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Industry 4.0 technologies are promising to increase manufacturing companies' performance through the new knowledge that such digital technologies allow to create and manage within the firm boundaries and through customer interactions. Despite the great attention on the Industry 4.0 adoption paths, little is known about the relationships with previous waves of digital technologies, namely, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and how different groups of both types of technologies link to knowledge and its related performances.

The study employed a quantitative research design using a survey method. Submitting the questionnaire to entrepreneurs, chief operation officers or managers in charge of the operational and technological processes of Italian manufacturing firms, 206 respondents stated that their firm has adopted at least one of the seven Industry 4.0 technologies investigated.

The findings of the study highlight the positive relationship between ICT and Industry 4.0 technologies in terms of both intensity and groups of technologies (Web-based, Management and Manufacturing ICT; Operation, Customization and Data-processing 4.0), and how technologies affect knowledge-related performances in terms of products and processes, job-learning, product-related services and customer involvement.

This study is one of the first attempts to link groups of ICT to groups of Industry 4.0 technologies and to explore the effects in terms of knowledge-related performances as a measure of technology use. The study shows strong path dependency among ICT, Industry 4.0 and knowledge performance, enriching the literature on technological innovation and knowledge management.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop prototype of the information system of the flood monitoring based internet of things (IoT). This prototype serves to assist users in accessing flood levels through water levels and rainy weather conditions.

Design/Methodology/Approach – This paper presents the design of information system of flood monitoring based internet of things (IoT). This prototype study acquires water level and rainfall data using ultrasonic sensors HC-SR04 and rain sensor. Data of flood height and rain levels detected by sensors are processed using Arduino Uno Microcontroller to produce output data in HTML format. Flood altitude information system and rainy weather from the microcontroller are distributed using ethernet module as web server integrated with Wireless N Router TL-MR3020 as a gateway path to the user.

Findings – This research produces a prototype of web-based flood monitoring information system that has been able to distribute data of flood height and rainy weather in real time.

Research Limitations/Implications – In the implementation of measurement, the information system only accesses one flood detector or one flooded location.

Practical Implications – This research produces a prototype of web-based flood monitoring information system that has been able to distribute data of flood height and rainy weather in real time.

Originality/Value – System prototype is the first development that uses internet of things (IoTs) method in real time web-based flood measurement with information in the form of flood hazard information in the form of water level and rainy weather conditions.

E-tourism is instilling in the tourism industry with the advancement in the technological infrastructure all over the world and fetching tremendous tourists’ attention. The dynamic changes in the technological aspects unveil varied developments in the tourism industry. This paper attempts to reveal the developments in the field of e-tourism by a systematic review of the literature using bibliometric analysis.

In total,146 research articles were retrieved from the Web of Science data during the period of 2004 – 2020, for further analysis using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny package of R Studio.

Useful insights resulted in the form of most cited papers, contribution in e-tourism research by different authors, countries, institutions, journals and so on, co-occurrence analysis and cluster analysis for major trends or themes of e-tourism. This study solicits an elaborated review of e-tourism research and unveils the future directions for the researchers.

This study adds substantial value to the research of e-tourism by analysing the bibliometric data of the last 16 years, that is, from 2004 – 2020, procured from the Scopus by analysing the significant trends developed in the e-tourism research. It also adds value by indicating the emerging areas of e-tourism.

This paper reports on one segment of a research project which investigates what faculty members perceive to be acting as barriers in their attempts to integrate [information and communication] technology into their teaching at a laptop university. A web-based questionnaire was used to collect information from 69/288 (24%) faculty members from a small U.A.E. university. From the data gathered, patterns and associations emerged from which the researcher is able provide recommendations as to what type of interventions and programs could be provided to increase current levels of teaching with technology.

Many countries today, especially in Europe, provide publicly funded public services in quasi-markets. As these markets commercialize, agencies of various types are providing technologies that support citizens’ choice of services. Citizens’ use of technologies for service provision is studied as e-government under labels of channel management, e-service uptake or adoption. In contrast, by using actor–network theory (ANT), the purpose of this paper is to focus on the marketing devices that are used to enroll citizens to choose technologies in a context with large penetration of quasi-market arrangements.

Based on a Swedish case study, this paper uses qualitative data from 11 occurrences of technologies to support citizens’ choice (“market devices”) in education, healthcare and public pension in an analysis of the means taken (“marketing devices”) to increase their use. The study formulates a tentative typology of these devices.

The marketing devices are intended to attract citizens’ attention to the possibility of choice (e.g. catalogs, postcards and commercials), invite interaction (e.g. various social media platforms), improve the technological support in line with user needs (e.g. user participation in development), increase visibility of technological support (e.g. search optimization) or directly connect citizens to technological support (e.g. via links).

The paper contributes to e-government research through a typology of means taken to increase citizens’ technology use based on selected concepts from ANT, and to a discussion of technologies and humans.

The purpose of this study is to explore the role individual innovativeness along with e-learning self-efficacy play in predicting the e-learning readiness of first- and second-year students of an open and distance education institutions in an African context.

Therefore, building on previous related research in this area, a quantitative approach was adopted to address the research questions and to establish whether a statistically significant relationship existed between individual innovativeness, e-learning self-efficacy, the independent variables; and e-learning readiness, the dependent variable. In total, 476 first- and second-years students of the university participated in the four-Likert-type scale survey. The research instrument which comprises 74 survey items was completed by 217 of the students. Statistical tools used for analysing data included both Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficients and t-tests.

It was discovered that a strong positive and significant relationship was observed between individual innovativeness and e-learning readiness of first- and second-year students of the Yenagoa Study Centre of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN); a statistically significant relationship was also found between e-learning self-efficacy scores and the e-learning readiness of the first- and second-year students of the Yenagoa Study Centre of NOUN; there was a statistically significant joint relationship between the three variables under investigation; findings equally revealed that male respondents had higher e-learning readiness than their female counterparts.

Like every other study of this nature, this one also suffers some limitations. First, NOUN is a very large university with over half a million students spread across almost 78 study centres. This means that observation from just one study centre amounts to a very small sample size. This according to Schweighofer, Weitlaner, Ebner and Rothe (2019) jeopardises the generalisability and validity of study results. The authors also maintain that empirical data generated from surveys that usually rely participants' abilities to read and select responses without further interpretation by the researchers suffer from cognitive biases like social desirability. To address the above limitations, detailed studies involving all studies centres of NOUN be undertaken and other qualitative and or mixed research methodologies be adopted in the future.

The implications for this study are that people who are innately innovative will willingly accept technology and by extension, learning in technology-rich environments like those found in like NOUN whose mode of study is blended learning inherently found in open and distance learning (ODL) institution. Therefore, this study is significant as it will provide relevant information to the management and administrators of NOUN, policymakers and regulatory institutions for the development, deployment and implementation of e-learning strategies. Findings will also benefit e-learning initiatives undertaken by similar institutions that adopt the ODL mode of education in Nigeria and other developing countries.

Even though, studies on the antecedents of e-learning readiness have been widely conducted across diverse contexts, studies exploring the associations between individual innovativeness, e-learning self-efficacy and e-learning readiness are relatively hard to come by. The above two variables as predicting the e-learning readiness in the study context are comparatively new. This study thus focuses on the relationships between the individual innovativeness levels, e-learning self-efficacy beliefs of students and their e-learning readiness which ultimately determines their ability to sustain studies in an ODL institution.

This paper aims to explore how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have redefined the hospitality industry. It develops a theoretical framework to evaluate its impact on employee engagement, retention and productivity levels, stemming from its potential implications for service quality and customer satisfaction.

Based on the exploration of relevant literature, role theory and service-profit chain were used to develop – role-service-profit chain.

Role-service-profit chain is an analytical tool which has strong implications for investment and deployment analysis of the new technologies in hospitality and tourism businesses. It proposes how managers can evaluate how the role expectation of technological innovations relate to service quality and customer satisfaction through its impact on employee-related outcomes (such as employee engagement, retention and productivity), and assess the corresponding impact on profitability and growth, in the context of their own unique internal environment and position in the market.

Although an empirical assessment of the hypothesised relationships in the model is required to evaluate and validate it in the hospitality industry, role-service-profit chain presents promising implications for tourism and hospitality practice and future research.

Role-service-profit chain is an analytical tool from which managers can make improvements on talent and talent management practices and adjust expectations and behaviours in ways that facilitate improvements in service quality and customer satisfaction.

This paper makes an important contribution to hospitality and tourism literature, as it explores how AI technologies implemented to improve on talent and talent management practices impact on service quality and customer satisfaction, and develops analytical tools by which this may be evaluated.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework based on an understanding of the principles of popular mobile-enabled games, indicating how organisations in the tourism sector could meet the needs of Millennials and Generation Z through engaging with the existing gamified location-based practice of geocaching as an information and communication technology enabled gamified enhancement to the destination experience.

As a primarily conceptual paper, the authors take an inductive qualitative approach to theory building based on the understanding of an existing practice (geocaching) that is undertaken among a community of practitioners (geocachers), which results in the presentation of a conceptual framework, which is the theory itself that the authors have constructed from the understanding of what is going on and which principles can then be applied across other tourism practices.

Findings indicate that through engaging with geocaching, smaller entrepreneurial businesses even in non-urban destinations that fall outside of the remit of smart city developments, and in tourism destinations on the less technologically enabled or resource-rich side of the digital divide, can reap the benefits associated with employing the principles and practices associated with smart tourism to meet the needs of this new generation of tourism consumers who seek richer digital and often gamified tourism experiences.

This paper fills a gap in the literature regarding the way many different types of tourism destinations could meet the needs of Millennials and Generation Z tourists.

The article investigates different types of strategies for managing user-generated content (UGC) and provides some insights into their implications.

A unique sample of Italian hotels with current and prospective customers in the digital environment is investigated. A taxonomy of user-provider interactions mediated by UGC is developed. A mixed approach was designed to meet the study aims. Firstly, an exploratory factor analysis was performed in order to illuminate different strategies of UGC and electronic word-of-mouth (E-WOM) management. Secondly, a cluster analysis was implemented in order to explain hoteliers' behavior toward users' contents.

The study results suggested the existence of three clusters, which reflected three different types of interactions between hotels and customers in the digital domain. Interestingly, most of Italian hotels were found to adopt a reductionist approach to UGC and E-WOM management, turning out to be ineffective to exploit them for the purpose of quality improvement and hospitality service excellence.

Hotels were found to be largely unaware of the importance of UGC and web-based communication with customers to improve their digital business strategy. Tailored management approaches are needed to realize the full potential of hotels' online content responsiveness for the purpose of value co-creation and service co-production.

This is one of the first studies investigating the strategic and management perspectives embraced by hotels to handle their interactions with customers in the digital arena.

The significant changes that supply chains (SCs) are undergoing and the emergence of disruptive technologies have led to a growing effort to integrate novel and mature technologies into existing SC strategies. Thus, this study investigates the relationships between mature information technologies (ITs), emerging IT and the lean supply chain (LSC) and agile supply chain (ASC) strategies.

An empirical study based on structural equation modeling of survey data from 256 Spanish focal companies has been conducted to test six hypotheses.

Drawing on resource orchestration, our results point to mature IT use being an enabler of both LSC and ASC strategy implementation. The results also show an LSC mediating effect on the relationship between mature IT and ASC when SCs follow both strategies. Also, the implementation of emerging IT requires a process of consolidation over time to be genuinely useful as a facilitating mechanism for developing both the lean and agile strategies along the SC. In this sense, a suitable mix needs to be orchestrated between emerging and mature IT.

This study sheds light on the relevance of the mature IT and emerging IT in the context of two SC strategies (lean/agile) and provides practical and theoretical implications.