Search results

The explosive growth of the Internet, the proliferation of mobile networks and the increasing difficulty in managing multi‐vendor environments and the services that they provide have altered forever the dynamics of the information and communications technology industry, the expectations of its customers and the business models under which it operates.

As Pervasive Computing environments become more richly populated with sensors and computing power it may be possible for the environment to observe and interpret user actions and pre‐emptively provide accurate support for those actions. This requires accurate inference of user intent. Though individual user acts may be inferable from environmental context sensing, the inference of intent for which appropriate support might be offered is more challenging. Numerous researchers have used probabilistic techniques such as Bayesian Analysis techniques to attempt such inference. Unlike a desktop environment, however, pervasive computing environments are extremely heterogeneous, so any heuristics used must be tailored to the physical environment and the users in question. Thus these techniques are only likely to be accurate if configured with accurate knowledge of routine user behavior. Many existing approaches attempt to learn such knowledge from operational data, but this often requires user involvement in training and expert configuration of probabilistic processing structure. In this paper we examine a complimentary approach where users are presented with an intuitive interface to support the direct configuration of probabilistic structure by users with appropriate knowledge. By treating an intent inference system for a particular pervasive computng environment as an autonomic system, we approach the problem as the design of an intuitive governance interface for this system. We then present the design and usability evaluation of this governance interface.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

1991 has seen a new census and local authorities will be keen to analyse the changes which have occurred since the last census. Their analysis will be helped by the introduction of Geographical Information Systems which have been recommended by the Chorley Report. The findings of ten in‐depth interviews with local authority officers within planning departments are examined in this pilot study. These officers were asked about Geographical Information Systems, the Population Census and the Census of Distribution.

The purpose of this article is to understand how academics in management deal with the concept of generation in the workplace. We begin by conducting an interdisciplinary literature analysis, thereby elaborating a conceptual framework concerning generational diversity. This framework consists of four levels of analysis (society, career, organisation and occupation) and three dimensions (age, cohort and event/period). We then conduct a meta-analysis using this conceptual framework to analyse papers from the management field. The results from this analysis reveal the existence of a diversity of generational approaches, which focus on the dimensions of age and cohort on a societal level. Four factors seem to explain these results: the recent de-synchronisation of generational dimensions and levels, the novelty of theoretical models, the amplification of stereotypes by mass media and the methodologies employed by researchers. In sum, this article contributes to a more realistic view of generational diversity in the workplace for both academics and practitioners.

Corporate organizations could enhance their economic and commercial values through knowledge acquisitions and exploitations. The purpose of this study is to analyze the economic and commercial performance effect of poultry management absorptive capacity in Nigeria.

Structural equation modeling was used in the analysis of a random sample of 300 poultry managers and owners surveyed within the South-Eastern Nigeria. The scales that quantified the latent variables of the factors were tested for reliability and consistency using confirmatory factor analysis.

The study found evidence that the difference between economically and commercially viable poultry businesses and failing ones depends on the level of absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity advanced innovations that resulted in higher economic and commercial performance of poultry farm. Poultry firms' profitability, sales growth and market shares were positively increased by absorptive capacity dimensions of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation.

The study was carried out within a region in Nigeria and thus could be limited by generalization to the developed country.

This study is the first to link four dimensions of absorptive capacity to the economic and commercial performance of poultry businesses in Nigeria. As such, it originally breaks new frontier of poultry farming from dynamic capabilities and absorptive capacity perspectives.

This study traces the development of financial reporting in two publicly funded hospitals in New South Wales over the period 1857 to post‐1975, with particular focus on the use of cash and accrual accounting. The historical analysis draws on process and contextual change and stakeholder theory, and uses both primary and secondary data, to describe patterns of change (and non‐change) in the hospitals’ financial reporting and to identify the social and political influences associated with such reporting. The study provides historical context for recent developments in public sector reporting and accountability in Australia, particularly the (re)introduction of accrual accounting, and provides insights into the nature of accounting change both in public sector organizations and generally.

In 1982 my book Beyond Positivism: Economic Methodology in the Twentieth Century was published. At the 2017 History of Economics Society meeting, a session was held to mark the 35th anniversary of that event. Papers by Wade Hands, Kevin Hoover, Tony Lawson, and the trio Peter Boettke, Solomon Stein, and Virgil Storr were prepared. In this paper, I respond by reflecting on how I came to write Beyond Positivism and on the state of the field of economic methodology at the time, and then commenting briefly on each of the papers noted above.

This study examines chronic illness, disability and social inequality within an exposure-vulnerabilities theoretical framework.

Using the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), a preeminent source of national behavioral health estimates of chronic medical illness, stress and disability, for selected sample years 2005–2014, we construct and analyze two foundational hypotheses underlying the exposure-vulnerabilities model: (1) greater exposure to stressors (i.e., chronic medical illness) among racial/ethnic minority populations yields higher levels of serious psychological distress, which in turn increases the likelihood of medical disability; (2) greater vulnerability among minority populations to stressors such as chronic medical illness exacerbates the impact of these conditions on mental health as well as the impact of mental health on medical disability.

Results of our analyses provided mixed support for the vulnerability (moderator) hypothesis, but not for the exposure (mediation) hypothesis. In the exposure models, while Blacks were more likely than Whites to have a long-term disability, the pathway to disability through chronic illness and serious psychological distress did not emerge. Rather, Whites were more likely than Blacks and Latinx to have a chronic illness and to have experienced severe psychological distress (both of which themselves were related to disability). In the vulnerability models, both Blacks and Latinx with chronic medical illness were more likely than Whites to experience serious psychological distress, although Whites with serious psychological distress were more likely than these groups to have a long-term disability.

Several possibilities for understanding the failure to uncover an exposure dynamic in the model turn on the potential intersectional effects of age and gender, as well as several other covariates that seem to confound the linkages in the model (e.g., issues of stigma, social support, education).

This study (1) extends the racial/ethnic disparities in exposure-vulnerability framework by including factors measuring chronic medical illness and disability which: (2) explicitly test exposure and vulnerability hypotheses in minority populations; (3) develop and test the causal linkages in the hypothesized processes, based on innovations in general structural equation models, and lastly; (4) use national population estimates of these conditions which are rarely, if ever, investigated in this kind of causal framework.