Matti Mäntymäki

The UN COP26 2021 conference on climate change offers the chance for world leaders to take action and make urgent and meaningful commitments to reducing emissions and limit global temperatures to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. Whilst the political aspects and subsequent ramifications of these fundamental and critical decisions cannot be underestimated, there exists a technical perspective where digital and IS technology has a role to play in the monitoring of potential solutions, but also an integral element of climate change solutions. We explore these aspects in this editorial article, offering a comprehensive opinion based insight to a multitude of diverse viewpoints that look at the many challenges through a technology lens. It is widely recognized that technology in all its forms, is an important and integral element of the solution, but industry and wider society also view technology as being part of the problem. Increasingly, researchers are referencing the importance of responsible digitalization to eliminate the significant levels of e-waste. The reality is that technology is an integral component of the global efforts to get to net zero, however, its adoption requires pragmatic tradeoffs as we transition from current behaviors to a more climate friendly society.

This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of research on blockchain applications in the healthcare domain. The review incorporated 42 articles presenting state-of-the-art knowledge on current implications and gaps pertaining to the use of blockchain technology for improving healthcare processes. The SLR findings indicate that blockchain is being used to develop novel and advanced interventions to improve the prevalent standards of handling, sharing, and processing of medical data and personal health records. The application of blockchain technology is undergoing a conceptual evolution in the healthcare industry where it has added significant value through improved efficiency, access control, technological advancement, privacy protection, and security of data management processes. The findings also suggest that the extant limitations primarily pertain to model performance, as well as the constraints and costs associated with implementation. An integrated framework is presented to address potential areas wherein future researchers can contribute significant value, including addressing concerns regarding regulatory compliance, system architecture, and data protection. Finally, the SLR suggests that future research can facilitate the widespread deployment of blockchain applications to address critical issues related to medical diagnostics, legal compliance, avoiding fraud, and improving patient care in cases of remote monitoring or emergencies.

Online travel agencies (OTAs) are struggling to remain financially sustainable due to intense competition. To overcome this challenge, OTAs need to better engage their customers by offering them superior value propositions. This calls for an in-depth understanding of the consumption values pertinent to the OTA context. To address this gap, the current study puts forward a framework for predicting purchase intention by adapting the theory of consumption values to the OTA context. The proposed model is tested with data collected from 809 OTA users. The results imply that quality-of-benefits, monetary, social status, preference, and information values predict purchase intention toward OTAs, with the chief driver being the quality-of-benefits value, followed by the preference value. Moderation analysis further reveals that the strength of the relationship between these values and purchase intention differs between users in different age groups and between users with different levels of privacy and security concerns, hygiene consciousness, and visibility perceptions.

Blockchain has gained substantial recognition for its ability to induce transformation and innovation in existing business models and frameworks. Consequently, the application of this technology to the management domain and its processes has attracted increasing interest from academia and industry. Although research addressing the use of blockchain in management has gained momentum, this field presents a discontinuous overview of the current scope and boundary of the knowledge thereon. This study addresses this lacuna using bibliometric analyses to synthesize the prior literature. Data from Scopus 586 articles, entailing contributions from 72 countries, 273 journals, 1016 organizations, and 1284 authors, were analyzed. The findings indicate a maturing research focus on blockchain applications in specific managerial sectors, such as finance and supply chain management. However, this field's conceptual evolution is posited to be in its infancy in other sectors, such as for managing luxury goods and counterfeit products. Further, the thematic classification of the extant literature led to the identification of the following four major themes of research: strategy and regulation, enablement and implication, multi-domain deployment, and the inefficiencies of bitcoin. These findings are used to propose directions for further research in this field, such as the need for methodological advancement and theoretical grounding.

Purpose Research examining the “fear of missing out” (FoMO) is increasingly prominent, with a growing number of studies exploring this phenomenon. Despite the increased academic interest, no attempts have been made to synthesize extant knowledge on FoMO. There is limited holistic understanding of its conceptualization and operationalization. To address this gap, an exhaustive systematic literature review (SLR) on FoMO is presented. Design/methodology/approach Systematic review protocols and content analysis was used to analyze and synthesize insights from 58 empirical studies obtained from four academic databases: Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and PsycINFO. Findings Significant diversity in prior research on FoMO was encapsulated in four themes. There are significant limitations in conceptualization of FoMO, along with narrow focus on geographic, methodological and contextual foci of prior studies. The authors propose a comprehensive framework and extensive gap-specific research directions to aid future research. Research limitations/implications The SLR is limited in its consideration of empirical studies published in academic journal articles obtained from four databases. Social implications The authors imply the critical need to ascertain motives for individuals' excessive engagement with social media and the subsequent impact on well-being indicators (e.g. sleep quality) and functional impairments (e.g. addiction). Originality/value This study magnifies and expands the intellectual boundaries of FoMO and suggests the adoption of a multidisciplinary perspective for further investigation. The use of novel theoretical lenses can further ascertain FoMO's effect on different cultures and social media users.