This week in multidisciplinary research: community radio reporting, sustainability reporting, AI decision support, social media in SMEs, physical literacy, stock forecasting, flood impacts, virtual influencers, and cooperative game theory.
📊 This week at a glance
🌍 African-led research
Community radio journalists in Limpopo, South Africa, face precarious frontline conditions when covering service delivery protests, negotiating safety, ethics, and community expectations on the ground.
This study documents how these journalists practically manage these challenges in one local municipality. It changes the assumption that community radio reporting is straightforward, revealing the complex negotiations required. The implication is that support systems and safety protocols are needed for these journalists. For African scholarship, it highlights the critical role of local media in documenting social unrest and the need for context-specific journalism practices.
Accounting professionals in Morocco adopt sustainability reporting standards as symbolic compliance rather than substantive engagement, driven by micro-foundational factors like motivation and autonomy.
Using self-determination theory, the study explains why meaningful engagement is lacking. It changes the view that adoption is purely institutional, highlighting individual motivations. The implication is that regulators must foster intrinsic motivation for substantive reporting. For African scholarship, it underscores the need to understand local professional contexts in global standard implementation.
National financial sector governance significantly influences the adoption of supranational sustainability reporting standards, with financial regulators playing a distinct role beyond firm-level drivers.
Drawing on neo-institutional theory, the study shows how governance quality affects adoption. It changes the focus from aggregated institutional quality to specific financial regulators. The implication is that strengthening financial governance can promote transparency. For African scholarship, it suggests that regulatory reforms in the financial sector could enhance sustainability reporting.
An explainable framework integrating semantic NLP and PLS-SEM assesses organisational AI illiteracy, helping identify gaps in employees’ ability to critically evaluate AI-generated information.
The study develops a Management Information Systems framework to examine relationships between AI illiteracy and decision support. It changes how organisations can diagnose AI literacy issues. The implication is that targeted training can improve strategic decision-making. For African scholarship, it offers a tool to address AI skill gaps in local organisations.
In developing economies, institutional pressures and technological factors jointly shape SMEs’ social media marketing use, with configurational analysis revealing multiple pathways to adoption.
Integrating institutional theory and UTAUT, the study moves beyond isolated perspectives. It changes the understanding of SME social media adoption by showing combined effects. The implication is that policymakers should consider both institutional support and technological readiness. For African scholarship, it provides insights into how SMEs can leverage social media for growth.
The French version of the Physical Literacy Self-Description questionnaire shows a two-factor structure—perceived confidence and value, and perceived skills competence—among children aged 5–12.
This validation study confirms the questionnaire’s psychometric properties in French-speaking Canadian and French children. It changes the availability of tools for assessing physical literacy in French. The implication is that researchers and educators can reliably measure these constructs. For African scholarship, it highlights the importance of validated instruments for diverse populations.
🔬 Global breakthroughs
ChatGPT can forecast stock price movements, demonstrating return predictability using large language models.
This study shows that LLMs like ChatGPT have predictive power for stock returns. It changes the view that such models are not useful for financial forecasting. The implication is that investors and analysts might incorporate LLM-based predictions. For African scholarship, it opens avenues for using AI in financial markets, though context-specific validation is needed.
Floods significantly and persistently worsen European manufacturing firms’ performance, with total assets deteriorating by about 2% in the year after a flood and up to 5% seven years later.
Using granular flood hazard maps and firm geolocalization, the study quantifies dynamic effects. It changes the understanding of flood impacts by showing long-term damage. The implication is that firms need resilience strategies and policymakers should support recovery. For African scholarship, it underscores the need for similar studies in flood-prone African regions.
Virtual influencers’ impact on consumer engagement is shaped by social tie presence—appearing in photos with humans with whom they seem to interact—according to a multimethod investigation.
The study examines what makes virtual influencer content more or less impactful. It changes the assumption that virtual influencers are uniformly effective. The implication is that marketers should consider social tie presence in campaigns. For African scholarship, it offers insights into digital marketing strategies in emerging markets.
The Shapley value for airport and irrigation games is characterized, with airport games shown to be a subclass of irrigation games defined on rooted trees.
This paper introduces a formal notion of irrigation games and provides a characterization. It changes the theoretical understanding of cost-sharing problems on rooted trees. The implication is that the Shapley value can be applied to a broader class of games. For African scholarship, it contributes to cooperative game theory with potential applications in resource allocation.
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