Church Sustainability: Exploring Online Technologies through the Lens of System Dynamics

Online technologies such as social media and videoconferencing platforms have changed the way church leaders access information and communicate with congregants. The paper investigates the value of online technologies in creating church sustainability using system dynamics. Exploring Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) as the case study, the researchers interviewed 12 religious leaders. The results showed that church leaders were using online technologies to create online communities within their congregations which were crucial for addressing the communication and informational needs of various church leaders as well as aiding the retention of church members. The study concludes that online technologies have the potential to sustain religious organisations. The study provides insight to the church leaders regarding the value of online technologies in church sustainability

Impact of e-Commerce on Corporate Governance and Ethics

It is always prudent that the business environment adopts technological platforms such as ecommerce, but there is a need to ascertain the risks involved to optimize the benefits. The current paper examines the impact of e-commerce on corporate governance and ethics in the retail sector. The research involved gathering the opinions of suppliers, customers, employees, government workers, traders, and as well as investors. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative approach. Quantitative data were gathered using a questionnaire administered on a corporate retail organization from different levels of workers, while indepth interviews were used for the qualitative data. Results from the questionnaire indicated meager customer relationship management on e-commerce platforms, stringent excess control rather than regulatory requirements and inadequate monitoring of the behavior activities of clients on e-commerce platforms. Also, the investors felt that e-commerce impact on shareholder activity was not satisfactory especially with regards to meetings, but they indicated agreement on the enhancement of resources with regards to the generation of organizational profits. The results show that overall satisfaction as a proxy for good corporate governance is dependent on investors and the government. However, issues such as difficulty in describing physical goods, elimination of unethical practices and untrustworthiness of intermediaries require inter-organizational compliance between different organizations and their stakeholders to manage risk on e-commerce platforms. It is therefore pertinent upon the organization and their stakeholder board to reduce the adverse impact on e-commerce through coordinated training on ethics and risk management to enhance mutual benefit for the entities involve

Cell Phone Banking: Revisiting Predictors of Adoption in South Africa

More South African cell phone users now turn their mobile phones into platform for several financial transactions rather than their personal computers. The penetration of cell phone banking has more than doubled in the past few years. This study provides an update on the earlier study conducted by Brown et al. (2003) on the predictors of adoption of cell phone banking in South Africa. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among cell phone banking users that consisted of students, and workers from various fields of employment. A total of 220 questionnaires were gathered from the sampled population of cell phone banking customers. The data were analysed through partial least square with structural equation as well as regression splines. This article examines the most important predictors influencing cell phone banking adoption in South Africa. The results show that utility expectancy and user satisfaction are playing a determinant role in the adoption behaviour of users in South Africa

Mining and Representing Unstructured Nicotine Use Data in a Structured Format for Secondary Use

The objective of this study was to use rules, NLP and machine learning for addressing the problem of clinical data interoperability across healthcare providers. Addressing this problem has the potential to make clinical data comparable, retrievable and exchangeable between healthcare providers. Our focus was in giving structure to unstructured patient smoking information. We collected our data from the MIMIC-III database. We wrote rules for annotating the data, then trained a CRF sequence classifier. We obtained an f-measure of 86%, 72%, 69%, 80%, and 12% for substance smoked, frequency, amount, temporal, and duration respectively. Amount smoked yielded a small value due to scarcity of related data. Then for smoking status we obtained an f-measure of 94.8% for non-smoker class, 83.0% for current-smoker, and 65.7% for past-smoker. We created a FHIR profile for mapping the extracted data based on openEHR reference models, however in future we will explore mapping to CIMI models

Measuring Efficiency and Productivity of ICT Infrastructure Utilization

Several researches have been carried out with respect to ICT Infrastructure Investments made by nations in a bid to bridge the digital divide and improve quality of life and the Human Development Index (HDI). With a strong argument being made in the literature for continued investments in ICT Infrastructure, this research investigated the relative efficiency and productivity of ICT Infrastructure Utilization in Education. The research employed the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malmquist Index (MI) non-parametric research methodology with Arab States, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa and World regions forming the Decision-Making Units. With Data collected from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Tel-ecommunications Union (ITU), findings show a relatively efficient utilization and steady increase in productivity for the regions but with only Europe and Arab States currently operating in a state of positive growth in produc-tivity

Evaluating eWOM in Social Media: Religious Leaders vs Religious Organizations: Functionality Approach

Social media have become considerable avenues for electronic word of mouth (eWOM) communication in religious organizations. Religious leaders use social media to share, interact and advertise church programs. The study seeks to evaluate the usage of social media, in particular, eWOM using the Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) as a case study. The researchers first interviewed 12 church leaders to evaluate the usage of social media among religious leaders. The researchers further collected data from various SDA church social media websites (e.g., Facebook). The results from religious leaders’ data showed a high level of social media usage and sentiments in the area of advertising, promotion of church programs, communication and evangelism. Social media enabled religious leaders to create online closed communities for leaders, such as communities of elders, departmental leaders, the church board executive and district church communities where conversations and decision-making took place. There were challenges of circulation of improper content, diverting the purpose of the groups, irreverent use social media platforms and flooding of the groups with media content unrelated to the groups

Is the Impact of Human-Computer Interaction in Religious Organisations a Hype or Crossword?

The application of human-computer interaction is on the rise in sectors that were in previous years lagging, such as in place of worship and other forms of churches. While there has been hype about human-computer interaction is all areas of human undertakings. However, few research studies have assessed the impact of human-computer interaction in religious organisations. It is, therefore, paramount to assess the impact and implementation of HCI on the management of religious organisations. In this current research, the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church was chosen as a case in point. The study employed a qualitative approach whereby data were gathered using semi-structured interviews, and various levels of church leaders (elders) were interviewed. Using Atlas-ti software tool, the results presented several themes on how human-computer interaction could meaningfully improve the operations of religious organisations with regards to spiritual health, economic, and performance impac

ICT Efficiency in Creating Public Value, 2005-2014: A Cross-National Enquiry of BRICS Countries

Recently, BRICS countries have emerged as a powerful economic block envisaging to provide economic assistance to the member states. With the most populous countries, BRICS deserve a focused research to interrogate ICT in public value creation. Using Data Envelopment Analysis, the present study found that ICT transformed public value in BRICS countries by 0.4301, with India being the top performer (0.9984) over the period 2005 to 2014. Russia is the least performer by scoring 0.0516 regardless of its highest ICT development. Further, Brazil, China and Russia performed below fifty percent and below the BRICS average score. Findings further indicate that high ICT development is not necessarily a determinant for high ICT efficiency in creating public value. The current study has theoretical, methodological and policy implications

ICT and Health System Performance in Africa: A Multi-Method Approach

For the past two decades, the discussion regarding the effect of ICT on health systems is becoming apparent. However, past studies have mainly focused on ICT impact on specific social-economic phenomena. Little empirical research on ICT and health systems exists. Many African countries have invested in ICT and there is a need to examine if such investments have impacted on health system of these countries. Using a multi-method approach, data for 27 African countries were analysed. We employed Data Envelopment Analysis, Cluster Analysis and Partial Least Squares to examine the impact. The findings indicate that the 27 countries can be grouped into three clusters based on their relative efficiency scores of ICT and health systems. More compelling, the findings indicate that countries that performed efficiently in ICT inputs also do so in their health systems. Further, findings indicate that ICT significantly improves life expectancy at birth and reduces infant mortality rate. African countries must significantly invest in ICT to improve their health systems so as to achieve socio-economic development. The current study has theoretical, methodological and policy implications

ICT Infrastructure and It’s Impact on National Development: A Research Direction for Africa

Discussions on Development that encompasses how ICTs can make a difference in climate, political, health disturbances and business environment require a multidisciplinary approach which demand contributions from IS community, the private sector, development agencies, practitioner and other academia. This would enable the development community to identify the objectives of technology for empowerment and how they should be achieved in the practice of national development. This study serves as a response to the call for more macro/micro level policy research on the role of ICT on national development. The paper reviews the previous research in this domain and proposes a research direction for macro/micro level impact of ICT on national development on the Africa continent