Search results for: humanizing financial services

Authors: Yusarina Mat-Isa, Zuraidah Mohd-Sanusi, Mohd-Nizal Haniff, Paul A. Barnes

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In view that money laundering has become eminent for banking institutions, it is an obligation for the banking institutions to adopt a risk-based approach as the integral component of the accepted policies on anti-money laundering. In doing so, those involved with the banking operations are the most critical group of personnel as these are the people who deal with the day-to-day operations of the banking institutions and are obligated to form a judgement on the level of impending risk. This requirement is extended to all relevant banking institutions staff, such as tellers and customer account representatives for them to identify suspicious customers and escalate it to the relevant authorities. Banking institutions staffs, however, face enormous challenges in identifying and distinguishing money launderers from other legitimate customers seeking genuine banking transactions. Banking institutions staffs are mostly educated and trained with the business objective in mind to serve the customers and are not trained to be “detectives with a detective’s power of observation”. Despite increasing awareness as well as trainings conducted for the banking institutions staff, their competency in assessing money laundering risk is still insufficient. Several gaps have prompted this study including the lack of behavioural perspectives in the assessment of money laundering risk in the banking institutions. Utilizing experimental approach, respondents are randomly assigned within a controlled setting with manipulated situations upon which judgement of the respondents is solicited based on various observations related to the situations. The study suggests that it is imperative that informed judgement is exercised in arriving at the decision to proceed with the banking services required by the customers. Judgement forms a basis of opinion for the banking institution staff to decide if the customers posed money laundering risk. Failure to exercise good judgement could results in losses and absorption of unnecessary risk into the banking institutions. Although the banking institutions are exposed with choices of automated solutions in assessing money laundering risk, the human factor in assessing the risk is indispensable. Individual staff in the banking institutions is the first line of defence who are responsible for screening the impending risk of any customer soliciting for banking services. At the end of the spectrum, the individual role involvement on the subject of money laundering risk assessment is not a substitute for automated solutions as human judgement is inimitable.

Keywords: banking institutions, experimental approach, money laundering, risk assessment

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Authors: Hatim Elhag

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Banking and Financial Service Institutions are possibly the most advanced in terms of technology adoption and use it as a key differentiator. With high levels of business process automation, maturity in the functional portfolio, straight through processing and proven technology outsourcing benefits, Banking sector stand to benefit significantly from Cloud computing capabilities. Additionally, with complex Compliance and Regulatory policies, combined with expansive products and geography coverage, the business impact is even greater. While the benefits are exponential, there are also significant challenges in adopting this model– including Legal, Security, Performance, Reliability, Transformation complexity, Operating control and Governance and most importantly proof for the promised cost benefits. However, new architecture designed should be implemented to align this approach.

Keywords: security, cloud, banking sector, cloud computing

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Authors: Edwaldo R. B. Monteiro, Patricia D. M. Plentz, Edson R. De Pieri

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Mobile robotics is gaining an increasingly important role in modern society. Several potentially dangerous or laborious tasks for human are assigned to mobile robots, which are increasingly capable. Many of these tasks need to be performed within a specified period, i.e., meet a deadline. Missing the deadline can result in financial and/or material losses. Mechanisms for predicting the missing of deadlines are fundamental because corrective actions can be taken to avoid or minimize the losses resulting from missing the deadline. In this work we propose a simple but reliable deadline missing prediction mechanism for mobile robots through the use of historical data and we use the Pioneer 3-DX robot for experiments and simulations, one of the most popular robots in academia.

Keywords: deadline missing, historical data, mobile robots, prediction mechanism

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Authors: Thomas Slunecko Karat

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The years since 9/11 2001 have given us a plethora of research papers with the word ‘terrorism’ in the title. Yet only a small subset of these papers has produced new data, which explains why more than 20 years of research since 9/11 have done little to increase our understanding of the mechanisms that lead to terrorism. Specifically, terrorism scholars are divided by political, temporal, geographical and financial demarcation lines which prevent a clear definition of terrorism. As a consequence, the true root causes of terrorism remain unexamined. Instead, the psychopathological conditions of the individual have been emphasized despite ample empirical evidence pointing in a different direction. This paper examines the underlying reasons and motives that prevent open discourse about the root causes of terrorism and proposes that terrorism is linked to the current international system of resource allocation and systematic violations of human rights.

Keywords: terrorism, root causes of terrorism, prevention of terrorism, racism, human rights violations

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Authors: Paolino Di Felice

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The background and significance of this study come from papers already appeared in the literature which measured the impact of public services (e.g., hospitals, schools, ...) on the citizens’ needs satisfaction (one of the dimensions of QOL studies) by calculating the distance between the place where they live and the location on the territory of the services. Those studies assume that the citizens' dwelling coincides with the centroid of the polygon that expresses the boundary of the administrative district, within the city, they belong to. Such an assumption “introduces a maximum measurement error equal to the greatest distance between the centroid and the border of the administrative district.”. The case study, this abstract reports about, investigates the implications descending from the adoption of such an approach but at geographical scales greater than the urban one, namely at the three levels of nesting of the Italian administrative units: the (20) regions, the (110) provinces, and the 8,094 municipalities. To carry out this study, it needs to be decided: a) how to store the huge amount of (spatial and descriptive) input data and b) how to process them. The latter aspect involves: b.1) the design of algorithms to investigate the geometry of the boundary of the Italian administrative units; b.2) their coding in a programming language; b.3) their execution and, eventually, b.4) archiving the results in a permanent support. The IT solution we implemented is centered around a (PostgreSQL/PostGIS) Geo DataBase structured in terms of three tables that fit well to the hierarchy of nesting of the Italian administrative units: municipality(id, name, provinceId, istatCode, regionId, geometry) province(id, name, regionId, geometry) region(id, name, geometry). The adoption of the DBMS technology allows us to implement the steps "a)" and "b)" easily. In particular, step "b)" is simplified dramatically by calling spatial operators and spatial built-in User Defined Functions within SQL queries against the Geo DB. The major findings coming from our experiments can be summarized as follows. The approximation that, on the average, descends from assimilating the residence of the citizens with the centroid of the administrative unit of reference is of few kilometers (4.9) at the municipalities level, while it becomes conspicuous at the other two levels (28.9 and 36.1, respectively). Therefore, studies such as those mentioned above can be extended up to the municipal level without affecting the correctness of the interpretation of the results, but not further. The IT framework implemented to carry out the experiments can be replicated for studies referring to the territory of other countries all over the world.

Keywords: quality of life, distance measurement error, Italian administrative units, spatial database

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Authors: Mark Kwaku Mensah Obeng

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In the late 1990s and early 2000s, nationals of sub-Saharan Africa who had initially settled in the Middle East and other parts of south east Asia moved to Guangzhou in response to the 1997/8 Asian financial crisis in numbers never witnessed. They were later joined by many more as the Chinese economy improved and as the economic relationship between China and Africa improved. This paper tells the story of identifiable sets of Ghanaians in Guangzhou, China in the 21st century. It details out their respective characteristics and their activities in China, their migratory trajectories and the motivations for travelling to China. Also analyzed is how they are coping with life in the unknown destination. It finally attempt predicting the future of the Ghanaian community in China in terms of their level of community participation and integration.

Keywords: Africa in China, Ghana, motivation, Guangzhou

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Authors: Malcolm Abbott, Angela Tan-Kantoor

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The purpose of this paper is to look at the varieties of ways in which regulators have undertaken asset valuations in Australia of government business enterprises as part of utility regulation. Regulation of the monopoly elements, through use of a building block approach, led to a need to estimate regulated asset bases. This development has had an influence on the manner in which Australian companies (both government and privately owned ones) have valued assets for the purpose of financial reporting. As the regulators in Australia did not always use a consistent approach it had meant that a variety of ways have been used to value the assets of government owned enterprises, and meant a varied impact on asset valuation more generally.

Keywords: sset valuation, regulation, government business enterprises

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Authors: Laleh Taheri, Noraini C. Pa, Rusli Abdullah, Salfarina Abdullah

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Knowledge plays an important role to the success of any organization. Software development organizations are highly knowledge-intensive organizations especially in their Requirement Elicitation Process (REP). There are several problems regarding communicating and using the knowledge in REP such as misunderstanding, being out of scope, conflicting information and changes of requirements. All of these problems occurred in transmitting the requirements knowledge during REP. Several researches have been done in REP in order to solve the problem towards requirements. Knowledge Audit (KA) approaches were proposed in order to solve managing knowledge in human resources, financial, and manufacturing. There is lack of study applying the KA in requirements elicitation process. Therefore, this paper proposes a KA model for REP in supporting to acquire good requirements.

Keywords: knowledge audit, requirement elicitation process, KA model, knowledge in requirement elicitation

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Authors: Nadia Sghaier

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In this paper, we aim to identify the determinants of the life and non-life insurance premiums of different lines for the case of the Tunisian insurance market over a recent period from 1997 to 2019. The empirical analysis is conducted using the linear cointegration techniques in the panel data framework, which allow both long and short-run relationships. The obtained results show evidence of long-run relationship between premiums, losses, and financial variables (stock market indices and interest rate). Furthermore, we find that the short-run effect of explanatory variables differs across lines. This finding has important implications for insurance tarification and regulation.

Keywords: insurance premiums, lines, Tunisian insurance market, cointegration approach in panel data

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Authors: Mahnaz Khalafehnilsaz, Rozina Rahnama

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Introduction: The elderly population is growing rapidly, and with this growth comes an increased demand for healthcare services. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of healthcare services to the elderly population. In this study, the various ways in which AI is used to create health content for elderly people and its transformative impact on the healthcare industry will be explored. Method: A systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify studies that have investigated the role of AI in creating health content specifically for elderly people. Several databases, including PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, were searched for relevant articles published between 2000 and 2022. The search strategy employed a combination of keywords related to AI, personalized health content, and the elderly. Studies that utilized AI to create health content for elderly individuals were included, while those that did not meet the inclusion criteria were excluded. A total of 20 articles that met the inclusion criteria were identified. Finding: The findings of this review highlight the diverse applications of AI in creating health content for elderly people. One significant application is the use of natural language processing (NLP), which involves the creation of chatbots and virtual assistants capable of providing personalized health information and advice to elderly patients. AI is also utilized in the field of medical imaging, where algorithms analyze medical images such as X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs to detect diseases and abnormalities. Additionally, AI enables the development of personalized health content for elderly patients by analyzing large amounts of patient data to identify patterns and trends that can inform healthcare providers in developing tailored treatment plans. Conclusion: AI is transforming the healthcare industry by providing a wide range of applications that can improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. From creating chatbots and virtual assistants to analyzing medical images and developing personalized treatment plans, AI is revolutionizing the way healthcare is delivered to elderly patients. Continued investment in this field is essential to ensure that elderly patients receive the best possible care.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, health content, older adult, healthcare

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Authors: Abul Shamsuddin

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The Islamic stock market indices are constructed by screening out stocks that are incompatible with Islam’s prohibition of interest and certain lines of business. This study examines the effects of Islamic screening on the risk-return characteristics of Islamic vis-a-vis mainstream equity portfolios. We use data on Dow Jones Islamic market indices and FTSE Global Islamic indices over 1993-2013. We observe that Islamic equity indices outperform their mainstream counterparts in both raw and risk-adjusted returns. In addition, Islamic equity indices are more resilient to turbulence in international markets than that of their mainstream counterparts. The findings are robust across a variety of portfolio performance measures.

Keywords: Dow Jones Islamic market index, FTSE global Islamic index, ethical investment, finance

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Authors: Josué Alfredo Tomas Machaca Fajardo, Jhon Elvis Chahua Janampa, Pedro Rau Lavado

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A flood vulnerability index was developed for the Piura River watershed in northern Peru using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to assess flood risk. The official methodology to assess risk from natural hazards in Peru was introduced in 1980 and proved effective for aiding complex decision-making. This method relies in part on decision-makers defining subjective correlations between variables to identify high-risk areas. While risk identification and ensuing response activities benefit from a qualitative understanding of influences, this method does not take advantage of the advent of national and international data collection efforts, which can supplement our understanding of risk. Furthermore, this method does not take advantage of broadly applied statistical methods such as PCA, which highlight central indicators of vulnerability. Nowadays, information processing is much faster and allows for more objective decision-making tools, such as PCA. The approach presented here develops a tool to improve the current flood risk assessment in the Peruvian basin. Hence, the spatial analysis of the census and other datasets provides a better understanding of the current land occupation and a basin-wide distribution of services and human populations, a necessary step toward ultimately reducing flood risk in Peru. PCA allows the simplification of a large number of variables into a few factors regarding social, economic, physical and environmental dimensions of vulnerability. There is a correlation between the location of people and the water availability mainly found in rivers. For this reason, a comprehensive vision of the population location around the river basin is necessary to establish flood prevention policies. The grouping of 5x5 km gridded areas allows the spatial analysis of flood risk rather than assessing political divisions of the territory. The index was applied to the Peruvian region of Piura, where several flood events occurred in recent past years, being one of the most affected regions during the ENSO events in Peru. The analysis evidenced inequalities for the access to basic services, such as water, electricity, internet and sewage, between rural and urban areas.

Keywords: assess risk, flood risk, indicators of vulnerability, principal component analysis

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Authors: Katerina Kormusheva

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Pricing plays a pivotal role in the marketing discipline as it directly influences consumer perceptions, purchase decisions, and overall market positioning of a product or service. This paper seeks to expand current knowledge in the area of discriminatory and differential pricing, a main area of marketing research. The methodology includes developing a framework and a model for determining how many price points to implement in differential pricing. We focus on choosing the levels of differentiation, derive a function form of the model framework proposed, and lastly, test it empirically with data from a large-scale marketing pricing experiment of services in telecommunications.

Keywords: marketing, differential pricing, price points, optimization

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Authors: Mueller Jann, Hoffmann Christian Hugo

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Conventional quantitative risk management in banking is a risk factor of its own, because it rests on assumptions such as independence and availability of data which do not hold when rare events of extreme consequences are involved. There is a growing recognition of the need for alternative risk measures that do not make these assumptions. We propose a novel method for modeling the risk associated with investment products, in particular derivatives, by using a formal language for specifying financial contracts. Expressions in this language are interpreted in the category of values annotated with (a formal representation of) uncertainty. The choice of uncertainty formalism thus becomes a parameter of the model, so it can be adapted to the particular application and it is not constrained to classical probabilities. We demonstrate our approach using a simple logic-based uncertainty model and a case study in which we assess the risk of counter party default in a portfolio of collateralized loans.

Keywords: risk model, uncertainty monad, derivatives, contract algebra

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Authors: Fekri Shawtari

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The banking sector plays a very crucial role in the economic development of the country. As a financial intermediary, it has assigned a great role in the economic growth and stability. This paper aims to examine the empirically the relationship between banking industry and economic growth in state of Qatar. We adopt the VAR vector error correction model (VECM) along with Granger causality to address the issue over the long-run and short-run between the banking sector and economic growth. It is expected that the results will give policy directions to the policymakers to make strategies that are conducive toward boosting development to achieve the targeted economic growth in current situation.

Keywords: economic growth, banking sector, Qatar, vector error correction model, VECM

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Authors: Joana Beyer

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Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the predominant cause of dementia, characterized by progressive cognitive decline. Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a less common variant of AD, primarily affecting younger individuals and presenting with visual, visuospatial, and visuoperceptual deficits, often leading to delayed diagnosis due to its atypical presentation. Case Presentation: We report the case of a 58-year-old woman referred to psychiatric services with a two-year history of progressive visuospatial decline, mild memory difficulties, and language impairments, notably anomia. Despite undergoing cataract and squint surgeries, her visual symptoms persisted, impacting her professional life as a music educator. The neuropsychological evaluation revealed profound visuoperceptual and visuospatial disturbances, with neuroimaging supporting a diagnosis of PCA. Treatment with Donepezil showed symptom improvement, highlighting the challenges and importance of early intervention and managing this atypical form of AD. Methods: The diagnostic process involved comprehensive physical, neuropsychological assessments, and neuroimaging, including MRI and F18 FDG PET CT, which demonstrated severe bilateral posterior cortical involvement. The case underscores the utility of these modalities in diagnosing PCA. Results: The initiation of Donepezil, an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, resulted in symptom improvement, emphasizing the potential for AD treatments to benefit PCA patients. However, challenges in management, including treatment side effects and the necessity of multidisciplinary care, are discussed. Conclusion: This case highlights PCA's diagnostic challenges due to its atypical presentation and the broader implications for managing younger patients with early-onset dementia. It underscores the necessity for early recognition, comprehensive assessment, and tailored management strategies, including both pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions, to improve patients' quality of life. Additionally, the case illustrates the need for expanding community memory services to accommodate younger patients with atypical forms of dementia, advocating for a more inclusive approach to dementia care.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, posterior cortical atrophy, dementia, diagnosis, management, donepezil, early-onset dementia

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Authors: Nadia Sghaier

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In this paper, we examine the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of the Tunisian stock market and 12 sectors over a recent period from 23 March 2020 to 18 August 2021, including several waves and the introduction of vaccination. The empirical study is conducted using cointegration techniques which allows for long and short-run relationships. The obtained results indicate that both daily growth in confirmed cases and deaths have a negative and significant effect on the stock market returns. In particular, this effect differs across sectors. It seems more pronounced in financial, consumer goods and industrials sectors. These findings have important implications for investors to predict the behavior of the stock market or sectors returns and to implement hedging strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Tunisian stock market, sectors, COVID-19 pandemic, cointegration techniques

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Authors: E. Rak

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The aim of the paper is to identify some of the specific characteristics of employee development, as observed in the practice of small enterprises in Poland. Results suggest that a sizeable percentage of employers are not interested in improving the development of their employee base. This aspect is often perceived as insignificant. In addition, many employers have no theoretical or practical knowledge of employee development methods. Lack of sufficient financial support is reported as third on the list of the most important barriers to employee development. Employees, on the other hand, typically offload the responsibility of initiating this type of activities onto the employer. Employee development plans are typically flexible and accommodating. The original value offered by this research comes in the form of a detailed characteristics of employee development in small enterprises, accompanied by identification of specificity of human resource development in Polish companies.

Keywords: employee development, human resources development, small enterprises, trainings

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Authors: Jaya Mathew

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Many organizations are faced with the challenge of how to analyze and build Machine Learning models using their sensitive telemetry data. In this paper, we discuss how users can leverage the power of R without having to move their big data around as well as a cloud based solution for organizations willing to host their data in the cloud. By using ScaleR technology to benefit from parallelization and remote computing or R Services on premise or in the cloud, users can leverage the power of R at scale without having to move their data around.

Keywords: predictive maintenance, machine learning, big data, cloud based, on premise solution, R

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Authors: L. Sudbury-Riley, P. Hunter-Jones, L. Menzies, M. Pyrah, H. Knight

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Just as manufacturing firms aim for zero defects, service providers strive to avoid service failures where customer expectations are not met. However, because services comprise unique human interactions, service failures are almost inevitable. Consequently, firms focus on service recovery strategies to fix problems and retain their customers for the future. Because a hospice offers care to terminally ill patients, it may not get the opportunity to correct a service failure. This situation makes the identification of what hospice users really need and want, and to ascertain perceptions of the hospice’s service delivery from the user’s perspective, even more important than for other service providers. A well-documented and fundamental barrier to improving end-of-life care is a lack of service quality measurement tools that capture the experiences of user’s from their own perspective. In palliative care, many quantitative measures are used and these focus on issues such as how quickly patients are assessed, whether they receive information leaflets, whether a discussion about their emotional needs is documented, and so on. Consequently, quality of service from the user’s perspective is overlooked. The current study was designed to overcome these limitations by adapting service blueprinting - never before used in the hospice sector - in order to undertake a ‘deep-dive’ to examine the impact of hospice services upon different users. Service blueprinting is a customer-focused approach for service innovation and improvement, where the ‘onstage’ visible service user and provider interactions must be supported by the ‘backstage’ employee actions and support processes. The study was conducted in conjunction with East Cheshire Hospice in England. The Hospice provides specialist palliative care for patients with progressive life-limiting illnesses, offering services to patients, carers and families via inpatient and outpatient units. Using service blueprinting to identify every service touchpoint, in-depth qualitative interviews with 38 in-patients, outpatients, visitors and bereaved families enabled a ‘deep-dive’ to uncover perceptions of the whole service experience among these diverse users. Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and thematic analysis of over 104,000 words of data revealed many excellent aspects of Hospice service. Staff frequently exceed people’s expectations. Striking gratifying comparisons to hospitals emerged. The Hospice makes people feel safe. Nevertheless, the technique uncovered many areas for improvement, including serendipity of referrals processes, the need for better communications with external agencies, improvements amid the daunting arrival and admissions process, a desperate need for more depression counselling, clarity of communication pertaining to actual end of life, and shortcomings in systems dealing with bereaved families. The study reveals that the adapted service blueprinting tool has major advantages of alternative quantitative evaluation techniques, including uncovering the complex nature of service user’s experiences in health-care service systems, highlighting more fully the interconnected configurations within the system and making greater sense of the impact of the service upon different service users. Unlike other tools, this in-depth examination reveals areas for improvement, many of which have already been implemented by the Hospice. The technique has potential to improve experiences of palliative and end-of-life care among patients and their families.

Keywords: hospices, end-of-life-care, service blueprinting, service delivery

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Authors: Rafael Ricieri, Rogerio Barros, Francisco Clovis

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Objective– The Objective of this is study is to report a rare case of dermoid cyst, with a sublingual location and cutaneous fistula in a 4 year-old child.Methods: This study is a case report. The main study instrument was the medical record and the radiological and intraoperative image bank. Results: Infants with congenital cervical lesions eventually need tomography for diagnostic elucidation, and health services should be structured to perform sedation and thin tomographic sections in order to reduce morbidity.

Keywords: congenital, sublingual dermoid cyst, fistula, pediatric surgery, head and kneck surgery

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Authors: H. Al-Khalaifa, A. Al-Nasser

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The viewpoint towards the use of drugs or vaccines against avian parasitic diseases is one of the most striking challenges in avian medical parasitology. This includes many difficulties associated with drug resistance and in developing prophylactic vaccines. In many instances, the potential success of a vaccination in controlling parasitic diseases in poultry is well-documented. However, some medical, technical and financial limitations are still paramount. On the other hand, chemotherapy is not very well-recommended due to a number of medical limitations. But in the absence of an effective vaccine, drugs are used against parasitic diseases. This paper sheds light on some the advantages and disadvantages of using vaccination and drugs in controlling parasitic diseases in poultry species. The usage of chemotherapeutic drugs is discussed with some examples. Then, more light will be shed on using vaccines as a potentially effective and promising control tool.

Keywords: drugs, parasitology, poultry, vaccines

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Authors: Razul Ikmal Ramli

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Successful implementation of innovation is a key success formula of a great organization. Innovation will ensure competitive advantages as well as sustainability of organization in the long run. In public sector context, the role of innovation is crucial to resolve dynamic challenges of public services such as operating in economic uncertainty with limited resources, increasing operating expenditure and growing expectation among citizens towards high quality, swift and reliable public services. Acknowledging the prospect of innovation as a tool for achieving high-performance public sector, the Malaysian New Economic Model launched in the year 2011 intensified government commitment to foster innovation in the public sector. Since 2011 various initiatives have been implemented, however little is known about the performance of public sector innovation in Malaysia. Hence, by applying the national innovation system theory as a pillar, the formulated research objectives were focused on measuring the level of innovation capabilities, wider public sector condition for innovation, innovation activity, and innovation performance as well as to examine the relationship between the four constructs with innovation performance as a dependent variable. For that purpose, 1,000 sets of self-administrated survey questionnaires were distributed to heads of units and divisions of 22 Federal Ministry and Central Agencies in the administrative, security, social and economic sector. Based on 456 returned questionnaires, the descriptive analysis found that innovation capabilities, wider sector condition, innovation activities and innovation performance were rated by respondents at moderately high level. Based on Structural Equation Modelling, innovation performance was found to be influenced by innovation capability, wider sector condition for innovation and innovation activity. In addition, the analysis also found innovation activity to be the most important construct that influences innovation performance. The implication of the study concluded that the innovation policy implemented in the public sector of Malaysia sparked motivation to innovate and resulted in various forms of innovation. However, the overall achievements were not as well as they were expected to be. Thus, the study suggested for the formulation of a dedicated policy to strengthen innovation capability, wider public sector condition for innovation and innovation activity of the Malaysian public sector. Furthermore, strategic intervention needs to be focused on innovation activity as the construct plays an important role in determining the innovation performance. The success of public sector innovation implementation will not only benefit the citizens, but will also spearhead the competitiveness and sustainability of the country.

Keywords: public sector, innovation, performance, innovation policy

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Authors: Daniel Stabler, Anne-Laure Mention, Henri Hakala, Ahmad Alaassar

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In Europe, 2.2 billion tons of waste annually generate severe environmental damage and economic burdens, and negatively impact human health. A stark illustration of the problem is found within the consumer electronics industry, which reflects one of the most complex global waste streams. Of the 5.3 billion globally discarded mobile phones in 2022, only 17% were properly recycled. To address these pressing issues, Europe has made significant strides in developing waste management strategies, Circular Economy initiatives, and Right to Repair policies. These endeavors aim to make product repair and maintenance more accessible, extend product lifespans, reduce waste, and promote sustainable resource use. European countries have introduced Right to Repair policies, often in conjunction with extended producer responsibility legislation, repair subsidies, and consumer repair indices, to varying degrees of regulatory rigor. Changing societal trends emphasizing sustainability and environmental responsibility have driven consumer demand for more sustainable and repairable products, benefiting repair-focused consumer electronics businesses. In academic research, much of the literature in Management studies has examined the European Circular Economy and the Right to Repair from firm-level perspectives. These studies frequently employ a business-model lens, emphasizing innovation and strategy frameworks. However, this study takes an institutional perspective, aiming to understand the adoption of Circular Economy and repair-focused business models within the European consumer electronics market. The concepts of the Circular Economy and the Right to Repair align with institutionalism as they reflect evolving societal norms favoring sustainability and consumer empowerment. Regulatory institutions play a pivotal role in shaping and enforcing these concepts through legislation, influencing the behavior of businesses and individuals. Compliance and enforcement mechanisms are essential for their success, compelling actors to adopt sustainable practices and consider product life extension. Over time, these mechanisms create a path for more sustainable choices, underscoring the influence of institutions and societal values on behavior and decision-making. Institutionalism, particularly 'neo-institutionalism,' provides valuable insights into the factors driving the adoption of Circular and repair-focused business models. Neo-institutional pressures can manifest through coercive regulatory initiatives or normative standards shaped by socio-cultural trends. The Right to Repair movement has emerged as a prominent and influential idea within academic discourse and sustainable development initiatives. Therefore, understanding how macro-level societal shifts toward the Circular Economy and the Right to Repair trigger firm-level responses is imperative. This study aims to answer a crucial question about the impact of European Right to Repair initiatives had on the financial and environmental performance of European consumer electronics companies at the firm level. A quantitative and statistical research design will be employed. The study will encompass an extensive sample of consumer electronics firms in Northern and Western Europe, analyzing their financial and environmental performance in relation to the implementation of Right to Repair mechanisms. The study's findings are expected to provide valuable insights into the broader implications of the Right to Repair and Circular Economy initiatives on the European consumer electronics industry.

Keywords: circular economy, right to repair, institutionalism, environmental management, european union

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Authors: Ali Safdari-Vaighani

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Pricing financial contracts on several underlying assets received more and more interest as a demand for complex derivatives. The option pricing under asset price involving jump diffusion processes leads to the partial integral differential equation (PIDEs), which is an extension of the Black-Scholes PDE with a new integral term. The aim of this paper is to show how basket option prices in the jump diffusion models, mainly on the Merton model, can be computed using RBF based approximation methods. For a test problem, the RBF-PU method is applied for numerical solution of partial integral differential equation arising from the two-asset European vanilla put options. The numerical result shows the accuracy and efficiency of the presented method.

Keywords: basket option, jump diffusion, ‎radial basis function, RBF-PUM

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Authors: Dina Siniora, Jasia Baig

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During the past few decades, the healthcare system has undergone profound changes in their healthcare decision-making competencies and moral aptitudes due to the vast advancement in technology, clinical skills, and scientific knowledge. Healthcare decision-making deals with morally contentious dilemmas ranging from illness, life and death judgments that require sensitivity and awareness towards the patient’s preferences while taking into consideration medicine’s abilities and boundaries. As the ever-evolving field of medicine continues to become more scientifically and morally multifarious; physicians and the hospital administrators increasingly rely on ethics committees to resolve problems that arise in everyday patient care. The role and latitude of responsibilities of ethics committees which includes being dispute intermediaries, moral analysts, policy educators, counselors, advocates, and reviewers; suggest the importance and effectiveness of a fully integrated committee. Despite achievements on Integrated Ethics and progress in standards and competencies, there is an imminent necessity for further improvement in quality within ethics consultation services in areas of credentialing, professionalism and standards of quality, as well as the quality of healthcare throughout the system. These concerns can be resolved first by collecting data about particular quality gaps and comprehend the level to which ethics committees are consistent with newly published ASBH quality standards. Policymakers should pursue improvement strategies that target both academic bioethics community and major stakeholders at hospitals, who directly influence ethics committees. This broader approach oriented towards education and intervention outcome in conjunction with preventive ethics to address disparities in quality on a systematic level. Adopting tools for improving competencies and processes within ethics consultation by implementing a credentialing process, upholding normative significance for the ASBH core competencies, advocating for professional Code of Ethics, and further clarifying the internal structures will improve productivity, patient satisfaction, and institutional integrity. This cannot be systemically achieved without a written certification exam for HCEC practitioners, credentialing and privileging HCEC practitioners at the hospital level, and accrediting HCEC services at the institutional level.

Keywords: ethics consultation, hospital, medical ethics, quality

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Authors: Talha Sareshwala

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The purpose of this research paper is to help entrepreneurs build an environment of trust, transparency and accountability necessary for fostering long term investment, financial stability and business integrity and to guide future Entrepreneurs into a promising future. The study presents a broader review on Corporate Governance, starting from its definition and antecedents. This is the most important aspect of ethical business. In fact, the 3 main pillars of corporate governance are: Transparency; Accountability; Security. The combination of these 3 pillars in running a company successfully and forming solid professional relationships among its stakeholders, which includes key managerial employees and, most important, the shareholders This paper is sharing an experience how an entrepreneur can act as a catalyst while ensuring them that ethics and transparency do pay in business when followed in true spirit and action.

Keywords: business, entrepreneur, ethics, governance, transparency.

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Authors: Rocio Murad, Marcela Sanchez, Mariana Calderon Jaramillo, Danny Rivera, Angela Cifuentes, Daniela Roldán, Juan Carlos Rivillas

Abstract:

Women and girls have specific health needs, but during health pandemics such as COVID19 they are less likely to have access to quality essential health information, commodities and services, or insurance coverage for routine and catastrophic health expenses, especially in rural and marginalized communities. This is compounded by multiple or intersecting inequalities, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, age, geographic location, and sexual orientation, among others. Despite concerted collective action, there is a lack of information on the situation of women, adolescents and youth, including gender inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. Much more needs to be done to amplify the lived realities of women and adolescents in global and national advocacy and policy responses. The COVID 19 pandemic reflects the need for systematic advocacy policies based on the lived experiences of women and adolescents, underpinned by human rights. This research is part of the initiative of Profamilia Association (Solidarity Study), and its objective is twofold: i) to analyze the behavioral changes and immediate expectations of Colombians during the stage of relaxation of the confinement measures decreed by the national government; and ii) to identify the needs, experiences and resilient practices of adolescents and young women during the COVID-19 crisis in Colombia. Descriptive analysis of data collected by Profamilia through the Solidaridad study, an exploratory cross-sectional descriptive study that used subnational level data from a nonprobabilistic sample survey conducted to 1735 adults, between September 01 and 11, 2020. Interviews were conducted with key stakeholders about their experiences during COVID19, under three key axes: i) main challenges for adolescents and young women; ii) examples of what has worked well in responding to the challenge; and iii) how/what services are/should be provided during COVID-19 (and beyond) to address the challenge. Interviewees were selected based on prior mapping of social groups of interest. In total, 23 adolescents and young women participated in the interviews. The results show that people adopted behavioral changes such as wearing masks, avoiding people with symptoms, and reducing mobility, but there was also a doubling of concerns for many reasons, from effects on mental health, sexual health, and unattended reproductive health to the burden of care and working at home. The favorable perception that people had at the beginning of the quarantine about the response and actions of the national and local government to control Covid-19 decreased over the course of the quarantine. The challenges and needs of adolescents and young women were highlighted during the most restrictive measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in disruptions to daily activities, education and work, as well as restrictions to mobility and social interaction. Concerns raised by participants included: impact on mental health and wellbeing due to disruption of daily life; limitations in access to formal and informal education; food insecurity; migration; loss of livelihoods; lack of access to health information and services; limitations to sexual and reproductive health and rights; insecurity problems; and problems in communication and treatment among household members.

Keywords: COVID-19, changes in behavior, adolescents, women

Procedia PDF Downloads 87

Authors: Andrew John Zeller, Francis Pouatcha

Abstract:

Working according to the DevOps principle has gained in popularity over the past decade. While its extension DevSecOps started to include elements of cybersecurity, most real-life projects do not focus risk and security until the later phases of a project as teams are often more familiar with engineering and infrastructure services. To help bridge the gap between security and engineering, this paper will take six building blocks of cybersecurity and apply them to the DevOps approach. After giving a brief overview of the stages in the DevOps lifecycle, the main part discusses to what extent six cybersecurity blocks can be utilized in various stages of the lifecycle. The paper concludes with an outlook on how to stay up to date in the dynamic world of cybersecurity.

Keywords: information security, data security, cybersecurity, devOps, IT management

Procedia PDF Downloads 94

Authors: Mouna Hemdi, Jamel bel Hadj Tahar

Abstract:

The increasing development of multimedia applications requiring the simultaneous transport of several different services contributes to the evolution of the need for very high-speed network. In this paper, we propose an effective solution to achieve the very high speed while retaining elements of the optical transmission channel. So our study focuses on error correcting codes that aim for quality improvement on duty. We present a comparison of the quality of service for single channels and integrating the code BCH, RS and LDPC in order to find the best code in the different conditions of the transmission.

Keywords: code error correction, high speed broadband, optical transmission, information systems security

Procedia PDF Downloads 375