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This chapter describes a teacher leadership professional development program for K-12 science teachers constructed through a partnership between a university and five school districts. The development and implementation of the program drew from the literature on teacher leadership, communities of practice, and distributed leadership. The program supports teachers through a two-year fellowship program where they examine their teaching practices, attend professional development workshops, and undertake an independent teacher leadership project in their own schools. The chapter also describes the research conducted by the university to improve the program and shares findings and future implications of this research.

Female leader is a major topic in the male of today that’s hardly getting attention. World today needs women in more positions of leadership. Today’s organizations need effective and agile leaders who understand the complexities of the rapidly changing global environment. This situation requires urgent attention as the world needs female as well as male characteristics to address global issues. Women represent half of the modern world’s abilities and population. They are important for economic and social prosperity for the world. Women carry a viewpoint that respects not only competitiveness but also organizational and team cooperation. Their female ideals are a functioning structure of new, cooperative and open economy. Eventually, the leadership of women will not only boost business, family and culture, but also the environment that will become more prosperous and peaceful as a result. In today’s modern world many researches are conducted on global, social and cultural forces, such as globalization, e-commerce, changing markets, the spread of technology and the need for teamwork, alliances and partnerships, show a high need for women leaders. But what is the role and leadership style of female leaders here? In this context, the purpose of this study is to discuss the leadership styles and what kind of leadership style female managers exhibit in line with the literature. The research showed that female managers have more agile leadership qualities and the authors suggested that female leaders should be brought forward for the opportunity to lead others toward a better future.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the tendency of leaders to select their followers depending on their human capital factors such as age, education level, previous working experience and training.

The participants were 1,388 employees working in a randomly selected sample of 289 small-sized businesses operating in Yemen. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect the data. The correspondence analysis method was used to explore the tendency of leaders to select their followers depending on their human capital factors.

We found significant corresponding relationships between leadership styles and the selection of the followers' human capital factors. The passive avoidant style was found to select middle-age, long-experience and fully-trained followers. Transactional style on the other hand was found to select young, middle-level experience and non-trained followers. The transformational leadership style was found to have no selection preferences towards any of the human capital factors except for working experience.

Although, some previous studies tried to understand the leaders–followers relationships, no one investigated the tendency of leaders to select their followers according to their preferences. This study contributes significantly to the leaders–followers theory by studying the selection process of the leadership style of their followers' human capital factors. Understanding this phenomenon could help explain why some leadership styles are more effective than others, especially in very limited resources contexts such as micro-sized businesses.

Emojis are quickly becoming a popular new language in social media and marketing. The capability to express emotions and make message understanding easier is one of the primary reasons for using emojis. The aim of this research was to determine the influence of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, trust, and involvement on customer engagement due to emojis used in digital marketing communications among Generation Z (Gen Z) in South Africa.

Following the descriptive research approach, quantitative research was used in this study. A questionnaire (self-administered) was utilized to test the effectiveness of using emojis among 1,000 young consumers. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The findings of the study yielded positive relationships between the variables, namely between trust and involvement; involvement and the perceived ease of use; involvement and perceived usefulness; perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness; trust and customer engagement; perceived usefulness and customer engagement; involvement and customer engagement; customer engagement and intention to purchase; trust and intention to purchase; and perceived usefulness and intention to purchase.

This study can help organizations in emerging markets use emojis in their digital marketing communications to engage customers and stimulate intention to purchase among young people, especially the Gen Z cohort, who seek organizations and brands that understand and connect with them.

By investigating the effects of emojis in digital marketing communications, this study contributes to the customer-centric process and the literature on emoji usage while also involving a credible digital language when communicating with members of Gen Z. By extending TAM, the findings of this study contribute to the TAM literature by demonstrating that emoji usage in digital marketing communications positively influences various attitudinal associations among Gen Z consumers.

The momentum of globalization has helped the organization to gain new insights into the domain of human resources (HRs). The changing nature of work has affected the coherence of the workplaces. Today, it is essential to preserve and nurture the cognitive and creative abilities of the diverse group of employees so that concrete outcomes and actions can be achieved. Human resource planning (HRP) is one of the processes that facilitate the development of employees and the integration of their individual goals with the business plans. This paper aims to produce useful predictions and unprecedented direction to boost organizational performance amidst cyclical business fluctuations. The innovative HRP programs minimize the dysfunctional aspects of employee handling through proper assessment of their skills and abilities. This inclusive approach initiates a sustainable journey for the firm and heightens its competitive edge.

A descriptive study has been conducted through a structured questionnaire. Primary data were collected from respondents working in the HR department of different manufacturing companies in the state of West Bengal, India. A multistage sampling technique has been used. Data analysis has been conducted through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Through structural equation modeling, the researchers examined a series of dependence relationships simultaneously and represented unobserved concepts.

The current study ratifies the overall model and reflects that the HRP activities, namely, retention plan, professional training and development, job analysis and design, succession planning and redeployment plan vitalizes the performance of the firm. A recruitment plan has a negative and non-significant impact on the functional performance of the organization. Succession planning practices immensely affect the firm’s competitive edge followed by the retention plans. The results also uphold that the efficacious performance of the firm brings in strategic sustainability for it.

HRP activities sufficiently address the HR concerns facilitating the organization to coalesce the needs of the employees and the business. It helps to adopt a long term perspective to foster productivity, innovation and quality. It encourages employees to believe in their competencies to deliver their best. Such practices involve the workforce; coordinate their efforts to contribute meaningfully in this intricate business network. Thus, HRP practices drive to accomplish challenging tasks, focus on creative work-related projects, enhances an employee’s coping skills and morale to establish strategic sustainability for the firm.

The study sheds light on the fact that in this complex and dynamic business system where the authors find multigenerational workforce, it is essential to nurture the subtle aspects of the employees rather than continuous monitoring and controlling them. HRP activities provide such a platform that maximizes employees’ potential and will to fit into a firm’s business strategy and translate a strategic plan into action. Such practices have the capability to intensify the positive aspects and ideas in an organization.

Notable energy losses and voltage deviation issues in low-voltage radial distribution systems are a major concern for power planners and utility companies because of the integration of electric vehicles (EVs). Electric vehicle charging stations (EVCSs) are the key components in the network where the EVs are equipped to energize their battery. The purpose of this paper is coordinating the EVCS and distributed generation (DG) so as to place them optimally using swarm-based elephant herding optimization techniques by considering energy losses, voltage sensitivity and branch current as key indices. The placement and sizing of the EVCS and DG were found in steps.

The IEEE 33-bus test feeder and 52-bus Indian practical radial networks were used as the test system for the network characteristic analysis. To enhance the system performance, the radial network is divided into zones for the placement of charging stations and dispersed generation units. Balanced coordination is discussed with three defined situations for the EVCS and DG.

The proposed analysis shows that DG collaboration with EVCS with suitable size and location in the network improves the performance in terms of stability and losses.

Stability and loss indices are handled with equal weight factor to find the best solution.

The proposed method is coordinating EVCS and DG in the existing system; the EV integration in the low-voltage side can be incorporated suitably. So, it has societal impact.

In this study, the proposed method shows improved results in terms EVCS and DG integration in the system with minimum losses and voltage sensitivity. The results have been compared with another population-based particle swarm optimization method (PSO). There is an improvement of 18% in terms of total power losses and 9% better result in minimum node voltage as compared to the PSO technique. Also, there is an enhancement of 33% in the defined voltage stability index which shows the proficiency of the proposed analysis.