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Social commerce is a rapidly emerging phenomenon involving commercial interactions and transactions through social media. Notwithstanding its global diffusion, social commerce remains ill-understood, particularly in the Arab context. Consequently, this study presents a multifocal framework exploring factors impacting user engagement in social commerce in Qatar. The framework encompasses technological, social media, and sociocultural characteristics, resulting in a holistic conceptual model for assessing user engagement and purchase intention. Through empirical quantitative data collection and analysis, the study aims to contribute to the nascent theoretical foundations of social commerce, particularly by integrating and validating a range of social media and sociocultural factors. There is also a strong potential for practical contributions in promoting inclusivity and democratization through social commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While staying fit through sports and fitness (SF) activities come with many health benefits, they also come with restrictions in regions that have extreme environmental conditions. An example of such a region is the GCC that mainly consists of arid and semi-arid land. Qatar is one such country that consecutively suffers from a high rate of physical inactivity among its population. VR for eSports and eFitness (eSF) are technological alternatives to the traditional real-world methods of SF that have been proven to improve physical fitness in participants (Lotan, et al., 2008). Drawing from existing literature and IT adoption disciplines, this study proposes a model, conceptualizing factors that affect the adoption of VR for eSF in Qatar, paying attention to the local environmental conditions and socio-cultural practices. The study explores factors influencing the adoption of VR for eSF through an IT adoption lens in the GCC region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mass diffusion of social media has revolutionized interactions in many social settings. It has also created a competitive potential for small to medium enterprises (SME) to succeed in an interconnected and globalized marketplace. Nonetheless, little is known about how micro enterprises (MEs) actually use social media. Particularly, what social media are used, and for what purposes? In addressing such questions, this research adopts an empirical approach that considers the use of social media among MEs in the Indonesian retail sector. Data was collected through a survey instrument. The results highlight the importance of two social media platforms deployed towards six core business activities. Further avenues of research and investigation are proposed, given the rapid evolution of social media and their diffusion into the social landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, financial reporting standards have proven inadequate in providing sound governance. With financial data being heavily dependent on information systems, a new standard, IFRS 9, is being adopted. IFRS 9 could leverage recent advancements in big data analytics capabilities to improve financial compliance and assurance. While such potential is widely acknowledged, big data analytics capabilities have not yet been adequately identified and validated in the context of financial reporting compliance. In addressing such discrepancy, this study attempts to explore the relationship between a firm's capability to conduct big data analytics and their perception of IT applications leveraged for compliance with the standard. This study identifies four constituent capabilities and provides empirical validation for their interrelation with a holistic big data analytics construct. It addresses the link between capabilities and perceived IFRS 9 benefits by a range of institutional stakeholders. The findings suggest that analytics governance, analytics personnel capabilities, and Big Data characteristics have a significant influence on big data analytics capabilities. The latter was found to have a significant relationship with perceived benefits of IFRS 9. These findings hold important implications to theory and practice given the impending mass adoption of IFRS 9. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporations play a central role in sustainability, as their operations have major ramifications on the ecological, social, and economic contexts in which they operate. These operations need to be transparent to all stakeholders so that meaningful reporting could be easily accessed and understood by stakeholders. Indeed, transparency is an important measure of the effectiveness of corporate sustainability reporting (Kaptein et al., 2003). Bushman et al. (2003) defined transparency as the availability of firm-related information to the public, which is external to the organization. The most influential media outlets for firms to report their sustainability efforts include annual reports, social media, and websites. While several researchers have studied measures for corporate transparency (e.g. Delmas et al., 2010; Eldomiaty, 2005), broad-based quantitative approaches grounded in automated text-analysis have not yet attracted much attention. The key objective of this research is to develop a measure of corporate transparency in sustainability reporting and a related methodological approach to examining the sustainability reporting practices of organizations. The first step in the proposed research is to build a dictionary of keywords in a systematic way through text analytics of a corpus of sustainability-rich documents compiled from different sources such as seminal articles, authoritative subject-specific books, social media, websites, and sustainability-specific reports of companies. The quality of the corpus is then evaluated both analytically and with the help of subject experts. The probability distribution of terms in the sustainability dictionary relative to the original corpus documents, will serve as a basis for developing an entropy-based measure of transparency in the sustainability reporting of businesses (Cover and Thomas, 1991). More specifically, we define a transparency score of a corporate report as the cross entropy between the probability distribution of sustainability terms in the dictionary and sustainability terms in a corporate report. Besides helping to compare reporting across groups of organizations within a specific industry sector, the measure will also help determine which information media are effective indicators of corporate transparency and which are not. The broader aim of this research is to influence improvements in transparency in sustainability reports and in communicating related information to stakeholders, in turn enhancing a corporation's sustainability strategies and related progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent information systems (IS) curriculum guidelines emphasize the importance of writing skill development (Topi et al., 2010). Although IS faculty are expected to take an active role in the development of students' writing abilities (Pomykalski, 2006), this is a daunting task for professors who lack explicit knowledge of the various rhetorical moves that are accepted within their specific discourse community. In this study, an interdisciplinary collaboration between IS faculty and applied linguists was carried out in a first-year course about core concepts of IS at a branch campus of an English-medium American university in the Middle East to: (1) unpeel the different discourse patterns involved in the case analysis genre, (2) revise the professor's writing assignments to make his expectations more explicit, and (2) develop writing workshops aimed at strengthening students' skills in scholarly writing. The case analysis genre involves examining a case, identifying an organization's problem(s), and proposing an IS solution through stages of analysis and recommendation (Forman & Rymer, 1999). The valued linguistic features of the case analysis genre were identified through: (1) interviews with the IS faculty, (2) think-alouds where the IS faculty read and commented on student writing from previous semesters, and (3) detailed analysis of the linguistic resources present in higher-and lower-graded assignments. These data informed the re-design of the assignment guidelines and the scaffolding materials for a writing workshop delivered in class. Our approach to scaffolding writing in the IS classroom is grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)- based genre pedagogy (de Oliveira & Iddings, 2014) and the Onion Model (Humphrey & Economou, 2015), which discloses the discourse patterns that students need to master to generate successful academic genres across numerous disciplines. Our analysis of the students' case analysis writing reveals more evidence of analytical writing compared to a previous semester where no writing workshops were offered. Based on the positive outcomes of this collaboration and with the aim of tracking and reinforcing the development of analytical writing across courses in the IS program, we are currently collaborating in other IS classrooms to investigate other types of genres such as project reports and case development exercises. This model of collaboration between English faculty and disciplinary faculty can be useful in meeting the needs of the increasing number of linguistically and culturally diverse students in IS education. Thus, we argue that collaborations like this are needed to help disciplinary teachers scaffold L2 writing development. Such a model of collaboration can have a positive impact on teacher development and student writing outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]