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Information security has become an essential entity for organizations across the globe to eliminate the possible risks in their organizations by conducting information security risk assessment (ISRA). However, the existence of numerous different types of risk assessment methods, standards, guidelines and specifications readily available causes the organizations to face the daunting tasks in determining the most suitable method that would augur well in meeting their needs. Therefore, to overcome this tedious process, this paper suggests collective information structure model for ISRA.

The proposed ISRA model was developed by deploying a questionnaire using close-ended questions administrated to a group of information security practitioners in Malaysia (N = 80). The purpose of the survey was to strengthen and add more relevant additional features to the existing framework, as it was developed based on secondary data.

Previous comparative and analyzed studies reveals that all the six types of ISRA methodologies have features of the same kind of information with a slight difference in form. Therefore, questionnaires were designed to insert additional features to the research framework. All the additional features chosen were based on high frequency of more than half percentage agreed responses from respondents. The analyses results inspire in generating a collective information structure model which more practical in the real environment of the workplace.

Generally, organizations need to make comparisons between methodologies and decide on the best due to the inexistence of agreed reference benchmark in ISRA methodologies. This tedious process leads to unwarranted time, money and energy consumption.

The collective information structure model for ISRA aims to assist organizations in getting a general view of ISRA flow and gathering information on the requirements to be met before risk assessment can be conducted successfully. This model can be conveniently used by organizations to complete all the required planning as well as to select the suitable methods to complete the ISRA.

We review and extend the arguments of Chen, Mathieu and Bliese by providing some foundational and guiding questions to assist researchers in multi-level construct validation. First, we suggest that all multi-level researchers need to gain a firm understanding of the difference between individual and collective constructs. Second, we make a distinction between collective constructs that describe the collection of individuals within the group vs. those that describe the collective as a whole. This distinction provides a framework to sort the various compositional models discussed by Chen et al. into two broad categories. After discussing these two questions, we then develop a decision tree that guides researchers through a series of questions and ultimately helps researchers to identify the appropriate compositional model.

The purpose of the paper is to propose an effective approach of artificial intelligence (AI) addressing social-humanitarian reality comprising non-formalizable representation. The new task is to describe processes of integration of AI and humans in the hybrid systems framework.

Social-humanitarian dynamics contradict traditional characteristics of AI. Suggested methodology embraces formalized and non-formalized parts as a whole. Holonic and special convergent approaches are combined to ensure purposefulness and sustainability of collective decision-making. Inverse problem solving on topology spaces, control thermodynamics and non-formalizable (considering quantum and relativistic) semantics include observers of eigenforms of reality.

Collective decision-making cannot be represented only by formal means. Thus, this paper suggests the equation of hybrid reality (HyR), which integrates formalizable and non-formalizable parts conveying and coalescing holonic approaches, thermodynamic theory, cognitive modeling and inverse problem solving. The special convergent approach makes the solution of this equation purposeful and sustainable.

The suggested approach is far reaching with respect of current state-of-the-art technology; medium-term limitations are expected in the creation of cognitive semantics.

Social-humanitarian events embrace all phenomena connected with individual and collective human behavior and decision-making. The paper will impact deeply networked experts, groups of crowds, rescue teams, researchers, professional communities, society and environment.

New possibilities for advanced AI to enable purposeful and sustainable social-humanitarian subjects. The special convergent information structuring during collective decision-making creates necessary conditions toward the goals.

The purpose of this paper is to identify sources and quantifying distortions to agricultural incentives to produce along the small ruminant value chains in Ethiopia.

National and district level average nominal rate of protection (NRPs) were computed for a five-year period (2010–2015). The authors developed four scenarios based on combinations of the different data generation processes employed in relation to each of the key variables.

The NRPs at farm gate and retail market for both sheep and goats are negative indicating a strong deviation of producer and retailer prices from the comparable export prices over the five-year period. Policy induced distortions were separated from market inefficiencies through use of data on access costs throughout the value chain. These access costs are positive and significant in value. It is clear that market inefficiencies are also due to government policy to a certain extent.

This study focuses only on sheep and goat value chains and covers only five-year period. This certainly limits the extrapolability of the results.

This study presents the extent to which smallholder livestock keepers are discouraged through disincentives in a unique context. This is the first study done on small ruminant value chains in the developing world.

Purpose – This essay attempts to answer the question, “What distinguishes inter-human influence from other forms of influence?”

Design/methodology/approach – Specifying the micro-foundations of social structures in terms of communicative inferences necessitates a revision of the concept of social structures (and institutions) as distributed, and hence, uncertain, structures of expectation. Institutional realities are generated in linguistic interaction through the indirect communication of generic references. The generalizing function of language – in particular, abstraction and memory – coupled with its reflexive function, to turn references into things, are sufficient to generate both social structures and institutions as collective inferences.

Findings – Social relations are fundamentally communicative relations. The communicative relation is triadic, implying an enunciator, an audience, and some referential content. Through linguistic communication, humans are capable of communicating locally with others about others nonlocally. Institutions exist only as expectations concerning the expectations of others. These expectations, however, are not only in the mind, and they are not exclusively psychological entities. Linguistically, these expectations appear as the reported statement within the reporting statement, that is, they are constituted through indirect discourse.

Research limitations/implications – An important implication for current sociological theory is that, from the point of view of a sociology defined as communication about communication from within communication, institutional realities should not be reified as existing naturalistically or objectively above or behind the communications through which they are instantiated.

Originality value – This approach, then, is decidedly anti-“realist.” The goal of such research is to examine the inadequacy of nonreflexive models of social order. Accounts of how sets of social relationships emerge will remain inadequate if they do not reflect upon the cognitive and communicative processes which make possible the consideration of such structures.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.