The current spread of financial technology (fintech) adoption within the financial and business industries across the globe is expected to increase the demand for employees with fintech skills and competencies. This in turn is likely to shift the traditional skill set required for financial and accounting professionals. This article investigates the competency level of employability skills required for the current job market from employers’ perspective in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. The United Kingdom and Sri Lanka are typical of industrialized and emerging economies, respectively. They are at the end of two opposing poles in terms of financial infrastructure, economic development, regulatory framework and educational system. This suggests a significant divergence of the two countries in terms of skills gap. We test for this via three main hypotheses. To this end, we identify the competency level of employability skills as expected by employers and identify the skills gaps between expected and observed competency levels of employability skills. Information on a set of twenty skills is collected via a questionnaire. We find no major skills gaps in the United Kingdom. Sri Lanka, on the other hand, shows severe skills gaps. The gaps are particularly acute within the soft skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and decision making. Our findings reflect the importance of expanding the fintech higher education curricula by assessing and implementing employability skills development activities.

The outer space environment is in a critical circumstance. This can cause severe impact on humanity. The main issue is an increasing space debris population in Earth’s orbit. To ensure the long-term sustainability of outer space activities, the relevant stakeholders need to collaborate with each other to solve challenging issues and find meaningful solutions. This article aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis to provide information and insights to guide the alignment of all stakeholders towards space sustainability in the context of near-Earth outer space. The software VOSviewer is chosen to analyse the selected 205 journal articles from Scopus database during 2003–22. The results show the publication trends, the leading sources of publications and the country collaboration network. The discussion based on the selected articles can inform emerging theories that can underpin the development of the space sustainability concept. In conclusion, this analysis reveals the current scientific research and proposes meaningful theories for further research and recommendations.

Germany is the largest economy in Europe, and currently the fourth largest in the world. It is also the most innovative country as measured by patent registrations. Technology transfers originating in Germany are therefore highly innovative and have a great potential to positively impact the economic situation in other countries as well. As the patents are generally held by businesses, it is commonly assumed that the logic of transferring technologies across borders also follows an economic motive. Here, this motive is questioned in a quantitative analysis, showing what determines the selection of destination country for German businesses looking to transfer their technology. It is shown that, contrary to common perception, the primary motivation is developmental, not economic. This is in line with international political declarations and calls for more (and more effective) international technology transfer. Furthermore, the best way to support international technology transfer is through the presence of German experts providing support in manifold ways to those businesses interested in international transfers.

In recent years, policy-makers and researchers have paid close attention to sustainable energy resources. Biofuel has emerged as a viable option among available alternatives in countries with excess agricultural production. India is also ramping up ethanol production. However, there is limited research available on enablers that can help boost production for enhanced blending, thereby assisting in the achievement of energy security and the transition to a low-carbon economy. Furthermore, India can capitalize on its excess agri-production for long-term energy security, increase farmer income, reduce import bills and foreign exchange outflows, encourage local business participation and accelerate its overall economic development while lowering its carbon footprints. The Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach is used in this article to investigate the enablers for implementing a policy regime for increased ethanol production. The findings are important for policy-makers in India to identify areas for policy interventions, and they also lay the groundwork for future similar research on this evolving industry in the global markets.

Being competitive has become essential to surviving in the current, rapidly evolving and highly dynamic corporate climate. Companies must streamline their operations if they want to remain competitive. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that have been applied successfully give businesses better practices and procedures. The article uses past literature to illustrate a new conceptual framework considering strategic, organizational, technological and environmental aspects for the effective implementation of ERP system in the information technology (IT) service sector. The primary focus is to find out the effectiveness of ERP deployment from the users’ perspective. For this analysis, information was gathered from 152 Indian IT companies that had already installed an ERP system. Factor analysis, both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, was used in the present study to find out the factors from the mentioned four perspectives. Structural equation modelling allows researchers to observe the relationships between the emerged factors. The findings suggest that end users of IT firms have recognized the value of emerging constructs for successful ERP implementation leading to sustainable firm growth, underscoring the significance of the suggested framework in their quest to become more competitive in the market.

The use of biometric identification technology has become increasingly prevalent in modern society, with potential benefits for various populations. However, despite the widespread adoption of biometric identification, there is still a significant gap in research on the benefits that older adults may derive from this technology and how it may improve their quality of life. This study draws on a mixed methodology and the flow theory to understand how biometric identification improves the quality of life of older adults. The findings show that older adults obtain socio-economic impacts, social inclusion, improved access to healthcare and access to information that serves their health, psychological, emotional and mental needs through the use of biometric identification. Drawing on artificial neural network, we ranked the derived benefits and used partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to investigate how these benefits translate to the quality of life of older adults. The results showed that the most significant biometric factor that promotes the quality of life of older adults is improved healthcare access, followed by information access and socio-economic development. The PLS-SEM results show that social inclusion is essential but does not improve the quality of life of older adults. The findings of this study offer valuable information for policy-makers, technology developers and practitioners working to improve the lives of older adults.

Are the principles of Islamic finance compatible with cryptocurrency? In the current age of digital transformation, to be followed perhaps by a quantum transformation in computing, plus the involvement of central banks, resource scarcity and climate change, this is the issue addressed in the article. Financial transactions are central to digitalization through fintech and other services. This conceptual article highlights the essentials of cryptocurrency, its history, structure and how it works. Different types of cryptocurrency mining will be examined and explained in detail. The primary purpose of this research is to investigate the extent to which cryptocurrency structure complies with the maxims of Islamic finance. The article discusses the question in relation to sharia jurisprudence and conformity with the views of Islamic finance scholars. Our discussion extends the rapidly growing literature on cryptocurrency by examining its compatibility with the conceptions of Mal (‘money’) in sharia and Islamic scholarship and its status as fiat money. Taking the view that despite recent glitches, cryptocurrency has a future in the financial ecosystem, we sketch the challenges of facing the introduction of cryptocurrency into Islamic finance. The research has profound policy implications: for the protocols and systems adopted by Islamic financial institutions, their regulation and the role of miners. This research is particularly relevant to avoiding the pitfalls that have so often befallen conventional financial institutions.

Building on strategic framing and sustainability communication research, this article finds that trust in firms’ sustainability commitment varies with differing evaluative mental models across stakeholders, such as investors, customers and the general public. Stakeholders’ perceived trust depends on their level of expertise and firms’ ways of framing their sustainability narratives. Using publicly available data of firms’ sustainability communications and experimental survey data of 300 participants, this study shows that firms benefit from deploying sustainability narrative framing strategies congruent with audiences’ mental models. Experts, such as sustainability or industry experts, appreciate sustainability narratives framed in concrete ‘how’ terms, while non-experts, i.e., laypeople, are more receptive to abstract ‘why’ terms. The study offers insights into and a framework based on the fieldwork on how managers may use framing tactics to improve the odds of achieving the desired perception of their sustainability narratives towards different stakeholders.

COVID-19 imposed a lockdown on all economic and social activities and contemporary organizations adapted to the challenge by shifting to a remote working model and individuals struggled for work–life balance. The purpose of this article is to systematically review the literature on work–life balance during a pandemic and comprehensively analyse the quality of work–life problems that are associated with it. Twenty-seven articles published between 2019 and 2021 were selected for review from Scopus and Web of Science (WOS) based on the research questions framed in the study. A four-step process suggested by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines was used to perform the scoping literature review (SLR). The findings of the review highlight the emerging gender inequalities with a focus on how this phenomenon has evolved during a pandemic. The article makes an important contribution by reporting gender disparity concerning each gender issue related to work–life balance raised during COVID-19. The review also synthesizes the finding of previous studies by identifying the top contributing authors, most influential journals, and co-citation analysis and cluster analysis. Additionally, content analysis and cluster analysis based on multiple correspondence analyses were performed that confirm the two important clusters highlighting gender issues. We conclude the review by proposing various research directions.

Based on blockchain technology, smart contracts promise to revolutionize the way parties legally agree. Smart contracts could enable tourism service providers to trade directly with customers bypassing some intermediaries. The study aims at identifying the provided services, economic impact, partners, popularity, technical and technological factors of smart contract applications in various tourism areas. It investigates ten popular smart contract applications that cover a wide spectrum of tourism areas such as hotel reservations, airline tickets, car rentals, payment management, reward programmes, traveller identity, luggage tracking, validity of reviews and ratings and more. These applications are analysed with respect to their purpose, business model, economic impact, partners, provided services, popularity, as well as what cryptocurrency and blockchain they use. Smart contracts enable time and transaction cost savings, convenience, flexibility, security, trust, ease verification of personal data and more. Most applications gained popularity mainly during 2018–19. Almost every application uses a different cryptocurrency. Ethereum is the most popular platform followed by Hyperledger Fabric and Stellar. The development of a universal legislation as well as interoperability is a necessity for the wide adoption of smart contracts.