Frontiers in Research

Climate change, urbanization, sedentarization, and dissipation of pastoral Fulani culture in Ghana

Abdulai Abubakari — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0300

While a lot of research has been conducted on the effects of climate change, urbanization, and sedentarization on pastoralism in Africa, empirical research that synchronizes the combined impact of these three monsters, especially how they conspire to deprive the pastoral Fulani of their beloved culture they strived to protect over the centuries. This study was conducted in Ghana among the Fulani ethnic group, who are notorious pastoralists. Using survey instruments and followed up with detailed interviews, the study found that the pastoralists are drifting towards sedentarization due to the effects of climate change and urbanization that make pastoralism difficult. The study found that pulaaku, which denotes a moral code of conduct that regulates the proper behavior of the Fulani ethnic group, is dissipated through sedentarization, intermarriages, and global impacts. The study concludes that to preserve their identity, the Fulani can form vibrant associations to promote their culture and identity.

Artificial intelligence and space exploration: A philosophical analysis of their intersection and implications

Hüseyin Can Coşkun — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0300

This article examines the philosophical intersections between artificial intelligence (AI), space exploration, and their conceptual frameworks. As AI systems become increasingly integrated into nearly all domains of human life, and space exploration advances toward potential habitable environments beyond Earth, philosophy becomes essential for interpreting these transformative developments. The paper investigates definitions, boundaries, and applications of AI while addressing philosophical discussions around habitable space environments and potential space societies. The research employs qualitative document analysis to examine the theoretical foundations of AI, from algorithmic processes to complex learning systems. It explores AI's fundamental limitations, particularly regarding consciousness and self-awareness, while reviewing existing space agreements and international legal frameworks. The analysis demonstrates that despite these important initiatives, no definitive conclusions have been reached regarding governance structures for habitable space. The study argues that political philosophy, which has historically provided robust frameworks for conceptualizing societies, will be crucial for developing ethical and just structures for potential space communities. As AI and space exploration converge, philosophical inquiry becomes indispensable for addressing fundamental questions about governance, ethics, consciousness, and human experience in these new domains. The implications extend to technology development, policy formation, education, and interdisciplinary research.

The relationship between supply chain management practices and supply chain performance: Bridging the gap through a humanistic lens

Simon Suwanzy Dzreke, Semefa Elikplim Dzreke — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0300

This study demonstrates that contemporary supply chain management (SCM) has reached a critical inflection point where the relentless pursuit of operational efficiency has created unsustainable trade-offs between profitability and ethical responsibility, as evidenced by recent scandals involving labor exploitation and environmental degradation that expose the limitations of traditional SCM frameworks prioritizing quantitative metrics while systematically neglecting human factors. Introducing a paradigm-shifting humanistic SCM model that reconceptualizes supply chains as dynamic socio-technical ecosystems where relational capital, worker dignity, and ethical alignment function as critical performance mediators, the research employs a rigorous mixed-methods design combining survey data from 200 global firms with 40 phenomenological interviews to yield three transformative findings: human factors explain 32% more variance in long-term performance outcomes than conventional metrics, high-trust supplier relationships demonstrate 18% reduction in stockouts through emergent collaborative behaviors transcending contractual obligations, and organizations scoring in the top quartile for ethical resilience indicators achieve 22% higher customer retention rates during market disruptions. These empirical results fundamentally challenge the dominant efficiency paradigm by demonstrating that humanistic practices serve as strategic levers for enhancing supply chain robustness, innovation capacity, and stakeholder value creation rather than merely ethical obligations, concluding with practical implementation tools including a field-tested Ethical Agility Scorecard that enables managers to quantify and operationalize this humanistic transformation while maintaining operational rigor.

Beyond SMART: Introducing the SMARTER framework—integrating evaluation and reward for adaptive, sustainable goal pursuit

Simon Suwanzy Dzreke, Semefa Elikplim Dzreke — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0300

Contemporary goal-setting frameworks, such as Locke and Latham's SMART criteria, struggle in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments due to a neurocognitive misalignment. This is highlighted by fMRI and ERP studies showing a 1.3-second delay between evaluation and reward processing, which disrupts motivational pathways and leads to goal abandonment. To tackle this issue, we propose the SMARTER framework (System for Monitoring, Adaptation, and Real-Time Evaluation Reinforcement). This neurocybernetic model introduces continuous real-time (R) to reinforce (R) feedback loops within goal structures, with a key innovation being a biologically calibrated sub-500ms R→R latency threshold. This threshold, validated by EEG phase-locked theta oscillations and computational modeling, synchronizes dopaminergic reward prediction error signaling with anterior cingulate cortex error detection, effectively bridging the motivation-action gap. The framework’s λ-calibrated volatility adaptation mechanism dynamically adjusts goal parameters using reinforcement learning algorithms, ensuring neurocognitive alignment amid environmental turbulence. Implementation trials in healthcare, manufacturing, and technology sectors showed 22–41% improvements in goal pursuit metrics, linked to increased striatal engagement levels (from M=0.38μV to M=1.24μV, SD=0.17) during high-volatility periods. SMARTER is the first system to achieve closed-loop evaluation-reward integration at neurophysiological timescales, transforming goal pursuit into an adaptive process that leverages environmental volatility for resilience. This requires retraining leaders as neuro-architects and adopting ISO 9241-450-compliant neuro-adaptive performance systems. We call for cross-disciplinary validation in extreme environments and the adoption of neuro-adaptive KPIs by 2025, leveraging volatility as a catalyst for human achievement.

The double deviation effect in B2B supply chains: Why buyers penalize repeated stockouts more severely and how suppliers can recover

Simon Suwanzy Dzreke, Semefa Elikplim Dzreke — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0300

This study reveals an overlooked yet important phenomenon in B2B supply chain relationships: the double deviation effect, whereby buyers impose drastically higher penalties—2.3 times greater—on suppliers for recurring stockouts than for one-off occurrences. While previous research has been predominantly focused on service recovery in B2C contexts, this study delineates the distinctive ways that industrial buyers assess supplier failure, going beyond operational performance to include process uncertainty and attribution processes. Employing a mixed-methods approach, we combined controlled experiments with 150 B2B procurement professionals with an in-depth case study of Toyota's supplier recovery system following the 2022 semiconductor crisis. According to our findings, buyers are 37% less likely to renew contracts after repeated stockouts, even when monetary impacts are the same as for isolated occurrences. This response is due to a shift in attribution, in which ongoing disruptions are perceived as indicative of systemic supplier vulnerability and not indicative of external hardships. These findings counter dominant supply chain risk management approaches, demonstrating that reactive recovery measures—like expedited shipping and monetary compensation—fail to rectify the deteriorating trust in institutions. In contrast, proactive interventions, like real-time monitoring dashboards of inventory and collaborative risk assessment platforms, have the potential to lower the magnitude of penalties by 24%. The research adds to the discipline through the introduction of double deviation penalty as a behavioral operations phenomenon, bringing attribution theory and supply chain governance together. The research offers empirical facts in the way of large-scale experiments and Fortune 50 supply chain validation, as well as suggesting a three-phase resilience framework specifically developed for high-value contracts. This research transforms stockouts into reputation-building opportunities for trust, defining supply chain resilience and allowing managers to engineer trust-sustaining systems for long-term partnerships.