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Customer centricity in B2B context:exploring triggers, enablers, and barriers to strategy formulation and implementation
No full textCustomer centricity is recognized for its potential to generate value for both organizations and their customers; however, its formulation and implementation in B2B settings remain complex. This study empirically examines the triggers, enablers, inhibitors, and conditions influencing customer centricity strategy formulation and implementation in B2B organizations. Employing a qualitative multiple case study approach, the research involved 22 in-depth interviews with senior managers, two focus group discussions, participation in customer centricity workshops, and interactions with three expert facilitators. Customer centricity strategy formulation enablers include departmental integration, employees’ perception of customer centricity, collaborative B2B customer relationships, supportive organizational culture, and strategic vision. Barriers were rooted in product-centric mindsets and rigid decision-making systems. Effective implementation relies on leadership support, employee empowerment, and customer voice heterogeneity, while challenges include lack of management commitment and department cohesion. This study contributes to understanding the complexities of customer centricity and provides actionable insights for B2B organizations seeking to adopt customer-focused strategies
Noncanonical genetic markers resolve the pre-GOE emergence of aerobic bacteria in Earth’s history
No full textThe transition from anaerobic to aerobic life was a pivotal adaptation in Earth’s history, yet the timing and genomic drivers remain poorly resolved. Traditional approaches relying on oxygen-utilizing genes need improvement for obligate anaerobes and fragmentary environmental genomes, where gene absence may reflect poor assembly rather than phenotype. We developed a machine learning model (GBDT40-LR) to predict microbial oxygen requirements using 40 broadly conserved genes, 35 without direct oxygen roles. This approach overcomes incompleteness biases in environmental genomes. Applied to 80,787 bacterial genomes [including metagenome-derived assemblies (MAGs)], the model classified 42,014 aerobes and 38,775 anaerobes, enabling large-scale ancestral reconstruction. Molecular clock dating indicates an emergence of aerobic bacterium prior to the Great Oxidation Event (GOE, 2.5 to 2.3 Ga), likely around ~2.7 Ga. Aerobic lineages subsequently diversified during the GOE and Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event (NOE, 0.8 to 0.55 Ga), with persistent anaerobe diversity across Earth’s oxygenation. This establishes that aerobic bacteria originated planetary oxygenation, potentially by 200 to 400 My, providing insights into phenotypic evolution and prolonged anaerobe–aerobe coexistence
Hope as a theopolitical virtue:eschatology and end of time politics
No full textThis chapter explores the meaning of hope as a theopolitical virtue in a nihilist era. Within the nihilist horizon, hope as simultaneously a theological and a political virtue is envisioned as equidistant both from arguments that favour a sanitised separation of eschatology from politics and from those that tend to recruit it in the service of earthly, political or technoscientific, utopias. In this context, eschatological hope becomes a type of counter-politics that transforms the very idea of what politics stands for: neither the politics of sovereign or revolutionary violence nor the technoscientific effacement of politics, but rather the counter-politics of happiness, resistance, messianic profanation, and theocratic an-archy. In this perspective, hope as a theopolitical virtue is affirmed within a terrain where politics and theology are no longer separate or juxtaposed discourses and where a certain nihilist take on the theological is always already political, transforming the latter from within
Shaping coral traits:plasticity more than filtering
No full textThe structure of an ecosystem is usually determined by the shape of the organisms that build it, commonly known as ecosystem engineers. Understanding to what extent plasticity and environmental filtering determine variation in the physical structure of ecosystem engineers is necessary to predict how ecosystem structure may change. Here, we explored coral survival and the plasticity of morphological traits that are critical for habitat provision in coral reefs. We conducted a reciprocal clonal transplant experiment in which branching corals from the genera Porites and Acropora were moved to and from a deep and a shallow site within a lagoon in the Maldives. Survival and trait analyses revealed that transplant destination consistently induced the strongest changes, particularly among Acropora spp. The origin of the corals had only marginal effects on some of the traits. We also detected variation in the way individuals from the same species and site differentiate in their shape, showing that traits linked to habitat provision are phenotypically plastic. The results suggest that in the quite common lagoonal conditions studied here, coral phenotypic plasticity plays a stronger role than environmental filtering, in determining the zonation of coral morphologies, and consequently the habitats they provide for other organisms
The role of knowledge brokering in fostering connections between educational research, policy, and practice
No full textThis chapter introduces knowledge brokering as a concept and set of practices focusing on its applications, strengths, and challenges in education. The chapter is divided into five sections. First, we consider the sorts of knowledge it is possible to broker. Next, we focus on the various approaches to brokering knowledge, followed by the actors operating in the knowledge brokering landscape. Then, we consider the competencies that knowledge brokers require in order to tighten connections between research, policy, and practice, before concluding with a summary and recommendations
Negotiating the boundaries of farmerhood:class, race, and identity in the new rural South Africa
No full textFarmers play a veto role in democratization because of their economic standing and their symbolic status as keepers of a conservative rural space. In South Africa, the classification of “farmer” was historically reserved for white land-owners, but democratization promised land reform and rural integration. This paper examines the ways the category of “farmer” has changed with these reforms. Using qualitative interviews with white and Black farmers, the paper finds distinct variation in the levels of integration of the category of “farmer” between white English-speaking and white Afrikaans-speaking farmers. Despite their reputation for liberality, there is less meaningful integration within English-speaking farming communities. Afrikaans-speaking farmers, who have a reputation for conservatism, have higher barriers to entry, but emerging farmers who meet these criteria are more meaningfully integrated into the farming community. These findings elucidate the complex interactions of threat, class, and politics that create rural identity in democratic transitions
Dirty Books 2.1:Quantifying Patterns of Use in Digitized Medieval Manuscripts Using a Pixel Meter: Case Studies
No full textThis article presents a series of case studies applying digital densitometry to 12 fully digitized late-medieval books of hours in order to examine patterns of use-wear across folios. Building on a previously established proof of concept (Dirty Books 2.0), it treats the digital pixel meter as an operational tool and explores how quantitative measurements taken from the digital object can support historical interpretation. By correlating peaks and valleys in area graphs with manuscript contents, the case studies reveal recurring devotional behaviors, including preferences for images, indulgenced texts, particular saints, and specific times of day. The article demonstrates the potential of computational approaches for manuscript studies while also identifying the limits of manual analysis, thereby motivating future work at greater scale
The global afterlives of Joycean classicism:case studies from Argentina and India
No full textJames Joyce’s Ulysses, which is famously structured in line with episodes from Homer’s Odyssey, stands as one of the most globally influential manifestations of Irish classicism to date. The central proposal of this chapter will be that by studying the migration, reception and influence of Joyce’s work (especially Ulysses) across the globe, we find a range of case studies that demonstrate the impact that Joyce’s classicism has had on ‘post-colonial’ literatures. This chapter will begin by defining the terms ‘global afterlife’ and ‘Joycean classicism’, and will then consider two different ‘sites’ of their interaction. Firstly, I will consider the reception of Ulysses in 1920s Argentina, which demonstrates the ways that Joycean classicism was co-opted into the complex culture war that underwrote the literary networks of modernist Buenos Aires, as typified by the rivalry between Jorge Luis Borges and Leopoldo Marechal. Secondly, I will look to the tradition of the Anglophone Indian novel, with Salman Rushdie as one of its major theorists and proponents, looking at how Rushdie values G. V. Desani’s All About H. Hatterr (1948) in his literary criticism and in The Satanic Verses (1988).<br/
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