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This study aims to investigate the antecedents of behavioral intention and actual usage of mobile payment (m-payment) services during the COVID-19 pandemic among Indian consumers.

The proposed research model of this study is based on the extended framework of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) by using two additional variables, namely, perceived security (PS) and perceived trust (PT). In total, 436 sample respondents are chosen from Indian consumers with experience using m-payment services through the online survey method. The data analysis and proposed hypothetical relationships were tested using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques.

The results confirm that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, PS, PT, habit and price value are antecedents of consumer intention toward adopting m-payment services. Furthermore, behavioral intention significantly influences the actual usage of m-payment services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Though the impact of COVID-19 has been observed during the research period in getting responses from m-payment service users, the constructs used in the study are confined to the UTAUT2 model, and dimensions related to COVID-19 are not directly included in the measurement scale. The study’s findings propose valuable insights for service providers and policymakers.

This study’s results offer valuable insights to the service providers and policymakers to achieve the Government of India digital India objective of “Faceless, Paperless and Cashless” transactions.

This study’s results contribute to extending the empirical research literature on m-payment as antecedents of behavioral intention toward the adoption of m-payment services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, this study assumes important interrelationships among UTAUT2 constructs with the additional incorporation of PS and PT.

Contrary to want-based services, customer participation has got lesser attention in high-credence services like health care. Customer participation for patients with chronic illnesses could be life-threatening and goes beyond the service organization’s physical environment. Realizing the importance of transformative service research in health-care services, this study aims to propose and validate the conceptualization of customer participation for patients with chronic illnesses.

The study uses sequential exploratory research design with mixed method research. The first phase is a qualitative exploration of the nature and meaning of customer participation by synthesizing theory and insights from semi-structured interviews (N = 75) with doctors, patients and paramedical staff. Next, survey data (N = 690) of patients with chronic illnesses is used to validate the proposed conceptualization. Finally, nomological validity was also tested on an additional survey data set (N = 362) using SEM and FsQCA.

The findings reveal that health-care customer participation is a three-dimensional behavioral construct in which a customer can participate by sharing information, involving in decision-making and ensuring compliance. The study also demonstrates that customer participation is a critical driver of satisfaction with life and perceived control on illness.

The research provides policy guidelines for owners and operators of health-care organizations in developing frameworks for collecting participation data, which can be used in strategies for seeking customer participation.

The research conceptualizes and validates “customer participation” as a multidimensional higher-order construct for patients with chronic illnesses, rarely focused in services marketing and management research on health care.

This study aims to understand the research data management (RDM) services offered by academic libraries in South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. This study aims to evaluate the library and information science professionals’ required RDM skills and the challenges faced with providing RDM services.

The research methodology for this study used a survey method with purposive sampling. Data were collected through online structured questionnaires, which were used to examine the current state of RDM services offered in academic libraries in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

South Asian and Southeast Asian region major types of RDM services provided were data repository, data management training, maintaining Web resources, data study and analysis, and promoting awareness of reusable data sources. Little attention was given to advisory services on data analysis/mining/visualization and supporting reproducibility and workflow transparency. The results indicated that most respondents agreed that metadata standards and data management planning skills were required for RDM services in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

This study is significant because it offers a comprehensive assessment of ongoing RDM services in academic libraries of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Most current literature focuses on best practices in developed nations. This study highlights the need for more competent and dedicated academic staff for effective RDM services. Library professionals can use this study to identify the gaps in RDM services and suggest formative measures to overcome such challenges.

This paper seeks to deepen and improve our understanding of business ethics in services by developing a typology that reconciles and integrates disparate and often conflicting ideas and viewpoints while providing practical guidance for ethical decision-making.

The paper examines current theoretical approaches in ethics to provide an understanding of the ethical theories, how they have been applied and how they have evolved in businesses and marketing. It discusses conceptual issues related to ethical dilemmas and the available typologies.

Based on the axioms of the Triple-A Framework for Ethical Service Research, the Typology of Ethical Dilemmas in Services (TEDS) is proposed. The typology identifies three types of dilemmas based on four dimensions considering all service interactions guided by normative ethics (virtue, deontological and consequentialism).

The proposed DILEMMAS process illustrates the practical application of TEDS.

This paper extends the ethics and services literature by offering a novel theoretical and practical approach to addressing ethical dilemmas. TEDS is authentic, advances our knowledge and applies to all service organizations that aim to manage ethical dilemmas effectively.

The present study aimed to provide an understanding of the roles of community-based financial service organizations (i.e. rotating savings and credit associations [ROSCAs] as institutional pillars in facilitating low-income, unbanked consumers’ access to informal financial services).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 low-income, unbanked consumers participating in ROSCAs in Pakistan, where only 21% of adults have a bank account and almost four out of five individuals live on a low income. The obtained data were analyzed using the thematic analysis technique.

ROSCAs’ regulatory, sociocultural and cognitive aspects facilitate low-income, unbanked consumers’ utilization of informal financial services owing to their approachability by, suitability for, and fairness to such consumers. Thus, they promote such consumers’ financial inclusion.

Low-income consumers are mostly unable to access formal financial services due to the existing supply- and demand-side impediments. Understanding ROSCAs’ institutional functioning can help formal financial service providers create more transformative financial services based on the positive institutional aspects of ROSCAs to enhance poor consumers’ financial inclusion and well-being.

The inclusion of low-income, unbanked consumers in formal banking services will help them better control their finances.

Many low-income, unbanked consumers in developing countries utilize informal financial services to meet their basic financial needs, but service researchers have rarely investigated how informal financial institutions function. The present study showed that ROSCAs, as informal institutions, meet low-income, unbanked consumers’ personal, social and financial needs in a befitting manner, which encourages such consumers to use the financial services offered by ROSCAs.

Data librarianship, or data-driven librarianship, is the combination of information science, data science and e-science fields and is gaining gradual importance in the library and information science (LIS) profession. Hence, this study investigates the data librarianship core concepts (motivational factors, challenges, skills and appropriate training platforms) to learn and successfully launch data librarianship services.

A survey method was used and the data were collected through online questionnaire. Purposive sampling method was applied and 132 responses were received with 76 respondents from the public and 56 from the private sector universities of Pakistan. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 25) was used, and descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to analyzed the data.

LIS professionals understand the importance of data-driven library services and perceive that such services are helpful in evolving the image of the library, helping with the establishment of institutional data repositories/data banks, developing data resources and services for library patrons and especially researchers, and receiving appreciation and acknowledgment from the higher authorities. The major challenges that emerged from the data were: missing data policies, limited training opportunities for data librarianship roles, no additional financial benefits, lack of infrastructure and systems, lack of organizational support for the initiation of data-driven services, and lack of skills, knowledge and expertise. Data librarianship is in its early stages in Pakistan, and consequently, the LIS professionals are lacking basic, advanced and technical data-driven skills.

The policy, theoretical and practical implications describe an immediate need for framing data policies. Such policies will help the libraries or any other relevant entities to store the data and assign metadata and documentation in such a way that it is easy to retrieve and reusable for others.

This is the first study in Pakistan to investigate the perceptions of LIS professionals about data librarianship core concepts: motivational factors, challenges, skills and appropriate training platforms to grasp data-driven skills and successfully launch library services.

“The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on service innovation during the past two decades and provide an analysis of sources of publication, citations and authorship using bibliometric analysis techniques (VOSviewer).” This paper aims to assesses the important trends, enhance the academic debate, identify research gaps and propose future directions and a research agenda.

This paper examines 176 articles in English language published from 2002 to 2022 from the Scopus database by adopting the bibliometric technique using VOSviewer software. This paper analyzes the different levels and boundaries of service innovation using bibliometric analysis of “service innovation research” using VOSviewer software. The methodology analyzes the number of citations, co-citations, keywords, authors, journals and countries.

The review of the past 20 years indicates a substantial growth in the number of good research publications on service innovation. The UK, the USA, Sweden and Australia dominate this research area with the most articles published to date under the subject area of “Business management.” The review highlighted that most of the studies on service innovation focused on products, companies and processes in the services industry. The most critical factors behind service innovation failure are improper management and lack of knowledge. The citation analysis revealed various research implications and directions for the future.

This study focuses only on service innovation and excludes research on performance management and control. Thus, future studies may explore this area of research in future studies. Only research articles were analyzed; conference papers, reports, manuals and white papers from practice were excluded. Research implications indicate that future studies on service innovation would be essential for organizational excellence, not process excellence.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the current status and essential trends of research on service innovation. This study identifies the research gaps and provides a clear research agenda for understanding the various elements of service innovation.

This study arises from the need to understand the servitization or service transition process in non-manufacturing firms and sets out from a taxonomy proposed in the literature (Lütjen et al., 2017). This study aims to identify the barriers to service transition in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) participating in an innovation ecosystem and how these small firms can benefit from this strategy to develop in this scale.

A qualitative study was carried out based on multiple case studies, data being collected through semi-structured interviews with service business-people belonging to a science and technology park situated in an inland region of Portugal.

From content analysis, the results obtained indicated a lack of specialized personnel as the main barrier and as a strategy to overcome this situation these companies turned to business cooperation. This means that good management of this cooperation increases the quality of the services provided, as inter-organizational networks, through participation in ecosystems, can secure a wider set of resources and capacities.

This study shows that firms try out different service offers simultaneously and that innovation capacity increases constantly during service transition. Secondly, the study emphasizes the importance of innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurship, servitization and cooperation networks in promoting resilient and small ventures. Thus, this study can help owner-managers, SMEs and political decision-makers to make better informed decisions, which can be particularly relevant in scenarios of uncertainty and crisis.

This study draws conclusions in a little explored empirical area in the literature, challenging the widespread understanding that service transition is used only in manufacturing firms. This study provides clearer conceptual understanding of service transition from a network and relational perspective which, despite the perspective's relevance, still lacks research in the context of servitization.

Recently, the Government of India has emphasized digital financial inclusion for promoting cashless transactions with a vision to transform India from a traditional cash-based economy into a cashless economy. Technology-driven payment apps are facilitated greater access to cashless financial services and improve the speed, efficiency, accuracy and effectiveness of financial transactions. This study aims to explore the determinants of quick response (QR) code mobile payment (m-payment) adoption intention among marginalized street vendors in India.

The proposed research model was tested using 320 responses from QR code m-payment users. An interview schedule was performed using the structured questionnaire from marginalized street vendors by adopting a purposive sampling technique. The proposed research framework of this study developed on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). In addition to the existing variables proposed in the UTAUT model, three more variables have been added, namely, digital financial literacy (DFL), personal innovativeness (PI) and perceived trust (PT). Besides, the study used confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques to analyze the data.

This study confirms that factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, PT and customers’ DFL are significant determinants of street vendors’ intention to use QR code m-payment services. However, social influence and PI have shown an insignificant relationship with adopting a QR code m-payment system.

The results provide insights for policymakers and service providers. Specifically, government and bankers design promotional campaigns emphasizing the ease of use, perceived benefits, security and faster business transactions to accept and use the QR code m-payment system to encourage prospective users to achieve a cashless economy.

Many prior studies have widely concentrated on m-payment adoption intention in India. However, only a few studies have attempted to examine the factors influencing the adoption of QR code m-payment services among merchants from emerging economies. There is a dearth of studies on QR code adoption from an unorganized sector perspective, specifically marginalized street vendors. Therefore, this study explicitly examines the extent to which the determinants of adoption intention toward QR code-based m-payment services among marginalized street vendors within the framework of the extended UTAUT model by incorporating DFL, PI and PT. The findings of this study contribute, theoretically and practically, to the existing literature.

This study examines whether engagement with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-focused specialized training programs enable senior public officials (focal actor) to collectively deliver on public services that have a transformational societal impact over time. Further, the study explores the factors that impede and facilitate the delivery of such services. The authors do so by using service mechanics theorization and drawing on the lens of actor and collective engagement.

This study undertakes a longitudinal exploratory qualitative study design. SDG-focused training programs were delivered, as interventions, for two cohorts of senior public officials from Bangladesh in an Australian University in 2017 and 2019. In-depth interviews were conducted upon the training's completion and then after 8- and 12-month intervals to assess the short- and long-term impact respectively.

An empirical framework is proposed from the study findings. It shows that engagement – cognitive, emotional and behavioral – with SDG-focused specialized training programs enables focal actors (i.e. senior public officials) to engage other actors (other public officials, community members) in networks, facilitated the delivery of SDG-aligned public services. Such engagement results in a transformative impact that spans micro (individual), meso (organizational) and macro (societal) levels over time. Factors that impede and facilitate SDG-aligned delivery of public services are also identified.

Theoretically, the authors contribute to the literature that relates to actor and collective engagement, SDG-focused capacity-building training programs and service mechanics. Practically, this study informs organizations about the ways that they can effectively engage their senior employees with capacity-building training programs that focus on sustainability.

This study is one of the few that connects the interface between public service delivery for enacting societal changes and SDG-focused capacity-building training programs through service mechanics theorization and using the lens of actor and collective engagement.