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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.

This paper aims to explore how older people in developed and developing countries are affected by the grey digital divide. It argues country type and culture influence older people’s willingness to access and learn internet skills. Using the knowledge from researchers informs policy, funding and delivery of appropriate skilling to minimize this divide.

A systematic literature search using specific keywords to locate digital divide research, specifically pertaining to older people across country types.

Despite increased internet access and affordability, older people still face challenges in learning internet skills. Country type, economic challenges and cultural beliefs need to be considered in minimizing the grey divide. Governments recognize the importance of funding such teaching but evidence-based research must continue to inform policy to maximize funding and solve the many physical age and cultural issues affecting older people’s access to internet skills learning.

This paper argues that research in developing countries into minimizing the grey digital divide is a crucial undertaking. As the internet continues growing in developing countries, finding solutions that consider cultural and age differences issues is crucial to the success of having internet literate societies that have growing populations of older people seeking to use it.

This study aims to measure the level of public awareness about the threat of the emerging coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic among the Omani population. It also aims to investigate the mediating effect of the Omanis’ attitudes and behaviors with underlying conditions of COVID-19.

A cross-sectional study was conducted to collect data via an online survey of Omani citizens and residents from various geographic areas in Oman, 305 responses were received. SPSS and partial least square-structural equation modeling were used for data analysis.

The study revealed that public awareness regarding the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly influenced by people’s perceived risk, information source and health-related knowledge. Further, preventive behavior during the disease spread has a significant direct and indirect impact on their awareness. However, an insignificant mediation effect of public attitude was found between the source of information and public awareness.

This study is limited by the scarcity of related literature in the Omani context. It is recommended that future research complete an in-depth study of public awareness regarding COVID-19, using other constructs and/or other data collection techniques.

This research will provide governmental health authorities and policymakers with a guideline to establish more efficient pandemic containment strategies to control public behavior toward the COVID-19 pandemic and curb viral prevalence.

This research will help in improving prevention measures against COVID-19 are recommended to be more educated through a more effective mechanism to raise public attitude regarding pandemic prevalence positively.

The originality of this research can be drawn from key findings that indicate that people overall gained knowledge about how to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and the accuracy of information significantly impacts public awareness.

This study aims to investigate the cybersecurity awareness manifested as protective behavior to explain self-disclosure in social networking sites. The disclosure of information about oneself is associated with benefits as well as privacy risks. The individuals self-disclose to gain social capital and display protective behaviors to evade privacy risks by careful cost-benefit calculation of disclosing information.

This study explores the role of cyber protection behavior in predicting self-disclosure along with demographics (age and gender) and digital divide (frequency of Internet access) variables by conducting a face-to-face survey. Data were collected from 284 participants. The model is validated by using multiple hierarchal regression along with the artificial intelligence approach.

The results revealed that cyber protection behavior significantly explains the variance in self-disclosure behavior. The complementary use of five machine learning (ML) algorithms further validated the model. The ML algorithms predicted self-disclosure with an area under the curve of 0.74 and an F1 measure of 0.70.

The findings suggest that costs associated with self-disclosure can be mitigated by educating the individuals to heighten their cybersecurity awareness through cybersecurity training programs.

This study uses a hybrid approach to assess the influence of cyber protection behavior on self-disclosure using expectant valence theory (EVT).

This study aims to examine the micromechanisms of how knowledge culture fosters human capital development.

An empirical model was developed by using the structural equation modeling method based on a sample of 321 Polish knowledge workers employed in different industries.

This study provides direct empirical evidence that tacit knowledge sharing supports human capital, whereas tacit knowledge hiding does not, and this hiding is considered a waste of knowledge. If tacit knowledge does not circulate within an organization, it is a severe waste of an organization. The findings indicate that shame from making mistakes might impede the sharing of knowledge gained from making those mistakes, and in such cases, the knowledge remains hidden.

Leaders aiming to ensure human capital growth should implement an authentic learning culture composed of a learning climate and mistakes acceptance components that enable open discussion about mistakes on each organizational level.

The knowledge culture is found to be an essential element of building human capital but, at the same time, not sufficient without a learning culture, and its mistakes acceptance component. A permanent organizational learning mode that supports a continuous organizational shared mental model reframing is an antidote to tacit knowledge hiding.

This study aims to investigate the integration of corporate social responsibility (CSR) at a functional level and examine its impact on company performance.

Using data from 435 Indonesian manufacturing companies, 11 hypotheses were tested on direct, indirect and total effects of the relationship between functional CSR integration and its impact on company performance. The stakeholder and contingency theories were applied.

The findings of this study reveal that functional CSR integration has a significant impact on customer, employee, operational and financial performances. The findings show that the relationship between functional CSR integration and financial performance can be mediated by customer, employee and operational performances. The results of this study also highlight that functional CSR integration has a stronger total effect on both customer and financial performances in environmentally non-sensitive industries than in environmentally sensitive ones.

This study expands the prior studies by providing a theoretical framework for the relationship between CSR integration and company performance, as well as testing the framework using quantitative research.

The findings can encourage managers to effectively integrate CSR into business functions to achieve superior social and financial performance, particularly in a developing country context.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to empirically investigate the performance implications of integrating CSR into business functions and reveals new findings on how such integration can substantially improve company performance.

This study aims to find the determinants of internal and external customer satisfaction of Islamic banks of Pakistan through service quality indicators that are assurance, reliance, empathy, tangibility, responsiveness. Compliance has also been added as a determinant of customer satisfaction. In this study, customers are divided into two groups, internal customers are those who are an employee in the Islamic bank and also an account holder. While external customers are account holders only in Islamic banks of Pakistan.

In this study, a quantitative research approach is used for analyzing the behavior of internal and external customers of Islamic banks in Pakistan. The instrument which is used to analyze the study’s data, is a structured five-point Likert-scale questionnaire. The structural model was analyzed with the help of the partial least squares structural equation modeling approach.

This study concluded that internal customers of Islamic banking are well aware and have full information and their level of satisfaction is positive toward the bank’s services. While external customers feel satisfied while using the Islamic banking services in Pakistan. Service quality indicators are positively and significantly related to customer satisfaction in the external customer model. On the other hand, some of the indicators are not showing a significant impact on the internal customer multi-group analysis shows a difference of coefficients are insignificant between internal and external customers.

This study helps policymakers, to understand the behavior of internal and external customers of Islamic banking in Pakistan for creating favorable policies for an interest-free banking service.

This research study provides an analysis of the customer satisfaction of Islamic banks in Pakistan by dividing Islamic bank customers into two groups (internal and external customers). The purpose for dividing Islamic bank customers into two groups is that this study wants to highlight that external customer’s perception is the same as internal customers or not? Before this study, it is difficult to find single research on this topic, whereas only one study is find-out on the factors that affect internet banking adoption among internal and external customers.

Digital transformation becomes the future path for all organizations. Organizations are in need to progress the technology in the event of rapid environmental changes in all aspects. This implies the essential need to adapt to these changes, not only to benefit from the vast opportunities it offers yet even to stay relevant in this instability, complexity, uncertainty and vagueness environment. This paper aims to examine the impact of different variables such as disruptive change, technological process innovation and industry 4.0 (I4.0) on digital transformation. It helps identify the different capabilities needed for digitalization and digital maturity, identify the supporting methods for adopting different technologies and offer answers to overwhelmed those challenges and obstacles resulting in this environment.

A quantitative approach was used in conducting this research, whereas a questionnaire survey strategy was used for this investigation. In total, 450 participants have been surveyed from three major private mining organizations in the Jordanian context. Structural equation modeling was used for the analysis stage and hypotheses testing.

The results of the analysis revealed that support the direct impact of the event of disruptive change, technological process innovation on digital transformation. In addition, the results showed that there is a positive direct impact of the event of disruptive change on technological process innovation. While I4.0 was found to moderate the relationship between the event of disruptive change and digital transformation.

Decision-makers are responsible for directing their organization toward digitalization. This transformation needs capabilities that help organizations in competing and survive in this challenging environment. That is, it is essential to increase process innovation and moving toward more adoption of I4.0. However, the event of disruptive change should be considered as a motivation for the organizations rather than an obstacle. Moreover, different populations, methods and other variables that may affect digitalization may generate novel insights in further research.

Theoretically, novel insights into the event of the disruptive change and its implications have been added to the literature. The models used in the current examination provide new directions for understanding and studying digital transformation and organizational capabilities that are needed for transformation. From the managerial perspective, these findings enhance understanding of practices in which the event of disruptive change supports innovation and highlight the values added through recommending more adopting of I4.0 applications to yield more innovative harvests.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the multi-stage dynamic process of financial distress. An attempt is made to explore multiple adverse heterogeneous events of financial distress leading a firm closer to bankruptcy progressively.

Sample comprises 321 ongoing, 54 suspended and 91 delisted non-financial firms from Pakistan Stock Exchange. Financial distress is segregated into three stages, i.e. profit reduction, mild liquidity (ML) and severe liquidity (SL). Flow diagrams are used to explain the transition of healthy firms through proposed stages of financial distress.

Results showed that firms liquidated/winding-up by court documented SL problems and closed their operations well before the delisting year. It is found that healthy firms are more likely to face SL when faced ML problem at first stage. Distressed firms can recover to a healthy position at any stage, however after approaching to SL, recovery is less expected.

The proposed process will provide a foundation for future studies to develop more relevant, robust and accurate early warning system of corporate failure that will help stakeholders to respond potential crisis accordingly and timely.

Previously, most of the studies used the ex post definition of bankruptcy that is criticized due to the contextual application, sample bias and non-segregation by the degree of liquidity problems. The originality of the proposed ex ante model is its segregation into a three-stage process that can be generalized regardless of specific bankruptcy law.