Search results

This paper aims at reflecting on the changing boundaries of public sector auditing. In particular the paper focusses on the opportunities and challenges for performance auditing, for sustainable development auditing and digitalised public sector auditing.

Building from the papers in this special issue, the authors draw on the literature on current development of public sector auditing (such as public sector auditing performance auditing, sustainable development auditing and digitalised public sector auditing) and propose a future research agenda.

The “changing boundaries” of public sector auditing may influence the difficulty for public sector organisations to manage the uncertainties and risks not only associated to corruption but also the public governance development (collaborative, digital and emergency governance). The authors speculate on the role that the “changing boundaries” of public sector auditing can play.

The paper contributes by setting new research avenues for future studies on public sector auditing in a post-new public management context.

The purpose of the present study is to examine the general and travel-specific job exhaustion of international business travelers (IBTs). The study employs a JD-R model to explain general and travel-specific job exhaustion (IBTExh) through international business travel as demand and leadership (LMX) as a resource buffering the demands of international business travel.

The study was conducted among Finnish service company employees who had taken at least one international business trip during the previous year. The data (N = 569), collected in 2015, were analyzed with path models.

The results suggest that a higher number of international business travel days is related to a higher level of job exhaustion, especially the exhaustion related to international business travel. Moreover, a high-quality LMX was found to be linked to lower levels of both types of exhaustion. Interestingly, for those IBTs' with a low-quality LMX, even a high number of long-haul international business travel days was not connected with IBTExh

The contribution of our study is threefold. First, this study contributes to JD-R theory and the ill-health process by focusing on a job-specific well-being indicator, IBTExh, in addition to general exhaustion. Second, specific job demands related to international business travel, particularly the duration of business travel spent in short-haul and long-haul destinations, contributes to the literature on global mobility. This study sheds light on the potential effects on IBTs of different types of business travel. Third, our study contributes to the leadership literature and the importance of acknowledging the context in which LMX occurs.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often operate in environments marked by high levels of turbulence. Such firms adopt digital technologies and platforms that provide access to external real-time information and establish digital connectivity between firms to remain competitive. This study aims to focus on SMEs’ downstream and upstream platform-based digital connectivity (PDC).

This study examines the effects of PDC on SMEs’ operational performance under conditions of environmental turbulence. The data was gathered from 192 SMEs operating in the manufacturing arena.

The results show that the adoption of PDC does not directly affect an SME’s operational performance. However, in highly turbulent environments, PDC can improve operational performance. The results indicate that the performance effects of PDC vary according to the level and type of environmental turbulence.

This research offers insights into the relationship between PDC among SMEs and operational performance and encourages future research examining other possible conditional effects that could explain the contradictory results found in previous research.

This study contributes to the knowledge of supply-chain digitalization among SMEs and its performance effects in varying environmental conditions. Further, this study contributes to the prior research by focusing on the interorganizational aspects of digitalization in SMEs.

The purpose of this research is to better understand the human aspects of open innovation in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by exploring how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influence enjoyment in helping others, knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding and consequently firms' open innovation.

We collected data with a survey among CEOs in 140 SMEs and performed confirmatory factor analysis applying structural equation modeling in IBM SPSS AMOS (v. 26).

Results reveal that intrinsic motivation is positively associated with helping behavior and knowledge sharing and negatively associated with knowledge hiding. We also confirm the positive relationship between extrinsic motivation and knowledge sharing. Moreover, we find that knowledge sharing increases and knowledge hiding decreases the firm-level open innovation. Especially in high-tech industry, knowledge sharing is a vital determinant of open innovation.

Responding to the calls for a deeper understanding of the individual-level factors that determine organization-level open innovation, in this research we focus on the human aspect of open innovation in SMEs. Open innovation is a widely recognized and implemented concept among large corporations and facilitates better understanding of new technological and market developments both within and outside of organizations. However, understanding of the microfoundations of open innovation in smaller firms is still limited, but this steam of research is growing rapidly.

Robotic process automation (RPA) has recently emerged as a technology focusing on the automation of repetitive, frequent, voluminous and rule-based tasks. Despite a few practical examples that document successful RPA deployments in organizations, evidence of its economic benefits has been mostly anecdotal. The purpose of this paper is to present a step-by-step method to RPA investment appraisal and a business case demonstrating how the steps can be applied to practice.

The methodology relies on design science research (DSR). The step-by-step method is a design artefact that builds on the mapping of processes and modelling of the associated costs. Due to the longitudinal nature of capital investments, modelling uses discounted cashflow and present value methods. Empirical grounding characteristic to DSR is achieved by field testing the artefact.

The step-by-step method is comprised of a preparatory step, three modelling steps and a concluding step. The modelling consists of compounding the interest rate, discounting the investment costs and establishing measures for comparison. These steps were applied to seven business processes to be automated by the case company, Estate Blend. The decision to deploy RPA was found to be trivial, not only based on the initial case data, but also based on multiple sensitivity analyses that showed how resistant RPA investments are to changing circumstances.

By following the provided step-by-step method, executives and managers can quantify the costs and benefits of RPA. The developed method enables any organization to directly compare investment alternatives against each other and against the probable status quo where many tasks in organizations are still carried out manually with little to no automation.

The paper addresses a growing new domain in the field of business process management by capitalizing on DSR and modelling-based approaches to RPA investment appraisal.

The purpose of this study is to introduce new tools to develop a more precise and focused bibliometric analysis on the field of digitalization in healthcare management. Furthermore, this study aims to provide an overview of the existing resources in healthcare management and education and other developing interdisciplinary fields.

This work uses bibliometric analysis to conduct a comprehensive review to map the use of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) research models in healthcare academic studies. Bibliometric studies are considered an important tool to evaluate research studies and to gain a comprehensive view of the state of the art.

Although UTAUT dates to 2003, our bibliometric analysis reveals that only since 2016 has the model, together with UTAUT2 (2012), had relevant application in the literature. Nonetheless, studies have shown that UTAUT and UTAUT2 are particularly suitable for understanding the reasons that underlie the adoption and non-adoption choices of eHealth services. Further, this study highlights the lack of a multidisciplinary approach in the implementation of eHealth services. Equally significant is the fact that many studies have focused on the acceptance and the adoption of eHealth services by end users, whereas very few have focused on the level of acceptance of healthcare professionals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to conduct a bibliometric analysis of technology acceptance and adoption by using advanced tools that were conceived specifically for this purpose. In addition, the examination was not limited to a certain era and aimed to give a worldwide overview of eHealth service acceptance and adoption.