Search results for: business communication

Authors: Ala Hanetite

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The purpose of this article is to present, by means of a model, the determinants of organisational culture which influence creativity and innovation. A literature study showed that a model, based on the open systems theory and the work of Schein, can offer a holistic approach in describing organisational culture. The relationship between creativity, innovation and culture is discussed in this context. Against the background of this model, the determinants of organisational culture were identified. The determinants are strategy, structure, support mechanisms, behaviour that encourages innovation, and open communication. The influence of each determinant on creativity and innovation is discussed. Values, norms and beliefs that play a role in creativity and innovation can either support or inhibit creativity and innovation depending on how they influence individual and group behaviour. This is also explained in the article.

Keywords: attitudes, creativity, innovation, organisational culture

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Authors: P. Viduthalai, A. K. Divakar, V. Natarajan

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Media is one of the powerful tools that manipulate the world in numerous aspects especially in the form of a communication process. For instance, the concept of the public sphere, which was earlier represented by landlords and elites has now transformed into a virtual public sphere, which is also represented by marginalized people. Unfortunately, this acquisition is still paradoxical. Though the media proliferation and its effects are humongous, still it has not been the same throughout the world. Inequality in access to media has created a technological divide among people. Finally, globalization and approach by the government towards using media for development communication has significantly changed the way in which the media reaches every nook and corner. Monarchy, oligarchy, republic and democracy together form the basis of most governments of the world. Of which, democracy is the one with the highest involvement and participation of the people. Ideally, the participation of the people is what, that keeps the democracy running. A healthy democracy is possible only when people are able to access information that makes citizens responsible and serves to check the functioning of their elected representatives. On one side the media consumption of people plays a crucial role in the formation of the public sphere, and on the other side, big media conglomerates are a serious threat to community participation, which is a goal that the media should strive for in a country like India. How different people consume these different media, differs greatly from length and breadth of the country. Another aspect of this media consumption is that it isn’t passive. People usage and consumption of media are related with the gratification that they derive from the particular media. This aspect varies from person to person and from society to society according to both internal and external factors. This article sets out from the most underlying belief that Malayali Tribes have adopted television and becomes a part of daily life and a day never passes without it especially after the introduction of Free Television Scheme by the past state government. Though they are living in hilly and socially isolated places, they too have started accessing media for understanding about the people of the plains and their culture, dictated by their interest. Many of these interests appear to have a social and psychological origin. The present research attempts to study how gratification of these needs lead Malayali Tribes to form such a virtual public sphere where they could communicate with people of the plains. Data was collected through survey method, from 300 respondents on “Exposure towards Television and their perception”. Conventional anthropological methods like unstructured interviews were also used to supplement the data collection efforts in the three taluks namely Yercaud, Pethanayankkanpalayam and Panamaraththuppatty in Salem district of TamilNadu. The results highlight the role of Television in gratifying needs of the Malayali Tribes.

Keywords: democracy, gratification, Malayali Tribes and television, virtual public sphere

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Authors: Shelly-Ann Gajadhar

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Over the last twenty years, the traditional economic motivations of foreign direct investment have been amalgamated with geopolitical motivations. This is evidenced by the extensive ratification of bilateral investment treaties (BIT) globally and the emergence of state-owned multinational companies (SOMNCs) that directly compete with local domestic enterprises (LDE). This paper investigates the impact that Chinese SOMNCs have on LDEs within Trinidad and Tobago’s construction sector and, determines whether knowledge transfer occurs. The paper employed semi-structured interviews of industry experts and concluded that LDEs predominantly experience adverse spillovers, inclusive of a long-term competition effect, with no technology transfer occurring.

Keywords: foreign direct investment, bilateral investment treaties, knowledge transfer, international business, Caribbean

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Authors: Afif Saleh Abugharsa

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The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is designed for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPAN) with focus on enabling wireless sensor networks. It aims to give a low data rate, low power consumption, and low cost wireless networking on the device-level communication. The objective of this study is to investigate the performance of IEEE 802.15.4 based networks using simulation tool. In this project the network simulator 2 NS2 was used to several performance measures of wireless sensor networks. Three scenarios were considered, multi hop network with a single coordinator, star topology, and an ad hoc on demand distance vector AODV. Results such as packet delivery ratio, hop delay, and number of collisions are obtained from these scenarios.

Keywords: ZigBee, wireless sensor networks, IEEE 802.15.4, low power, low data rate

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Authors: Sherrene Bogle, Verlia Bogle, Tyrone Anderson

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In recent years, organizations have become increasingly interested in the possibility of analyzing social media as a means of gaining meaningful feedback about their products and services. The aspect based sentiment analysis approach is used to predict the sentiment for Twitter datasets for Digicel and Lime, the main mobile companies in Jamaica, using supervised learning classification techniques. The results indicate an average of 82.2 percent accuracy in classifying tweets when comparing three separate classification algorithms against the purported baseline of 70 percent and an average root mean squared error of 0.31. These results indicate that the analysis of sentiment on social media in order to gain customer feedback can be a viable solution for mobile companies looking to improve business performance.

Keywords: machine learning, sentiment analysis, social media, supervised learning

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Authors: Yulin Liang

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Under the background of protecting ecology, natural education is an effective way for people to understand nature. At the same time, it is a new means of sustainable development of eco-tourism, which can improve the functions of China 's protected areas and develop new business formats for the development of national parks. This study takes national park gateway communities as the research object and uses literature review, inductive reasoning and other research methods to sort out the development process of natural education in China and the research progress of natural education design in national park gateway communities. Finally, it discuss how gateway communities can use natural education to transform their development methods and provide theoretical and practical basis for the development of gateway communities in national parks.

Keywords: nature education, gateway communities, national park, sustainable development

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Authors: Louati Salma, Louhichi Awatef, Boujelbene Younes

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Analysis of the trade-off between competition and financial stability has been at the center of academic and policy debate for over two decades and especially since the 2007-2008 global financial crises. We use information on 10 OIC countries from 2005 to 2014 to investigate the influence of bank competition on individual bank stability and risk-taking. Alternatively, we explore whether the quality of prudential regulation may affect the nexus between competition and banking stability/risk-taking. We provide a particular attention to the Islamic banking system which principally involves with the Riba-free instruments as compared to the conventional interest-based system. We first run a dynamic panel regression (GMM), and then we apply a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) methodology to compare both banking business models.

Keywords: Lerner index, Islamic banks, non-performing loans, prudential regulations, z-score

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Authors: Bourama Mane, Ibrahima Fall, Mamadou Samba Camara, Alassane Bah

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At the level of the National Statistical Institutes, there is a large volume of data which is generally in a format which conditions the method of publication of the information they contain. Each household or business data collection project includes a dissemination platform for its implementation. Thus, these dissemination methods previously used, do not promote rapid access to information and especially does not offer the option of being able to link data for in-depth processing. In this paper, we present an approach to modeling these data to publish them in a format intended for the Semantic Web. Our objective is to be able to publish all this data in a single platform and offer the option to link with other external data sources. An application of the approach will be made on data from major national surveys such as the one on employment, poverty, child labor and the general census of the population of Senegal.

Keywords: Semantic Web, linked open data, database, statistic

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Authors: Mohamed Elmogbail

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The present study aimed at investigating difficulties those Translators encounter in understanding idiomatic expressions between Arabic and English languages. To achieve this goal, the researcher raised the three questions are:(1) What are the major difficulties that translators encounter in translating idiomatic expressions? (2) What factors cause such difficulties that translators encountered in translating idiomatic expressions? (3) What are the possible techniques that should be followed to overcome these difficulties? To answer these questions, the researcher designed questionnaire Table (2) and mentioned tables related to Test Show the second question in the study is about the factors that stand behind the challenges. Translators encounter while translating idiomatic expressions. The translators asked Provided the following factors:1- Because of lack of exposure to the source culture, they do not know the connotations of the cultural words that are related to the environment, food, folklore 2- Misusing dictionaries made the participants unable to find a proper target language idiomatic expression. 3-Lack of using idiomatic expressions in daily life. Table (3): (Questionnaire) Results to the table (3) Questions Of the study are About suggestions that can be inferred to handle these challenges. The questioned translators provided the following solutions:1- translators must be exposed to source language culture, including religion, habits, and traditions.2- translators should also be exposed to source language idiomatic expressions by introducing English culture in textbooks and through participating in extensive English culture courses.3- translators should be familiar with the differences between source and target language cultures.4- translators should avoid literal translation that results in most cases in wrong or poor translation.5- Schools, universities, and institutions should introduce translators to English culture.6- translators should participate in cultural workshops at universities.7- translators should try to use idiomatic expressions in everyday situations.8- translators should read more idiomatic expressions books. And researcher also designed a translation test consisted of 40 excerpts given to a random sample of 100 Translators in Khartoum capital of Sudan to translate them. After Collected data for the study, the researcher proceeded to a more detailed analysis, the methodology used in the analysis of idiomatic expressions Is empirical and descriptive. This study is qualitative by nature, but the quantitative method used the analysis of the data. Some figure and statistics are used, such as (statistical package for the social sciences). The researcher calculated the percentage proportion of each translation expressions. And compared them to each other. The finding of the study showed that most translations are inadequate as the translators faced difficulties while communication, these difficulties were mostly due to their unfamiliarity with idiomatic expressions producing improper equivalence in the communication, and not being able to use translation techniques as required, and resorted to literal translation, furthermore, the study recommended that more comprehensive studies to executed on translating idiomatic expressions to enrich the translation field.

Keywords: translation, translators, idioms., expressions

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Authors: Ossama Matrane

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Information System has become a strategic lever for enterprises. It contributes effectively to align business processes on strategies of enterprises. It is regarded as an increase in productivity and effectiveness. So, many organizations are currently involved in implementing sustainable Information System. And, a large number of studies have been conducted the last decade in order to define the success factors of information system. Thus, many studies on maturity model have been carried out. Some of this study is referred to the maturity model of Information System. In this article, we report on development of maturity models specifically designed for information system. This model is built based on three components derived from Maturity Model for Information Security Management, OPM3 for Project Management Maturity Model and processes of COBIT for IT governance. Thus, our proposed model defines three maturity stages for corporate a strong Information System to support objectives of organizations. It provides a very practical structure with which to assess and improve Information System Implementation.

Keywords: information system, maturity models, information security management, OPM3, IT governance

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Authors: Faisal Algosair

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We examine the role of monetary policy in the presence of commodity price shocks using a Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with price and wage rigidities. The model characterizes a commodity exporter by its degree of export diversification, and explores the following monetary regimes: flexible domestic inflation targeting; flexible Consumer Price Index inflation targeting; exchange rate peg; and optimal rule. An increase in the degree of diversification is found to mitigate responses to commodity shocks. The welfare comparison suggests that a flexible exchange rate regime under the optimal rule is preferred to an exchange rate peg. However, monetary policy provides limited stabilization effects in an economy with low degree of export diversification.

Keywords: business cycle, commodity price, exchange rate, global financial cycle

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Authors: Maya Irjayanti

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Local creativity utilization has been a strategic investment to be expanded as a creative industry due to its significant contribution to the national gross domestic product. Many developed and developing countries look toward creative industries as an agenda for the economic growth. This study aims to identify the role of local potential for creative industries from various empirical studies. The method performed in this study will involve a peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers review addressing local potential and creative industries. The literature review analysis will include several steps: material collection, descriptive analysis, category selection, and material evaluation. Finally, the outcome expected provides a creative industries clustering based on the local potential of various nations. In addition, the finding of this study will be used as future research reference to explore a particular area with well-known aspects of local potential for creative industry products.

Keywords: business, creativity, local potential, local wisdom

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Authors: Md Maruf Hossain Koli

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The issue of child labor is enormous and cannot be ignored in Bangladesh. The problem of child exploitation is a socio-economic reality of Bangladesh. This paper will indicate the causes, consequences, and possibilities of using microfinance as remedies of hazardous child labor in Bangladesh. Poverty is one of the main reasons for children to become child laborers. It is an indication of economic vulnerability, inadequate law, and enforcement system and cultural and social inequities along with the inaccessible and low-quality educational system. An attempt will be made in this paper to explore and analyze child labor scenario in Bangladesh and will explain holistic intervention of BRAC, the largest nongovernmental organization in the world to address child labor through promoting incubation support to youth-led enterprises. A combination of research methods were used to write this paper. These include non-reactive observation in the form of literature review, desk studies as well as reactive observation like site visits and, semi-structured interviews. Hazardous Child labor is a multi-dimensional and complex issue. This paper was guided by the answer following research questions to better understand the current context of hazardous child labor in Bangladesh, especially in Dhaka city. The author attempted to figure out why child labor should be considered as a development issue? Further, it also encountered why child labor in Bangladesh is not being reduced at an expected pace? And finally what could be a sustainable solution to eradicate this situation. One of the most challenging characteristics of child labor is that it interrupts a child’s education and cognitive development hence limiting the building of human capital and fostering intergenerational reproduction of poverty and social exclusion. Children who are working full-time and do not attend school, cannot develop the necessary skills. This leads them and their future generation to remain in poor socio-economic condition as they do not get a better paying job. The vicious cycle of poverty will be reproduced and will slow down sustainable development. The outcome of the research suggests that most of the parents send their children to work to help them to increase family income. In addition, most of the youth engaged in hazardous work want to get training, mentoring and easy access to finance to start their own business. The intervention of BRAC that includes classroom and on the job training, tailored mentoring, health support, access to microfinance and insurance help them to establish startup. This intervention is working in developing business and management capacity through public-private partnerships and technical consulting. Supporting entrepreneurs, improving working conditions with micro, small and medium enterprises and strengthening value chains focusing on youth and children engaged with hazardous child labor.

Keywords: child labour, enterprise development, microfinance, youth entrepreneurship

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Authors: Adedeji Tejumola Olugboja

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Night markets are physical locations in residential neighbourhoods where market parties interact. It is a kind of market where marketing activities commence by 6pm until after midnight. The problem of the study is to assess marketing activities in the night markets. Specific objectives for this study include determining volume of business activities, numbers of market parties etc in the selected night markets. The purposive sampling technique is adopted for this study and the four night markets in the area of study are selected as sample: Aggregate of 173 retailers and an average of 2583 consumers daily operate in these night markets. The use of tables, simple percentage and descriptive statistics were employed for data analysis and presentation. Findings revealed volume of marketing activities, sales per night, profit per night and savings per day in each of these night markets. Government should erect street lights and repair damaged ones in these night markets to make night markets more lucrative.

Keywords: marketing activities, night markets, Nigerian economy

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Authors: Mohamed Elmeshad

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During the mid-1990's Egypt had become obliged to implement the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Program that included broad economic liberalization, expansion of the private sector and a contraction the size of government spending. This coincided as well with attempts to appear more democratic and open to liberalizing public space and discourse. At the same time, economic pressures and the proliferation of social media access and activism had led to increased pressure to open a mediascape and remove it from the clutches of the government, which had monopolized print and broadcast mass media for over 4 decades by that point. However, the mechanisms that governed the privatization of mass media allowed for sustained government control, even through the prism of ostensibly privately owned newspapers and television stations. These mechanisms involve barriers to entry from a financial and security perspective, as well as operational capacities of distribution and access to means of production. The power dynamics between mass media establishments and the state were moulded during this period in a novel way. Power dynamics within media establishments had also formed under such circumstances. The changes in the country's political economy itself somehow mirrored these developments. This paper will examine these dynamics and shed light on the political economy of Egypt's newly privatized mass media in the early 2000's especially. Methodology: This study will rely on semi-structured interviews from individuals involved with these changes from the perspective of the media organizations. It also will map out the process of media privatization by looking at the administrative, operative and legislative institutions and contexts in order to attempt to draw conclusions on methods of control and the role of the state during the process of privatization. Finally, a brief discourse analysis will be necessary in order to aptly convey how these factors ultimately reflected on media output. Findings and conclusion: The development of Egyptian private, “independent” mirrored the trajectory of transitions in the country’s political economy. Liberalization of the economy meant that a growing class of business owners would explore opportunities that such new markets would offer. However the regime’s attempts to control access to certain forms of capital, especially in sectors such as the media affected the structure of print and broadcast media, as well as the institutions that would govern them. Like the process of liberalisation, much of the regime’s manoeuvring with regards to privatization of media had been haphazardly used to indirectly expand the regime and its ruling party’s ability to retain influence, while creating a believable façade of openness. In this paper, we will attempt to uncover these mechanisms and analyse our findings in ways that explain how the manifestations prevalent in the context of a privatizing media space in a transitional Egypt provide evidence of both the intentions of this transition, and the ways in which it was being held back.

Keywords: business, mass media, political economy, power, privatisation

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Authors: Okike Benjamin, E. J. D. Garba

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The protection of sensitive information against unauthorized access or fraudulent changes has been of prime concern throughout the centuries. Modern communication techniques, using computers connected through networks, make all data even more vulnerable to these threats. The researchers in this work propose a new encryption technique to be known as Merged Irregular Transposition Cipher. In this proposed encryption technique, a message to be encrypted will first of all be split into multiple parts depending on the length of the message. After the split, different keywords are chosen to encrypt different parts of the message. After encrypting all parts of the message, the positions of the encrypted message could be swapped to other position thereby making it very difficult to decrypt by any unauthorized user.

Keywords: information security, message splitting, pattern, sequence

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Authors: Taha Ahmed Özbey, Sedat Nazlıbilek, Alparslan Çağrı Yapıcı

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Combline cavity filters have gained significant attention in recent years due to their exceptional narrowband characteristics, high unloaded Q, remarkable out-of-band rejection, and versatile post-manufacturing tuning capabilities. These filters play a vital role in various wireless communication systems, radar applications, and other advanced technologies where stringent frequency selectivity and superior performance are required. This paper represents combined cavity filter design and implementation by coupling matrix synthesis. Limited filter length, 50 dB out-of-band rejection, and agile design were aimed. To do so, CAD tools and intuitive methods were used.

Keywords: cavity, band pass filter, cavity combline filter, coupling matrix synthesis

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Authors: T. Yuri M. Zagloel, Inaki M. Hakim, Syarafi A. M.

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Manufacturing process has been considered as one of the most important activity in business process. It correlates with productivity and quality of the product so industries could fulfill customer’s demand. With the increasing demand from customer, industries must improve their manufacturing ability such as shorten lead time and reduce wastes on their process. Lean manufacturing has been considered as one of the tools to waste elimination in manufacturing or service industri. Workforce development is one practice in lean manufacturing that can reduce waste generated from operator such as waste of unnecessary motion. Anthropometric approach is proposed to determine the recommended measurement in operator’s work area. The method will get some dimensions from Indonesia people that related to piston workstation. The result from this research can be obtained new design for the workarea considering ergonomic aspect.

Keywords: adjustable, anthropometric, ergonomic, waste

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Authors: M. Kishore Kumar

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The ancient Vedas and Upanishads are a treasure of knowledge gifted to the world by India. The four Vedas, a conglomerate of Hindu scriptures, contain many principles of modern management at organisation as well as at individual levels. It lays down the duties of a King and ministers as well as its citizens and cites values for leadership. Bhagawadgita (or ‘Gita’ in short), popularly cited as Pancham (Fifth) Veda, is stated to be sermoned about 5000 years ago by Lord Krishna. In the midst of the Kurukshetra battle, Gitopadesh was given various aspects such as dharma (duties), karma (action), stithaprajna (stable mind), nishkama (detachment from results) and ethics. Arjun was steered to victory by Lord Krishna as his charioteer, and the 700-odd-verse holy text Bhagawadgita can become a valuable guide for all of us to achieve success in business management. Many parallels exist between modern-day management theories and principles enshrined in Vedic texts.

Keywords: goal, motivation, leadership, mind, management

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Authors: Umar Mujahid, Greatzel Unabia, Hongsik Choi, Binh Tran

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Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is one of the most commonly used technologies in IoTs and Wireless Sensor Networks which makes the devices identification and tracking extremely easy to manage. Since RFID uses wireless channel for communication, which is open for all types of adversaries, researchers have proposed many Ultralightweight Mutual Authentication Protocols (UMAPs) to ensure security and privacy in a cost-effective manner. These UMAPs involve simple bitwise logical operators such as XOR, AND, OR & Rot, etc., to design the protocol messages. However, most of these UMAPs were later reported to be vulnerable against many malicious attacks. In this paper, we have presented a detailed overview of some eminent UMAPs and also discussed the many security attacks on them. Finally, some recommendations and suggestions have been discussed, which can improve the design of the UMAPs.

Keywords: RFID, Ultralightweight, UMAP, SASI

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Authors: Hassan Mahasneh, Abu Sesay

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We propose the use of relay terminals at the cell edge of an LTE-based cellar system. Each relay terminal is equipped with an omni-directional antenna. We refer to this scheme as the Omni-Relay (OR) scheme. The OR scheme coordinates the inter-cell interference (ICI) stemming from adjacent cells and increases the desired signal level at cell-edge regions. To validate the performance of the OR scheme, we derive the average signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) and the average capacity and compare it with the conventional universal frequency reuse factor (UFRF). The results show that the proposed OR scheme provides higher average SINR and average capacity compared to the UFRF due to the assistance of the distributed relay nodes.

Keywords: the UFRF scheme, the OR scheme, ICI, relay terminals, SINR, spectral efficiency

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Authors: Filiz Erden, E. Elhan Özus, Melek Tufan

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If the history of clothing is examined, it is seen that clothing has gone through many stages from ancient times to present. Each nation has shaped its clothing according to its own traditions, customs, beliefs, living conditions. While clothes are being prepared, attributing different meanings to colors and patterns of the fabrics has become a common characteristic of many cultures. It is known that cloths worn in special days such as mourning, weddings, engagements, festivals and business vary according to their models, fabrics, colors and patterns. We witness use of cloth to differentiate people belonging to certain classes from nobles throughout the history. Striped fabric has carried many different meanings and uses throughout the history. In this study, place has been given to the important periods related to the history of striped fabric by examining current meaning of the striped fabric and dimensions of its meanings in the past. Also, evening dresses have been designed by using striped fabrics in order to reveal how striped fabric is liked and demanded after it coped with difficulties and being despised in its history.

Keywords: striped fabric, design, clothing, fasion

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Authors: Hideaki Endo, Mika Goto

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The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously affected railway businesses. The number of railway passengers decreased due to the decline in the number of commuters and business travelers to avoid crowded trains and a sharp drop in inbound tourists visiting Japan. This has affected not only railway businesses but also related businesses, including hotels, leisure businesses, and retail businesses at station buildings. In 2021, the companies were divided into profitable and loss-making companies. This division suggests that railway companies, particularly loss-making companies, needed to decrease operational inefficiency. To measure the impact of COVID-19 and discuss the sustainable management strategies of railway companies, we examine the cost inefficiency of Japanese listed railway companies by applying stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to their operational and financial data. First, we employ the stochastic frontier cost function approach to measure inefficiency. The cost frontier function is formulated as a Cobb–Douglas type, and we estimated parameters and variables for inefficiency. This study uses panel data comprising 26 Japanese-listed railway companies from 2005 to 2020. This period includes several events deteriorating the business environment, such as the financial crisis from 2007 to 2008 and the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and we compare those impacts with those of the COVID-19 pandemic after 2020. Second, we identify the characteristics of the best-practice railway companies and examine the drivers of cost inefficiencies. Third, we analyze the factors influencing cost inefficiency by comparing the profiles of the top 10 railway companies and others before and during the pandemic. Finally, we examine the relationship between cost inefficiency and the implementation of efficiency measures for each railway company. We obtained the following four findings. First, most Japanese railway companies showed the lowest cost inefficiency (most efficient) in 2014 and the highest in 2020 (least efficient) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second worst occurred in 2009 when it was affected by the financial crisis. However, we did not observe a significant impact of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. This is because no railway company was influenced by the earthquake in this operating area, except for JR-EAST. Second, the best-practice railway companies are KEIO and TOKYU. The main reason for their good performance is that both operate in and near the Tokyo metropolitan area, which is densely populated. Third, we found that non-best-practice companies had a larger decrease in passenger kilometers than best-practice companies. This indicates that passengers made fewer long-distance trips because they refrained from inter-prefectural travel during the pandemic. Finally, we found that companies that implement more efficiency improvement measures had higher cost efficiency and they effectively used their customer databases through proactive DX investments in marketing and asset management.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, stochastic frontier analysis, railway sector, cost efficiency

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Authors: L. Sierra, N. Gambetta, M. A. Garcia-Benau, M. Orta

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Financial scandals and financial crisis have led to an international debate on the value of auditing. In recent years there have been significant legislative reforms aiming to increase markets’ confidence in audit services. In particular, there has been a significant debate on the need to improve the communication of auditors with audit reports users as a way to improve its informative value and thus, to improve audit quality. The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) has proposed changes to the audit report standards. The International Standard on Auditing 701, Communicating Key Audit Matters (KAM) in the Independent Auditor's Report, has introduced new concepts that go beyond the auditor's opinion and requires to disclose the risks that, from the auditor's point of view, are more significant in the audited company information. Focusing on the companies included in the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 index, this study aims to focus on the analysis of the determinants of the number of KAM disclosed by the auditor in the audit report and moreover, the analysis of the determinants of the different type of KAM reported during the period 2013-2015. To test the hypotheses in the empirical research, two different models have been used. The first one is a linear regression model to identify the client’s characteristics, industry sector and auditor’s characteristics that are related to the number of KAM disclosed in the audit report. Secondly, a logistic regression model is used to identify the determinants of the number of each KAM type disclosed in the audit report; in line with the risk-based approach to auditing financial statements, we categorized the KAM in 2 groups: Entity-level KAM and Accounting-level KAM. Regarding the auditor’s characteristics impact on the KAM disclosure, the results show that PwC tends to report a larger number of KAM while KPMG tends to report less KAM in the audit report. Further, PwC reports a larger number of entity-level risk KAM while KPMG reports less account-level risk KAM. The results also show that companies paying higher fees tend to have more entity-level risk KAM and less account-level risk KAM. The materiality level is positively related to the number of account-level risk KAM. Additionally, these study results show that the relationship between client’s characteristics and number of KAM is more evident in account-level risk KAM than in entity-level risk KAM. A highly leveraged company carries a great deal of risk, but due to this, they are usually subject to strong capital providers monitoring resulting in less account-level risk KAM. The results reveal that the number of account-level risk KAM is strongly related to the industry sector in which the company operates assets. This study helps to understand the UK audit market, provides information to auditors and finally, it opens new research avenues in the academia.

Keywords: FTSE 100, IAS 701, key audit matters, auditor’s characteristics, client’s characteristics

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Authors: Christopher Reichstein, Ralf-Christian Härting, Martina Häußler

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With a continuously increasing speed of information exchange on the World Wide Web, retailers in the E-Commerce sector are faced with immense possibilities regarding different online purchase processes like dynamic price settings. By use of Dynamic Pricing, retailers are able to set short time price changes in order to optimize producer surplus. The empirical research illustrates the basics of Dynamic Pricing and identifies six influencing factors of Dynamic Pricing. The results of a structural equation modeling approach show five main drivers increasing the potential of dynamic price settings in the E-Commerce. Influencing factors are the knowledge of customers’ individual willingness to pay, rising sales, the possibility of customization, the data volume and the information about competitors’ pricing strategy.

Keywords: e-commerce, empirical research, experts, dynamic pricing (DP), influencing factors, potentials

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Authors: Jayeola Olabisi, T. Olawale Oladunjoye, Ademola A. Adewumi

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The study empirically examines the relationship that exists between the economic environment and entrepreneurial development in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire is administered on the study and data collected are analysed using Analysis of Variance and Regression. The following variables are indices of determination; Interest Rate (IR); Income Tax (IT). The results of the study show that there is a significant relationship between IR and ED in Nigeria (p < 0.5) with a positive correlation (r=0.526, r2=0.276). Also, there is a significant relationship between IT and ED in Nigeria (p < 0.05), with a positive association (r=0.546; r2=0.299). The study concludes that the emergence of the higher level of the stable economic environment is critical to entrepreneurial development in Nigeria. Therefore, government involvement in public private partnership for infrastructural development, enlargement of productive, judicious and transparent use of funds collected from income tax and affordable interest rate will galvanise the inward sourcing of raw materials that boost entrepreneurial development in Nigeria.

Keywords: interest rate, income tax, business environment and entrepreneurial development

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Authors: Penelope Paliadelis, Asheley Jones, Glenn Campbell

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This paper discusses the development of co-designed capability frameworks for two large multinational organizations led by a university department. The aim was to create evidence-based, integrated capability frameworks that could define, identify, and measure human skill capabilities independent of specific work roles. The frameworks capture and cluster human skills required in the workplace and capture their application at various levels of mastery. Identified capability gaps inform targeted learning opportunities for workers to enhance their employability skills. The paper highlights the value of this evidence-based framework development process in capturing, defining, and assessing desired human-focused capabilities for organizational growth and success.

Keywords: capability framework, human skills, work-integrated learning, credentialing, digital badging

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Authors: Aishwarya Ravichandra, Kirtana Kirtivasan, Adithi Mahesh, Ashwini S.Savanth

Abstract:

A Non-Contact Digital Music System has been conceptualized and implemented to create a new era of digital music. This system replaces the strings of a traditional stringed instrument with laser beams to avoid bruising of the user’s hand. The system consists of seven laser modules, detector modules and distance sensors that form the basic hardware blocks of this instrument. Arduino ATmega2560 microcontroller is used as the primary interface between the hardware and the software. MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is used as the protocol to establish communication between the instrument and the virtual synthesizer software.

Keywords: Arduino, detector, laser, MIDI, note on, note off, pitch bend, Sharp IR distance sensor

Procedia PDF Downloads 394

Authors: Le Jiang, Chua Jinxing

Abstract:

Introduction: The recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the west Africa has drawn global concern. With a high fatality rate and direct human-to-human transmission, it has spread between countries and caused great damages for patients and family who are affected. Being the designated hospital to manage epidemic outbreak in Singapore, Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) is facing great challenges in preparation and managing of potential outbreak of emerging infectious disease such as Ebola virus disease. Aim: We conducted an infection control drill in TTSH emergency department to assess the readiness of healthcare and allied health workers in managing suspected Ebola patients. It also helps to review current Ebola clinical protocol and work instruction to ensure more smooth and safe practice in managing Ebola patients in TTSH emergency department. Result: General preparedness level of staffs involved in managing Ebola virus disease in TTSH emergency department is not adequate. Knowledge deficits of staffs on Ebola personal protective equipment gowning and degowning process increase the risk of potential cross contamination in patient care. Loopholes are also found in current clinical protocol, such as unclear instructions and inaccurate information, which need to be revised to promote better staff performance in patient management. Logistic issues such as equipment dysfunction and inadequate supplies can lead to ineffective communication among teams and causing harm to patients in emergency situation. Conclusion: The infection control drill identified the need for more well-structured and clear clinical protocols to be in place to promote participants performance. In addition to quality protocols and guidelines, systemic training and annual refresher for all staffs in the emergency department are essential to prepare staffs for the outbreak of Ebola virus disease. Collaboration and communication with allied health staffs are also crucial for smooth delivery of patient care and minimising the potential human suffering, properties loss or injuries caused by disease. Therefore, more clinical drills with collaboration among various departments involved are recommended to be conducted in the future to monitor and assess readiness of TTSH emergency department in managing Ebola virus disease.

Keywords: ebola, emergency department, infection control drill, Tan Tock Seng Hospital

Procedia PDF Downloads 113

Authors: Sanju Vaidya, Aihua Li

Abstract:

Vulnerability measures and topological indices are crucial in solving various problems such as the stability of the communication networks and development of mathematical models for chemical compounds. In 1947, Harry Wiener introduced a topological index related to molecular branching. Now there are more than 100 topological indices for graphs. For example, Hosoya polynomials (also called Wiener polynomials) were introduced to derive formulas for certain vulnerability measures and topological indices for various graphs. In this paper, we will find a relation between the Hosoya polynomials of any graph and its Mycielskian graph. Additionally, using this we will compute vulnerability measures, closeness and betweenness centrality, and extended Wiener indices. It is fascinating to see how Hosoya polynomials are useful in the two diverse fields, cybersecurity and chemistry.

Keywords: hosoya polynomial, mycielskian graph, graph vulnerability measure, topological index

Procedia PDF Downloads 60