The Office at Home: Information Technology and Work-Life Balance among Women in Developing Countries

The use of information technology (IT) has increased in developing countries, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic era, since many have been forced to stay indoors to stop the spread of the virus. IT use means the acquisition and use of smart devices and Apps that make work and communication from home efficient. Women in developing countries who also have to work from home have challenges of acquiring IT. They must solely care for the family as it is the norm. This potentially increases burnout. This study, therefore, seeks to understand how women in developing countries appropriate IT for work-life balance during COVID-19. This study employs qualitative autoethnography methodology and theoretical lens of technology appropriation to recount how female academics appropriate IT in Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic. We present an analysis and discussion of the empirical finding through the three levels of the technology appropriation process that support Work-Life balance

Competitive Intelligence Capabilities of Social Media Analytics for Value Creation

In recent times, social media has been a major tool where traces of clients’ engagements of a business product or services are kept. The petabytes of daily social media data are utilized to make informed decisions grounded in context. Businesses are tapping into this chunk of data to make intelligent decisions. The use of these Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies is shown to drive business value. Existing reviews of Social Media Analytics (SMA) use and other digital innovations lack the theorisation of the value created from the use of SMA as a digital transformation of businesses(Matarazzo et al. 2021). Davenport and Ronanki (2018), purports that there are three main business needs that make use AI technology. These are, process automation, cognitive insights and cognitive engagement. Gaining competitive intelligence from social media data has become a market requirement among businesses. Competitive intelligence is “a process that includes collection, analysis, interpretation and dissemination providing strategic information that can be used in a decision making process” (Acharya et al. 2018). Fan and Gordon (2014) indicated that social media analytics produces intelligence that contributes to creating competitive advantages and business value. On this premises, it is interesting to study the competitive intelligence capabilities of SMA and value creation. This study sought to theorise the ways to create business value from the use of SMA. The study seeks to answer the research question: What value is derived from the competitive intelligence capabilities of Social Media analytics. This research will adopt both conceptual analysis and empirical quantitative design to achieve its objectives. A cross-sectional survey research design will be adopted in this study. Managers of the banking and telecommunication companies in Ghana, specifically in Greater Accra region, will be chosen to respond to the survey questionnaire that will be administered. The key informants will be managers of these companies because their experiences, and professional knowledge about SMA use will provide reliable information to this study. The study will use partial least square-based structural equation modelling to evaluate the measurement items. This study is one of the few types of research to investigate the causal relationships between the SMA, competitive intelligence, and value creation. This study contributes to information systems literature by conceptualising the competitive intelligence capabilities of SMA to understand the value that is derived from its use

Editorial

No abstract available

Art and handicraft in the Woman's building of the World's Columbian exposition,

Mode of access: Internet

Engaging Women in Information Systems: Where Are We Headed?

The IS field has acknowledged it has gaps in gender and racial equity. Fewer women choose to study IS, as students or faculty, but how can we improve that? This panel will present current, ongoing studies and activities to collect data about the experiences of women and underserved populations lacking from IS academia and classrooms, including what types of data are needed, sources of this data, and how to begin collecting it from within universities. Panelists will present ideas from all three AIS regions, with special care to discuss how these concepts differ within and between regions. The goal of this panel is to identify missing but critical data related to diversity in IS and to spotlight important work being done to collect and analyze this data worldwide. Conference attendees will learn how they can participate in these efforts and discuss obstacles or barriers that they may face

Resource efficiency in the food manufacturing sector: DIRECT, a co-designed online tool.

International audienc

An attempt to constrain the age, duration, and eruptive history of the Karoo flood basalt: Naude's Nek section (South Africa)

We have carried out paleomagnetic sampling of a ∼750 m sequence of the Karoo large igneous province (Naude's Nek Pass, South Africa). K-Ar dating (Cassignol-Gillot) has been performed on four samples from the 650 m upper unit (mean age 179.2 ± 1.8 Ma) and a sample from the lower unit (184.8 ± 2.6 Ma). A succession of two phases of volcanism is suggested. The lower 25 flows (115 m thick) have recorded a reversed polarity; the next 23 flows (135 m thick) are transitional and contribute a detailed record of the “Van Zijl” (1962) Jurassic reversal. The upper 38 flows (500 m thick) have normal polarity. Directional groups (DGs) of lava flows with quasi-identical remanence directions indicate eruption durations too short to have recorded geomagnetic secular variation and hence are interpreted as single eruptive events. Altogether, 19 DGs and 10 sheet lobes yield a sequence of 29 distinct directions. This could correspond to a total eruptive activity shorter than 3000 years, less than one per mil of the total duration over which the section was emplaced. We obtain a new paleomagnetic pole for South Africa at ∼180 Ma (λ = 75.2°N, ϕ = 276.4°E, A95 = 5.8°, N = 19), which is consistent with earlier reports