Search results

This study aims to examine the influence of the three dimensions of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – on knowledge transfer and travel agents’ performance. In addition, the study investigates how employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance.

A positivist research philosophy was adopted with a quantitative approach, in which quantitative data were gathered based on questionnaires to tackle different stages of the study. To test the hypotheses, a self-administrated face-to-face survey of about 42 questions, launched on November 7, 2016, was used to compile response from top and medium management Category A travel agents operating in Egypt.

Based on a sample of 577 travel agents’ frontline employees, the results showed that the three dimensions of travel agents’ competencies have a positive effect on knowledge received by the employee. Findings further indicated that knowledge received by employee mediates the link between these three competencies and travel agents’ performance. The link between the competencies and knowledge received by the employee was found to be positively moderated by employee absorptive capacity. Moreover, these findings suggested that the relationship between knowledge received and travel agents’ performance is stronger when employees’ absorptive capacity is greater.

This study is bound by certain limitations that also provide fertile grounds for further research. First, the study examined how an employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance. However, innovation as a dependent variable can be investigated. Second, one limitation is that the study is restricted to Category A travel agents only in Greater Cairo. Third, examining the antecedents of ability, motivation and opportunity seeking to transfer knowledge is also important.

It is important for travel agents, owners, managers and employees to acknowledge absorptive capacity as a critical component for organizations to sustain, grow and compete. Travel agents can also take steps to develop their employees’ absorptive capacity. Doing so would further enhance the success of knowledge, employees and travel agents’ performance. Also, travel agents’ top management has to ensure their employees’ absorbing knowledge, identifying and recognizing external knowledge, processing and understanding it, combining it with existing knowledge and applying the new knowledge to commercial ends. Hence, the development of absorptive capacity contributes to a travel agent’s achievement of competitive advantage.

This study contributes to the literature by expanding the extant literature on knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity by investigating the influence of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – for knowledge transfer in the Egyptian context. In addition, it investigates the direct effects of the three dimensions of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – for knowledge transfer. Finally, the paper investigates how employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance

Despite the increasing utilization of webpages for the purposes of information seeking, customers’ concerns have become a crucial impediment for online shopping. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the effectiveness of web assurance seals services (WASS) and customers’ concerns on customer’s willingness to book hotels through perceived website trust and perceived value.

A questionnaire was administrated to measure the study variables. Using partial least squares–structural equation modeling approach to analyze the data collected from 860 users of online hotel websites.

The results indicate that WASS influence positively on perceived website trust and negatively on consumers’ concerns. As well as, perceived value and trust play a mediating role in the link between WASS and consumers’ concerns and their intentions. Finally, perceived website trust and perceived value have greater effect on intention to book hotel for low-habit consumers.

This study ignored the cross-culture issue as it concentrates on the customers from developing countries, so further research may need to compare between two or more than two samples from different societies that could give a significant insights. Second, this study stresses on the WASS to predict customers booking intentions that indicates significant results, so further research may need to examine the role of online reviews as a predictor of customers purchase decision as well.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first empirical research that investigates and examines the influence of the effectiveness of WASS and consumers’ concerns on consumers’ intentions through perceived value and trust. This research also investigates the moderating role of habit in the link between perceived website, perceived value and consumers’ intentions.

This study aims to focus on the main materials used in consolidation processes of illuminated paper manuscripts and leather binding.

For each material, chemical structure, chemical composition, molecular formula, solubility, advantages, disadvantages and its role in treatment process are presented.

This study concluded that carboxy methyl cellulose, hydroxy propyl cellulose, methyl cellulose, cellulose acetate, nanocrystalline cellulose, funori, sturgeon glue, poly vinyl alcohol, chitosan, chitosan nanoparticles (NPs), gelatin, aquazol, paraloid B72 and hydroxyapatite NPs were the most common and important materials used for the consolidation of illuminated paper manuscripts. For the leather bindings, hydroxy propyl cellulose, polyethylene glycol, oligomeric melamine-formaldehyde resin, acrylic wax SC6000, pliantex, paraloid B67 and B72, silicone oil and collagen NPs are the most consolidants used.

Illuminated paper manuscripts with leather binding are considered one of the most important objects in libraries, museums and storehouses. The uncontrolled conditions and other deterioration factors inside the libraries and storehouses lead to degradation of these artifacts. The brittleness, fragility and weakness are considered the most common deterioration aspects of illuminated paper manuscripts and leather binding. Therefore, the consolidation process became vital and important to solve this problem. This study presents the main materials used for consolidation process of illuminated paper manuscripts and leather bindings.

This study aims to evaluate the efficiency of using some polymers at different concentrations in the consolidation of vegetable-tanned leather artifacts.

New vegetable-tanned leather samples were prepared. The consolidants used were polyacrylamide (PAM) and polymethyl methacrylate/hydroxyethyl methacrylate (MMA-HEMA). Accelerated heat aging was applied to the untreated and treated samples. Analytical techniques used were Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), digital microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM), change of color and mechanical properties.

The characteristic FTIR bands showed the effect of accelerated heat aging on the molecular structure of the studied samples, but treated and aged treated samples used were better than aged untreated samples. Microscopic investigations (digital and SEM), and mechanical properties proved that 2% was the best concentration for polymers used. The change in the total color difference of the treated and aged treated samples was limited.

This study presents the important results obtained from PAM and poly(MMA-HEMA) used for the consolidation of vegetable-tanned leather artifacts. The best results of the studied polymers can be applied directly to protect historical vegetable-tanned leathers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether investor reactions to accounting narratives are uniform across cultures or if there are predictable systematic culture-based differences, particularly for investors from interdependent cultures, such as in Asia.

This research paper builds on the experiment conducted in Riley et al. (2014) by collecting data from investors from interdependent cultures and comparing their investment judgments to the “baseline” judgments of the investors from Riley et al. (2014).

In comparing independent and interdependent culture investors, a culture by construal interaction is observed. Whereas the independent culture investors in Riley et al. (2014) made less favorable investment judgments of a company with a concretely (vs abstractly) written negative narrative, this effect is attenuated for interdependent culture investors.

This study extends the literature on accounting narratives by providing evidence that investors’ culture and linguistic characteristics of accounting narratives “interact,” suggesting that future studies in this area should account for culture as a variable. As for limitations, the independent and interdependent participant data were predominantly collected from different universities, so the differences observed may be due to institutional, not cultural differences. However, the populations are matched on key demographic measures.

The results have practical implications for investor relations professionals and international standard-setting bodies.

This study is believed to be the first to examine how investors’ culture may affect their reactions to the features of accounting narratives.

This paper aims to present the components' characterization and condition assessment of an important deteriorated Mamluk-illuminated paper manuscript housed in Al-Azhar Library, Egypt.

Different analytical techniques used in this study were the portable digital optical microscope, stereomicroscope, scanning electron microscope with EDX (SEM.EDX), portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD), pH measurement and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR).

The results obtained by different microscopes showed that the gilding in the surface of illuminated paper sheets was performed with gold leaves. Additionally, these microscopes revealed that the illuminated paper manuscript has different aspects of deterioration such as adhered dirt, staining, some micro-cracks, cracks and detachment of some parts in some illuminated areas. The results of elemental analysis by EDX, portable XRF and XRD analysis showed that the orange red pigment is red lead (Pb₃O₄), blue pigment is azurite (2CuCo₃.Cu (OH)₂), and the gold layer is has consisted of brass alloy (Cu-Zn) with a small amount of gold element (Au). The pH measurement stated that the historical paper in the acidity level. The ATR-FTIR analysis also revealed the oxidation of cellulose. Moreover, it was found from ATR-FTIR that Arabic gum was used as a binder for the pigments.

This study presents the important results of analytical methods used for condition assessment and identification of the components of an important Mamluk-illuminated paper manuscript, where these results referred that the studied paper manuscript had different aspects of deterioration. The conservation steps either conservation treatment or preventive conservation are urgently needed in future studies.

Paper aims to Preparation and evaluation of isoxazole benzene sulfonamide derivatives and incorporated it with waterborne household paints to develop coating compositions as an insecticidal coating against Musca domestica adults.

The synthesized compounds were prepared and confirmed by different analyzes, fourier transform infra-red (FTIR), mass, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹HNMR) and Carbon 13 nuclear magnetic resonance (¹³CNMR) spectra. The prepared compound has been blended with waterborne household paint formulation, the physical and mechanical properties of the paint formulation has been studied. The efficiency of the isoxazole benzene sulfonamide derivatives when incorporated with waterborne paint against Culex quinquefasciatus and Mosquito house fly adults, also have been examined.

The obtained results of the paint formulations confirmed their best performance and providing good scrub resistance. Also, the finding promising results of the insecticide test of the paint formulation may be because of the biological activity of these compounds and containing sulfonamide, cyanide and free aromatic amine groups comparing with the standard recommended organophosphorus insecticide. The order activity increase with increasing the dose concentration of the isoxazole derivatives and the activity of chemical compounds itself is represented in terms of their medium lethal concentrations LC50 (LC90), which recorded 0.90(1.62), 0.89(1.61) and 0.86(1.56) g/ml for 5, 3 and 4 chemical compounds, respectively, after 72 h from treatment.

These types of organic compounds are friendly environmentally and can be used as a biocide with different types of paint formulations.

Insecticide waterborne household paints based on isoxazole benzene sulfonamide derivatives as insecticide agents are novel.

Today’s in-demand skills may not be needed tomorrow. As companies are adopting a new group of technologies, they are in huge need of information technology (IT) professionals who can fill various IT positions with a mixture of technical and problem-solving skills. This study aims to adopt a sematic analysis approach to explore how the US Information Systems (IS) programs meet the challenges of emerging IT topics.

This study considers the application of a hybrid semantic analysis approach to the analysis of IS higher education programs in the USA. It proposes a semantic analysis framework and a semantic analysis algorithm to analyze and evaluate the context of the IS programs. To be more specific, the study uses digital transformation as a case study to examine the readiness of the IS programs in the USA to meet the challenges of digital transformation. First, this study developed a knowledge pool of 15 principles and 98 keywords from an extensive literature review on digital transformation. Second, this study collects 4,093 IS courses from 315 IS programs in the USA and 493,216 scientific publication records from the Web of Science Core Collection.

Using the knowledge pool and two collected data sets, the semantic analysis algorithm was implemented to compute a semantic similarity score (DxScore) between an IS course’s context and digital transformation. To present the credibility of the research results of this paper, the state ranking using the similarity scores and the state employment ranking were compared. The research results can be used by IS educators in the future in the process of updating the IS curricula. Regarding IT professionals in the industry, the results can provide insights into the training of their current/future employees.

This study explores the status of the IS programs in the USA by proposing a semantic analysis framework, using digital transformation as a case study to illustrate the application of the proposed semantic analysis framework, and developing a knowledge pool, a corpus and a course information collection.

The purpose of this paper is to assess and monitor a sample of heavy metals, namely lead, cadmium and copper, in water treatment plants at Greater Cairo, Egypt, to assess the efficiency of water treatment plants for metals removal and to monitor lead concentrations in the distribution system.

Water samples were collected from two water treatment plants. In addition, randomly flushed tap water samples from different districts at Greater Cairo were analyzed for lead concentration. Other water quality parameters also were monitored in water samples.

The study indicated that for water treatment plant intake, the mean concentrations were 4.44, 0.38 and 5.54μg/l for lead, cadmium and copper respectively. However, the final effluent shows that the mean concentrations of lead, cadmium and copper were 2.0, 0.15 and 2.78μg/l respectively. The drinking water mean metals concentrations were below World Health Organization drinking water guidelines and the Egyptian drinking water standards. The results revealed that water‐treatment plants have a high efficiency for metals removal where lead, cadmium and copper concentrations were reduced by 54.9, 60.5 and 49.8 per cent respectively. On the other hand, as expected, the water treatment plant sludge showed high accumulation with metals in concentrations decreased in the following order Fe > Mn > Zn > Cu > Cr > Ni > Pb > Cd. The mean lead concentration was 9.5μg/l in tap water samples.

Water treatment plants have a high efficiency for metals removal; water treatment plant sludge contains high concentrations of metals and should be treated before discharge; lead contamination from the distribution system is well established and lead concentration in homes in studied areas were higher than concentrations in plant effluent.

Security is a vital requirement for software systems. Misuse case models allow system designers to inject security considerations within their designs early in the development cycle rather than patching an end system with security mechanisms after it was developed. The notation and syntactical rules of misuse case models are relatively simple. However, misuse case modeling practitioners are highly vulnerable to modeling pitfalls, creating defective models that can have catastrophic effects downstream in the development cycle. This paper seeks to present a framework that unitizes antipatterns to help remedy defective misuse case models and poor modeling practices.

A repository of antipatterns was constructed and formatted to be machine‐readable whenever possible so that it can be utilized by the proposed framework. The feasibility of the proposed approach was then demonstrated using a real‐world misuse case model of an online bookstore system.

The results indicate that the overall quality and clarity of the bookstore misuse case model is improved by applying the proposed technique and framework.

This research work presents a series of domain‐independent antipatterns. Users of this framework may be interested to develop domain‐dependent antipatterns to better suit their modeling and development needs.

The proposed approach will help misuse case modelers, especially novice ones, to improve the quality of their current models as well as future models.