Sustainable collaborative supply networks in the international clothing industry: a comparative analysis of two retailers

Collaborative supply networks in the international clothing industry are of major economic significance in many countries, particularly in developing economies. The sector has gone through substantial changes in the last decade with the abolition of trade barriers and the increasingly dominant position of major retailers and brand owners in supply networks. The sustainability of clothing supply networks is subject to increasing public scrutiny. In this work, the characteristics and operation of collaborative clothing supply networks have been analyzed. Two contrasting supply networks – one for a major leading brand retailer and one for a major supermarket retailer - are analyzed and compared from a sustainability perspective. The challenges in assessing economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainability at a network level are highlighted. The results show a minimum compliance culture in the supermarket supply network, whereas the leading brand retailer demonstrates a much higher level of proactive and positive sustainability practices and actions across the network. The study highlights the benefits of a strongly collaborative network in helping to facilitate and enhance a sustainability agenda. The implications of the study are discussed for retailers, manufacturers and policy makers, as well as for the governance of collaborative supply networks more generally

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA AND PERCEPTION CREATIONS: A STUDY ABOUT THE STRATEGIC NARRATIVES TO SPREAD CHINESE CULTURAL VALUES THROUGH CHINA RADIO INTERNATIONAL IN SRI LANKA

The research has been conducted to indicate about the China’s main international media in Sri Lanka, “CRI Sinhala Service” The study was aimed to find largely the communication strategies used by CRI Sinhala service to spread China’s culture in Sri Lanka. This was a mix methodological research. The qualitative data collected through 25 interviewees from five major categories such as government officers, private company officers, University academics, journalists and businessmen. Further the data also collected through the CRI Facebook page and CRI website. The quantitative data collected through 300 questionnaires given through social media platforms to Sri Lankans. The research used thematic analysis, content analysis and statistical analysis through SPSS to identify the interesting findings. The research indicated that there are main themes reporting in CRI to spread the China’s culture. Therefore, the main themes indicated as Chinese language, Chinese aesthetics and beauty, Chinese food and Chinese festivals customs and rituals. Each theme has different sub themes as well. There are three main communication strategies indicated to spread Chinese culture. Integrating social media influencer, style repertoire and arrangement and live video reporting. The highest influenced strategy was social media influencer according to the findings

AN INVESTIGATIVE STUDY ON SOURCES OF INFORMATION ABOUT CHINA IN SRI LANKA

This research has been conducted to identify the strategies used by People’s Republic of China to spread the soft diplomacy to the Sri Lankan audience. Hence the study has mainly focused to indicated the sources that the Sri Lankans are getting information from China and the perception creation about China among the Sri Lankans through the strategies they have used. This is a qualitative study and the data has been collected through the semi structured method with the purposive sampling. 20 interviews have been conducted with the people belongs to different categories. The results have been analyzed through the thematic analysis. Thus, the results indicated that, there are five main sources spread the information about China. China as a state used their international media in order to spread their information to Sri Lanka. Thus, CRI Sinhala service, Chinese social media influencers, local media reporting, real life experiences of the people and import / export business people are the sources of the information about China in Sri Lanka. Hence the CRI Sinhala service is more focusing on the Chinese culture. Social media influencers are spreading the news about the Chinese culture, real life, China’s technology and China’s relationship with Sri Lanka mainly. Further, local media reporting about China’s projects in Sri Lanka. Thus, the real-life experiences and the import/export business people share the China’s daily life style. The positive influence about China made by the China’s media and the real-life experiences of Sri Lankans in China while the local media reporting specially the private channels give the negative feeling about China and the import/export businessmen give medium impression about China.  &nbsp

The Impact of Job Involvement on Organisational Commitment with Special Reference to the Branch Managers in Insurance Companies in Sri Lanka

Job involvement is used for increasing employee productivity by enhancing employee participation and commitment. By considering the high turnover ratio, individual sales targets vs. branch sales targets and incentive compensation system, in here an attempt is made to study the impact of job involvement towards organisational commitment in terms of affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment with special reference to the branch managers in insurance companies in Sri Lanka.  The population of the study was the branch managers who are working in the insurance companies in Sri Lanka and hundred branch managers were taken as the sample by using a simple random sampling method. To measure the organisational commitment, Allen and Meyer’s scale was used and to measure the job involvement, ten-item job involvement scale developed by Kanungo was used. The responses for the questionnaire were rated 1-5 with the use of five- point Likert scale, indicating strongly agree to strongly disagree. Data were analysed by using SPSS and data was normality distributed. The reliability was tested with Cronbach’s alpha and accordingly, variables were considered as acceptable in terms of reliability. Descriptive analysis, Pearson correlation analysis and simple regression analysis were used to analyse the collected data. The findings of the study revealed that all the hypotheses developed in this study got significant support and proved that job involvement has a significant positive impact on organisational commitment. Further, the study findings demonstrate that job involvement is a powerful weapon to increase the organisational commitment in terms of affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment in the insurance industry. Therefore, the managers should take a distinct interest to make every effort to increase the level of job involvement by paying more attention to job involvement factors, being sensitive to their employees’ needs, providing new types of training and development to employees, etc. It can be suggested to replicate future research by increasing sample size and adding individualistic characteristics as control variables.  Keywords: Job Involvement, Organisational Commitment, Affective Commitment, Continuance Commitment, Normative Commitmen

The Evolution of the Beauty Industry : A theoretical study exploring the evolution of beauty from ancient Egypt to the present (2024) focusing on the recent changes in technology and sustainability in the beauty industry

This thesis aims to explore the evolution of the beauty industry from Ancient Egypt to the present (2024), focusing on how sustainability and technology influence modern beauty practices. In ancient times, natural ingredients were the primary resources for beauty, but with time everything started to change with the use of new methods and products for beauty. The study identifies what consumers value most in eco-friendly beauty products and the beauty technological features, such as AI, that consumers find most useful. This research helps consumers by highlighting important factors that enable them to make informed and satisfying choices in their beauty routines. The study collected data by surveying 35 participants aged 18-35. It found that 65.7% of young consumers value eco-friendly attributes, such as recyclable packaging and cruelty-free formulations. Additionally, 54.3% of respondents prefer AI-powered personalized skincare recommendations in beauty apps, supporting a shift toward customized, tech-focused beauty solutions. The results show that young consumers like sustainable and tech-based beauty options. These findings suggest that the future of the beauty industry will focus on sustainability and technology, providing valuable insights to help consumers in their choices and help brands develop products that match consumers' needs of today

Field measurements of trace gases and aerosols emitted by peat fires in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, during the 2015 El Nino

Abstract. Peat fires in Southeast Asia have become a major annual source of trace gases and particles to the regional–global atmosphere. The assessment of their influence on atmospheric chemistry, climate, air quality, and health has been uncertain partly due to a lack of field measurements of the smoke characteristics. During the strong 2015 El Niño event we deployed a mobile smoke sampling team in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo and made the first, or rare, field measurements of trace gases, aerosol optical properties, and aerosol mass emissions for authentic peat fires burning at various depths in different peat types. This paper reports the trace gas and aerosol measurements obtained by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, whole air sampling, photoacoustic extinctiometers (405 and 870 nm), and a small subset of the data from analyses of particulate filters. The trace gas measurements provide emission factors (EFs; grams of a compound per kilogram biomass burned) for up to  ∼  90 gases, including CO2, CO, CH4, non-methane hydrocarbons up to C10, 15 oxygenated organic compounds, NH3, HCN, NOx, OCS, HCl, etc. The modified combustion efficiency (MCE) of the smoke sources ranged from 0.693 to 0.835 with an average of 0.772 ± 0.053 (n  =  35), indicating essentially pure smoldering combustion, and the emissions were not initially strongly lofted. The major trace gas emissions by mass (EF as g kg−1) were carbon dioxide (1564 ± 77), carbon monoxide (291 ± 49), methane (9.51 ± 4.74), hydrogen cyanide (5.75 ± 1.60), acetic acid (3.89 ± 1.65), ammonia (2.86 ± 1.00), methanol (2.14 ± 1.22), ethane (1.52 ± 0.66), dihydrogen (1.22 ± 1.01), propylene (1.07 ± 0.53), propane (0.989 ± 0.644), ethylene (0.961 ± 0.528), benzene (0.954 ± 0.394), formaldehyde (0.867 ± 0.479), hydroxyacetone (0.860 ± 0.433), furan (0.772 ± 0.035), acetaldehyde (0.697 ± 0.460), and acetone (0.691 ± 0.356). These field data support significant revision of the EFs for CO2 (−8 %), CH4 (−55 %), NH3 (−86 %), CO (+39 %), and other gases compared with widely used recommendations for tropical peat fires based on a lab study of a single sample published in 2003. BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes) are important air toxics and aerosol precursors and were emitted in total at 1.5 ± 0.6 g kg−1. Formaldehyde is probably the air toxic gas most likely to cause local exposures that exceed recommended levels. The field results from Kalimantan were in reasonable agreement with recent lab measurements of smoldering Kalimantan peat for “overlap species,” lending importance to the lab finding that burning peat produces large emissions of acetamide, acrolein, methylglyoxal, etc., which were not measurable in the field with the deployed equipment and implying value in continued similar efforts. The aerosol optical data measured include EFs for the scattering and absorption coefficients (EF Bscat and EF Babs, m2 kg−1 fuel burned) and the single scattering albedo (SSA) at 870 and 405 nm, as well as the absorption Ångström exponents (AAE). By coupling the absorption and co-located trace gas and filter data we estimated black carbon (BC) EFs (g kg−1) and the mass absorption coefficient (MAC, m2 g−1) for the bulk organic carbon (OC) due to brown carbon (BrC). Consistent with the minimal flaming, the emissions of BC were negligible (0.0055 ± 0.0016 g kg−1). Aerosol absorption at 405 nm was  ∼  52 times larger than at 870 nm and BrC contributed  ∼  96 % of the absorption at 405 nm. Average AAE was 4.97 ± 0.65 (range, 4.29–6.23). The average SSA at 405 nm (0.974 ± 0.016) was marginally lower than the average SSA at 870 nm (0.998 ± 0.001). These data facilitate modeling climate-relevant aerosol optical properties across much of the UV/visible spectrum and the high AAE and lower SSA at 405 nm demonstrate the dominance of absorption by the organic aerosol. Comparing the Babs at 405 nm to the simultaneously measured OC mass on filters suggests a low MAC ( ∼  0.1) for the bulk OC, as expected for the low BC/OC ratio in the aerosol. The importance of pyrolysis (at lower MCE), as opposed to glowing (at higher MCE), in producing BrC is seen in the increase of AAE with lower MCE (r2 =  0.65)

Low complexity optimization of delay schemes for delayed bit-interleaved coded modulation

This thesis investigates a low-complexity cost function to optimize delay schemes in delayed bit-interleaved coded modulation (DBICM), providing an alternative to exhaustive computation of mutual information using Monte Carlo simulation. Traditional bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) has a performance gap compared to coded modulation capacity. DBICM is an excellent method for bridging this gap by trading off latency and receiver complexity. Performance of DBICM depends on the delay schemes used in the bit-delay module. DBICM system design for capacity efficient Gray-labeled quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and standardized amplitude and phase-shift keying (APSK) constellations has been recently addressed by the state-of-the-art research. This thesis contributes to existing research by designing delay schemes for Gray-labeled pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM) constellations. This capacity optimized design can be readily extended to Gray-labeled QAM constellations. The first part of the thesis explains the basic system model of DBICM starting with BICM. Using recent state-of-the-art research, the existing theory on the capacity of DBICM is summarized. A low complexity cost function is formulated for the purpose of optimizing delay schemes when the constellation, bit-labeling and the maximum allowed delay are fixed. The results for Gray-labeled PAM constellations are demonstrated numerically. It is shown that the relationship between the DBICM capacity and the proposed cost function, which characterizes bit error probability, approaches near linearity when the code rate exceeds 2/3 for a subset of delay schemes. An improvement of 0.11 dB in the BER performance is obtained with the optimized DBICM delay scheme compared to the baseline BICM for 3/4 rate coded Gray-labeled 32-PAM. This result is extended towards higher-order PAM constellations up to 256-PAM by identifying optimal delay schemes using the cost function. Another valuable extension is the applicability of the proposed method for Gray-labeled PSK constellations. The numerical results empirically demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method for code rates exceeding 2/3. An improvement of 0.4 dB in the BER performance is obtained with the optimized DBICM delay scheme compared to the baseline BICM for 2/3 rate coded Gray-labeled 32-PSK. Finally, effectiveness of the low-complexity function for other constellations and bit-labelings is quantified using the correlation between the cost function and the capacity of delay schemes

Source apportionment of organic carbon in Centreville, AL using organosulfates in organic tracer-based positive matrix factorization

Organic tracer-based positive matrix factorization (PMF) was used to apportion fine particulate (PM_(2.5)) organic carbon (OC) to its sources in Centreville, AL, USA, a rural forested site influenced by anthropogenic emissions, during the Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study (SOAS) in the summer of 2013. Model inputs included organosulfates, a group of organic compounds that are tracers of anthropogenically-influenced biogenic secondary organic aerosols (SOA), as well as, OC, elemental carbon, water-soluble organic carbon, and other organic tracers for primary and secondary sources measured during day and night. The organic tracer-based PMF resolved eight factors that were identified as biomass burning (11%, average contribution to PM_(2.5) OC), vehicle emissions (8%), isoprene SOC formed under low-NO_x conditions (13%), isoprene SOC formed under high-NO_x conditions (11%), SOC formed by photochemical reactions (9%), oxidatively aged biogenic SOC (6%), sulfuric acid-influenced SOC (21%, that also includes isoprene and monoterpene SOC), and monoterpene SOC formed under high-NO_x conditions (21%). These results indicate that OC in Centreville during summer is mainly secondary in origin (81%). Fossil fuel combustion is the major source of NO_x, ozone, and sulfuric acid that play a key role in SOA formation in the southeastern US. Fossil fuel was found to influence 61–76% of OC through vehicle emissions and SOA formation. Together with prescribed burns, which were the major type of biomass burning during this study, the OC influenced by anthropogenic activities reached 87%. The organic tracer-based PMF results were further compared with two complementary source apportionment techniques: PMF factors resolved for submicron organic aerosols measured using aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS) by Xu et al. (2015a) in Centreville during SOAS; biomass burning organic aerosols (BBOA, 11% of OC), isoprene-derived organic aerosols (isoprene-OA, 20% of OC), more-oxidized oxygenated organic aerosols (MO-OOA, 34% of OC), and less-oxidized oxygenated organic aerosols (LO-OOA, 35% of OC); and PM_(2.5) OC apportioned by chemical-mass balance model (CMB), considering the same chemical species as this study, save for organosulfates; biomass burning (5%), diesel engines (2%), gasoline smokers (3%), vegetative detritus (1%), isoprene SOC (23%) and monoterpene SOC (34%), and other (likely biogenic secondary) sources (33%). Overall, this study indicates the primary and secondary sources resolved by the organic tracer-based PMF are in good agreement with CMB and AMS-PMF results, while the organic tracer-based PMF provides additional insight to the SOC formation pathways through the inclusion of organosulfates and other organic tracers measured during day and night

Ultrasound-Augmented Laparoscopy

Laparoscopic surgery is perhaps the most common minimally invasive procedure for many diseases in the abdomen. Since the laparoscopic camera provides only the surface view of the internal organs, in many procedures, surgeons use laparoscopic ultrasound (LUS) to visualize deep-seated surgical targets. Conventionally, the 2D LUS image is visualized in a display spatially separate from that displays the laparoscopic video. Therefore, reasoning about the geometry of hidden targets requires mentally solving the spatial alignment, and resolving the modality differences, which is cognitively very challenging. Moreover, the mental representation of hidden targets in space acquired through such cognitive medication may be error prone, and cause incorrect actions to be performed. To remedy this, advanced visualization strategies are required where the US information is visualized in the context of the laparoscopic video. To this end, efficient computational methods are required to accurately align the US image coordinate system with that centred in the camera, and to render the registered image information in the context of the camera such that surgeons perceive the geometry of hidden targets accurately. In this thesis, such a visualization pipeline is described. A novel method to register US images with a camera centric coordinate system is detailed with an experimental investigation into its accuracy bounds. An improved method to blend US information with the surface view is also presented with an experimental investigation into the accuracy of perception of the target locations in space

Editorial Note

Editor-in-Chief for Asian Journal of Marketing Management (AJMM), Department of Marketing Management, Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka, are delighted to issue the Volume 2, Issue II of the Journal. This issue of AJMM disseminates new knowledge through selected five scholarly papers that comprehensively investigate current and critical real marketing scenarios and a book chapter. First paper is on a brief literature review that provides a basis for understanding the different angles of Marketing Technology (MarTech) views by Financial Technology (FinTech) marketers and customers’ usage intention – behaviour gap in the relationship marketing with the customer journey and experience as an experiential marketing strategy. It put forward a new research agenda in the context of relationship marketing regarding customers’ usage intention - behaviour gap. The presented literature review and pilot study expand several research potentials. The second paper provides new understandings of the socio-structural elements that support (or undermine) domestic daily mindful consumption behaviours of kids and young adults of Sri Lanka. The process of mindful consumption and its adoption at home has been explored with the aim to understand how mothers have influenced their children in becoming mindful consumers through 25 in-depth interviews with mothers and children in the context of Sri Lanka. The third paper offers insight on how financial literacy and social support could impact the quality of life of cancer patients in Sri Lanka with a rationale for its social and community impacts. The survey method was used with the participation of 187 respondents. The results proved that financial distress has a significant impact on the quality of life of cancer patients. Additionally, it discloses that social support experienced by cancer patients significantly influences the quality of life of cancer patients. Fourthly, bottom of the pyramid customers' attempts to act against violations of consumer rights in an environment defined by constrained spending patterns is investigated with the participation of twenty informants from vulnerable population in Sri Lanka southern province. It reveals that there are two basic categories of attempts exhibited by the bottom of the pyramid population when acting against the violation of consumer rights. The expressive approach and the silent approach are the two approaches.   The fifth paper is focused on how consumers can be persuaded to adopt sustainable practices when disposing of clothes with the use of the Fogg Behavior Model.  366 respondents participated in the survey. It indicates that variables motivation- sensation anticipation, motivation- social evaluation, and ability have a significant positive impact on sustainable clothing disposing behaviour. Furthermore, the trigger has no moderation impact on the relationship between motivation- sensation anticipation, motivation- social evaluation, ability and sustainable clothing disposing behaviour. Finally, the book of Kevin Lane Keller and Vanitha Swaminathan (2020). Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring, and Managing Brand Equity, 5th edition was reviewed with more comprehensive and critic perspective. We extend our sincere gratitude to all the authors for their valuable contribution through research articles and for patience in reviewing process; to reviewers for their constructive comments that bring the papers into a publishable level; to language editors for their service rendered for the Journal; and to the editorial assistant as well as web assistants for smooth operation of the Journal