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This paper covers the development of a novel defect model for concrete highway bridges. The proposed defect model is intended to facilitate the identification of bridge’s condition information (i.e. defects), improve the efficiency and accuracy of bridge inspections by supporting practitioners and even machines with digitalised expert knowledge, and ultimately automate the process.

The research design consists of three major phases so as to (1) categorise common defect with regard to physical entities (i.e. bridge element), (2) establish internal relationships among those defects and (3) relate defects to their properties and potential causes. A mixed-method research approach, which includes a comprehensive literature review, focus groups and case studies, was employed to develop and validate the proposed defect model.

The data collected through the literature and focus groups were analysed and knowledge were extracted to form the novel defect model. The defect model was then validated and further calibrated through case study. Inspection reports of nearly 300 bridges in China were collected and analysed. The study uncovered the relationships between defects and a variety of inspection-related elements and represented in the form of an accessible, digitalised and user-friendly knowledge model.

The contribution of this paper is the development of a defect model that can assist inexperienced practitioners and even machines in the near future to conduct inspection tasks. For one, the proposed defect model can standardise the data collection process of bridge inspection, including the identification of defects and documentation of their vital properties, paving the path for the automation in subsequent stages (e.g. condition evaluation). For another, by retrieving rich experience and expert knowledge which have long been reserved and inherited in the industrial sector, the inspection efficiency and accuracy can be considerably improved.

The article extends the distinction of semantic from syntactic labour to comprehend all forms of mental labour. It answers a critique from de Fremery and Buckland, which required envisaging mental labour as a differentiated spectrum.

The paper adopts a discursive approach. It first reviews the significance and extensive diffusion of the distinction of semantic from syntactic labour. Second, it integrates semantic and syntactic labour along a vertical dimension within mental labour, indicating analogies in principle with, and differences in application from, the inherited distinction of intellectual from clerical labour. Third, it develops semantic labour to the very highest level, on a consistent principle of differentiation from syntactic labour. Finally, it reintegrates the understanding developed of semantic labour with syntactic labour, confirming that they can fully and informatively occupy mental labour.

The article further validates the distinction of semantic from syntactic labour. It enables to address Norbert Wiener's classic challenge of appropriately distributing activity between human and computer.

The article transforms work in progress into knowledge for diffusion.

It has practical implications for determining what tasks to delegate to computational technology.

The paper has social implications for the understanding of appropriate human and machine computational tasks and our own distinctive humanness.

The paper is highly original. Although based on preceding research, from the late 20th century, it is the first separately published full account of semantic and syntactic labour.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the progress of documentation efforts of the country, India in conserving and preserving its intangible cultural heritage (ICH) elements. This paper also provides few suggestive measures to improve the effectiveness of documentation process.

Available published literature and the initiatives of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), government, nongovernment and individual efforts on documentation of ICH have been consulted to analyze the strength and growth.

The use of information and digital technologies can effectively document and enable the communication of ICH values at global level. Community participation plays a pivotal role in conserving the living heritage for its long-term sustainability and to transmit it to future generations. Mutual recognition and respect for cultural diversity, harmony in intercultural relations and sustainable development are essential in safeguarding ICH. More research on preserving the languages, scripts, living heritage and oral traditions has to be carried out. A knowledge modeling framework for ICH has to be developed.

This study evaluated various efforts of the country (India) pertained to the documentation of ICH. Further, it has analyzed only the information available in the published literature and the various information portals developed for this purpose.

In this study, prime consideration is given to discuss about various efforts on the documentation of ICH, which are generally transferred orally through generations. The recommendation aspect highlighted in the results may be useful for policymakers to effectively safeguard and improve the viability of ICH. The paper will also contribute to a better understanding of the problems and challenges faced while documenting the ICH and offer few suggestions to valorize the ICH through its Documentation.

This study deepens the understanding of various documentation efforts of the country. The study will also help those who have been involved in the documentation of ICH to take proper measures to enhance its visibility.

The primary objective of this investigation was to explore how employees’ utilization of social media for work-related purposes impacts their service innovation behavior, both directly and through the intermediary mechanisms of knowledge management and employees’ risk-taking.

In developing its conceptual framework, this study has drawn upon the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory. To test its hypotheses, this study has surveyed 241 financial analysts from ten Iranian financial companies and has employed variance-based structural equation modeling (specifically, PLS-SEM) with the assistance of “WarpPLS 8.0 software.”

The findings revealed that employees’ work-related use of social media positively influences their service innovation behavior using knowledge management, encompassing knowledge sharing and acquisition capability as well as employee risk-taking. However, this influence is not directly significant.

To the best of our knowledge, this study marks the first instance in which the effect of work-related use of social media on employee service innovation behavior directly and through the mediating roles of knowledge management and risk-taking has been investigated through the lens of the SOR paradigm, especially in the financial sector.

Introduction: The word consists of different phonemes, which are interconnected to form a meaningful word, since phonemes as a single phoneme have no meaning, but their union forms the meaning of the word.

Purpose: Since the phonemes in the Albanian language, both vowels and consonants, have contradictions with each other, manage to bring words that have the same etymology but can change during writing. For example, in Gheg dialect – baj; hanë, while in Tosk dialect – bëj; hënë, etc. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to highlight the characteristics of the phonemes of the Albanian language, accordingly the use of phonetic and dialectal elements in the Balkans, before and at present, since these may have implications for economic and industrial strategies.

Need for the study: The Albanian language has a rich vocabulary with standard speech, but its dialects have more words than standard speech. Each dialectal change has required study to see the cause of the change in these phonemes, vowels and consonants.

Methodology: The chapter is focussed on the descriptive method of research. Therefore, the comparison of research approaches has been considered. A quantitative deductive method has been applied for data analyses.

Findings: The results reveal that some of the phonemes undergo changes over time spam. The changes occur in the two dialects of Albania, Gheg and Tosk.

Four Albanian vowels, the phonemes /a/, /e/, /i/ and /u/, come directly from vowels inherited from the Indo-European period; the vowel /o/ is formed by the evolution of long vowels; while the vowels /y/ and /ë/ were found from other vowels in the internal developments of the Albanian language. Whereas nasal vowels were also formed later as internal developments of the language.

Practical implications: The study is important for language researchers and affects the appearance of elements from the field of dialectology and phonetics.

This empirical research intends to examine factors influencing the adoption of renewable energy (RE) using a conceptual model of the consumer decision-making process.

This study uses a primary response-based survey to collect data from 668 respondents interested in adopting RE for their daily usage. The sample respondents were chosen through a multi-stage random stratified technique. The responses were analyzed through structural equation-based modeling techniques to discuss the findings and suggest further implications.

The findings suggest that factors like knowledge, policy incentives, sustainable development goals (SDGs-7, 11 and 13), socio-economic benefits and risk perception significantly impact the adoption of RE. Besides, risk perception mediates between environmental concerns and the adoption of RE. Also, age has a significant role in RE adoption.

The study finds the critical role of government in introducing financial incentives to reduce the initial cost of renewable adoption. Doing so will also promote clean and equitable energy access to society leading to further fulfillment of SDGs. Additionally, steps like knowledge enrichment, designing suitable policies for a manufacturer and public-friendly renewable market development will further facilitate renewable adoption in society.

With an objective to study the public perception and attitude towards renewable adoption, this empirical research is the first of its kind to carry out a real-time survey of the Indian population and suggest policy implications which would benefit all the concerned stakeholders.

After completion of the case study, students are expected to demonstrate understanding of the process of strategy formulation (which include conducting situational analysis) and strategy implementation.

Perusahaan Azan, which trades under the brand name Roti Azan for its fresh bread and Azan for its dry bread or rusks, was established as a family business in 1968 by Haji Abu Bakar bin Ali in his hometown in Kuala Pilah, in the state of Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia. In the mid-1980s, the management of the business was passed on by Haji Abu Bakar to one of his sons, Haji Mohd Ghazali bin Haji Abu Bakar. Haji Ghazali was named managing director in 1985 and officially inherited his father’s company in 1987. By 2004, Perusahaan Azan breads had started to penetrate major grocery stores nationwide, and later the business began to expand internationally in 2010, with Oman and Iraq among the first countries it ventured into. The company sold both its fresh and dry bread in local stores; however, in the international market, only dry bread types were sold, specifically wholemeal rusks and long rusks, which had longer shelf lives. Post-pandemic, by 2022, the company had exited the retail fresh bread market and had focused only on its contractual fresh bread and retail dry bread markets. He thought about the main strategic choices he had of going forward, either to revive its retail fresh bread segment or venture into a coffee shop business. The former was the bread and butter of the company in the last 50 years. However, he knew that re-entering this market was getting more difficult, as it requires competing head-to-head with the giant breadmakers. There were also issues of rising costs and high wastage. For the latter coffee shop project, the company did not have experience in directly “serving” the customers, with its businesses so far had been mainly in production. He pondered on the best decision to undertake to sustain the company’s profitability into the next generation. Few family businesses can pass this crucial stage. He knew he had to act fast to ensure that the company’s plans for the future could be successfully implemented. The case study is suitable for use in teaching courses in strategic management, organisational management and integrated case study for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates in the programmes of business administration, Muamalat administration and accounting.

The case study is suitable for use in advanced undergraduate students in management, business administration, Muamalat administration and postgraduate students in MBA, Master in Muamalat Administration or other related master’s programmes with a course in strategic management, organisational management and integrated case study.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

As public awareness of the concept of sustainable development has increased, a new investor market has appeared. These investors will only make investments in sustainable financial instruments. Yet, how corporate managers can effectively exploit this new financing concept to make their companies risk resilient remains unaddressed. This study, a conceptual research, aims to examine the impact of sustainable finance (SF) on business risk resilience (BR) and the impact of SF on risk management infrastructure (RI). It also addresses the impact of RI on BR and the mediating effect of the former between SF and BR in the corporate world. Finally, this research explores the moderating effect of managerial capability (MC) and firm technology-focused innovation capability (IC) between SF and RI.

This study incorporates both theoretical and empirical works in the sustainability, innovation, risk management and HRM fields. Afterwards, it constructs a conceptual model alongside suppositions that can be tested in further studies.

This study proposes that SF will enhance BR and RI. Moreover, RI will promote BR and positively intervene between SF and BR. Furthermore, MC and IC will reinforce the SF–RI impact such that the SF–RI impact will be strengthened for companies whose MCs and ICs are high than low.

This research affords suggestions for researchers in multidisciplinary fields. It reinforces BR and RI by introducing SF, MC and IC as tactical devices. It also serves as a reference point for forthcoming academics to investigate this conceptual model, empirically, in diverse industries worldwide.

Practical lessons for finance, investment and risk managers, as well as corporate investors are discussed.

This study provides a new research model that demonstrates how SF can be exploited to promote BR and build RI. It also shows how RI can bolster BR and how RI can connect SF to BR. This new model also exhibits how MC and IC moderate the impacts of SF and RI. Thus, it attempts to advance existing knowledge and theoretical frameworks.

The purpose of this study is to examine relevant demographic and socio-economic factors as they relate to progress towards intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and intercultural sensitivity for ethnic-minority Latinx middle school English learners (ELs) using a mobile-assisted funds-of-knowledge-featured writing practice.

Through the theoretical lens of funds of knowledge, this three-year study implemented a survey-based quasi-experimental design centered on the Latinx ELs’ ICC development with the implementation of an intercultural sensitivity questionnaire (Chen and Starosta, 2000). The authors first investigated the relationship between ELs’ intercultural sensitivity and associated demographic and socio-economic factors. The authors then examined the changes of ELs’ intercultural sensitivity. Over ten weeks, the intervention group completed five funds-of-knowledge-featured narrative essays using pen and paper and mobile-based writing tools alternatively.

Findings indicated that ELs’ intercultural sensitivity increased as they advanced to a higher-level grade from sixth to eighth. The embedded mobile-assisted funds-of-knowledge writing practice as intervention promoted ELs’ intercultural sensitivity in interaction engagement, respect of cultural differences, interaction enjoyment and interaction attentiveness. Among the variables, interaction enjoyment was portrayed the most. ELs who reported not speaking English at home were statistically significant in this experiment.

This study acknowledges the robust and variance of funds of knowledge as a niche to address the interculturality and hybridity of ELs’ cultural practices accumulated through Latinx ELs’ family socialization and social development using mobile-assisted writing practice. This study could provide implications for optimizing inclusive experience to promote computer-assisted language learning in a contemporary, postcolonial global world.

This study aims to collect empirical data and observe the type of influences that were causing impact to the implementation of information technology governance (ITG) mechanisms in Malaysia’s technical universities. This study enhanced the understanding on the status of ITG implementation and revealed internal and external influences that were shaping the types of ITG mechanisms implemented within universities and present a new perspective through the lens of resource-based view and continuous improvement.

This study focused on two Malaysia’s technical universities belongs under same university’s network. Five IT leaders involved in the implementations of ITG from each university were interviewed. Qualitative content analysis was used as the main analyzing method to extract categories and themes from the transcripts. Final results were produced after multiple efforts of refining categories and themes in ITG implementations.

The findings revealed that both Malaysia’s technical universities had more soundly implementations in structure mechanisms than relational and process mechanisms. The shaping of implemented mechanisms was influenced by environment surrounding the universities, internally and externally. The findings proposed that the internal and external factors are best addressed with the growth of internal ITG expertise.

This research was conducted on two of Malaysia’s technical universities that were under a university network. Although both universities had presented the exact trend in the type of ITG mechanisms implemented in the universities, more empirical data were needed to further solidify the findings from this study. Other than that, the major respondents for this research were middle-level IT officers and leaders in the universities. Further research could be conducted specifically on top-level managements to further understand the point of views of top managements in the aspect of ITG mechanisms implementations in universities.

This study discussed how each factor could influence the types of ITG mechanisms implemented in Malaysia’s technical universities and concluded the attentions needed to improve the overall environment for ITG implementations in universities through the lens of resource-based view and continuous improvement.