Vishanth Weerakkody

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at University of Bradford

Public sector institutions are under increasing pressure to deliver greater public value through disruptive technologies, despite ongoing pressures. In response to evolving technological change and an abundance of information, many public sector organisations have adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve decisionmaking and generate social va...

This is the 11th edition of the workshop series with the label “Web Applications and Smart Cities” (previous name: AW4City), which started in Florence in 2015 and kept on taking place every year in conjunction with the WWW conference series. Last year the workshop was held in Singapore, in conjunction with “The Web Conference 2024”. The workshop se...

This special issue aimed to attract articles situating digital transformation in the geopolitical-organizational nexus. Unlike innovation and change panaceas (or fads) like business process reengineering (BPR) which became popular in the 1990s, digital transformation is a multi-level concept. Extending beyond the redesign of organizational and busi...

WebAndTheCity: 10th International Smart City Workshop – The Web and Smart Cities In conjunction with The Web Conference (WWW’24): 34th World Wide Web International Conference, Singapore, May 13, 2024 http://webandthecity.home.blog/ This is the 10th edition of the workshop series with the label “Web Applications and Smart Cities” (previous name: A...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to evaluate food supply chain stakeholders’ intention to use Industry 5.0 (I5.0) drones for cleaner production in food supply chains. Design/methodology/approach The authors used a quantitative research design and collected data using an online survey administered to a sample of 264 food supply chain stakeholde...

City digital transformation is being performed across the globe and it is being supported by several initiatives and policy groups. Nevertheless, this transformation is mainly technology oriented. Although there have been several interesting and impactful outcomes, like solutions for enhancing municipal efficiency and local living, the results lag...

Legacy systems have continued to pose a major challenge to digital transformation efforts in public administration. A comprehensive review of literature suggests seven levels of complexity in transforming legacy systems, including, being a stand-alone system, being part of a larger system, and data incompatibility, each depicting unique criteria an...

Privacy is an emerging issue for home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb. Home-sharing providers (business customers) are subject to both digital privacy risks (e.g., data breaches and unauthorized data access) and physical privacy risks (e.g., property damage and invasion of their personal space). Therefore, platforms need to strengthen their instit...

Based on Herbert Simon's conceptualization of bounded rationality, this study develops and tests an integrative model of the strategic decision-making process (SDMP) and outcomes in public organizations. The model integrates different SDMP dimensions—procedural rationality, intuition, participation, and constructive politics—and examines their impa...

Entrepreneurial activities have been vital to economic growth as a feasible career option for many university graduates. Nonetheless, it has been recognised that the lowest intentions to undertake entrepreneurial activity are among female graduates. While entrepreneurship is claimed to be a reflection of creative activity from which individuals gen...

This paper examines the continuous intention by healthcare professionals to use the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in combination with responsible artificial intelligence (AI). Using the theory of Diffusion of Innovation (DOI), a model was developed to determine the continuous intention to use IoMT taking into account the risks and complexity in...

The realisation of citizen-centric services in the public sector requires breaking traditional silos and transforming existing institutional structures and processes. Recent transformation efforts undertaken in government institutions have embraced business process re-engineering (BPR) concepts championed by the private sector over decades ago to f...

Agile development methodologies (ADM) have become a widely implemented project management approach in Information Systems (IS). Yet, along with its growing popularity, the amount of concerns raised in regard to human related challenges caused by applying ADM are rapidly increasing. Nevertheless, the extant scholarly literature has neglected to iden...

In order to grow the food the world needs, there is a pressing need to gain a more detailed understanding of how innovative solutions can be incorporated into the agricultural supply chains, particularly within production, for environmentally, economically, ethically and socially viable food production. Despite a number of innovative solutions avai...

It is widely acknowledged that traditional teaching methods such as lectures, textbooks and case study techniques on their own are not adequate to improving the most in-demand employability skills for graduates. The aim of this article is to explore the potential impact that novel learning and teaching methods can have on improving the employabilit...

Nous présentons un modèle conceptuel testé empiriquement, basé sur la théorie de la voix de sortie (« exit-voice theory »), pour étudier l’influence de la transformation du gouvernement par les technologies de l’information et de la communication sur la confiance des citoyens dans le gouvernement. Nous conceptualisons et abordons les principaux fac...

Business leaders and policymakers within service economies are placing greater emphasis on well-being, given the role of workers in such settings. Whilst people’s well-being can lead to economic growth, it can also have the opposite effect if overlooked. Therefore, enhancing subjective well-being (SWB) is pertinent for all organisations for the sus...

The continuous use of eGovernment services is a de facto for its prosperity and success. A generalised sense of citizens' self-efficacy, expectations, and satisfaction offer opportunities for governments to further retain needed engagements. This study examines the factors influencing citizens' continuance use of eGovernment services. Through the i...

The aim of this study is to stimulate and support women to engage in action-oriented entrepreneurial activities such as practical training, international collaboration, knowledge exchange, and shared learning to foster entrepreneurship. To achieve the aim, this study proposes a structured program of training and mentoring that will combine multiple...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to help in providing a better understanding of the application of blockchain technology in the context of the banking and finance sectors. The aim is to outline blockchain's benefits, opportunities, costs, risks as well as challenges of the technology in the context of banking and finance services. Design/metho...

This study explores how British South Asian parents perceive their children’s technology consumption through their collectivist lenses and interdependent values. The findings for this qualitative study indicate that second and third generation South Asian parents acknowledge the benefits of children’s technology use; but largely perceive technology...

Participatory budgeting (PB) is currently one of the most widely adopted democratic innovations. ICT platforms are key enablers of PB processes, by supporting citizen engagement. They support the establishment of diverse participation channels to build candidate proposals, for the voting process, and for monitoring proposals' implementation. PB pla...

Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) significantly affects the consumer decision-making process. A number of studies investigated why consumers provide eWOM communications. Existing literature has contradicting factors regarding factors affect eWOM providing behaviour. This study aims to evaluate factors affecting eWOM providing behaviour by performing...

The adoption of blockchain technologies require the consideration of a broad range of factors, over and above the predominantly technology focus of most current work. Whilst scholarly literature on blockchain technology is only beginning to emerge, majority are focused on the technicalities of the technology and tend to ignore the organizational co...

In light of the heterogeneity of scholarly publications on the subject of transformational government (T-Gov), this paper examines research trends and assesses methodologies used to investigate the topic with the aim of analysing directions for future research. A comprehensive analysis of T-government research published in four Chartered Associatio...

The sharing economy, which is empowered by digital technologies, drives platform business models and creates new forms of growth and value, which disrupts many businesses. The essential challenge for the formation of business interactions between individuals in the context of platforms is mutual trust. Blockchain, with broad applications in differe...

Digitally Enabled Service Transformation (DEST) in the Public Sector (PS) offers a unique opportunity for public administration (PA) and information systems (IS) disciplines to interlace. Albeit complicating the deployment of a coherent analytical lens in its study, such uniqueness has formed a basis to enable a deviance in the theoretical selectio...

Information and communications technology (ICT) is widely utilized in the accounting profession and has transformed the accounting functions in business and the role of accountants. Acknowledging the significance of ICT skills in accounting education, many employers and professional associations are calling for integration of accounting curricula w...

Unlike e-business few studies have examined how information is generated and exchanged between stakeholders in an e-government service chain to generate value for citizens. This case study applies the concept of service chains to empirically explore: a) how internal and external business activities in local government authorities (LGAs) contribute...

Social media plays an important role in the digital transformation of businesses. This research provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of social media by b2b companies. The current study focuses on a number of aspects of social media such as: the effect of social media; social media tools; social media use; adoption of social media use and it...

Governments across the word are under pressure to adopt new technologies and to innovate and transform their processes. Some governments have introduced the role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) to facilitate these innovations though adoption of new technologies. The traditional CIO role of improving operational efficiency is now shifting towards...

Digital inclusion research has been critically important in drawing an understanding of how policies, society, organisations, and information technologies can all come together within a national environment that aspires to be a digital nation. This research aims to examine the factors influencing e-Inclusion in the UK within a digital-by-default po...

This study seeks to investigate the effectiveness of Cloud Computing Utilization (CCU) in the mitigation of informational and marketing barriers for SMEs from the Emerging Market-Countries (EM-SMEs). A quantitative-research methodology was applied to collect data by using self-administered questionnaires from top managers of 227 SMEs based in Iran...

The concept of e-Government was first developed and implemented in industrialised countries. Consequently, it should not be assumed that this concept is automatically appropriate for developing countries. This study aims to examine the roles of perceived support quality and support satisfaction in the context of government- to-citizen (G2C) transac...

We present an empirically tested conceptual model based on exit–voice theory to study the influence of information and communications technology-enabled transformation of government on citizen trust in government. We conceptualize and address the key factors affecting the influence of transformation of government on citizen trust, including governm...

Electronic government services (e-services) involve the delivery of information and services to stakeholders via the Internet, Internet of Things and other traditional modes. Despite their beneficial values, the overall level of usage (take-up) remains relatively low compared to traditional modes. They are also challenging to evaluate due to behavi...

While higher education institutes attempt to adapt their curricula to cope with national employability strategies, there remain some significant variations between what employers want and the attributes possessed by new graduates. Using a systematic review of literature and focused scanning of the job market, the authors aimed to contribute to the...

Smart cities have attracted an extensive and emerging interest from both science and industry with an increasing number of international examples emerging from all over the world. However, despite the significant role that smart cities can play to deal with recent urban challenges, the concept has been being criticized for not being able to realize...

Digitally-enabled service transformation (DEST) in the public sector (PS) offers a unique opportunity for public administration (PA) and information systems (IS) disciplines to interlace. Such uniqueness has enabled a deviance in the theoretical selection from the adoption of native PA/IS theories to imported social sciences theories including inst...

E-Government adoption and implementation has gained noticeable momentum across many developed and developing economies. Nevertheless, transitioning from the “electronic” to the stage of “transformational” domain – coined as t-Government – is posing the greatest challenge of how government services respond to changes in the broader economy and socie...

The luxury goods industry has experienced evolving consumer preferences, emerged from innovation and growth in the sharing economy and driven by digital technologies. On one side, the sharing economy has disrupted traditional luxury brands by providing or sharing access to goods and services through online platforms. On another side, the entire val...

This paper examines exchange houses employees perceptions of the impact of financial literacy of low-income workers in blue-collar jobs in Qatar on financial inclusion. Most academic research has been carried out on customers of financial institutions especially banks or investment firms. The role of employees in these financial institutions, based...

The goal of most organisations is to achieve better financial results and enhaced profitability through improved organisational performance. One way to improve performance is by developing the organisation's human capital, which is considered by many scholars to be a valuable asset of a company. Social capital, although it has received less attenti...

This research examines the extent to which immigrant consumers' use of social networking sites affect their socialization and political engagement in the Netherlands. The study uses self-administered questionnaires to collect data from 514 Turkish-Dutch respondents of various ages, occupations, levels of education and locations in the Netherlands....

With the advancement of disruptive new technologies, there has been a considerable focus on personalisation as an important component in nurturing users’ engagement. In the context of smart cities, Internet of Things (IoT) offer a unique opportunity to help empower citizens and improve societies’ engagement with their governments at both micro and...

Smart cities have attracted an extensive and emerging interest from both science and industry with an increasing number of international examples emerging from all over the world. However, despite the significant role that smart cities can play to deal with recent urban challenges, the concept has been being criticized for not being able to realize...

Big data has been discussed extensively in existing scholarly works but scant consideration is given to customers’ willingness to generate and leave big data digital footprints on social media, especially in the light of the profusely debated issue of privacy and security. The current paper endeavours to address this gap in the literature by develo...

Infused by the concepts of co-creation, participatory budgeting (PB) allows citizens to participate in the local government's budgetary decision-making process concerning the community-focused programs. Nonetheless, the attainment of PB success has always been challenged by various factors, including ineffectiveness and inefficiency of PB practice,...

Following up the success of the past events at WWW2015, WWW2016 and WWW2017, the 4th AW4City 2018 aims to keep on attracting a significant international attention with regard to web applications for smart cities. More specifically, the aim of this workshop is to focus on the applications smart city component and more specifically on the design and...

This research particularly aims to investigate how the individual differences in gender, age, and internet experience influence citizens’ trust in e-government’s adoption. The findings of the study revealed that females are confident and have a more positive evaluation of online services compared to males. Interestingly, this study found that old p...

It is widely acknowledged that traditional teaching methods such as lectures, textbooks and case study techniques on their own are not adequate to improving the most in-demand employability skills for graduates. The aim of this article is to explore the potential impact that novel learning and teaching methods can have on improving the employabilit...

The trust and confidence of citizens in their governments has been declining in recent decades. Electronic government (e-government) is seen as a means to reverse this trend. Despite conflicting conclusions in the literature, there is a consensus that e-government-led transformation can improve citizen confidence and trust in government. This resea...

Electronic diplomacy (E-diplomacy) is the use of technology by nations to define and establish diplomatic goals and objectives and to efficiently carry out the functions of diplomats. These functions include representation and promotion of the home nation, establishing both bilateral and multilateral relations, consular services and social engageme...

In addressing the EU2020 goals, skills shortage combined with increasing unemployment rates is to be primarily tackled in Western Europe; the common factor here is education. Education and lifelong learning (LL) are the key strands governing employability in the European labour market. Overarching concepts capable of addressing social challenges wi...

In recent years Government departments and public/private organisations are becoming increasingly transparent with their data to establish the whole new paradigm of big open data. Increasing research interest arises from the claimed usability of big open data in improving public sector reforms, facilitating innovation, improving supplier and distri...

“Enabling Multichannel Participation through ICT Adaptations for Participatory Budgeting ICT-enabled platform” (EMPATIA) is a multi-channel participatory budgeting (PB) platform that represents a significant social innovation process of democratic deliberation and decision-making, involving citizens within complex public-institution structures. EMP...

The race against ‘Digital Darwinism’ in public sector had caused failures of several high profile large-scale Digitally Enabled Service Transformation (DEST) projects. While technical and managerial issues are often emphasised as the factors underpinning such failures, the vital role of key actors and the interplay between these actors and structur...

While many universities have implemented various initiatives and teaching and learning methods to embed the most in-demand skills into their degree programmes, there is little evidence in the literature of students’ opinions and awareness of these skills. The purpose of this article is to assess, through an empirical study, students’ perceptions of...

This paper presents an empirically tested conceptual model that is based on exit-voice theory to study the influence of ICT enabled transformation of government (IETG) on citizens’ trust. We conceptualize and address the key factors including government performance and transparency through which transformation of government influence citizens’ trus...

Innovation is vital to find new solutions to problems, increase quality, and improve profitability. Big open linked data (BOLD) is a fledgling and rapidly evolving field that creates new opportunities for innovation. However, none of the existing literature has yet considered the interrelationships between antecedents of innovation through BOLD. Th...

Government legislation and calls for greater levels of oversight and transparency are leading public bodies to publish their raw datasets online. Policy makers and elected officials anticipate that the accessibility of open data through online Government portals for citizens will enable public engagement in policy making through increased levels of...

Purpose Many governments are working toward a vision of government-wide transformation that strives to achieve an open, transparent and accountable government while providing responsive services. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of transparency-by-design to advance open government. Design/methodology/approach The opening of data...

Higher education institutes are facing increasing pressure to ensure that graduates are equipped with the right set of attributes that will make them desirable to potential employers. To deal with this pressure, universities have for some time been embedding employability attributes into their curriculum through classroom-based teaching and externa...

Nitric oxide is generated in skeletal muscle with activity and decreases Ca(2+)-sensitivity of the contractile apparatus, putatively by S-nitrosylation of an unidentified protein. We investigate the mechanistic basis of this effect and its relationship to the oxidation-induced increase in Ca(2+)-sensitivity in mammalian fast-twitch (FT) fibers medi...

Digitally-Enabled Service Transformation (DEST) projects in public sector institutions are viewed as a choice of strategic response towards changes in policy. Such transformation can destruct institutional stability and legitimacy and result in failure if the complex institutional setting of the public sector is not comprehended in the change-insti...

Continued professional development (CPD) has been at the centre of capacity building in most successful organisations in western countries over the past few decades. Specialised professions in fields such as Accounting, Finance and ICT, to name but a few, are continuously evolving, which is necessitating certain standards to be followed through reg...

Digitally Enabled Service Transformation (DEST) in the Public Sector (PS) offers a unique opportunity for public administration (PA) and information systems (IS) disciplines to interlace. Albeit complicating the deployment of a coherent analytical lens in its study, such uniqueness has formed a basis to enable a deviance in the theoretical selectio...

Public administration has endured signification transformation over the last decade enabled largely through Information and Communication Technology. In recent times, second generation web technologies (Web 2.0) such as social media and networking sites are increasingly being used by governments for its digital activities ranging from public relati...

Citizens’ satisfaction is acknowledged as one of the most significant influences for e-government adoption and diffusion. This study examines the impact of information quality, system quality, trust, and cost on user satisfaction of e-government services. Using a survey, this study collected 1518 valid responses from e-government service adopters a...

Big Data (BD), with their potential to ascertain valued insights for enhanced decision-making process, have recently attracted substantial interest from both academics and practitioners. Big Data Analytics (BDA) is increasingly becoming a trending practice that many organizations are adopting with the purpose of constructing valuable information fr...

During the last two decades citizens trust and confidence in their governments has continued to decline and e-government is seen as a means to reverse this trend. However, it appears that e-government alone is not enough. The literature has drawn conflicting conclusions, the consensus suggests that ICT enabled government transformation often improv...

Smart cities have attracted an extensive and emerging interest from both science and industry with an increasing number of international examples emerging from all over the world. However, despite the significant role that smart cities can play to deal with recent urban challenges, the concept has been being criticized for not being able to realize...

Although the success adoption of e-government contingent upon citizens' trust and their willingness to use it, little consideration has been paid to explore the adoption of e-government from citizens' trust perspective. This paper provides a critical and systematic review of the current literature on citizens’ trust in e-government, with a particul...

The aim of this research is to develop a unified model of electronic government (e-government) system adoption and validate it using the data gathered from 419 citizens from few selected cities in India. In course of doing so, the research also evaluates the performance of nine well-known alternative theoretical models of information technology (IT...

Smart services concern the core element of a smart city, since they support the realization of urban “intelligence” in terms of people, economy, governance, environment, mobility and leaving. Smart services aim to enhance quality of life within a city and in this respect to improve “livability”. The types and purposes of smart services cannot be ea...

Digital diplomacy (also popularly known as e-Diplomacy), is generally defined as the use of information and communication technology for purposes of attaining foreign policy goals. Many experts have particularly defined digital diplomacy as an electronic component of public diplomacy. Although digital diplomacy is an emerging new field with a wide...

The systematic deployment of social innovation has been largely overlooked by policy makers concerned to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. According to research funded by the European Commission, the policies of international organizations rarely refer to the potential of social innovation, neither generally nor in the context of...

The derailment of large scale Digitally-Enabled Service Transformation Projects (DEST) in public sector has generated much attention and debate among the research community. However, most of the debates focus on the technology imperatives and / or strategic choices view. The micro-process of institutionalisation involving interplays between actors...

This study presents a cross-national examination of e-government adoption in the United Kingdom and the United States. The results of partial least squares analysis indicate that disposition to trust is positively related to internet trust and government trust. Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have a significant impact on intention to...

Although recent advancements in technology have led to major transformations in healthcare services, the use of tele-monitoring in patient care is yet an emerging occurrence. This study examines factors that affect the adoption of video based remote treatment of senior patients in a tele-glaucoma project in a large hospital in Greece. Several theme...

Even after more than a decade of intensive research work in the area of electronic government (e-government) adoption and diffusion, no study has yet undertaken a theoretical evaluation of research related to ‘e-government satisfaction'. The purpose of this study is to undertake a comprehensive review of the literature related to e-government satis...

Graduate employability has become an issue since there are broad mismatches between the acquired graduate skills from university and the required skills by employers. While previous researches have outlined the salient skills that need to be embedded in graduate education, to date no studies have attempted to methodically identify and synthesize th...

The relationships between policies, their values, and outcomes are often difficult for citizens and policymakers to assess due to the complex nature of the policy lifecycle. With the opening of data by public administrations, there is now a greater opportunity for transparency, accountability, and evidence-based decision making in the policymaking...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a critical viewpoint on the negative aspects of market, price and cost transparencies to consumers in terms of its costs. Design/methodology/approach – It adopts an inter-disciplinary approach from the marketing, economics and accounting literature. The paper explores market transparency in the eve...

Governments across the world are releasing public data in an effort to increase transparency of how public services are managed whilst also enticing citizens to participate in the policy decision-making processes. The channel for making open data available to citizens in the UK is the data.gov.uk platform, which brings together data relating to var...