Search results

This study investigates human behavior, specifically attitude and anxiety, toward humanoid service robots in a hotel business environment.

The researcher adopted direct observations and interviews to complete the study. Visitors of Henn-na Hotel were observed and their spatial distance from the robots, along with verbal and non-verbal behavior, was recorded. The researcher then invited the observed hotel guests to participate in a short interview.

Most visitors showed a positive attitude towards the robot. More than half of the visitors offered compliments when they first saw the robot receptionists although they hesitated and maintained a distance from them. Hotel guests were also disappointed with the low human–robot interaction (HRI). As the role of robots in hotels currently remains at the presentation level, a comprehensive assessment of their interactive ability is lacking.

This study contributes to the HRI theory by confirming that people may treat robots as human strangers when they first see them. When a robot's face is more realistic, people expect it to behave like an actual human being. However, as the sample size of this study was small and all visitors were Asian, the researcher cannot generalize the results to the wider population.

Current robot receptionist has limited interaction ability. Hotel practitioners could learn about hotel guests' behavior and expectation towards android robots to enhance satisfaction and reduce disappointment.

Prior robot research has used questionnaires to investigate perceptions and usage intention, but this study collected on-site data and directly observed people's attitude toward robot staff in an actual business environment.

Territory-wide system assessment (TSA) was launched and administered by Hong Kong (HK) Education Bureau (EDB) since 2004. Since then, parents and teachers have been questioning its need, value, uselessness, effectiveness, harm for schools, teachers and students. In 2015, the issue blew up with Kau Yan School’s principal boycotting the tests. A series of discussions in the public and media and different surveys were then carried out widely in HK. After review, EDB announced in 2017 that the revised version of TSA be extended to Primary 3 students in HK. The purpose of this paper is to propose that TSAs for Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 need a further review to judge their need and uselessness.

This paper reviews the educational policy governing the administration of the TSA. Primary and secondary data from focus group meetings, press interviews (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982; Miles and Huberman, 1994; Ouiment et al., 2001) and public reports would be analyzed. Besides, participant observation (Nosich, 1982; Sou, 2000; Sou and Zhou, 2007) and theoretical reasoning (Nosich, 1982; Sou, 2000; Sou and Zhou, 2007) have been applied for the critical review of this controversial test. The contrast study on the conflicting views of stakeholders in the education industry would bring up some insights of this controversial educational policy in Assessment for Learning.

Conflicting and contrasting perceptions from TSA to basic competency assessment (BCA) among stakeholders of education and government include governmental stakeholder – EDB’s awareness; EDB stressed that TSA is a low-stakes assessment which does not need extra practice for students; non-governmental stakeholders including legislative councilors’ perception, school principals’ perception, teachers’ perception, parents’ perception and students’ perception. Facing the opposition and grievances of different stakeholders, EDB announced in January 2017 that the revised version of TSA: BCA, be extended to HK in May 2017. Parents and legislative councilors were angry and they ask for a review or even cancellation for Primary 3 TSA.

This original study will initiate more thorough revisions and discussions for the TSAs for Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 in HK, as a quality educational management step. While TSA for Primary 3 has been reviewed and substantially “revised,” the community at large still asks for further revision for its needs, uselessness and harm for parents, teachers and students. Since the underlying causes of students’ suicides are not fully identified, the problem of over-drilling practices for TSAs for Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 needs to be satisfactorily resolved. Thus, TSAs for Primary 6 and Secondary 3, like that for Primary 3, should be reviewed for probable revision.

Interorganizational collaboration has been a major source of exploratory innovation. Despite much research, the authors’ understanding about how partner cultural distance is harnessed for exploratory innovation is limited. The authors’ conceptual framework aims to address this gap by explaining the social-psychological processes between perceived partner cultural distance and exploratory innovation.

Drawing on research in organizational learning and culture mixing, the authors propose a multilevel model with two parallel processes – cultural brokering and cultural defense. If managers are engaged in the former and are protected from the latter, then the partnership will produce more exploratory innovation. Cultural brokering is encouraged by prompting a learning mindset, while cultural defense is preempted by dampening social categorization across organizational boundaries.

Cultural brokering can be encouraged by building operational-level managers' (OLMs') collaborative strength through developing a learning orientation, allowing them delivery for exploration, cultivating mutual trust with partners. Cultural defense can be preempted by protecting OLMs from intergroup anxieties through providing organizational support to the OLMs, bridging social categorization faultlines and setting shared collaborative goals. Whether an alliance can unleash its potential depends on not just how cultural brokering is enabled but also how cultural defense is curtailed.

This paper takes a microfoundational approach and considers micro-level processes in a partnership. Furthermore, the model takes the operational managers' perspective and defines culture at the organizational level. All these differences allow us to provide a nuanced picture of how diverse partnerships can be harnessed for exploratory innovation through a few easily-implementable measures.

This review analyzes data from research articles published from 2010 to 2022 related to workplace ostracism which include theoretical or empirical practical implications. The primary motive of this review is to identify main themes of practical implications relevant to workplace ostracism.

In total, 86 research articles published in 56 journals were retrieved from six well-known management science databases, namely, Science Direct, Emerald Online, Springer Link, Taylor and Francis, Wiley and Sage. The affinity diagram was utilized to organize the practical implications of the studies into meaningful themes. Moreover, in order to prioritize the main themes, the Pareto diagram was utilized.

Eleven themes have been used to categorize the practical implications of the reviewed articles, demonstrating various human resource (HR) interventions for avoiding or limiting the feelings of ostracism at work. Specifically, they focus on training and development, culture, formal and informal meetings, interpersonal relationships, task interdependence, monitoring, trust and transparency, proper channel, job autonomy and individual characteristics.

While many systematic and traditional literature reviews have been undertaken in an attempt to thoroughly organize extant literature on various aspects of workplace ostracism, no study has addressed the main themes of practical implications vis-à-vis employees experiencing workplace ostracism. Moreover, the majority of them are apparently out of date (prior to 2019), and there is just one study undertaken up to 2020.

This study mainly focuses on the potentiality of the e-commerce industry's opportunities and limitations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) specifically toward non-oil revenue sectors.

E-commerce contribution to the retail market industry becomes more global and more flexible with the rapid growth of the Internet and information technology revolution. A new way of conducting business is rendered by e-commerce, which helps to make a profit electronically.

The main contributions of e-commerce are management of company operations, easy and cheaper ways of extending their markets and coordinating with the value chain across different borders. In addition, the Internet and e-commerce are responsible for removing language barriers, cultural diversification and extending the market to the national boundaries. The countries would have many innovative and dynamic aspects by the beginning of the global market that increases national revenue, market, employment opportunity, capital and access to technology and information.

At present, KSA's national revenue mostly depends on oil and its related commodities, while other trades compete with the global market and increase national income. So, it is essential to increase other Saudi products to reach a global business level through e-commerce. Moreover, the study suggests accessing new markets and participating in global production to improve e-commerce structure without affecting current employment patterns, industry structure, productivity and Saudi culture.

This paper aims to investigate the use of crowdsourcing in the enhancement of an ontology of taxonomic knowledge. The paper proposes a conceptual architecture for the incorporation of crowdsourcing into the creation of ontologies.

The research adopted the design science research approach characterised by cycles of “build” and “evaluate” until a refined artefact was established.

Data from a case of a fruit fly platform demonstrates that online crowds can contribute to ontology enhancement if engaged in a structured manner that feeds into a defined ontology model.

The research contributes an architecture to the crowdsourcing body knowledge. The research also makes a methodological contribution for the development of ontologies using crowdsourcing.

Creating ontologies is a demanding task and most ontologies are not exhaustive on the targeted domain knowledge. The proposed architecture provides a guiding structure for the engagement of online crowds in the creation and enhancement of domain ontologies. The research uses a case of taxonomic knowledge ontology.

Crowdsourcing for creation and enhancement of ontologies by non-experts is novel and presents opportunity to build and refine ontologies for different domains by engaging online crowds. The process of ontology creation is also prone to errors and engaging crowds presents opportunity for corrections and enhancements.

Cloud computing originated in central data centers that are connected to the backbone of the Internet. The network transport to and from a distant data center incurs long latencies that hinder modern low-latency applications. In order to flexibly support the computing demands of users, cloud computing is evolving toward a continuum of cloud computing resources that are distributed between the end users and a distant data center. The purpose of this review paper is to concisely summarize the state-of-the-art in the evolving cloud computing field and to outline research imperatives.

The authors identify two main dimensions (or axes) of development of cloud computing: the trend toward flexibility of scaling computing resources, which the authors denote as Flex-Cloud, and the trend toward ubiquitous cloud computing, which the authors denote as Ubi-Cloud. Along these two axes of Flex-Cloud and Ubi-Cloud, the authors review the existing research and development and identify pressing open problems.

The authors find that extensive research and development efforts have addressed some Ubi-Cloud and Flex-Cloud challenges resulting in exciting advances to date. However, a wide array of research challenges remains open, thus providing a fertile field for future research and development.

This review paper is the first to define the concept of the Ubi-Flex-Cloud as the two-dimensional research and design space for cloud computing research and development. The Ubi-Flex-Cloud concept can serve as a foundation and reference framework for planning and positioning future cloud computing research and development efforts.