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1 – 10 of over 25000
Book part
Publication date: 10 April 2006

Mary T. Dzindolet, Hall P. Beck and Linda G. Pierce

In complex environments, the use of technology to enhance the capability of people is commonplace. In rapidly changing and often unpredictable environments, it is not enough that…

Abstract

In complex environments, the use of technology to enhance the capability of people is commonplace. In rapidly changing and often unpredictable environments, it is not enough that these human-automated “teams” perform well when events go as expected. Instead, the human operators and automated aids must be flexible, capable of responding to rare or unanticipated events. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the Framework of Automation Use (Dzindolet, Beck, Pierce, & Dawe, 2001) as it relates to adaptive automation. Specifically, our objectives are to: (1) examine a number of factors that determine how people can effectively integrate their activities with their machine partners in fluid environments and (2) consider the implications of these findings for future research.

Details

Understanding Adaptability: A Prerequisite for Effective Performance within Complex Environments
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-371-6

Article
Publication date: 17 December 2018

David Egan and Natalie Claire Haynes

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions that managers have of the value and reliability of using big data to make hotel revenue management and pricing…

2246

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions that managers have of the value and reliability of using big data to make hotel revenue management and pricing decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

A three-stage iterative thematic analysis technique based on the approaches of Braun and Clarke (2006) and Nowell et al. (2017) and using different research instruments to collect and analyse qualitative data at each stage was used to develop an explanatory framework.

Findings

Whilst big data-driven automated revenue systems are technically capable of making pricing and inventory decisions without user input, the findings here show that the reality is that managers still interact with every stage of the revenue and pricing process from data collection to the implementation of price changes. They believe that their personal insights are as valid as big data in increasing the reliability of the decision-making process. This is driven primarily by a lack of trust on the behalf of managers in the ability of the big data systems to understand and interpret local market and customer dynamics.

Practical implications

The less a manager believes in the ability of those systems to interpret these data, the more they perceive gut instinct to increase the reliability of their decision making and the less they conduct an analysis of the statistical data provided by the systems. This provides a clear message that there appears to be a need for automated revenue systems to be flexible enough for managers to import the local data, information and knowledge that they believe leads to revenue growth.

Originality/value

There is currently little research explicitly investigating the role of big data in decision making within hotel revenue management and certainly even less focussing on decision making at property level and the perceptions of managers of the value of big data in increasing the reliability of revenue and pricing decision making.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 36 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 June 2019

Florina Livia Covaci and Pascale Zaraté

This paper aims to overcome some of the limitations of previous works regarding automated supply chain formation (SCF). Hence, it proposes an algorithm for automated SCF using…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to overcome some of the limitations of previous works regarding automated supply chain formation (SCF). Hence, it proposes an algorithm for automated SCF using multiple contract parameters. Moreover, it proposes a decision-making mechanism that provides means for incorporating risk in the decision-making process. To better emphasize the features of the proposed decision-making mechanism, the paper provides some insights from the petroleum industry. This industry has a strategic position, as it is the base for other essential activities of the economy of any country. The petroleum industry is faced with volatile feed-stock costs, cyclical product prices and seasonal final products demand.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors have modeled the supply chain in terms of a cluster graph where the nodes are represented by clusters over the contract parameters that suppliers/consumers are interested in. The suppliers/consumers own utility functions and agree on multiple contract parameters by message exchange, directly with other participant agents, representing their potential buyer or seller. The agreed values of the negotiated issues are reflected in a contract which has a certain utility value for every agent. They consider uncertainties in crude oil prices and demand in petrochemical products and model the decision mechanism for a refinery by using an influence diagram.

Findings

By integrating the automated SCF algorithm and a mechanism for decision support under uncertainty, the authors propose a reliable and practical decision-making model with a practical application not only in the petroleum industry but also in any other complex industry involving a multi-tier supply chain.

Research limitations/implications

The limitation of this approach reveals in situations where the parameters can take values over continuous domains. In these cases, storing the preferences for every agent might need a considerable amount of memory depending on the size of the continuous domain; hence, the proposed approach might encounter efficiency issues.

Practical implications

The current paper makes a step forward to the implementation of digital supply chains in the context of Industry 4.0. The proposed algorithm and decision-making mechanism become powerful tools that will enable machines to make autonomous decisions in the digital supply chain of the future.

Originality/value

The current work proposes a decentralized mechanism for automated SCF. As opposed to the previous decentralized approaches, this approach translates the SCF optimization problem not as a profit maximization problem but as a utility maximization. Hence, it incorporates multiple parameters and uses utility functions to find the optimal supply chain. The current approach is closer to real life scenarios than the previous approaches that were using only cost as a mean for pairwise agents because it uses utility functions for entities in the supply chain to make decision. Moreover, this approach overcomes the limitations of previous approaches by providing means to incorporate risk in the decision-making mechanism.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 49 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2023

Jenny Sarah Wesche and Lisa Handke

To remain competitive, efficient and productive, organisations need to ensure that their employees continuously learn and develop. This is even more challenging and critical in…

Abstract

Purpose

To remain competitive, efficient and productive, organisations need to ensure that their employees continuously learn and develop. This is even more challenging and critical in times characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). Hence, several technological applications have been introduced with the promise to make organisational training and development (T&D) more efficient and targeted through digitisation and automation. However, digitising and automating processes in the sensitive field of T&D also poses challenges and perils for employees and organisations as a whole.

Design/methodology/approach

Structured by the T&D process of (1) assessment/planning, (2) design/implementation and (3) evaluation, the authors present different digitisation and automation possibilities and discuss the specific opportunities and challenges they pose. Subsequently, the authors identify and discuss overarching themes of opportunities and challenges of technology use in T&D via a meta-review.

Findings

This synthesis revealed three central topics that decision-makers in T&D should carefully consider when it comes to the implementation of technological applications: opportunities and challenges of (1) data collection, (2) decision-making and (3) the value of human contact.

Originality/value

This review integrates previously fragmented research on specific technologies applied to specific T&D functions and provides researchers and practitioners with a fuller picture of the opportunities and challenges of technology applied in T&D.

Details

Personnel Review, vol. 53 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0048-3486

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 5 September 2023

Simone Guercini

This paper examines the relationship between marketing automation emergence and the marketers' use of heuristics in their decision-making processes. Heuristics play a role for the…

3134

Abstract

Purpose

This paper examines the relationship between marketing automation emergence and the marketers' use of heuristics in their decision-making processes. Heuristics play a role for the integration of human decision-making models and automation in augmentation processes, particularly in marketing where automation is widespread.

Design/methodology/approach

This study analyzes qualitative data about the impact of marketing automation on the scope of heuristics in decision-making models, and it is based on evidence collected from interviews with twenty-two experienced marketers.

Findings

Marketers make extensive use of heuristics to manage their tasks. While the adoption of new automatic marketing tools modify the task environment and field of use of traditional decision-making models, the adoption of heuristics rules with a different scope is essential to defining inputs, interpreting/evaluating outputs and control the marketing automation system.

Originality/value

The paper makes a contribution to research on the relationship between marketing automation and decision-making models. In particular, it proposes the results of in-depth interviews with senior decision makers to assess the impact of marketing automation on the scope of heuristics as decision-making models adopted by marketers.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 61 no. 13
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 August 2021

Jakob Keller, Patricia Burkhardt and Rainer Lasch

The purpose of this study is to explore if and how informal governance mechanisms are used for coordinating actors of digitalized supply networks.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore if and how informal governance mechanisms are used for coordinating actors of digitalized supply networks.

Design/methodology/approach

A multiple case study analysis of ten German firms in digitalized supply networks is conducted. Data are collected through semi-structured expert interviews with interviewees having notable years of professional experience in purchasing or sales.

Findings

This research shows that reduced personal contacts in digitalized supply networks decrease the ability to coordinate with informal governance mechanisms. However, the need for informal governance in digitalized supply networks remains when facing supply network disruptions or building new business relationships.

Originality/value

This is the first study examining the role of informal governance mechanisms in digitalized supply networks. Theoretical and practical insights on the changing abilities and needs to use informal governance after the digital transformation are given.

Details

International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. 41 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3577

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 26 December 2023

Mona Nikidehaghani

This paper aims to explore how accounting is fostering neoliberal citizenship through the participants of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). More…

1046

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore how accounting is fostering neoliberal citizenship through the participants of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). More specifically, this paper aims to understand how accounting discourse and the management accounting technique of budgeting, when intertwined with automated administrative processes of the NDIS, are giving rise to a pastoral form of power that directs people’s behaviour toward certain ends.

Design/methodology/approach

Publicly available data has been crafted into an autoethnographic case study of one fictitious person’s experiences with the NDIS – Mina. Mina is an amalgam created from material submitted to the Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on the NDIS. Mina’s experiences are then analysed through the lens of Foucault’s concept of pastoral power to explore how accounting has contributed to marketising and digitising public disability services.

Findings

Accounting rhetoric appears to be a central part of rationalising the decision to shift to individualised disability funding. Those receiving payments are treated as self-governable, financially responsible subjects and are therefore expected to have knowledge of management accounting techniques and budgeting. However, NDIS’s strong reliance on the accounting concepts of funds, budgets, cost and price is limiting people’s autonomy and subjecting them to intervention and control.

Originality/value

This paper addresses calls to explore the interplay between accounting and current disability policies. The analysis shows that incorporating accounting into the NDIS’s algorithms serves to conceal the underlying ideology of the programs, subtly driving behaviours towards neoliberal objectives. Further, this research extends the Foucauldian accounting literature by revealing the contribution of accounting to reinforcing the authority of digital pastors in contemporary times.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 37 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 June 2022

Takayuki Matsuo and Shun Iwamitsu

The purpose of this paper is to present the legal conditions under which governments may use green artificial intelligence (AI) in city planning. Although Japan was one of the…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present the legal conditions under which governments may use green artificial intelligence (AI) in city planning. Although Japan was one of the early countries to release its general AI principles, it has been relatively slow in establishing conditions where administrative agencies may use AI. Granted, there have been some recent scholarship that discusses the usage of AI in general under Japanese administrative law, but the use of green AI in city planning under Japanese law has not yet been discussed. Hence, this paper intends to focus on green AI in city planning and discuss the conditions for usage based on different categories of AI.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper conducts a legal analysis on the utilization of AI for the purpose of sustainable city planning and administration in Japan. The approach of this paper is to summarize the existing scholarship in Japanese administrative law and analyse the new elements in the new field of green AI in city planning. This paper is not a natural science paper. The social science method of jurisprudence is used. This paper cites only public sources, and no informal literature has been referenced.

Findings

This paper establishes the conditions where Japanese central and local government may use green AI in city planning from a legal viewpoint based on three categories. The categories are green AI usage in city planning concerning things, green AI usage in city planning concerning people and green AI usage in city planning concerning automated decision-making.

Research limitations

This research is limited to an analysis of Japanese law, which means that issues other than law are not included in this paper. Further, although general legal issues are discussed, this paper is intended to discuss Japanese law issues only, and foreign laws are not discussed. Therefore, this paper mostly cites Japanese language papers published in domestic journals.

Practical implications

The intended practical implication of this paper is to allow central and local governments to determine – based on the proposed categories – whether green AI can be used for city planning purposes and under which conditions. The authors hope that this will assist the Japanese government in establishing rules on the usage of AI by governmental agencies and allow for the greater actual usage by Japanese central and local governments of green AI in future city planning.

Social implications

As the theme of this paper deals with governmental use (and the function of a government is to serve society), the social implications at issue can be said to be equivalent to the practical implication.

Originality/value

There have been articles discussing Japanese administrative law restrictions on AI in general. However, as of now, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there have been no articles published focusing on green AI used for city planning. The authors note that the green AI used for city planning would have different legal implications from AI’s usage by the government in general, such as the chatbot used by the agencies or lethal autonomous weapons by the military force. Therefore, this paper is original in focusing on green AI used for city planning.

Details

Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1750-6166

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 November 2014

Christoph Becker, Luis Faria and Kresimir Duretec

Preservation environments such as repositories need scalable and context-aware preservation planning and monitoring capabilities to ensure continued accessibility of content over…

1399

Abstract

Purpose

Preservation environments such as repositories need scalable and context-aware preservation planning and monitoring capabilities to ensure continued accessibility of content over time. This article identifies a number of gaps in the systems and mechanisms currently available and presents a new, innovative architecture for scalable decision-making and control in such environments.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper illustrates the state of the art in preservation planning and monitoring, highlights the key challenges faced by repositories to provide scalable decision-making and monitoring facilities, and presents the contributions of the SCAPE Planning and Watch suite to provide such capabilities.

Findings

The presented architecture makes preservation planning and monitoring context-aware through a semantic representation of key organizational factors, and integrates this with a business intelligence system that collects and reasons upon preservation-relevant information.

Research limitations/implications

The architecture has been implemented in the SCAPE Planning and Watch suite. Integration with repositories and external information sources provide powerful preservation capabilities that can be freely integrated with virtually any repository.

Practical implications

The open nature of the software suite enables stewardship organizations to integrate the components with their own preservation environments and to contribute to the ongoing improvement of the systems.

Originality/value

The paper reports on innovative research and development to provide preservation capabilities. The results enable proactive, continuous preservation management through a context-aware planning and monitoring cycle integrated with operational systems.

Details

OCLC Systems & Services: International digital library perspectives, vol. 30 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1065-075X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 May 2022

Tom Cockburn and Cheryl Cockburn-Wootten

This chapter considers how social capital is evolving in the era of globalization today especially under COVID-19 pandemic conditions globally. Definitions of social capital have…

Abstract

This chapter considers how social capital is evolving in the era of globalization today especially under COVID-19 pandemic conditions globally. Definitions of social capital have varied: some broad others narrow. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for example, currently has a broad research project on social capital. These researchers have defined social capital as comprising four key areas. These areas are:

  • Personal relationships, referring to the structure of people’s social networks.

  • Depth and breadth of social network support available to each person in their networks.

  • Civic engagement activities such as volunteering and community action.

  • Beliefs, attitudes, and action frames of reference such as trust and cooperative norms, of reciprocity.

Personal relationships, referring to the structure of people’s social networks.

Depth and breadth of social network support available to each person in their networks.

Civic engagement activities such as volunteering and community action.

Beliefs, attitudes, and action frames of reference such as trust and cooperative norms, of reciprocity.

Thus, there are tacit as well as explicit aspects of social capital though some of these may seldom if ever be articulated and delineated for others.

As Claridge (2020) indicates, there are distinct, but dynamically interrelated, levels of social capital. These levels range between the micro- or individual level. That is personal “habitus” – which Bourdieu (1977) describes as a person’s “taken-for-granted” – ways of being, thinking, and reacting to events and to other people. Then, the next level above the individual is the meso-level, which is “how things are done here amongst us,” that is, the level of a group’s social capital (such as a team, or an organizational or local community level). Lastly, and wider still, the top level is the macro- or cultural-societal structural level of the nation.

The social capital systems in any location encompasses sets of acceptable or culturally legitimated behavioral norms and rules of engagement between community members which include types of greetings, forms of cooperation, communications, and signaling between diverse members. Thus, social capital may be present in the tacit, or unspoken/taken-for-granted assumptions as much as in explicit or formalized codes of behavior. The forms of social interactions at each of the levels may have norms for specific types communication and address in particular sets of circumstances such as social gatherings at home or in public or when attending communal gatherings or ceremonial occasions, or between people of different social status. Social capital generates trust and social cohesion and some level of cultural and attitudinal consensus and interest, which in turn delivers a stable environment for the local community or larger society, business, or the economy.

  • (1)

    Social capital is the development of relationships that help contribute to a more efficient production of goods and services as there is embedded trust, embodied in practice, that is, in behaviors regarded as trustworthy and socially helpful.

  • (2)

    There are three types of social capital at each level of interaction – bonding, bridging, and linking. Bridging and linking are similar though they operate in different directions socially. Bonding social capital describes the connections between people in similar social levels or groups of people who share the same characteristic norms and beliefs, whereas linking social capital facilitates connects between different groups.

  • (3)

    Social capital can therefore make or break businesses, especially small businesses or start-ups as those with the right kind and amount of social capital, such as good connections and contacts in the trade or profession, can usually thrive as they are able to get work done more quickly, effectively, and efficiently. Conversely, a lack of social capital denoting some distrust between groups can undermine social stability.

Social capital is the development of relationships that help contribute to a more efficient production of goods and services as there is embedded trust, embodied in practice, that is, in behaviors regarded as trustworthy and socially helpful.

There are three types of social capital at each level of interaction – bonding, bridging, and linking. Bridging and linking are similar though they operate in different directions socially. Bonding social capital describes the connections between people in similar social levels or groups of people who share the same characteristic norms and beliefs, whereas linking social capital facilitates connects between different groups.

Social capital can therefore make or break businesses, especially small businesses or start-ups as those with the right kind and amount of social capital, such as good connections and contacts in the trade or profession, can usually thrive as they are able to get work done more quickly, effectively, and efficiently. Conversely, a lack of social capital denoting some distrust between groups can undermine social stability.

The meso- or macro-levels of bridging type social capital ensures acceptance of established social roles locally and linking forms of social capital boost levels of acceptance of other roles such as those of leaders and followers.

All three forms of social capital and the three levels are not mutually exclusive but instead are mutually inclusive and interrelated. That is, they co-evolve, each impacting the other while dynamically interacting with the social capital anchored as it is emerging from the complex and interwoven fields of tacit and explicit norms of social interaction underpinning each of the levels of interaction over time.

Details

Contestations in Global Civil Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-701-2

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 25000