Purpose Social network sites (SNSs) have been common applications attracting a large number of users in Qatar. Current literature remains inconclusive about the relationship between SNS usage and users’ academic performance. While one stream confirms that SNS usage may lead to addiction and seriously affect individuals’ academic performance, other studies refer to SNS as learning enablers. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it investigates the SNS usage profiles among the young generation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) represented by Qatar; second, it examines the relationship between the identified SNS usage profiles and their respective users’ academic performance. Design/methodology/approach The study follows a quantitative survey-based method that was adapted from Chen’s internet Addiction Scale to fit the context of social networks. Data were collected from students of two universities in Qatar, one private and another public. Respondents’ grade point average was also collected and compared across the different usage profiles to understand how SNS usage behavior affects academic performance. Findings Results reveal that there is no linear relationship between SNS usage and academic performance. Therefore, this study further investigates SNS usage profiles and identifies three groups: passive (low usage), engaged (normal usage) and addicted (high usage). It was found that engaged users demonstrate significantly higher academic performance than their passive and addicted peers. Moreover, there is no significant difference in the academic performance between passive and addicted users. Research limitations/implications This study is cross-sectional and based on self-reported data collected from university students in Qatar. Further research venues could employ a more general sample covering a longer period, differentiating between messaging tools (e.g. WhatsApp) and other pure SNS (e.g. Twitter), and to cover other aspects than just academic performance. Originality/value This study complements research efforts on the influence of technology on individuals and on the society in the GCC area. It concludes that engaged SNS users achieve better academic performance than the addicted or passive users. Contradicting the strong linear relationship between SNS and performance, as claimed by previous studies, is the main originality of this paper.

Workflow technology has been proven as an enabler for numerous benefits for private and public organizations. Including: cost reduction, efficiency savings in terms of time and cost, increased capability, faster processing, reductions in errors, and work iterations, service quality and customer satisfaction. Public sector has endorsed these benefits by adopting workflow management systems to support administrative processes, such as human resources management or claims processing. This technology is yet to be utilized to support the formulation of policy making processes to facilitate the participation of citizens in the policy making processes and increase their awareness on political issues. This paper Investigates the feasibility of adopting workflow tools for the support of decision making processes that lead to development of public policies, despite the variant institutional settings. To do so, public policy making processes from four countries were examined and analyzed. The results are explored further in the article.

Evaluating users' satisfaction of e-Government services has been addressed by numerous studies. These mainly looked at e-Government users as citizens who are nationals and comply with the local culture of the governments providing these services. However, the GCC region has a particular culture stemming from the social structure and working environment. The expatriate population from different backgrounds form a significant portion of e-Government users. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore users' satisfaction towards the electronic services provided by governments in the GCC region represented by the State of Qatar. In order to examine the suitability of the e-Government service portal, a cross-sectional survey targeting the users of three common e-Government services in Qatar evaluated users' satisfaction based on the four dimensions of the COBRA framework (Osman et al. 2014): Cost, opportunity, benefit and risk. SEM analysis demonstrated a good model fit and supported the hypotheses related to the effect of risk and benefit on users' satisfaction.

No abstract

No abstract