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1 – 10 of 231The aim of this study is to examine interpersonal trust in Muslim matrimonial sites (MMS) from a male perspective. Specifically how users perceive interpersonal trust in MMS; what…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this study is to examine interpersonal trust in Muslim matrimonial sites (MMS) from a male perspective. Specifically how users perceive interpersonal trust in MMS; what are the signs of lack of trust in MMS (if any); and what strategies do users adopt to handle the lack of trust in MMS.
Design/methodology/approach
This empirical qualitative study used ethnographic techniques to collect data. In addition to briefly observing five MMS, the study conducted semi-structured interviews with ten participants, who were all males, between the ages of 25-35, and residing in different locations, including the USA, the UK, the UAE, Australia and Bahrain. While the interviews focused on participants' experience in MMS, the analysis of these interviews focused on the issue of trust in these sites.
Findings
The analysis has revealed that participants associated trust with “risk taking”, “reliance” on one's abilities, “self-confidence” and honesty with the first three being the major themes that transpired from the analysis of data. The analysis has also revealed three signs of lack of trust in MMS. Users expressed concern over a large number of members' profiles being fake; they appeared suspicious about these sites and approached them with caution and felt intimidated by the unrealistic expectations members placed on them. However, it was found users adopted several strategies to handle the lack of trust in MMS including using their communication skills to study others carefully, doing “police work” to uncover any inconsistencies in their statements, “interrogating” them using a pre-developed list of questions and involving their family members in their negotiations.
Originality/value
Despite MMS immense popularity within the Islamic world, with the exception of a few articles, there are not many articles available in the academic literature on them. This article seeks to address this imbalance.
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The purpose of this paper is to identify the invention of computer systems, information and communication technology and the internet as the critical landmarks in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the invention of computer systems, information and communication technology and the internet as the critical landmarks in the transformation of information processing, storage, retrieval and dissemination.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey of 42 librarians in the Nigerian cities of Lagos and Ibadan was carried out, along with information gathered from research on the internet.
Findings
The paper reports on how the internet can affect African cultural values in the area of songs/music and dance, theater, dress, languages, arts, housing, marriage, child care, friendship, decoration, religion, politics and personality profile development. Librarians' IT skills, internet literacy and awareness of the implications of the unfolding environment on library and African cultural value systems are discussed.
Originality/value
The paper recommends a set of proactive professional repositioning that African librarians must initiate as custodians of both information and African rich cultural heritage.
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Tamami Komatsu, Alessandro Deserti, Francesca Rizzo, Manuela Celi and Sharam Alijani
The chapter provides empirical research results on the peculiarities of social innovation and the specific features that its business model must support. It concludes by proposing…
Abstract
Purpose
The chapter provides empirical research results on the peculiarities of social innovation and the specific features that its business model must support. It concludes by proposing a Social Innovation Business Model Canvas and steps towards Social Innovation typologies.
Methodology/approach
The research is based on the results of a comparative analysis of 25 business case studies and 32 biographies conducted within the SIMPACT research framework. We then implemented a process of reverse engineering to uncover the business models behind the cases which facilitated the creation of a typology for different social innovation business models. Reverse engineering is the application of tools and processes used to study new business ventures in comparison with existing ones. As such, it sheds further light on the broad characteristics of social business models and their value creation mechanisms. The evidence coming from the cases were analyzed within a new business model and clustered to identify a typology of business models of social innovations.
Findings
The main SIMPACT findings, resulting from the reverse engineering process and upon which our discussion is based, can be seen in the following distinguishing characteristics of SI business models. SI business models are: configured around finding complementarity between antagonistic assets and seemingly conflicting logics; often structured around a divergence in the allocation of cost, use, and benefit leading to multiple value propositions; modeled on multiactor/multisided business strategies, and developed as frugal solutions and through actions of bricolage. Four typologies of social innovation were identified: beneficiary as actor, beneficiary as customer, beneficiary as user, and community-asset-based models.
Research implications
While much attention has been placed on for-profit business models, there is little literature on social/not-for-profit business models. This chapter can add to this gap by providing substantial empirical evidence.
Practical implications
Practitioners in the field of social innovation, particularly the growing intermediary sector, could integrate the findings of the research in their work.
Social implications
The work is also leading to the construction of a future business toolbox for social innovation, which will be even more useful for incubators, accelerators, and supporting structures.
Originality/value
Research presented in this chapter is the result of an extensive comparative analysis across all of Europe, including examples of failure, and the first to propose a typology of SI Business Models.
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The aim of the study is to understand how the hiring process develops in cases where there are no explicit or formal requirements. How do implicit and informal criteria and…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of the study is to understand how the hiring process develops in cases where there are no explicit or formal requirements. How do implicit and informal criteria and requirements impact the process of selecting the right candidate?
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative approach was employed through the use of semi-structured interviews with 47 external recruitment consultants in the south of England.
Findings
In contrast to what is assumed in mainstream Human Resource Management literature, employers do not rely on a comprehensive implicit understanding of what is needed in cases where there are no explicit criteria and requirements. Instead, high uncertainty makes the development of criteria and requirements incremental and negotiable but also problematic. The analysis shows that three mechanisms compensate for the lack of certainty in the hiring process. First, interviews with applicants shape how the hiring criteria develop. Second, market signals of what is available in the labour market help construct the criteria and requirements. Third, criteria and requirements are interpreted and negotiated during interactions with recruiters and others.
Originality/value
Hiring without explicit requirements and criteria is often understood as rather unproblematic and/or not fundamentally distinct from hiring with them. The study shows that in these cases the process becomes more unpredictable and more open to interpretation and negotiation.
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Shameen Prashantham, Amer Qureshi and Stephen Young
Purpose – In this chapter, we seek to extend understanding of the ‘international’ dimension of comparative international entrepreneurship (IE), by undertaking exploratory…
Abstract
Purpose – In this chapter, we seek to extend understanding of the ‘international’ dimension of comparative international entrepreneurship (IE), by undertaking exploratory empirical research within a global industry viz. the software industry, and focusing on two local ecologies, namely a regional agglomeration (Bangalore, India) and less developed niche (Lahore, Pakistan) about which little is known.
Methodology – On the basis of in-depth interviews in Bangalore and Lahore, exemplar case studies from both sub-national regions are presented, which highlight the relative significance of local milieu and ethnic ties in IE.
Findings – The global nature of the software industry and the central role of the innovative milieu in the USA have important implications for the comparative IE literature. These refer particularly to the coordination and integration of the entrepreneurial processes of opportunity discovery, evaluation and exploitation across frontiers. Close inter-milieu links provide the opportunity to access complementary assets and business networks. While Indians have influenced the development of Silicon Valley, their ties with Bangalore seem primarily to be based on hard-nosed business relations. But in relation to Pakistan, while the US milieu is critical for all aspects of the entrepreneurial process, closed networks may be a barrier to long-term growth.
Originality/value of chapter – Where our study goes beyond the literature is by highlighting the role of cross-border linkages between milieux.
Robert J. Nathan, Paul H.P. Yeow and San Murugesan
This paper aims to report on a web usability study and to identify and prioritise key web interface usability factors (WIUFs) for web sites of 36 student‐related online services…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to report on a web usability study and to identify and prioritise key web interface usability factors (WIUFs) for web sites of 36 student‐related online services categorised into three groups: personal services, purchase services and study‐related web sites.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, involving 400 student internet users (SIUs), 12,310 data points were collected and analysed using a multiple linear regression test. Seven WIUFs were tested: use of colour and font (UCF), use of graphics and multimedia (UGM), clarity of goals in web site (CGW), trustworthiness of web site (TOW), interactivity of web site (IOW), ease of web navigation (EWN), and download speed of web site (DSOW).
Findings
The study results reveal that every online service category has a different set of crucial WIUFs. SIUs' web usability preferences were compared with those of general internet users.
Research limitations/implications
The participants were all Malaysians; therefore, generalising the findings to all SIUs will require a confirmatory study with SIUs from other parts of the world.
Practical implications
Web developers can use the results to design usable web sites for specific online service categories.
Originality/value
The research offers a simpler alternative to measure web usability and to determine which WIUFs are crucial for a specific online service category with consideration of the users' role. This study overcomes some weaknesses of previous studies, i.e. small sample size, no consideration of product‐task relationship, no specific customer group and cumbersome procedures.
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Historically, sex, tourism, and the labor market have long been inextricably linked, but media concerns about sex as the main purpose of tourism, and its effects on the host group…
Abstract
Historically, sex, tourism, and the labor market have long been inextricably linked, but media concerns about sex as the main purpose of tourism, and its effects on the host group and its sex workers, date from the mid-1990s, in the wake of the spread of HIV, the collapse of communism, the rise of the Internet, and the increasing influence of NGOs concerned with women's and children's welfare. This chapter argues that in order to understand fully the relationship between tourism, sex, and the labor market, we need to adopt a broader perspective and look at the various intersections between the three factors, and how they blend into and influence each other. It conceptualizes the three domains of tourism, sex, and work as intersecting circles and analyzes the forms of activity typical of each. “Sex tourism,” as popularly defined, is the space where all three overlap, but there are significant areas of sexual activity associated with tourism that are not commercial, and yet that generate significant and increasing business activity in some destinations. There is also a tendency for partners in commercial sex to define their relationships in terms of other sectors, as “love” or “romance.” The chapter concludes that with economic development, there is a tendency for roles in the sex industry to become increasingly professionalized and differentiated, and that as the industry is unlikely to disappear, regulation should focus on the empowerment and welfare of sex workers rather than abolition and suppression.
To explore and add insight to the online‐dating services phenomena which is the next product and beneficiary of the internet revolution that offers customers a convenient and…
Abstract
Purpose
To explore and add insight to the online‐dating services phenomena which is the next product and beneficiary of the internet revolution that offers customers a convenient and affordable alternate to traditional methods of dating.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirically investigated through conceptual models and statistical methods was the value proposition of online matchmaking services, which boils down to the ability to provide appropriate matches through successfully business‐to‐customer (B2C) customer service enhanced by the web and based on sound customer relations management practices.
Findings
The differentiation of the marketplace includes unique ways to collect user‐based information and customized, proprietary algorithms that generate what are believed to be the best matches, based on user and matchmaking service criteria. Online dating services use statistics, data mining, and activity monitoring to provide appropriate matches; thus, differentiating their services and understanding the success of their product offering.
Research limitations/implications
The basic strategic business model created by online dating industry that is researched in this paper is built around B2C customer service in a privacy and security conscious environment. Internet dating service providers are gaining increased acceptance though successful use of customized software that helps generate a potential valued‐added match for the masses.
Practical implications
What most companies do not define as clearly are the many privacy issues and possible protection against the people they may come in contact with through using these services. The industry has to be particular careful about the legal ramifications since much of the information it gathers from its customers must remain private and confidential in order to succeed and gain a larger market share.
Originality/value
It is apparent that online dating services are concerned with privacy and confidentiality issues as high priority by management. To date, no academic‐based research has surfaced concerning this emerging online industry and the information exchanges required to ensure a safe environment.
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Rajesh Karunamurthy, Ferhat Khendek and Roch H. Glitho
A web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine‐to‐machine or application‐to‐application interactions over networks. Descriptions enable web services…
Abstract
Purpose
A web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine‐to‐machine or application‐to‐application interactions over networks. Descriptions enable web services to be discovered, used by other web services, and composed into new web services. Web service composition is a mechanism for creating new web services by reusing existing ones. In order to compose a web service, the right primitive services have to be discovered. A matchmaking technique enables discovering these services. Web services have functional, non‐functional, behavioral, and semantic characteristics. These four aspects of web services provide different key information about the service; therefore they have to be considered for description, matching, and composition. The purpose of this paper is to propose a formal description framework and a formal matchmaking technique that allows describing and discovering web services by considering their four characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the description framework combines two existing languages for functional, semantic, and behavioral description, along with a simple and new language for non‐functional description.
Findings
A case study is used to illustrate the description framework and the matchmaking technique. The implementation and performance evaluation of the matchmaking technique is presented. The framework formalizes and integrates the languages in a common semantic domain in order to match and manipulate the different aspects together and formally. Isabelle is used by the matchmaking technique for discovering the partially and fully matched services.
Originality/value
The contribution of this paper lies in the new description framework and the new matchmaking technique.
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How do you efficiently design a global yet local user experience for Web sites? Arguably, the user-centered design approach has been one of the best methods in designing a…
Abstract
How do you efficiently design a global yet local user experience for Web sites? Arguably, the user-centered design approach has been one of the best methods in designing a successful user experience for Web services in the initial market, but why isn’t this process applied to international markets? This chapter makes a case for applying a user-centered design process to the international expansion of Web sites and discusses issues impacting the creation of a successful user experience for local audiences. Although this chapter primarily focuses on designing large scale Web services, many of the principles can be applied to any sites that undergo internationalization.