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Accurate prediction of stock market price is of great importance to many stakeholders. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have shown robust capability in predicting stock price return, future stock price and the direction of stock market movement. The major aim of this study is to predict the next trading day closing price of the Qatar Exchange (QE) Index using historical data from 3 January 2010 to 31 December 2012. A multilayer perceptron ANN architecture was used as a prediction model with 10 market technical indicators as input variables. The experimental results indicate that ANNs are an effective modelling technique for predicting the QE Index with high accuracy, outperforming the well-established autoregressive integrated moving average models. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use ANNs to predict the QE Index, and its performance results are comparable to, and sometimes better than, many stock market predictions reported in the literature. The ANN model also revealed that the weighted and simple moving averages are the most important technical indicators in predicting the QE Index, and the accumulation/distribution oscillator is the least important such indicator. The analysis results also indicated that the ANNs are resilient to stock market volatility.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a keyword-based organizing framework for enterprise resource planning (ERP) intellectual contributions, and use the proposed framework to derive major areas of emphasis in ERP research. Design/methodology/approach – Using keyword persistence, a time-based measure, and keyword dominance, a frequency-based measure, the authors constructed an empirical framework to classify ERP intellectual contributions. Findings – Four major ERP themes were identified using the proposed framework; namely, emerging/phantom, intermittent, trendy, and core. Further examination of the keywords in each of these themes revealed that whereas the business aspects of ERP systems are discussed in an intermittent manner, its technical aspects are discussed in a trendy fashion. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation of this research is that it only used keywords from papers published in scholarly journals, and did not include conference proceedings, books, and other outlets. In this paper, the authors developed an objective keyword-based organizing framework. The proposed framework is simple, flexible, and is based on dimensions that are research domain independent, and thus can be used as an organizing framework for any research domain. Practical implications – The proposed framework may help managers to better focus consulting engagements on ERP implementations through identifying areas that are not well covered by researchers to ensure that such areas they are well covered by consulting services. Originality/value – The main contribution of this paper is the development of an objective keyword-based framework that can be used as an organizing tool for intellectual contributions. The framework can be used to derive insights in the macro characterizations of the research in a given domain, and is thus valuable to researchers – both academic and practitioner. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first such keyword-based research organizing framework.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into enterprise resource planning (ERP) research by framing ERP intellectual contributions using a knowledge-centric taxonomy that was originally proposed as an organizing framework for classifying conceptual contributions in marketing. Thus the paper provides a better understanding of existing gaps and future opportunities in ERP research. Design/methodology/approach Using MacInnis framework, the authors classified a sample of 300 ERP articles published during the period 2000-2014 into a topology of four generic contributions types and eight sub-types. Findings The findings indicate that whereas the explicating type received the most attention by researches, the debating type received the least. It also seems that there is a temporal dimension to the different types of conceptual contributions. Identification of usefulness of the ERP systems to business was not addressed as would have been predicted by the build-evaluate lens of March and Smith framework. Research limitations/implications The main limitation of this research is that only used articles from scholarly journals, and did not include conference proceedings, books, and other outlets. Another limitation is that the search criteria was title-based, which may have missed some relevant papers. Research implications include highlighting the importance of a knowledge-centric view of ERP research, and practical implications include the call for robust measurement criteria for ERP benefits and rigorous ERP comparison schemes. Originality/value The main contribution is providing an alternative approach to framing the ERP intellectual contributions. The proposed taxonomy revealed major areas of focus and opportunities for future ERP research emphasis. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first instantiation of MacInnis framework into ERP research.

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