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This paper seeks to scope the nature and form of practices, understandings and institutional arrangements that might contribute to the successful “design” and continuity of Communities of Practice (CoP) in a state government department in Australia. The study aims to provide research evidence to support the design and establishment of a CoP based on systems thinking within this department.

A total of 13 semi‐structured interviews were undertaken involving 14 informants. The interviewer also attended one CoP meeting. An emergent approach to research design was adopted with data analysis guided by previous studies on CoPs.

The research revealed the existence of six CoPs that were purposefully created internally by the department. Six “design” and practice considerations were suggested for practitioners aiming to create and sustain successful CoPs.

Interview material was the only source of primary data and it was gathered from one organisation only – a state government department in Australia. Findings indicate that the role of the CoP coordinator is still not fully understood.

The results from this study can be used in re‐designing a systems thinking CoP to support systems thinking within the department. The study also revealed that purposefully designing CoPs is possible and useful for practitioners aiming to collaborate and share expertise across disciplinary and divisional boundaries.

This study provides some guidance for the purposeful design of CoPs, which has been under‐examined in the literature.

This chapter uses an intellectual capital (IC) qualitative approach for assessing the bio health technologies entrepreneurial ecosystem of a university located in Southern Europe, aiming to identify the role played by IC in fostering the sustainable success of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. There has been limited research dedicated to deepening the knowledge of the entrepreneurial ecosystems’ dimensions, using an IC lens, in the context of university cities with different dimensions. Small cities may not have some dimensions, so developed, comparing with the ones of the ecosystems of large urban centers. This chapter uses a qualitative approach funded in a case study exploring internal and external stakeholders of a Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem, UBImedical, targeted at the bio health sector. The study is part of an exploratory study funded in the scope of a European Project, aiming to explore in a pioneering way the application of the dominant triad of capitals forming IC and, thus, identifying and understanding the dimensions of different entrepreneurial ecosystems. The case study reveals that the IC’s dimensions more critical for the success of the bio health entrepreneurial ecosystems are the structural capital and the relational capital, although human capital is perceived as a basic prerequisite for fostering the entrepreneurial ecosystem’s performance. The results are funded in primary and qualitative data collected from the interviews developed to previously identified external and internal stakeholders of this type of entrepreneurial ecosystem under study.

This study aims to evaluate the instances of information literacy instruction within the virtual reference system of a Canadian university library.

Coding and analysis of a sample of chat transcripts over the course of one academic year have been used.

The analysis indicated that over 50 per cent of virtual reference interactions do not lend themselves to information literacy instruction. An average of 23.6 per cent of interactions included information literacy instruction and the preferred methods of instruction were modelling and resource sharing.

While previous studies have focused on information literacy instruction provided in a virtual reference setting, this study aims to identify not only instances of information literacy but also to better understand the nature of chat queries by codifying instances of a transactional nature. The results could lead to improved best practices for chat reference, enhanced staff training and varied promotion and delivery of not just virtual reference services but of other library services as well. A portion of this research project, including partial results for the Fall semester, was presented at the LILAC Conference in Liverpool in April 2018.

This paper examines the websites of 11 political parties in the run up to the general election of 7th June 2001, to determine whether parties have got to grips with the Internet as a medium for information delivery and campaigning. The websites of all the parties were analysed; and their content, design, interactivity, multimedia features and currency evaluated. Overall, the parties appeared to have developed a more professional and corporate attitude to web design since 1997, and certainly made efforts to keep their web pages up to date. However, the parties tended to conform to a rather sterile design lacking in multimedia features, and mounted only predictable content. Only a few parties had made any special effort to draw users to their websites. Similarly, although interactive features were present, few of these allowed more than a token input into party policy.

Savant syndrome, a very rare condition in the world, refers to individuals who have extraordinary talents but might have disabilities that prevent them from maintaining their life. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the views of conservatory instructors about the education of Buğra Çankır (BC), a musical savant with autism.

As it was difficult to communicate with BC and elicit his views, interviews were conducted with his teachers, who had similar experiences in his music education process. The participants were six instructors who worked as full-time instructors in the conservatory. The participants were administered a semi-structured focus group interview form that described the difficulties, experiences, perceptions and feelings they had in their interactions with BC. Data obtained from the study were subjected to content analysis methods performed by the researchers; analysis involved identification of the codes and themes and formation of sub-themes and codes in line with these themes.

Results showed that the participants had difficulties in teaching BC because of having insufficient knowledge about his features. In addition, while planning the conservatory education processes, the participants were found to redesign the teaching content considering the features of the student.

The present case study is important in terms of revealing the problems experienced in the education processes of these individuals. More detailed qualitative studies or action research could be utilised in studies to be conducted in the future.

BC’s educational experience is the first case for educational institutions and instructors in Turkey.

This paper aims to present a modified MEC algorithm for demagnetization modeling of the PM motor. One of the major issues that the designers of the permanent magnet (PM) motors are faced with is the demagnetization of magnets because of high temperatures and armature reaction. Demagnetization will weaken the magnetic properties of the magnet and lead to a reduction in the performance of the motor. Therefore, it is essential to provide appropriate methods for modeling this phenomenon. One of these methods that has a compromise between accuracy and time consumption is the magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC). In this paper, the MEC method is used for modeling the demagnetization phenomenon for the newly introduced ring winding axial flux PM (RWAFPM) motor. The proposed algorithm can take the demagnetization into account through a time-stepping model and also correct the value of the knee point flux density.

The modified MEC method is used for demagnetization modeling. The modified algorithm can take into account demagnetization and also renew the knee point at each step to increase the accuracy of the modeling. In addition, the proposed algorithm has a very high and fast execution speed so that the computation time of the MEC algorithm compared to the FEM model is reduced from 3 h to 35 s. In this case, the simulations have been performed on a core i5@ 2.3 GHz/8GB computer. The FEM model is used to verify the validity of the MEC results.

The obtained results show that at the high temperature, RWAFPM motor is severely vulnerable to demagnetization. At the temperature of 140°C, the demagnetization rate of 35% has occurred. So, it is necessary to use the high-temperature magnet in this motor or modify the motor structure in terms of demagnetization tolerant capability.

The RWAFPM motor is introduced for use in ship propulsion and traction systems. For this reason, an accurate estimation of demagnetization tolerant of this motor in different working conditions can show the strengths and weaknesses of this structure.

The purpose of this study is to determine the main challenges that IT security practitioners face in their organizations, including the interplay among human, organizational, and technological factors.

The data set consisted of 36 semi‐structured interviews with IT security practitioners from 17 organizations (academic, government, and private). The interviews were analyzed using qualitative description with constant comparison and inductive analysis of the data to identify the challenges that security practitioners face.

A total of 18 challenges that can affect IT security management within organizations are indentified and described. This analysis is grounded in related work to build an integrated framework of security challenges. The framework illustrates the interplay among human, organizational, and technological factors.

The framework can help organizations identify potential challenges when implementing security standards, and determine if they are using their security resources effectively to address the challenges. It also provides a way to understand the interplay of the different factors, for example, how the culture of the organization and decentralization of IT security trigger security issues that make security management more difficult. Several opportunities for researchers and developers to improve the technology and processes used to support adoption of security policies and standards within organizations are provided.

A comprehensive list of human, organizational, and technological challenges that security experts have to face within their organizations is presented. In addition, these challenges within a framework that illustrates the interplay between factors and the consequences of this interplay for organizations are integrated.

The purpose of this paper is to examine knowledge-creating interaction in developing an innovation in a multidisciplinary research community with hermeneutic phenomenology, to understand how previous experiences and future prospects shape the process and to examine the circumstances, which support or limit knowledge creation.

The approach of this study is phenomenological and the empirical case study has been conducted using ethnography. The data consist of field notes, videos, interviews and documents of a BCDC energy consortium, developing energy weather forecast (EWF) in a new type of research environment.

The results indicate that the role of actual interactive events was crucial in the development of EWF. Hermeneutic approach illustrated that the roots of that event were in the past experiences of the participants and the circumstances, which promoted the development of the innovation, but the acknowledgment of the future prospects was crucial in finalizing the process. The role of a leader organizing the interaction and collaborative work was also substantial.

The results of this study could be used to plan and organize knowledge creation processes in organizations, especially in universities and research communities, striving to create multidisciplinary research environments and practices.

This study proposes a new approach based on hermeneutic phenomenology to examine it in a unified way, by focusing on the key aspects of elements affecting knowledge-creating interaction.

Differential search algorithm (DSA) is a new optimization, meta-heuristic algorithm. It simulates the Brownian-like, random-walk movement of an organism by migrating to a better position. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the performance analysis of DSA into two key parts: six random number generators (RNGs) and Benchmark functions (BMF) from IEEE World Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC, 2015). Noting that this study took problem dimensionality and maximum function evaluation (MFE) into account, various configurations were executed to check the parameters’ influence. Shifted rotated Rastrigin’s functions provided the best outcomes for the majority of RNGs, and minimum dimensionality offered the best average. Among almost all BMFs studied, Weibull and Beta RNGs concluded with the best and worst averages, respectively. In sum, 50,000 MFE provided the best results with almost RNGs and BMFs.

DSA was tested under six randomizers (Bernoulli, Beta, Binomial, Chisquare, Rayleigh, Weibull), two unimodal functions (rotated high conditioned elliptic function, rotated cigar function), three simple multi-modal functions (shifted rotated Ackley’s, shifted rotated Rastrigin’s, shifted rotated Schwefel’s functions) and three hybrid Functions (Hybrid Function 1 (n=3), Hybrid Function 2 (n=4,and Hybrid Function 3 (n=5)) at four problem dimensionalities (10D, 30D, 50D and 100D). According to the protocol of the CEC (2015) testbed, the stopping criteria are the MFEs, which are set to 10,000, 50,000 and 100,000. All algorithms mentioned were implemented on PC running Windows 8.1, i5 CPU at 1.60 GHz, 2.29 GHz and a 64-bit operating system.

The authors concluded the results based on RNGs as follows: F3 gave the best average results with Bernoulli, whereas F4 resulted in the best outcomes with all other RNGs; minimum and maximum dimensionality offered the best and worst averages, respectively; and Bernoulli and Binomial RNGs retained the best and worst averages, respectively, when all other parameters were fixed. In addition, the authors’ results concluded, based on BMFs: Weibull and Beta RNGs produced the best and worst averages with most BMFs; shifted and rotated Rastrigin’s function and Hybrid Function 2 gave rise to the best and worst averages. In both parts, 50,000 MFEs offered the best average results with most RNGs and BMFs.

Being aware of the advantages and drawbacks of DS enlarges knowledge about the class in which differential evolution belongs. Application of that knowledge, to specific problems, ensures that the possible improvements are not randomly applied. Strengths and weaknesses influenced by the characteristics of the problem being solved (e.g. linearity, dimensionality) and by the internal approaches being used (e.g. stop criteria, parameter control settings, initialization procedure) are not studied in detail. In-depth study of performance under various conditions is a “must” if one desires to efficiently apply DS algorithms to help solve specific problems. In this work, all the functions were chosen from the 2015 IEEE World Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC, 2015).

Integrity is a critical issue as it could lead to failures in governance, fraud, inefficacy, corruption and weak financial management particularly in the public sector. At present, the public sector is a matter of global concern because of the constant cases of failures in governance, fraud, inefficacy and corruption. As such, this sector has been pressurized to provide justification of the sources and usages of public resources and to improve their service performance as the public has the right to monitor the public sector management’s transparency and efficacy. This study aims to evaluate the state of present integrity practices among public sector employees from various Malaysian service schemes.

Primary data were collected using a questionnaire survey approach with 194 heads of departments in the Malaysian federal ministries. The collection of data was according to the perspective of 13 factors in integrity practices using a five-point Likert scale. Factor analysis and descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. In addition, data reliability was checked by Cronbach’s alpha test; data normality was examined by Skewness and Kurtosis tests, and data validity was tested by using Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test and Barlett’s test.

The findings show that 92.6 per cent of the participants reported that they practised integrity within their departments. Nevertheless, the priority for these integrity factors varies according to the service schemes. In general, the departments of finance, audits and administration had an above-average integrity practice level; however, the practice of the accounting scheme is below the general average level.

These findings of the study will help policymakers to take necessary steps to improve the practices of integrity in the public sector to create a more dependable and efficient public sector in Malaysia.

This is an original study based on primary data that assess the performance of practicing integrity in the public sector of Malaysia.