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In 2022, the International Network for Quality Assurance (QA) Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) published the new guidelines by adding three QA modules in response to the changing higher education landscape. The paper aims to investigate the transformative focus of quality assurance in higher education globally as well as Asian response to three new QA modules according to the INQAAHE ISGs.

The research conducted a quantitative approach for data collection. An on-line survey was conducted to perceive QA practices, perceptions toward new emerging QA modules and challenges encountered. In total, there were 26 responses from 18 territories with 22 QA agencies. A total of 13 out of them have a national qualifications framework in place.

Three are three major findings in the study. First, national policy and criteria and standards in distance education have been developed in the majority of Asian nations. Second, non-signatories of the Tokyo Convention had a higher proportion of having related policies, regulations and criteria in CBHE and distance education. Third, national policies and regulations; and lack of professional staff are two common challenges implementing QA in new types of providers.

The findings are of value for policymakers, QA agencies and universities to advocate the new QA model as a systematic approach in response to changing higher education landscape in the post pandemic era.

This study aims to investigate the motivations for the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies among manufacturing firms in developing economies. Specifically, the effects of relative advantage of the technologies, competitive pressure, and government support on the adoption are explored. Moreover, the mediating role of top management support between environmental factors (government support and competitive pressure) and the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies is examined.

A research model is developed based on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework strengthened by institutional theory. Structural equation modeling (SEM) approach is employed to evaluate the model using data obtained from 215 manufacturing firms through a cross-industry survey. Additionally, a post-hoc analysis is conducted using cluster analysis and ANOVA.

The results show that competitive pressure and government support significantly promote top management support, which in turn contributes to the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies. Relative advantage of the technologies is not significantly related to the adoption.

This study does not explore the relationship between technology type and the specific needs of manufacturing firms. Future researchers can conduct a more comprehensive analysis by examining how different technology types align with the unique needs of individual companies.

The findings of this study have implications for both policymakers and managers. Policymakers can leverage these insights to understand the underlying motivations behind manufacturing firms' adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies and develop promoting policies. In turn, managers should keep an eye on government policies and utilize government support to facilitate technology adoption.

This study uncovers the underlying motivations—government support and competitive pressure—for the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies among manufacturing firms in developing economies. Meanwhile, it complements previous research by showing the mediating role of top management support between environmental factors (government support and competitive pressure) and the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies.

The purpose is to investigate whether Brazilian e-commerce nonusers all have the same reasons not to purchase online or whether different behavior patterns might lead them to cluster in different groups.

This study carried out cluster analyses on a large sample (N = 9,065) from a nationwide survey on the use of information and communication technology in Brazil.

Three clusters of e-commerce nonusers were identified: the first cluster is quite reluctant; the second is characterized by disbelief in e-commerce; and the last cluster includes members who must see a product to believe it. Overall, nonusers have different reasons not to shop online, but they also share some similarities in this regard. Furthermore, socioeconomic factors do not seem to affect their behavior. The findings suggest that merchants’ failure to attract customers’ attention and tangibility are the major barriers to e-commerce use.

Even though nonusers have different reasons not to shop online, the key pattern that emerges is the value of tangibility for these individuals, which is a barrier present in all three clusters. This suggests that current marketing strategies and advertisements are ineffective to reach these consumers. Vendors should therefore try different approaches.

The findings contribute to the information systems (IS) literature by bringing a new perspective to the understanding of e-commerce rejection in addition to having managerial implications that involve strategies to attract potential users based on their specificities.

The objective of this research is to examine the performance of weather routing service in the North Pacific Ocean based on a global container shipping company.

The data comprise two passages: one that departs from the port of Taipei to the port of Los Angeles (TPE-LAX) and another that departs from the port of Tacoma to the port of Kaohsiung (TCM-KSG). A weather routing service was utilized to compare the differences of the distance, sailing time and fuel consumed among different voyages.

Results indicated that the average speed of vessel in winter is faster than in summer. The vessels consumed much more fuel in the winter than they did in the summer. In terms of the distance of the passage, the results show that the ships' sailing distance across the North Pacific Ocean in the summer was shorter than it was in the winter.

Due to the difficultly of practical data collection, relatively few sailing records were employed in this study. It is suggested that additional sailing records should be collected, which adopt weather routing recommendations, to more comprehensively analyze sailing performance in future research.

The study's findings offer valuable guidance to different stakeholders in the maritime industry (e.g. seafarers, marine hull and machinery companies, Protection and Indemnity Club (P&I), ocean container carriers and freight forwarders) to clarify their responsibilities in order to achieve desired sailing outcomes.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the current study is the first research to utilize practical sailing data to provide objective evidence of sailing performance based on a weather routing service, which can assist various stakeholders to make optimal decisions.

This study aims to explore the use of technology-based strategies by Yemeni undergraduate students to develop their English as a foreign language skills in informal learning settings.

A mixed methods research design was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 110 undergraduate students enrolled at the English Departments in two universities in Yemen. In the first phase of the study, 10 students were interviewed to obtain information about their use of technology to develop their English language skills and subsystems in informal settings. Following the analysis of the interview data, a questionnaire was built to collect quantitative data, and the second phase of the study was carried out with 100 undergraduate students.

The findings revealed that students developed four technology-based strategies that they used in informal settings. These strategies included using social media, being inspired by someone, accessing social networks and websites. Students reported that these strategies helped them develop their listening, speaking and reading skills, while they also reported that their vocabulary was enhanced over grammar and pronunciation.

The study findings can be of benefit not only for helping to raise students’ awareness of informal learning strategies to develop their English skills outside the classroom but also for teachers to rethink the importance of integrating technology tools and digital resources in their teaching practice. The results could also guide curriculum designers to augment textbook materials by integrating technology-based informal learning strategies.

This is the first study on this topic conducted in the context of higher education in Yemen and offers unique insights into informal learning practices of Yemeni students. In addition, the findings of the study open new dimensions for rethinking the classification of language learning strategies to include those that are technology-based and mainly useful for independent informal learning.

The purpose of this study is to explore the causal relationship between smart transportation technology innovation and green transportation efficiency.

A comprehensive framework is used in this paper to assess the level of green transportation efficiency in China based on the instrumental variable – generalized method of moments model, followed by an examination of the impact of innovation in smart transportation technology on green transportation efficiency. Additionally, their non-linear relationship is explored, as are their important moderating and mediating effects.

The findings indicate that, first, the efficiency of green transportation is significantly enhanced by innovation in smart transportation technology, which means that investing in such technologies contributes to improving green transportation efficiency. Second, in areas where green transportation efficiency is initially low, smart transportation technology innovation exerts a particularly potent influence in driving green transportation efficiency, which underscores the pivotal role of such innovation in bolstering efficiency when it is lacking. Third, the relationship between smart transportation technology innovation and green transportation efficiency is moderated by information and communication technology, and the influence of smart transportation technology innovation on green transportation efficiency is realized through an increase in energy efficiency and carbon emissions efficiency.

Advancing green transportation is essential in establishing a low-carbon trajectory within the transportation sector.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of information disclosure by unlisted bond issuers on the stock price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry.

This paper takes advantage of information disclosure during the bond issuance and examines the spillover effect of unlisted bond issuers' information disclosure on listed firms in the stock market. The sample is composed of A-share firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2018. All the data are obtained from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research and WIND databases. The impact of bond market information disclosure on price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry is identified through multivariate regression analyses.

Empirical results show that price informativeness of listed firms has a significantly positive association with the information disclosure of same-industry unlisted bond issuers. Further analyses show that the above finding is more significant when information disclosure of bond issuers is a more important channel for acquiring industry information (i.e. when industry is more concentrated, when economic uncertainty is high, and when industry information is less transparent) and understanding the industry competitive landscape (i.e. when bond issuers are relatively large, when bond issuers and listed firms have more direct product competition, when bond issuance firms are large-scale state-owned business groups), and when there are more cross-market information intermediaries (i.e. more cross-market institutional investors and more sell-side analysts). This paper indicates that information disclosure of bond issuers has a positive spillover effect on the stock market.

The novelty of the research is that the authors examine industry information spillover from unlisted firms to listed firms leveraging on unlisted firms' information disclosure in bond markets.

This paper explores the relationships between firm absorptive capacity, novel business model design (NBMD), product differentiation strategy and performance in a transition economy.

The study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze firm-level data from a unique sample of Albanian manufacturing and service firms.

The study shows that absorptive capacity enables and shapes the NBMD that, in turn, leads to performance gains. The authors also find that the NBMD capacity mediates the impact of realized absorptive capacity on performance, whereas product differentiation strategy moderates the relationship between new business model and performance.

All variables were measured based on a self-assessed scale leading to potential method bias. Also, based on relevant literature, the study focuses on only one type of business model (BM) design.

Since dynamic capabilities are the foundation of NBMD, firms should invest carefully in developing such capabilities. Thus, the study results provide an integrative framework for understanding the role of absorptive capacity in NBMD adoption and for explaining the relationship between NBMD adoption and performance, an aspect that helps organizations in a dynamic environment.

This study strives to investigate the relationships between absorptive capacity, business model design, product strategies and performance by answering the call of Teece (2018) to “flesh out the details” of such relationships.

This article aims to draw a conceptual model that integrates the view from the entrepreneurial event model with entrepreneurial education and prior self-employment experience. The model tests the role of entrepreneurial education on the formation of intentions to become an entrepreneur and examines whether prior self-employed experiences moderate the route from entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurial perceived feasibility (PF) and perceived desirability (PD) into the entrepreneurial intention (EI).

The authors operated on a sample of 389 master's students by applying Cronbach's alpha, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling to illustrate the links between constructs.

The study found that entrepreneurial education is positively correlated with PF, PD, and intention to enter entrepreneurial activities. PD is determined as a partial mediator in the entrepreneurial education–intention link and full mediator in PF and EI. Moreover, the study revealed that prior self-employed experiences serve as a positive moderator in the path from entrepreneurial education and PD to EI.

The study offers several recommendations based on research findings so as to nurture and promote entrepreneurial activities among master's students.

The current research provides novel insights about the relationship between entrepreneurial education and intentions to become an entrepreneur over and about the central antecedents in the entrepreneurial event model and moderation effects of prior self-employed experiences.