Chun-Hua Hsiao, Jung Jung Chang, Pi-Chu Wu and Kai-Yu Tang
The purpose of this paper is to propose an innovative service model regarding the public library’s pilot project in Taiwan – Borrowing Books from Convenience Stores (BBCS). The…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose an innovative service model regarding the public library’s pilot project in Taiwan – Borrowing Books from Convenience Stores (BBCS). The proposed model presents a comprehensive evaluation of patrons to enhance readers’ intention to adopt this innovative library service.
Design/methodology/approach
A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the users of the public library and convenience stores in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.
Findings
The main findings of this study make both theoretical and practical contributions. First, this study explores the library’s extending service to convenience stores, and proposes an integrated BBCS model for the library’s innovative service. Second, the identification of influential factors, such as control influence, social interaction and perceived values of convenience, contributes to a marketing strategy for this innovative service offered by the library. Third, gender differences in some relationships of influential factors on BBCS use intention were identified.
Originality/value
Although many studies have investigated the adoption of self-service technology, this paper is the very first attempt to explore the use of the innovative library service in convenience stores. Based on several theories, an integrated model for users’ intention to use BBCS is proposed in this study. The authors also recommend various gender-specific strategies of BBCS service.
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Mitigating agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is an essential part of China's effort to achieve net-zero emissions. This study assesses the cost-effectiveness of China's…
Abstract
Purpose
Mitigating agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is an essential part of China's effort to achieve net-zero emissions. This study assesses the cost-effectiveness of China's agricultural GHG reduction under diverse carbon policies.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employs a parametric non-radial distance function approach and estimates the technical abatement potential and marginal abatement cost (MAC) of GHG in China's agricultural sector for the 2008–2017 period.
Findings
Agriculture is expected to make a great contribution to China's net-zero emissions progress. This study empirically analyses the cost-effectiveness of China's agricultural GHG reduction under diverse carbon policies. A parametric non-radial distance function approach is used to derive technical abatement potential and MAC of GHG for the 2008–2017 period. The results indicate that no significant improvement had been achieved in terms of agricultural GHG reduction in China during 2008–2017. The country's agricultural sector could reduce 20–40% GHG emissions with a mean value of 31%. In general, western provinces have larger reduction potential than eastern ones. The average MAC for the whole country is 4,656 yuan/ton CO2e during 2008–2017. For most western provinces, their MAC values are considerably higher than those for most eastern provinces. Compared with previous sectoral estimates of GHG mitigation cost, this study’s estimates indicate that reducing agricultural GHG emissions in some provinces is likely to be cost-effective. The Chinese government should consider expanding its national carbon market to cover agricultural sector.
Practical implications
The Chinese government should consider expanding its national carbon market to cover agricultural sector.
Originality/value
Existing studies in the field mostly ignore input constraints, which is inconsistent with carbon mitigation policy practice, especially in the agricultural sector. This study’s approach integrates both input and output constraints reflecting differing policy practice.
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A.R.D. Prasad and Durga Sankar Rath
This paper presents a methodology to capture bibliographic data from the verso of the title pages of documents. A survey has been undertaken to identify the syntactic and semantic…
Abstract
This paper presents a methodology to capture bibliographic data from the verso of the title pages of documents. A survey has been undertaken to identify the syntactic and semantic features of bibliographic elements on the verso of title pages. These features include the font size, line numbers and appearence of certain string of characters. Emphasis is given to the study of “cataloguing‐in‐publication” data. The results of the survey are used to develop heuristics which can help in developing a program to automatically identify the various bibliogaphic data elements. The back of the title pages are scanned and stored as HTML pages using optical recognition software. The heuristics are then applied on the HTML pages. Few samples of input and the output generated are presented. Finally, the problems related to OCR and the heuristics are enumerated.
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Chun-Hua Hsiao and Kai-Yu Tang
The self-service technology (SST) launched outside libraries has received great attention in Taiwan. This automatic book stop (ABS), FastBook, has raised some interesting issues…
Abstract
Purpose
The self-service technology (SST) launched outside libraries has received great attention in Taiwan. This automatic book stop (ABS), FastBook, has raised some interesting issues regarding users’ behavior in the library context. The purpose of this paper is: first, to assess critical variables that contribute to users’ acceptance of SST in the library context; second, to propose an integrated SST acceptance model in terms of technological and individual factors; and third, to further examine the gender differences among all the theoretical relationships proposed in this research model.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a sound theoretical foundation, the authors proposed a research model to investigate users’ intention to adopt FastBook, including both technological and individual factors. The survey methodology and structural equation modeling were used in this study.
Findings
The proposed model successfully accounted for about 92 percent of the total variance explained in attitude and 45 percent in behavioral intention (BI). Individuals’ attitudes toward FastBook had a significant impact on their usage intention. All three technological characteristics (perceived ease of use, usefulness, and reachability) and one individual trait (self-efficacy) were confirmed as critical determinants of attitude. Note that the effect of self-efficacy on attitude was much stronger for male than for female users.
Originality/value
The SST launched outside libraries has received great popularity and extended the library service to readers in Taiwan. This research connected actual users’ experience and the SST literature to provide a conceptual understanding of FastBook adopting process.
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Kai-Tang Fan, Yuan-Ho Chen, Ching-Wen Wang and Minder Chen
Virtual teams are becoming a norm in current knowledge-based society and offer a wide range of organizational benefits. This paper aims to investigate the effects of leaders’…
Abstract
Purpose
Virtual teams are becoming a norm in current knowledge-based society and offer a wide range of organizational benefits. This paper aims to investigate the effects of leaders’ motivating language (ML) and feedback approach on virtual team members’ creativity performance.
Design/methodology/approach
A 2×2 with pre-test and post-test experimental design was employed to explore how to stimulate virtual team members’ creativity performance using a group decision support system.
Findings
The results show that leaders’ ML and feedback approach via e-mail instructions have different interaction effects on members’ creativity and idea generation performance. Team members receiving direction-giving instructions generate more ideas under the demanding feedback approach and team member receiving instructions with more empathetic language exhibit higher creativity performance under the encouraging feedback approach.
Research limitations/implications
Shortcomings of virtual environment and leadership remain the major factors influencing such findings. Since the results are also restrained by the functionality of the utilized software tool, tools for virtual teams are recommended to include features that can support the effective use of team leaders’ motivational language.
Social implications
Virtual team leaders should provide proper guidance to members using understanding and empathetic wording approach. For task-oriented work, leaders should consider giving more specific instructions and provide constant feedback for completed work. For creative work, leaders should give positive encouragement as feedback or even challenge team members to stimulate their creativity. Additionally, facilitation rules can be set up in advance so that the intelligent agent can timely send out follow-up instructions/feedback.
Originality/value
The gained insights beneficially help tool developers for virtual teams build/enhance their tools based on the need of team leaders. This paper also usefully offers important implications regarding how to motivate virtual team members’ creative thinking.
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Chun-Hua Hsiao and Kai-Yu Tang
– The current study aims to investigate college students' behavioral intentions to adopt e-textbooks for their studies according to well-known theoretical intention-based models.
Abstract
Purpose
The current study aims to investigate college students' behavioral intentions to adopt e-textbooks for their studies according to well-known theoretical intention-based models.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper empirically assesses five theoretical models of technology acceptance, including the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the technology acceptance model (TAM), the decomposed TPB model (DTPB), the combined model of TAM and TPB (C-TAM-TPB), and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). The survey methodology and structural equation modeling (SEM) were employed to examine and compare these five models. Moreover, explanatory power, goodness-of-fit indices, and model parsimony were taken into consideration in the model comparisons.
Findings
Both TPB and TAM provided less effective but adequate predictive behavioral power. However, TPB appeared to be more parsimonious than TAM and the other models. By focusing on specific beliefs of attitude, social and control influences, DTPB shares many of the same advantages as TPB and TAM, but is less parsimonious. Similarly, C-TAM-TPB, an augmented version of TAM that incorporates social influences and behavioral control, is superior to TPB and TAM in terms of its explanatory power of behavioral intention to use e-textbooks. Overall, however, the results indicated that UTAUT appeared to be the best model in terms of the metrics of parsimonious fit and explanatory power.
Originality/value
Theoretical comparison of different models is important. This is believed to be the first study to present model comparisons by investigating undergraduates' intention to adopt e-textbooks as tools for their on-campus learning in Taiwan.
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Krisda Matmuang Cripe and Cheryl Burleigh
The purpose of this paper was to discover the best practices used by information technology (IT) project managers to determine what leadership skills, behaviors, communication…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to discover the best practices used by information technology (IT) project managers to determine what leadership skills, behaviors, communication tools and techniques are needed to lead and communicate effectively with virtual IT project teams.
Design/methodology/approach
In this qualitative case study, data was gathered by semistructured interviews from ten successful IT project managers from Northern California who had more than ten years of experience managing virtual teams (VTs) with growing and profitable IT companies in Silicon Valley, California.
Findings
IT project managers and leaders may consider building personal relationships with team members at the beginning of each project to foster a sense of camaraderie and common ground for the successful outcome and desired results. Maintaining cohesive team relationships to gain their trust and confidence may require additional coaching, mentoring, collaborating, recognizing their accomplishments, providing technical training, and understanding different cultures and local laws that relate to VTs to manage projects successfully to move projects forward in sustaining business, and assure customer satisfaction.
Originality/value
Findings from this study may assist IT project managers and leaders in building trust and rapport, increasing efficiency and developing effective lines of communication within their virtual IT teams.
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Micropollutants in the aquatic environment pose threats to both ecosystems and human health. Traditional wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) reduce some micropollutants, especially…
Abstract
Purpose
Micropollutants in the aquatic environment pose threats to both ecosystems and human health. Traditional wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) reduce some micropollutants, especially those who adhere to sludge or suspended matter. The hydrophilic micropollutants, on the other side, which may be non-biodegradable and resistant to UV-treatment etc. are typically transported untreated into the water recipients. This paper contains a literature study on the state of the art of advanced wastewater treatment technologies for reducing micropollutants such as pharmaceutical degradation products, personal care products, surfactants and industrial chemicals including heavy metals.
Design/methodology/approach
This literature study is completed using the most extensive and expansive literature database in the World to date, Google Scholar (GS). Published papers in recognized scientific journals are sought out in GS, and for relevance for this literature study, papers published here from 2016 and onwards (the last 5 years) have been chosen to eliminate irrelevant studies.
Findings
The result of the study is that there are many promising technologies on the market or emerging; however, no one solution treats every micropollutant equally well. Since advanced technologies often require expensive investments for municipalities and companies, it is important to identify which micropollutants pose the highest risk towards human health and the environment, because choosing systems to eliminate them all is not economically wise, and even choosing a system combining the existing technologies can be more expensive than states, municipalities and private companies are capable of investing in.
Research limitations/implications
The research is limited to published papers on GS, which may omit certain papers published in closed databases not sharing their work on GS.
Practical implications
The practical implications are that practitioners cannot find go-to solutions based on the conclusions of the research and thus need to use the results to investigate their own needs further in order to make the wisest decision accordingly. However, the paper outlines the state of the art in advanced wastewater treatment and explains the benefits and downsides of the technologies mentioned; however, more research in the field is required before practitioners may find a proper solution to their specific issues.
Social implications
The social implications are that the consequences of introducing a removal of micropollutants from the water environment can ultimately effect the citizens/consumers/end-users through added costs to the tariffs or taxes on advanced wastewater treatment, added costs on everyday goods, wares and products and added costs on services that uses goods, wares and products that ultimately produces micropollutants affecting the water environment.
Originality/value
This paper presents a much needed state of the art regarding the current advanced technologies to mitigate micropollutants in wastewater. The overview the paper provides supports politics on national as well as international levels, where larger unions such as the EU has stated that advanced wastewater treatment will be the next step in regulating pollutants for aquatic outlet.
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Jason Chong Lee, Shahtab Wahid, D. Scott McCrickard, C. M. Chewar and Ben Congleton
Decades of innovation in designing usable (and unusable) interfaces have resulted in a plethora of guidelines, usability methods, and other design tools. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
Decades of innovation in designing usable (and unusable) interfaces have resulted in a plethora of guidelines, usability methods, and other design tools. The purpose of this research is to develop ways for novice developers to effectively leverage and contribute to the large and growing body of usability knowledge and methods.
Design/methodology/approach
This work presents the first extensive usage evaluation of an integrated design environment and knowledge management system, LINK‐UP. Key to this effort is the central design record (CDR), a design representation meant to prevent breakdowns occurring between design and evaluation phases.
Findings
The case study results show that a design knowledge IDE centered on the CDR can help novices make connections between requirements data, design representations and evaluation data and better understand how to leverage that information to improve designs.
Research limitations/implications
Future efforts are focusing on exploring the utility of this approach for practitioners—especially agile developers.
Practical implications
A useful process and toolset for teaching usability design to novice developers and students.
Originality/value
The CDR makes designs coherent and understandable, thus supporting a principled, guided development process critical for student developers.
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Sandra Gutierrez-Wirsching, Jacqueline Mayfield, Milton Mayfield and Wei Wang
The purpose of this paper is to propose motivating language as a mediator to increase the positive effects of servant leadership on subordinates’ outcomes. The authors propose…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose motivating language as a mediator to increase the positive effects of servant leadership on subordinates’ outcomes. The authors propose that motivating language acts as a mediator to transmit servant leadership traits and enhances the positive impact that servant leadership verbal behavior has on employees’ performance.
Design/methodology/approach
By developing a conceptual model, the authors propose a connection between servant leadership and motivating language.
Findings
In the proposed model, motivating language acts as a full and a partial mediator. The authors further categorize three distinct outcome sets that should be improved from this relationship. The first set includes improved worker performance, job satisfaction, absenteeism and worker innovation. The second set is composed of self-efficacy, organizational citizenship behavior and employee commitment. Finally, the third set includes trust, satisfaction with the leader and inspiration to become servant leaders.
Research limitations/implications
Empirical research needs to be conducted to test this model.
Practical implications
The positive effects of servant leadership through the use of motivating language could be operationalized in multiple ways. First, potential servant leaders could take the well-established, reliable and valid motivating language scale to diagnostically identify their leader-member communication strengths and weaknesses. Then, tailored motivating language trainings could be implemented which target motivating language weaknesses and key strategic outcomes in the proposed model. Furthermore, motivating language training would be a valuable instrument for transmission of a servant leadership culture.
Social implications
Servant leadership style responds to the demand for positive ethical behavior that is much needed during these times when emphasis is given to profitability and lack of concern for people is the norm rather than the exception. It is also synchronized with the current benefits of organizational citizenship behaviors that have recently emerged in the field of managerial research.
Originality/value
This paper aims at addressing a gap in the literature by developing a model of how leader strategic language, namely, motivating language, mediates between servant leadership and worker outcomes.