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This study proposes and validates an integrated theoretical model involving the theory of planned behavior (TPB), health belief model (HBM), personal norms and information privacy to understand determinants of acceptance and resistance to the use of mobile contact tracing app (MCTA) in a pandemic situation.

This study draws on online surveys of 194 research respondents and uses partial least squares structural equation modeling (PL-SEM) to test the proposed theoretical model.

The study establishes that a positive attitude towards MCTA is the most important predictor of individuals' willingness to use MCTA and resistance to use MCTA. Furthermore, barriers to taking action positively influence resistance to the use of MCTA. Personal norms negatively influence resistance to the use of MCTA. Information privacy showed a negative and positive influence on willingness to use MCTA and use the resistance of MCTA, respectively, but neither was statistically significant. The authors found no significant influence of perceived vulnerability, severity, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control on either acceptance or use resistance of MCTA.

The study has been one of the first in the literature to propose an integrated theoretical model in the investigation of the determinants of acceptance and resistance to the use of MCTA in a single study, thereby increasing the scientific understanding of the factors that can facilitate or inhibit individuals from engaging in the use of a protection technology during a pandemic situation.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2021-0533

The purpose of this paper is to show that third-party quality audits (TPQAs) facilitate performance improvement and give confidence to organisations concerning the process quality of services and products. However, because of inconsistencies and unethical practices often observed in the industry, organisations question the significance of TPQA. A perception exists that its initial purpose as an impartial tool ensuring quality of deliverables is no longer upheld. Hence, the need to determine and explain the influence of the ISO 19011 standard interpretation on the application of the audit guidelines in performing TPQA, to promote consistency in the audit process.

The study employed document analysis of the ISO 19011 standard, followed by semi-structured interviews with certification managers (CBs) to gain insight related to their interpretation and application of the ISO 19011 guidelines.

The CBs interpret the ISO 19011 guidelines differently; hence, their application of the standard to compile their audit documents differ. Adherence to the principles of auditing particularly, integrity and independence were found as the core of the audit process while their disregard reflects failure of the real intent of auditing. The inconsistencies in the audit procedures and documents developed for auditors are ascribed to some CBs’ personal interpretations.

The study explores how the different interpretations of the ISO 19011 standard prevail and are perceived by the CBs and auditors. The findings aim to support standardisation and reduce the variations across and amongst the different CBs and auditors.

Despite the technological paradigm shift presented to the architecture, engineering, construction and operations sector (AECO), the full-fledged acceptance of the building information modelling (BIM) methodology has been slower than initially anticipated. Indeed, this study aims to acknowledge the need for increasing supportive technologies enabling the use of BIM, attending to available human resources, their requirements and their tasks.

A complete case study is described, including the development process centred on design science research methodology followed by the usability assessment procedure validated by construction projects facility management operational staff.

Results show that participants could interact with BIM using openBIM processes and file formats naturally, as most participants reached an efficiency level close to that expected for users already familiar with the interface (i.e. high-efficiency values). These results are consistent with the reported perceived satisfaction and analysis of participants’ discourses through 62 semi-structured interviews.

The contributions of the present study are twofold: a proposal for a virtual reality openBIM framework is presented, particularly for the semantic enrichment of BIM models, and a methodology for evaluating the usability of this type of system in the AECO sector.

Despite the growing recognition of the complex interplay between macroeconomic shock indexes and stock market dynamics, there is a significant research gap concerning their interconnectedness and return spillovers in the context of the African stock market. This leaves much to be desired, given that the financial market in Africa is arguably one of the most preferred destinations for hedge and portfolio diversification (Alagidede, 2008; Anyikwa and Le Roux, 2020). Further, like other financial markets across the globe, the increased capital flow, coupled with declining information asymmetry in Africa, has deepened intra and inter-sectoral integration within and across national borders. This has, thus, increased the susceptibility of financial markets in Africa to spillover of shocks from other sectors and jurisdictions. Additionally, while previous studies have investigated these factors individually (Asafo-Adjei et al., 2020), with much emphasis on developed markets, an all-encompassing examination of spillovers and the connectedness between the aforementioned macroeconomic shock indexes and stock market returns remains largely unexplored. This study happens to be the first to consider the impact of each of the indexes on stock returns in Africa, with evidence spanning from May 2007 to April 2023, covering notable global crisis episodes such as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war.

This study employs the novel quantile vector autoregression (QVAR) model, making it the first of its kind in literature. By applying the QVAR, the study captures the potential nonlinear and asymmetric relationship between stock returns and the factors of interest across different quantiles, i.e. bearish, normal and bullish market conditions. Thus, the approach allows for a more accurate and nuanced examination of the tail dependence and extreme events, providing insights into the behaviour of the variables under extreme events.

The study revealed that connectedness and spillovers intensified under bearish and bullish market conditions. It was also observed that, among the macroeconomic shock indicators, FSI exerted the highest influence on stock returns in Africa in both bullish and normal market conditions. Across the various market regimes, the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) and the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) were net receiver of shocks.

This study happens to be the first to consider the impact of each of the indexes on stock returns in Africa, with evidence spanning from May 2007 to April 2023, covering notable global crisis episodes such as the GFC, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war. On the methodology front, this study employs the novel QVAR model, making it one of the few studies in recent literature to apply the said method.

This paper aims to focus on the need for an enhanced anti-money laundering (AML) regulation for decentralised finance (DeFi) to protect the integrity of global financial systems against illicit activities. Research highlights the requirement for a robust regulatory strategy for the fast-paced DeFi evolvement.

This study used doctrinal legal research by analysing legislation, which involved creating use cases to illustrate different aspects of potential illicit activities via the DeFi ecosystem. Various DeFi applications were assessed for the potential regulatory responses and outcomes.

This paper offers valuable insight into the regulatory challenges presented by DeFi. This study addresses the blind spots leveraged by criminals afforded by the DeFi’s decentralised nature. This paper offers a comprehensive examination of DeFi regulatory challenges based on use-case scenarios and provides recommendations for regulators on how to address them effectively.

This paper proposes measures for regulatory authorities to minimise money laundering risks through new channels such as decentralised exchanges, non-custodial wallets and cross-chain bridges. This study concludes with the future directions for DeFi regulation and AML compliance.

The study aims to investigate the impact of technological innovation, such as blockchain, in the music field from a value co-creation perspective, highlighting how it is determining a radical change in the business model and value creation process.

To shed light on how blockchain adoption is reconfiguring the music industry, the authors adopted a qualitative-based approach based on a case study, allowing us to investigate value co-creation at three levels (macro, meso and micro) through exchange and integration of multi-actor resources.

The authors found that blockchain adoption in the music industry can singularly shape the business model, representing a powerful tool to enhance inter-organizational cooperation in value creation. It effectively deals with operational and business issues, besides financial transactions, profoundly impacting both the creation and distribution of value within the supply chain.

The research contributes to a better understanding of innovation adoption in a specific setting, the music industry, giving support and guidance for players working in this ecosystem. The blockchain-music link helps close the gap between music and society through technology, thus providing a foundation for future research.

The paper provides new insights into the antecedents and mechanisms of value co-creation, spanning macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of context. It also illustrates the factors underpinning Bitsong viability to embed the value co-creation perspective in designing the business model within a value network.

This study seeks to examine the relationship between macroeconomic shock indicators, namely geopolitical risk (GPR), global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU) and financial stress (FS), and returns as well as volatilities on seven carefully selected stock markets in Africa. Specifically, the study intends to unravel the co-movement and interdependence between the respective macroeconomic shock indicators and each of the stock markets under consideration across time and frequency.

This study employed wavelet coherence approach to examine the strength and stability of the relationships across different time scales and frequency components, thereby providing valuable insights into specific periods and frequency ranges where the relationships are particularly pronounced.

The study found that GEPU, Financial Stress (FS) and GPR failed to induce significant influence on African stock market returns in the short term (0–4 months band), but tend to intensify in the long-term band (after 6th month). On the contrary, stock market volatilities exhibited strong coherence and interdependence with GEPU, FSI and GPR in the short-term band.

This study happens to be the first of its kind to comprehensively consider how the aforementioned macro-economic shock indicators impact stock markets returns and volatilities over time and frequency. Further, none of the earlier studies has attempted to examine the relationship between macro-economic shocks, stock returns and volatilities in different crisis periods. This study is the first of its kind in to employ data spanning from May 2007 to April 2023, thereby covering notable crisis periods such as global financial crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic episodes.

This paper offers a definition of the core of information science, which encompasses most research in the field. The definition provides a unique identity for information science and positions it in the disciplinary universe.

After motivating the objective, a definition of the core and an explanation of its key aspects are provided. The definition is related to other definitions of information science before controversial discourse aspects are briefly addressed: discipline vs. field, science vs. humanities, library vs. information science and application vs. theory. Interdisciplinarity as an often-assumed foundation of information science is challenged.

Information science is concerned with how information is manifested across space and time. Information is manifested to facilitate and support the representation, access, documentation and preservation of ideas, activities, or practices, and to enable different types of interactions. Research and professional practice encompass the infrastructures – institutions and technology –and phenomena and practices around manifested information across space and time as its core contribution to the scholarly landscape. Information science collaborates with other disciplines to work on complex information problems that need multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to address them.

The paper argues that new information problems may change the core of the field, but throughout its existence, the discipline has remained quite stable in its central focus, yet proved to be highly adaptive to the tremendous changes in the forms, practices, institutions and technologies around and for manifested information.

The authors explore the relationship between the exchange rate, bond yield and the stock market as well as the effect of capital market dynamics on the exchange rate before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors employ a non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) methodology using daily data of the Indonesian economy over the period 2012–2021.

Whilst, over the full sample period, the authors find no cointegration between the exchange rate, the 10-year bond yield and stock market, for the COVID-19 period, evidence of cointegration is present. Furthermore, the results suggest that asymmetric effects are evident both in the short as well as the long run.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that the relationship between the exchange rate, bond yield and the stock market as well as the effect of capital market dynamics on the exchange rate before and during the COVID-19 pandemic has been explored in the case of the Indonesian economy.