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The aim of this study is to provide insights concerning the effects of the ubiquitous digital environment on the way people think and the subsequent need to equip young individuals with the necessary skills. Several studies focus on defining the so-called digital skills, also providing indications that higher cognitive skills are required. However, they do not examine how young individuals could perform better to adapt to the continuously evolving digital environment. To address this gap, the study introduces and analyses the construct of digital intelligence, representing the new way of thinking and behaviour in the digital environment. For the purposes of the study, a set of tests was given to students at Greek high schools, targeting 15–16 years old students and employing original tests to assess digital intelligence. According to the findings, digital intelligence is composed of: (1) logical reasoning, algorithms, and evaluation, (2) abstraction, decomposition, and patterns and generalisation, (3) digital emotional intelligence and communication, (4) digital safety and security, and (5) digital identity, use, literacy, and rights. Assessing digital intelligence, as proposed in this study, could be used to assist vocational guidance, employee selection and evaluation, and development of revised school curricula.

Classical data envelopment analysis models have been applied to extract efficiency when time series data are used. However, these models do not always yield realistic results, especially when the purpose of the study is to identify the peers of the decision making unit (DMU) under investigation. This is due to the fact that apart from the spatial distance of DMUs, which is the basis on which efficiency is extracted, the distance in time between DMUs is also important in identifying the most suitable peer that could serve as a benchmark for the DMU under investigation. Based on these two dimensions, i.e. the spatial and the temporal, the concept of spatio-temporal efficiency is introduced and a mixed integer linear programming model is proposed to obtain its value. This model yields a unique past peer for benchmarking purposes based on both dimensions. The implementation has been performed in the R language, where the user can provide, through a graphical interface, the data (inputs and outputs for successive versions of a DMU) for which the spatio-temporal efficiency is measured. Applications to the real world and particularly from the discipline of software engineering are provided to show the applicability of the model to temporally arranged data. Profiling results of the code in the R language are also provided showing the effectiveness of the implementation.

Digital currencies are rapidly evolving Internet currencies that have been increasingly attracting academic, governmental, banking, and business interest. This paper aims to present the commercial perspective towards the adoption of digital currencies as a means of daily transactions. Considering digital currencies as a pioneering technological innovation, this study proposes a research model that combines the innovation decision process model with the technology acceptance model, adding the construct of perceived security in order to investigate the factors that affect the actual use of digital currencies. The collected data from 254 respondents, derived from an online questionnaire-based survey addressed to commercial users, were further analyzed by using structural equation modeling. The findings of this research have significant implications for academics by bridging the gap in the literature about the factors affecting digital currencies’ commercial adoption and for practitioners concerning decision-making on their adoption and use. More specifically, this study stresses the role of perceived security and the fact that managers need to build their policies regarding transactions in digital currencies on the basis of security. Perceived usefulness was also found to be a significant factor, meaning that commercial users should be aware of the advantages of digital currencies regarding businesses. Moreover, compatibility with existing values and practices affects indirectly the actual use of digital currencies, implying that managers need to perceive that the use of digital currencies should be compatible with existing practices.

PurposeThis paper aims to address privacy concerns that arise from the use of mobile recommender systems when processing contextual information relating to the user. Mobile recommender systems aim to solve the information overload problem by recommending products or services to users of Web services on mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, at any given point in time and in any possible location. They use recommendation methods, such as collaborative filtering or content-based filtering and use a considerable amount of contextual information to provide relevant recommendations. However, because of privacy concerns, users are not willing to provide the required personal information that would allow their views to be recorded and make these systems usable.Design/methodology/approachThis work is focused on user privacy by providing a method for context privacy-preservation and privacy protection at user interface level. Thus, a set of algorithms that are part of the method has been designed with privacy protection in mind, which is done by using realistic dummy parameter creation. To demonstrate the applicability of the method, a relevant context-aware data set has been used to run performance and usability tests.FindingsThe proposed method has been experimentally evaluated using performance and usability evaluation tests and is shown that with a small decrease in terms of performance, user privacy can be protected.Originality/valueThis is a novel research paper that proposed a method for protecting the privacy of mobile recommender systems users when context parameters are used.

Apart from the technological perspective of security in mobile devices and applications, the economic perspective has been increasingly attracting the academic and business interest. This paper aims to investigate the perceptions of mobile users about the economic importance of security breaches. Instead of considering mobile users as a whole, they were examined as distinct user types based on Brandtzaeg's mobile user typology. These types are: (1) sporadic users, (2) socializers, (3) entertainment type users, (4) instrumental users, and (5) advanced users. In the context of the research part of this study, a survey was conducted in a sample of smartphone and tablet owners. The five user types were identified in our sample by setting specific classification rules, based on the frequency and the variety of mobile services used. Mobile users' perceptions were assessed in terms of ten different kinds of security breaches. The findings indicated that the user types perceive differently the economic importance of security breaches, implying that the design of security policies and/or the development of tools totally for the community of users are not the appropriate practices. Our research could contribute to the knowledge considering mobile users and their perceptions about security breaches. Mobile content providers and developers could use the findings of this study to evaluate and redesign, if needed, their current strategies so as to meet users' needs regarding security.

In this paper, a study for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) trade is conducted by using graph theory. In specific, exports and imports for UN COMTRADE data code 854810 which corresponds to waste and scrap of prim cell are collected for 175 countries around the world, spanning the period from 2002 to 2014. WEEE trade networks are generated for each year and communities are produced applying spinglass community detection algorithm. Communities are compared with groups of countries produced by applying detection community algorithms on networks based on common currency, differences in CO2 levels, geographical distances, common language, colonial ties, and regional trade agreements (RTA). An estimation of the factors that affect key network metrics has also been conducted, using a random effect linear regression. The model assesses the effect that economic, environmental, geographical, and social, as well as intra-country commercial agreements have on degree of nodes, betweenness score, and clustering coefficient. The results indicate that communities of WEEE trade network are very similar with groups produced by clustering countries regarding CO2 emissions and distance. Distance, contiguity, common currency, colonial ties, common language, and differences in CO2 levels tend to affect significantly the degree of countries engaged in WEEE trade network. Betweenness score is affected only by common currency while clustering coefficient by common language and CO2 levels between countries. A statistical validation of WEEE network, with Erdos – Renyi, Small – World and Scale – Free networks, was conducted. The results reveal that in, cycle, and middle clustering coefficients of Erdos – Renyi and Small – World networks were statistically equal to the corresponding of WEEE network for the period 2004–2008, while Scale – Free's out and clustering coefficients coincided with WEEE's across all years.

In modern times and during the recent global economic crisis, a paradox has emerged: the workforce becomes more and more skilled and trained, while unemployment rates remain very high. The new generation shows a clear tendency towards education, by obtaining various diplomas and certifications. This situation has created a highly educated generation and therefore the selection of the appropriate employee is becoming as difficult as ever. Moreover, it becomes more and more difficult for a candidate to stand out among so many other equally qualified individuals. The elements, which can really make a difference, are the skills a candidate possesses. Skills are divided into two broad categories: technical skills and non-technical or soft skills. Technical skills include all the aspects of formal learning, which results in obtaining degrees and certifications. Nevertheless, the skills that can make a candidate really stand out are non-technical or soft skills. These skills include many personal characteristics of the individual, which form a unique combination of assets. Soft skills are not developed exclusively within the context of formal education, but are mainly part of a wider process of lifelong learning. The aim of the present paper is the development of a framework for the assessment of both technical and non-technical skills in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. In this context, content analysis of online job ads was conducted, in order to determine the significance of each skill generally in the ICT sector, as well as in each of the 23 professions included in this sector. The results demonstrate that every ICT-related profession requires a different ideal combination of skills. The implications of the present research will lead to a new, automated, and reliable personnel selection process, which assesses both technical and non-technical skills for a specific profession or job offering.

In recent years, digital currency was launched and spread due to technological developments, economic changes, monetary and political conditions in a steadily rising rate. This paper aims to provide the findings of an academic research about the actual use of digital currency by companies and freelancers. The research was based on the Diffusion of Innovations Theory and the Technology Acceptance Model. The goal of the survey was to investigate the actual use of digital currency, as a means of transaction by companies and how it is affected by the constructs of Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, and Perceived Security directly and other constructs indirectly, according to the research model. Based on the responses provided by 254 companies and freelancers the findings exhibit that the penetration of digital currency usage is in increasing progress. This survey’s findings are significant for businessmen, banks, financial institutions, digital currency’s users and experts, scientists and policy makers.

One of the major challenges in measuring efficiency in terms of resources and outcomes is the assessment of the evolution of units over time. Although Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been applied for time series datasets, DEA models, by construction, form the reference set for inefficient units (lambda values) based on their distance from the efficient frontier, that is, in a spatial manner. However, when dealing with temporal datasets, the proximity in time between units should also be taken into account, since it reflects the structural resemblance among time periods of a unit that evolves. In this paper, we propose a two-stage spatiotemporal DEA approach, which captures both the spatial and temporal dimension through a multi-objective programming model. In the first stage, DEA is solved iteratively extracting for each unit only previous DMUs as peers in its reference set. In the second stage, the lambda values derived from the first stage are fed to a Multiobjective Mixed Integer Linear Programming model, which filters peers in the reference set based on weights assigned to the spatial and temporal dimension. The approach is demonstrated on a real-world example drawn from software development.

Factors affecting positively or negatively e-waste rejection rates are examined.Economic, cultural, demographic factors are considered.Weibull parametric accelerated failure time model is applied.E-waste rejection rate is prolonged by economic disparity and cultural variables.Wealth causes a shorter time of rejection rate. This study aims at investigating the factors which influence positively or negatively electronic waste (e-waste) rejection rates. E-waste quantities have been calculated based on historical sales data worldwide and lifespan distribution. The methodology, which is adopted in this paper in order to estimate the effect that economic, cultural, and demographic factors have upon the time at which maximum e-waste rejection is achieved, is a Weibull parametric accelerated failure time model. Considering the event at which the maximum rejection of e-waste takes place as the dependent variable, it is assumed that it is a function of economic (GDP, GINI index, Internet users, exports/imports and prices), demographic (dependency ratio, gender, literacy, no of households), and cultural covariates (masculinity, uncertainty avoidance). The variables are fed to the model after transformation into two major constructs derived from Factor Analysis: the first construct is Wealth (exports, imports, and GDP) and the second is Economic Disparity (no of households, literacy, Internet users, and GINI). The results demonstrate that the time of maximum e-waste rejection rate is prolonged by economic disparity and cultural variables (uncertainty avoidance), while wealth causes a shorter time of rejection rate. The proposed methodology is of great value, as its application could provide useful information in order to develop policies for optimal management of e-waste quantities.

Measuring computer network efficiency is of great importance for a network manager. When a detailed picture of the current state of the network is available, we can use analytical and simulated-based methods. Instead, it is more difficult to measure network efficiency, when the details of network topologies and internal characteristics are not available. In this paper, we present operations research techniques, which have been used in measuring the efficiency of economic systems, namely data envelopment analysis (DEA), stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE). We investigate whether these techniques can be used to assess network efficiency and provide the network manager with a complete set of quantitative suggestions towards relative efficiency improvement of the networks determined as inefficient. The average efficiencies extracted in our benchmark from DEA and SFA are almost equal. Furthermore, the decision maker can adjust the weights of the criteria in PROMETHEE in order to build different scenarios. Consequently, we claim that these methods can be used for measuring computer network efficiency, when networks' internal characteristics are not available. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper studies the relationship between foreign direct investments, exports, and economic growth in Croatia using annual time series data for the period 1994-2012. Several econometric models are applied including the bounds testing (ARDL) approach and the ECM-ARDL model. The results confirm a bidirectional long run and short run causal relationship between exports and growth. These results offer new perspectives and insight for a new policy in Croatia for a sustainable economic growth.

The generation and accumulation of obsolete electrical and electronic equipment is growing fast, becoming one of the most complex waste streams the modern world face. It is clear that the e-waste environmental, economical, and social consequences, that stakeholders in both developed and developing countries should deal with, need a proper e-waste management system. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the flow in an e-waste management system, present the processes included and the necessary information that interrelate and affect the processes. The analysis focuses on the management system for e-wastes created by IT and telecommunication equipment. The paper presents relative studies and flow diagrams that were used in the development of the herein proposed diagram. The study results in the presentation of a material and information flow diagram of ICT waste management system.

Technology changes rapidly over years providing continuously more options for computer alternatives and making life easier for economic, intra-relation or any other transactions. However, the introduction of new technology “pushes” old Information and Communication Technology (ICT) products to non-use. E-waste is defined as the quantities of ICT products which are not in use and is bivariate function of the sold quantities, and the probability that specific computers quantity will be regarded as obsolete. In this paper, an e-waste generation model is presented, which is applied to the following regions: Western and Eastern Europe, Asia/Pacific, Japan/Australia/New Zealand, North and South America. Furthermore, cumulative computer sales were retrieved for selected countries of the regions so as to compute obsolete computer quantities. In order to provide robust results for the forecasted quantities, a selection of forecasting models, namely (i) Bass, (ii) Gompertz, (iii) Logistic, (iv) Trend model, (v) Level model, (vi) AutoRegressive Moving Average (ARMA), and (vii) Exponential Smoothing were applied, depicting for each country that model which would provide better results in terms of minimum error indices (Mean Absolute Error and Mean Square Error) for the in-sample estimation. As new technology does not diffuse in all the regions of the world with the same speed due to different socio-economic factors, the lifespan distribution, which provides the probability of a certain quantity of computers to be considered as obsolete, is not adequately modeled in the literature. The time horizon for the forecasted quantities is 2014-2030, while the results show a very sharp increase in the USA and United Kingdom, due to the fact of decreasing computer lifespan and increasing sales.

Research and practice in software engineering have led to an extensive set of metrics for the evaluation of almost every aspect of software development. One of the major challenges for any quality model is the combination of metrics, which are complementary to each other. In this paper, we propose the use of Data Envelopment Analysis DEA, a non-parametric technique employed in economics, as a means of providing a unified view of selected design metrics. The proposed application of DEA aims at assessing the overall trend of quality during the evolution of software systems, by considering releases of a project as units to be ranked. An important benefit derived from the use of DEA is the ability to "normalize" the evaluation over the size characteristics of the examined systems, which is vital when comparing projects of different scale. Results are presented for successive versions of two open-source, one industrial and one research project, whereas validation, whereas validation is performed by comparing the findings with the results obtained by Analytic Hierarchy Process, which is an acknowledged multi-criteria decision analysis approach. According to the results, DEA enables the perception of global trends in qualitative characteristics, which would be otherwise difficult to recognize and interpret. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study develops and presents a proposed framework for the measurement of mobile government (m-government) services. The measurement framework consists of: (i) identification/categorisation of m-government services; (ii) sophistication stages of these services; and (iii) indicators to evaluate their progress. With respect to the methodological approach followed in the study, twenty e-government services clustered by type of activity and interaction level are ranked for importance in terms of criteria that characterise the mobile setting. Moreover, core indicators used for e-government are examined in terms of their appropriateness to the mobile setting. According to the authors’ findings, three m-government service clusters are established, assisting governments to prioritise services to mobile users. A modification in the sophistication model for e-services is recommended for application in m-government. Finally, the proposed indicators are mainly user-focused, in accordance with the personalised nature of services delivered through mobile devices.

The aim of this special issue is to provide insights into the use of Operational Research (OR) applications in the context of the digital economy and electronic commerce (e-commerce) technologies. The term ‘‘digital economy’’ (or Internet economy) refers to all the economic and social activities that are enabled by the Internet and the other Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The digital economy is not a totally new economy, but rather the whole of new ways to accomplish the usual economic and social activities through the use of ICTs. In the past, there were numerous applications of OR in the microand macro-economy; nowadays OR also seems to offer a great potential to the further development of the digital economy. There are many issues in the context of the digital economy which need to be studied to a greater extent. Some of them are indicatively mentioned in the following lines: (1) the modeling of the pricing on the Internet, (2) the assessment of the economic changes arising from the use of open-source software, (3) the assessment of the economic implications of software piracy, (4) the measurement of digital inequalities in the usage of ICTs, and (5) the measurement of productivity and efficiency in the Internet economy. A reasonable question that rises is whether the

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο Library software is generally believed to be well-structured and follows certain design guidelines due to the need of continuous evolution and stability of the respective APIs. We perform an empirical study to investigate whether the design of open-source library software is actually superior to that of application software. By analyzing certain design principles and heuristics that are considered important for API design, we extract a set of software metrics that are expected to reflect the improved nature of libraries. An initial comparison by conventional statistical analysis confirms the overall belief that products of different software size scale should not be compared by simply examining metric values in isolation. In this paper, we propose the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), borrowed from production economics, as a means of measuring and benchmarking the quality of different object-oriented software designs captured by software metrics and apply this approach to the comparison of library and application software. The advantages offered by DEA and the differences between the application of DEA in an economic and a technological context are discussed. Results of the approach are presented for 44 open-source projects, equally divided between libraries and applications.

PurposeThis study aims to identify the similarities and differences between the perspectives of providers and customers regarding the important dimensions and attributes of e‐service quality (e‐SQ).Design/methodology/approachTen criteria are proposed for assessment of e‐SQ in both business‐to‐business (B2B) and business‐to‐consumer (B2C) transactions. Confirmatory factor analysis confirms the validity of grouping these criteria into five proposed dimensions. The e‐SQ dimensions and criteria are then ranked in terms of their importance by a survey of respondents from small and medium‐sized enterprises with experience in conducting e‐business in Greece. The results are compared with selected surveys of customers' perceptions from the literature.FindingsThe results indicate that the providers' perceptions are in agreement with customers' perceptions with regard to e‐SQ dimensions, but not with regard to specific criteria (items) within those dimensions. The study also finds that providers have similar perceptions of the importance of the suggested e‐SQ criteria in B2B and B2C electronic transactions.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings should be generalised with care if extrapolated to other socio‐cultural settings and specific industries.Practical implicationsManagers should recognise that there might be differences between their views of e‐SQ and those of their customers.Originality/valueThis is one of the few studies to have focused on the perceptions of providers in assessing e‐SQ.

The possible interactions among tourism organizations, their customers and other organizations are considered in this article. Based on these interactions, three drivers of an integrated e-business strategy in the tourism sector are suggested: (1) customizing tourist products, personalizing services and supporting mobile services, (2) sharing tourism information and operational data, and (3) offering tailor made products and supporting user-generated content. In order to emphasize our suggestions, the most representative figures derived from recent surveys conducted by the Sectoral e-Business W@tch are selected and analyzed. These figures are: (a) the use of customer relationship management applications in tourism and the importance of mobile services for different sectors of the economy including tourism, for the first driver, (b) the use of supply chain management systems, online purchasing and finally the use of broadband Internet as a complementary indicator, for the second driver, and (c) the use of ICT-enabled product and process innovations and dynamic packaging, for the third driver. The clear positive tendencies of these figures indicate the rising importance of our suggested directions as basic drivers of a tourism e-business strategy.

Mobile recommender systems aim to solve the information overload problem found by recommending products or services to users of mobile smartphones or tables at any given point in time and in any possible location. Mobile recommender systems are designed for the specific goal of mobile recommendations, such as mobile commerce or tourism and are ported to a mobile device for this purpose. They utilize a specific recommendation method, like collaborative filtering or content-based filtering and use a considerable amount of contextual information in order to provide more personalized recommendations. However due to privacy concerns users are not willing to provide the required personal information to make these systems usable. In response to the privacy concerns of users we present a method of privacy preserving context-aware mobile recommendations and show that it is both practical and effective.