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Mobile banking (m-banking) can be defined as a service offered by a bank or any other financial institution that allows the customers of such establishments to carry out a variety of banking operations via a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, tablet or personal digital assistant. The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that influence customers to adopt and subsequently use m-banking services in Ghana using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) model with age, educational level, user experience and gender as moderators.

Using questionnaire survey, the study sampled 300 users of m-banking services in Ghana as respondents. The primary data collected were analyzed using SmartPLS software.

Findings of the study indicate that Habit, Price Value and Trust are the main factors influencing adoption and use of m-banking in Ghana. Individual differences of gender, age, educational level and user experience responded differently as they moderate the relationship between UTAUT2 constructs and use bahaviour. The applicability of UTAUT2 model was confirmed in the context of the research.

M-banking is a new phenomenon in Ghana’s financial industry, thus it is imperative to understanding the customer adoption behavior. The outcome will aid financial institutions to develop strategies that will sustain the interest of consumers to embrace m-banking.

This paper is among the first ever known attempts to examine m-banking adoption in Ghana using UTAUT2 model.

Nowadays, in building structures, dampers are connected to the building structure to reduce the damages caused by seismicity in addition to enhancing structural stability, and to connect dampers with the structure, joints are used. In this paper, three different configurations of double-lap joints were designed, developed and tested.

This paper aims to analyze three different categories of double-lap single-bolted joints that are used in connecting dampers with concrete and steel frame structures. These joints were designed and tested using computational, numerical and experimental methods. The studies were conducted to examine the reactions of the joints during loading conditions and to select the best joints for the structures that allow easy maintenance of the dampers and also withstand structural deformation when the damper is active during seismicity. Also, a computational analysis was performed on the designed joints integrated with the M25 concrete beam column junction. In this investigation, experimental study was carried out in addition to numerical and computational methods during cyclic load.

It was observed from the result that during deformation the double-base multiplate lap joint was suitable for buildings because the deformations on the joint base was negligible when compared with other joints. From the computational analysis, it was revealed that the three double joints while integrated with the beam column junction of M25 grade concrete structure, the damages induced by the double-base multiplate joint was negligible when compared with other two joints used in this study.

To prevent the collapse of the building during seismicity, dampers are used and further connecting the damper with the building structures, joints are used. In this paper, three double-lap joints in different design configuration were studied using computational, numerical and experimental techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of females' likelihood to work in a Muslim society, Azerbaijan.

To obtain more precise results, the authors analyze the relationships of interest in three different contexts: single (unmarried) females (n = 407, M = 0.779, Std. = 0.416), married female (n = 398, M = 0.706, SD = 0.456) and married male (n = 381, M = 0.378, Std. = 0.485). Linear probabilistic models and logistic regression techniques are employed to estimate regression parameters.

The results altogether display a strong positive impact of the educational attainment of both females and married males. Between the income of married males' and females' employment likelihood, nonlinear – inverse U-shaped association is found. The findings indicate that conservatism towards females' employment is not religiously opinionated, mostly due to insufficient educational attainment.

Based on the research findings, inspiring individuals are recommended to attain degree level qualifications. Simultaneously, the government should engage in mass media to increase awareness of the public about the non-monetary benefits of female employment.

The research results are highly useful for policy practices and fill the huge gap in the studies and research made on the Azerbaijan labor market.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2019-0557.

This study aims to investigate the factors that influence the use of e-government services among male and female samples, aiming at gaining a deeper understanding of how to promote digital inclusion and maximize the benefits of digitalization.

This study uses binomial logistic regression modeling on two data sets: a nationwide survey at the individual level of 8,854 usable samples conducted in 2019 and village potential statistics.

The survey indicates low adoption and use of e-government services among both males and females. The statistical analysis further reveals that although there might be some variations in the influencing factors between the genders, the overall patterns are similar. These findings suggest that the low adoption and use of e-government services among males and females can be attributed to factors such as misperceptions about internet-based services, resulting in low motivation to use the services, inadequate internet connectivity, affordability, limited digital skills and exposure to harmful online content.

This study conducts a gender-disaggregated analysis to determine whether the antecedents of males’ decisions to adopt e-government services differ from those of females. Such a study is underrepresented in the extant literature, particularly in the context of e-government service use.

Purpose – This chapter aims to show that attention to nicknaming as a form of language-making and sensemaking can provide a valuable avenue for exploring employees’ assessments of (mis)behavior. It highlights the connection between gender and language-making as central to the way workers assess and respond to (mis)behavior in different workplaces.

Methodology – The chapter uses an historical perspective and concepts drawn from sociology and organizational theory. It identifies nicknames and nicknaming practices from a wide range of documentary sources and oral sources.

Findings – In considering nicknaming in terms of sensemaking and language-making rather than simply as a form of humor, the chapter shows that derogatory names enable employees to address the tensions and conflicts arising from formal organizational practices, rules, and managerial imperatives and workplace relations. It emphasizes commonalities in nicknaming practices that extend beyond the micro-level of specific workplaces and in doing so illustrates that nicknaming is not simply a manifestation of humor but as importantly of inter-subjective processes through which workers construct group identities to enforce co-produced informal rules of behavior.

Social implications – The chapter illustrates the importance of workplace nicknaming and its implications for the way employees try to influence the behavior of others by condoning and/or shaming those who conform to or defy informal rules.

Originality – The chapter's originality lies in its focus on employees’ own assessments of misbehavior and on commonalities in nicknaming practices in different times and in different places.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

This study explicitly examines how Hofstede's cultural dimensions moderate the relationship between nonmonetary motivation factors and performance.

Through the simple random sampling technique, the hypotheses were tested with a sample of 604 employees from a mobile telecommunication company operating in both China and Ghana, two countries that represent two same and opposite cultural poles on Hofstede's cultural dimensions.

The results point that employee motives such as relationship, supervision, challenging work and achievement are moderated by cultural values. Whilst employees with high power distance cultural values are highly motivated by high supervision, those with low individualistic cultural values are highly motivated by high relationship. The results also depict that whilst the interaction effects between supervision and power distance and relationship and individualism on performance were marginal for both China and Ghana samples, the interaction effect of achievement and masculinity as well as challenging work and uncertainty avoidance on performance had great differences due to the different cultural values for the two countries.

This study implies that, as organizations are devising strategies to lower personnel costs in a recessionary period, there is the need to redesign motivation factors that go beyond monetary means and based on the cultural background of an employee in order to improve performance.

This is one of the few studies that focused on nonmonetary motives from a cultural management perspective with samples from emerging economies.

Beginning with the introduction of mass compulsory schooling legislation in the 1870s, and using age and marital status as key categories of social difference, this article provides an overview of issues surrounding the ‘woman teacher’ through to the postwar baby boom. It shows how women teachers were increasingly differentiated according to location (country and city) and level of schooling (kindergarten, primary and secondary), and it also casts them as somewhat threatening to the gender order. Firstly, the article describes the processes by which teaching in both city and country primary schools became normalised as single women or spinsters’ work with the advent of mass compulsory schooling. Part two focuses on the turn of the twentieth century, a period in which anxieties about single women, so many of whom were teachers, coalesced around the figure of the ‘new woman’. In this context I investigate what state school teaching might have meant for single women, be they unqualified ‘girl teachers’ in country schools or mature women whose qualifications and career paths brought them into city schools. The third section shows that the expansion of state schooling in the early twentieth century produced further differentiation of the ‘teacher’ as primary, kindergarten or secondary. Furthermore, in the interwar years new meanings of singleness for women were proposed by sexologists and psychologists, and spinster teachers became more stigmatised as women. Finally, I turn to the women who taught from the late 1930s into the postwar era.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics of subsonic jet emanating from corrugated lobed nozzle.

Numerical simulations of subsonic turbulent jets from corrugated lobed nozzles using shear stress transport k-ω turbulence model have been carried out. The analysis was carried out by varying parameters such as lobe length, lobe penetration and lobe count at a Mach number of 0.75. The numerical predictions of axial and radial variation of the mean axial velocity, u′u′ ¯ and v′v′ ¯ have been compared with experimental results of conventional round and chevron nozzles reported in the literature.

The centreline velocity at the exit of the corrugated lobed nozzle was found to be lower than the velocity at the outer edges of the nozzle. The predicted potential core length is lesser than the experimental results of the conventional round nozzle and hence the decay in centreline velocity is faster. The centreline velocity increases with the increase in lobe length and becomes more uniform at the exit. The potential core length increases with the increase in lobe count and decreases with the increase in lobe penetration. The turbulent kinetic energy region is narrower with early appearance of a stronger peak for higher lobe penetration. The centreline velocity degrades much faster in the corrugated nozzle than the chevron nozzle and the peak value of Reynolds stress appears in the vicinity of the nozzle exit.

The corrugated lobed nozzles are used for enhancing mixing without the thrust penalty inducing better acoustic benefits.

The prominent features of the corrugated lobed nozzle were obtained from the extensive study of variation of flow characteristics for different lobe parameters after making comparison with round and chevron nozzle, which paved the way to the utilization of these nozzles for various applications.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the motivating factors of employees working in various Malaysian organizations.

A survey method was adopted. The survey questionnaire consisted of two parts: respondents' personal information were obtained through Part A and in Part B, they were asked to rank the ten motivating factors in terms of their effectiveness. The motivating factors were compiled from the existing literature and refined through consultation with human resource professionals.

An ordered set of motivating factors for employees working in Malaysian organizations. Demographic factors like gender, race, education, etc. were found to have impact on the ranking of the factors.

The findings are expected to provide useful guidelines to managers while developing employee motivation programs.