Fatima Maturan

The need to address the impediments to teaching numeracy in early childhood education necessitates a comprehensive approach, as an evident lack of exploration of impediments and their intertwined relationships exists in the domain literature. Thus, this work advances such agenda by utilizing the decision‐making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) approach with q‐rung orthopair fuzzy sets (q‐ROFSs), referred to as q‐ROF‐DEMATEL. Unlike other fuzzy set extensions, q‐ROFS offers a larger decision space, providing the capability to handle information with greater ambiguity. The proposed q‐ROF‐DEMATEL is applied to identify the critical factors impeding effective instruction of numeracy skills to early childhood learners. The findings suggest that the prominent impediments include inadequate teaching time, lack of teaching knowledge, and underestimation of learners’ knowledge. Moreover, among the identified impediments, the lack of teaching knowledge emerges as the key impediment, while language barriers, inadequate teaching time, and lack of educational resources are identified as minor key impediments. These findings could guide decision makers in academic institutions to allocate resources effectively, pool human resources strategically, and develop appropriate strategies to augment teaching numeracy. Investing in professional development opportunities, incorporating visual representations and culturally relevant materials, and seeking community partnerships for resources are some recommended initiatives to address these challenges. Insights for future work were outlined.

The factors influencing consumer purchase decisions in electronic commerce platforms and the interrelationships of each element are prevalent in the domain literature. However, a comprehensive analysis of the complex interrelationships among the success factors remains unexplored, especially in a social commerce context. To address the gap, this work evaluates the relationship structure and determines the critical factors using interpretive structural modelling (ISM). On the other hand, the Matrice d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée á un Classement (MICMAC) is introduced to analyse the interaction of the factors and recognise the most relevant among them. In demonstrating the ISM-MICMAC analysis, this work performed a case study evaluating 13 factors of social commerce success for food products derived from a previous study. The findings of this work suggest that timeliness, data privacy policy, and Internet connectivity drive most other factors. Thus, focusing the resources on augmenting these factors consequently improves other factors. These findings suggest that sellers must streamline their overall service chain to maintain timeliness in their transactions, safeguard consumers’ data privacy, and uphold consumer communication efficiency to maximise Internet connectivity. These insights provide useful information to help decision-makers in the food industry allocate resources and encourage more consumers for social commerce. Several managerial insights were discussed.

The barriers to implementing circular supply chains are well explored, but very little is provided to understand how these barriers play in public sector supply chains. Consequently, the role of digital technologies in addressing these barriers in the circularity of supply chains in the public sector remains a gap. Thus, this study bridges these gaps by evaluating digital technologies according to their relevance in addressing the identified barriers. In particular, eight domain experts who have sufficient knowledge and expertise in the domains of the public sector and circular economy were asked to elicit judgments in order to (1) set a threshold that defines the list of barriers that are significant to supply chains in the public sector, (2) obtain the priority weights of these barriers through the criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC), and (3) rank the identified digital technologies based on their relevance in addressing the identified barriers in public sector supply chains using combinative distance-based assessment (CODAS) method, all under a Fermatean fuzzy set environment to account for epistemic uncertainties in judgment elicitation processes. This novel integration of the CRITIC and CODAS methods augmented by Fermatean fuzzy sets forms the methodological contribution of this work. Findings show that barriers associated with regulations restricting the collection of wastes, poor demand or acceptance for environmentally superior technologies, lack of expertise, technology, and information, operational risk, immature recycling technologies, and information sharing and communication were considered critical in managing circular public sector supply chains. The analysis also revealed that ripple effect modeling, simulation, and artificial intelligence are the priority digital technologies. These digital technologies offer efficiency and flexibility to decision-makers in analyzing complex and dynamic scenarios before the deployment of any circularity initiative, providing crucial information in its design and implementation. This paper outlines several managerial insights and offers possible agenda for future research.

This study offers an integrated evaluation methodology for construction project delay causes viewed as a multicriteria sorting (MCS) problem. Time, cost, and quality were the three project management factors considered as criteria to evaluate 38 identified delay causes. The priority weights were extracted using the integration of Weighted Influence Non-linear Gauge Systems (WINGS) and Level-Based Weight Assessment (LBWA) to capture the inherent interdependencies of the criteria. The sorting of 38 delay causes was performed using FlowSort. To handle the uncertainty and vagueness of the judgments of the decision makers in the evaluation process, q-rung fuzzy orthopair fuzzy sets (q-ROFS) were integrated within the proposed computational framework. The proposed novel q-ROF–WINGS–LBWA–FlowSort method was applied in an actual case study in residential construction projects. The delay causes were categorized under three categories of construction firm vulnerability into four levels of impact. In highly vulnerable construction firms, thirty-five delay causes have a high impact, two have a moderate impact, and one has the least impact. In moderately vulnerable and least-vulnerable construction firms, 32 and 28 delay causes have a medium impact, respectively. The results may provide insights for decision makers in highly vulnerable construction firms, i.e., small companies with limited resources and networks. Layers of sensitivity and comparative analyses were put forward to test the robustness of the approach.

In view of the recent education sectoral transition to Education 4.0 (EDUC4), evaluating the preparedness of higher education institutions (HEIs) for EDUC4 implementation remains a gap in the current literature. Through a comprehensive review, seven criteria were evaluated, namely, human resources, infrastructure, financial, linkages, educational management, learners, and health and environment. This work offers two crucial contributions: (1) the development of an EDUC4 preparedness indicator system and (2) the design of a computational structure that evaluates each indicator and computes an aggregate preparedness level for an HEI. Using the full consistency method (FUCOM) to assign the priority weights of EDUC4 criteria and the rough set theory to capture the ambiguity and imprecision inherent in the measurement, this study offers an aggregate EDUC4 preparedness index to holistically capture the overall preparedness index of an HEI towards EDUC4. An actual case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed indicator system. After a thorough evaluation, the results indicate that human resources were the most critical criterion, while health and environment ranked last. Insights obtained from the study provide HEIs with salient information necessary for decision making in various aspects, including the design of targeted policies and the allocation of resources conducive to implementing EDUC4 initiatives. The proposed indicator system can be a valuable tool to guide HEIs in pursuing EDUC4, resulting in a more effective and efficient implementation of this educational paradigm.