap from human-in-the-loop copilots to bounded orchestration. The main conclusion is that near-term value lies in grounded, auditable, compliance-aware copilots, whereas autonomous recovery execution remains premature without stronger validation, state-aware grounding, sector-specific benchmarks, and formal safeguards. Full article

Despite the growing importance of the Saudi capital market, sectoral-level volatility connectedness within Tadawul remains largely unexplored. This study contributes to the literature by applying the Diebold–Yılmaz framework to examine volatility connectedness across 16 Tadawul sectors over the period January 2017 to December 2024. Total, directional, and net pairwise volatility spillovers are quantified from daily closing prices using a VAR(4) model combined with generalized forecast error variance decomposition. The static analysis reveals a high overall connectedness of 80.49%, indicating that cross-sectoral spillovers account for the majority of volatility fluctuations. Materials, Transportation, and Real Estate Management and Development are identified as the dominant net transmitters of volatility, while Utilities and Telecommunication Services are persistent net receivers. The dynamic analysis shows that sectoral connectedness is highly time-varying, peaking at 93.70% during the COVID-19 period, with additional episodes of elevated spillovers during 2022–2023. The network analysis reveals that the strongest pairwise linkages exist among Materials, Transportation, Real Estate Management and Development, and Banks, forming the core of the spillover network. While block-bootstrap results reinforce the identification of dominant net transmitters and receivers, they reveal substantial uncertainty in the rank-order of intermediate sectors, necessitating a more nuanced interpretation. The results are robust to alternative rolling window sizes and forecast horizons. These findings have important implications for portfolio diversification, sectoral risk monitoring, and macroprudential policy in the Saudi capital market. Full article

The increasing complexity and extended operational lifetimes of modern space infrastructure have significantly intensified the demand for reliable structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. However, the extreme space environment, characterized by radiation exposure, microgravity, ultra-high vacuum, and severe thermal cycling, imposes critical limitations on conventional electrical sensing technologies, leading to reduced measurement accuracy, instability, and long-term degradation. This review presents a comprehensive analysis of fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based sensing technologies as a promising solution for deformation monitoring in space infrastructure. The study investigates the fundamental operating principles of FBG sensors under space conditions and systematically classifies existing FBG-based SHM architectures, including point-based, multiplexed, long-distance, and hybrid sensing systems. Furthermore, the advantages of FBG sensors—such as immunity to electromagnetic interference, passive operation, and high-resolution multipoint sensing—are critically evaluated in comparison with traditional electrical sensors. In addition, key challenges affecting the performance of FBG systems in space environments are analyzed, including radiation-induced wavelength drift, temperature–strain cross-sensitivity, signal attenuation, and long-term stability issues. The paper also highlights recent advances in interrogation techniques and network architectures that enable reliable in situ and real-time deformation monitoring of space structures. The results demonstrate that FBG-based sensing systems provide a scalable and robust framework for SHM in extreme environments while also revealing existing limitations and open research challenges. This work establishes a structured foundation for the development of next-generation intelligent monitoring systems for space infrastructure. Full article

The increasing amount of untreated electronic waste, particularly in the telecommunications sector, is having a negative impact on the environment, not only by increasing the production of greenhouse gases, but also by reducing the availability of resources such as metals. At the same time, these metals are increasingly in demand to meet the manufacturing needs of new technologies. One solution is to recover metals by recycling end-of-life electronic boards. However, current processes are often implemented by large companies but are not suitable for small organizations or those with fewer resources, thus limiting their participation in local electronic waste management. Based on laboratory-scale analyses, this project compares the metal concentration results of three pre-treatments that could be suitable for smaller organizations: magnetic separation, chemical pre-treatment with sodium hydroxide, and centrifugation. The proposed preparation step, after the shredding of telecom electronic boards down to a particle diameter of less than 1 mm, is two-stage centrifugation. This pre-treatment enables metals to be concentrated efficiently and safely prior to hydrometallurgical processing. Full article

The UK telecommunications sector’s 5G rollout is projected to consume 2.1% of national electricity by 2030, raising urgent sustainability concerns. This study empirically investigates, under controlled laboratory conditions, the energy performance and cost characteristics of two private 5G architectures—Vodafone’s Mobile Private Network (MPN) and an Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) via BubbleRAN—and contextualises them against public network references and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Two complementary dimensions of energy performance are assessed: absolute power consumption (Watts), reflecting total system draw regardless of throughput; and throughput efficiency (Mbps/W), capturing useful data delivered per unit of energy. In terms of absolute power, O-RAN consumes less (460 W active, 378 W idle) than MPN (645 W active, 620 W idle). In terms of throughput efficiency, MPN delivers 1.45 Mbps/W versus O-RAN’s 0.44 Mbps/W under these specific controlled, single-cell conditions, a difference that reflects the tested hardware configurations (n77 vs. n78 band; 936 Mbps vs. 202 Mbps throughput; 2 × 2 vs. 4 × 4 MIMO) as much as any intrinsic architectural distinction. Both architectures offer substantially lower annual energy costs (£1060–£1486) compared to public micro-cells (£1991–£2666), representing 44–60% savings. Session continuity was 100% across all controlled trials; this reflects short-term laboratory conditions and should not be extrapolated to a long-term network availability guarantee without extended field validation. These results are configuration-specific preliminary indicators; the relative efficiency advantage of each architecture is expected to vary with load, band, and deployment scale. By 2030, UK 5G network operations are projected to generate 795,347–1,260,532 tonnes of CO₂ annually across low-to-high demand scenarios; private deployment, by reducing site proliferation 15–33%, could displace a meaningful share of this footprint. These findings support SDGs 4, 8, 9, 12, and 13. Hybrid O-RAN–MPN pilots are recommended to maximise sustainability gains while advancing social equity and net-zero targets. Full article

This study assesses the elasticity between integrated media performance and corporate reputation by examining the relationship between Media Output Score (MOS) and RepScore™ in the Portuguese telecommunications sector (Altice/MEO, NOS, and Vodafone) between 2021 and 2023. Adopting a longitudinal observational design, the analysis compares inter-annual variation in communication output with corresponding changes in stakeholder-based reputation. Media performance is operationalized through MOS as a composite indicator of visibility, favorability, readership, targeting, and social amplification, while corporate reputation is measured using third-party RepScore™ data. The findings indicate directional alignment between media output and corporate reputation; however, the magnitude of reputational adjustment appears substantially lower than the amplitude of media volatility. Across heterogeneous crisis contexts, including cybersecurity incidents and governance-related events, reputational scores exhibit incremental and comparatively stable evolution despite pronounced fluctuations in media performance. These results suggest that the relationship between media output and corporate reputation is characterized by constrained responsiveness at the annual level, consistent with a stock–flow interpretation in which communication signals operate as high-variance flows and reputation evolves as a path-dependent stock. By empirically illustrating this asymmetry, the study contributes to media influence research by identifying a structural boundary condition in the translation of media exposure into stakeholder evaluation. The findings further clarify the analytical distinction between output-level communication metrics and outcome-level reputational constructs in digital media environments. Full article

This study aims to systematically review how artificial intelligence (AI) is being adopted by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Latin America to improve resilience and support sustainable practices in uncertain business environments. Based on the PRISMA protocol, fourteen peer-reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2025 were analyzed. The results identify significant barriers such as lack of adoption, including insufficient technological infrastructure, limited specialized talent, and budgetary constraints. Despite these obstacles, AI is increasingly used to automate processes and enhance predictive decision-making. While most applications remain concentrated in logistics, manufacturing, and telecommunications, their potential to improve efficiency and competitiveness is evident. The review also identifies the absence of robust regulatory frameworks as a critical limitation, particularly regarding ethical issues such as data privacy and algorithmic transparency. Although these aspects are not extensively covered in the reviewed literature, they represent important gaps for future research. In conclusion, the responsible adoption of AI in SMEs can contribute to business performance and sustainability goals, provided that appropriate public policies and sectoral strategies are implemented. Full article

Intense technological advancements and market liberalization have intensified competition in the telecommunication industry, challenging established operators to innovate continuously. This study investigates how transformational leadership drives creativity and innovation and, consequently, organizational performance, focusing on its four dimensions: inspirational motivation, idealized influence, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Data were collected from 314 executives and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results indicate that inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation significantly enhance creativity and innovation, whereas idealized influence shows no direct effect. Creativity and innovation further mediate the relationships of inspirational motivation and individualized consideration with organizational performance, highlighting their critical role in translating leadership behaviors into tangible performance outcomes. The findings advance theoretical understanding by clarifying the pathways through which transformational leadership fosters innovation and creative engagement. Practically, the study provides actionable insights for organizational leaders to cultivate a culture of creativity and innovation to sustain competitive advantage, and informs policymakers and regulators in supporting organizational performance and sectoral development. Full article

The present study examines the physicochemical degradation and elemental contamination of marine distillate diesel fuels, which were stored in land-based tanks in operational conditions. Forty-one (41) samples, in compliance with ELOT ISO 8217:2024 were analyzed for crucial physicochemical properties. Stepwise regression identified magnesium (Mg) (positive) and chromium (Cr) (negative) as significant viscosity predictors (R² = 0.269, p = 0.003, VIF < 2), while calcium (Ca), Phosphorus (P), zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), lead (Pb) and Ferrous (Fe) were excluded due to multicollinearity. Strong correlations (r > 0.85) between element pairs (Cu-Pb) (r = 0.996), Ca-Zn (r = 0.897), and P-Ca (r = 0.888) indicate common sources from lubricant additives (ZDDP) and brass corrosion, with individual correlations recorded for Ca (showing r = 0.679, p < 0.001), P (r = 0.722, p < 0.001), and Zn (r = 0.595, p < 0.001). The results revealed that fuels stored in carbon steel tanks under high-humidity conditions for over six (6) months recorded higher metal loads than those in stainless steel tanks with regular periodic supply. The FAME content in the studied samples ranged from 6.7 to 7.1% v/v and showed no significant correlation with degradation indicators (p > 0.05). The narrow FAME range examined precludes definitive conclusions regarding specific biodiesel effects. The threshold of 0.2 mg/kg, as set by manufacturers’ guidelines to protect injectors, was exceeded in the coastal carbon steel tank samples with eight (8) months of storage under high-humidity conditions and in the coastal carbon steel tank samples with nine (9) months of storage under high-humidity conditions examined. The current study offers a systematic correlation between viscosity and elemental contamination for marine distillate fuels under operational storage conditions regarding real-world samples. Full article

Artificial intelligence (AI) marketing technologies are reshaping customer engagement in service sectors, yet their performance within integrated digital ecosystems remains poorly understood. Existing research often examines AI tools in isolation, overlooking how the holistic quality of the virtual customer experience (VCE) shapes their impact on consumer decisions, particularly in intangible service contexts such as telecommunications. This study addresses this gap by investigating the influence of four AI technologies—chatbots, dynamic pricing, voice search, and visual search—on purchasing decisions, with VCE tested as a critical moderating mechanism. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and survey data from 487 telecommunications customers in Saudi Arabia, the findings confirm significant positive direct effects for all four AI tools. Moreover, the VCE significantly amplifies these individual relationships and further strengthens their combined contribution to decision quality, enabling the model to explain 71.2% of the variance in purchasing decisions. The results indicate that competitive advantage in AI-enabled service markets depends not on deploying isolated technologies, but on orchestrating a coherent, high-quality virtual experience ecosystem. By integrating the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) framework, this study advances the theoretical understanding of how AI and experience design jointly enhance digital decision-making. Practically, it underscores the need for managers to prioritize integrated VCE design to drive sustainable consumption and strengthen customer loyalty in increasingly digital service environments. Full article

Big data analytics (BDA) has emerged as a crucial strategic asset for organizations aiming to enhance their sustainable company performance; nevertheless, empirical information elucidating the correlation between analytics and sustainability results is scarce, especially in developing nations. This study examines the influence of big data analytics (BDA) on sustainable firm performance (SFP) within the Libyan telecommunications sector, focusing on the mediating roles of organizational learning (OL) and process-oriented dynamic capabilities (PODCs), utilizing dynamic capability and organizational learning theories. A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was utilized. A systematic questionnaire was used to collect data from personnel at five different managerial and functional levels in the Libyan telecoms sector. There were 354 valid replies from a group of 5400 professionals who worked in the managerial, technical, and strategic areas. We used Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with Smart PLS 4.0 to look at the proposed research model. We used measurement scales from previous investigations. The findings demonstrate that BDA exerts a positive and statistically significant influence on SFP. Nonetheless, this direct effect is quite minor when juxtaposed with the indirect effects conveyed by OL and PODCs. Both organizational learning and process-oriented dynamic capabilities significantly and partially mediate the relationship between big data analytics (BDA) and sustainable performance. This shows that analytics-driven sustainability outcomes depend heavily on a company’s ability to learn from data and change how it does things. This study enhances the Business and Management literature by elucidating the inadequacy of analytics investments in producing robust sustainability outcomes. It emphasizes the essential function of supplementary organizational capabilities in converting data-driven insights into enduring economic, environmental, and social value. From a practical standpoint, the findings indicate that managers and policymakers in developing economies ought to prioritize learning systems and adaptive process capabilities in conjunction with digital investments to fully harness the sustainability potential of big data analytics. Full article

Frugal innovation is an important area of academic research for organizations seeking to create value with limited resources. However, one important theoretical issue remains unclear: the available literature does not clarify how environmental orientations produce frugal innovation outcomes or how leadership capabilities determine this relationship within the resource-based view. Specifically, the processes by which both external and internal environmental orientations contribute to frugal innovation in resource-constrained environments, and the way transformational leadership is viewed as an intangible strategic resource, are not developed in theory. Therefore, the objective of this study is to explain the importance of frugal innovation in telecom companies in Saudi Arabia and to examine its theoretical link to the resource-based view. Furthermore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between environmental orientation and frugal innovation. Environmental orientation is estimated using both internal and external orientations. Furthermore, this study examines the moderating role of transformational leadership in the relationship between external and internal environmental orientation and frugal innovation in telecom companies in Saudi Arabia. For the empirical analysis, data were collected via a well-developed questionnaire sent to employees of three leading telecom companies: Zain, Mobily, and Saudi Telecom Company (STC). The sample size consisted of 436 employees. Furthermore, SmartPLS 4 software was used for PLS-SEM modeling to test hypotheses and assess model validity. After the data analysis, it was found that external environmental orientation has a positive and significant relationship with frugal innovation, and internal environmental orientation also shows a positive relationship. Furthermore, it was found that transformational leadership positively moderates the relationship between external and internal environmental orientations with frugal innovation in the telecommunications company. Furthermore, this study concluded that the telecommunications sector makes a significant contribution to economic development and that executives’ transformational leadership skills are an important moderator in analyzing environmental orientation and in enhancing employees’ abilities to utilize limited resources to achieve maximum benefits. This study is highly relevant to policymakers and researchers in the context of frugal innovation, in support of the organization’s objective. Full article

Connectivity has become integral to various application domains, with the automotive sector as a prime example. Advances in electronics, computing, and telecommunications have driven the evolution of the connected car ecosystem, transforming it into a data-rich environment that enhances road safety, efficiency, and overall mobility. However, the success of this ecosystem depends on seamless, reliable, and resilient communications. We identify key challenges that may affect communications in the connected car environment and discuss solutions that enhance resiliency and robustness. Finally, we propose a multi-layered network architecture that will enhance communication resilience in the connected car ecosystem. Full article