Asma Abdul Ghani Al-Shargabi and Francois Siewe
This paper aims to introduce a comprehensive framework for quality of context in pervasive context-aware systems. The framework includes the context quality characteristics, the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to introduce a comprehensive framework for quality of context in pervasive context-aware systems. The framework includes the context quality characteristics, the quality policy, the quality calculation methods and the quality control algorithm.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used the constructive research method to introduce the framework. The data of a context-aware flooding prediction system to evaluate the approach were used.
Findings
The framework improves the quality of captured context by resolving the missing, error context and the context conflicts using the quality characteristics and quality control process that are introduced in the framework.
Originality/value
This work is original. It is based on the author’s PhD work in De Montfort University.
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S.A. Grishanov, F. Siewe and T. Cassidy
A project aimed at the 3D simulation of textile yarns from technical specifications was begun in 1993 and attracted support from both industry and research councils to enable the…
Abstract
A project aimed at the 3D simulation of textile yarns from technical specifications was begun in 1993 and attracted support from both industry and research councils to enable the formation of a multi-national team of researchers to come together in the UK. Considerable progress has been made particularly in the simulation of knitting yarn and plain knit fabric. In recent times the team has tackled the problem of simulating mixture coloured yarns sometimes called melange. This has necessitated a more complicated model of yarn structure based on queuing theory which is outlined at the end of the paper. References are provided for readers who wish to learn more of the various theories and models that have been used throughout the course of this project.
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Olivia Kyriakidou, Joana Vassilopoulou and Dimitria Groutsis
The unanticipated disruption caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic led to the extensive use of flexible working arrangements. In such a boundaryless work environment, however…
Abstract
The unanticipated disruption caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic led to the extensive use of flexible working arrangements. In such a boundaryless work environment, however there are significant concerns, especially around inclusivity and discrimination. Given the increasing concerns surrounding hybrid and remote work settings, the authors investigated whether the extent of working in substantially flexible working arrangements relates to employees’ perceived ostracism and inequality, distinguishing between working from home, in a hybrid mode or from the office. In addition, the authors theorised that in flexible working arrangements, high-quality leader relationships, such as leader–member exchange (LMX) and servant leadership are likely to reduce perceptions of ostracism and inequality. Based on a survey of 161 professionals, who worked to varying degrees in flexible working arrangements, the authors found that employees who worked extensively in a hybrid mode were less likely to report experiences of ostracism and inequality in comparison to employees who worked mainly from home or in an office. Furthermore, a moderation analysis showed that the effects of LMX and servant leadership on perceptions of ostracism and inequality were much stronger for individuals who work in hybrid working arrangements than those who work at the office or from home. This research makes an important contribution to our understanding of how different degrees of flexible working arrangements affect employees by demonstrating the role of high-quality leader relationships in reducing perceptions of ostracism and inequality at different degrees of work flexibility.
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Mochammad Rifai and Devi Fitrianah
This study aims to support an institution to hold an online meeting or conference in the middle of social distancing, which is currently in effect.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to support an institution to hold an online meeting or conference in the middle of social distancing, which is currently in effect.
Design/methodology/approach
In developing this application, rapid application design methodology is used. The implementation used HTML5 and PHP for the Web and MySQL for the database and Agora Software Development Kit. To evaluate the application, the authors had a black box testing method.
Findings
This application will support the participant registration process, validation, payment, providing a link to the workshop to the participant, token and room name to be able to join an online meeting or conference up to the process of giving a digital attendance certificate to participants or members participating in it.
Originality/value
An integrated Web application provides full services, starting from the registration process, payment, the conference meeting itself and certificate of attendance.
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Meryem Amane, Karima Aissaoui and Mohammed Berrada
Together, learning objects (LOs) and e-pedagogical practices have the potential to improve the performance of e-learning systems in several ways. They can make e-learning more…
Abstract
Purpose
Together, learning objects (LOs) and e-pedagogical practices have the potential to improve the performance of e-learning systems in several ways. They can make e-learning more personalised and adaptable, providing students with a more engaging and effective learning experience.
Design/methodology/approach
The development of LOs and e-pedagogical practices have significantly influenced and changed the performance of e-learning systems. LOs are self-contained, reusable units of instructional content that create instructional materials, such as online courses, tutorials and assessments. They provide a flexible and modular approach to designing and delivering e-learning content, allowing educators to easily customise and adapt their materials to the needs of their students. e-pedagogical practices refer to the use of technology to enhance and support the teaching and learning process. They include strategies such as online collaboration, gamification and adaptive learning to improve student engagement, motivation and achievement.
Findings
To achieve this objective, this study consists of two main phases. First, the authors extract metadata from LOs using latent semantic analysis algorithms, which are considered a strong tool in web-mining exploration techniques. Second, they identify LOs according to a particular form of similarity using fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithms. To improve classification accuracy, the FCM is used as a clustering algorithm.
Originality/value
Finally, in order to assess the effectiveness of LOs with FCM, a series of experimental studies using a real-world dataset are conducted. The results of this study indicate that the proposed approach exceeds the traditional approach and produces good results.
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Utkarsh Shrivastava, Bernard Han, Ying Zhou and Muhammad Razi
Sharing patient health information (PHI) among hospitals has been much slower than the adoption of health record systems. This paper aims to investigate if privacy regulation (PR…
Abstract
Purpose
Sharing patient health information (PHI) among hospitals has been much slower than the adoption of health record systems. This paper aims to investigate if privacy regulation (PR) or security measures (SMs) influence hospitals’ use of health information exchange (HIE) to share PHI with other providers (e.g. physicians, labs, hospitals). The study specifically focuses on how multiple PRs can impede and a strong national security infrastructure (NSI) can support HIE.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses secondary data from a multi-national and multi-hospital survey administered by the European Union. The multi-level structure of the cross-sectional panel data is used to test the influence of both hospital-level (e.g. PR) and national-level variables (e.g. NSI) on HIE. A total of nine types of HIE, three types of PRs, nine SMs and other relevant control variables are considered. This study uses a two-level random intercept generalized linear model to test the hypothesis proposed in the study.
Findings
The study finds that national-level PRs (NLPR) have the strongest positive influence on HIE in comparison to regional (RLPR) and hospital-level (HLPR) PRs. Moreover, the study finds evidence that the presence of RLPR and HLPR, on average, decreases the positive impact of NLPR by 264%. The SMs also have a significant and positive impact on HIE. Adoption of an additional SM can increase the odds of engaging in a certain type of HIE between 21% and 61%. On the other hand, a strong NSI can also amplify the positive impact of SM on certain types of HIE.
Originality/value
This study extends prior research on the role of PRs in enabling HIE by considering the complexities brought up by adopting multiple PRs. NLPRs have the strongest impact on HIE in comparison to RLPRs or HLPRs. Moreover, public infrastructure initiatives such as those related to secure communications can also complement SMs adopted by the providers by encouraging HIE.
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Abir Al-Harrasi, Abdul Khalique Shaikh and Ali Al-Badi
One of the most important Information Security (IS) concerns nowadays is data theft or data leakage. To mitigate this type of risk, organisations use a solid infrastructure and…
Abstract
Purpose
One of the most important Information Security (IS) concerns nowadays is data theft or data leakage. To mitigate this type of risk, organisations use a solid infrastructure and deploy multiple layers of security protection technology and protocols such as firewalls, VPNs and IPsec VPN. However, these technologies do not guarantee data protection, and especially from insiders. Insider threat is a critical risk that can cause harm to the organisation through data theft. The main purpose of this study was to investigate and identify the threats related to data theft caused by insiders in organisations and explore the efforts made by them to control data leakage.
Design/methodology/approach
The study proposed a conceptual model to protect organisations’ data by preventing data theft by malicious insiders. The researchers conducted a comprehensive literature review to achieve the objectives of this study. The collection of the data for this study is based on earlier studies conducted by several researchers from January 2011 to December 2020. All the selected literature is from journal articles, conference articles and conference proceedings using various databases.
Findings
The study revealed three main findings: first, the main risks inherent in data theft are financial fraud, intellectual property theft, and sabotage of IT infrastructure. Second, there are still some organisations that are not considering data theft by insiders as being a severe risk that should be well controlled. Lastly, the main factors motivating the insiders to perform data leakage activities are financial gain, lack of fairness and justice in the workplace, the psychology or characteristics of the insiders, new technologies, lack of education and awareness and lack of management tools for understanding insider threats.
Originality/value
The study provides a holistic view of data theft by insiders, focusing on the problem from an organisational point of view. Organisations can therefore take into consideration our recommendations to reduce the risks of data leakage by their employees.
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Vicky Dimitra Ioanna Lamprinou, Konstantinos Tasoulis and Foteini Kravariti
Drawing on organisational support theory, this paper aims to investigate the relationships between servant leadership and (1) job burnout and (2) work–life balance, as mediated by…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on organisational support theory, this paper aims to investigate the relationships between servant leadership and (1) job burnout and (2) work–life balance, as mediated by perceived organisational support (POS) and perceived supervisor support (PSS), for both teleworkers and non-teleworkers. It is postulated that, under the influence of a servant leader, as well as a supportive workplace and supervisor, teleworkers and non-teleworkers will demonstrate reduced symptoms of job burnout and maintain a better balance between their professional and personal lives.
Design/methodology/approach
An online survey was developed based on well-established scales. Primary data were collected from individuals working in 22 industrial sectors operating in Greece. In total, 211 individuals participated in this study, of whom 64 were teleworkers and 147 were non-teleworkers. Statistical analyses include Pearson's correlations, exploratory factor analyses and mediation analyses using SPSS Process Version 3.
Findings
The findings established that POS is the full mediator in the relationship between servant leadership and (1) job burnout and (2) work–life balance for both teleworkers and non-teleworkers, whereas PSS was not found to act as a mediator in the aforementioned associations.
Originality/value
This article offers robust evidence for servant leadership and organisational support scholarship by establishing that POS mediates the relationship between servant leadership and (1) job burnout and (2) work–life balance amidst COVID-19 for both teleworkers and non-teleworkers. This evidence contributes to understanding how and why servant leadership influences employee well-being not only in traditional working environments but also in the context of teleworking.
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This cross-sectional study investigated differences in the learning styles of 127 undergraduate architectural students (first year through to final year) to examine the…
Abstract
Purpose
This cross-sectional study investigated differences in the learning styles of 127 undergraduate architectural students (first year through to final year) to examine the relationship between learning styles and learning autonomy.
Design/methodology/approach
For the investigation, the Felder and Solomon index of learning styles and the Macaskill and Taylor autonomous learning scale were used to identify how these variables relate to one another and how this relationship differs by gender and level of study.
Findings
The study provides evidence of a statistically significant impact of studio-based learning on both learning autonomy and style. Our findings, in conjunction with the absence of consistent findings from literature, provide suggestions for making learning in the studio more inclusive for all students. The authors also suggest that looking for learning style differences in the design studio is redundant. This is not intended to ignore the importance of learning styles, but when differences of learning preferences are apparent in one design studio, such finding would provide support for that specific learning setting, and only then conclusions can be drawn and suggestions can be introduced to help its learners, but not to be generalized to other studios.
Originality/value
Learning styles in the design studio literature has revealed only a few fragmentary and sometimes contradicting evidence that cannot be generalized. Although previous studies have explored learning styles in architecture in some detail, much uncertainty still exists about the relation between learning styles and other learning concepts such as autonomy, especially within studio-based subjects. In this research, the authors interrogated and critically review learning styles as applied to different design settings from different countries.
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Jacqueline Cope, Francois Siewe, Feng Chen, Leandros Maglaras and Helge Janicke
This study is an exploration of areas pertaining to the use of production data in non-production environments. During the software development life cycle, non-production…
Abstract
Purpose
This study is an exploration of areas pertaining to the use of production data in non-production environments. During the software development life cycle, non-production environments are used to serve various purposes to include unit, component, integration, system, user acceptance, performance and configuration testing. Organisations and third parties have been and are continuing to use copies of production data in non-production environments. This can lead to personal and sensitive data being accidentally leaked if appropriate and rigorous security guidelines are not implemented. This paper aims to propose a comprehensive framework for minimising data leakage from non-production environments. The framework was evaluated using guided interviews and was proven effective in helping organisation manage sensitive data in non-production environments.
Design/methodology/approach
Authors conducted a thorough literature review on areas related to data leakage from non-production systems. By doing an analysis of advice, guidelines and frameworks that aims at finding a practical solution for selecting and implementing a de-identification solution of sensitive data, the authors managed to highlight the importance of all areas related to sensitive data protection. Based on these areas, a framework was proposed which was evaluated by conducting set of guided interviews.
Findings
This paper has researched the background information and produced a framework for an organisation to manage sensitive data in its non-production environments. This paper presents a proposed framework that describes a process flow from the legal and regulatory requirements to data treatment and protection, gained through understanding the organisation’s business, the production system, the purpose and the requirements of the non-production environment. The paper shows that there is some conflict between security and perceived usability, which may be addressed by challenging the perceptions of usability or identifying the compromise required. Non-production environments need not be the sole responsibility of the IT section, they should be of interest to the business area that is responsible for the data held.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a simplified business model and framework. The proposed model diagrammatically describes the interactions of elements affecting the organisation. It highlights how non-production environments may be perceived as separate from the business systems, but despite the perceptions, these are still subject to the same legal requirements and constraints. It shows the interdependency of data, software, technical infrastructure and human interaction and how the change of one element may affect the others. The proposed framework describes the process flow and forms a practical solution in assisting the decision-making process and providing documentary evidence for assurance and audit purposes. It looks at the requirements of the non-production system in relation to the legal and regulatory constraints, as well as the organisational requirements and business systems. The impact of human factors on the data is also considered to bring a holistic approach to the protection of non-production environments.