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The purpose of this paper is to focus on explaining the concept of a smart citizen and in what way it is related to and dependent on smart government.

To study this specific use case, researchers use “Qualitative Research.” For the review of the literature, the authors used an indirect citation. Additionally, VOSviewer software was used to evaluate the research data for this paper.

As researchers, the authors will explain how smart governments lay the foundation for transforming an ordinary citizen into a smart citizen. Also, they will be highlighting the significance and importance of citizens becoming smart in the future and how it will give an edge to any country over others in terms of development and growth.

After it, the authors will be sharing the essential qualities that are joined together to make a smart citizen and able to distinguish between a common citizen and smart citizen. Finally, creating an understanding of it, the emphasis will be on the facilities and services smart citizens will get under a smart government, which will eventually increase the smartness of the citizens.

This study uses a bibliometric approach to analyze the overall status of e-government research by revealing patterns and trends that would help gain a broad understanding of global developments in the field and future directions.

All documents related to e-government published from 2000 to 2019 were extracted from the Scopus and the Digital Government Reference Library databases. Bibexcel, Biblioshiny, and VOSviewer were used to perform the analyses and visualize the science mapping.

The results showed that 21,320 documents related to e-government research were published and cited 263,179 times. The annual growth rate of e-government research has reached 21.50%. The regression analysis showed that the growth rate is expected to increase gradually over the coming years. Despite the significant role that conference papers play in the e-government literature, the impact of articles far exceeds conference papers. The University of Albany (SUNY) has played an important role in e-government research in terms of production and impact. Furthermore, the study revealed some countries that are expected to play a prominent role in e-government research, as well as several topics that may attract more attention soon.

The results presented in this study and the comprehensive picture obtained about the e-government field make it an effective supplement to the expert evaluation. Thus, researchers, research managers, policymakers, institutions, funding agencies, and governments can rely on it.

This research focuses on the Metaverse's evolving trend and the potential application of blockchain technology in the accounting of virtual assets in this digital domain. The Metaverse introduces a new economy in which users may earn real-world revenue through virtual activities, necessitating the need for efficient and dependable virtual asset accounting. Blockchain technology, with its decentralized and immutable record, appears to be a viable answer to these problems. This chapter discusses the present status of blockchain technology for accounting for virtual assets in the Metaverse as well as its potential role for businesses and the economy. It also determines the technology's issues and limits and makes recommendations for further development. The findings indicate that blockchain technology has the potential to transform virtual asset accounting in the Metaverse by improving security, transparency, and consistency. However, scalability and legal/regulatory issues must be overcome before it can completely achieve its promise. Accounting experts, developers, and stakeholders interested in the convergence of blockchain technology and the Metaverse economy will find this chapter useful.

The purpose of this study is to provide a holistic view of the emergence of shareholder activism (SA) in India. However, specifically, this study aims at fulfilling the research gap by discussing the policy and legal advancement in the area of SA and investigating the chronological evolution of SA, manifestations of SA, motives of SA, outcome of SAs and impact of SA on the financial performance of the firm.

This study used a mixed methodology (both qualitative and quantitative) to draw inferences, including content analysis, descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test. The data has been collected from the annual reports of the sample companies and the Prowess database. Return on assets and return on equity have been used as measures of financial performance while investigating the difference in financial performance between firms subjected to SA and firms not subjected to SA.

The findings of this study suggest that there has been significant growth in the occurrence of SA incidents in India in the past decade, with shareholders prominently manifesting by opposing the proposals at annual general meetings/extraordinary general meetings, mostly involving governance-related demands. The findings from the independent sample t-tests revealed that there has been a significant difference in the financial performance of the sample subjected to SA and firms not subjected to SA. Furthermore, the results of the paired sample t-test provide strong evidence of significant improvement in the financial performance of firms’ post-SA.

The findings of this study have implications for various stakeholders. The findings of this study suggest that SA has been relatively more successful in the Indian context and may encourage minority shareholders to follow active participation through shareholder proposals and votes rather than a passive strategy to trade and exit. For firms, it can provide valuable inferences about the emergence of SA and how it has a positive impact on the financial performance of the firm, which can lead to a change in the perception of investors and promoters who perceive SA as a threat (Gillan and Starks 2000; Hartzell and Starks, 2003). For policymakers, it can act as a tool to investigate whether the regulatory changes have been able to bring the intended transparency, accountability and enhanced shareholder participation. This will encourage policymakers to be more agile, as their efforts are bearing fruit. This will also act as a guide to formulating future policies and regulations.

This study is an effort to provide a holistic view of SA scenarios in a developing economy setting like India, where SA is a very recent phenomenon. Although there are studies in the area of SA, there is a dearth of studies that have investigated the various dimensions of SA in the Indian context in a very systematic and extensive manner, investigating all the different dimensions of SA. Furthermore, this study also intends to investigate the impact of SA, which is normally perceived as a threat to financial performance and provide valuable contrasting evidence.

This study examines shareholder and board motivations regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) to understand boards' stewardship approaches to environmental issues.

Using content analysis, the authors classify CSR motivations in all environmental shareholder proposals and board responses of Fortune 250 companies from 2013 to 2017 from do little (a shareholder primacy perspective) to do much (a stakeholder pluralism perspective). The authors calculate the motivational dissonance for each proposal-response pair (the Talk Gap) and use cluster analysis to observe evidence of board stewardship and subsequent environmental disclosure and performance (ED&P) changes.

Board interpretations of stewardship are not uniform, and they regularly extend to stakeholders beyond shareholders, most frequently including profit-oriented stakeholders (e.g. employees and customers). ED&P changes are highest when shareholders narrowly lead boards in CSR motivation and either request both action and information or information only. The authors observe weaker ED&P changes when shareholders request action and the dissonance between shareholders and boards is larger. When shareholders are motivated to do little for CSR, ED&P changes are weak, even when boards express more pluralistic motivations.

The results show the important role that boards play in CSR and may aid activist shareholders in determining how best to generate change in corporate CSR actions.

This study provides the first evidence of board stewardship at the proposal-response level. It measures shareholder and board CSR motivations, introduces the Talk Gap, and examines relationships among proposal characteristics, the Talk Gap, and subsequent ED&P change to better understand board stewardship of environmental issues.

This study aims to examine the role of trust and digital literacy in influencing citizens’ adoption of e-government services.

Grounded in the technology acceptance model (TAM), a research model was developed focusing on e-filing services adoption. Hypotheses were formulated to assess the moderating effect of digital literacy on the relationship between trust and the key TAM determinants of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. A questionnaire-based survey of 876 citizens who have used e-filing using the snow-ball sampling technique was adopted to generate data. The data was analyzed using PLS-SEM through the aid of SmartPLS 4 to assess the measurement model and structural relationships.

Trust positively influences perceived usefulness and ease of use, which in turn drive adoption. Additionally, digital literacy significantly moderates the impact of trust on usefulness and ease of use perceptions – the effect is stronger for higher digital literacy.

The study adopted a single country developing economy context limiting cross-cultural applicability. Second, the focus on e-filing adoption precludes insights across other e-government services. Third, the reliance on perceptual measures risks respondent biases and fourth, the study is a cross-sectional survey design.

The findings emphasize multifaceted strategies to accelerate e-government adoption. Nurturing citizen trust in e-government systems through enhanced reliability, security and transparency remains vital. Simultaneously, initiatives to cultivate digital access, skills and proficiencies across population segments need to be undertaken.

This study integrates trust and digital literacy within the theoretical model to provide a more holistic understanding of adoption determinants. It highlights the need for balanced technology-enabled and social interventions to foster acceptance of e-government services.