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The main purpose of this chapter is to explore whether and how the productivity of SMEs is affected by qualified human capital, digital capabilities, and innovation activities. In doing so, we use a rich data survey of 3,500 Greek SMEs in the year 2012 and we perform conditional quantile regression analysis. The main findings of this study suggest that although human capital knowledge, ICT infrastructure, and organizational innovation are significantly affecting productivity at the mean of the distribution, the effects are highly differentiated in the quantiles. Thus, qualified human capital facilitates substantially the productivity of SMEs only in the middle and the higher quantiles of the productivity distribution. In addition, SMEs in some high and low quantiles seem to increase their productivity when they participate in R&D collaborations. Furthermore, a higher degree of ICT infrastructure and organizational innovation favors the labor productivity of SMEs in the low and middle quantiles. On the contrary, the internet usage by the employees of SMEs at the lowest quantile is harmful for their productivity. SMEs should adopt the most appropriate policies to increase productivity and enhance performance.

Increasingly, Open Government Data (OGD), a philosophy and set of policies, gains on momentum today. Believed to promote transparency, accountability and value creation by making government data available to all (OECD, 2018), OGD constitutes a yet another field in which the interlocking relation between technological advances and politics can be studied. Using the national OGD portal of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (http://www.data.gov.sa/en) as a case study, this evaluates the portal to underline the significance of maintaining the quality of the data sets published online. The usability framework (Machova, Hub, & Lnenicka 2018) constitutes the framework for evaluation of the OGD portal. The findings suggest that there are many drivers to re-use the data sets published via the portal. At the same time, however, there are barriers to re-use the data sets on account of the non-publication of updated data sets. Implicitly, quality of the data sets should be improved. More involvement of the government agencies is required for contributing toward the data sets. Also, user involvement should be promoted by encouraging them to contribute to the data sets and lending recommendations for the improvisation of the data sets published via the portal.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) involved in the production of natural essential oils can reduce market accessibility challenges by trading through electronic marketplaces (e-marketplaces). However, trust is a barrier that SMEs should overcome in order to successfully trade in e-marketplaces. The agricultural sector presents a unique challenge to the subject of trust and e-marketplaces. It is difficult for SMEs in the agricultural sector to provide the level of assurance of product quality that their buyers expect. Trust between buyers and sellers during the earliest stages of e-marketplace interaction can pave the way for future trust in a seller on an e-marketplace. Thus, this study uses the uncertainty reduction theory (URT) to investigate factors that could influence the initial trust and pave the way for future trust in a seller on e-marketplaces. This study assumes a qualitative research methodology in which a multiple-case study approach is adopted. The study focuses on SMEs that produce natural essential oils in South Africa. Open-ended interviews were conducted with companies involved in buying or selling natural essential oils in South Africa to determine the factors that influence their decision to buy or sell in an e-marketplace. Findings from data were used to inform the development of a model of trust in sellers of natural essential oils in e-marketplaces. The proposed model recommends trust factors that should be considered during the entry, personal, and exit phases of the URT. The model identifies common and unique trust factors that relate specifically to businesses trading natural essential oils on e-marketplaces. The study found that some SMEs face challenges in coming up with an effective model for selling agricultural produce on e-marketplaces. Hence, they often resort to face-to-face interaction when it comes to product inspection, especially when dealing with first-time buyers. However, this study presented measures put in place by other SMEs suggesting how such challenges could be addressed. Nevertheless, a lack of trust in technology remains a cause for concern to some SMEs selling natural essential oils.

The main purpose of this study is to see the effects of Information Communication Technology (ICT) on a firm's innovation performance in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The objective of this study is twofold: First, it aims to analyze the impact of ICT applications on firms' innovative behavior and whether firms using ICT applications more intensively are also more innovative. Second, and more essentially, it assesses empirically the impact of ICT applications on firms' innovative performance in sub-Saharan African countries by using instrumental variable probit model. Therefore, we used data from the 2013 enterprise survey (Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS)). According to our results, the most important ICT tools are emails and using the internet for online sales. Firms who have IT Teams are not creating any difference; however, if a firm purchase or develop in-house any software then they are more likely to produce innovation than the other firms.

For various reasons many organisations are currently introducing the new ways of working (NWW). By now, this occurs on such a large scale, that it becomes relevant to investigate whether the new way of working leads to the best way of working: are the measurements taken by NWW really resulting in pursued outcomes? NWW claims to make working more effective, efficient but also more enjoyable for the organisation as well as the employee (Bijl, 2007). In practice, it seems that more pragmatically reasons lead to changes in the way of working. In many cases this concerns the elimination of fixed workplaces, combined with the possibility to work from home or elsewhere, facilitation of working with new ICT, and establishing an organisational culture which aims at employee autonomy and goal attainment.

To answer the question whether the NWW approach offers sufficient tools to provide effective solutions for occurring objectives, we compare NWW with a scientifically established construct regarding work design: Sociotechnical systems (STS) (Kuipers et al., 2010). We chose STS not only because it is a comprehensive approach to work design (all aspects of managing and organising are addressed), but also because the ambition is similar to NWW. STS considers, next to the ‘quality of the organisation’ (which is central to most work design approaches), also the ‘quality of work’ and ‘quality of employment relationships’ as outcome criteria. With incorporating the latter two, STS distinguishes itself from many other work design approaches and fits to the philosophy of NWW as mentioned above. Important foundations for the NWW approach are the quality of work as well as the willingness to organise teamwork.

The comparison of NWW and STS reveals as most important finding that the NWW approach misses a coherent theoretical foundation for the design of organisations. NWW focuses on loose aspects of organisations, like workspace, work design, management, organisational culture and competences. This is also evident in the scientific research focused on NWW: many studies examine the impact of a specific measure (e.g. introduction of flexible workspaces) on specific aspects of the organisation (e.g. social cohesion). Due to the lack of a work design approach no framework exists to test whether the introduction of NWW fits to the organisation and how work is organised and divided. It is our statement that NWW can only be effective once a good theoretical foundation is provided for NWW and once a clear work design approach is deducted.

Simultaneously, the NWW practices provide so many relevant practical experiences on skills and information underlining the potential of STS. Currently, STS mostly is focused on work in industrial organisations. STS and NWW have the potential to mutually extend each other, while tools may be developed with which new ways of working lead to the best way of working for organisations.

International students make valuable educational and economic contributions in higher education institutions (HEIs) all across the world. They contribute to the diversity and add different perspective in classrooms. Attracting international students is one of the objectives of HEIs. International students being present all over the world access information about the university online. Hence, all the relevant information must be available on the HEI website. Institutions are also present on social media platforms for interaction purposes. The owned media, including website, social media, discussion forums, etc. of institutions must be regularly monitored and analysed. Equally important is to analyse what students are discussing online about institutions, that is, what are their sentiments. This chapter is an attempt to develop a guide for HEI to draw the interest of international students for an institution through web analytics and social listening. Web analytics will help in understanding the behaviour of the visitor to the HEI website. Key performance indicators that will help in achieve the objective of attracting international students will be identified. On the other hand, analysing social listening on different platforms will help in understanding international students’ perspectives towards a specific institution.

This paper surveys the literature on economic research in banking. Two streams of empirical research were reviewed. The first stream of empirical research focus on research examining the effect of bank behaviour on economic performance. The second stream of empirical research focus on research on the effect of economic events on bank behaviour and performance. We provide our views about what we have learned from this research and about what else we would like to know.

Open data are characterized by a number of economic, environmental, technological, innovative, and social benefits. They are seen as a significant contributor to the city’s transformation into smart city. This is all the more so when the society is on the border of Society 5.0, that is, shift from the information society to a super smart society or society of imagination takes place. However, the question constantly asked by open data experts is, what are the key factors to be met and satisfied in order to achieve promised benefits? The current trend of openness suggests that the principle of openness should be followed not only by data but also research, education, software, standard, hardware, etc., it should become a philosophy to be followed at different levels, in different domains. This should ensure greater transparency, eliminating inequalities, promoting, and achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). Therefore, many agendas (sustainable development strategies, action plans) now have openness as a prerequisite. This chapter deals with concepts of open (government) data and Society 5.0 pointing to their common objectives, providing some success stories of open data use in smart cities or transformation of cities toward smart cities, mapping them to the features of the Society 5.0. We believe that this trend develops a new form of society, which we refer to as “open data-driven society.” It forms a bridge from Society 4.0 to Society 5.0. This chapter attempts to identify the role of openness in promoting human-centric smart society, smart city, and smart living.