Search Results (7)

Blockchain technology (BC) and big data analytics capability (BDAC) are two crucial emerging technologies that have attracted significant attention from businesses and academia. However, their combined effect on business model innovation (BMI), along with the moderating role of environmental uncertainty and the mediating influence of corporate entrepreneurship, remains underexplored. To fill this gap, the present study investigates the combined effects of BDAC and blockchain adoption on BMI and explores the mediating role of corporate entrepreneurship as well as the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty. Drawing on the dynamic capability view (DCV) and the related literature, this study investigates these relationships using a conceptual framework hypothesising that (1) BDAC and blockchain adoption affect BMI through corporate entrepreneurship and (2) environmental uncertainty moderates these relationships. Consistent with the main theoretical arguments, our results, based on a sample of 284 employees working in Australian firms, indicate direct and indirect impacts of both BDAC and blockchain adoption on BMI. Corporate entrepreneurship was found to play a partial mediating role in the relationship between the two technologies, while BMI and environmental uncertainty were found to be significant moderators. These findings have significant theoretical and practical implications for companies striving to innovate their BMI. The results suggest that the synergistic effects of BDAC and blockchain technologies together create entrepreneurial activities and strategies to generate value, thus enabling BMI. Furthermore, the mediating role of corporate entrepreneurship and the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty have important theoretical implications for innovative BMI and management. As such, this study highlights the potential of BDAC and blockchain technologies to drive sustainable business practices, offering insights into how these technologies can contribute to economic, social, and environmental sustainability through innovative business models. Full article

This research aims to investigate the average and heterogeneous impacts of digital agricultural technology extension service use on eco-efficiency among 1302 maize-producing farmers from a major maize-producing area in Northeast China in 2022. The slack-based measure model with undesirable outputs is applied to calculate the eco-efficiency of maize production. To obtain an unbiased estimation of the average effect, the self-selection problem generated by observable and unobservable factors is solved by the endogenous switching regression model. Quantile regression is utilized to analyze the heterogeneous effect. Notably, the mediated effects model is utilized to examine the potential mechanism between them. Our findings indicate that digital agricultural technology extension service use can increase maize production’s eco-efficiency. Digital agricultural technology extension service users would have reduced the eco-efficiency of the service by 0.148 (21.11%) if they had not used it. Digital agricultural technology extension service nonusers would have improved the eco-efficiency of the service by 0.214 (35.20%) if they had used it. The robustness check reconfirms the results. Moreover, digital agricultural technology extension service use is more helpful for maize farmers who have lower eco-efficiency than those who have higher eco-efficiency. Digital agricultural technology extension service use can improve the eco-efficiency of maize production through the application of organic fertilizers, green pesticides, and biodegradable agricultural films. There are policy implications of these findings: there is an argument for using the publicity of the digital agricultural technology extension service to encourage farmers to use sustainable inputs; additionally, it might be worthwhile to implement a categorized promotion strategy based on the different real-world situations. Full article

This article provides an anthropologically derived philosophy of the nature of experience in relation to the lifeworld of virtual tourism. Framed around Martin Heidegger and Tim Ingold’s concept of dwelling, I interrogate what the implications of a virtually derived experience of tourism might be for how we understand what experience means and by extension the experience of being human-in-the-world; in effect, what it means to ‘experience’ virtual tourism. I illustrate my argument by focusing on extended reality (XR) technology within the context of three museums, since museum experiences are increasingly mediated by varying forms of XR. I am interested in what the virtual-tourism-world of a museum might reveal about the experience of being human, experience that I refer to as virtual dwelling. The museums are the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle and the Louvre, both of which are located in Paris, France, and the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex in FL, USA. These examples provide a snapshot into the merging, blending or overlaying of the physical with the virtual. In other words, the inseparability of virtual, person and world. Drawing from Heidegger, I argue that the significance of technology does not lie in its instrumentality as a resource or as a means to an end. Its significance comes from its capacity to un-conceal or reveal a ‘real’ world of relations and intentions through which humans take power over reality. The nature of experience, as virtual dwelling revealed, concerns the relationship between humans and the natural world, understandings of cultural value and cultural wealth and notions of human exceptionalism. Ultimately, what technologically modified experiences of a virtual-tourism-world reveal is experience as virtual dwelling, experience of the embeddedness of being human-in-the-world. Full article

Given the indisputable roles of remittance and financial development in countries’ economic performance, enhancing the nexus between the two variables has become pertinent. The remittance–financial development literature has surged, with a growing argument that making the relationship work is conditioned on mediating roles of certain economic indicators. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the transformative roles of digital technology, the assessment of its possible mediating role in the remittance–financial development nexus is lacking in the literature. Hence, using pooled data of 35 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries sourced from the World Bank’s Development Indicators, this study examined the mediating effect of digital technology in the relationship between remittance inflows and financial development. Using two indicators of ICT—fixed broadband and mobile cellular subscription—the results of the generalized method of moment analysis suggest that digital technology spurs remittance inflows to promote financial development in SSA. The results are consistent for both measures. These findings imply that remittance and digital technology are complementary in promoting financial development in the sub-region. Based on these outcomes, the study therefore advances the enactment of policies aimed at fostering diffusion of digital technology and achieving the sustainable development goal’s recommendation of lower transaction cost of remittances. Full article

Data infrastructures, economic processes, and governance models of digital platforms are increasingly pervading urban sectors and spheres of urban life. This phenomenon is known as platformization, which has in turn given rise to the phenomena of platform society, where platforms have permeated the core of urban societies. A recent manifestation of platformization is the Metaverse, a global platform project launched by Meta (formerly Facebook) as a globally operating platform company. The Metaverse represents an idea of a hypothetical “parallel virtual world” that incarnate ways of living and working in virtual cities as an alternative to smart cities of the future. Indeed, with emerging innovative technologies—such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, the IoT, and Digital Twins—providing rich datasets and advanced computational understandings of human behavior, the Metaverse has the potential to redefine city designing activities and service provisioning towards increasing urban efficiencies, accountabilities, and quality performance. However, there still remain ethical, human, social, and cultural concerns as to the Metaverse’s influence upon the quality of human social interactions and its prospective scope in reconstructing the quality of urban life. This paper undertakes an upper-level literature review of the area of the Metaverse from a broader perspective. Further, it maps the emerging products and services of the Metaverse, and explores their potential contributions to smart cities with respect to their virtual incarnation, with a particular focus on the environmental, economic, and social goals of sustainability. This study may help urban policy makers to better understand the opportunities and implications of the Metaverse upon tech-mediated practices and applied urban agendas, as well as assess the positives and negatives of this techno-urban vision. This paper also offers thoughts regarding the argument that the Metaverse has disruptive and substantive effects on forms of reconstructing reality in an increasingly platformized urban society. This will hopefully stimulate prospective research and further critical perspectives on the topic. Full article

The paper uses activity theory for understanding and managing the complexity involved in the transition of a product-service organization from closed to the technology-mediated open mode of innovation. In particular, activity theory is used to facilitate the alignment of the open innovation model adopted with the organization’s dominant argumentation scheme by developing nested representations of the innovation process in the traditional closed mode, as well as in the user-led innovation and user co-creation modes, associated with product- and service-provision operations, respectively. For all cases, we concentrate on the argumentation-in-innovation activity and its context. We arrive at insights about the process of Activity Based Analysis (ABA) in this endeavor and the issues raised through action research in a product-service firm in the food and beverages sector, aiming at adopting an open innovation strategy implemented in the innovation community mode. Full article

The purpose of this synthesis paper is to present the motivations and conceptual basis for research on socio-technical-ecological systems (STES), addressing the need for interdisciplinary studies targeting the technological mediation of human–environment relationships. The background is the very limited number of collaborations between scholars of social-ecological systems and sociotechnical systems (SES), despite repeated calls for bridging work. The synthesis builds on an in-depth review of previous literature, interdisciplinary exchanges, and empirical examples. The result is arguments for why a sociotechnical understanding of ‘technology’ is of central importance for SES studies, related to how technology: (1) mediates human–environment relationships; (2) brings ambivalence to these relationships; (3) enhances and transforms human agency and provides a source of constitutive power; (4) changes scalar relationships, enabling our interaction with and impact on the natural world across time and space. Furthermore, we present an STES analytical approach which starts from symmetrical attention to technology, society, and environment, specifically targeting interfaces and relationships of critical relevance for SES scholars, and address counterarguments that we have encountered. We conclude that a shift to STES research will enhance our knowledge of system interfaces that are often overlooked, opening further avenues for research and real-world interventions. Full article