Tooraj Karimi and Yalda Yahyazade
Risk management is one of the most influential parts of project management that has a major impact on the success or failure of projects. Due to the increasing use of information…
Abstract
Purpose
Risk management is one of the most influential parts of project management that has a major impact on the success or failure of projects. Due to the increasing use of information technology in all fields and the high failure rate of software development projects, it is essential to predict the risk level of each project effectively before starting. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is proposing an expert system to infer about the risk of new banking software development project.
Design/methodology/approach
In this research, the risk of software developing projects is considered from four dimensions including risk of cost deviation, time deviation, quality deviation and scope deviation, which is examined by rough set theory (RST). The most important variables affecting the cost, time, quality and scope of projects are identified as condition attributes and four initial decision systems are constructed. Grey system theory is used to cluster the condition attributes and after data discretizing, eight rule models for each dimension of risk as a decision attribute are extracted using RST. The most validated model for each decision attribute is selected as an inference engine of the expert system, and finally a simple user interface is designed in order to predict the risk level of any new project by inserting the data of project attributes
Findings
In this paper, a high accuracy expert system is designed based on the combination of the grey clustering method and rough set modeling to predict the risks of each project before starting. Cross-validation of different rule models shows that the best model for determining cost deviation is Manual/Jonson/ORR model, and the most validated models for predicting the risk of time, quality and scope of projects are Entropy/Genetic/ORR, Manual/Genetic/FOR and Entropy/Genetic/ORR models; all of which are more than 90% accurate
Research limitations/implications
It is essential to gather data of previous cases to design a validated expert system. Since data documentation in the field of software development projects is not complete enough, grey set theory (GST) and RST are combined to improve the validity of the rule model. The proposed expert system can be used for risk assessment of new banking software projects
Originality/value
The risk assessment of software developing projects based on RST is a new approach in the field of risk management. Furthermore, using the grey clustering for combining the condition attributes is a novel solution for improving the accuracy of the rule models.
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Construction sustainability (CS) is a strategic reaction to the sustainability expectations of the construction industry's external stakeholders. The extant literature has viewed…
Abstract
Purpose
Construction sustainability (CS) is a strategic reaction to the sustainability expectations of the construction industry's external stakeholders. The extant literature has viewed the environmental, social and economic dimensions of CS as having independent effects on financial performance. Due to the influence of common stakeholders, however, interactions in these dimensions will be present in their effect on financial performance. Accordingly, this study identifies the mechanisms of the interactions between the three CS dimensions and how they jointly affect financial performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Content analysis of GRI reports of 60 large construction organisations, followed by a hierarchical regression analysis was used to identify the interactions between environmental, social and economic CS in their effect on financial performance.
Findings
Economic CS was found to indirectly, and not directly, affect financial performance, the effect being mediated by both environmental and social CS. Environmental CS was found to have a strong negative effect on financial performance, whilst social CS was found to have a strongly significant positive effect on financial performance.
Practical implications
The motivation for engaging in CS is that investment in economic CS will have a positive effect on both environmental and social CS outcomes, which, in turn can have a combined effect on financial performance.
Originality/value
This is one of the first studies investigating the effect of interactions between the environmental, social and economic CS dimensions on the financial performance of construction organisations. It is also one of the first studies that applies a sociotechnical framework to this relationship.
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Alan Gardner, Allison M. Orr, Cath Jackson and James T. White
The retail investment landscape in the UK has drastically changed. Understanding owners’ responses to this structural change is critical to gain insight into protecting investment…
Abstract
Purpose
The retail investment landscape in the UK has drastically changed. Understanding owners’ responses to this structural change is critical to gain insight into protecting investment performance. This paper identifies and evaluates the tactics and strategies being adopted.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper employs a mixed methods research approach, using data collected from semi-structured interviews with professionals involved in the retail investment process. This is supplemented by secondary market data analysis.
Findings
The paper assesses the practical responses made by retail property owners/managers, structured around emerging sub-themes. Actions include mitigating short-term risks through greater use of temporary tenants/licensees and independent retailers, preparing generic “white box” retail space to capture remaining tenant demand, exploiting the tenant mix to provide “the retail experience,” and applying new technologies and processes in a sector where systematic risk remains high. A new framework for retail asset management has been developed.
Research limitations/implications
This study contributes to the retail asset management literature and understanding of the way the contemporary retail landscape is shaping investment management behaviour.
Practical implications
The developed framework provides guidance to real estate managers developing a retail real estate management strategy and will help them recognise tactics to better support the evolving retailing market.
Originality/value
The new framework adds new insights to understanding the process for managing retail assets and the actions necessary for asset managers to address economic/functional obsolescence and sustain asset investment values.
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Robin Marc Orr, Elisa Canetti, Jason Movshovich, Robert Lockie, Jay Dawes and Ben Schram
The aims of this study were to evaluate fitness levels in a cohort of police trainees and compare these results to other police trainees and the general population.
Abstract
Purpose
The aims of this study were to evaluate fitness levels in a cohort of police trainees and compare these results to other police trainees and the general population.
Design/methodology/approach
Retrospective data for 274 male and 152 female police trainees were supplied. Measures included height, body mass and physical appraisal test (PAT; 2.4 km run, vertical jump, push-ups and grip strength) results, assessed twice, prior to commencement of training, separated by several months. Wilcoxon signed rank tests were used to analyze non-parametric initial and final PAT scores and Mann–Whiney U tests were used to determine variance between groups.
Findings
Male trainees were significantly quicker in the run (−12%, p < 0.001), completed more push-ups (+74%, p < 0.001) with greater grip strength (+52% left and +50% right, p < 0.001) when compared to female trainees. Following the second PAT assessment, the significant differences between male and female trainees remained (p < 0.001). Only female trainee 2.4 km run times improved significantly between initial and final PAT (−4%, p = 0.002).
Originality/value
When compared to the general population from which they were drawn and to other law enforcement trainees, the police trainees in this study were quicker, more powerful and stronger. While there was no loss of fitness between initial and final PAT performance, a conditioning program, spanning the periods between initial and final PAT may be of benefit to increase fitness prior to training commencement especially for female trainees who were generally less fit than, yet must complete the same training as, male trainees.
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To examine the relationship that athletes establish with their bodies within sport and through their transitions out of sport, with a special focus on risk, injury and pain.
Abstract
Purpose
To examine the relationship that athletes establish with their bodies within sport and through their transitions out of sport, with a special focus on risk, injury and pain.
Approach
This chapter is an explanatory review of the literature focusing on the embodied and sensory experiences of athletes as they depart sport.
Findings
This chapter explores definitions and conceptualizations of the retirement process, highlights how the body is experienced during the sporting exit (as fragile and out of control) and makes connections between how bodily breakdown during sporting exits impacts an athlete’s sense of self and identity.
Implications
Through practical recommendations, this chapter highlights some of the ways in which psycho-education and an expanded focus on the body could be useful to athletes as they attempt to reconcile their new lives and bodies post-sport.
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In this chapter, we reflect on the possibilities of craftivism — yarn bombing, specifically — in a fourth-year undergraduate seminar on feminist praxis. We suggest that knitting…
Abstract
In this chapter, we reflect on the possibilities of craftivism — yarn bombing, specifically — in a fourth-year undergraduate seminar on feminist praxis. We suggest that knitting in the classroom, as an ‘everyday [act] of defiance’ (Baumgardner & Richards, 2000, p. 283), opens a productive space for complex and challenging conversations, in the process enabling not only different ways of listening, but also different ways of learning. Knitting, as a meditative and embodied practice, encourages and supports critical attentiveness. We also argue that craftivism can operate to make change in a way that emphasizes collaboration, non-violence and critical self-reflection. Social change, in a craftivist framework, happens in the everyday, and perhaps more radically, within the domestic spaces of the normatively feminine. Finally, our project demonstrated that knitting as feminist praxis serves a bridging function: we contend that systems of power may be challenged through knitting-as-protest, and that students may be able to practice engaged citizenship as they navigate the slippery borders between public and private, and academic and community-based feminisms.
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Online marketing become a trend in recent years focussed on online social networks, such social networks have rapidly grown in popularity; providing platforms to the marketing of…
Abstract
Online marketing become a trend in recent years focussed on online social networks, such social networks have rapidly grown in popularity; providing platforms to the marketing of products and services for the hospitality industry. Online marketing offers media technologies that can facilitate online functionality and monitoring perspectives wherein the data gathered can be used to develop their services for customer satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to study the impact of online marketing in travel agency. The data collected using google online survey and analysed using SPSS. The findings stressed that online marketing in travel agency has a positive relationship in increasing the sale of packages in travel agency. Travel agencies who use online marketing more frequently receive more correspondence. Therefore, travel agencies should use online marketing to generate more income. The value of time has also changed, making communication a process that has to be instant and simplified. Hence, travel agencies have to use online marketing and taking into account travellers feedbacks and complaints as well as delivering information about products and services in real time. Travel agencies have no chance to face their competitors if they don’t adopt online marketing strategies.
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This article argues that critical realism (CR) offers an ontological position suited to understanding the dynamic relations between multinational companies (MNCs) and the complex…
Abstract
This article argues that critical realism (CR) offers an ontological position suited to understanding the dynamic relations between multinational companies (MNCs) and the complex political spaces within which they operate. After outlining the core assumptions of CR, the key arguments are elaborated through two case studies which focus on issues of staffing and expatriation. The first case concerns recent developments in the Middle East, highlighting the shifting reality of nationality-based definitions of staffing the MNC, and the second examines the internationalisation of Chinese firms, exploring the way MNCs restructure space to retain access to home-country advantages.
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Zeyu Xing and Rustam Ibragimov
Rapid stock market growth without real economic back-up has led to the 2015 Chinese Stock Market Crash with thousands of stocks hitting the down limit simultaneously multiple…
Abstract
Rapid stock market growth without real economic back-up has led to the 2015 Chinese Stock Market Crash with thousands of stocks hitting the down limit simultaneously multiple times. The authors provide a detailed analysis of structural breaks in heavy-tailedness and asymmetry properties of returns in Chinese A-share markets due to the crash using recently proposed robust approaches to tail index inference. The empirical analysis points out to heavy-tailedness properties often implying possibly infinite second moments and also focuses on gain/loss asymmetry in the tails of daily returns on individual stocks. The authors further present an analysis of the main determinants of heavy-tailedness in Chinese financial markets. It points out to liquidity and company size as being the most important factors affecting the returns’ heavy-tailedness properties. At the same time, the authors do not observe statistically significant differences in tail indices of the returns on A-shares and the coefficients on factors affecting them in the pre-crisis and post-crisis periods.
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Abby Kinchy, Kirk Jalbert and Jessica Lyons
This paper responds to recent calls for deeper scrutiny of the institutional contexts of citizen science. In the last few years, at least two dozen civil society organizations in…
Abstract
This paper responds to recent calls for deeper scrutiny of the institutional contexts of citizen science. In the last few years, at least two dozen civil society organizations in New York and Pennsylvania have begun monitoring the watershed impacts of unconventional natural gas drilling, also known as “fracking.” This study examines the institutional logics that inform these citizen monitoring efforts and probes how relationships with academic science and the regulatory state affect the practices of citizen scientists. We find that the diverse practices of the organizations in the participatory water monitoring field are guided by logics of consciousness-raising, environmental policing, and science. Organizations that initiate monitoring projects typically attempt to combine two or more of these logics as they develop new practices in response to macro-level social and environmental changes. The dominant logic of the field remains unsettled, and many groups appear uncertain about whether and how their practices might have an influence. We conclude that the impacts of macro-level changes, such as the scientization of politics, the rise of neoliberal policy ideas, or even large-scale industrial transformations, are likely to be experienced in field-specific ways.