Research using the term ‘parasocial’ has appeared since 1956 in media studies and psychology and, more recently, in influencer marketing. This study maps the development, intellectual structure and recent thematic direction of the 2174 journal works published from 1956 to 2025 that use the term ‘parasocial’ in its media sense. Using records from OpenAlex, it combines performance analysis with co-citation, bibliographic coupling, keyword mapping and topic analysis and tests the robustness of the main mapping results across alternative corpora, periods and network settings. Output increased from one article in 1956 to 521 works in 2025, and, by authors’ affiliations, the USA, Indonesia and China had the most works. Horton and Wohl’s 1956 article is cited by 63.1
This research aims to analyze how FinTech adoption (FA), mediated by digital transformation (DT) and financial inclusion (FI), influences sustainability performance (SP) in Jordan’s commercial banking sector. The study focuses on bank managers as participants because they play key roles in managing FA, DT, and SP. Study collected 395 questionnaire responses sufficient for analysis using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in Smart PLS 4.0. The results showed that DT positively influences SP, suggesting that banks’ digital initiatives are important for advancing sustainable business practices. The study confirms that FA significantly drives both DT and FI. This indicates that integrating financial technologies improves banking services and supports the digital transformation of banking operations. The study confirms that FA directly and positively determines a bank’s SP. Moreover, the study highlights significant mediation, showing that both FI and DT positively affect banks’ SP and validating multiple pathways through which FinTech supports sustainable outcomes. The results also show that FA and FI cross multiple dimensions, enhance an institution’s SP, which is particularly relevant to managers and policymakers seeking to advance sustainable development through digital finance innovations.
When is it cheaper to coordinate production inside a hierarchical firm rather than across an open market? As per the classical theory of the firm developed by Coase and Williamson, hierarchy wins in a low-trust, complex environment, as a hierarchical firm can economize on the cost of verifying, coordinating, and executing transactions. Blockchain technology upsets this calculus: it distributes the verification work that a central authority would otherwise perform and so changes the cost logic on which the classical prediction rests. This paper asks: how much is that difference? We build a simulation to evaluate four governance frameworks: traditional manual coordination without shared infrastructure, a centralized hub, a permissioned blockchain run by a subset of member firms, and a fully distributed blockchain. Each framework's coordination cost follows from an explicitly specified capacity structure, and every reported number can be regenerated from deposited code. Three findings stand out. First, digitization matters most in our model: all three digital arrangements improve on manual coordination, though this ordering and the size of the gap are set by our assumptions about manual effort. Second, distributed verification holds a real but bounded advantage over a centralized system, and it shrinks when the centralized alternative spreads its coordination load across several hubs (Sect. 4.9). Third, the advantage appears widest under a high complexity, low-trust environment, exactly where the classical theory expects hierarchy to perform best, a pattern that rests on assumptions we state openly and vary. Because our centralized arrangement carries hierarchy's congestion costs without its adaptive benefits, the results speak to one dimension of the classical question, the information-processing cost of coordination, and on that dimension only. Blockchain shifts the balance between markets and hierarchies; it does not overturn transaction cost economics.
Universities generate substantial volumes of paper waste, yet much of this valuable resource remains underutilized despite increasing commitments to circular economy and sustainable campus initiatives. Paper recycling within university campuses has the potential to reduce solid waste generation, lowering paper procurement costs, and supporting sustainability-focused education. This article proposes an integrated framework of feasibility assessment and business model for a campus-scale paper recycling facility tailored to the environmental, climatic, and infrastructural conditions of universities in developing countries. The proposed framework integrates technical, economic, environmental, social, and managerial analyses to evaluate the viability of implementing an on-campus recycling facility. The proposed Standalone Paper Recycling Unit (SPRU) combines wastepaper collection and manual sorting with hydropulping, sheet forming, mechanical pressing, and solar-assisted drying. A case of an Egyptian university is considered by presenting promising data and scale. The proposed unit is expected to achieve fiber recovery, and a specific energy consumption lower than conventional industrial recycling systems. The preliminary results offer a scalable and replicable reference for higher education institutions seeking to adopt decentralized paper recycling systems and advance circular economy principles. Moreover, the economic evaluation demonstrates promising investment potential under the adopted case study assumptions. In addition, the system has strong educational potential by enabling hands-on learning in sustainable engineering practices. The findings offer practical guidance for university administrators and policymakers seeking to transform paper waste into economic, environmental, and social value while supporting institutional sustainability and circular economy objectives.
Supply chain bottlenecks are critical constraints that disrupt the smooth flow of goods, often triggering delays that cascade through interconnected processes and weaken overall resilience. In an era of digital transformation, the ability to anticipate such constraints through real-time data and predictive analytics has become increasingly important, yet the existing literature remains fragmented across transportation, logistics, and information systems, leaving conceptual boundaries blurred and practical insights underdeveloped. Addressing this gap, we conducted a bibliometric review of 3638 Scopus-indexed publications from 2016 to 2025, using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer to analyse publication patterns, keyword clusters, and thematic evolution. The findings reveal a strong concentration in intelligent transportation systems, with traffic congestion emerging as the most frequent theme, and four clusters identified around traffic management and detection, congestion and travel-time modelling, data infrastructure and analytics, and short-horizon flow control. A clear shift is observed between 2016–2020 and 2021–2025, marked by the growing prominence of machine learning and deep learning approaches. The study contributes by distinguishing transport-level prediction from supply chain-level bottleneck management. It further proposes a research agenda that emphasises cross-context validation, prediction-to-action integration, and explicit tests of forecast usefulness, thereby offering both theoretical clarity and practical guidance for strengthening supply chain performance.
