Quantitative assessment of manipulative academic journal solicitation is relevant to academic ethics because publication-related communication can exploit researchers’ professional incentives and influence submission and payment decisions. Previous research has identified warning signs in unsolicited invitations but has rarely formalized how multiple signals interact nonlinearly within a single email to produce cumulative pressure. This study develops and applies a mathematical model to measure manipulative strategies in academic journal solicitation emails without making a definitive judgment about the journals themselves. The dataset comprises 206 solicitation emails received by one researcher and preserved in a spam folder in March 2026 as screenshots with readable text transcriptions and visible metadata. The analysis combines rule-based content coding and descriptive statistics with weighted scoring, evidence-confidence adjustment, normalization of eight components to a zero-to-one scale, nonlinear activation, five interaction terms, sentiment-pressure correction, and a logistic transformation to produce a final score from zero to one hundred. The model assigns indicator weights of 1, 2, or 3 based on signal severity and uses component sensitivity parameters ranging from 0.9 to 1.8, with the highest activation assigned to scarcity pressure and false follow-up pressure. Scores ranged from 11.92 to 86.51, with a mean of 35.95 and a median of 30.13, demonstrating substantial variation in solicitation intensity. Classification across five score intervals identified 43 low-risk editorial invitations (20.9%), 101 promotional solicitations (49.0%), 35 risk-oriented solicitations (17.0%), 14 aggressive solicitations (6.8%), and 13 predatory-like solicitations (6.3%); thus, 30.1% of messages fell into the three higher-risk categories. Urgency pressure and false follow-up pressure were the strongest activated components. At the same time, their interaction received a weight of 0.25, indicating that a demand for rapid action becomes more manipulative when framed as an overdue response to previous contact. The model also assigns weights of 0.25 to urgency combined with scarcity, 0.20 to prestige signals combined with commercial cues, 0.15 to personalization failure combined with prestige signals, and 0.20 to reduced publication friction combined with commercial cues, capturing how individually ambiguous features can reinforce one another. The model offers researchers, universities, research integrity offices, and scholarly publishers an interpretable screening instrument for prioritizing email verification and integrity training; future studies should validate its weights and thresholds using larger, multilingual datasets and compare scores with independent checks of journal indexing, editorial transparency, and peer-review practices.
Digital leadership in higher education requires evidence about whether investments in digital systems are accompanied by stronger institutional decision-making and measurable collaboration beyond the university. Existing smart university studies examine infrastructure, educational technologies, and sustainability extensively but provide less quantitative evidence on the conditional relationships between internal digital capacity, management analytics, and distinct forms of external engagement. This study measures the divergence between internal digital transformation and ecosystem integration and estimates how their component dimensions are associated with partnership activity, thereby identifying empirically relevant priorities for university digital leadership. The analysis draws on a June 2026 institutional survey covering 110 Ukrainian higher education institutions across five macroregions, including state, communal, and private institutions differentiated by enrollment size, with responses assessing administration, research information, business collaboration, public-sector engagement, and project activity. Five-point composite indices were assessed using Cronbach’s alpha, compared with paired Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and percentile bootstrap confidence intervals, and analyzed using Spearman rank correlations with Benjamini–Hochberg false-discovery-rate adjustment and multivariable ordinary least squares with heteroskedasticity-consistent type-three standard errors in Python 3.13.5 using NumPy, SciPy, and statsmodels. Internal digital transformation averaged 3.958 against 2.900 for external integration, yielding a paired mean difference of 1.058 points (95% bootstrap confidence interval 0.899–1.224), with the internal index exceeding the external index in 100 of 110 institutions. The composite-index Spearman correlation was 0.366, whereas the component-level regression associated research-information capacity positively with external integration (coefficient 0.341; probability value 0.005) and administrative digitalization negatively conditional on the other regressors (coefficient −0.230; probability value 0.006), demonstrating why digital leadership cannot be inferred from an undifferentiated technology score. Educational partnership ratings exceeded research-commercial partnership ratings by 1.136 points on average (95% bootstrap confidence interval 0.939–1.338), revealing a measurable gap between relatively established teaching relationships and more demanding research-oriented collaboration despite universities’ digital provision. These findings provide university governing bodies and higher education policymakers with statistically grounded indicators for prioritizing digital leadership, management analytics, and research partnerships, while supporting future longitudinal and independently verified assessments of organizational change and collaborative performance.
Ethical leadership in public administration increasingly depends on understanding how employees from different generations prioritise integrity, accountability, anti-corruption, trust and participation within public organisations. Previous research has usually examined corporate social responsibility, organisational ethics and generational differences as separate streams, leaving limited evidence on whether the combined structure of ethical priorities differs systematically across generations of public employees. The study therefore aims to identify and compare generational patterns in the perceived importance of ethical principles of corporate social responsibility in Slovak public administration and to determine which dimensions drive the strongest differentiation. The calculations are based on an online questionnaire conducted in Slovakia between November 2025 and February 2026 among 302 public-administration employees, including 93 respondents from Generation X, 132 from Generation Y and 77 from Generation Z, drawn from territorial self-government organisations and different organisational levels. The five-point Likert survey was processed using descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney comparisons, Kruskal-Wallis tests, Holm correction, epsilon-squared and rank-biserial effect sizes, strong-endorsement shares, rankings, multiple correspondence analysis and permutation-based multivariate analysis of variance, with calculations performed in Microsoft Excel and Python using SciPy, statsmodels and Matplotlib. The strongest omnibus differences concerned employee ethical integrity, with epsilon-squared of 0.356, and responsibility and oversight, with epsilon-squared of 0.335, whereas public interest was the only principle without a significant between-generation difference, with a Holm-adjusted probability value of 0.521. Pairwise analysis identified the largest contrast between Generations Y and Z for employee ethical integrity, with a rank-biserial correlation of 0.779, while responsibility and oversight separated Generation Z from Generation X with a value of 0.772 and from Generation Y with a value of 0.710. Strong endorsement revealed distinct profiles: 74.2% of Generation X prioritised responsibility and oversight, 68.9% of Generation Y prioritised the anti-corruption environment, and 71.4% of Generation Z prioritised citizen participation, while the global multivariate analysis confirmed separation of the combined ethical profiles with a pseudo-F statistic of 35.02, an explained-variation coefficient of 0.190 and a permutation probability value below 0.001. The findings can support public-sector leaders, integrity officers and policymakers in designing generation-sensitive ethical leadership, accountability and participation practices in Slovakia and comparable administrations, while future cross-country research can test the stability of the identified profiles across institutional contexts.
Decarbonization pressure is increasing the need for Moroccan small and medium-sized enterprises to align carbon-related financial conditions with environmental innovation and green and circular supply chain practices. However, previous research has often examined carbon finance, environmental innovation, and sustainable supply chains separately, leaving their combined statistical relationships insufficiently understood in African emerging economies. This study examines the association between carbon finance and green and circular supply chain adoption among Moroccan small and medium-sized enterprises and assesses the indirect role of environmental innovation and the conditional roles of digital capability, institutional pressure, and managerial sustainability perception. Responsible business leadership is used as an interpretative perspective for understanding how decision-makers perceive decarbonization pressures and mobilize organizational resources; it was not directly measured as an empirical construct. The analysis draws on 119 valid questionnaires collected between November 2025 and April 2026 from enterprises operating in the industrial, agri-food, and logistics sectors. The questionnaire used a five-point response scale and purposive firm selection. The data were analyzed using reliability assessment, exploratory factor analysis, multiple regression, mediation and moderation analysis, and bootstrap estimation based on 5,000 resamples. Carbon finance was positively associated with green and circular supply chain adoption, with an unstandardized estimate of 0.336, while the pre-mediation total-effect regression model for G&CSC adoption, including carbon finance, the two sector dummy variables, and the other firm-level controls, explained 66.23 percent of the variance (R² = 0.6623). Environmental innovation showed a statistically significant indirect association between carbon finance and green and circular supply chain adoption, with an indirect effect estimate of 0.2655 and a 95 per cent bootstrap confidence interval ranging from 0.1375 to 0.4381. The mediator-adjusted direct association was positive but not statistically significant (B = 0.0701, p = 0.355). Digital capability and institutional pressure did not significantly moderate the tested associations, whereas managerial sustainability perception significantly moderated the association between environmental innovation and green and circular supply chain adoption. The study offers preliminary evidence relevant to responsible business leadership by showing how perceived carbon-finance and carbon-oriented financial-management conditions may be statistically connected with innovation-oriented supply-chain sustainability among Moroccan small and medium-sized enterprises. The findings suggest that policymakers and enterprise decision-makers may consider carbon-related financial support alongside environmental innovation measures while recognizing the limits of purposive sampling, single-informant measurement, cross-sectional data, and the need for confirmation in independent and longitudinal studies.
In labor-intensive export manufacturing, leadership practices can shape how employees experience production pressure, hierarchical supervision, responsible-sourcing requirements, and the broader meaning of their work. Prior research has provided limited dimension-level evidence on whether distinct authentic-leadership behaviors are associated differently with affective, cognitive, and meaning-related components of happiness at work, particularly in manufacturing environments. This study examines the associations of leader self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and an internalized moral perspective with employees’ positive affect, job satisfaction, and meaningful work. The analysis is based on 515 valid responses collected from March to June 2025 among production staff, administrative staff, middle-level management, and senior management in 34 wood-processing and export enterprises in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang, Vietnam, using purposive and convenience sampling. Data were analyzed in SmartPLS 4 using partial least squares structural equation modelling; reliability and convergent validity were assessed alongside the heterotrait–monotrait ratio, while structural relationships were evaluated through standardized path coefficients, coefficients of determination, f² values, and bootstrapping with 5,000 subsamples and bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals. Self-awareness was positively associated with meaningful work (β = 0.435, p < 0.001), job satisfaction (β = 0.294, p < 0.001), and positive affect (β = 0.263, p = 0.003). Relational transparency was associated with positive affect (β = 0.376, p < .001) and meaningful work (β = 0.198, p = 0.017), but not job satisfaction (β = −0.027, p = 0.671). Balanced processing was associated with job satisfaction (β = 0.389, p < .001) and meaningful work (β = 0.173, p = 0.014), but not positive affect (β = 0.098, p = 0.205). An internalized moral perspective was associated with job satisfaction (β = 0.317, p < 0.001), positive affect (β = 0.196, p = 0.004), and meaningful work (β = 0.154, p = 0.021). Ten of the twelve hypothesised paths were statistically significant. The model accounted for 81.3% of the variance in job satisfaction, 74.5% in positive affect, and 78.7% in meaningful work. Medium f² values were observed for self-awareness with meaningful work (f² = 0.225) and balanced processing with job satisfaction (f² = 0.250); all 21 heterotrait–monotrait ratios exceeded 0.90 and two exceeded 1.00, indicating substantial construct overlap. The findings support cautious, targeted consideration of leadership practices in export manufacturing, while future research should validate the author-developed measures, examine higher-order measurement models, and use longitudinal, multisource, and multilevel designs.
