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The major objective of the study is to investigate the effect of selected customer retention strategies (fair pricing, online marketing and frequent communication) on perceived service quality and organisational performance within the retail sector in Zimbabwe. Also, the study sought to understand the moderating role of ICT on the effect of customer retention strategies on perceived service quality and organisational performance.

A cross-sectional survey of 280 employees within Zimbabwe's retail sector was adopted and respondents were selected using simple random sampling method. A structured questionnaire with Likert type questions was used to gather data.

The study findings indicate that the performance of organisations within the retail sector is influenced by superior service quality, selected customer retention strategies and also moderated by the use of ICT.

The study contributes to the business management body of knowledge by assessing the effect of selected customer retention strategies (fair pricing, online marketing and frequent communication) on perceived service quality and organisational performance within the retail industry of an emerging economy. The study is also unique in that it used ICT to moderate the effect of selected customer retention strategies on perceived service quality and organisational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the personal information management (PIM) behaviours of social science faculty in Africa. The study examined the experiences and encounters of selected social scientists in Africa in organising and finding and re-finding of the information they previously created or stored. More specifically, the study sought to examine how faculty keep and refind information, the files and folders in which they store the information. Also, the study examined the nature and characteristics of faculty information spaces with particular respect to electronic documents including emails and paper documents.

Sample survey research design and a mixed methods approach consisting of qualitative and quantitative were used. Data was collected using a discursive technique, an interview schedule and a questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted using factorial analysis of mixed data design, guided by a combination of category and codes identification using NVivo and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 17. Principal component analysis (PCA) of factor analysis was executed to identify key components.

Eleven issues, namely, time, infrastructure, importance of the information, folder/file management, document characteristics and organisational context played significant roles in the PIM behaviours of the respondents. Others were importance of the information, document overload, memory, workload and computer literacy. PCA extracted four major components, namely, document overload, time, computer literacy and importance of the information.

An expansion in the number of faculty involved in this study would probably yield a more reliable outcome. Extending the study to cover Africa would also yield a more applicable result.

The key PIM issues identified in this study, namely, document overload, time, computer literacy and importance of the information should constitute the focus of continuous information literacy education aimed at improving PIM social scientists’ faculty in Africa.

Improved PIM of social science faculty will result to improved research productivity and good health.

PIM of social scientists has not been examined in the literature, and yet it is crucial for further understanding their learning and information behaviours, and improving their productivity. The design and administration of a questionnaire constructed based on codes extracted from qualitative and discursive sessions to the same respondents from whom the qualitative data was collected makes the findings very strong. A further deployment of factorial analysis of mixed data design to handle qualitative data makes the contribution of the study very significant.

Patient-centric exchanges, a major type of Health Information Exchange (HIE), empower patients to aggregate and manage their health information. This exchange model helps patients access, modify and share their medical information with multiple healthcare organizations. Although existing studies examine patient engagement, more research is required to investigate patients' attitudes and willingness to play an active role in patient-centered information exchange. The study's main objective is to develop a model based on the belief-attitude-intention paradigm to empirically examine the effects of patients' attitudes toward engagement in care on their willingness to participate in patient-centric HIE.

The authors conducted an online survey study to identify the antecedents and consequences of patients' attitudes toward engagement in care. To empirically test the research model, the authors collected data from a national sample (n = 357) of individuals in the United States. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The proposed model categorizes the antecedents to patients' attitudes toward engagement in patient-related and healthcare system factors. The results show that patient-related factors (perceived health literacy and perceived coping ability) and health system factors (perceived experience with the healthcare organization and perceived patient-provider interaction) significantly shape patient attitude toward care management engagement. The results indicate that patients' attitudes toward engaging in their healthcare significantly contribute to their willingness to participate in medical information sharing through patient-centric HIE initiatives. Moreover, the authors’ findings also demonstrate that the link between patient engagement and willingness to participate in HIE is stronger for individuals who perceive lower levels of privacy and security concerns.

The authors validate the proposed model explaining patients' perceptions about their characteristics and the healthcare system significantly influence their attitude toward engaging in their care. This study also suggests that patients' favorable attitude toward engagement can bring patient-centric HIE efforts onto a path to success. The authors’ research attempts to shed light on the importance of patients' roles in adopting patient-centric HIE initiatives. Theoretical and practical contributions of this study are noticeable since they could result in a deeper understanding of the concept of patient engagement and how it may affect healthcare services in an evolving digital world. The authors’ findings can help healthcare organizations provide public citizen-centric services by introducing user-oriented approaches in healthcare delivery systems.

Due to their particular nature, virtual assets (VA) are vulnerable to financial crimes such as money laundering and if the appropriate legal mechanisms are not established, this may result in the financial collapse of various economies. To this effect, best practices and standards have been published by some international organisations such as the Financial Action Task Force and IMF which are now domesticated in the national laws of several countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse the anti-money laundering (AML) legislative framework in the context of VA in three countries, namely, Mauritius, Japan and South Africa.

To achieve the research objective, the Mauritian AML laws in the context of VA were compared with the corresponding laws of some other countries, namely, Japan and South Africa. As such, a qualitative research method was adopted. In particular, the black letter approach was used to examine the relevant laws of these countries. A comparative analysis was conducted concerning the relevance of AML laws for each country when dealing with VA with the view of suggesting recommendations for Mauritian stakeholders to adopt to enhance the existing AML legal and regulatory framework.

The comparative study conducted has revealed that there are both similarities and divergences among the AML framework of the three countries further to which this research recommends that the Mauritian laws must be amended concerning the duration of information storage on VA, the definition of VA, advertisement by VA service providers and the electronic submission of annual reports. The Mauritian regulatory bodies also need to play a more active role in their joint collaboration to monitor suspicious VA transactions to combat money laundering.

At present, this study will be among the first academic writings on the efficiency of AML laws in the context of VA in Mauritius and also, because existing literature is quite scarce on assessing the adequacy of AML legislation in developing countries, this research aims at filling in the gap in literature. This study is carried out with the aim of combining a large amount of empirical, theoretical and factual information that can be of use to various stakeholders and not only to academics.

Consumers frequently use electronic payments (e-payment) as their first step into formal financial services. The advancement of information and communication technology, on the other hand, has resulted in several achievements for human civilization, altering people’s lives, behaviors and societal measures. This study’s main aim is to investigate issues and identify the factors that are likely to influence customers’ acceptance of implementing e-payment in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

A quantitative research approach was adopted to test the influence of e-payment data security, trust, ease of use, usefulness and accessibility on customers’ acceptance of the service. A questionnaire survey was electronically administered to a purposive sample, and 531 responses were returned, achieving the required sample size for the study. Descriptive statistics analysis was used to ascertain data validity and consistency, and regression analysis was used to test the model’s hypotheses.

The findings of this study demonstrated a high influence of the mentioned factors on the e-payment acceptance of the customers in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The main recommendations are to increase the adoption of e-payment; focus highly on the security factor in e-payment adoption; create a trustworthy e-payment service; strive to make the e-payment services more user-friendly; increase the longevity of the e-payment services by focusing on usefulness; and make e-payment services more accessible.

This study’s potential contribution is to identify the factors that influence e-payment acceptance by customers in Bahrain and draw attention to issues to be considered in adopting new e-payment services.

Lack of trust and poor quality of construction deliverables have become a serious matter nowadays. This is due to the absence of a uniform and decentralized system for managing quality information. In Kuwait’s industry, many incidents have been recorded as a lack of confidence in the authenticity and integrity of the documented data in the system. This paper aims to shed the light on a framework that would tackle this matter.

A designed framework using Blockchain technology (Hyperledger Fabric) has been used to create a transparent and decentralized environment between the parties. A digitalized informative checklist referred to as “Smart Construction Inspection Checklist (SCIC)” has been initiated to enhance the poor information recorded between the parties.

The framework has provided a transparent, immutable, traceable and decentralized environment in which all parties are involved in transactions. In addition, the integration of the SCIC in the blockchain environment provided an advantage in which all the necessary criteria of inspection will be stated, checked by the consultant and validated by the client to approve the transaction. A preliminary testing has been conducted to support the proposed framework.

This study fulfils the gap in the state of art for further studies to practically apply the framework that will enhance the quality of information management in Kuwait’s industry.

Purpose: Analysis and systematisation of global trends in the transformation of DSSs from the standpoint of solving their global and local problems and determining the central axioms of setting up and supporting business processes in DSSs.

Need of the Study: Decision Support Systems (DSSs) are the basis of doing business in an enterprise by automating business processes, keeping accounting and reducing various risks associated with complexity, labour-intensiveness, slow execution time and, therefore, potential loss of profit. In recent decades, the rapid development of DSSs has led to the emergence of complex enterprise information system architectures. At the same time, many local business processes are not implemented or are partially implemented. In Ukraine, such techniques include VAT accounting.

Methodology: The study is based on the literature analysis, Internet resources and practical experience obtained during the SAP ERP system implementation projects. Particular attention is paid to developing information systems architecture to solve the problems enterprises face during their growth. Thanks to the analysis of the example of the realisation of the Internet sales process and the induction method, the axioms of automation of business processes in accounting systems were formed.

Findings: Regardless of the qualitative and quantitative transformation, modern DSSs still cannot solve all the enterprise’s problems, mainly due to the use of paper documents and the diversity of national legislation. By the example of the SAP ERP system, the optimal implementation of the business process of VAT liabilities was proposed by Ukrainian legislation for sales below cost price.

Practical Implications: Compliance with the established axioms of automation of business processes will reduce the cost of resources for their implementation, maintenance and correction of potential errors and, therefore, will provide an opportunity to process more transactions. Implementing the proposed algorithm for calculating VAT liabilities in SAP ERP for sales below the cost price will simplify the existing process and enable the fulfilment of other requirements within the framework of current legislation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide adaptive access to learning resources in the digital library.

A novel method using ontology-based multi-attribute collaborative filtering is proposed. Digital libraries are those which are fully automated and all resources are in digital form and access to the information available is provided to a remote user as well as a conventional user electronically. To satisfy users' information needs, a humongous amount of newly created information is published electronically in digital libraries. While search applications are improving, it is still difficult for the majority of users to find relevant information. For better service, the framework should also be able to adapt queries to search domains and target learners.

This paper improves the accuracy and efficiency of predicting and recommending personalized learning resources in digital libraries. To facilitate a personalized digital learning environment, the authors propose a novel method using ontology-supported collaborative filtering (CF) recommendation system. The objective is to provide adaptive access to learning resources in the digital library. The proposed model is based on user-based CF which suggests learning resources for students based on their course registration, preferences for topics and digital libraries. Using ontological framework knowledge for semantic similarity and considering multiple attributes apart from learners' preferences for the learning resources improve the accuracy of the proposed model.

The results of this work majorly rely on the developed ontology. More experiments are to be conducted with other domain ontologies.

The proposed approach is integrated into Nucleus, a Learning Management System (https://nucleus.amcspsgtech.in). The results are of interest to learners, academicians, researchers and developers of digital libraries. This work also provides insights into the ontology for e-learning to improve personalized learning environments.

This paper computes learner similarity and learning resources similarity based on ontological knowledge, feedback and ratings on the learning resources. The predictions for the target learner are calculated and top N learning resources are generated by the recommendation engine using CF.