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This study aims to examine Big Data and the management of libraries in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its implications for policymakers in Nigeria.

A qualitative methodology was used, involving the administration of open-ended questionnaires to librarians from six selected federal universities located in Southwest Nigeria.

The findings of this research highlight that a significant proportion of librarians are well-acquainted with the relevance of big data and its potential to positively revolutionize library services. Librarians generally express favorable opinions concerning the relevance of big data, acknowledging its capacity to enhance decision-making, optimize services and deliver personalized user experiences.

This study exclusively focuses on the Nigerian context, overlooking insights from other African countries. As a result, it may not be possible to generalize the study’s findings to the broader African library community.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is unique because the paper reported that librarians generally express favorable opinions concerning the relevance of big data, acknowledging its capacity to enhance decision-making, optimize services and deliver personalized user experiences.

Today, human resource managers do not have the luxury of operating and performing in a stable, predictable environment as political, social and economic changes are affecting all organizations and their human resource management activities. In particular, the dominant environmental uncertainties combined with recent trends/changes in the socio‐economic climate are having considerable effects on the place and role of human resource planning (HRP). Outlines some of the major issues surrounding the HRP function in the face of the above uncertainties and changes. An operational HRP model designed to incorporate these is proposed and outlined. Suggestions for implementing the model by means of simple spreadsheets or a basic (object oriented) computerized decision support system are also made. A preliminary computerized decision support system, based on the proposed model, can easily be developed. This would prove of great assistance to human resource managers, planners and professionals in the challenging task of personnel planning in the 1990s. Also outlines the various scenarios and procedures required in building the operational model.

Humanitarian supply chain (HSC) has been constantly challenged with multiple issues due to the complex dynamics of the disaster. These issues are inevitable and interrelated. The issues produce undesirable cascading effects that make performance measurement complicated. This paper aims to identify and model the critical barriers in the HSC.

The study identifies 17 barriers through the relevant literature and interviews with the stakeholders related to humanitarian organization (HO) in the developing economy. The barriers have been identified from strategic, technological, organizational, economic and operational point of view. Further, the barriers were ranked based on the degree of influence using the grey analytic network process (ANP) approach. The interrelationship among the influential barriers is established through modified total interpretive structural modelling (mTISM). To analyse and demonstrate the iterative consensus among the stakeholders, kappa statistics was adopted.

The barriers have been ranked to determine their extent of influence and modelled to reveal the interrelationship among them. The issues concerned with skills of personnel are the most influential barrier. Other three critical barriers identified are: chaotic operative environment, conflicting objectives of HO and lack of funding for information technology (IT) infrastructure. Appropriate funds need to be allocated towards IT infrastructure and personnel training.

Both quantitative and qualitative performance measurement frameworks had been proposed earlier for HSC. However, limited literature addresses the implementation issues with the available frameworks. This study advances the knowledge on performance measurement barriers of HSC and develops a functional description to identify the critical role of performance measurement in HOs. The study proposes a new version of the interpretive structure modelling, using mTISM technique, to determine the contextual interactions between various HSC performance measurement barriers.

The aim of this paper is to explain the relationship between economic performance and labour manoeuvrability of township‐village enterprises in the Jiangsu province, People's Republic of China.

After a concise general overview of recent economic developments in the Chinese economy and the functioning of labour markets, a statistical analysis was performed on economic performance and labour market conditions based on a sample of 103 enterprises in the area considered.

The analysis shows that the flexibility to fire employees has a considerable impact on the rise in added value of the enterprises, whereas hiring flexibility appears to have negligible effects.

Although the paper has a limited scope related to one Chinese province, it seems plausible that the results – a positive economic effect of deregulation – have a more general validity, but this would call for a broader comparative study across sectors and regions.

The paper thus offers a novel contribution to a better understanding of the economic performance after the fast changes in the Chinese economy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the role of tenure as a moderator of the effects of job insecurity (JI) and employability on turnover intentions and absenteeism and will demonstrate its importance in personnel research and theorization.

Data from a sample of client service representatives of a Peruvian call centre (n=268) were analysed. Tests of hypotheses targeted the intact group as a whole and divided into short (3–10 months), medium (11–14 months) and long job tenure groups (15–37 months).

Results of general linear models revealed that the effects of JI on turnover intention observed in the intact group were aligned with those seen within each of the tenure groups. However, this was not the case for the effects of JI on absenteeism or the effects of employability on turnover intention and absenteeism. A comparison of results of various regression models indicated that the effects of JI and employability on absenteeism differed in meaningful ways across the intact group and the tenure groups.

The evidence does not reveal whether the observed differences stem from dynamic personnel selection processes or whether they express different relationships between the variables at various stages of an employee’s trajectory in an organization.

Human resource managers at call centres will be stimulated to re-evaluate the costs and benefits of promoting tenure, and journal editors will have to consider requesting the inclusion of tenure as a variable in studies focussing on organizations with high turnover.

This study is the first to prove that the effects of JI and employability on turnover intention and absenteeism vary across job tenure levels. It also shows the importance of addressing tenure in personnel research and theorization.

En este artículo se desea proporcionar evidencia sobre el rol de la antigüedad como moderador de los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo y la empleabilidad sobre las intenciones de irse y el ausentismo y demostrar su importancia en la teorización e investigación sobre el personal.

Se analizó datos de una muestra de representantes de servicios al cliente de un centro de llamadas peruano (n=268). Las pruebas de hipótesis abordaron al grupo intacto como un todo y dividido en grupos de antigüedad corta (3–10 meses), media (11–14 meses) y larga (15–37 meses).

Los resultados de modelos lineales generales revelaron que los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo sobre la intención de irse observados en el grupo intacto estaban alineados con aquellos vistos dentro de cada grupo de antigüedad. Sin embargo, este no era el caso de los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo sobre el ausentismo o los efectos de la empleabilidad sobre la intención de irse y el ausentismo. Una comparación de los resultados de varios modelos de regresión indicaron que los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo y la empleabilidad sobre el ausentismo diferían de manera significativa entre el grupo intacto y los grupos de antigüedad.

La evidencia no indica si las diferencias observadas provienen de procesos dinámicos de selección del personal o si expresan relaciones diferentes entre las variables en diversos momentos de la trayectoria del empleado en la organización.

Los gerentes de recursos humanos en centros de llamadas serán estimulados a reevaluar los costos y beneficios de promover la antigüedad y los editores de revistas científicas tendrán que considerar pedir la inclusión de la antigüedad como una variable en los estudios enfocados en organizaciones con altas tasas de rotación de personal.

Este estudio es el primero en demostrar que los efectos de la inseguridad en el trabajo y la empleabilidad sobre las intenciones de irse y el ausentismo varían a través de niveles de antigüedad del personal. También muestran la importancia de abordar la antigüedad en la teorización e investigación sobre el personal.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the changes of dental caries status among Thai adults and elderly under the different policy options using system dynamics modeling.

A multi-sector system dynamics model was developed to capture the dynamic interrelationship between dental caries status changes and oral health behavior – including self-care, dental care utilization and sugar consumption. Data used to populate the model was obtained from the Thai national oral health survey in 2000, 2006, 2012 and Thailand Official Statistics Registration. Three policy scenarios were experimented in the model: health promotion policy, dental personnel policy and affordable dental care service policy.

Dental caries experiences among Thai adults and elderly were projected to increase from now to 2040, as the elderly population increases. Among all policies experimented herein, the combined policies of health promotion, increased affordability and capacity of dental health service were found to produce the highest improvement in dental caries status with 3.7 percent reduction of population with high decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) and 5.2 percent increase in population with very low DMFT.

This study is the first comprehensive simulation model that attempts to explore the dynamic interrelationship among dental caries experiences and behavioral factors that impact on oral health outcomes. In addition, the simulation model herein offers a framework for policy experimentation that provides policymakers with additional insights to inform health policy planning.

The Surrey (British Columbia, Canada) fire department has an annual cycle for hiring full-time firefighters. This paper optimizes the timing of the annual hiring period. A key issue is handling workplace absences, which can be covered by overtime cost or full-time hires.

Short-term and long-term absences patterns are analyzed according to season and age cohorts of the firefighters. These are then used in both an explanatory and time series model to predict future absences. The hiring schedule is optimized based on these predictions and additional constraints.

The current practice fares well in the analysis. For the time period studied, moving to earlier hiring dates appears beneficial. This analysis is robust with respect to various assumptions.

This is a case study where analytic techniques and machine learning are applied to an organizational practice that is not commonly analyzed. In this case, the previous method was not much worse than the optimized solution. The techniques used are quite general and can be applied to various organizational decision problems.

Introduction The importance of effective recruitment can hardly be over‐emphasised. Errors can be offset, but at a cost, either by further recruitment, or by extra training and development. However, not only must recruitment be effective—it must also be efficient. This entails taking costs into account, although these are often difficult to control because budgets are notoriously difficult to set. However, given the amount of resources involved, it is surprising that not more attention has been paid by writers to the cost‐effectiveness of the process.

The stimulus for the research on which this monograph is based came from Digman's work [1] “How Well‐managed Organisations Develop Their Executives” and from an expression of interest at Cranfield in establishing data from British companies.

This paper aims to take a look at police‐specific factors of stress – police stressors – and to assess the effects of these factors on police officer burnout. The paper also seeks to test the linearity of these effects.

The study focuses on four stressors: defective leadership, role conflicts, threat of violence, and time pressure. As a measure of burnout, Bergen Burnout Indicator 15 is used. The data are cross‐section in nature and come from the Police Personnel Barometer (PPB) conducted in Finland in 2008. The PPB‐survey targeted the entire police administration in Finland. The response rate was 67.2 percent (n=6,871). The current paper uses a sub‐sample of police officers (constable rank) from three functional areas of policing (n=2,821).

Controlling for age, gender, education, shift work, tenure and the function of the police officer, the effects of the different stressors on burnout were all statistically significant. Statistically significant and robust nonlinear effects of the stressors on burnout were also found.

The study introduces a new measure of stress to analyze police work. It takes a preliminary look at the reliability and validity of the measure. The study considers linear as well as nonlinear effects of the stressors on burnout and suggests that the effects under scrutiny are essentially nonlinear.