Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore a novel control approach for swift and accurate positioning and tracking of a mobile robot. Coordinated movement of the mobile robot-body and chameleon-inspired binocular “negative correlation” visual system (CIBNCVS) with neck has rarely been considered in conventional mobile robot design. However, it is vital in swift and accurate positioning and tracking of the target. Consequently, it is valuable to find an optimized method where the robot-body, the biomimetic eyes and neck could achieve optimal coordinated movement.

Based on a wheeled mobile robot, a biomimetic dual Pan–Tilt–Zoom visual system with neck is constructed. The cameras can rely on the unique “negative correlation” mode of chameleon vision, and cooperate with neck, achieving swift search of the 160° scope in front of the robot. Genetic algorithm is used to obtain optimal rotation of the neck and robot-body. Variable resolution targeting is also applied for accurate aiming. Using these two approaches, we can achieve efficient targeting with low energy consumption. Particle filter algorithm is further utilized for real-time tracking.

In the proposed approach, swift and accurate positioning and tracking of the target can be obtained. The rationality of the approach is verified by experiments on flat and sandy terrains with satisfactory results.

This paper proposes a novel control approach for wheeled mobile robots, which achieves coordinated movement of the robot-body and CIBNCVS with neck concerning time and energy saving in the process of swift and accurate tracking.

Drawing from Upper-Echelons Theory (UET), this paper aims to examine whether an increasing number of board members studying and working overseas, especially in Anglo countries, provides some impetus for increased corporate environmental disclosures (CED) in Vietnam.

This study used quantitative data collection and analysis. The data collection involved a content analysis of annual, sustainability and integrated reports to capture the quality and quantity of CED. The authors subsequently developed ordered probit models to quantitatively test the hypotheses.

The authors find that board members studying in Anglo countries positively impact firms’ levels of CED in emerging economies. However, overseas work experience is found to be an insignificant explanatory variable. Further, the findings suggest that, in Vietnam, Chairs appear to be more influential than chief executive officers in affecting CED levels.

Despite the positive influence of overseas study, the authors find overall levels of CED in Vietnam remain relatively low. This suggests the necessity of dialogue about potential reform in CED policies, which could involve the introduction of mandatory reporting requirements. In addition, to enhance sustainability disclosures, shareholders should appoint board members who possess international qualifications.

This study adds to the literature exploring the impacts of Anglo cultural traits of board members on CED levels, within an economy transitioning from a communist ideology to a market-oriented system context. The connection between international study and cultural norms, beliefs and traditions in these countries and their positive influence on directors’ values and attitudes towards CED have not yet been studied. The study also extends UET by examining the potential positive influence of different national contexts on board members’ education levels.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effects of knowledge management (KM) enablers on KM processes in research universities and testing the direct relation between KM processes and OP. This study also proposes to examine the mediating role of intellectual capital (IC) and innovation in the relationship between KM processes and performance of universities.

Using a sample of 217 academic and administrative personnel from research universities of Pakistan, the hypothesized relationships were tested through partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The results reveal that KM enablers have a significant impact on KM processes. The results also indicate that KM processes influence organizational performance (OP) directly and indirectly through innovation and IC.

Findings of this study reinforce the corporate experience of KM and suggest how administrators of research universities and higher educational institutions can promote innovation and IC, which in turn enhance OP.

Despite the augmented importance of KM in higher education institutions or research universities, there is a dearth of studies that investigate the interplay of KM, innovation, IC and OP. This is one of the earliest studies that not only empirically investigate the interaction of KM enablers, KM processes and performance of research universities but also shed insights into the existing literature by simultaneously investigating mediating role of IC and innovation in the underlying relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors that influence individuals’ intention to adopt internet banking in the Republic of Yemen. The current study found that a lack of empirical studies have been conducted in this field in Arab countries, in general, and in Yemen, in particular.

The theory of reasoned action (TRA) was extended by relative advantage, perceived risk, mass media, family’s influence, innovativeness, skepticism and technology readiness (TR). Paper survey was used to collect data from 1,500 bank customers. Structural equation modeling was employed to investigate the relationships between variables. The TRA was extended by relative advantage, perceived risk, mass media, family’s influence, innovativeness, skepticism and TR. Paper survey was used to collect data from 1,500 bank customers. Structural equation modeling was employed to investigate the relationships between variables.

Customer’s behavioral intention was significantly influenced by attitude, subjective norms and TR. Overall, the results indicate that the model provides a good understanding of factors that influence the intention to use internet banking service. The model explained 63.8 percent of the variance in the behavioral intention.

The findings are of great use to banks already offering internet banking but of even greater use for those banks which are planning to offer internet banking services. The results of the study could serve as a guideline for bank managers in understanding the factors and strategic market planning that needs to be initiated to increase internet banking adoption among current and potential customers.

Factors such as perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and relative advantage have been found to be the determinants of internet banking adoption in previous studies. Along with the above variables, a new variable called TR has been analyzed in the present study. This kind of study has not been conducted in the Middle East context previously.

This study aims to examine the effect of job stress on perceived organizational support (POS) and organizational commitment in hospitals in Amman, Jordan. It also investigated the mediating role of POS on the relationship between job stress and organizational commitment.

The study used a cross-sectional, quantitative survey design to collect data from 500 employees in six hospitals in Amman, Jordan. An Arabic version of a reliable and valid measurement instrument was used. A convenience sample was selected from employees in the targeted hospitals. Mediating effect was tested using the approach proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986). Validity and reliability tests were applied, and regression analyses were used to test the study hypotheses.

The results revealed a significant negative effect of job stress on POS and organizational commitment. The results also indicated full negative mediating effect of POS on the relationship between job stress and organizational commitment.

This research promotes hospitals to implement strategies that reduce employees’ job stress, increase levels of POS among employees working at hospitals, which, in turn, will enhance employees’ commitment to their hospitals.

This study is one of the first to investigate the proposed effects in Jordan in particular, and the Middle East in general. In addition, it contributes to the literature by examining the mediating effect of POS on the relationship between job stress and organizational commitment. Recommendations are provided to practitioners in hospitals based on the study results.

In spite of the active role of continuous learning on improving organisational performance, the construction industry generally and architectural design firms (ADFs) in particular are criticised for their inability to use organisational knowledge to foster learning culture towards enhancing their performance. This paper aims to develop a framework based on knowledge management (KM) to enhance the learning culture in ADFs in developing countries.

To achieve the abovementioned aim, a research methodology consisted of data collection, data analysis and action required is designed to achieve four objectives. First, to examine the nature of the construction industry in developing countries, learning culture in ADFs, as well as knowledge and KM; second, to present three case studies to investigate the effectiveness of KM in enhancing the learning culture in ADFs; third, to investigate the perception and application of KM towards enhancing the learning culture in ADFs in Egypt, finally to develop a KM based framework to enhance the learning culture in ADFs in developing countries.

Through literature review, the research highlighted the fragmented nature of the architectural design process, which led to the loss of valuable information and made the process of capturing and sharing knowledge a hard task. In addition, it identified the barriers of implementing KM and the building blocks of learning culture in ADFs. Results of data analysis showed that “lack of organisational culture” and “low involvement of top management” were ranked the highest barriers for implementing KM in ADFs. Moreover, respondents mentioned that they do not share openly their information with other employees to maintain their uniqueness and that the strict working environment of their ADFs is not encouraging creativity or enhancing learning culture. Furthermore, “continuous learning and enhancement” and “experimentation, feedback and reflection” were ranked by respondents as the highest building blocks of a learning organisation.

This research focussed on ADFs in developing countries.

Implementing KM strategies will facilitate the enhancement of learning culture within ADFs in developing countries. This will impact positively on improving the performance and increasing the competitiveness and market share of ADFS.

The research identified the barriers of KM implementation in ADFs and the building blocks of creating a learning organisations. It focusses on improving the performance of ADFs through using the capabilities of KM towards building learning culture in ADFs. The proposed framework which was designed to facilitate the implementation of KM for enhancing the learning culture in ADFs in developing countries represents a synthesis that is novel and creative in thought and adds value to the knowledge in a manner that has not previously occurred.

In the past decade, intellectual capital (IC) measurement and reporting have been feeding scientific debate; however, only few studies address these issues together. The present research aims to provide an integrated view of the topics covered by the existing literature and to highlight the emerging research trends and set the agenda for future research.

This study develops a structured literature review (SLR) of the extant research concerned with IC measurement and reporting, using a comprehensive sample of 1,021 articles extracted from the Scopus database.

The findings of the SLR show that the existing literature focuses on seven research areas: IC and public sector; IC university and education; IC evaluation method; internal and external IC disclosure; IC and CSR; management of IC in organizations; other. Overall, findings indicate that IC measurement and reporting are highly researched topics that continue to attract the interests of scholars. Finally, the SLR analysis has allowed outlining a future research agenda, with particular reference to the IC evaluation method and internal and external IC disclosure research areas.

The main limitation of this research lies in the manual screening of relevant studies, which entails some degree of subjectivity. Furthermore, another limitation research could be considered the use of a single database (Scopus).

The present study brings potential contributions for scholars and practitioners. From a scholarly perspective, the paper provides a systematization of scientific contributions that have dealt with IC measurement and reporting. In particular, it contributes to the scholarly debate bringing into focus various IC measurement and reporting issues in the landscape of private and public organizations. Referring to practical implications, our research supports the strategic use of IC measurement and reporting as a key lever for improving the management of firms. Using an analytical framework that combines insights from the agency, stakeholder and legitimacy theories, this study highlights that IC reporting activity should be used strategically as a means to engage with all firm's stakeholders, in particular with a view to reducing information asymmetry and improving firm reputation.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of the stakeholder's relationship with supply chain resilience (SCR) and organizational performance (OP) using the lens of stakeholder theory in the manufacturing and service industry. Investigating the supply chain community in Pakistan, this paper explores the relationship between SCR, OP and the stakeholder's relationship (including customers and suppliers).

A partial least square (PLS) – structural equation modeling (SEM) technique using SmartPLS 3.3.3 was used to test the hypotheses. Data were collected through a survey (questionnaire) completed by 202 supply chain representatives. All respondents were supply chain professionals working in different organizations in Pakistan.

The findings of the study revealed that supplier relationship (SR) and customer relationship (CR) have a positive and significant impact on SCR and a positive and significant relationship between SCR and OP. A positive and significant relationship between customer relationship and OP was also noted. The mediating role of SCR is also found positive and significant.

The outcomes of the study will help managers to strengthen SCR through relationship management. The study is also helpful to increase OP through stakeholder management.

This study empirically tests an inclusive model with a PLS-SEM technique where SCR plays a mediating role in the mechanism, which is crucial since the supplier and customer (stakeholder) relationship has been never tested to gauge the OP by positioning SCR as a mediator while using the lens of stakeholder theory.

This study aims to highlight the current trends in the literature on corporate governance by applying a bibliometric review of papers on corporate governance topics published in the journal of Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business Society (Bingley).

Bibliometric analysis is a quantitative and qualitative approach applied to bibliographic materials that highlights the core theoretical and empirical contributions to a specific research field. This analysis was based on keyword cartography, bibliometric authors’ citation analysis, bibliometric papers’ co-citation analysis, bibliometric references’ co-citation analysis, journals’ co-citation cartography and qualitative content analysis. It reviews 353 articles on corporate governance published in the journal of Corporate Governance (Bingley). Bibliometric analysis was performed using VOSviewer, and content analysis was performed using WordStat.

The results identify three major clusters: corporate governance; board of directors; and firm performance. In addition, the results reveal that the journal Corporate Governance (Bingley) has experienced increasingly important growth in research papers on corporate governance topics and citations, reflecting its significant contribution to the corporate governance research field. This study also presents recommendations for future research in this field.

The findings of this study have implications for corporate governance research, such as the impact of ownership structure and the board of directors on environmental, social and governance disclosure. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the only one to review the key corporate governance research topics on which papers published in the journal of Corporate Governance (Bingley) are focused and can be largely used for corporate governance practices.

This study provides an overview of how the literature on corporate governance research has developed, as well as a summary of the most influential authors, along with countries, organizations and journal sources. This offers an opportunity for future research to focus on this topic.

This paper aims to determine priority issues in the corporate governance (CG) principles to increase CG rating notes of publicly traded companies.

This study defines the priority issues for publicly traded companies that should be focused to increase the CG rating notes. In this context, this study considers the companies in Borsa Istanbul CG index (XKURY), use data for 2018, 2019, 2020, and applies machine learning algorithms.

Overall, importance of each CG principle changes for the CG rating notes; first five CG principles in terms of significance have a total of 43.6% importance for the CG rating notes; following a straight-line approach in completing deficiencies of the CG principles cannot help increase the CG rating notes. Hence, empirical results highlight the impact of the most significant CG principles in terms of the CG rating notes that should be focused on by publicly traded companies so that CG ratings can be increased.

This study uses Turkey data and considers publicly traded companies in the XKURY index. The main cause of this condition is that consolidated data of compliance report format for all publicly traded companies cannot be obtained.

The publicly traded companies can increase the CG rating notes by considering the results of this study while focusing on priority issues in the CG principles.

The study determines the most important CG principles that companies can focus on, highlights the importance of usage of machine learning algorithms in determining the most influential CG principles in terms of the CG rating notes and reflects on the difficulties for gathering consolidated CG principles compliance reporting data for all publicly traded companies. Hence, societies can have better companies that are ruled more efficiently and corporately by increasing their compliance with the CG principles.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that determines the priority issues to increase the CG rating notes of publicly traded companies based on the new CG principles compliance reporting scheme in Turkey. Following this aim, machine learning algorithms, which can present better results with regard to most of the econometric models, are used in this study.