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This paper examines the relationship between marketing automation emergence and the marketers' use of heuristics in their decision-making processes. Heuristics play a role for the integration of human decision-making models and automation in augmentation processes, particularly in marketing where automation is widespread.

This study analyzes qualitative data about the impact of marketing automation on the scope of heuristics in decision-making models, and it is based on evidence collected from interviews with twenty-two experienced marketers.

Marketers make extensive use of heuristics to manage their tasks. While the adoption of new automatic marketing tools modify the task environment and field of use of traditional decision-making models, the adoption of heuristics rules with a different scope is essential to defining inputs, interpreting/evaluating outputs and control the marketing automation system.

The paper makes a contribution to research on the relationship between marketing automation and decision-making models. In particular, it proposes the results of in-depth interviews with senior decision makers to assess the impact of marketing automation on the scope of heuristics as decision-making models adopted by marketers.

This paper analyzes how information systems (IS) can serve as tools of neo-colonial control in offshore outsourcing of research and development work. It draws on critical work examining business and knowledge process outsourcing.

The paper reports an empirical study of how laboratory information management systems (LIMS) shape offshore outsourcing practices involving Western client firms and Indian contract research organizations (CROs) in the pharmaceutical industry. The study adopted a multi-actor perspective, involving interviews with representatives of Western clients, Indian CROs, system validation auditors, and software vendors. The analysis was iterative and interpretative, guided by postcolonial sensitivity to themes of power and control.

The study found that LIMS act as tools of neo-colonial control at three levels. As Western clients specify particular brands of LIMS, they create a hierarchy among local CROs and impact the development of the local LIMS industry. At inter-organizational level, LIMS shape relationships by allowing remote, real-time and retrospective surveillance of CROs’ work. At individual level, the ability of LIMS to support micro-modularizing of research leads to routinization of scientific discovery, negatively impacting scientists’ work satisfaction.

By examining multiple actors’ perceptions of IS, this paper looks beyond the rhetoric of system efficiency characteristic of most international business research. As it explores dynamics of power and control surrounding IS, it also questions the proposition that outsourcing of high-end work will move emerging economies upstream in the value chain.

This paper addresses a gap in research literature in the fields of blockchain technology (BC), supply chain network dynamics (SC) and network effect phenomena (NE). Extant BC and SC literature describes the potential benefits to be reaped through the adoption of BC technology. While BC technology does not yet meet the researched expectations of adoption, performance and efficacy, the authors analyze the three inter-related fields (BC, SC and NE) to bridge this gap in theory.

This paper begins with a research review correlating the technological fundamentals of BC technology into fundamental value propositions for SC logistics contexts. The authors review the gap between these theoretical technological functions and the current ecosystem of BC applications. With an overarching understanding of BC in SC contexts, this paper then explores the phenomena of NE and attempts to synthesize various interrelated aspects of the three fields (BC, SC and NE). Research frameworks from extant literature are used for cross-comparing legacy software/information system solutions with potential and existing BC-based solutions. Case studies are utilized to support this analysis.

Several key considerations and themes are identified to better inform practitioner and researcher decision-making. Novel insights pertain to BC platform architecture and application modularity, integrated governance and decision-making capabilities, and the automation capabilities that arise from a healthy application and smart contract ecosystem.

The core contribution is the synthesis of network effect theory with SC phenomena and BC theory and the exploration of how these three fields are inter-related in the maturation of BC technology. Specifically, the authors deepen insights from extant literature by contextualizing findings with relevant interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks.

It has been demonstrated that AI-powered, data-driven tools’ usage is not universal, but deeply linked to socio-cultural contexts. The purpose of this paper is to display the need of adopting situated lenses, relating to specific personal and professional learning about data protection and privacy.

The authors introduce the results of a case study based on a large educational intervention at a fully online university. The views of the participants from degrees representing different knowledge areas and contexts of technology adoption (work, education and leisure) were explored after engaging in the analysis of the terms and conditions of use about privacy and data usage. After consultation, 27 course instructors (CIs) integrated the activity and worked with 823 students (702 of whom were complete and correct for analytical purposes).

The results of this study indicated that the intervention increased privacy-conscious online behaviour among most participants. Results were more contradictory when looking at the tools’ daily usage, with overall positive considerations around the tools being mostly needed or “indispensable”.

Though appliable only to the authors’ case study and not generalisable, the authors’ results show both the complexity of privacy views and the presence of forms of renunciation in the trade-off between data protection and the need of using a specific software into a personal and professional context.

This study provides an example of teaching and learning activities that supports the development of data literacy, with a focus on data privacy. Therefore, beyond the research findings, any educator can build over the authors’ proposal to produce materials and interventions aimed at developing awareness on data privacy issues.

Developing awareness, understanding and skills relating to data privacy is crucial to live in a society where digital technologies are used in any area of our personal and professional life. Well-informed citizens will be able to obscure, resist or claim for their rights whenever a violation of their privacy takes place. Also, they will be able to support (through adoption) better quality apps and platforms, instead of passively accepting what is evident or easy to use.

The authors specifically spot how students and educators, as part of a specific learning and cultural ecosystem, need tailored opportunities to keep on reflecting on their degrees of freedom and their possibilities to act regarding evolving data systems and their alternatives.

Nearly 40 years since they first appeared, there is renewed interest in dashboards, engendered by the diffusion of business intelligence (BI) desktop software, such as Power BI, QlikView and Tableau, denoted collectively as “self-service” BI. Using these commodity software tools, the work to construct dashboards apparently becomes easier and more manageable and no longer requires the intervention of specialists. This paper aims to analyse the implementation of this kind of commodity dashboard in a university, exploring its role in performance management processes and investigating whether the dashboard affects the organisation (or not).

This paper focusses on an action research project developed by the authors, where the objective was to design and implement a dynamic performance measurement tool fitting the needs of department directors. The three authors were all involved in the project, respectively, as project manager, dashboard implementation manager and accounting manager of the studied organisation.

The results reveal a specific but complex change to the procedures and outcomes in the organisation studied, where the dashboard becomes a boundary infrastructure, thereby reviving technical and organisational problems that had been latent for years.

In this paper, the authors contribute to the debate on the digital age and the role of accounting with their exploration into the “revolution” of self-service BI tools. The democratisation and flexibility of these instruments put into discussion two core and somewhat controversial functions of accounting: data integration and personalised reporting.

This paper explores how digitalization affects the academic research publication process by taking into account the perspective of management scholars. It provides an overview of the digital professional services dedicated to academic research, and investigates academics' awareness of, the impact on the publication process of, and scholars' expectations regarding digital services and software.

This explorative study adopted a qualitative approach by performing direct observations of websites regarding digital professional research services and in-depth interviews with national and international management scholars.

The multiple digital professional services dedicated to academic research enable authors to develop a scientific paper independently or with the support of professionals. The scholars' awareness regarding the digital services and software was limited, because of both the plethora of options on the market and the frequent use of the same digital tools over time. In impact terms, these tools enable scholars to improve research quality and to increase productivity. However, the negative effects led scholars to express different expectations about how they can be improved and what difficulties should be overcome to favor the publication process.

The results of this study provide suggestions both for scholars who engage in academic research and digital services and software providers.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the ongoing development of digitalization in support of the research publication process from the perspective of academics.

Quality management practitioners have yet to cease the potential of digitalisation. Furthermore, there is a lack of tools such as frameworks guiding practitioners in the digital transformation of their organisations. The purpose of this study is to provide a framework to guide quality practitioners with the implementation of digitalisation in their existing practices.

A review of literature assessed how quality management and digitalisation have been integrated. Findings from the literature review highlighted the success of the integration of Lean manufacturing with digitalisation. A comprehensive list of Lean Six Sigma tools were then reviewed in terms of their effectiveness and relevance for the hybrid digitisation approach to process improvement (HyDAPI) framework.

The implementation of the proposed HyDAPI framework in an industrial case study led to increased efficiency, reduction of waste, standardised work, mistake proofing and the ability to root cause non-conformance products.

The activities and tools in the HyDAPI framework are not inclusive of all techniques from Lean Six Sigma.

The HyDAPI framework is a flexible guide for quality practitioners to digitalise key information from manufacturing processes. The framework allows organisations to select the appropriate tools as needed. This is required because of the varying and complex nature of organisation processes and the challenge of adapting to the continually evolving Industry 4.0.

This research proposes the HyDAPI framework as a flexible and adaptable approach for quality management practitioners to implement digitalisation. This was developed because of the gap in research regarding the lack of procedures guiding organisations in their digital transition to Industry 4.0.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of emerging technology (technology adoption, perceived benefits, technological challenges and ease of use) and the auditing practice of accounting professionals.

The primary method of data collection was a questionnaire directed to newly practicing chartered accountants who are partners of sole proprietorship or partnership firms in India. The data were analyzed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that there is a positive and significant relationship between characteristics of emerging technology (technology adoption, technological challenges and ease of use) and auditing practice, while factors of the perceived benefits had a negative relationship with auditing practice.

The study model would aid technology enabled audit research by giving a platform for a new study to investigate further detailed solutions to emerging information technology determinants.

This study illustrates how tools technique perceived benefit motivates sole proprietorship practicing auditors to adopt emerging technology- enabled auditing software for auditing client's financial statements. Further, this study has added to the information technology auditing literature and might add benefits to the numerous other audit firms to adopt in emerging technology tools their audit firm.

Audit firms, generally sole proprietorship and partnership firms, should be given enough awareness about the latest audit software tools to carry out their audit tasks efficiently.

The study findings highlight benefits of emerging technology-enabled auditing practice among owners/partners of the sole proprietorship or partnership firms, which is not extensively discussed in the prior studies. Furthermore, it broadens knowledge of perceived benefit, technological challenges and ease of use in technology-enabled audit software in the auditing and accounting literature.

The aim of this paper is to frame the stakeholder-driven system mapping approach in the context of climate change, building on stakeholder knowledge of system boundaries, key elements and interactions within a system and to introduce a decision support tool for managing and visualising this knowledge into insightful system maps with policy implications.

This methodological framework is based on the concepts of market maps. The process of eliciting and visualising expert knowledge is facilitated by means of a reference implementation in MATLAB, which allows for designing technological innovation systems models in either a structured or a visual format.

System mapping can contribute to evaluating systems for climate change by capturing knowledge of expert groups with regard to the dynamic interrelations between climate policy strategies and other system components, which may promote or hinder the desired transition to low carbon societies.

This study explores how system mapping addresses gaps in analytical tools and complements the systems of innovation framework. Knowledge elicitation, however, must be facilitated and build upon a structured framework such as technological innovation systems.

This approach can provide policymakers with significant insight into the strengths and weaknesses of current policy frameworks based on tacit knowledge embedded in stakeholders.

The developed methodological framework aims to include societal groups in the climate policy-making process by acknowledging stakeholders’ role in developing transition pathways. The system map codifies stakeholder input in a structured and transparent manner.

This is the first study that clearly defines the system mapping approach in the frame of climate policy and introduces the first dedicated software option for researchers and decision makers to use for implementing this methodology.