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In general, software development work environments involve many different tasks and have high demands on efficiency and quality of performance at both individual and team levels, which depend on the competencies of employees. However, the literature does not provide satisfactory evidence as for the characteristics and competencies of individuals. Especially, the employers’ expectations of new graduates have not been investigated in detail for different work environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine employers’ expectancies regarding technical, personal and educational competencies among IT-graduated employees to provide a comparison between individual and team work settings.

A survey approach was used for this purpose, and the research model was tested using multiple regression.

The results revealed that significant diversity exists in individual and team work settings regarding employers’ expectations for new graduates’ competencies in terms of adapting to new software development methods and approaches, using time effectively and experience gained in undergraduate projects.

The results of this study will yield insight to computer-related departments in curriculum development by providing a comparison between the varying competencies required in individual and team work settings from the employer’s perspective. In the long run, the aim is to meet employers’ demands of the new graduates’ competencies, resulting in better individual and team performances in information technology companies, thereby leading to successful software development.

Social media remarkably changed the way of interaction between the consumers and organizations. The increased acceptance of social media has given rise to social commerce (s-commerce) and s-commerce usage is gradually increasing over the last few years. The progressive development of technologies suggests that s-commerce will become the mainstream for marketing and a literature survey indicates that there have not been many studies in this area. The purpose of this paper is to predict the factors influencing consumer intention towards the adoption of s-commerce.

This study uses a survey approach with reference to important behavioural factors such as satisfaction, ethics, trust, enjoyment/easiness, social pressure and awareness. The research model was developed to be in line with the available literature. The data were collected using a five-point Likert scale and the research model was tested using least square regression.

The results showed that user intention is significantly and positively related to perceived trust, enjoyment/easiness, social pressure, satisfaction and awareness. Also, “intention” was found to be a significant mediating factor for actual usage.

First, the questionnaire was a “snap-shot” instead of longitudinal study. Second, future research should use other moderating variables that may affect the usage of social media. Also the study could apply a variant of research methods to include other techniques such as interviews, which allow for deeper understanding of the problem and issues.

Social media represents an important platform for electronic commerce and has one of the most metamorphic impacts on business. Therefore, investigating the usage of s-commerce with reference to important behavioural factors could provide valuable information for companies in establishing policies and strategies. It could also be useful for management studies and researchers in understanding the consumers’ attitude towards usage of social media for commercial purposes.

S-commerce creates opportunities for firms. Based on findings this research provides insights with major implications for marketers, who would like to generate direct sales on social network platforms.

Existing literature focusses largely on the effectiveness of social media. Only a handful has endeavoured to analyse s-commerce systems and the literature on consumers’ behaviour in using s-commerce is not mature yet. This study is one of the few studies in this field, and aims to predict and explain the user acceptance of social media for commercial purposes.

Nowadays, the main problem of industries is the issue of environmental pollution. The green supply chain (GSC) is one of the processes that can be effective to consider this issue and its practices in all working processes in every organizations, so that the concept of GSC has been emerged with the acceleration of the government regulations and rules to achieve environmental standards and the increasing demands of consumers to supply green products. Therefore, the organizations should move toward the development of environmental activities in today’s turbulent world. In other words, the current organizations should consider making their supply chain more agile and green to survive in the competition arena or in other words, they should consider making agile the GSC. The necessity of considering this issue needs to identify the evaluating indicators of the agility of the GSC. This study aims to consider this issue.

With reviewing the research literature and having survey with the experts, totally 7 criteria and 37 sub-criteria were identified as the evaluating indicators of the agility of the GSC. The results from collecting research data and using the confirmatory-factor analysis suggest the suitability of the above-mentioned indicators.

The idea of the GSC is to remove or minimize the greenhouse, chemical/hazardous gases and waste throughout the supply chain. On one hand, the agility of the supply chain as an operational capability in quick response to the uncertain and turbulent markers not only improves the performance of the company but also leads to cost decrease and increase of the professional capabilities. Therefore, the organizations should step toward the development of the environmental activities in the today’s turbulent world. The importance of the issue of agility and considering the environment in the supply chain double the necessity of identification of the factors of agility of the GSC.

The present research considers the identification of the evaluating indicators of the agility of the GSC in industries.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of the early adoption of International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) on Financial Market Indicators (FMIs) from a diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory perspective.

Using panel data from 110 countries in a period that spans from 1995 to 2014, this study applies an ordinary least squares regression model to investigate the financial consequences of adopting ISAs. This analysis was supplemented with estimating a fixed-effects and two-stage least squares regression models to address any concerns regarding the possible existence of endogeneity problems.

This study reports three key findings. First, the authors find that early ISAs adoption has a negative effect on several financial market consequences, namely stock market integration, market capitalisation, market turnover, market return, market development, stock price volatility and stock trading volume. Second, using an alternative measure to the one that is proposed by DOI theory, the authors found that some financial indicators have been significantly improved after ISAs adoption, but only for listed firms that prepared their financial statements under International Financial Reporting Standards and audited by ISAs simultaneously. Finally, the financialindicators of European stock markets, however, have insignificantly shrank post the mandatory adoption of ISAs in 2006.

The empirical evidence raises questions about how ISAs were enforced and implemented. For example, countries that adopted ISAs at early stages may have been dominated mostly by recently established stock exchanges. This implies a crucial need to determine and apply the best type of auditing regime that can increase investors trust and enhance the credibility of stock markets information, which might ultimately advance the FMIs over time significantly.

To-date, studies investigating the impact of the adoption of ISAs on FMI from a DOI theory perspective are virtually non-existent. The study, therefore, seeks to contribute to the extant literature by examining the influence of ISAs adoption on a wide range of FMIs.

Along with accounting scandals in the past, academics, researchers, and legislators have focused on fraud. The purpose of this study is to examine postgraduate and doctoral studies, articles, and books about forensic accounting and fraud audit published between the years 2008 and 2018 in Turkey. For this purpose, a total of 96 studies have been examined and 35 of these are master’s theses, 10 of them are PhD theses, 45 of them are articles, and six of them are books. These studies were presented in tables as classified. The studies examined in our research are summarized as year they were published, the author, and the scope of the topic and in terms of results. The conclusions of this study can be summarized as follows: (a) the majority of thesis published about forensic accounting and fraud audit are in 2011 and following years. In addition, most of the theses are focused on forensic accounting review rather than fraud audit. (b) Results in the articles reviewed are in the same direction with theses. (c) There are very few books about fraud audit and forensic accounting. One of them is related to fraud audit, while the rest of them are related to forensic accounting and forensic accounting profession. We suggest extending the scope of the study and making to other countries.

The e-Government has a potential to entrench Good Governance in Pakistan. However, this technology could not be successfully developed and implemented in public sector – despite of efforts made by the Government. Consequently, public sector is suffering from bad Governance, which ultimately affects the Governance as well as e-Government ranking of Pakistan in the globe – as indicated by the UN surveys and other relevant indices. This paper aims to propose a novel techno-policy framework for its successful implementation by considering all relevant critical success factors (CSFs) and determining their relative importance from policymakers’ perspective. Further, it aims to excerpt the root causes of e-Government failure in Pakistan and to derive valuable policy implications for its success in the public sector.

The techno-policy framework was developed by identifying all the CSFs and assimilating them by deploying the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. The survey instrument was designed to compare all the CSFs on the basis of AHP scale and to collect the socio-demographic data. An interview based survey of all the concerned stakeholders was conducted to know their perspective about the proposed framework and to determine their relative importance about all the CSFs. Finally, the empirical estimations were performed by using the Expert-Choice decision-making system.

The analysis of empirical results depicts that among CSFs’ main-categories – Governance is the most important; whereas, the Management and Resources are relatively more important; however, the Socio-Economics is relatively less important for the e-Government success in Pakistan. Further, among CSFs’ sub-categories – Political, Managerial, Legislative, Non-Technical, and Technical are relatively more important than Social, Economic, and Scope for the e-Government success in Pakistan. Lastly, among all CSFs – Political Stability, Managerial Strategy, ICT Policies, Funding, Portal Technology, Education & Skills, Cost, and Autonomy are the most important factors of their respective categories, and which can positively affect the e-Government success in Pakistan.

This study fills the gap caused by paucity of literature in terms of empirical based techno-policy research in the e-Government domain – from implementation perspective. Further, it serves as a prototype for the prospective researchers, who aim to conduct policy oriented research toward e-Government development in their respective regions.

The key findings, policy implications & recommendations of this study are quite valuable and of practical significance for the government, policymakers, practitioners, researchers and all the concerned stakeholders and beneficiaries. Further, this study paves a way forward toward entrenching the Good Governance in Pakistan.

This study contributes in several ways. It highlights the significance of e-Government as a technology for attaining Good Governance in Pakistan. Further, it presents consolidated view of all the concerned stakeholders toward the successful implementation of all e-Government programs in Pakistan. Finally, it provides a guideline for the government agencies to formulate their e-Government policy and strategy as per the needs of all stakeholders in Pakistan.

Social media users’ purchasing behaviour is yet to be fully understood by research. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how purchase intention is affected by social media user traits, cognitive factors (such as perceived control and trust) and individual beliefs, such as risk propensity and trustworthiness.

The authors propose and empirically test a model of purchase intention on social platforms. The study of over 500 active social media users finds the links between risk propensity, trust, technical efficacy and perceived control and explores the moderating effect of age and gender.

Purchase intention on social platforms is influenced by demographic factors, cognitive factors and beliefs. Both age and gender moderate the effects of beliefs and cognitive factors: age is a determinant of purchase intention for men, while beliefs are significant for younger women and cognitive factors are significant for older women.

This study involved a cross-sectional design via online survey of social networking users. Gender differences in purchase intentions are found which are, in turn, influenced by age. Further empirical testing of social purchase intention could include less experienced users or non-users.

The results of this study provide guidance for SNS providers and technology developers in social networking commerce in terms of the different drivers of purchase intention.

Social media users’ purchasing behaviour is yet to be fully understood. The study shows that purchase intention antecedents vary between genders and age groups of users. The identified connection between users’ perceptions of social networking sites (SNS) usage of personal information and purchase behaviour has an impact on the likelihood of user engagement in social transactions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the negative impact the invasive nature of social media technologies (SMTs) can have on a user’s continued intention to use it.

In order to understand the impact technology invasiveness (TI) has on people’s continued SMT behavior, a research model and corresponding survey were developed based on a comprehensive literature review and data collected from actual SMT users.

The authors found perceived usefulness has a large impact on user’s attitudes. Additionally, social networking (SN) has a significant and direct impact on both attitude toward the use of the SMT and its continued use. Another interesting finding is how strongly SN increases a user’s TI. The negative impact technology has on users’ lives comes from the need users feel to continue to update and manage their online persona.

Social media tools are becoming part of the workplace environment. If not careful, companies may introduce increased pressures on their workers to constantly be “connected” to SMTs. In order to obtain the advantages of SMT usage, companies would be wise to set expectation standards that alleviate some of this pressure.

This growth in social media would lead one to assume that all is well with SMTs and their usage is similar to other web-based technologies. However, there are some negative effects of SMT that warrant society and companies pausing to rethink the focus on these technologies.

Previous research has looked at IT from system success and acceptance. In this paper, we investigate the negative impact the invasive nature of SMTs can have on a user’s continued intention to use it.

The purpose of this study is to verify whether managers’ strategic orientation influences decision-making related to differentiation and whether these two factors impact on the performance of the firms in the Brazilian wine industry.

A survey was conducted with representatives from 123 wineries located in the following Brazilian states: 78.86 per cent in Rio Grande do Sul; 13.01 per cent in Santa Catarina; 2.44 per cent in Paraná; 2.44 per cent in São Paulo; 1.63 per cent in Bahia; and 1.63 per cent in Pernambuco. The data were analyzed using multivariate statistical techniques, resulting in a structural equations model of the constructs.

The research findings show that there is a positive association between prospector orientation and differentiation. Analyst positioning was negatively associated with differentiation of winery companies. It was also possible to show that differentiation has a positive relationship with performance.

While a previous study attempted to identify wineries’ strategic orientation using other theoretical constructs, this study makes a contribution to consolidating reflections on strategic orientation focused on differentiation and performance. The results contribute to expanding the scientific debate by filling a gap in existing theory and also provide information of use to decision-makers, demonstrating, which approaches improve differentiation, and hence, performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between employee loyalty (Organizational Commitment) and its two dimensions namely, affective commitment (AC) and continuance commitment (CC) with employee engagement.

A self-administered questionnaire was used for collecting the study data from 50 employees who represent three managerial levels from the government sector in United Arab Emirates (UAE). Three hypotheses were developed in order to test the said relationship. Hypotheses were tested through using various testes namely: the correlation coefficient and the regression analysis from the Statistical Package for Social Science software.

The findings indicated that there is a significant relationship between loyalty and engagement. AC was found to be more important in affecting employee's engagement when compared with CC.

The study is based on a small number of employees working mostly in one single organization which limits the generalizability of the results; a limitation that does not allow for statistical generalization but allows for analytical generalization.

The study contributes to the literature of OC and more specifically to the relationship between employee loyalty and engagement in the UAE public sector. The outcome of the research draws decision makers’ attention to the importance of employees’ loyalty and its impact on their engagement.