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This study aims to investigate why anti-corruption statutes are not efficient in Nigeria’s upstream petroleum industry.

This study is a doctrinal legal research that embraces a point-by-point comparative methodology with a library research technique.

This study reveals that corruption strives on feeble implementation of anti-corruption legal regime and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention. Finally, this study finds that anti-corruption organisations in Nigeria are not efficient due to non-existence of the Federal Government’s political will to fight corruption, insufficient funds and absence of stringent implementation of the anti-corruption legal regime in the country.

Investigations reveal during this study that Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) operations are characterised with poor record-keeping, lack of accountability as well as secrecy in the award of oil contracts, oil licence, leases and other financial transactions due to non-disclosure or confidentiality clauses contained in most of these contracts. Also, an arbitration proceeding limit access to their records and some of these agreements under contentions. This has also limited the success of this research work and generalising its findings.

This study recommends, among other reforms, soft law technique and stringent execution of anti-corruption statutes. This study also recommends increment in financial appropriation to Nigeria’s anti-corruption institutions, taking into consideration the finding that a meagre budget is a drawback.

This study reveals that corruption strives on feeble implementation of anti-corruption legal regime and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention. Corruption flourishes due to poor enforcement of anti-corruption laws and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention by the government.

The study advocates the need for enhancement of anti-corruption agencies' budgets taking into consideration the finding that meagres budgets are challenge of the agencies.

This study evaluates the mediating role of social media entertainment on social information (content) and social media performance, during the COVID-19 era.

Primary data were randomly gathered from 373 students from two top universities (public and private) in Ghana, a sub-Saharan African economy. Data analysis was achieved utilizing the partial least square–structural equation model (PLS-SEM).

Social media (SM) entertainment partly mediates the link between social media content and social media performance of students, suggesting that social media entertainment is almost indispensable in creating social media content to achieve optimum performance among tertiary students.

The use of cross-sectional data alone for this study does not give us the opportunity to observe the social media activities of respondents over a longer period. Future studies could, therefore, include longitudinal data.

The findings in this study suggest that faculties can modify their pedagogical activities to include social media and reflect some entertainment content, since it has an influence on student performance within the social media space.

SM has a great influence on students' performance socially and academically; therefore, educational stakeholders like university authorities, faculties, parents and guardians, and the government should consider social media as a tool for attaining educational goals.

The study extends the use of UTAUT2, in understanding students' learning and behavior processes, by linking antecedents of adoption to the post-adoption effect.

This paper aims to describe the indigenous and innovative practices adopted by the small-scale farmers to cope with the impacts of climate change hazards on subsistence farming.

The data were collected through focus group discussions with 72 small-scale farmers from a rural community in Limpopo Province, South Africa. The discussions were analysed through verbatim transcripts and content analysis.

The study results show the farmers’ understanding of climate change variability and its hazards in the form of rainfall scarcity and excessively increased temperature, which are responsible for a declining production of indigenous crops. It has also been found that in the face of these hazards, the farmers experience low crop yields, which cannot provide the household food requirements. However, the small-scale farmers use a combination of local and innovative knowledge and skills to improve their crop production. They have adopted the indigenous adaptation mechanisms, which include rainfall prediction, preparation of the gardens, change of crops and the planting season to ensure better crop yields. The farmers also adopted innovative adaptation practices such as the use of fertilisers, growing of exotic crops and use of extension officers’ guidance and skills to minimise the risks and maximise the chances of resilient crop production.

This paper describes the farmers’ ability to use the indigenous and innovative adaptation practices. It is only focused on the farmers’ knowledge and skills other than the extension officers’ skills.

The adaptation practices reported in the study fall within the adaptation and mitigation systems stipulated in the South African National Climate Change Strategy to assist the small-scale farmers grow and maintain the crops to improve production and minimise the risks, thus ensuring food security under observable harsh climate hazards.

The need for context-specific adoption models led to the development of the firm technology adoption model (F-TAM) model. Among small to medium-scale enterprises (SMEs); however, firm-level factors were rather insignificant in engendering SME level adoption of technological innovation. This study aims to examine the effect of firm size and other moderating and mediating factors on the relationships between personal, firm, societal and technological factors proposed in the stakeholder-oriented F-TAM among SMEs.

A research instrument was developed, reviewed by experts, and pilot tested with a sample of 25 respondents. Data were purposively collected from four hundred (400) SMEs and analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The study discovered that employees, societal and technological factors moderate the relationship between firm factors of adoption and firm adoption. Without these moderating effects, firm factors of adoption would have been insignificant at the SMEs’ level of organizational technology adoption. The study further discovered that firm size, as well as risk propensity, also affect the relationships proposed in the model.

Data was collected on voluntary adoption from the most cosmopolitan area of a developing country. It, therefore, needs further contextual validation across the country and different countries.

The engagement of innovations in firms must be planned with employees and society as major stakeholders.

The significance of this finding is the study’s emphasis on an eco-system approach for examining the phenomenon of innovation adoption. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the effect of firm characteristics on is proposed eco-system of stakeholders.

This paper aims to assess the direct effects of antecedents of initial trust, the mediating effect of trust and the moderating effect of demographic variables on non-adopters’ behavioral intention to use mobile banking.

The study tested the models of theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior to evaluate potential antecedents of trust (diffusion of trust, infrastructure quality, perceived costs, privacy and security) moderators (demographic variables) and mediators (initial trust) that will influence behavioral intention to use mobile banking. The Hayes’ Process Macro developed by Andrew F. Hayes (2013) was used as a statistical analysis in SPSS to estimates the path coefficients using multiple regression. The tool provides insights on the direct and indirect effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable through the existence of moderating variables and mediation variables.

The results show that the non-adopters of mobile banking asserted that the antecedents of initial trust played a significant influence on behavioral intention to use online banking services.

There is a dearth of literature addressing mobile banking in the Philippines. The first initial trust formation in internet banking using computer workstations and laptops in the Philippines was conducted by Chiu et al. (2016). This research fills in the gap by expanding and formulating a deeper understanding of the antecedents of initial trust that influence consumer behavioral intention that might be responsible for the slow diffusion of mobile banking services in the country. The results from this study will help financial institutions create a beneficial connection with consumers while alleviating the fears of non-adopters and enhancing their understanding of the benefits of mobile banking.

The purpose of the research is to analyze the factors that determine the intention of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt the Metaverse. For this purpose, the analysis of the effort expectancy and performance expectancy of the constructs in relation to business satisfaction is proposed.

The analysis was performed on a sample of 182 Spanish SMEs in the technology sector, using a PLS-SEM approach for development. For the confirmation of the model and its results, an analysis with PLSpredict was performed, obtaining a high predictive capacity of the model.

After the analysis of the model proposed in this research, it is recorded that the valuation of the effort to be made and the possible performance expected by the companies does not directly determine the intention to use immersive technology in their strategic behavior. Instead, the results obtained indicate that business satisfaction will involve obtaining information, reducing uncertainty and analyzing the competition necessary for approaching this new virtual environment.

The study represents one of the first approaches to the intention of business behavior in the development of performance strategies within Metaverse systems. So far, the literature has approached immersive systems from perspectives close to consumer behavior, but the study of strategic business behavior has been left aside due to the high degree of experimentalism of this field of study and its scientific approach. The present study aims to contribute to the knowledge of the factors involved in the intention to use the Metaverse by SMEs interested in this field.

The purpose of this study is to discuss how enhancing the role of local institutions (LI) and incorporating indigenous knowledge (IK) in climate change adaptation planning can improve adoption and scaling success of climate-smart agriculture innovations.

A review of relevant literature from sub-Saharan Africa was used to answer the study research questions.

Embracing IK and LI in climate change adaptation projects can enhance adoption and scaling success of climate-smart agriculture innovations in smallholder farming. Such efforts will improve: information gathering and dissemination, mobilization of resources, establishment of useful networks with relevant stakeholders, capacity building farmers on various fronts and provision of leadership in climate adaptation programs.

Fully embracing IK and LI can improve the scaling of climate-smart innovations only if development partners recognize IK systems that are to be transformed and build on them instead of trying to replace them. Also, participatory approaches in scaling innovations will enhance input from rural people in climate change adaptation programs.

Development interventions aimed at taking proven effective climate-smart innovations to scale must, therefore, engage local communities and their indigenous institutions as active stakeholders in designing, planning and implementation of their climate adaptation programs.

The purpose of this paper is to reduce the difficulty of model predictive control (MPC) deployment on FPGA so that researchers can make better use of FPGA technology for academic research.

In this paper, the MPC algorithm is written into FPGA by combining hardware with software. Experiments have verified this method.

This paper implements a ZYNQ-based design method, which could significantly reduce the difficulty of development. The comparison with the CPU solution results proves that FPGA has a significant acceleration effect on the solution of MPC through the method.

Due to the limitation of practical conditions, this paper cannot carry out a hardware-in-the-loop experiment for the time being, instead of an open-loop experiment.

This paper proposes a new design method to deploy the MPC algorithm to the FPGA, reducing the development difficulty of the algorithm implementation on FPGA. It greatly facilitates researchers in the field of autonomous driving to carry out FPGA algorithm hardware acceleration research.

Service members of the US Department of Defense (DoD) have alarmingly high rates of depression, anxiety, probable stress disorders and suicidality, all of which are negative health conditions exacerbated by various external stressors. High-stress work conditions – to include shift work, hazardous territories, high-stakes mission sets and generally disconnected sites – require a work environment that facilitates, rather than inhibits, stress reduction and mental well-being. This paper aims to present “salutogenic design” as an innovative approach: Salutogenic design offers demonstrated architectural solutions that improve health and well-being.

This paper describes salutogenic design strategies beginning with the need for such an approach, the call to action to implement strategic and tactical solutions and the challenges and financial impacts of such a broad and innovative strategy to improve workplace health, well-being and performance in the DoD and beyond. Examples of these strategies, via biophilic design solutions, are presented in the central Table 1 as an easy-to-reference tool and supported by the voluminous literature as referenced, in part, through this research paper.

Salutogenic design strategies offer innovative, financially viable solutions to help mitigate stress and improve workforce well-being while maintaining the highest level of building security requirements in access-controlled spaces and disconnected sites, such as military installations and government compounds.

Issues of mental and physical health are complex and multi-faceted, and they require complex and multi-faceted solutions. Salutogenic design is presented as one facet of that solution: a tangible solution to an often-intangible issue. Further, as a novel approach to address a critical DoD issue, Table 1 bridges the common gap between high-concept design theory and practical construction-application solutions, with positive value to the health, performance, quality-of-life and well-being of service members.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to approach the DoD’s imperative to reduce service members’ mental stress with “salutogenic design.”

This paper aims to address the long-standing problem of suboptimal student team experiences for instructors and students by incorporating the student voice by co-creating a virtual team collaborative environment to improve team collaboration in the online classroom.

This paper presents a novel design science research approach and relates two elaborated action design science research (eADSR) cycles that design, implement and evaluate the student team experience in online courses requiring teamwork.

The outcome is a holistic view of a virtual team classroom environment specified with technologies and practices that may be employed to optimize the student team experience. The eADSR process yields non-obvious diagnoses and actionable steps for continually incorporating the ever-changing social aspects unique to students in addition to the evolving technological landscape.

This paper is valuable to faculty members interested in applying eADSR processes to incorporate the student voice to address pedagogical and learning challenges in the classroom. Additionally, it provides a DSR-based model that can be implemented in the classroom to improve student team collaboration as well as transparency for the instructor and the students in terms of team member contributions with the goal to alleviate student and faculty frustrations. This topic is particularly relevant in light of COVID-19 as students and faculty alike are thrust into new online classroom environments.

Employing eADSR in the classroom is a novel and unique approach to create a replicable model for virtual team collaboration that can be added to the classroom.