Search results

Predicting effects of artificial intelligence on service occupations can be supported by a long historical perspective. Historical databases and archaeology help reconstructing the service sector in ancient societies. Here, the purpose of this paper is to analyse occupational specialization within services in cities of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, as well as how the service sector is reflected in architectural remains, to identify differences and similarities with today’s Europe.

Occupational titles are traced in epigraphical and literary sources, sorted according to ISCO-08. Secondary sources are used for the architectural evidence of service activities, as well as for the role of contests and entertainment in antiquity.

Compared to current European service employment, professionals were fewer in classical Athens and imperial Rome, which had a greater proportion of specialized salespersons. There were few office buildings and no civic hospitals, but heavy investment in facilities for entertainment and well-being. Quality assessments for goods were little developed; contests for cultural and sports activities assessed entertainment service quality.

This study covers two periods in classical antiquity and is restricted to Mediterranean cultures, although findings may help understanding the service sector in poor countries with informal employment.

While particular services provided in ancient cities have been studied, there has been no broad comparative overview of their service occupations. Services in earlier societies with primitive information and communication technologies can provide clues for current developments.

Audio-visual presentations – delivered either in real-life or virtually – feature heavily in educational assessments and employer recruitment. This study explored neurodivergent undergraduate students' experiences of presentations. The aim was to understand how neurodivergent students describe experiences of presentations in educational and workplace contexts and how neurodivergent students experienced training, support activities and learning technologies associated with presentations.

An exploratory qualitative phenomenological approach was taken, from students' perspectives. Overall, 12 neurodivergent undergraduate students (M_age = 21.89 years, SD_age = 2.57; nine women, two men, one non-binary) discussed their experiences of presentations within educational and/or professional contexts via semi-structured remote interviews. The sample included individuals with diagnoses of anxiety, depression, dyslexia, borderline personality disorder, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, and panic disorder.

Thematic Analysis of interview transcript data revealed four main themes (with sub-themes in parentheses): Control (preparedness; delivery); Audience Perceptions and Behaviours (expectations of “normality”; shared knowledge; audience “expertise”); Intervention Efficacy (early access; individuality; learning technologies) and Value of Presentation Skills (reciprocity between education – workplace; self-efficacy; self-esteem; learner development).

The dataset was extracted from a relatively small sample from a single university and indeed a single academic discipline. Furthermore, the dataset was collected during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic – although this gives us a valuable snapshot of students' experiences and perceptions during this time, whether the author can extrapolate these findings in future is unclear.

The findings help understand how we better support students. Better ways to support learners can be developed in developing presentation and audience skills. This research shows that alternative assessment provisions must be based on individuals and their own specific needs and skills, rather than their divergence label. This research can inform the development of digital learning technologies.

This research can inform how educators, coaches, trainers, and facilitators “train” audiences to be more inclusive and less prejudicial/biased. We can understand how to better construct social spaces for presentations, in the classroom and the world of work.

This report presents a valid and valuable methodological approach, conducted and reported transparently. This research was conducted during a crucial, unprecedented and precarious time period for learners and education professionals. Implications are considered with respect to the design of teaching, learning and assessment activities; facilitator, learner, and peer behaviours; the role of digital learning technologies; and employment/employability.

Many organizations struggle to utilize security-as-a-service (SecaaS) advantages effectively, thus challenging the assumption that adopting the SecaaS model will necessarily lead to post-adoption satisfaction. This research paper draws on the organizational mindfulness theory and investigates the factors that lead to satisfaction with SecaaS.

The key informant-based survey approach was employed to collect data from 215 organizations that were using the SecaaS model. PLS was used for data analysis.

Organizations with greater extents of internal security resources report higher satisfaction levels with SecaaS, thanks to the mediating effect of organizational mindfulness, and that organizations with extensive and mature security auditing were especially well-positioned to experience satisfaction with SecaaS.

This research provides new theoretical insights into the conditions under which organizations' post-adoption satisfaction with the SecaaS model is shaped by investigating the role of internal security resources and organizational mindfulness.

The paper seeks to bridge the already familiar benefits of 3D printing (3DP) to the rehabilitation of cultural heritage, still based on the use of complex and expensive handcrafted techniques and scarce materials.

A compilation of different information on frequent anomalies in cultural heritage buildings and commonly used materials is conducted; subsequently, some innovative techniques used in the construction sector (3DP and 3D scanning) are addressed, as well as some case studies related to the rehabilitation of cultural heritage building elements, leading to a reflection on the opportunities and challenges of this application within these types of buildings.

The compilation of information summarised in the paper provided a clear reflection on the great potential of 3DP for cultural heritage rehabilitation, requiring the development of new mixtures (lime mortars, for example) compatible with the existing surface and, eventually, incorporating some residues that may improve interesting properties; the design of different extruders, compatible with the new mixtures developed and the articulation of 3D printers with the available mapping tools (photogrammetry and laser scanning) to reproduce the component as accurately as possible.

This paper sets the path for a new application of 3DP in construction, namely in the field of cultural heritage rehabilitation, by identifying some key opportunities, challenges and for designing the process flow associated with the different technologies involved.

This paper aims to assess the impact of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices on the triple bottom line’s economic, social and environmental performance of Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers.

This quantitative study uses a deductive approach. The practice-based view is used to support the conceptual framework. The partial least square structural equation modelling technique empirically assessed the conceptual model using 164 responses from Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers through a structured survey questionnaire. Apart from examining the direct effects of GSCM practice on the triple bottom line, the study also investigated the moderating effects of firm size and duration.

The results show that GSCM practices positively affect the organisation’s triple bottom line while business size and duration moderate the said relationship.

The fact that this study is based on Sri Lankan apparel producers may impact the generalizability of the findings across different industries and countries. Furthermore, the survey only looked at export manufacturers. This raises questions about the results’ relevance to other non-export groups of the current population with distinct characteristics.

The paper provides insights for both academia and practitioners on the importance of adopting GSCM practices for the business performance of apparel manufacturers in Sri Lanka. The paper includes implications for devising strategic solutions for organisational performance and sustainability by using GSCM practices in apparel manufacturers in Sri Lanka.

The research contributes to the body of knowledge in the GSCM field in general. This research also contributes to the limited literature on GSCM practices in Sri Lanka. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to explain how apparel manufacturers in Sri Lanka are organised.

The purpose of this paper is to encourage scholars of international business (IB) to engage with the “decolonizing the university” project and reflect on what decolonizing might mean for IB research and education. The paper also argues that it is particularly important for IB scholars to join the decolonizing project given that the field’s main object of study – the multinational enterprise – has been central to colonialism.

An essay style is adopted to introduce the decolonizing project to IB and to explain why and how this scholarly field might benefit from engaging with it. As part of that, the paper calls upon IB scholars to work on decolonizing the field and to do so by not only interrogating its knowledge claims but also broadening the scope of its research so it can address the theme of neo-colonialism.

The paper reveals the conspicuous absence of IB scholars from the decolonizing project and situates such absence within a long-standing indifference within IB to the issue of colonialism.

In learning about and engaging with the decolonizing project, IB scholars will be able to not only enrich IB theory and education but also help to tackle one of the grand challenges facing the modern world society, namely, social inequality and injustice rooted in colonialism.

It is hoped that this paper will stimulate reflection on IB’s absence from the decolonizing project and assist scholars in developing an understanding of the project’s rationale and underlying literature. It is also hoped that the paper will open dialogue within IB about how this field might be decolonized and help scholars engage meaningfully with other disciplines as they do so.

Circular procurement is assumed to foster innovation and influence demand for and supply of goods through criteria setting and dialogue with suppliers. However, even in countries placed at the forefront of sustainability practices such as Sweden, examples of procurement that can truly be considered to be circular are rare. This paper aims to examine circular public procurement practices in a selection of Swedish municipalities and regions through the lens of the Advocacy Coalition Framework. The authors propose a categorisation of municipalities by circular procurement uptake and identify factors that support the acceleration of the circular transition in Sweden.

Using the key informant approach, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with employees of seven municipalities, one region and one external procurement agency, as well as seven suppliers of various sizes. The authors also analysed procurement documents received from municipalities. Participating organisations represented a variety of Swedish local government structures and local conditions.

The authors proposed a categorisation of circular procurement uptake. Notably, beginners differ from leaders in circular procurement, most importantly by the level of flexibility policy brokers have within their organisations and by policy brokers’ ability to accommodate changes that materialise between existing organisational structures and set routines.

The fragmented uptake of circular procurement poses a challenge for local businesses interested in implementing circular business models. It also both highlights and exacerbates inequalities in access to resources between sparsely populated, rural municipalities and more urbanised areas.

Despite existing national government guidelines for the circular economy transition in Sweden, circular procurement is not fully realised at the local level. In this paper, the authors examine the Swedish experience with circular procurement and propose several steps to improve the uptake of circular procurement by the public authorities. The authors' findings concerning the role of policy brokers may well be generalised to similar socio-cultural contexts.

The primary purpose is to investigate the dynamic relationships among urbanization, energy use and environmental pollution in the context of India from 1971 to 2018. The paper also examines the validity of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the present Indian context.

The study uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag cointegration test (Shin et al., 2014) to investigate the dynamic relationship among the mentioned variables. The Wald test is also used to statistically check the presence of asymmetry. Additionally, the VECM test is applied to examine the causality among the variables.

This study documents that urbanization in India is good for environment in the long run, whereas energy consumption is bad for the environment. It also finds that positive and negative shocks of energy and urbanization exert asymmetric impacts on ecological footprint. Furthermore, the results could not validate the EKC hypothesis for India.

The outcome of the study suggests designing an environmental policy which considers the nonlinearity of the investigated relationships and bearing in mind the use of comprehensive indicator like ecological footprint is equally important to address the wide-ranging problem of the environment. Policy reorientation towards the production and consumption of green energy, investment in research and development, and use of efficient technology is very crucial to achieve sustainable outcomes in the long run.

In this study, the researchers use the ‘ecological footprint’ variable to obtain a more accurate and comprehensive assessment of environmental deterioration. The mentioned dynamic relationships are investigated using an improved methodology of the NARDL model, which assumes the asymmetric impact of the explanatory variables on the response variable. The novelty of this study lies in examining the non-linear impact of urbanization and energy on ecological footprint which is inadequately addressed in the context of Indian economy.

Virtual Reality (VR) based training is an efficient and promising digital tool. In the construction industry, studies have been conducted on the realisation of VR scenarios for construction operations, but the challenges lie in procedural scenario creation based on the knowledge and digital data of the construction project. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

A new system and interface allowing an automatic generation of a VR scenario for operating procedure (OP) based on 4D Building Information Modelling (BIM) and tasks authoring by the domain experts are presented. The first process, Automatic Scenario Generation, generates assembly tasks based on the BIM metadata. The second process, Expert Scene and Scenario Authoring, allows adding tasks that cannot be modeled in the BIM OP.

With the 4D BIM methodology, the 3D model of building as well as the 3D OPs contain a time dimension representing the construction phases or planning. The evolution in time of the construction site and the tools and procedures adapted to each construction project must be integrated in the VR simulations. Moreover, domain experts should have control over the scenario and should be able to author tasks assigned to the operator in training.

A Unified Modeling Language based framework allows the reuse of BIM metadata to create the scene, VR interactions and the assembly procedure; the assembly procedure is embedded in the virtual environment considering the time (4D) in the construction of the building and is used as a training scenario for the operator; and the training scenario can be refined by adding operational knowledge, such as quality.

In recent times, the construction industry is being influenced by technological innovations when delivering a better, more effective and efficient desired project, cyber-physical systems (CPSs) offer a coupling of the physical and engineered systems by monitoring, coordinating, controlling and integrating their operations. This study aims to examine the level of awareness of professionals and usage of CPSs for construction projects in Nigerian construction industry.

The target population for this study was the professionals in the construction industry consisting Architects, Quantity Surveyors, Engineers and Builders. Data collection was through the use of a structured questionnaire administered to the target population. The data was analyzed by using statistical tools.

This study concluded that the construction professionals in the Nigerian construction industry are mostly aware about the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, global positioning system, microphone, speakers and camera as the most widely used CPSs in construction industry. HVAC systems was also found to be the mostly adopted technologies in the construction industry.

This study recommended that platforms that increase the awareness and encourage the usage of CPSs in construction industry should be encouraged by stakeholders concerned with management of construction projects. Such include electronic construction and adoption of blockchain technology.