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This paper aims to propose a statistical and context-aware feature reduction algorithm that improves sentiment classification accuracy. Classification of reviews with different…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose a statistical and context-aware feature reduction algorithm that improves sentiment classification accuracy. Classification of reviews with different granularities in two classes of reviews with negative and positive polarities is among the objectives of sentiment analysis. One of the major issues in sentiment analysis is feature engineering while it severely affects time complexity and accuracy of sentiment classification.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, a feature reduction method is proposed that uses context-based knowledge as well as synset statistical knowledge. To do so, one-dimensional presentation proposed for SentiWordNet calculates statistical knowledge that involves polarity concentration and variation tendency for each synset. Feature reduction involves two phases. In the first phase, features that combine semantic and statistical similarity conditions are put in the same cluster. In the second phase, features are ranked and then the features which are given lower ranks are eliminated. The experiments are conducted by support vector machine (SVM), naive Bayes (NB), decision tree (DT) and k-nearest neighbors (KNN) algorithms to classify the vectors of the unigram and bigram features in two classes of positive or negative sentiments.
Findings
The results showed that the applied clustering algorithm reduces SentiWordNet synset to less than half which reduced the size of the feature vector by less than half. In addition, the accuracy of sentiment classification is improved by at least 1.5 per cent.
Originality/value
The presented feature reduction method is the first use of the synset clustering for feature reduction. In this paper features reduction algorithm, first aggregates the similar features into clusters then eliminates unsatisfactory cluster.
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Amanda O. Latz, Jocelyn H. Bolin, Marilynn (Marks) Quick, Ruth Jones and Austin Chapman
The purpose of this paper is to provide information regarding the ways in which the authors’ College’s faculty use paper within their pedagogical practice. A related purpose was…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide information regarding the ways in which the authors’ College’s faculty use paper within their pedagogical practice. A related purpose was to ascertain faculty interest in professional development initiatives related to reducing paper usage through technological affordances.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was developed and administered to the faculty within the university’s Teachers College. The survey was built to assess faculty pedagogical use of paper. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected via the survey.
Findings
The results suggested that digital resources are widely used by faculty, and students are encouraged to conserve paper. However, many faculty are uncomfortable with the complete elimination of paper.
Originality/value
Modeling and promoting environmentally sustainable pedagogical practice is imperative within institutions charged with preparing the next generation of educators.
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Shinichi Kitazawa and Joseph Sarkis
The ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS) standard has been designed to help organizations in the creation of structured mechanisms for continuous improvement in…
Abstract
The ISO 14001 environmental management system (EMS) standard has been designed to help organizations in the creation of structured mechanisms for continuous improvement in environmental performance. This paper evaluates how ISO 14001 EMS and EMS‐like standards aid organizations in operating continuous source reduction programs by exploring some critical elements for program success. The ISO 14001 standard helps organizations define important EMS elements for continuous source reduction. However, adopting these elements may necessitate cultural changes, the core elements of which are embodied by TQM principles. The cultural changes support complex operational activities aimed at source reduction. Three case study firms are used to evaluate these critical EMS elements. Each firm showed substantially idiosyncratic situations attributable to each organization’s size, history, corporate culture, and technology. Despite the differences, however, the cases highlighted one critical point: employee empowerment, their willingness to make suggestions for improvement, and management’s effort to create employee participation in decision making are critical elements in managing continuous source reduction programs. These initial empirical observations provide some insight into how this cultural change may occur.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of activity-based working (ABW), an office design and management system that has emerged in the past 20 years. It…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the phenomenon of activity-based working (ABW), an office design and management system that has emerged in the past 20 years. It investigates its manifest and underlying agendas with a view to determining its degree of cost management focus and scientific management foundations.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses historical and website analysis methodologies for investigating historical office management philosophies and practices, as well as contemporary office design and management philosophies and related ABW practices and discourse. These are examined through the theoretical lenses of governmentality and impression management theories.
Findings
Despite a rhetoric of staff empowerment, ABW’s dominant agenda is overhead cost reduction and operating cost management. This reflects scientific management principles of early twentieth-century office design and management. Cost efficiencies and productivity emerge as key ABW output foci. While ABW adopters and advocates present ABW as a desirable staff satisfaction and operations facilitator, the cost agenda nonetheless commands centre stage.
Research limitations/implications
Accounting research into the office and its processes is much needed. This has been largely neglected in favour of line management and factory floor costing and accountability systems. In a world dominated by service industries, the office as a centre of organisational and economic activity merits researchers’ greater attention.
Practical implications
Contemporary office design and functioning developments merit greater recourse to and acknowledgement of their historic roots. Then, practitioners can better design and implement systems that build on past knowledge and learnings. While such innovations as ABW may carry potential for improved organisational performance, care is needed with respect to their balancing of agendas and suitability for their institutional and cultural environments.
Social implications
Organisational work has become a dominant part of social life in most economies today. Such innovations as ABW must be considered in terms of the societal culture into which they are introduced: how they reflect and adapt to that culture and what impacts they may also have on the culture itself. This includes dimensions such as organisational and self-control, as well as personal and organisational accountability.
Originality/value
This study presents itself as one of the very few refereed research studies of ABW currently available in the accounting, management or property research literatures. It also represents one of the very few studies of the office in the accounting research literature internationally.
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Joanna Poon and Michael Brownlow
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether gender has an impact on real estate and built environment graduates’ employment outcomes, employment patterns and other…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether gender has an impact on real estate and built environment graduates’ employment outcomes, employment patterns and other important employment related issues, such as pay, role, contract type and employment opportunity in different states of a country.
Design/methodology/approach
The data used in this paper has been collected from the Australian Graduate Survey (AGS). Data from the years 2010-2012 was combined into a single data set. Dimensionality reduction was used to prepare the data set for the courses listed in AGS data, in order to develop the simplified classifications for real estate and built environment courses which are used to conduct further analysis in this paper. Dimensionality reduction was also used to prepare data set for the further analysis of the employment outcomes and patterns for real estate graduates. Descriptive and statistical analysis methods were used to identify the impact of gender on the employment outcomes, employment patterns and other important employment related issues, such as pay, role, contract type and location of job, for real estate graduates in Australia. This paper also benchmarks the employment result of real estate graduates to built environment graduates.
Findings
Recent male built environment graduates in Australia are more likely to gain full-time employment than females. The dominant role for recent female built environment graduates in Australia is a secretarial or administrative role while for the male it is a professional or technical role. Male real estate and built environment graduates are more likely to have a higher level of salary. Gender also has an impact on the contract type. Male built environment graduates are more likely to be employed on a permanent contract. On the other hand, gender has no impact on gaining employment in different states, such as New South Wales and Queensland, in Australia. The finding of this paper reinforces the view of previous literature, which is that male graduates have a more favourable employment outcomes and on better employment terms. The finding also shows that graduate employment outcomes for real estate and built environment graduates in Australia are similar to that in other countries, such as the UK, where equivalent studies have been published.
Originality/value
This is pioneering research that investigates the impact of gender on employment outcomes, employment patterns and other employment related issues for real estate graduates and built environment graduates in Australia.
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Gabriela Souza Assis Ferreira, Ulisses Rezende Silva, André Lucirton Costa and Silvia Inês Dallavalle de Dallavalle Pádua
Given the complexity and difficulties of the health sector, the question that this study attempts to answer is as follows: what are the main results of studies on business process…
Abstract
Purpose
Given the complexity and difficulties of the health sector, the question that this study attempts to answer is as follows: what are the main results of studies on business process management (BPM) and lean in the health sector? The purpose of this paper is to analyze the results of studies that address the promotion of BPM and lean in the health sector.
Design/methodology/approach
To conduct a survey of published studies using the BPM and lean approach in healthcare, a search was performed in the Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases in two steps. The first step consisted of the collection and analysis of data related to the BPM approach in the health sector, based on a survey of published articles on this topic. The second step consisted of the collection and analysis of data related to the use of lean in the same sector, based on the survey of systematic reviews published in major databases.
Findings
The main results of the studies that address the promotion of BPM and lean in the health sector are as follows: a reduced length of hospitalization, increased patient satisfaction, increased patient efficiency and safety, a reduction in the time of notification of infection, help with organizational change, understanding the end-to-end process, increased motivation, understanding the importance of some handoffs for patient safety, improvements in quality indicators in the emergency department, and improvements in the organization’s focus on high-level processes. By contrast, a single study showed difficulties in promoting management focused on processes in which decisions are unique and difficult to model.
Originality/value
The results may help in the identification of research gaps in the promotion of BPM and lean healthcare and in the development of relevant research. In addition, by understanding how health organizations are promoting management focused on processes and the results obtained with this approach, managers from other organizations, especially in this sector, can reflect and develop similar actions that seek to improve the quality of services offered, increase productivity and customer satisfaction, and reduce costs, errors, and waiting times.
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The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive picture of characteristics affecting the employment outcomes and patterns for real estate graduates in Australia…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive picture of characteristics affecting the employment outcomes and patterns for real estate graduates in Australia. Furthermore, this paper benchmarks the characteristics affecting employment prospects of real estate graduates against those of built environment graduates.
Design/methodology/approach
The data used in this paper were collected by the Australian Graduate Survey (AGS). Dimensionality reduction was used to prepare the dataset for the courses listed in the AGS data, in order to develop the simplified classifications of courses used to conduct the analysis in this paper. Dimensionality reduction was also used to prepare the dataset for the analysis of the employment outcomes and patterns for real estate and built environment graduates. Descriptive and statistical analysis methods were used to identify the difference in characteristics, such as gender, age, attendance type, mode of study, degree levels and English proficiency, for real estate and built environment graduates, the level of the influence of these characteristics on their employment outcomes and patterns and the statistical relationship between individual characteristics and employment outcomes as well as employment patterns of the graduates.
Findings
English proficiency was found to be an important factor for real estate and built environment graduates for securing employment and it has a statistically significant impact on the employment outcomes and patterns for the graduates. Despite the fact that age and attendance type have no statistical impact on employment outcomes for real estate and built environment graduates, they were found to have statistical significant impact on their employment patterns.
Originality/value
This is pioneering research which used official government data, such as AGS data, to provide a reliable and thorough picture of the employment outcomes and patterns for real estate and built environment graduates.
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R.E.A. Ashu and Dewald Van Niekerk
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the status quo of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy and legislation in Cameroon.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the status quo of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy and legislation in Cameroon.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a qualitative method, this paper examines historical data from sectoral administrative reports, plans, declarations, commitments and speeches, texts and peer-reviewed journals on disaster and risk management in Cameroon for the period 1967-2017. Empirical data from ten selected government sectors were used to analyze the status quo, together with quantitative data collected by using four instruments (i.e. HFA Priority 1 & 4, USAID Toolkit, GOAL Resilience Score and the Checklist on Law and DRR).
Findings
Findings show that Cameroon largely still practices disaster response through the Department of Civil Protection. Transparency and accountability are the sine qua non of the state, but the lack thereof causes improper implementation of DRR within development institutions. DRR is seen as an ad hoc activity, with the result that there is not effective institutional capacity for implementation. The need to develop a new national DRR framework is evident.
Originality/value
Analyzing the status quo of DRR in Cameroon could assist with the review and reevaluation of a new DRR framework within the Cameroonian territory.
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Bruce Duyshart, Derek Walker, Sherif Mohamed and Keith Hampson
Effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is necessary for delivering efficiency and improved project delivery in the construction industry. Convincing…
Abstract
Effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is necessary for delivering efficiency and improved project delivery in the construction industry. Convincing clients or contracting organisations to embrace ICT is a difficult task, there are few templates of an ICT business model for the industry to use. ICT application in the construction industry is relatively low compared to automotive and aerospace industries. The National Museum of Australia project provides a unique opportunity for investigating and reporting on this deficiency in publicly available knowledge. Concentrates on the business model content and objectives, briefly indicates the evaluation framework that was used to evaluate ICT effectiveness.
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Research focussed on various issues or perspectives of business can be considered as an important driving force for business development. The purpose of this paper is to identify…
Abstract
Purpose
Research focussed on various issues or perspectives of business can be considered as an important driving force for business development. The purpose of this paper is to identify the main topics and trends associated with business-related research conducted in Belarus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine. The study results contribute to a context-aware explanation of the dynamics of business-oriented research in individual countries.
Design/methodology/approach
This study both quantitatively and semantically analyses 6,166 abstracts indexed and abstracted in the Scopus database. Three main research questions and associated hypotheses are investigated. Three text-mining techniques were applied in the analysis of available resources, namely, word clustering, collocation statistics and correspondence analysis.
Findings
There is a growing trend in the quantity of business-related research publications associated with each country. Similarly, there is an increasing internationalisation and intensification process of research networks. It is possible to identify both general and specific business topics that are investigated in individual countries.
Research limitations/implications
The time spans investigated do not always correspond with the main events occurring at the national level. From the semantic analysis perspective, the shortage of records for specific time periods prevents a valid semantic analysis, and the results are dependent on the quality of the abstracts provided by the authors. The study results might be used as support for funding decisions or context-aware evaluation of research outcomes at both institutional and national level.
Originality/value
This study provides a unique insight into the development and mutual comparison of business-related research in the countries investigated.
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