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Despite consumers' widespread use of social media platforms, there is scant research on the underlying factors that influence their willingness to share digital footprints on social media. The purpose of this study is to address this research gap by examining consumers' cognitive and affective attitudes simultaneously.

This research used quantitative method by using online survey administered to a sample of 733 social media users.

The findings indicate both cognitive and affective attitudes jointly influence consumers' behavioural intentions with trust as a key construct mediating the relationship between attitudinal antecedents and consumers' willingness to share digital footprints on social media.

This study contributes to the information systems (IS) literature by offering a comprehensive framework constituting the joint attitudinal components as antecedents to consumers' behavioural intention for sharing digital footprints while trust works as a mediator.

This paper has important managerial implications. It helps marketers and IS managers in profiling consumers, understanding consumption patterns, sharing of digital footprints, which are useful for effective market segmentation, product development and future design of social media platforms. It informs social media providers of the importance of not only focussing on functional aspects but also underscores the essence of paying attention to consumers' affect towards social media platforms, especially trust.

The paper presents an original framework that explains the influence of joint attitudinal components on behavioural intention, with trust as a mediator.

Over the last few decades, microfinance industry is argued to have played a constructive role in alleviating poverty level and providing the underprivileged with access to financial services. Statistics from the World Bank reveal that, currently, only 4% of the underprivileged have been served out of the 3 billion+ potential clients. Such results are due to several claims, particularly the operational and financial challenges faced by microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the constant flux inviting more attentions towards its performance. While explicit attention is given by many researchers towards mobile banking and information and communication technology (ICT) in improving the MFIs’ performance, the study on how social media, as a rapidly growing online phenomenon, can impact on the MFIs’ performance remains scarce. As such, this study aims to investigate this impact based on four dimensional performance indicators: efficiency, financial sustainability, portfolio quality and outreach.

A model is proposed and tested to ascertain the relationship between social media applications and organisational performance. In so doing, web-based questionnaires have been used to collect data from MFI employees in developing countries. Results reveal a significant influence of the social media over the MFIs’ performance, offering valuable insights into both researchers and practitioners in the domain of microfinance, as well as social media—conforming that the adoption of social media as marketing, advertising and communication tools may significantly improve the MFIs’ performance.

The results demonstrate that there is a positive and significant impact of social media use within microfinance on the key indicators of MFIs. They also show that the highest impact of social media usage within the microfinance is on the portfolio quality. In addition, it was found that marketing and advertising; communication and sales and distribution are the main areas where social media is able to support while social networking websites are the most popular platforms employed in MFIs.

This study adds to the existing literature few theoretical and practical aspects. First, this study developed a model for assessing the value of social media as a new phenomenon within this type of organisation. Second, it offers microfinance sponsors, managers and policy makers with a frame of reference to understand what social media platform can be deployed for each purpose. Third, with the identification of the main MFIs’ performance indicators, this research provided a reference of performance measurement guide for microfinance industry when assessing different technological employment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and validate the adoption lifecycle phases and perform the mapping of factors influencing the decision making process for enterprise application integration (EAI) adoption on the adoption lifecycle phases in two local government authorities (LGAs).

A case study based research approach using interviews with the decision makers is utilised to investigate the less acknowledged phenomena like EAI adoption. This approach assists in examining the phenomenon in its natural setting, examining the in‐depth complexities and processes, and providing considerable flexibility during interviews and observations.

According to the empirical findings, the factors influencing EAI adoption and the adoption lifecycle phases are appropriate for studying the research context. The analysis and study of the factors and adoption lifecycle phases is made carefully and specifically to fit and be compatible within the context of LGAs. As a result, it is apparent from the empirical findings that most of the factors influence the decision making process for EAI adoption on each phase of the adoption lifecycle in the case organisations with exception to few factors.

The combination of theoretical discussions, analysis of the literature and empirical research presented in this paper illustrates the start of research on EAI adoption in LGAs. However, the theoretical and empirical data collected are confined to the limited context of two LGAs within the region of England. The structure of LGAs varies in different parts of the UK. In the light of the reflections and the research limitations of this paper it is recommended that further work could usefully be pursed to validate the adoption lifecycle phases and perform the mapping of the factors at each phase of the adoption lifecycle in the context of other types of LGAs, different cities and countries.

From a conceptual and empirical point of view, none of the existing EAI adoption studies investigated the mapping of the factors influencing EAI adoption on the adoption lifecycle phases. In doing so, the authors consider this as a literature void and report that it is important to understand and manage the EAI adoption process in LGAs. The mapping of factors process is substantial as it may enhance the analysis of EAI adoption process in LGAs and further facilitate the decision makers in realising the importance of EAI adoption factors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of the intermediary in delivering public services from government departments to different stakeholders (business and citizens) and to highlight the challenges that face the development of e‐government services in the context of Madinah City, in Saudi Arabia.

The paper uses a broad literature review to identify significant factors that contribute to e‐government adoption and diffusion success. These factors are then used as a basis for analyzing the findings from a case study that focuses on the concept of intermediaries for e‐government service delivery in Saudi Arabia. To investigate a less‐recognized phenomenon, such as the use of intermediaries in e‐government contexts, the authors adopt a qualitative case study approach to gain further understating. This method allowed examining the phenomenon in its natural settings through employing multiple methods of data collection. Further, it gave the researchers enough room to get a closer look at the reasons behind introducing the intermediary concept in the e‐government context and provided considerable flexibility during interviews and observations.

The results of this paper indicate that digital divide and poor infrastructure to conduct payments (secure transactions) for e‐government services was hindering citizens' adoption of e‐services in Saudi Arabia. Thus, the intermediary concept was facilitating citizens' access to e‐government services and helping to reduce the digital divide in Saudi Arabia. The findings also show that intermediaries helped in increasing the availability of e‐government services. Additionally, this paper finds that trust between the service provider (government) and service requester (citizens and businesses) is an important factor that influences not only e‐government adoption and diffusion, but also the role of electronic intermediary (e‐offices) in facilitating this adoption.

The authors take into account the most salient adoption factors when introducing e‐government systems. Electronic intermediaries may help to enhance the understating and analysis of those adoption factors in government settings and facilitate government departments in realizing the importance of intermediaries' role in e‐government contexts. Furthermore, this paper significantly contributes to the knowledge and practice of e‐government adoption and diffusion and provides sufficient support to decision makers in expediting e‐government adoption and diffusion.

The application of enterprise application integration (EAI) technologies in integrating heterogeneous information systems (IS) has been pursued by several private and public organisations. However, where EAI has added effectiveness and strengthened the information technology infrastructures in the private domain, local government authorities (LGAs) have been slow in adopting cost‐effective EAI solutions to significantly expand the capabilities of their conventionally inflexible IS. Despite EAI represents an attractive proposition to LGAs and offers the opportunity to leverage the IS into a seamless chain of processes, EAI has not been widely investigated in LGAs. Literature indicates several research studies mainly focusing on a number of different factors (e.g. benefits, barriers) influencing EAI adoption. However, due to plethora of different factors, it may not be sufficient for LGAs to take decisions by merely focusing on factors. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to assess and prioritise the factors influencing EAI adoption in LGAs through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique.

To investigate the less acknowledged phenomena like EAI adoption in LGAs, the author follows an interpretive, qualitative case study approach to conduct this research. This approach will assist in examining the phenomenon in its natural setting, examine the in‐depth complexities and processes, e.g. analysing and prioritising the importance of factors influencing the decision‐making process for EAI adoption, and provide considerable flexibility during interviews and observations.

According to the empirical findings, the proposed EAI adoption factors are appropriate for studying the research context. The analysis and study of the factors is made carefully and specifically to fit and be compatible within the context of an LGA. As a result, it is apparent from the empirical findings that most of the factors have influenced the decision‐making process for EAI adoption except two factors that are not tested.

The author takes into consideration the literature void and prioritise the importance the factors by introducing the AHP technique. This technique is substantial as it may enhance the analysis of EAI adoption in LGAs, tests and justifies the feasibility of AHP technique by a case study, and facilitates LGAs in realising the importance of EAI adoption factors. Hence, it significantly contributes to the body of knowledge and practice in this area and providing sufficient support to the management by speeding up the EAI adoption process.

The purpose of this paper is primarily to analyse the implementation of shared services models in business enterprises or private sector and the benefits realised, thereafter; to a greater extent, focusing on the lessons learnt from such operations and exploring the potential of applying similar models in the public sector.

This research attempts to examine whether or not the concepts regarding shared service in the private sector are valid and applicable in the public sector.

Even though the shared services concept and related models are significantly prevalent across the business enterprises or private sector and government sector, the author argues that the shared services model developed in the private sector may further significantly facilitate governments and public agencies in dealing with the recent changes (i.e. due to global financial crisis) in their environments and to become more effective and efficient.

This paper brings together some of the key discussions from the business and private sector on shared services and discusses their applicability in the public sector context.

This paper aims to focus on systematically analysing and synthesising the extant research published on supply chain integration (SCI) area, given the significance of SCI research area. More specifically, the authors aim to answer three questions: “Q1 – What are the factors (e.g. both driving and inhibiting) that influence SCI?”, “Q2 – What are the key developments (e.g. both in research and industry) in SCI area?” and “Q3 – What are the approaches employed/discussed to integrate supply chains?”. Over the past decade, SCI has gained increasing attention in the supply chain management (SCM) context, both from the practitioners’ perspective and as a research area. In realising the global transformations and competitive business environment, a number of organisations are collaborating with their supply chain (SC) partners, to conduct seamless SC operations.

A systematic and structured literature review is carried out to observe and understand the past trends and extant patterns/themes in the SCI research area, evaluate contributions and summarise knowledge, thereby identifying limitations, implications and potential directions of further research. Thus, to trace the implementation of SCI practices, a profiling approach is used to analyse 293 articles (published in English-speaking peer-reviewed journals between 2000 and 2013) extracted from the Scopus database. The Systematic Review Approach proposed by Tranfield et al. (2003) was followed to analyse and synthesise the extant literature on SCI area.

The analysis presented in this paper has identified relevant SCI research studies that have contributed to the development and accumulation of intellectual wealth to the SCI and SCM area. Each of the 293 papers was examined for achieving the aim and objectives of the research, the method of data collection, the data analysis method and quality measures. While some of the papers provided information on all of these categories, most of them failed to provide all the information, especially for Q2 and Q3 that resulted in 23 and 21 papers, respectively.

This study would have benefited from the analysis of further journals; however, the analysis of 293 articles from leading journals in the field of operations and SCM was deemed sufficient in scope. Moreover, this research has implications for researchers, journal editors, practitioners, universities and research institutions. It is likely to form the basis and motivation for profiling other database resources and specific operations and SCM-type journals in this area.

This systematic literature review highlights a taxonomy of contextual factors driving and inhibiting SCI for researchers and SC practitioners to refer to while researching or implementing SCI. It also exemplifies some areas for future research, along with the need for researchers to focus on developing more practical techniques for implementing SCI and improving organisational performance.

The prime value and uniqueness of this paper lies in analysing and compiling the existing published material in relation to Q1, Q2 and Q3, including examining other variables (such as yearly publications, geographic location of each publication, type of publication, type of research methods used), which lacks in the recent published five SCI literature review-based articles (by Kim, 2013; Leuschner et al., 2013; Alfalla-Luque et al., 2013; Parente et al., 2008; Fabbe-Costes and Jahre, 2007). This has been achieved by extracting and synthesising existing publications using “Supply Chain Integration” keyword. This paper provides a critique of the conceptual and empirical works in SCI discipline and offers research agendas that can stimulate future researchers to carefully explore the topic.