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Completing Right-of-Way (ROW) acquisition process on schedule is critical to avoid delays and cost overruns on transportation projects. However, transportation agencies face challenges in accurately forecasting ROW acquisition timelines in the early stage of projects due to complex nature of acquisition process and limited design information. There is a need of improving accuracy of estimating ROW acquisition duration during the early phase of project development and quantitatively identifying risk factors affecting the duration.

The quantitative research methodology used to develop the forecasting model includes an ensemble algorithm based on decision tree and adaptive boosting techniques. A dataset of Georgia Department of Transportation projects held from 2010 to 2019 is utilized to demonstrate building the forecasting model. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is performed to identify critical drivers of ROW acquisition durations.

The forecasting model developed in this research achieves a high accuracy to predict ROW durations by explaining 74% of the variance in ROW acquisition durations using project features, which is outperforming single regression tree, multiple linear regression and support vector machine. Moreover, number of parcels, average cost estimation per parcel, length of projects, number of condemnations, number of relocations and type of work are found to be influential factors as drivers of ROW acquisition duration.

This research contributes to the state of knowledge in estimating ROW acquisition timeline through (1) developing a novel machine learning model to accurately estimate ROW acquisition timelines, and (2) identifying drivers (i.e. risk factors) of ROW acquisition durations. The findings of this research will provide transportation agencies with insights on how to improve practices in scheduling ROW acquisition process.

Bridge programs constitute institutionalized interventions to provide equitable educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation, and disadvantaged traditional undergraduate students (Gullatt & Jan, 2003). These are typically pre-college transition programs that serve to facilitate college access and readiness. This chapter discusses the role of bridge programs at American colleges and universities and the recommends integration of the Dynamic Student Development Metatheodel (DSDM) student success model (Frederick, Sasso, & Barratt, 2015). This chapter outlines the typology of bridge programs at the federal, state, and campus levels and highlights the target populations of these programs. Evaluation and outcomes regarding the efficacy of these programs are also highlighted. Implications and considerations for practice are provided integrating specific constructs from the DSDM to inform the further development of bridge programs to increase student development.

The purpose of this study is to determine what proportion of books were checked out in an academic library over a 15‐year period and what pattern of use occurs over the years and among various subject groups and between purchased and donated books.

Check‐out counts were obtained for each year over a 15‐year period and the results analysed by year, language, and Library of Congress classification.

Book check‐outs rise each year during the first five to seven years of a book's arrival in an academic library and stabilise after that period. Books that are checked out in their first year tend to continue to be checked out, while books that are not checked out in the first or second year will still not be checked out after 15 years. While overall check‐outs are generally about 70 per cent, some subject areas show almost 100 per cent use. As expected, books acquired as direct purchases had more use than books acquired as gifts. Although a third of the collection has not circulated over a 15‐year period, it is believed that the lack of use does not necessarily imply a lack of value.

This research covers a longer period than earlier studies and has been conducted in a non‐Western library using both Chinese and English texts. It supports the conclusion of earlier studies that approximately one‐third of book acquisitions will not be checked out and that circulation within the first few years of a book's acquisition is a good predictor of future circulation. For libraries considering remote storage, books not circulated within five to seven years could be removed to storage with little inconvenience to users.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Despite Bangladesh’s continued attempts, gender disparity in the workplace has long been a concern, and progress has been slow. Studies conducted earlier indicate that working women in Bangladesh experience an unwelcoming work environment, leading to unequal pay and limited opportunities for their career growth. Academic literature focuses little on the connection between gender and the physical work environment. This chapter focuses on the connection between the masculinist culture of organizations, how work is carried out, and workplaces are set up, illuminating the crucial role played by the built environment in maintaining gender equality. Infrastructure, spatial design, safety measures, amenities, and the biased culture often influence the obstacles to women’s long-term success in the workplace. This chapter investigates and comprehends the constraints female employees encounter in Bangladesh during their work by scrutinizing the influence of the physical space and the biased socio-psychological environment. As women’s long-term professional progress depends on how these elements are interrelated, improving the environment is the first step toward a fairer and more empowered work environment. A qualitative approach has been used in this study. Seventy-eight Bangladeshi graduate, working women have participated in this research. The results show that, regardless of efforts, the environment in Bangladeshi workplaces is inhospitable, directly affecting women’s careers. Building a welcoming workspace accommodating all genders is crucial for creating gender parity and promoting long-term professional growth. Therefore, this research suggests that the government should capitalize on successful efforts and investigate alternative techniques to improve this issue.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the marketing results of video blogging (vlogging). In particular, the authors are interested in understanding which video bloggers (vloggers) can better help marketers develop their brand image, which vlog viewers tend to evaluate vlogger-endorsed brands more positively, and how these effects occur.

A questionnaire survey was conducted with a convenience sample online. A total of 401 valid responses were collected. Regression analyses and bootstrapping were used to test the hypotheses.

The authors found that vloggers’ physical and social attractiveness and the audience’s viewing motives (entertainment motive and relationship-building motive) and behavior (time spent on the media) increased the audience’s evaluations of the brands endorsed by the vloggers (perceived brand quality, brand affect and brand preference). The authors also found that these relationships were mediated by the parasocial interaction (PSI) between the vloggers and the audience.

The findings of this study suggest that marketers can develop relationships with consumers and enhance their brand evaluations via vloggers. This strategy is more effective when brand managers use more attractive vloggers and target viewers who spend a lot of time on vlogs seeking entertainment or hoping to build relationships.

This study contributes to the literature by showing that vlogging can affect brand evaluations through the development of PSI between vloggers and viewers. The authors extended the focus of vlog marketing research from consumers’ watching and sharing behaviors and their perception of vloggers to brand evaluations, from vloggers’ characteristics to viewers’ characteristics and from the Western to the Eastern context.

Athlete activism has developed along with movements for human rights protection and promotion in Western societies. There have been many voices, active behaviors, and social movements that oppose and resist sexism, racism, or homophobia in society and sports. Unlike such sociopolitical occasions in the United States and European countries, neither strong voices nor active behaviors and organized movement against discrimination have existed in Korean society. Recently, incidents of violence at training facilities or athletes' dorm resulted in government policies centered for anti-violence. Structural factors limiting the outbreak and development of athlete activism were analyzed and discussed, including the conservative and authoritarian physical culture, the athletes' lack of awareness of social issues in sports, and the absence of governmental policies to combat and end sexism, racism, and homophobia in sports. Finally, this chapter explores several challenging plans to overcome structural constraints and build up, promote, and develop athlete activism in Korea as follows: First, it is to increase opportunities for student athletes to develop social awareness by normalizing their education and school life; second, it is to abolish the regulations that restrict student athletes graduating from high school to PE/sports/kinesiology major departments of universities; third, it is to greatly expand athletes' social networking and increase their social power. Finally, the chapter argues that the development of athlete activism protecting and promoting athletes' human rights can be an important turning point for Korea to leap forward as a sport democratized and advanced country.