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The purpose of this study is to use the structural model to determine the influence of mobile telecommunication on Egypt’s economic growth from 2000 to 2009. By focusing on mobile unique subscribers and mobile broadband-capable device penetration as indicators of telecommunications adoption, the authors seek to understand their overarching effects on the nation’s economic landscape.

The paper uses quarterly time-series data set over the period 2000–2019 and uses a structural econometric model based on an aggregate production function, a demand function, a supply function and an infrastructure function to detect causality and examine long-run relationships between variables.

The findings of the structural model reveal that both mobile unique subscribers and mobile broadband-capable device penetration significantly contributed to Egypt’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth from 2000 to 2019. Specifically, a 1% increase in mobile unique subscriber penetration and mobile broadband-capable device adoption is estimated to result in an average annual contribution to GDP growth of 0.172% and 0.016%, respectively.

The scarcity of panel data is the main research limitation for comparative study with other Middle East and North African Region (MENA) countries. Research extensions would include testing the significance of complementarities such as improving governance measures and building human capacity for both households and firms, which are necessary to boost the impact of telecommunication on economic growth in the MENA region.

Based on these findings, the study puts forth policy recommendations aimed at maximizing investment in network utilization, including mobile and internet services, as well as fixed broadband subscriptions. It highlights the crucial role of these investments in promoting social and economic development, not only in Egypt but also across the MENA region as a whole.

The findings of this research emphasize the importance of strategic investments in network utilization, encompassing mobile, internet services and fixed broadband subscriptions. Such investments are pivotal for fostering social and financial inclusion. The study underscores the potential of these investments to drive social and economic progress, not just within Egypt but throughout the entire MENA region.

Overall, existing literature generally supports the notion that the telecommunications sector has a positive economic impact. However, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to understanding the specific effects of the Egyptian telecommunications sector on the country’s economy, particularly in relation to the Egypt Vision 2030. The study aims to fill this gap by focusing specifically on Egypt and providing additional insights into the direct and indirect effects of the Egyptian telecommunications sector on the economy. By conducting a thorough analysis of the sector’s role, the authors aim to contribute to the existing literature by providing context-specific findings and recommendations.

This study aims to introduce and evaluate the COPULA framework, a construction project monitoring solution based on blockchain designed to address the inherent challenges of construction project monitoring and management. This research aims to enhance efficiency, transparency and trust within the dynamic and collaborative environment of the construction industry by leveraging the decentralized, secure and immutable nature of blockchain technology.

This paper employs a comprehensive approach encompassing the formulation of the COPULA model, the development of a digital solution using the ethereum blockchain and extensive testing to assess performance in terms of execution cost, time, integrity, immutability and security. A case analysis is conducted to demonstrate the practical application and benefits of blockchain technology in real-world construction project monitoring scenarios.

The findings reveal that the COPULA framework effectively addresses critical issues such as centralization, privacy and security vulnerabilities in construction project management. It facilitates seamless data exchange among stakeholders, ensuring real-time transparency and the creation of a tamper-proof communication channel. The framework demonstrates the potential to significantly enhance project efficiency and foster trust among all parties involved.

While the study provides promising insights into the application of blockchain technology in construction project monitoring, future research could explore the integration of COPULA with existing project management methodologies to broaden its applicability and impact. Further investigations into the solution’s scalability and adaptation to various construction project types and sizes are also suggested.

This research offers a comprehensive blockchain solution specifically tailored for the construction industry. Unlike prior studies focusing on theoretical aspects, this paper presents a practical, end-to-end solution encompassing model formulation, digital implementation, proof-of-concept testing and validation analysis. The COPULA framework marks a significant advancement in the digital transformation of construction project monitoring, providing a novel approach to overcoming longstanding industry challenges.

To answer the questions: what roles windows of opportunity act in the catchup process of latecomers, what strategies latecomer enterprises should adopt to size windows of opportunity to catch-up with incumbents even going beyond?

This paper studies the catch-up history of the Chinese mobile phone industry and proposes a sectoral innovation system under scenario of technology paradigm shifts. Then a history-friendly simulation model and counterfactual analysis are conducted to learn how different windows of opportunity and catch-up strategies influence the catch-up performance of latecomers.

Results show latecomers can catch up with technology ability by utilizing technology window and path-creating strategy. However, catching up with the market is not guaranteed. Demand window can help latecomers to catch up with market as it increases their survival rates, different sized windows benefit different strategies. However, it also enlarges incumbents' scale effect. Without technology window technology catch up is not guaranteed. Two windows have combination effects. Demand window affects the “degree” of change in survival rates, while the technology window affects the “speed” of change. Demand window provides security; technology window provides the possibility of a breakthrough for technology ability.

The findings of this paper provide theoretical guidance for latecomer enterprises to choose appropriate catch-up strategies to seize different opportunity windows.

This paper emphasizes the abrupt change of industrial innovation system caused by technology paradigm shifts, which makes up for the shortcomings of previous researches on industrial innovation system which either studied the influence of static factors or based on the influence of continuous changes.

Fortification-interdiction models provide system designers with a broader perspective to identify and protect vital components. Based on this concept, the authors examine how disruptions impact critical supply systems and propose the most effective protection strategies based on three levels of decision-makers. This paper aims to investigate location and fortification decisions at the first level. Moreover, a redesign problem is presented in the third level to locate backup facilities and reallocate undisrupted facilities following the realization of the disruptive agent decisions at the second level.

To address this problem, the authors develop a tri-level planner-attacker-defender optimization model. The model minimizes investment and demand satisfaction costs and alleviates maximal post-disruption costs. While decisions are decentralized at different levels, the authors develop an integrated solution algorithm to solve the model using the column-and-constraint generation (CCG) method.

The model and the solution approach are tested on a real supply system consisting of several hospitals and demand areas in a region in Iran. Results indicate that incorporating redesign decisions at the third level reduces maximum disruption costs.

The paper makes the following contributions: presenting a novel tri-level optimization model to formulate facility location and interdiction problems simultaneously, considering corrective measures at the third level to reconfigure the system after interdiction, creating a resilient supply system that can fulfill all demands after disruptions, employing a nested CCG method to solve the model.

Agriculture is one sector where the Internet of things (IoT) is expected to make a major impact. Yet, its adoption in the sector falls behind expectations. The purpose of this paper is to present the state-of-the-art of IoT in agriculture and investigate its slow adoption in the sector.

The authors have undertaken a systematic review and a synthesis of 1355 relevant publications over the last decade.

This literature review reveals that the “big three” barriers for the overall sector are cost, skills and standardization. The lack of connectivity and data governance are two key reasons why most of the proposed IoT solutions are standalone systems of limited scope, while the majority of commercial IoT efforts focus on practices in the protected indoor environment. Lastly, the analysis of past research along the five layers of the IoT system architecture reveals limited attention to barriers and solutions at the business layer, which represents a research opportunity for information systems scholars.

It is possible that some of relevant publications were missed in the literature search, although the search queries were kept as broad as possible to avoid the exclusion of any relevant work. Any publication written in any other language other than English was excluded from the review. Given the geographical distribution of the reviewed English publications (see section 4.1), it is highly likely that important works written by Chinese and European scholars in their native language were overlooked.

This study provides practical insights into the technical and organisational challenges on the ground. It is the hope that this literature review lays the groundwork for IS researchers who are well positioned to investigate technology adoption challenges in the relatively understudied agriculture sector.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review of adoption barriers and solutions across all five layers of the IoT system architecture.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the vehicle-based sensor effect and pavement temperature on road condition assessment, as well as to compute a threshold value for the classification of pavement conditions.

Four sensors were placed on the vehicle’s control arms and one inside the vehicle to collect vibration acceleration data for analysis. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests were performed to diagnose the effect of the vehicle-based sensors’ placement in the field. To classify road conditions and identify pavement distress (point of interest), the probability distribution was applied based on the magnitude values of vibration data.

Results from ANOVA indicate that pavement sensing patterns from the sensors placed on the front control arms were statistically significant, and there is no difference between the sensors placed on the same side of the vehicle (e.g., left or right side). A reference threshold (i.e., 1.7 g) was computed from the distribution fitting method to classify road conditions and identify the road distress based on the magnitude values that combine all acceleration along three axes. In addition, the pavement temperature was found to be highly correlated with the sensing patterns, which is noteworthy for future projects.

The paper investigates the effect of pavement sensors’ placement in assessing road conditions, emphasizing the implications for future road condition assessment projects. A threshold value for classifying road conditions was proposed and applied in class assignments (I-17 highway projects).

Considering the limited understanding of determinants influencing the adoption of smart mobile tourism app (SMTA) featuring augmented reality (AR) and big data analytics (BDA), privacy concern (PC) and the risk of privacy information disclosure (PI) have threatened SMTA adoption. This study aims to propose an expanded consumer acceptance and use of information technology (UTAUT2) model by including new contextual components, integrated with privacy calculus theory (PCT) model to examine the determinants influencing behavioural intention (BI) to use SMTA.

Personal innovativeness (IN) and privacy information disclosure (PI) are incorporated in UTAUT2 model to determine its effect on SMTA featuring AR and BDA technologies from smart perspective. Both privacy concern (PC) and privacy risk (PR) derived from PCT model are also included to determine its influences on an individual's willingness to disclose privacy information for better-personalised services. We collected responses from 392 targeted participants, resulting in a strong response rate of 84.66%. These responses were analysed statistically using structural equation modeling in both SPSS 22.0 and SmartPLS 3.0.

Findings showed that personal innovativeness (IN), habit (HT) and performance expectancy (PE) significantly affect behavioural intention (BI) while privacy concern (PC) significantly affect privacy information disclosure (PI) to use SMTA. In contrast, effort expectancy (EE), hedonic motivation (HM) and privacy information disclosure (PI) had no significant effects on behavioural intention (BI) while privacy risk (PR) had no significant effects on privacy information disclosure (PI) to use SMTA.

The study findings help tourism practitioners in better comprehending recent trends of SMTA adoption for establishing targeted marketing strategies on apps to improve service quality. In addition, it enables app development companies acquire app users’ preferences to enhance their app development for leading app usage.

This study intends to explore the influence of emotional intelligence on employee self-efficacy in Pakistan's telecom industry. Besides, it explores the mediating effect of emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) between them. This study also tests the relationship between emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) and self-efficacy in the customer care of Pakistan's telecom division.

The study leads forward with a positivist approach to obtain data in two different waves as a time lag study from the big five telecom companies operating in Pakistan. The data was collected from 270 employees working in Customer Services in the Telecom sector.

The results reveal that there exists a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and self-efficacy in customer care employees in Pakistan's telecommunication division sector. Moreover, emotional labor (deep acting) partially mediates the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-efficacy, and surface acting could not mediate the relationship among the employees of customer care in Pakistan's telecom division.

Management of emotions at the workplace has been an immensely vital area in managing the performance of employees, especially in customer-centric jobs, where dealing with customers is the prime focus and achieving customer satisfaction is the utmost outcome. There is limited evidence of the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-efficacy specifically in the customer care of the Telecom sector.

The paper aims to discuss error detection and correction in Kashmiri carpet weaving (KCW), mediated by cryptographic code, Talim which is held to guarantee accurate information transference from designing to weaving, even after hundred years. Yet, carpets often show errors on completion.

Human factors analysis revealed error emergence, detection and correction in this practice whose task domains are distributed over large geographies (from in-premises to several kilometers) and timescales (from days to decades). Using prospective observation method, production process of two research carpets from their design, coding and weaving was observed while noting the errors made, identified and corrected by actors in each phase.

The errors were found to emerge, identified and corrected during different phases of designing, coding and weaving while giving rise to fresh errors in each phase, due to actors’ normal work routines.

In view of this, usual branding of “weaver-error” behind flawed carpet turns out to be misplaced value judgment passed in hindsight.

The purpose of this paper is to present an up-to-date survey on the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique with co-operative strategy, a fast-evolving fifth-generation (5 G) technology. NOMA is used for serving many mobile users, both in power and code domains. This paper considers the power-domain NOMA, which is now discussed as NOMA.

The first part of the paper discusses NOMA-based cooperative relay systems using different relay strategies over different channel models. In various research works, the analytical expressions of many performance metrics were derived, measured and simulated for better performance of the NOMA systems. In the second part, a brief introduction to diversity techniques is discussed. The multiple input and multiple output system merged with cooperative NOMA technology, and its future challenges were also presented in this part. In the third part, the paper surveys some new conceptions such as cognitive radio, index modulation multiple access, space-shift keying and reconfigurable intelligent surface that can be combined with NOMA systems for better performance.

The paper presents a brief survey of diverse research projects being carried out in the field of NOMA. The paper also surveyed two different relaying strategies that were implemented in cooperative NOMA over different channels and compared several performance parameters that were evaluated and derived in these implementations.

The paper provides a scope for recognizable future work and presents a brief idea of the new techniques that can be united with NOMA for better performance in wireless systems.