With its inherent characteristics of decentralization, immutability, and transparency, blockchain technology presents a promising opportunity to revolutionize the South African food supply chains. Blockchain technology, with its decentralized, immutable, and secure nature, offers solutions to these challenges by improving traceability and accountability across the supply chain. This study investigates the role of blockchain technology in enhancing transparency in the food supply chain among small and medium enterprises in South Africa. SMEs form a critical part of the country's agri-food sector but face challenges such as food fraud, inefficient inventory management, and lack of transparency, which impact food safety and trust. The research adopts a mixed-method approach, utilizing the Technology-Organization-Environment framework and Institutional Theory to explain blockchain adoption among SMEs. The results demonstrate that blockchain-enabled practices, such as smart contracts, records traceability, production tracking, and distribution monitoring, significantly enhance supply chain transparency. The findings highlight blockchain's potential to increase operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and stakeholder trust. This research provides valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners, emphasizing the need for regulatory support and strategic investment in blockchain solutions to promote sustainability and competitiveness in the agri-food sector.

Mobile banking has become very important in today’s life as technological advancements have led bank clients to use banking services. Clients’ attitudes toward mobile banking services are based on their expectations is the background of this research. So, the main objective is to observe the purposeful conduct in mind of clients to adopt mobile banking services. This study also examines the influence of six variables on financial services clients’ desire to utilize mobile banking services, including perceived benefits, perceived ease of use, trust, security, perceived privacy, and technology expertise. Consequently, the goal of this study is to find out the crucial and deciding factors that may influence clients’ willingness to use mobile banking features in Bangladesh as a developing country. The sample shaped for this research is 310 respondents from Bangladesh a developing country. For analytical purposes, SEM has been used to test hypotheses. The results show that in Bangladesh, factors like perceived value, security, and technological aptitude greatly determine whether a customer will utilize mobile banking. Financial institutions have proven to be successful in serving clients through mobile phones. Clients have made good use of mobile banking only to save money, cost, and labor. The research suggests that mobile banking operations must be timely and accurate, the transaction process must be short, interactivity, convenience of usage, and so on. The findings have important implications for bank regulatory authority, management, bankers, and executives who wish to increase mobile banking usage to secure their long-term profitability.

Short-form content has the potential for virality and broad sharing, allowing businesses to reach large audiences in a short period of time. This type of content has transformed traditional marketing approaches, capturing the attention and curiosity of Generation Z, thereby leading to the rise of digital marketing. As Generation Z is the next generation of consumers and their purchasing power increases as they enter the workforce, marketers need to understand the factors influencing their attitudes and purchase intentions. This study aims to explore the relationship between the growing presence of short-form advertising content in corporate marketing strategies and consumer behavioral intentions. To achieve this, the sub-characteristics of short-form content were categorized into expertise, ease of use, and entertainment value, while information reliability was set as a mediating variable. Data was collected through a survey of 256 adults residing in Busan and Gyeongnam, and analyzed using SPSS 28.0. The findings of the study revealed that most sub-characteristics of short-form content advertisements positively influenced both recommendation and purchase intentions. Additionally, information reliability was identified as a significant mediating factor between short-form content and consumer behavioral intentions. These results provide important insights for corporate marketers and advertising professionals, as they offer valuable guidance on how to influence consumer purchase intentions effectively.

Latin America is increasingly contributing to scientific research on leadership, although less than other regions. What are the predominant paradigms on leadership within the scientific community in Mexico? The article reviews doctoral dissertations on leadership from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Anahuac University of Mexico (UA) defended before 2021. The findings highlight that 1) the number of doctoral dissertations has grown from 2016 onwards, especially in educational leadership. 2) In both universities a “functionalist” paradigm prevails, based on the transformational leadership model. 3) Two other leadership paradigms are present, referred to in this article as ‘political’ and ‘humanistic’. 4) These three paradigms have their characteristics and preferences in terms of research methodology, language, and reference authors. 5) The use of a paradigm is associated with the type of faculty rather than the type of university (public or private): in business faculties the functionalist paradigm predominates, in education faculties the humanist paradigm, and in political science or communication faculties the political paradigm. In conclusion, it is recommended to confirm the exploratory result obtained and to promote the dialogue between leadership paradigms.

Research on retailers’ behavioral intention and behavior of using the omnichannel ecommerce solution (OES) used the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model and supplemented the other factors such as seamless supply, omnichannel integration. Research concerns about behavioral intention and behavior of using OES as this is a global trend; OES has become one of the top priorities for businesses to thrive in the rapidly changing market and retain customers; increasingly high standards are being set for digital experiences. Therefore, retailers must quickly adapt to new trends for sustainable development to keep up with the transformation and increase the use of OES. The results show that effort expectation, social influence, hedonic motive, retailers’ capacity, seamlessly connecting have a positive impact on retailers’ behavioral intention and behavior of using OES. Behavioral intention and favorable conditions have a positive impact on behavior of using OES. Meantime, omnichannel integration have a negative impact on behavior of using OES in Vietnam. This research helps managers and OES providers to develop their skills and expertise, and the study results may prove diagnostically useful to the retailers’ behavioral intention and behavior of using OES.

This study uses the UTAUT2 (Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology) model as well as adding other factors such as Platform Usability, User Autonomy to determine the behavioral intention and behavior of online shoppers using e-commerce applications (ECAs) in Vietnam. Using the analysis results from structural equation modeling, it was shown that Social Influence, Use Proficiency, Hedonic Motivation, User Skill, Effort Expectancy positively affect Behavioral Intention. At the same time, Behavioral Intention is negatively affected by Performance Expectancy. Behavioral Intention and Facilitating Conditions are two factors that positively affect Use Behavior. Besides, User Autonomy negatively affects Use Behavior. The research results are an important basis for ECAs providers, managers and stakeholders to apply in assessing the behavioral intentions and behaviors of online shopping customers using ECAs in Vietnam to promote the use of ECAs in online shopping.