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Mobile phones are radically transforming micro-finance in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Kenya, in particular. The introduction of the micro-financial transaction mobile phone application, “MPesa,” created a means to facilitate micro-transactions without the need for an intermediary, such as a banking system. The purpose of this paper is to posit an econophysics model to predict the value of Mpesa for Kenyan and South African consumers. The econophysics framework posits several fitness matrices and a distance measure that can account for the concepts of mass, distance, momentum, velocity, action, and force. The authors begin with a table of the match between the physics concepts and the economic concepts followed by the vector model that utilizes these concepts for the MPesa application case. In this paper, the authors will argue that MPesa succeeded in Sub-Saharan African countries, such as Kenya, because the fit between what this group of customers needed and the solutions Safaricom’s MPesa offered was a better fit with a smaller distance to adoption than in the South African case.

The research develops an econophysics approach to the assessment of micro-finance development in Sub-Saharan countries.

The research shows clearly the reasons of the success of MPesa in Kenya in comparison of its relative failure in South Africa: the distance between customers’ expectations and the system supply.

The research is limited to two case studies and needs to be extended to other contexts, in order to demonstrate its robustness, especially with regard to the intangible dimension, e.g., the distance between a system potential and what it really offers.

The research shows the importance of system’s characteristics in its success.

The social implications are very high, especially in this case, where micro-finance is a high stake for developing societies.

This is one of the first works to develop an econophysics approach for the evaluation of the key characteristics of a system.

Many organizations are embarking upon knowledge management initiatives to enhance their competitiveness. While there has been a significant amount of multidisciplinary research in this area, the evidence from surveys of practitioners indicate that a large proportion of company projects focus on the implementation of technology‐based solutions without consideration of the structural and contextual issues. Many academic authors have presented a variety of different models for knowledge management but have often failed to relate these to the requirements of practitioners. This paper presents a model of knowledge management derived from a synthesis of current literature. The model emphasizes the need for knowledge evaluation within a knowledge management approach and describes, using a case study, how this might be achieved.

Pacific Bell has pioneered the development of a unique concept for computing the amount of value added by a given component business process before and after process reengineering efforts. Its innovative Process Value Estimation (PVE) methodology enables management to target processes ripe for reengineering and prevent cost cutting that reduces value.

The financial reporting practices of modern day organizations operating in a knowledge‐based economy will eventually change as intangible assets increasingly become such organizations' most valuable assets. Financial reports need to be supported by intangible performance metrics, in order to ensure that the reports are rigorously interpreted and applied, and if any issues or problematic practices exist, they may be identified and resolved in a timely fashion. This paper aims to focus on this issue.

This paper provides support for the use of knowledge value‐added (KVA) metrics to assist firms in better understanding, evaluating, and reporting intangible assets, and to provide them with more transparency in their operations. Currently, the general consensus seems to be that before any real progress can be made in converging intangible performance metrics with traditional financial reports, modern day organizations need to more actively depict their intangible assets.

A case study demonstrated how KVA measures support financial ratios of a company as well as providing for a better comparison of one industry with another. Further, from this case study the KVA methodology provided an approach for objectively obtaining information about the performance of knowledge assets as well as a means of benchmarking organizations operating in a knowledge economy.

Future research should empirically test whether an organization's performance and operations is better captured by the added value of intangible measures, such as KVA metrics.

The paper shows that implementing intangible asset measures, along with traditional financial measures may provide a better overall platform that is understandable to managers, creditors, investors, and public institutions.

The Strategic Information Systems Division of Pacific Bell supports the company's business process reengineeiing (BPR) efforts. The division developed an innovative process‐based cost/value analysis to quantify the costs incurred as well as the value added from the firm's activities. The analysis became an important tool for determining the value of information systems to BPR efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of an analytic methodology (knowledge valuation analysis, i.e. KVA), based on complexity and information theory, that is capable of quantifying value creation by corporate intellectual capital. It aims to use a real‐world case to demonstrate this methodology within a consulting context.

The fundamental assumptions and theoretical constructs underlying KVA are summarized. The history of the concept, a case application, limitations, and implications for the methodology are presented.

Although well‐known financial analytic tools were used to justify IT investment proposals, none provided a satisfying result because none offered an unambiguous way to tie IT performance to value creation. KVA provided a means to count the amount of corporate knowledge, in equivalent units, required to produce the outputs of client core processes. This enabled stakeholders to assign revenue streams to IT, develop IT ROIs, and decide with clarity where to invest.

When stakeholders can assign revenue streams to sub‐corporate processes, they have a new context for making IC investment decisions. “Cost centers” and decisions based on cost containment can be replaced. Concepts such as a knowledge market, the knowledge asset pricing model, k‐betas, and a sub‐corporate equities market can be developed and applied. Some of the limitations related to real options analysis can be resolved.

This paper introduces an approach to measuring corporate intellectual capital that solves some long‐standing IC valuation problems.

Available evidence indicates that there is a growing gap between the information rich and information poor. That gap is part of a larger struggle for control of information resources and for the societal power that accompanies such control. New institutional arrangements are needed to spread the benefits of modern information technologies to all segments of the population. Achieving social equity objectives requires governmental leadership and funding. But current legislative proposals for shaping the National Information Infrastructure (NII) lack clear statements as to how the social equity objectives enunciated by the President and Vice President would be accomplished. These proposals seem to make insufficient provision for expanding the development of more than 150 computerized community information systems (CCIS) created by grass‐roots organizations over the past several years. Locally controlled information delivery systems supported by a federally sponsored system of National and Regional Institutes for Information Democracy could help meet the daily information needs of all people, regardless of economic class or community environment. The Institutes would provide sustained support for anc coordination of social equity and empowerment objectives, and could servie as the institutional structures lacking in current legislation

The purpose of the current study is to illustrate the importance of strategic agility (SA), the capacity to respond agilely to a rapidly changing environment, for digitally transforming firms during the COVID-19 crisis. A secondary purpose of the study is to conceptually frame SA as a function of the creative to realized intangible capital (IC) ratio.

To inferentially corroborate the hypothesis, this study exploits the results of a recent firm-level survey, conducted under the H2020 project GlobalInto (2021). Via OLS and ordered logistic regressions, the relationship among SA, economic performance and IC was tested.

The exploratory findings implied that the more strategically agile companies were those that responded more effectively to the pandemic crisis, but only if they were ahead in terms of digital transformation. Moreover, the results implied that firms that were able to efficiently convert their creative IC into realized IC were the most strategically agile.

This study developed a new conceptual framework for digitally transforming firms that included the role of SA and the IC conversion ratio in the context of extreme threats to the survival of firms. Some preliminary practical recommendations were offered to management about how to measure the IC conversion ratio as well as how to stimulate and reward greater creativity among employees, filling a notable gap in the SA literature that provides less than precise guidance about how this concept can be measured.

This investigation/report/reflection was motivated largely by the occasion of the first Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) “Summer School” in North America.¹ But its roots reach down as well to other recent reflection/investigation pieces, in particular, Mathews (1997), Gray (2002, 2006), and Deegan and Soltys (2007). The last of these authors note (p. 82) that CSEAR Summer Schools were initiated in Australasia, at least partly as a means to spur interest and activity in social and environmental accounting (SEA) research. So, too, was the first North American CSEAR Summer School.² We believe, therefore, that it is worthwhile to attempt in some way to identify where SEA currently stands as a field of interest within the broader academic accounting domain in Canada and the United States.³ As well, however, we believe this is a meaningful time for integrating our views on the future of our chosen academic sub-discipline with those of Gray (2002), Deegan and Soltys (2007), and others. Thus, as the title suggests, we seek to identify (1) who the SEA researchers in North America are; (2) the degree to which North American–based accounting research journals publish SEA-related research; and (3) where we, the SEA sub-discipline within North America, might be headed. We begin with the who.