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Geopolitical Shockwaves: SME Growth and Resilience in times of Political Instability
No full textThe file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.We investigate the effects of geopolitical risk (GPR) on the growth and survival of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across diverse economic and institutional contexts. Using robust econometric methods and firm-level data across multiple countries, we find that heightened GPR significantly hampers SME growth and increases the likelihood of firm exit. Our results reveal that the adverse effects are particularly pronounced for financially constrained firms, highly innovative enterprises, and domestically owned businesses, highlighting critical firm-level vulnerabilities. Furthermore, gender diversity in firm leadership and workforce composition attenuates the adverse GPR effect, while regional analysis shows that firms in the Middle East & North Africa and Latin America & Caribbean are most susceptible to GPR shocks. Though survival analysis demonstrates a strong, positive relationship between GPR and SME exit risk, our findings also highlight effective mitigation pathways. Specifically, financial, strategic, and operational resilience mechanisms such as high-quality management, international diversification, certification compliance, and diversified financing, significantly enhance SME survival under heightened geopolitical uncertainty
Community detection in attributed networks based on deep attention autoencoder with block diagonal subspace constraint
No full textThe file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Community detection in attributed networks has become a hotspot in contemporary complex network research. It integrates topological structures and attribute features to uncover latent community structures, providing considerable value in practical applications like recommendation systems, social network analysis, and bioinformatics. Although neural network-based community detection methods have achieved decent performance, these methods demonstrate weak learning capabilities for spatial structural features and neglect to consider the clustering distribution in the embedding space. To address this issue, this paper proposes a subspace plugin strategy that utilizes subspace constraints to guide representation vectors to learn the clustering distribution in the embedding space, making it more appropriate for clustering tasks. Additionally, to overcome the challenges of insufficient capture of network spatial features and inadequate extraction of attribute information in subspace clustering for attributed network community detection, an attribute-topology fusion strategy and a subspace autoencoder strategy are devised. These strategies enable the representation vectors to capture network features better and solve the difficulty of extracting attribute information. Experimental results on real and synthetic networks demonstrated that DAEAS has higher accuracy than several state-of-the-art community detection algorithms
The intersection of artificial intelligence and assistive technologies in the diagnosis and intervention of mental health conditions
No full textopen access articleMental health disorders are becoming a major global health concern and pose a significant burden on global healthcare systems. Nearly one billion people suffer from mental disorders, accounting for 13% of the global disease burden and $1 trillion in annual productivity loss. Depression is the leading cause of disability and suicide is the second leading cause of death among young individuals. Economic uncertainty, social isolation, climate change, shifting societal norms, political conflict, and increasing violence are key factors contributing to the high prevalence of mental health issues. In the future, increasing poverty and inequality are likely to worsen this trend, resulting in a greater incidence and burden of mental illness. Therefore, timely diagnosis and intervention are a high priority. Traditional diagnostic and intervention methods, such as self-report questionnaires, clinical interviews, psychotherapy, medication, electroconvulsive therapy, and occupational therapy, have drawbacks including subjectivity, time commitment, and the potential for prolonged treatment. Due to these limitations, advanced approaches are needed to improve diagnostic accuracy and precision and to develop more effective interventions. This review aims to explore and evaluate the applications of Artificial Intelligence in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions. This study provides a thorough analysis of various artificial intelligence-driven techniques and their advancements in the diagnosis of mental health conditions. Artificial intelligence has the potential to greatly improve the accuracy and effectiveness of mental health conditions. Moreover, this work consolidates the research gaps in current techniques and provides research hypotheses on how to overcome the gaps using a proposed 3-tier solution
International perspectives on implementation of system change in family mental health
No full textopen access articleParental mental illness is a major public health issue across the globe with well-known intergenerational impacts on children. There is a wide body of evidence supporting the effectiveness of a range of interventions supporting families, however, their implementation has rarely been sustained across public health systems. Systemic change is an important part of workforce development and known to be crucial to embed and sustain practice, policy and structural initiatives in services for families. While much is known about the barriers to implementing family focused approaches within organisations and systems, less is known about how systems change occurs and what supports systems change to improve outcomes for families. This study uses a Delphi method, with 103 experts from 17 countries participating to identify systems change factors from their own experience and to build consensus about key strategies required across the globe to support systems change in health, education, social welfare and mental health services. The findings identify that systems change can be defined as any workforce, policy, legislation or other mental health promotion strategy that collectively contributes to improving outcomes for parents with mental illness, their children and their families. A systems approach to improve outcomes for families where a parent has a mental illness requires partnerships and collaboration between services and sectors affecting families (mental health, welfare, primary health, education, social care, public health), social and health policy development, and families themselves. Success in system change requires a focus on change at all levels of the system for momentum building, leadership support, the use of relevant data and reporting mechanisms, establishing practice competency and collaborative care, and being able to reflect and adapt to changing conditions and structural barriers. A focus on system change for supporting families where a parent has a mental illness appears to require the combination of many strategies and factors, with international approaches to knowledge sharing imperative to support implementing, resourcing and sustaining change
Parental mental ill-health: experiences of navigating multiple services. a systematic review conducted by learnt and lived experience researchers
No full textopen access articleBackground. Families in which a parent experiences mental ill-health often face complex and evolving challenges, with individual family members’ needs impacting one another across generations. Accessing appropriate support frequently requires the navigation of multiple services and systems, which can be overwhelming for both families and professionals, potentially leading to barriers in care. To address the challenges inherent with navigating complex systems of care it is imperative that the experiences of individuals using these services are understood. The aim of this paper is to review qualitative studies of family members' experiences of accessing multiple services.
Methods. A multidisciplinary research team with both learnt and lived experience of parental mental illness conducted a systematic review using PsycINFO, Academic Search Ultimate, Complementary index, Medline Ultimate, CINAHL, ERIC and Scopus databases. Studies were screened according to predefined inclusion criteria. Quality assessment was undertaken using an expanded version of the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) Qualitative Studies Checklist. Findings were thematically synthesized using a reflexive thematic analysis approach.
Results. While no studies were found that directly addressed the navigation of complex support systems, sixteen papers were identified that explored experiences related to receiving or engaging with multiple services (N = 417). Inhibiting and enabling factors were identified at an individual and systemic level highlighting key considerations for service design and delivery
Conclusion. The limited research in this area indicates a pressing need to understand the experiences of individuals, families and professionals navigating complex and often contradictory systems of care. This review highlights a critical gap in the literature and emphasizes the value of lived experience in research. Future work must centre the voices of all family members to develop coordinated, responsive and effective systems of care. Integrating insights from those directly affected can lead to more family-centred care models, ultimately improving health outcomes and service delivery for all family members
Key Challenges and Success Factors for Scaling Up Upcycling Businesses Across Industries and Countries
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Scheduling a constrained hybrid flowshop using a variable representation cooperative co-evolutionary algorithm
No full textThe file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.The research addresses a hybrid flowshop scheduling problem incorporating worker competency constraints. Unlike most existing studies that assume workers can operate all machines, our work accounts for the absence of certain worker skills. The added constraints substantially increase the problem’s complexity, rendering traditional algorithms inadequate for obtaining feasible solutions. Therefore, a mixed-integer programming model is formulated, and a variable representation cooperative co-evolutionary algorithm (VRCCEA) is designed to achieve makespan minimization. Based on the decomposition idea, we use two populations to address the multi-coupled problem and implement a cooperative mechanism by introducing a solution archive to promote the co-evolution of populations. Given the limitations of a single encoding–decoding strategy, a variable representation mechanism is provided to balance the exploration scale and search efficiency. To prevent the failures of worker assignment, we design a heuristic based on resource constraint matrix (RCM), which conducts a greedy search within the feasible region. For the problem-specific knowledge, a reduced insertion neighborhood and an accelerated evaluation strategy are proposed to swiftly identify the best neighborhood solution. Finally, analytical experiments show the practical value of the algorithmic components and demonstrate that VRCCEA significantly outperforms five advanced metaheuristics
The overlap of anti-Black and anti-protest rhetoric: How far-right political commentators preserve anti-Black racist stereotypes in the context of Black Lives Matter debates
No full textopen access articleResearch has shown that speakers opposing political demonstrations can pathologize protesters campaigning against racial prejudice in order to justify racialized police profiling and brutality. This paper builds on these insights by exploring how right-wing political commentators reinforce the racist stereotype of violent Black people when discussing protests and police brutality in Black Lives Matter (BLM) debates. The dataset includes two debates drawn from Conservative Talk Radio and The Candace Owen Show, where issues concerning anti-Black racism in the United States were discussed—including racialized police brutality and BLM demonstrations. Using discursive and rhetorical psychology, we show how far-right commentators managed their (arguably racist) identities by employing ‘rioter’ categories against the BLM movement. We demonstrate that far-right commentators used anti-protest rhetoric and anti-Black racist tropes to portray BLM activists as uncivilized and violent rioters. Doing so portrayed the BLM movement as using anti-racism as an ulterior motive to enact violence which also downplayed racialized police brutality. This study shows how anti-protest rhetoric and anti-Black stereotypes overlap when right-wing speakers undermine attempts to challenge systemic racism. Black people and protesters are discriminated against in similar ways; both are characterized as violent and uncivilized when they mobilize against structural oppression and inequality
Organising for Circularity: An Empirical Analysis of Project Organising and the Development of Circular Economy Firm Capabilities
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GB-GOV-1–30012.Firms pursue the circular economy (CE) by using projects as organisational forms. However, the transformative role of project organising (PO) in developing circular firm capabilities (FC) remains underexplored. In this study, we examine the effects of PO on the development of critical circular FC in CE‐based firms. We draw on primary data from a survey of 227 project professionals, managers and business owners from CE‐based firms and apply structural equation modelling (SEM) to analyse our data. We find that PO supports the combined development of FC including circular organisational routines (OR), eco‐innovation capabilities (EC), strategic agility (SA) and dynamic capabilities (DC). We also find that the combined effect of these FC positively enhances the environmental and economic performance of the firms. The study advances theoretical understanding by empirically demonstrating the enabling role of PO in developing circular FC and the role of FC in providing superior performance in CE‐based firms. We recommend that managers adopt projects as a deliberate organising form to enhance the FC critical to CE‐based firm performance
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