Search results for: knowledge management.

Authors: Alma Lucero Ortiz, Mario Gómez

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The purpose of this article is to conduct a theoretical and empirical study in order to analyze how the Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Supply Chain Responsiveness (SCR) affects the competitive advantage of the agrofood sector in 2017, in particular, the exporting companies of berries in Mexico. This work is presented in two parts, as a first part is developed a theoretical analysis of the main studies to measure the variables subject to the study. Subsequently an empirical study is carried out through field work and to process the data a logical econometric model is performed to be able to evaluate the effect of the SCM and SCR on the competitive advantage in the companies exporting berries. The results suggest that the SCM has a positive effect on the competitive advantage of the companies under study, so it is necessary to implement greater practices oriented towards a suitable SCM for the companies to achieve a competitive performance. In the case of SCR, it was found that this variable does not have effect on competitive advantage.

Keywords: Competitive advantage, econometric model, supply chain management, supply chain responsiveness, sustained competitive advantage.

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Authors: M. C. Pardo-Ferreira, J. C. Rubio-Romero, M. Martínez-Rojas

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Resilience Engineering is a new paradigm of safety management that proposes to change the way of managing the safety to focus on the things that go well instead of the things that go wrong. Many complex and high-risk sectors such as air traffic control, health care, nuclear power plants, railways or emergencies, have applied this new vision of safety and have obtained very positive results. In the construction sector, safety management continues to be a problem as indicated by the statistics of occupational injuries worldwide. Therefore, it is important to improve safety management in this sector. For this reason, it is proposed to apply Resilience Engineering to the construction sector. The Construction Phase Health and Safety Plan emerges as a key element for the planning of safety management. One of the key tools of Resilience Engineering is the Resilience Assessment Grid that allows measuring the four essential abilities (respond, monitor, learn and anticipate) for resilient performance. The purpose of this paper is to develop a questionnaire based on the Resilience Assessment Grid, specifically on the ability to learn, to assess whether a Construction Phase Health and Safety Plans helps companies in a construction site to implement this ability. The research process was divided into four stages: (i) initial design of a questionnaire, (ii) validation of the content of the questionnaire, (iii) redesign of the questionnaire and (iii) application of the Delphi method. The questionnaire obtained could be used as a tool to help construction companies to evolve from Safety-I to Safety-II. In this way, companies could begin to develop the ability to learn, which will serve as a basis for the development of the other abilities necessary for resilient performance. The following steps in this research are intended to develop other questions that allow evaluating the rest of abilities for resilient performance such as monitoring, learning and anticipating.

Keywords: Resilience engineering, construction sector, resilience assessment grid, construction phase health and safety plan.

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Authors: L. C. Moreira, M. Kauffman

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This paper outlines the results of an experimental research on deploying an emerging augmented reality (AR) system for real-time task assistance (or work instructions) of highly customised and high-risk manual operations. The focus is on human operators’ training effectiveness and performance and the aim is to test if such technologies can support enhancing the knowledge retention levels and accuracy of task execution to improve health and safety (H&S). An AR enhanced assembly method is proposed and experimentally tested using a real industrial process as case study for electric vehicles’ (EV) battery module assembly. The experimental results revealed that the proposed method improved the training practices and performance through increases in the knowledge retention levels from 40% to 84%, and accuracy of task execution from 20% to 71%, when compared to the traditional paper-based method. The results of this research validate and demonstrate how emerging technologies are advancing the choice for manual, hybrid or fully automated processes by promoting the XR-assisted processes, and the connected worker (a vision for Industry 4 and 5.0), and supporting manufacturing become more resilient in times of constant market changes.

Keywords: Augmented reality, extended reality, connected worker, XR-assisted operator, manual assembly 4.0, industry 5.0, smart training, battery assembly.

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Authors: Christian Mosch, Reiner Anderl, Antonio Álvaro de Assis Moura, Klaus Schützer

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Due to short product life cycles, increasing variety of products and short cycles of leap innovations manufacturing companies have to increase the flexibility of factory structures. Flexibility of factory structures is based on defined factory planning processes in which product, process and resource data of various partial domains have to be considered. Thus factory planning processes can be characterized as iterative, interdisciplinary and participative processes [1]. To support interdisciplinary and participative character of planning processes, a federative factory data management (FFDM) as a holistic solution will be described. FFDM is already implemented in form of a prototype. The interim results of the development of FFDM will be shown in this paper. The principles are the extracting of product, process and resource data from documents of various partial domains providing as web services on a server. The described data can be requested by the factory planner by using a FFDM-browser.

Keywords: BRAGECRIM, Factory Planning Process, FactoryData Management, Web Services

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Authors: O. A. Novitskaya

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The emerging markets of post-USSR countries have attracted Western multinational companies; however, weak institutions and unstable host country environments have hindered the implementation of successful management practices. The Ukrainian market, in light of recent events, is particularly interesting to study for its compatibility with Western businesses. This paper focuses on factors that can facilitate or inhibit the transfer of human resource management practices from Western headquarters to Ukrainian subsidiaries. To explain the national context’s effects better, a business systems approach has been applied to a qualitative study of 16 wholly owned Western subsidiaries, dissecting the reasons for a weak integration of Western practices in Ukraine. Results show that underdeveloped institutions have forced companies to develop additional practices that compensate for national weaknesses, as well as to adjust to a constantly changing environment. Flexibility and local responsiveness were observed as vital for success in Ukraine.

Keywords: Business system, HR practices, human resource management, multinational companies, Ukraine.

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Authors: Brandtner Patrick, Staberhofer Franz

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Logistics and Supply Chain Management are of crucial importance for organisational success. In the era of Digitalization, several implications and improvement potentials for these domains arise, which at the same time could lead to decreased competitiveness and could endanger long-term company success if ignored or neglected. However, empirical research on the issue of Digitalization and benefits purported to it by practitioners is scarce and mainly focused on single technologies or separate, isolated Supply Chain blocks as e.g. distribution logistics or procurement only. The current paper applies a holistic focus group approach to elaborate practitioner use cases at the nexus of the concepts of Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Digitalization. In the course of three focus group workshops with over 45 participants from more than 20 organisations, a comprehensive set of benefit entitlements and areas for improvement in terms of applying digitalization to SCM is developed. The main results of the paper indicate the relevance of Digitalization being realized in practice. In the form of seventeen concrete research action fields, the benefit entitlements are aggregated and transformed into potential starting points for future research projects in this area. The main contribution of this paper is an empirically grounded basis for future research projects and an overview of actual research action fields from practitioners’ point of view.

Keywords: Digital transformation, supply chain management, digital supply chain, value networks.

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Authors: Kyung Bae Park, Sung Ho Ha

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Online user-generated contents (UGC) significantly change the way customers behave (e.g., shop, travel), and a pressing need to handle the overwhelmingly plethora amount of various UGC is one of the paramount issues for management. However, a current approach (e.g., sentiment analysis) is often ineffective for leveraging textual information to detect the problems or issues that a certain management suffers from. In this paper, we employ text mining of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) on a popular online review site dedicated to complaint from users. We find that the employed LDA efficiently detects customer complaints, and a further inspection with the visualization technique is effective to categorize the problems or issues. As such, management can identify the issues at stake and prioritize them accordingly in a timely manner given the limited amount of resources. The findings provide managerial insights into how analytics on social media can help maintain and improve their reputation management. Our interdisciplinary approach also highlights several insights by applying machine learning techniques in marketing research domain. On a broader technical note, this paper illustrates the details of how to implement LDA in R program from a beginning (data collection in R) to an end (LDA analysis in R) since the instruction is still largely undocumented. In this regard, it will help lower the boundary for interdisciplinary researcher to conduct related research.

Keywords: Latent Dirichlet allocation, R program, text mining, topic model, user generated contents, visualization.

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Authors: Felix Brito

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With the growth of online learning, several higher education institutions have attempted to incorporate technology in their curriculum. Successful technology implementation projects really on technology infrastructure and on the acceptance of education professionals towards innovation. This research study is aimed at illustrating the relevance of the human component in technology implementation projects in higher education by describing the Learning Management System implementation project executed by instructional designers working for a higher education institution in the southeast region of the United States. An analysis of the Transformative Leadership Theory, the Technology Acceptance Model, and the Diffusion of Innovation Process provide the support for a solid understanding of this issue and address recommendations for future technology implementation projects in higher education institutions.

Keywords: Learning management systems, transformative leadership theory, technology acceptance model, diffusion of innovation process, leadership, instructional design, online learning.

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Authors: Fakhruddin Esa, Yusri Yusof

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The confirmatory of Total Quality Management (TQM) implementation is most vital in quality management. This paper focuses on employees' perceptions towards TQM implementation in a local automotive company supplier. The objectives of this study are first and foremost to determine the perception of TQM implementation among the staff, and secondly to ascertain the correlation between the variables, and lastly to identify the relative influence of the 10 TQM variables on the cost of poor quality (COPQ). The TQM implementation is perceived to be moderate. All correlation is found to be significant and five variables having positively moderate to high correlation. Out of 10 variables, quality system improvement, reward and recognition and customer focus influence the perceived COPQ. This study extended a discussion on these three variables contribution to TQM in general and the human resource development in the organization. A significant recommendation to lowering costs of internal error, such as trouble shooting and scraps are also discussed. Certain components of further research that would add value to this study have also been suggested and perhaps could be implemented at policy-level initiatives.

Keywords: Cost of poor quality, correlation, total quality management, variables.

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Authors: Mohd Iskandar bin Illyas Tan, Iziati Saadah bt Ibrahim

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Logistics is part of the supply chain processes that plans, implements, and controls the efficient and effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customer requirements. This research aims to investigate the current status and future direction of the use of Information Technology (IT) for logistics, focusing on Supply Chain Management (SCM) and E-Commerce adoption in Johor. Therefore, this research stresses on the type of technology being adopted, factors, benefits and barriers affecting the innovation in SCM and ECommerce technology adoption among Logistics Service Providers (LSP). A mailed questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data from 265 logistics companies in Johor. The research revealed that SCM technology adoption among LSP was higher as they had adopted SCM technology in various business processes while they perceived a high level of benefits from SCM adoption. Obviously, ECommerce technology adoption among LSP is relatively low.

Keywords: E-Commerce, Johor, Logistics Service Providers, Supply Chain Management.

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Authors: Jaroslav Pavlíček

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Company strategy expresses a basic idea of how to reach company objectives. A whole range of models of strategic management are used in practice. The concept of strategic management should fulfill some basic requirements to make it applicable for both the typical, but also more specific company environment. The financial strategy plays an important role in corporate strategy. The paper develops a methodology of strategic model implementing into the category of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, the methodology recommends procedures while solving an up-to-date worldwide task of the definition of the company strategy and its financial strategy.

Keywords: corporate strategy, financial strategy, corporate planning

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Authors: Susana G. Azevedo, Helena Carvalho, V. Cruz –Machado

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The supply chains (SCs) have to appeal to new management paradigms to improve their ability to respond rapidly and cost effectively to unpredictable changes in markets and increasing levels of environmental turbulence, both in terms of volume and variety. In this highly demanded context, the Agile paradigm provides the capabilities to SC quickly adapt to changes in the market requirements. The purpose of this paper is to suggest an Agile Index to assess the agility of the automotive companies and corresponding SCs. The proposed integrated assessment model incorporates Agile practices weighted according to their importance to the automotive SC competitiveness and obtained from the Delphi technique.

Keywords: Agile, Supply chain management, Index, Delphitechnique.

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Authors: İlke Bereketli, Müjde Erol Genevois, H. Ziya Ulukan

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Nowadays, manufacturers are facing great challenges with regard to the production of green products due to the emerging issue of hazardous substance management (HSM). In particular, environmental legislation pressures have yielded to increased risk, manufacturing complexity and green components demands. The green principles were expanded to many departments within organization, including supply chain. Green supply chain management (GSCM) was emerging in the last few years. This idea covers every stage in manufacturing from the first to the last stage of life cycle. From product lifecycle concept, the cycle starts at the design of a product. QFD is a customer-driven product development tool, considered as a structured management approach for efficiently translating customer needs into design requirements and parts deployment, as well as manufacturing plans and controls in order to achieve higher customer satisfaction. This paper develops an Eco- QFD to provide a framework for designing Eco-mobile phone by integrating the life cycle analysis LCA into QFD throughout the entire product development process.

Keywords: Eco-design, Eco-QFD, EEE, Environmental New Product Development, Mobile Phone.

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Authors: Bruno Henrique Rocha Fernandes, Amir Rezaee, Jucelia Appio

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The relation between Human Resource Management (HRM) practices and organizational performance remains the subject of substantial literature. Though many studies demonstrated positive relationship, still major influencing variables are not yet clear. This study considers the Person-Environment Fit (PE Fit) and its components, Person-Supervisor (PS), Person-Group (PG), Person-Organization (PO) and Person-Job (PJ) Fit, as possible explanatory variables. We analyzed PE Fit as a moderator between HRM practices and financial performance in the “best companies to work” in Brazil. Data from HRM practices were classified through the High Performance Working Systems (HPWS) construct and data on PE-Fit were obtained through surveys among employees. Financial data, consisting of return on invested capital (ROIC) and price earnings ratio (PER) were collected for publicly traded best companies to work. Findings show that PO Fit and PJ Fit play a significant moderator role for PER but not for ROIC.

Keywords: Financial performance, human resource management, high performance working systems, person-environment fit.

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Authors: S. Ahmed Sinthia

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Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, is one of the densely populated cities in the world. Due to rapid urbanization 60% of its population lives in slum and squatter settlements. The reason behind this poverty is low economic growth, inequitable distribution of income, unequal distribution of productive assets, unemployment and underemployment, high rate of population growth, low level of human resource development, natural disasters, and limited access to public services. Along with poverty, creating pressure on urban land, shelter, plots, open spaces this creates environmental and ecological degradation. These constraints are mostly resulted from the failures of the government policies and measures and only Government can solve this problem. This is now prime time to establish planning and environmental management policy and sustainable urban development for the city and for the urban slum dwellers which are free from eviction, criminals, rent seekers and other miscreants.

Keywords: Economic and resource constraints, environmental degradation and management, government policy, land management and policy, sustainable development.

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Authors: Aimen Mohamed Almaloul

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The main focus of this study is investigating the interference of Arabic in the use of English prepositions by Libyan university students. Prepositions in the tests used in the study were categorized, according to their relation to Arabic, into similar Arabic and English prepositions (SAEP), dissimilar Arabic and English prepositions (DAEP), Arabic prepositions with no English counterparts (APEC), and English prepositions with no Arabic counterparts (EPAC).

The subjects of the study were the first year university students of the English department, Sabrata Faculty of Arts, Azzawia University; both males and females, and they were 100 students. The basic tool for data collection was a test of English prepositions; students are instructed to fill in the blanks with the correct prepositions and to put a zero (0) if no preposition was needed. The test was then handed to the subjects of the study.

The test was then scored and quantitative as well as qualitative results were obtained. Quantitative results indicated the number, percentages and rank order of errors in each of the categories and qualitative results indicated the nature and significance of those errors and their possible sources. Based on the obtained results the researcher could detect that students made more errors in the EPAC category than the other three categories and these errors could be attributed to the lack of knowledge of the different meanings of English prepositions. This lack of knowledge forced the students to adopt what is called the strategy of transfer.

Keywords: Foreign language acquisition, foreign language learning, interference system, interlanguage system, mother tongue interference.

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Authors: Ivana Tadić, Snježana Pivac

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Although human resources are recognized as the crucial companies’ resources and their positive influence on companies’ performances has been confirmed through different researches, scientists are still debating it. In order to contribute this debate, this paper firstly discusses the most important human resource management elements and practices and its influence on companies’ success. Afterwards it defines human resource “bundles” – interrelated and internally consistent human resource practices, complementary to each other, or the most important human resource practices and elements regarding Croatian companies and its human resource management activities. Finally, the paper provides empirical results; more precisely it reveals the relation of the level of development of human resource management function (“bundles”) and companies’ financial performances (using profitability ratios, liquidity ratios, solvency ratios and a group of additional ratios related to employees’ indicators).

Keywords: Companies’ performances, human resource bundles, multivariate statistical analysis.

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Authors: Mais Nijim, Rama Devi Chennuboyina, Waseem Al Aqqad

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Advances in spatial and spectral resolution of satellite images have led to tremendous growth in large image databases. The data we acquire through satellites, radars, and sensors consists of important geographical information that can be used for remote sensing applications such as region planning, disaster management. Spatial data classification and object recognition are important tasks for many applications. However, classifying objects and identifying them manually from images is a difficult task. Object recognition is often considered as a classification problem, this task can be performed using machine-learning techniques. Despite of many machine-learning algorithms, the classification is done using supervised classifiers such as Support Vector Machines (SVM) as the area of interest is known. We proposed a classification method, which considers neighboring pixels in a region for feature extraction and it evaluates classifications precisely according to neighboring classes for semantic interpretation of region of interest (ROI). A dataset has been created for training and testing purpose; we generated the attributes by considering pixel intensity values and mean values of reflectance. We demonstrated the benefits of using knowledge discovery and data-mining techniques, which can be on image data for accurate information extraction and classification from high spatial resolution remote sensing imagery.

Keywords: Remote sensing, object recognition, classification, data mining, waterbody identification, feature extraction.

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Authors: Won-Hee Cho, GeunHyung Lee, Deok-Hwan Kim

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The flash memory has many advantages such as low power consumption, strong shock resistance, fast I/O and non-volatility. And it is increasingly used in the mobile storage device. The YAFFS, one of the NAND flash file system, is widely used in the embedded device. However, the existing YAFFS takes long time to mount the file system because it scans whole spare areas in all pages of NAND flash memory. In order to solve this problem, we propose a new content-based flash file system using a mounting time reduction technique. The proposed method only scans partial spare areas of some special pages by using content-based block management. The experimental results show that the proposed method reduces the average mounting time by 87.2% comparing with JFFS2 and 69.9% comparing with YAFFS.

Keywords: NAND Flash Memory, Mounting Time, YAFFS, JFFS2, Content-based Block management

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Authors: Paschalis Koutalakis, George N. Zaimes, Valasia Iakovoglou, Konstantinos Ioannou

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Mitigating soil erosion, especially in Mediterranean countries such as Greece, is essential in order to maintain environmental and agricultural sustainability. In this paper, scientific publications related to soil erosion studies in Greece were reviewed and categorized. To accomplish this, the online search engine of Scopus was used. The key words were “soil”, “erosion” and “Greece.” An analysis of the published articles was conducted at three levels: i) type of publication, ii) chronologic and iii) thematic. A hundred and ten publications published in scientific journals were reviewed. The results showed that the awareness regarding the soil erosion in Greece has increased only in the last decades. The publications covered a wide range of thematic categories such as the type of studied areas, the physical phenomena that trigger and influence the soil erosion, the negative anthropogenic impacts on them, the assessment tools that were used in order to examine the threat and the proper management. The analysis of these articles was significant and necessary in order to find the scientific gaps of soil erosion studies in Greece and help enhance the sustainability of soil management in the future.

Keywords: Climate change, agricultural sustainability, environmental sustainability, soil management.

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Authors: Chapman Eze Nnadozie

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Relational databases constitute a very vital tool for the effective management and administration of both personal and organizational data. Data access ranges from a single user database management software to a more complex distributed server system. This paper intends to appraise the use a programming language extension like structured query language (SQL) to establish links to a relational database (Microsoft Access 2013) using Visual C++ 9 programming language environment. The methodology used involves the creation of tables to form a database using Microsoft Access 2013, which is Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) database compliant. The SQL command is used to query the tables in the database for easy extraction of expected records inside the visual C++ environment. The findings of this paper reveal that records can easily be accessed and manipulated to filter exactly what the user wants, such as retrieval of records with specified criteria, updating of records, and deletion of part or the whole records in a table.

Keywords: Data access, database, database management system, OLE, programming language, records, relational database, software, SQL, table.

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Authors: Maziyar Nouraee

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Today, quality improvement is an essential manner that is notified primarily as an essence in industry, manufacturing, health and education. Whenever quality is noticed as a criterion, then it results into empowering managers and job satisfaction of staffs. The research is aimed to evaluate the rate of relationship between TQM executions toward rate of empowering and satisfaction of staff paper mill in Isfahan. Results showed that there is a meaningful relationship between TQM, empowerment and satisfaction and even between TQM and empowerment dimensions; total quality management can perfectly predict empowerment and job satisfaction.      

Keywords: TQM (total quality management), Empowerment, Job Satisfaction.

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Authors: Osama Al-Sehail

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This paper argues for sustainability as a necessity in the evolution of tall architecture. It provides a different mode for dealing with sustainability in tall architecture, taking into consideration the speciality of its typology. To this end, the article develops a Biomimetic Structural Form as a paradigm to attain Vital Sustainability. A Biomimetic Structural Form, which is derived from the amalgamation of biomimicry as an approach for sustainability defining nature as source of knowledge and inspiration in solving humans’ problems and a Structural Form as a catalyst for evolving tall architecture, is a dynamic paradigm emerging from a conceptualizing and morphological process. A Biomimetic Structural Form is a flow system whose different forces and functions tend to be “better”, more "fit", to “survive”, and to be efficient. Through geometry and function—the two aspects of knowledge extracted from nature—the attributes of the Biomimetic Structural Form are formulated. Vital Sustainability is the survival level of sustainability in natural systems through which a system enhances the performance of its internal working and its interaction with the external environment. A Biomimetic Structural Form, in this context, is a medium for evolving tall architecture to emulate natural models in their ways of coexistence with the environment. As an integral part of this article, the sustainable super tall building 3Ts is discussed as a case study of applying Biomimetic Structural Form.   

Keywords: Biomimicry, design in nature, high-rise buildings, sustainability, structural form, tall architecture, vital sustainability.

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Authors: Mary L. G. S. Senna, Veruska C. Dutra, Afonso R. Aquino

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The study is in application and analysis of two tourism management tools that can contribute to making public managers decision: the Barometer of Tourism Sustainability (BTS) and the Ecological Footprint (EF). The results have shown that BTS allows you to have an integrated view of the tourism system, awakening to the need for planning of appropriate actions so that it can achieve the positive scale proposed (potentially sustainable). Already the methodology of ecological tourism footprint is an important tool to measure potential impacts generated by tourism to tourist reality.

Keywords: Barometer of tourism sustainability, ecological footprint of tourism, Jalapão/Brazil, sustainable tourism.

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Authors: Gulnara Moldasheva

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The research explores the relationship between management responsibility and corporate governance of listed companies in Kazakhstan. This research employs firm level data of selected listed non-financial firms and firm level data “operational” financial sector, consisted from banking sector, insurance companies and accumulated pension funds using multivariate regression analysis under fixed effect model approach. Ownership structure includes institutional ownership, managerial ownership and private investor’s ownership. Management responsibility of the firm is expressed by the decision of the firm on amount of leverage. Results of the cross sectional panel study for non-financial firms showed that only institutional shareholding is significantly negatively correlated with debt to equity ratio. Findings from “operational” financial sector show that leverage is significantly affected only by the CEO/Chair duality and the size of financial institutions, and insignificantly affected by ownership structure. Also, the findings show, that there is a significant negative relationship between profitability and the debt to equity ratio for non-financial firms, which is consistent with pecking order theory. Generally, the found results suggest that corporate governance and a management responsibility play important role in corporate performance of listed firms in Kazakhstan.

Keywords: Corporate governance, corporate performance, debt to equity ratio, ownership.

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Authors: Rachael Olatoun Okunuga

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Developing young people’s employability is a key policy issue for ensuring their successful transition to the labour market and their access to career oriented employment. The youths of today irrespective of their gender need to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes that will enable them to create or find jobs as well as cope with unpredictable labour market changes throughout their working lives. In a study carried out to determine the influence of gender on job-competencies requirements of chemical-based industries and undergraduate-competencies acquisition by chemists working in the industries, all chemistry graduates working in twenty (20) chemical-based industries that were randomly selected from six sectors of chemical-based industries in Lagos and Ogun States of Nigeria were administered with Job-competencies required and undergraduate-competencies acquired assessment questionnaire. The data were analysed using means and independent sample t-test. The findings revealed that the population of female chemists working in chemical-based industries is low compared with the number of male chemists; furthermore, job-competencies requirements are found not to be gender biased while there is no significant difference in undergraduate-competencies acquisition of male and female chemists. This suggests that females should be given the same opportunity of employment in chemical-based industries as their male counterparts. The study also revealed the level of acquisition of undergraduate competencies as related to the needs of chemicalbased industries.

Keywords: Acquired, attitude, employability, knowledge, required, skill.

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Authors: M. N. Hasnine, M. K. H. Chayon, M. M. Rahman

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Organizational tendencies towards computer-based information processing have been observed noticeably in the third-world countries. Many enterprises are taking major initiatives towards computerized working environment because of massive benefits of computer-based information processing. However, designing and developing information resource management software for small and mid-size enterprises under budget costs and strict deadline is always challenging for software engineers. Therefore, we introduced an approach to design mid-size enterprise software by using the Waterfall model, which is one of the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycles), in a cost effective way. To fulfill research objectives, in this study, we developed mid-sized enterprise software named “BSK Management System” that assists enterprise software clients with information resource management and perform complex organizational tasks. Waterfall model phases have been applied to ensure that all functions, user requirements, strategic goals, and objectives are met. In addition, Rich Picture, Structured English, and Data Dictionary have been implemented and investigated properly in engineering manner. Furthermore, an assessment survey with 20 participants has been conducted to investigate the usability and performance of the proposed software. The survey results indicated that our system featured simple interfaces, easy operation and maintenance, quick processing, and reliable and accurate transactions.

Keywords: End-user Application Development, Enterprise Software Design, Information Resource Management, Usability.

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Authors: Prateep Wajeetongratana

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This study investigates the management accountant’s roles that link with the creation of corporate shared value to enable more effective decision-making and improve the information needs of stakeholders. Mixed method is employed to collect using triangulation for credibility. A quantitative approach is employed to conduct a survey of 200 Thai companies providing annual reports in the Stock Exchange of Thailand. The results of the study reveal that environmental and social data incorporated in a corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure are based on the indicators of the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) at a statistically significant level of 0.01. Environmental and social indicators in CSR are associated with environmental and social data disclosed in the annual report to support stakeholders’ and the public’s interests that are addressed and show that a significant relationship between environmental and social in CSR disclosures and the information in annual reports is statistically significant at the 0.01 level.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, creating shared value, management accountant’s roles, stock exchange of Thailand.

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Authors: C. Adam, G. Henri, T. Levent, J-B Mauro, A-L Mayet

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Energy Efficiency Management is the heart of a worldwide problem. The capability of a multi-agent system as a technology to manage the micro-grid operation has already been proved. This paper deals with the implementation of a decisional pattern applied to a multi-agent system which provides intelligence to a distributed local energy network considered at local consumer level. Development of multi-agent application involves agent specifications, analysis, design, and realization. Furthermore, it can be implemented by following several decisional patterns. The purpose of present article is to suggest a new approach for a decisional pattern involving a multi-agent system to control a distributed local energy network in a decentralized competitive system. The proposed solution is the result of a dichotomous approach based on environment observation. It uses an iterative process to solve automatic learning problems and converges monotonically very fast to system attracting operation point.

Keywords: Energy Efficiency Management, Distributed Smart- Grid, Multi-Agent System, Decisional Decentralized Competitive System.

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Authors: S. M. Azad, H. Ghodsipour, F. Roshannafas

Abstract:

In recent years ‘technology management and policymaking’ is one of the most important problems in management science. In this field, different generations of innovation and technology management are presented which the earliest one is Innovation System (IS) approach. In a general classification, innovation systems are divided in to 4 approaches: technical, sectoral, regional, and national. There are many researches in relation to each of these approaches in different academic fields. Every approach has some benefits. If two or more approaches hybrid, their benefits would be combined. In addition, according to the sectoral structure of the governance model in Iran, in many sectors, such as information technology, the combination of three other approaches with sectoral approach is essential. Hence, in this paper, combining two IS approaches (technical and sectoral) and using system dynamics, a generic model is presented for a sample of software industry. As a complimentary point, this article is introducing a new hybrid approach called Techno-Sectoral Innovation System. This TSIS model is accomplished by Changing concepts of the ‘functions’-which came from Technological IS literature- and using them into sectoral system as measurable indicators.

Keywords: Innovation system, technology, techno-sectoral system, functional indicators, system dynamics.

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