•This study addresses a real-world business problem, the digitalization of SMEs.•Three main SME resources show to positively relate to digitalization.•Digitalization, in turn, positively relates to ...financial performance.•It also mediates the impact of information technology on financial performance.•A digital strategy or employee skills alone do not foster financial performance.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lag behind larger firms when it comes to digitalization. This has negative impacts on firm performance. Despite the economic importance of SMEs, little is known about the antecedents, consequences, and challenges of SME digitalization. We have set three objectives to address this knowledge gap. Drawing on the resource-based view, we first investigate the impact of three main SME resources on digitalization: information technology, employee skills, and digital strategy. Second, we assess the impact digitalization has on financial performance. We then investigate whether digitalization mediates the effect of resources on performance. The results of a survey of 193 SMEs demonstrate how digitalization can impact SME performance, with the three resources positively relating to digitalization. And in turn, digitalization significantly relates to performance, mediating the effect of information technology on performance. It however does not mediate the effect of digital strategy or employee skills on performance.
Considering the importance of the eIDAS regulation, the current state of implementation of its stipulations both in the European Union and in our country, a comprehensive study of implementations and ...usage of digital identity tools (eID - electronic Identity) within the EU member states, revealing their peculiarities and the challenges related to the unitary integration required by eIDAS, proved both useful and necessary. The study is also justified by the fact that, on September 29, 2018, the eIDAS regulation became mandatory for each EU country stating that each EU country has to recognize both legally and practically - through interconnection in the eIDAS nodes network - the other EU countries notified digital identification schemes.
The traditional centralized digital identity management system (DIMS) has been subject to threats such as fragmented identity, single point of failure, internal attacks and privacy leakage. Emerging ...blockchain technology allows DIMSs to be deployed in it, which largely alleviates the problems caused by the centralized third party, but its inherent transparency and lack of privacy pose a huge challenge to DIMSs. In this regard, we leverage the smart contracts and zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) algorithms to improve the existing claim identity model in blockchain to realize the identity unlinkability, effectively avoiding the exposure of the ownership of attributes. Furthermore, we implement a system prototype named BZDIMS that includes a challenge-response protocol, which allows users to selectively disclose their ownership of attributes to service providers to protect users’ behavior privacy. Performance evaluation and security analysis show that our scheme achieves effective attribute privacy protection and a wider application scope compared with the prior model.
The national digital identity platform is a robust scheme that enables individuals and entities to prove who they are to digitally access critical information or services. However, c urrent digital ...identity systems do not sufficiently consider delegation between entities from the viewpoint of dynamic authorizers and permissions. This study aims to understand the pain points and expectations of end-users and service providers in the Thai national digital identity platform, to design a dynamic delegation model and develop an innovative delegation application to test user acceptance. The research utilizes semi-structured interviews with 3 digital identity experts, two focus groups, one with 6 service providers, and the other one with 6 end-users. Based on results from the data analysis and conceptual prototype design, validated by experts, the proposed prototype is practical and suitable for developing a digital delegation mobile web application that is convenient, safe, secure, and reliable utilizing blockchain technology under the Thai national digital identity platform. The technology acceptance model was used to test the application acceptance with 42 participants . The result reveals that both person and businesses intend to adopt the digital delegation mobile web application. Use cases of the application include users give their power to trusted entities and Government Agency to provide services to the citizens via the authorized delegatee.
AbstractThis paper chronicals the emergence of digital identity as a legal concept, how digital identity has grown in importance at the national level over the past decades and is now poised to ...become even more important internationally. This work builds on existing scholarship, to consider the next evolution of digital identity from what is now essentially a national concept into a global, legal concept. The examination looks to the likely emergence of a global digital identity for individuals in the near future and asks how that could be achieved. The authors examine the use of blockchain technology as a possible foundation of a global digital identity, along with the necessary development of existing international law on individual rights to support a global digital identity for all. Blockchain is viewed as relatively more secure and it enables individuals to have more control over how their identity information is managed and used. Blockchain’s traceability provides advantages for government and the private sector in managing and verifying identity. It aids the integrity of identity information and related transactions. However, it is important to note that, while blockchain has advantages, its relative immutability can lead to the creation and use of false digital identities that cannot be easily detected or corrected. As this paper discusses, this aspect can undermine the integrity and reliability of digital identity nationally and internationally. Given that blockchain technology is fallible, the authors argue that international law has a vital role now and in the future in recognizing the right to digital identity and establishing norms of conduct.
Ci sono due pilastri fondamentali che oggi garantiscono una rete Internet forte basata su una governance affidabile e utilizzabile a livello globale: regolamentazione e identità digitale. ...L’evoluzione di Internet sarà descritta partendo da questi due strumenti abilitanti del trust digitale. Sotto il primo aspetto, inizialmente si analizzerà il significato e l’impatto che la Internet governance ha avuto a livello teorico-filosofico, investigando il rapporto tra legge e codice, e in seguito sarà esaminato in concreto ciò che è stato portato avanti dai legislatori italiano ed europeo, che hanno da tempo cercato la migliore formula normativa per garantire un ecosistema in grado di bilanciare gli interessi dei cittadini e del mercato. Il secondo aspetto della governance di un ecosistema complesso come Internet è l’identità degli utenti. Saranno ripercorsi i tentativi di approcciare il tema dell’identità online: iniziali soluzioni centralizzate hanno lasciato spazio a proposte federate e le tendenze di democratizzazione e digital sovereignty hanno successivamente permesso il fiorire di un nuovo approccio, quello della Self Sovereign Identity. Partendo da una disamina della normativa in vigore in Europa, con alcuni richiami agli interventi regolatori previsti a livello eurounionale, si cercherà di esporre quali strumenti – tecnici e organizzativi – sono più idonei per il raggiungimento di un mercato digitale sicuro e affidabile.
We assess whether and how entrepreneurs' digital identities change in response to entrepreneurial failure based on a sample of 760 entrepreneurs who experienced failure. We analyze a longitudinal ...dataset of Twitter messages before, during, and after a business failure with a language-based method of computerized text analysis. The results of our explorative research indicate that the financial, social, and psychological consequences of failure are reflected in entrepreneurs' Tweets and lead to changes in their digital identities. Among others, entrepreneurs' language decreases in emotional tone and indicates increased psychological distress. Simultaneously, we observe higher levels of self-assurance and reflection after failure. We conclude by outlining the potential of using Twitter-generated digital footprints in future entrepreneurship research.
•Explorative study on the individual consequences of entrepreneurial failure•Uses longitudinal Twitter data captured before, during, and after failure•Draws on computerized text analysis to assess entrepreneurs' digital identities•Results document failure's profound, identity-changing consequences•Outlines the potentials of using digital footprints in entrepreneurship research
Digital identity platforms are widely regarded as important means to improve social protection systems. Yet these platforms have been implicated in the production of a range of unintended outcomes ...for development beneficiaries. To clarify how digital identity platforms enable the production of one such outcome that we call degenerative, because it causes target systems to deteriorate, we conduct a case study of the incorporation of Aadhaar, the world's largest digital identity platform, in India's primary food security scheme. Based on the data from two South Indian states, we show how the incorporation produced degenerative effects in the access, monitoring, and policy layers of the social protection system. These effects lead us to theorise how Aadhaar enabled the degenerative outcome via exclusion, distortion, and redirection, making public distribution of subsidised goods displaceable in favour of cash transfers.
At present, our online activity is almost constant, either producing information or consuming it, both for the social and academic fields. The spaces in which people move and travel every day, ...innocently divided between the face-to-face and the virtual, affect the way we communicate and perceive ourselves. In this document, a characterization of the academic digital identity of Chilean university students is proposed and an invitation to teachers to redefine learning spaces is made, allowing integrating all those technological tools that the student actually uses. This study was developed within the logic of pragmatism based on mixed methodology, non-experimental design, and a descriptive–quantitative cross-sectional approach. A non-probabilistic sample was made up of 509 students, who participated voluntarily with an online questionnaire. The Stata Version-14 program was used, applying the Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon and Kruskal–Wallis U tests. To develop characterizations, a conglomerate analysis was performed with a hierarchical dissociative method. In general, Chilean university students are highly truthful on the Internet without making significant differences between face-to-face and digital interactions, with low awareness of their ID, being easily recognizable on the Web. Regarding their educational process, they manage it with analogical/face-to-face mixing formal and informal technological tools to optimize their learning process. These students manifest a hybrid academic digital identity, without gender difference in the deployment of their PLEs, but maintaining stereotypical gender behaviors in the construction of their digital identity on the Web, which shows a human-technological development similar to that of young Asians and Europeans.
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