Search results for: shopping mall employees

Authors: Elena V. Lysenko

Abstract:

Motivating as the leading function of a modern Human Resources Management involves issues of increasing the effectiveness of the organization in a broader context. During the formation of motivational systems, the top-management of organization should pay equal attention to both external motivation (incentive system) and internal (self-motivation). The balance of internal and external motivation harmonizes the relations between employers and employees, increases the level of job satisfaction by the organization staff, which in turn leads the organization to success and ensures the organization`s profitability and competitiveness in the market environment. The article is devoted to the study of personnel motivation system in the small metal trade company, which is located in Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation. The study took place during November-December, 2016 ordered by the Company Director to analyze the motivational potential of work (managerial aspect of motivation) and motivation of personnel (personnel aspect of motivation) with the purpose to construct a system of employees’ motivation. The research tools included 6 specially selected tests of motivation, which are: “Motivation profile of your job”, “Constructive motivational attitudes”, Tests about Motivation of achievements (1st variant: Test by А.Mehrabian by the theory of D.С.McClelland and 2nd variant: Test about leading needs according with the theory of D.С.MacClelland), Tests by T.Elers (1st variant: “Determination of the motivation towards success or to avoid failure” and 2nd variant: “Trends to achieve results or to avoid failure”). The results of the study showed only one, but fundamental problem of the whole organization: high level of both motivational potential in work and self-motivation, especially in terms of achievement motivation, but serious lack of productivity. According the results which study showed this problem is derived from insufficient staff competence. The research suggests basic guidelines in order to build the new personnel motivation system for this Company, which is planned to be developed in the nearest future.

Keywords: incentive system, motivation of achievements, motivation system, self-motivation

Procedia PDF Downloads 294

Authors: C. John Thomas, Sabitha Jannet

Abstract:

The review concentrates on mental health wellbeing at workplace to create a safe work environment. The purpose of the study is to find the existing gaps in occupational health in the manufacturing sector. Mental wellbeing is important because it is an essential component of human life and influences our emotions, attitudes, and feelings. In the workplace, mental wellbeing can encourage a culture of safety and avoid accidents. An environment where individuals are comfortable voicing themselves and being themselves. More technically, when individuals have psychological protection at work, without regard for humiliation or punishment, they feel relaxed expressing complaints and errors. They are sure they are going to speak up and not humiliate, neglect, or accuse them. Once they are uncertain about something, they know they are going to ask questions. They are inclined to trust their colleagues and respect them. The reviews were considered through keywords and health-related topics. There are different characteristics of mental wellbeing in the literature and how it impacts the workplace. There is also a possibility that their personal lives will have an impact. In every occupation, however, there is widespread acknowledgment that psychosocial hazards are an important health risk for workers, yet in many workplaces, the focus remains on physical hazards. It is alleged that the understating of workplace psychosocial hazards is primarily due to the perception that they present a more difficult and complex challenge when compared to other health and safety issues. Others, however, allege it is the paucity of awareness about psychosocial hazards and their alleviation that explains their relative neglect. The other researchers focused that following global trends, it is believed that psychosocial hazards must be minimized within our workplaces and that there is a requirement for workplace interventions to reduce psychological harm and promote mental health for all the workman employees to achieve zero harm. In common, this literature review compares various results of the individual studies on their research methods and finding to fill gaps.

Keywords: mental health wellbeing, occupational health, psychosocial hazards, safety culture, safety management systems, workman employee, workplace safety

Procedia PDF Downloads 97

Authors: Kanika Saxena, Sunita Balani

Abstract:

Purpose - The aim of the study is to compare the reported sustainability activities in areas of emission, water management and gender equality, currently undertaken by the seven major pharmaceutical companies. Methodology: The published corporate sustainability activity reports for the year 2017 for seven pharmaceutical companies have been studied. The two main criteria for the inclusion of pharmaceutical companies in this study are that they are globally recognized and active in the field of sustainability reporting. Company’s actions and initiatives have been grouped under three categories: (i) Emissions (ii) Water management (iii) Gender Equality in terms of employee workforce. Findings: Based on the sustainability reports, quantification and grading of the companies showed interesting results. Johnson & Johnson and Bayer are leading their activities under emissions and water management categories. The number of activities under emission and water management in case of Eli Lily, Roche, Sanofi, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline were 19, 16, 16, 11 and 6 respectively. Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lily are leading in taking the initiatives to curb the problem of emissions as compared with other 5 companies. Under the category of gender equality in terms of employee workforce, Eli Lily is leading the group of sampled companies with 47% of women employee workforce globally followed by Sanofi with 46.2% (42.2% of managers) female employees. It has also been observed that in some of the reports, gender diversification in the workforce has not been mentioned though the total number of employees were mentioned. Conclusion: This study could serve as the informative material for future in-depth industry-specific studies in order to find out the participation of the pharmaceutical companies in the reporting of the sustainability activities especially in reference to emission, water management and gender equality in the workforce. In addition to it, this can be helpful as a reference point for other companies in the pharmaceutical sector who are yet to explore the field of sustainability initiatives and reporting. Due to the limited scope of this study, only seven major players of the pharmaceutical sector who are active in the field of sustainability have been considered.

Keywords: emission, gender equality workforce, pharmaceutical, sustainability, water management

Procedia PDF Downloads 132

Authors: Soumya Rajan

Abstract:

While delving into the heart of any organization, the structural pre-requisites which form the framework of its system, allures and sometimes invokes great interest. In an attempt to understand the ecosystem of Knowledge that existed in organizations with diverse ownership and legal blueprints, Cooperative Societies, which form a crucial part of the neo-liberal movement in India, was studied. The exploration surprisingly led to the re-designing of at least a set of premises of the researcher on the drivers of engagement in an otherwise structured trade environment. The liberal organizational structure of Cooperative Societies has been empowered with certain terminologies: Voluntary, Democratic, Equality and Distributive Justice. To condense in Hubert Calvert’ words, ‘Co-operation is a form of organization wherein persons voluntarily associated together as human beings on the basis of equality for the promotion of the economic interest of themselves.’ In India, largely the institutions which work under this principle is registered under Cooperative Societies Act of the Central or State laws. A Worker Cooperative Society which originated as a movement in the state of Kerala and spread its wings across the country - Indian Coffee House was chosen as the enterprise for further inquiry for it being a living example and a highly successful working model in the designated space. The exploratory study reached out to employees and key stakeholders of Indian Coffee House to understand the nuances of the structure and the scope it provides for engagement. The key questions which formed shape in the mind of researcher while engaging in the inquiry were: How has the organization sustained despite its principle of accepting employees with no skills into employment and later training and empowering them? How can a system which has pre-independence and post-independence (independence here means the colonial independence from Great Britain) existence seek to engage employees within the premise of equality? How was the value of socialism ingrained in a commercial enterprise which has a turnover of several hundreds of Crores each year? How did the vision of a flat structure, way back in the 1940’s find its way into the organizational structure and has continued to remain as the way of life? These questions were addressed by the Case study research that ensued and placing Knowledge as the key premise, the possibilities of engagement of the organization man was pictured. Understanding that although the macro or holistic unit of analysis is the organization, it is pivotal to understand the structures and processes which best reflect on the actors. The embedded design which was adopted in this study delivered insights from the different stakeholder actors from diverse departments. While moving through variables which define and sometimes defy bounds in rationality, the study brought to light the inherent features of the organization structure and how it influences the actors who form a crucial part of the scheme of things. The research brought forth the key enablers for engagement and specifically explored the standpoint of knowledge in the larger structure of the Cooperative Society.

Keywords: knowledge, organizational structure, engagement, worker cooperative

Procedia PDF Downloads 219

Authors: Gurli Olsen, Ida Bruheim Jensen

Abstract:

Internationally, many young adults not in education, employment, or training (NEET) remain in temporary solutions such as labour market measures or other forms of welfare arrangements. These trends have been associated with ineffective labour market measures, an underfunded theoretical foundation for activation work, limited competence among social workers and labour market employees in using ordinary workplaces as job inclusion measures, and an overemphasis on young adults’ personal limitations such as health challenges and lack of motivation. Two competing models have been prominent in activation work: Place‐Then‐Train and Train‐Then‐Place. A traditional strategy for labour market measures has been to first motivate NEETs to sheltered work and training and then to the regular labour market (train then place). Measures such as Supported Employment (SE) and Individual Placement and Support (IPS) advocate for rapid entry into paid work at the regular labour market with close supervision and training from social workers, employees, and others (place then train). None of these models demonstrate unquestionable results. In this web of working life measures, young adults (NEETs) experience a lack of confidence in their own capabilities and coping strategies vis-á-vis labour market- and educational demands. Drawing on young adults’ own experiences, we argue that the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Theory can contribute to the theoretical and practical dimensions of activation work. This presentation will focus on what the JD-R theory entails and how it can be fruitful in activation work with NEETs (what and how). The overarching rationale of the JD-R theory is that an enduring balance between demands (e.g., deadlines, working hours) and resources (e.g., social support, enjoyable work tasks) is important for job performance for people in any job and potentially in other meaningful activities. Extensive research has demonstrated that a balance between demands and resources increases motivation and decreases stress. Nevertheless, we have not identified literature on the JD-R theory in activation work with young adults.

Keywords: activation work, job demands-resources theory, social work, theory development

Procedia PDF Downloads 59

Authors: Ankit Kamboj, Shikha Talwar, Nilesh Powar

Abstract:

To successfully deliver our products in the market, the employees need to be in a safe environment, especially in an industrial and manufacturing environment. The consequences of delinquency in wearing safety glasses while working in industrial plants could be high risk to employees, hence the need to develop a real-time automatic detection system which detects the persons (violators) not wearing safety glasses. In this study a convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithm called faster region based CNN (Faster RCNN) with rotated bounding box has been used for detecting safety glasses on persons; the algorithm has an advantage of detecting safety glasses with different orientation angles on the persons. The proposed method of rotational bounding boxes with a convolutional neural network first detects a person from the images, and then the method detects whether the person is wearing safety glasses or not. The video data is captured at the entrance of restricted zones of the industrial environment (manufacturing plant), which is further converted into images at 2 frames per second. In the first step, the CNN with pre-trained weights on COCO dataset is used for person detection where the detections are cropped as images. Then the safety goggles are labelled on the cropped images using the image labelling tool called roLabelImg, which is used to annotate the ground truth values of rotated objects more accurately, and the annotations obtained are further modified to depict four coordinates of the rectangular bounding box. Next, the faster RCNN with rotated bounding box is used to detect safety goggles, which is then compared with traditional bounding box faster RCNN in terms of detection accuracy (average precision), which shows the effectiveness of the proposed method for detection of rotatory objects. The deep learning benchmarking is done on a Dell workstation with a 16GB Nvidia GPU.

Keywords: CNN, deep learning, faster RCNN, roLabelImg rotated bounding box, safety goggle detection

Procedia PDF Downloads 116

Authors: Riktesh Srivastava

Abstract:

Online Shopping have established an astonishing evolution in the last few years. And it is now apparent that B2C architecture is becoming progressively imperative channel for even traditional brick and mortar type traders as well. In this completion knowing customers and predicting behavior are extremely important. More important, when any customer logs onto the B2C architecture, the traces of their buying patterns can be stored and used for future predictions. Such a prediction is called Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Earlier, we used Net Present Value to do so, however, it ignores two important aspects of B2C architecture, “market risks” and “big amount of customer data”. Now, we use RFM- Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value to estimate the CLV, and as the term exemplifies, market risks, is well sheltered. Big Data Analysis is also roofed in RFM, which gives real exploration of the Big Data and lead to a better estimation for future cash flow from customers. In the present paper, 6 factors (collected from varied sources) are used to determine as to what attracts the customers to the B2C architecture. For these 6 factors, RFM is computed for 3 years (2013, 2014 and 2015) respectively. CLV and Revenue are the two parameters defined using RFM analysis, which gives the clear picture of the future predictions.

Keywords: CLV, RFM, revenue, recency, frequency, monetary value

Procedia PDF Downloads 198

Authors: Diana Flores Galindo, Richard Gil Herrera

Abstract:

Nowadays, Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 are very important in every country. One of the main benefits is continued market presence. It has been identified that there is a need to change existing educational programs, as well as update the knowledge and skills of existing employees. It should be borne in mind that behind each technological improvement, there is a human being. Human talent cannot be neglected. The main objectives of this article are to review the link between Lean Manufacturing, the incorporation of Industry 4.0 and the steps to follow to implement it; analyze the current situation and study the implications and benefits of this new trend, with a particular focus on Mexico. Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 implementation waves must always take care of the most important capital – intellectual capital. The methodology used in this article comprised the following steps: reviewing the reality of the fourth industrial revolution, reviewing employees’ skills on the journey to become world-class, and analyzing the situation in Mexico. Lean Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 were studied not as exclusive concepts, but as complementary ones. The methodological framework used is focused on motivating companies’ collaborators to guarantee common results, innovate, and remain in the market in the face of new requirements from company stakeholders. The key findings were that both trends emphasize the need to improve communication across the entire company and incorporate new technologies into everyday work, from the shop floor to administrative staff, to help improve processes. Taking care of people, activities and processes will bring a company success. In the specific case of Mexico, companies in all sectors need to be aware of and implement technological improvements according to their specific needs. Low-cost labor represents one of the most typical barriers. In conclusion, companies must build a roadmap according to their strategy and needs to achieve their short, medium- and long-term goals.

Keywords: lean management, lean manufacturing, industry 4.0, motivation, SWOT analysis, Hoshin Kanri

Procedia PDF Downloads 126

Authors: Tseng-Lung Huang

Abstract:

Sensory breadth experiences, such as visualization, a sense of self-location, and haptic experiences, are critical in an online try-on environment. This research adopts an emotional appeal perspective, including concrete and abstract effects, to clarify the relationship between sensory experience and consumer's behavior intention in an online try-on context. This study employed an augmented reality interactive technology (ARIT) in an online clothes-fitting context and applied snowball sampling using e-mail to invite online consumers, first to use ARIT for trying on online apparel and then to complete a questionnaire. One hundred sixty-eight valid questionnaires were collected, and partial least squares (PLS) path modeling was used to test our hypotheses. The results showed that sensory breadth, by arousing concrete effect, induces impulse buying intention and willingness to pay a price premium of online shopping. Parasocial presence, as an abstract effect, diminishes the effect of concrete effects on willingness to pay a price premium.

Keywords: sensory breadth, impulsive behavior, price premium, emotional appeal, online try-on context

Procedia PDF Downloads 531

Authors: Panagodage Janaka Sampath Fernando

Abstract:

Brain circulation has become a buzzword in the skilled migration literature. However, promoting brain circulation; returning of skilled migrants is challenging. Success stories in Asia, for instances, Taiwan, and China, are results of rigorous policy interventions of the respective governments. Nonetheless, the same policy mix has failed in other countries making it skeptical to attribute the success of brain circulation to the policy interventions per se. The paper seeks to answer whether the success of brain circulation within the Knowledge Services Industry (KSI) in Sri Lanka is a policy driven or a market driven process. Mixed method approach, which is a combination of case study and survey methods, was employed. Qualitative data derived from ten case studies of returned entrepreneurs whereas quantitative data generated from a self-administered survey of 205 returned skilled migrants (returned skilled employees and entrepreneurs) within KSI. The pull factors have driven the current flow of brain circulation within KSI but to a lesser extent, push factors also have influenced. The founding stone of the industry has been laid by a group of returned entrepreneurs, and the subsequent growth of the industry has attracted returning skilled employees. Sri Lankan government has not actively implemented the reverse brain drain model, however, has played a passive role by creating a peaceful and healthy environment for the industry. Therefore, in contrast to the other stories, brain circulation within KSI has emerged as a market driven process with minimal government interventions. Entrepreneurs play the main role in a market-driven process of brain circulation, and it is free from the inherent limitations of the reverse brain drain model such as discriminating non-migrants and generating a sudden flow of low-skilled migrants. Thus, to experience a successful brain circulation, developing countries should promote returned entrepreneurs by creating opportunities in knowledge-based industries.

Keywords: brain circulation, knowledge services industry, return migration, Sri Lanka

Procedia PDF Downloads 256

Authors: Mostafa Ahmed Shokshok

Abstract:

Libyan industrial companies face many challenges in today's competitive market. Quality management culture approaches is one of these challenges which may furnish the road to the Libyan industrial companies to effectively empower their employees and improve their ability to respond to the international competition. The primary objective of this paper is to design a practical approach to guide Libyan industrial companies toward successful quality culture implementation.

Keywords: TQM, quality culture, Libyan manufacturing industries, quality framework

Procedia PDF Downloads 396

Authors: K. H. Yang, T. C. Yeh, P. S. Lu, F. C. Yang, T. Y. Wu, W. J. Sung

Abstract:

In this study, a series of full-scale hot smoke tests has been conducted to validate the performances of the smoke management system in the WWY center for arts before grand opening. Totaled 19 scenarios has been established and experimented with fire sizes ranging from 2 MW to 10 MW. The measured ASET data provided by the smoke management system experimentation were compared with the computer-simulated RSET values for egress during the design phase. The experimental result indicated that this system could successfully provide a safety margin of 200% and ensure a safe evacuation in case of fire in the WWY project, including worst-cases and fail-safe scenarios. The methodology developed and results obtained in this project can provide a useful reference for future applications, such as for the large-scale indoor sports dome and arena, stadium, shopping malls, airport terminals, and stations or tunnels for railway and subway systems.

Keywords: building hot smoke tests, performance-based smoke management system designs, full-scale experimental validation, tenable condition criteria

Procedia PDF Downloads 425

Authors: Greeshma Sharma, Sushil Chandra, Vijander Singh, Alok Prakash Mittal

Abstract:

Navigational ability requires spatial representation, planning, and memory. It covers three interdependent domains, i.e. cognitive and perceptual factors, neural information processing, and variability in brain microstructure. Many attempts have been made to see the role of spatial representation in the navigational ability, and the individual differences have been identified in the neural substrate. But, there is also a need to address the influence of planning, memory on navigational ability. The present study aims to evaluate relations of aforementioned factors in the navigational ability. Total 30 participants volunteered in the study of a virtual shopping complex and subsequently were classified into good and bad navigators based on their performances. The result showed that planning ability was the most correlated factor for the navigational ability and also the discriminating factor between the good and bad navigators. There was also found the correlations between spatial memory recall and navigational ability. However, non-verbal episodic memory and spatial memory recall were also found to be correlated with the learning variable. This study attempts to identify differences between people with more and less navigational ability on the basis of planning and memory.

Keywords: memory, planning navigational ability, virtual reality

Procedia PDF Downloads 309

Authors: Xizhen Zhou, Yanjie Ji

Abstract:

The charging behavior of drivers provides a reference for the planning and management of charging facilities. Based on the real trajectory data of electric vehicles, this study explored the influence of the surrounding environments of the parking spot on charging decisions. The built environment, the condition of vehicles, and the nearest charging station were all considered. And the mixed binary logit model was used to capture the impact of unobserved heterogeneity. The results show that the number of fast chargers in the charging station, parking price, dwell time, and shopping services all significantly impact the charging decision, while the leisure services, scenic spots, and mileage since the last charging are opposite. Besides, factors related to unobserved heterogeneity include the number of fast chargers, parking and charging prices, residential areas, etc. The interaction effects of random parameters further illustrate the complexity of charging choice behavior. The results provide insights for planning and managing charging facilities.

Keywords: charging decision, trajectory, electric vehicle, infrastructure, mixed logit

Procedia PDF Downloads 55

Authors: Jungyeol Hong, Dongjoo Park

Abstract:

The primary purpose of this study is to develop a methodological framework to predict daily subway ridership at a station-level and to examine the association between subway ridership and bus demand incorporating commercial business facility in the vicinity of each subway station. The socio-economic characteristics, land-use, and built environment as factors may have an impact on subway ridership. However, it should be considered not only the endogenous relationship between bus and subway demand but also the characteristics of commercial business within a subway station’s sphere of influence, and integrated transit network topology. Regarding a statistical approach to estimate subway ridership at a station level, therefore it should be considered endogeneity and heteroscedastic issues which might have in the subway ridership prediction model. This study focused on both discovering the impacts of bus demand, commercial business characteristics, and network topology on subway ridership and developing more precise subway ridership estimation accounting for its statistical bias. The spatial scope of the study covers entire Seoul city in South Korea and includes 243 stations with the temporal scope set at twenty-four hours with one-hour interval time panels each. The data for subway and bus ridership was collected Seoul Smart Card data from 2015 and 2016. Three-Stage Least Square(3SLS) approach was applied to develop daily subway ridership model as capturing the endogeneity and heteroscedasticity between bus and subway demand. Independent variables incorporating in the modeling process were commercial business characteristics, social-economic characteristics, safety index, transit facility attributes, and dummies for seasons and time zone. As a result, it was found that bus ridership and subway ridership were endogenous each other and they had a significantly positive sign of coefficients which means one transit mode could increase another transportation mode’s ridership. In other words, two transit modes of subway and bus have a mutual relationship instead of the competitive relationship. The commercial business characteristics are the most critical dimension among the independent variables. The variables of commercial business facility rate in the paper containing six types; medical, educational, recreational, financial, food service, and shopping. From the model result, a higher rate in medical, financial buildings, shopping, and food service facility lead to increment of subway ridership at a station, while recreational and educational facility shows lower subway ridership. The complex network theory was applied for estimating integrated network topology measures that cover the entire Seoul transit network system, and a framework for seeking an impact on subway ridership. The centrality measures were found to be significant and showed a positive sign indicating higher centrality led to more subway ridership at a station level. The results of model accuracy tests by out of samples provided that 3SLS model has less mean square error rather than OLS and showed the methodological approach for the 3SLS model was plausible to estimate more accurate subway ridership. Acknowledgement: This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2017R1C1B2010175).

Keywords: subway ridership, bus ridership, commercial business characteristic, endogeneity, network topology

Procedia PDF Downloads 125

Authors: Mohammed Al-Yamani, Yaser Miaji

Abstract:

DHL Customer Solutions and Innovation Department (CSI) have been experiencing difficulties while comparing quotes for different customers in different years. Currently, the employees are processing data by opening several loaded Excel files where the quotes are and manually copying values to another Excel Workbook where the comparison is made. This project consists of developing a new and effective database for DHL CSI department so that information is stored altogether on the same catalog. That being said, we have been assigned to find an efficient algorithm that can deal with the different formats of the Excel Workbooks to copy and store the express customer rates for core products (DOX, WPX, IMP) for comparisons purposes.

Keywords: DHL, solution design, ORACLE, EXCEL

Procedia PDF Downloads 390

Authors: Kazuko Sakamoto

Abstract:

Anthropomorphic agents have been successful in areas where there are many human interactions, such as education and medical care. The persuasive effect is also expected in e-shopping sites on the web. This indicates that customer service is not necessarily human but can play that role. However, the 'humanity' in anthropomorphism sometimes has a risk of working negatively. In general, as the appearance of anthropomorphic agents approaches humans, it is thought that their affinity with humans increases. However, when the degree of similarity reaches a certain level, it gives the user a weird feeling. This is the 'eerie valley' phenomenon. This is a concept used in the world of robotics, but it seems to be applicable to anthropomorphic agents such as characters. Then what kind of design can you accept as an anthropomorphic agent that gives you a feeling of friendliness or good feeling without causing discomfort or fear to people? This study focused on this point and examined what design and characteristics would be effective for marketing communication. As a result of the investigation, it was found that there is no need for gaze and blinking, the size of the eyes is normal or large, and the impression evaluation is higher when the structure is as simple as possible. Conversely, agents with high eye-gaze and white-eye ratios had low evaluations, and the negative impact on eye-gaze was particularly large.

Keywords: anthropomorphicgents, design evaluation, marketing communication, customer service

Procedia PDF Downloads 91

Authors: Richard Mababu Mukiur

Abstract:

Leadership is an important drive that plays a key role in the success and development of organizations, particularly in the current context of digital transformation, highly competitivity and globalization. Leaders are persons that hold a dominant and privileged position within an organization, field, or sector of activities and are able to manage, motivate and exercise a high degree of influence over other in order to achieve the institutional goals. They achieve commitment and engagement of others to embrace change, and to make good decisions. Leadership studies in higher education institutions have examined how effective leaders hold their organizations, and also to find approaches which fit best in the organizations context for its better management, transformation and improvement. Moreover, recent studies have highlighted the impact of leadership styles on organizational performance and innovation capacities, since some styles give better results than others. Effective leadership is part of learning process that take place through day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and experiences that influence the organizational performance, innovation and engagement of employees. The adoption of appropriate leadership styles can improve organization results and encourage learning process, team skills and performance, and employees' motivation and engagement. In the case of case of Information Technology sector, leadership styles are particularly crucial since this sector is leading relevant changes and transformations in the knowledge society. In this context, the main objective of this study is to analyze managers leadership styles with their relation to organizational performance and innovation that may be mediated by learning organization process and demographic variables. Therefore, it was hypothesized that the transformational and transactional leadership will be the main style adopted in Information Technology sector and will influence organizational performance and innovation capacity. A sample of 540 participants from Information technology sector has been determined in order to achieve the objective of this study. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was administered as the principal instrument, Scale of innovation and Learning Organization Questionnaire. Correlations and multiple regression analysis have been used as the main techniques of data analysis. The findings indicate that leadership styles have a relevant impact on organizational performance and innovation capacity. The transformational and transactional leadership are predominant styles in Information technology sector. The effective leadership style tend to be characterized by the capacity of generating and sharing knowledge that improve organization performance and innovation capacity. Managers are adopting and adapting their leadership styles that respond to the new organizational, social and cultural challenges and realities of contemporary society. Managers who encourage innovation, foster learning process, share experience are useful to the organization since they contribute to its development and transformation. Learning process capacity and demographic variables (age, gender, and job tenure) mediate the relationship between leadership styles, innovation capacity and organizational performance. The transformational and transactional leadership tend to enhance the organizational performance due to their significant impact on team-building, employees' engagement and satisfaction. Some practical implications and future lines of research have been proposed.

Keywords: leadership styles, tranformational leadership, organisational performance, organisational innovation

Procedia PDF Downloads 196

Authors: Kamal Amarouche, Houda Benbrahim, Ismail Kassou

Abstract:

Nowadays, e-commerce shopping websites have experienced noticeable growth. These websites have gained consumers’ trust. After purchasing a product, many consumers share comments where opinions are usually embedded about the given product. Research on the automatic management of opinions that gives suggestions to potential consumers and portrays an image of the product to manufactures has been growing recently. After launching the product in the market, the reviews generated around it do not usually contain helpful information or generic opinions about this product (e.g. telephone: great phone...); in the sense that the product is still in the launching phase in the market. Within time, the product becomes old. Therefore, consumers perceive the advantages/ disadvantages about each specific product feature. Therefore, they will generate comments that contain their sentiments about these features. In this paper, we present an unsupervised method to extract different product features hidden in the opinions which influence its purchase, and that combines Time Weighting (TW) which depends on the time opinions were expressed with Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF). We conduct several experiments using two different datasets about cell phones and hotels. The results show the effectiveness of our automatic feature extraction, as well as its domain independent characteristic.

Keywords: opinion mining, product feature extraction, sentiment analysis, SentiWordNet

Procedia PDF Downloads 378

Authors: J. A. López, J. E. Olguín, C. W. Camargo, G. A. Quijano, R. Martínez

Abstract:

This paper presents an anthropometric study conducted to 300 employees in a maquiladora industry that belongs to the cluster of medical products as part of a research project to pretend simulate workplace conditions under which operators conduct their activities. This project is relevant because traditionally performed a study to design ergonomic workspaces according to anthropometric profile of users, however, this paper demonstrates the importance of making decisions when the infrastructure cannot be adapted for economic whichever put emphasis on user activity.

Keywords: anthropometry, biomechanics, design, ergonomics, productivity

Procedia PDF Downloads 436

Authors: Ruben Peralta, Sam Thomas, Nazia Hirani, Ayman El-Menyar, Hassan Al-Thani, Mohammed Al-Thani, Mohammed Al-Hajjaj, Rafael Consunji

Abstract:

Moderate to severe work-related injuries [WRI's] are a leading cause of trauma admission in Qatar but information on risk factors for their incidence are lacking. This study aims to document and analyze the predictive characteristics for WRI to inform the creation of targeted interventions to improve worker safety in Qatar. This study was conducted as part of the NPRP grant # 7 - 1120 - 3 - 288, titled "A Unified Registry for Occupational Injury Prevention in Qatar”. 266 workers were interviewed using a standard questionnaire, during ‘World Day for Safety and Health at Work’, a Ministry of Public Health event, none refused interview. Nurses and doctors from the Hamad Trauma Center conducted the interviews. Questions were translated into the worker’s native language when it was deemed necessary. Standard information on epidemiologic characteristics and incidence of work-related injury were collected and compared between nationalities and those injured versus those not injured. 262 males and 4 females were interviewed. 17 [6.4%] reported a WRI in the last 24 months. More than half of the injured worked in construction [59%] followed by water supply [11.8%]. Factors significantly associated with recent injury were: Working for a company with > 500 employees and speaking Hindi. Protective characteristics included: Being from the Philippines or Sri Lanka, speaking Arabic, working in healthcare, an office or trading and company size between 100-500 employees. Years of schooling and working in Qatar were not predictive factor for WRI. The findings from this survey should guide future research that will better define worker populations at an increased risk for WRI and inform recruiters and sending countries. A focus on worker language skills, interventions in the construction industry and occupational safety in large companies is needed.

Keywords: occupational injury, prevention, safety, trauma, work related injury

Procedia PDF Downloads 307

Authors: Fawad Azeem

Abstract:

This paper deals with the comparative analysis of Karachi Electric before and after privatization. Technical as well as financial analysis has been done based on the available KE’s stats for last decade. Karachi Electric has evolved as a better entity in terms of its financial and technical achievements. On the other hand, human resources have been seriously affected due to mass firing of employees from the organizations. Study and analysis show that transparent and unbiased privatization practices on institutions like KE that were in serious trouble can upsurge the standards of the institution. Further, for the betterment of the social circle privatization must not affect the employment opportunities.

Keywords: Karachi Electric, power, energy, privatization

Procedia PDF Downloads 334

Authors: A. Giannakopoulos, S. B. Buckley

Abstract:

Problem solving in any field is recognised as a prerequisite for any advancement in knowledge. For example in South Africa it is one of the seven critical outcomes of education together with critical thinking. As a systematic way to problem solving was initiated in mathematics by the great mathematician George Polya (the father of problem solving), more detailed and comprehensive ways in problem solving have been developed. This paper is based on the findings by the author and subsequent recommendations for further research in problem solving and critical thinking. Although the study was done in mathematics, there is no doubt by now in almost anyone’s mind that mathematics is involved to a greater or a lesser extent in all fields, from symbols, to variables, to equations, to logic, to critical thinking. Therefore it stands to reason that mathematical principles and learning cannot be divorced from any field. In management of knowledge situations, the types of problems are similar to mathematics problems varying from simple to analogical to complex; from well-structured to ill-structured problems. While simple problems could be solved by employees by adhering to prescribed sequential steps (the process), analogical and complex problems cannot be proceduralised and that diminishes the capacity of the organisation of knowledge creation and innovation. The low efficiency in some organisations and the low pass rates in mathematics prompted the author to view problem solving as a product. The authors argue that using mathematical approaches to knowledge management problem solving and treating problem solving as a product will empower the employee through further training to tackle analogical and complex problems. The question the authors asked was: If it is true that problem solving and critical thinking are indeed basic skills necessary for advancement of knowledge why is there so little literature of knowledge management (KM) about them and how they are connected and advance KM?This paper concludes with a conceptual model which is based on general accepted principles of knowledge acquisition (developing a learning organisation), knowledge creation, sharing, disseminating and storing thereof, the five pillars of knowledge management (KM). This model, also expands on Gray’s framework on KM practices and problem solving and opens the doors to a new approach to training employees in general and domain specific areas problems which can be adapted in any type of organisation.

Keywords: critical thinking, knowledge management, mathematics, problem solving

Procedia PDF Downloads 575

Authors: Fan Wei, Tang Yipeng

Abstract:

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 has been raging around the world, which has severely affected people's work and life. In today's post-pandemic era, although the pandemic has been effectively controlled, people still need to maintain social distancing at all times to prevent the further spread of the virus. Based on this, social distancing in the context of the pandemic has aroused widespread attention from scholars. At present, most studies exploring the influencing factors of social distancing are studying the negative impact of social distancing on the physical and mental state of special groups from the inter-individual level, and their more focus on the forced complete social distancing during the severe period of the pandemic. Few studies have focused on the impact of social distancing on working groups in the post-pandemic era from the within-individual level. In order to explore this problem, this paper constructs a cross-level moderating model based on resource conservation theory from the perspective of psychological resources. A total of 81 subjects were recruited to fill in the three-stage questionnaires each day for 10 working days, and 661valid questionnaires were finally obtained. Through the empirical tests, the following conclusions were finally obtained: (1) At the within-individual level, daily social distancing is positively correlated with the second day’s recovery, and the individual’s low sociability regulates the relationship between social distancing and recovery. The indirect effect of daily social distancing through recovery has positive relationship employees’ work engagement and work-goal progress only when the individual has low sociability. For individuals with high sociability, none of these paths are significant. (2) At the within-individual level, there is a significant relationship between individual's recovery and work engagement and work-goal progress, indicating that the recovery of resources can produce positive work outcomes. According to the results, this study believes that in the post-pandemic era, social distancing can not only effectively prevent and control the pandemic but also have positive impacts. Employees can use the time and energy originally saved for social activities through social distancing to invest in things that can provide resources and help them recover.

Keywords: social distancing, recovery, work engagement, work goal progress, sociability

Procedia PDF Downloads 110

Authors: Omar Bataineh

Abstract:

Total productive maintenance (TPM) is a principle-based method that aims to get a high-level production with no breakdowns, no slow running and no defects. Key principles of TPM were applied in this work to improve the performance of the glass production line at United Beverage Company in Kuwait, which is producing bottles of soft drinks. Principles such as 5S as a foundation for TPM implementation, developing a program for equipment management, Cause and Effect Analysis (CEA), quality improvement, training and education of employees were employed. After the completion of TPM implementation, it was possible to increase the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) from 23% to 40%.

Keywords: OEE, TPM, FMEA, CEA

Procedia PDF Downloads 315

Authors: Abhinav Singh

Abstract:

Point Of Sale (POS) malwares have been stealing the limelight this year. They have been the elemental factor in some of the biggest breaches uncovered in past couple of years. Some of them include • Target: A Retail Giant reported close to 40 million credit card data being stolen • Home Depot : A home product Retailer reported breach of close to 50 million credit records • Kmart: A US retailer recently announced breach of 800 thousand credit card details. Alone in 2014, there have been reports of over 15 major breaches of payment systems around the globe. Memory scrapping malwares infecting the point of sale devices have been the lethal weapon used in these attacks. These malwares are capable of reading the payment information from the payment device memory before they are being encrypted. Later on these malwares send the stolen details to its parent server. These malwares are capable of recording all the critical payment information like the card number, security number, owner etc. All these information are delivered in raw format. This Talk will cover the aspects of what happens after these details have been sent to the malware authors. The entire ecosystem of credit card frauds can be broadly classified into these three steps: • Purchase of raw details and dumps • Converting them to plastic cash/cards • Shop! Shop! Shop! The focus of this talk will be on the above mentioned points and how they form an organized network of cyber-crime. The first step involves buying and selling of the stolen details. The key point to emphasize are : • How is this raw information been sold in the underground market • The buyer and seller anatomy • Building your shopping cart and preferences • The importance of reputation and vouches • Customer support and replace/refunds These are some of the key points that will be discussed. But the story doesn’t end here. As of now the buyer only has the raw card information. How will this raw information be converted to plastic cash? Now comes in picture the second part of this underground economy where-in these raw details are converted into actual cards. There are well organized services running underground that can help you in converting these details into plastic cards. We will discuss about this technique in detail. At last, the final step involves shopping with the stolen cards. The cards generated with the stolen details can be easily used to swipe-and-pay for purchased goods at different retail shops. Usually these purchases are of expensive items that have good resale value. Apart from using the cards at stores, there are underground services that lets you deliver online orders to their dummy addresses. Once the package is received it will be delivered to the original buyer. These services charge based on the value of item that is being delivered. The overall underground ecosystem of credit card fraud works in a bulletproof way and it involves people working in close groups and making heavy profits. This is a brief summary of what I plan to present at the talk. I have done an extensive research and have collected good deal of material to present as samples. Some of them include: • List of underground forums • Credit card dumps • IRC chats among these groups • Personal chat with big card sellers • Inside view of these forum owners. The talk will be concluded by throwing light on how these breaches are being tracked during investigation. How are credit card breaches tracked down and what steps can financial institutions can build an incidence response over it.

Keywords: POS mawalre, credit card frauds, enterprise security, underground ecosystem

Procedia PDF Downloads 417

Authors: Mohammad-Ali Latifi, Harry Bouwman

Abstract:

Changes in the business environment accelerated dramatically over the last decades as a result of changes in technology, regulation, market, and competitors’ behavior. Firms need to change the way they do business in order to survive or maintain their growth. Innovating business model (BM) can create competitive advantages and enhance firm performance. However, many companies fail to achieve expected outcomes in practice, mostly due to irreversible fundamental changes in key components of the company’s BM. This leads to more ambiguity, uncertainty, and risks associated with business performance. However, the relationship among BM Innovation, moderating factors, and the firm’s overall performance is by and large ignored in the current literature. In this study, we identified twenty moderating factors from our comprehensive literature review. We categorized these factors based on two criteria regarding the extent to which: the moderating factors can be controlled and managed by firms, and they are generic or specific changes to the firms. This leads to four moderation groups. The first group is BM implementation, which includes management support, employees’ commitment, employees’ skills, communication, detailed plan. The second group is called BM practices, which consists of BM tooling, BM experimentation, the scope of change, speed of change, degree of novelty. The third group is Firm characteristics, including firm size, age, and ownership. The last group is called Industry characteristics, which considers the industry sector, competitive intensity, industry life cycle, environmental dynamism, high-tech vs. low-tech industry. Through collecting data from 508 European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and using the structural equation modeling technique, the developed moderation model was examined. Results revealed that all factors highlighted through these four groups moderate the relation between BMI and firm performance significantly. Particularly, factors related to BM-Implementation and BM-Practices are more manageable and would potentially improve firm overall performance. We believe that this result is more important for researchers and practitioners since the possibility of working on factors in Firm characteristics and Industry characteristics groups are limited, and the firm can hardly control and manage them to improve the performance of BMI efforts.

Keywords: business model innovation, firm performance, implementation, moderation

Procedia PDF Downloads 103

Authors: Bahar Urhan Torun, Havva Nur Tarakcı

Abstract:

At the present time, online marketing has become the common target of small and full-scale organizations. Today’s humanbeing who has to spend most of their time in front of the computer because of his job, prefers to socialize by internet due to the easy access to technology. So online marketing area expands day by day. All business organizations from the smallest to the biggest are in a race in order to get a cut from the virtual market share in an extreme competitive environment. However these organizations which use the internet to reach more consumers cannot determine their target group accurately, so this is the biggest handicap of online marketing sales nowadays. The aim of this study is to determine some significant elements about need for communicating efficiently with the consumer on the internet on online marketing. The strategies that can be used in order to increase sales and the limitations of virtual environment where cannot be communicated with the consumer face to face are argued in this study’s scope. As a consequence it is thought that to study on this subject because of lacking and also being limited efficiency of researches and outputs. Within this scope suggesting some proposals about how to communicate efficiently with the consumer and also offering the consumers’ demands efficiently is the essential objective of this study.

Keywords: online marketing, competition, consumer, communication

Procedia PDF Downloads 245

Authors: M. Afshin, A. Sohankar, M. Dehghan Manshadi, M. R. Daneshgar, G. R. Dehghan Kamaragi

Abstract:

In this paper, the influence of an upstream structure on the flow pattern within and around the wind-catcher is experimentally investigated by smoke flow visualization techniques. Wind-catchers are an important part of natural ventilation in residential buildings or public places such as shopping centers, libraries, etc. Wind-catchers might be also used in places of high urban densities; hence their potential to provide natural ventilation in this case is dependent on the presence of upstream objects. In this study, the two-sided wind-catcher model was based on a real wind-catcher observed in the city of Yazd, Iran. The present study focuses on the flow patterns inside and outside the isolated two-sided wind-catcher, and on a two-sided wind-catcher in the presence of an upstream structure. The results show that the presence of an upstream structure influences the airflow pattern force and direction. Placing a high upstream object reverses the airflow direction inside the wind-catcher.

Keywords: natural ventilation, smoke flow visualization, two-sided wind-catcher, flow patterns

Procedia PDF Downloads 547

Authors: J. A. López, J. E. Olguín, C. W. Camargo, G. A. Quijano, R. Martínez

Abstract:

This paper presents an anthropometric study conducted to 300 employees in a maquiladora industry that belongs to the cluster of medical products as part of a research project to pretend simulate workplace conditions under which operators conduct their activities. This project is relevant because traditionally performed a study to design ergonomic workspaces according to anthropometric profile of users, however, this paper demonstrates the importance of making decisions when the infrastructure cannot be adapted for economic whichever put emphasis on user activity.

Keywords: anthropometry, biomechanics, design, ergonomics, productivity

Procedia PDF Downloads 440