Search results

This paper aims to present the findings from a European study on the digital skills gaps in tourism and hospitality companies.

Mixed methods research was adopted. The sample includes 1,668 respondents (1,404 survey respondents and 264 interviewees) in 5 tourism sectors (accommodation establishments, tour operators and travel agents, food and beverage, visitor attractions and destination management organisations) in 8 European countries (UK, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands and Bulgaria).

The most important future digital skills include online marketing and communication skills, social media skills, MS Office skills, operating systems use skills and skills to monitor online reviews. The largest gaps between the current and the future skill levels were identified for artificial intelligence and robotics skills and augmented reality and virtual reality skills, but these skills, together with computer programming skills, were considered also as the least important digital skills. Three clusters were identified on the basis of their reported gaps between the current level and the future needs of digital skills. The country of registration, sector and size shape respondents’ answers regarding the current and future skills levels and the skills gap between them.

The paper discusses the digital skills gap of tourism and hospitality employees and identifies the most important digital skills they would need in the future.

The accelerated digital transformation and the growing emphasis on privacy, safety and security present ongoing challenges for cybersecurity experts. Alongside these challenges, the multidisciplinary, everchanging and complex nature of the cybersecurity domain has further challenged the acquisition and retention of cybersecurity talent. Empowering reskilling and upskilling in cybersecurity necessitates efficacious educational endeavours which promote self-confidence and foster a growth mindset. The purpose of this paper is to highlight that cultivating self-efficacy in cybersecurity education can help promote competency development and effectively address the prominent skills gaps. This notion applies equally to both aspiring individuals pursuing a career in cybersecurity and professionals in the field who may wish to better articulate the skills they already possess, the skills they lack and newly surfacing skills that need to be developed.

The study discusses the imminent need for adopting a “skills-first” approach in cybersecurity and explores innovative pedagogies and professional frameworks that can inform and frame such an approach. Subsequently, a critical analysis of the importance of self-efficacy towards motivating and supporting upskilling in cybersecurity is performed. A case study is presented, expanding the authors’ previous work on cybersecurity professional development, to demonstrate the mediating role that self-efficacy can play in developing core cybersecurity competencies. The case study presents the design of a new cybersecurity curriculum in the context of postgraduate, synchronous distance cybersecurity education, and it is utilised as a basis to discuss how the proposed curriculum cultivates self-efficacy attitudes.

A skills-first approach is becoming the new norm in contemporary workplaces. This work highlights the importance of actively nurturing self-efficacy attitudes through innovative cybersecurity curricula that can be tailored to the learners’ needs, instigating a drive for learning and, ultimately, helping learners effectively upskilling by portraying a self-directed learning path and a professional growth mindset in cybersecurity.

The authors present the importance of cultivating self-efficacy in higher and lifelong education to foster reskilling and upskilling in cybersecurity. An innovative cybersecurity curriculum was constructed and delivered with a group of learners demonstrating how self-efficacy can be leveraged through interactive, reflective and self-assessment educational activities that enhanced motivation and self-awareness, curiosity, attention to detail and resilience – key skills for a successful career in cybersecurity.

The purpose of this paper is to (a) examine the current state of the digital economy in Southeast Asia (SEA), the challenges and opportunities derived from digital transformation and the digital economy, and the impact of the digital economy on SEA, especially human and physical capital development, and (b) propose policy recommendations for SEA countries to better manage digital transformation.

This is a conceptual paper. The theoretical framework has been built from the three-sector governance approach to identify the issues of the digital economy and propose solutions to address the issues. Specifically, it examines the role and activities of the public sector, the private sector and the third sector to address the challenges posed by the digital economy, especially human and physical capital development.

This paper revealed challenges and opportunities derived from the experience of Southeast Asian countries and proposed several policies recommendations, including a common data policy and payment platform for the Asian region, a good training and development policy to equip the workforce with digital skills, and digital mindset as well as build cybersecurity capability and capacity at the regional level.

This paper is significant as it examines the development of the digital economy from an interdisciplinary perspective – including economics, digitalisation, governance, management, public policy, technology and human resource development. It also provides better insights into how SEA's digital economic development can be further improved to contribute to a sustainable regional economy.

This paper aims to analyze the financial implications associated with Ugandan universities employing e-learning techniques and to suggest sound policy solutions to the problems the investigation found.

To illustrate how e-learning is used in Uganda, the study used a descriptive research design. The study used a quantitative methodology to highlight the various experiences associated with utilizing e-learning platforms from various universities. A questionnaire survey was distributed to university students, and the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics in order to understand the usage of e-learning and Persons correlation to understand the degree of the relationship between the study variables.

The study findings reveal that e-learning approaches in universities are favorably correlated with their financial implications (r = 0.598; p-value 0.05). It was excruciatingly difficult to access online learning resources and platforms, and there was a severe lack of power. Some academic staff members lacked adequate e-learning platform training, and students noted that e-learning eased communication between students and lecturers, whereas Internet subscription and acquisition of mobile devices were expensive.

The research was limited to three districts in western Uganda, and thus, it may not be possible to extrapolate the results to the entire nation.

Universities are open to these changes since the digital world is moving more quickly, overall, and this trend has crept into education as well. Policymakers and other universities may utilize the study's findings to inform their decisions.

The study offers useful insights into how e-learning systems have altered university teaching methods.

Heritage education is currently a consolidated discipline, which advocate for a holistic vision of heritage. In this sense, this research aims to study the heritage conceptions, perceptions and learning context amongst primary and secondary students, comprehensively and fully.

This research focuses in Andorra, a country in the Pyrenees, where there are three different education systems. This allowed the study to obtain a sample of 1,235 primary and secondary students, throughout a structured questionnaire that was previously designed and validated ad hoc.

In general terms, the results show that around half of the students have a holistic view of heritage; however, natural and historical elements are highlighted as the ones they learn from the most, especially through visits in situ. Moreover, the students’ perceptions of heritage show that over a 90% of students believe it is important to safeguard because it is connected to nature and culture preservation.

This research is included in a greater scope project that also considers other agents in the education community that belong to formal and non-formal spheres. In addition, it is the first investigation where the field of heritage education is studied globally in an entire country, considering primary and secondary education students.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of external stakeholders-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities (local community and suppliers) on customer value co-creation behavior. This study also aims to examine the mediating role of relationship marketing orientation (RMO) on the relationship of CSR activities and customer value co-creation behavior.

The main problem of dichotomy between customers and the management was existing in banking sector so that’s why through purposive sampling, banking customers were selected for data collection through a self-administered questionnaire. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The present study found that both local community-related and supplier-related CSR activities have a positive impact on customer value co-creation behavior. Relationship marketing orientation mediates between the link of CSR activities and customer value co-creation behavior. The strength of RMO in CSR supplier and customer value co-creation behavior is found to be more dominant.

This study is restricted to one country under-investigation; therefore, it can be replicated with a larger and more geographically diverse sample.

This study offers insights to the banking sector that local community-related CSR activities contribute to the value co-creation behavior and minimize the social problems of Pakistan.

The findings of this study highlight that top management of banks can enhance the customer’s participation in services by using valuable CSR activities. The results imply the importance of interactions between the recipient of services and service providers. Stakeholder theory has previously been applied to examine stakeholders’ value maximization; this study uses stakeholder theory to examine shareholders’ value co-creation.

Este estudio investiga el impacto de las actividades de responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC) relacionadas con las partes interesadas externas (comunidad local y proveedores) en el comportamiento de co-creación del valor del cliente. Este estudio también tiene como objetivo examinar el papel mediador de la orientación del marketing relacional (OMR) en la relación de las actividades de responsabilidad social corporativa y el comportamiento de co-creación del valor del cliente.

El principal problema de dicotomía entre los clientes y la gerencia existía en el sector bancario, por lo que a través de un muestreo intencional, los clientes bancarios fueron seleccionados para la recolección de datos a través de un cuestionario auto-administrado. Con el fin de verificar las hipótesis propuestas, se empleó un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales.

El presente estudio encontró que tanto las actividades de RSC relacionadas con la comunidad local como las relacionadas con los proveedores tienen un impacto positivo en el comportamiento de co-creación del valor del cliente. La orientación del marketing relacional media entre el vínculo de las actividades de responsabilidad social corporativa y el comportamiento de co-creación del valor del cliente. La fuerza de la OMR en el comportamiento de co-creación del valor del cliente y el proveedor de RSC se encontró que era más dominante.

Este estudio se limita a un único país, por lo tanto, podría ser replicado con una muestra más amplia y con mayor diversidad geográfica.

Este estudio ofrece información al sector bancario de que las actividades de RSE relacionadas con la comunidad local contribuyen al comportamiento de co-creación de valor y minimizan los problemas sociales de Pakistán.

Los resultados de este estudio ofrecen a la alta dirección de los bancos la posibilidad de mejorar la participación de los clientes en los servicios mediante la utilización de valiosas actividades de RSC. Los resultados implican la importancia de las interacciones entre el receptor de los servicios y los proveedores de servicios. La teoría de las partes interesadas se ha aplicado anteriormente para examinar la maximización del valor de las partes interesadas; este estudio utiliza la teoría de las partes interesadas para examinar la co-creación de valor de los accionistas.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of digital technology on promoting the equalization of basic regional public services based on measuring the level of digital technology and the equalization level of regional basic public services.

Based on the inter-provincial panel data from 2013 to 2021, this article utilizes the method of replacing digital technology to verify the robustness of the conclusion, evaluating the impact of digital technology on promoting the equalization of basic regional public services, while carrying out an extended analysis of government intervention, population density and regional heterogeneity.

According to our findings, digital technology has significantly promoted the equalization of basic public services in the region. According to the result of the heterogeneity test, digital technology has a better effect on promoting the equalization of public services in regions with moderate government intervention and relatively low population density. Moreover, the development of digital technology can significantly promote the equalization of public services in China’s eastern region.

This article elaborates on the impact of digital technology on the equalization of basic regional public services from three perspectives: reducing the cost of public services, increasing the degree of marketization of public services and realizing the sharing of public service resources. Thus, it enriches the empirical research literature on digital technology and the equalization of regional public services.

This study aims to investigate the comprehensive conceptualization how digital marketing and its adoption increase the productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as the impact of technological orientation, customer relationship management and digital marketing on SMEs’ business performance in emerging markets (EMs).

Anchored by social network theory, 178 SMEs were conveniently drawn from the National Board for Small Scale Industries now Ghana enterprise agencies in Ghana. The hypotheses were analysed using the SPSS package tool, and structural equation modelling was used, as well.

This study reveals that the conceptualization and adoption of digital marketing positively affect the performance of SMEs’ business management in EMs. In addition, a positive moderating effect of dynamism is observed in the relationship between digital marketing and SMEs’ business performance.

This study focuses only on SMEs from the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions of Ghana as an EM, and it proposes priorities for future research streams in both developed and emerging countries.

The findings encourage SMEs to develop quality digital marketing technologies, good customer relationships and technological orientation and customer relationship management competencies in EMs to maximise profit.

This paper fills considerable knowledge, evidence and contextual gaps in the literature on SMEs, entrepreneurship and marketing in EMs by presenting a comprehensive overview of how SMEs can use digital marketing in an EM context to achieve the following: customer acquisitions, satisfaction and retention; increased profitability; quality service delivery; value creation; and cost reductions.

This study aims to statistically verify the links of income and education with information and communication technology (ICT) diffusion across 191 countries of the world taking into account a total of 9 indicators best representing the socio-economic variables.

Multivariate regression analysis was used as a prime method to rigorously test the relationships of income and education with ICT diffusion across 191 countries. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (V. 22) was used to analyze and predict patterns in the data.

The results support the hypotheses that income and education are positively related to ICT diffusion. The findings statistically confirm that poverty is a leading cause of digital divide worldwide.

Academic, policy and practice groups should work in collaboration to fight against digital divide. Present results also imply that digital divide shall never end but rather it can be controlled to an extent with multiple collaborative efforts.

Prior research assignments on the digital divide concentrate on exploring the links between few socio-economic and ICT variables in select few regions theoretically. The present work addresses this literature gap by developing and testing two hypotheses to statistically investigate the relationships between a broad set of socio-economic and ICT indicators.