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The purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, this research aims at helping countries implement an equitable, innovative and context-appropriate stay-home game plan for the millions of disadvantaged and under-privileged students severely affected by the forfeiture of school closures; and secondly, this study proclaims that the burgeoning popularity of gamification has the potential to lay the bedrock foundation for ‘Literacy in the New Norm’.

The temporal closure of schools around the world to limit the spread of the COVID-19 has resulted in massive educational disruptions triggering adverse effects and bringing much of education under grave threat. Through a review of the current empirical and conceptual literature, this study proposes a new gamification concept in a non-technology environment.

Well underway are global dialogues that hold conversations on implementing mitigation strategies to counter the looming global health crisis. This has generated the impetus for a more concerted effort by concerned governments and international organizations to identify appropriate solutions for the continuity of learning so that the learning never stops. While educators and learners plunge further into the core of reconstructing education, the authors recognize that the fundamentals of technology and virtual connectivity have all along contributed to the multi-faceted e-learning stage set. However, concerns regarding the paradigm shift to remote online learning would certainly exacerbate inequalities cardinally felt across disadvantaged communities around the globe.

As the world is currently bound by strict isolation measures, learners of all ages have been relegated to the confines of their homes. For the most part, the stark realities of technological mishaps that have befallen underprivileged school children, serve as a reminder to help target children all over the world who are in most peril of losing ground in terms of continued education. It is on these grounds that the criterion set out in this article elucidates the nature and scope of a supplementary stay-home game plan detailing the use of game affordances that bear intelligently in the creation of home-based activities for parents to give it their best effort in fostering a collaborative and meaningful parent-child relationship that spawns the new language of literacy in the new norm.

The study aims to understand how big data analytics capabilities of tech startups help them gain competitive advantage and improve their firm performance. The study is performed for two countries: India and China. A comparative analysis is also discussed in the study.

The study collected responses from tech startups from both India and China. A total of 502 responses were collected with 269 from India and 233 from China. The results were analyzed using Warp PLS 6.0 after testing for common method bias, endogeneity and reliability of data. The study tested five primary hypotheses and also tested the effect of two control variables: country of origin of startup and age of the startup.

We found that big data analytics capabilities have a positive and significant impact on the firm performance and competitive advantage of tech startups. While organizational culture proved to have a positive impact as a moderator, innovation was found to have non-significant effect. The results also found to have non-significant effect of age of the firm while its country of origin does play an important role in defining its success.

The study offer key insights for the tech startups operating in two countries which are geographically neighbors but differ in the tech expertise from each other. Moreover, the study offers key insights on how does the origin of the country contributes significantly to explaining the success and competitiveness of the firm.

This paper aims to understand the main challenges connected with accountability issues across multiple layers of the metaverse, to identify whether and how any techwashing is taking place and to discuss implications for accounting research.

To develop the research, the authors refer to a critical dialogic accountability framework, operationalized in the current paper by leveraging the perspectives of accountability as virtues and as mechanisms (Bovens, 2010). The authors discuss who is accountable to whom, for what and in what manner in a relatively unregulated and unaccountable world, through the layers of virtual reality introduced by MacKenzie et al. (2013) and Llewellyn (2007). Methodologically, the study concentrates on 32 start-ups working in the metaverse selected from the Crunchbase database and relies on interviews, direct observation in the field and white paper reports analyzed by means of NVivo coding.

The findings show how metaverse creators deal with accountability as a virtue and accountability as a mechanism. Companies who operate metaverses primarily consider accountability in the virtual-physical domain, which focuses on developing the necessary internal and external architecture to enable a particular metaverse to function. Metaverse companies also emphasize the virtual-agential dimension that concentrates on onboarding, engaging with and incentivizing individuals in virtual worlds. There is an emphasis on outlining the virtues or standards that metaverse companies aspire to, but there is very little detail provided. Similarly, there are uneven and limited discussions of the mechanisms that can support accountability in most layers of a virtual world.

The analysis raises significant questions about the purpose, scope and use of metaverses, which are still a relatively unregulated and unaccountable world. The paper advances the idea that the current creators of metaverses are “techwashing” their projects, providing a utopian ideal of what their universes will look like but obfuscating the realities of their ventures in tech jargon that few people are likely to understand. Therefore, meaning and truth at all levels of the real and virtual worlds remain unaddressed, with implications to be explored in terms of legitimacy and trust of metaverses and the interests that shape them.

This paper is one of the first to address the issue of accountability in metaverses. It advances an analytical framework to guide future accounting and accountability research into virtual worlds.

This paper aims to establish if quantified self-data positively impact motivation in a goal pursuit across a broad cross-section of consumers and in multiple contexts; and to understand the underlying causal mechanism and identify boundary conditions.

Exploratory qualitative research helped direct the hypotheses development. Two quantitative experiments were then conducted via MTURK, involving 331 respondents, to test the hypotheses in two different personal goal areas (fitness and carbon footprint reduction).

Self-quantification has a significant and positive impact on anticipated motivation in both contexts studied. The mediated model provides insight into the psychological process underlying self-quantification’s motivational impact, which involves strengthening user perceptions regarding feedback meaningfulness, self-empowerment and goal focus. Age (>50) was found to be a boundary condition; however, distance to goal was not.

This paper focuses on initial (anticipated) motivation, which is the vital first step in behavior change. However, more work is needed to understand quantification’s long-term impact over the course of a behavior change process.

This research encourages firms to incorporate self-quantification features into products/services aimed at behavior change and helps firms better understand consumer-perceived benefits. It alerts firms regarding the extra effort needed to convince older consumers of these benefits.

This is the first study to confirm the “quantification effect” on motivation in multiple life areas and provide a causal model to explain how it works. It is also the first to highlight age as a boundary condition.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting behaviour intention (BI) to use and actual usages of investment-related FinTech services among the zoomers (Gen Z) and millennials (Gen M) retail investors of India.

The study explores the predictive relevance of actual adoption behaviour among the two different age categories of Indian retail investors. It uses the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology-2 and the prospect theory framework as guiding frameworks. Data has been collected from 294 retail investors, actively engaged in the investment-related FinTech services. The multi-group analysis using variance-based partial least square structured equation modelling has been used to compare the two groups. The invariance between the two groups was achieved through measurement invariance assessment.

The study reveals distinct factors significantly affecting BI to use investment-related FinTech services among Gen Z and Gen M retail investors are performance expectancy (PE) to BI, perceived risk (PR) to BI, price value (PV) to BI and PR to service trust (ST).

This study provides insights for financial providers and policymakers, emphasizing different factors influencing BI to use investment-related FinTech services in both age groups. Notably, habit emerges as a common factor influencing the actual usage of investment-related FinTech services across Gen M and Gen Z retail investors in India.

This study explores the heterogeneous behaviour of the heterogenous population in the domain of technological adoption of investment-related FinTech services in India.

The objective of this study is to provide a systematic review of the literature on artificial intelligence (AI) in customer-facing financial services, providing an overview of explored contexts and research foci, identifying gaps in the literature and setting a comprehensive agenda for future research.

Combining database (i.e. Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCO, ScienceDirect) and manual journal search, the authors identify 90 articles published in Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) journals for investigation, using the TCCM (Theory, Context, Characteristics and Methodology) framework.

The results indicate a split between data-driven and theory-driven research, with most studies either adopting an experimental research design focused on testing the accuracy and performance of AI algorithms to assist with credit scoring or investigating AI consumer adoption behaviors in a banking context. The authors call for more research building overarching theories or extending existing theoretical perspectives, such as actor networks. More empirical research is required, especially focusing on consumers' financial behaviors as well as the role of regulation, ethics and policy concerned with AI in financial service contexts, such as insurance or pensions.

The review focuses on AI in customer-facing financial services. Future work may want to investigate back-office and operations contexts.

The authors are the first to systematically synthesize the literature on the use of AI in customer-facing financial services, offering a valuable agenda for future research.