Molde University College

Purpose This research addresses the integration of sport into corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies by companies listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE). Theoretically underpinned by neo-institutional isomorphic pressures, the study aims to fill a gap in the literature on CSR practices in the Middle East by examining how Qatari firms use sport-related CSR initiatives to foster community engagement and meet sustainable development goals. Design/methodology/approach The research involved a comprehensive analysis of annual reports from QSE-listed companies (n = 47), ensuring reliability through an automated data retrieval and analysis framework. The study handled extensive data sets consisting of annual reports spanning 10–15 years and primarily used two components: prompts and retrieval augmented generation. Findings The results highlight an increased focus on and utilisation of sport within CSR strategies across various sectors. They further demonstrate significant sectoral differences in CSR strategies, with banks and financial services leading in activities linked to philanthropy, sponsorships and personnel engagement. Given Qatar’s strategic emphasis on sport, related CSR initiatives have seen parallel and substantial growth, strengthening their role in promoting societal well-being. Originality/value This study contributes to the understanding of CSR practices in the region, by offering theoretical and practical insights on developing effective “CSR through sport” programmes. The research further provides a methodological and data foundation for application into other/adjacent regional or sectoral contexts.

The healthcare sector faces complex challenges that demand a highly competent management workforce. Although considerable efforts have been made to develop management competency frameworks that provide lists of core competencies for health managers, few frameworks have undergone rigorous validity and reliability testing. The present study aimed to translate and culturally adapt the Management Competency Assessment Partnership (MCAP) tool for use in the Norwegian healthcare context and to evaluate its psychometric properties. An eleven-step translation and cultural adaptation procedure was developed in accordance with established guidelines. A pilot study was conducted using the adapted MCAP tool with 53healthcare managers in Norway. The resulting test scores were analyzed using inter-item correlations and exploratory factor analysis to assess the construct validity and reliability. The comprehensive translation and cross-cultural adaptation procedure contributed to the Norwegian version retained strong fidelity to the original tool. Preliminary findings demonstrated acceptable reliability and supported the construct validity of the MCAP tool test scores within the Norwegian healthcare context. A rigorous translation and cross-cultural adaptation process is essential to preserve conceptual integrity when implementing assessment instruments across contexts. The preliminary findings of this study adds to previous cross-contextual validation studies using the MCAP tool, further supporting its utility as a representative framework for assessing health management competencies.

BackgroundThe digital divide in health has rapidly expanded during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, with fragmented understanding and an unclear implementation process, for the formal integration of digital health into the healthcare system, which challenges actionable policy development.MethodsThis critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) of the literature aimed to capture the complexity of the digital divide in health. This began with a scoping review of literature published between 2013 and 2023 describing the digital divide in health within the WHO's European Region, in Web of Science, Medline (via Ovid), PsycInfo (via Ovid), and Sociological (via ProQuest). Three sets of two reviewers independently conducted the selection, and all contributed to the synthesis process.ResultsOf 4,967 original articles identified, 49 articles were included for review. Results revealed a synthesizing argument that the digital divide should be considered as more of a dynamic, entangled, and reciprocal collection of “areas” of phenomenon affecting service users, rather than “levels”. Results describe the three synthetic constructs that describe this synthesizing argument.ConclusionFindings suggest that digital health solutions should respectfully consider the pace of human healing, long-term user engagement and adaptability. We call for the importance of inter- and multidisciplinary collaboration to ensure effective and context-sensitive implementation in future studies.

This study aims to examine the influence of new software product efficiency and effectiveness on agile software development project success, with a particular focus on the mediating roles of market information capabilities, customer involvement, and R&D capabilities within IT companies operating in Portugal. Data were collected using purposive and convenience sampling from 418 employees across various IT SMEs in Portugal. The analysis was conducted using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS v.4 software. The study found that both software product efficiency and effectiveness significantly and positively influence agile software development project success. Furthermore, R&D capabilities and market information management capabilities (MIMC) positively mediate these relationships, whereas customer involvement (CI) has a significant but negative mediating effect. These findings are highly relevant to agile practitioners, suggesting that for agile development projects to succeed, managers should focus on assembling capable teams and fostering effective customer collaboration and interaction, while also leveraging R&D and market information strengths. This research offers a novel framework integrating technical performance metrics with organizational capabilities to explain agile project success. It provides new insights into how different mediating factors influence the relationship between product characteristics and project outcomes in agile software environments.

Pneumonia continues to be a significant cause of death around the globe, and quick and accurate diagnosis based on chest X-rays (CXR) and computed tomography (CT) images is of utmost importance. While transformer-based models that process CXR and CT images have been developed, models often make use of fixed patch tokenization, which can lead to a loss of anatomical boundaries and reduce interpretability from a clinical perspective. We fill this gap with a boundary-aware dual-stream vision transformer to leverage both pixel-level detail for images and region-level superpixel representations to make the architecture adaptable to both modalities. The framework was validated on two publicly available datasets (Kaggle) and one dataset from Dhulikhel Hospital, with accuracies on Kaggle CXR = 98.21%; Dhulikhel CXR = 98.74%; Kaggle CT = 99.73%; and Dhulikhel CT = 97.3%. Furthermore, per-class precision, recall, and F1-scores all exceeded 96%, and all ROC–AUC values exceeded 0.99. In addition to more typical metrics, boundary-aware evaluation revealed good alignment with clinicians with edge-alignment cosine scores ranging from 0.27 to 0.34 for CXR and 0.48 to 0.49 for CT and intra-region variance below 0.015, while observing focused attention distributions as evidenced by Gini coefficients ≈0.58 for CXR, and ≈0.33 for CT. Statistical robustness was also confirmed with 95% bootstrap confidence intervals, all reaching significance over single-stream baselines, and particularly emphasizing reduction in false negatives of pneumonia positive cases. These results show that the proposed approach fills the important gap between high diagnostic accuracy and preserving anatomical boundaries, improving clinical trust and understanding in pneumonia detection.

Abstract Arbitration under the auspices of sport bodies and Olympic committees is a popular mechanism globally, and one that aligns well with both the ideals of safeguarding sport from inappropriate influences and offering speedy and cost-effective dispute resolution. But it is by no means exempt from problems or situations where it cannot perform such a beneficial role. Montenegrin Olympic Committee (MOC) Arbitration offers a case study on how not to organize sport arbitration. Set within the background of deeper sports governance issues in Montenegro, MOC Arbitration exhibits total autonomy from the wider arbitral legal framework and a series of issues concerning arbitrators, challenges and remedies against awards that render the mechanism practically unworkable. Such a state of affairs, apart from being an affront to the rule of law, is deeply detrimental to interests of sportspeople and potentially further exacerbates governance issues. Aiming to help promote effective (sports) arbitration mechanisms more generally, the present article dissects the critical issues with the MOC Arbitration and provides some guidance on how to secure a workable mechanism that respects the needs and dignity of sportspeople under its jurisdiction.

The rapid growth of e-commerce and the pandemic-driven surge in deliveries have intensified the challenges last-mile logistics poses to urban areas. Road transport, the predominant delivery mode, is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Despite a downward trend since 2008, emissions rose in 2022, reflecting an increased mobility demand. Light commercial vehicles and trucks impact air and noise pollution due to their high emissions and noise levels. Innovative solutions, such as cargo bikes (CBs), have emerged as sustainable alternatives to mitigate these effects. This paper reports a brief literature review on CBs and evaluates their environmental, economic, and social benefits by comparing real-life data from a shipping company operating with CBs in central Rome to simulated data for motorized delivery vehicles. By analyzing their potential to reduce emissions, improve urban livability, and lower operational costs, this study seeks to raise awareness on CBs’ sustainability as a viable alternative for last-mile logistics. Highlighting these advantages can support policymakers, businesses, and urban planners in fostering a transition to more sustainable urban mobility solutions.