Search results

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to study which perceived and attained entrepreneurial competences acquired by students while developing a business plan are rated most highly; and second, to analyse the differences observed in entrepreneurial competences, depending on whether the business plan developed is real or fictitious.

To analyse the role played by business plans in perceptions and attainment of competence, data were collected from students enrolled on a final project course of a bachelor’s degree, specifically the Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Management at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. The course in question focussed on entrepreneurship and business plans. The data on perceived and attained competences were obtained through questionnaires and assessment rubrics, respectively. Mean comparison analyses were conducted to investigate any differences in entrepreneurial competences existing between students developing real or fictitious business plans.

The paper finds evidence that the process of creating a business plan results in entrepreneurial competence being highly rated and that whether the business plan is real or fictitious does not affect the level of entrepreneurial competence.

A longitudinal study will be required to analyse how entrepreneurial competences evolve during the business plan creation process.

This paper finds that few studies have been conducted to explore entrepreneurial competences in relation to business plan development and shows that more complete research is required. Moreover, both perceived and achieved competences are considered, an analysis not previously carried out.

The purpose of this paper is to set out a methodology for characterising the complexity of air traffic control (ATC) sectors based on individual operations. This machine learning methodology also learns from the data on which the model is based.

The methodology comprises three steps. Firstly, a statistical analysis of individual operations is carried out using elementary or initial variables, and these are combined using machine learning. Secondly, based on the initial statistical analysis and using machine learning techniques, the impact of air traffic flows on an ATC sector are determined. The last step is to calculate the complexity of the ATC sector based on the impact of its air traffic flows.

The results obtained are logical from an operational point of view and are easy to interpret. The classification of ATC sectors based on complexity is quite accurate.

The methodology is in its preliminary phase and has been tested with very little data. Further refinement is required.

The methodology can be of significant value to ATC in that when applied to real cases, ATC will be able to anticipate the complexity of the airspace and optimise its resources accordingly.

Air traffic controllers (ATCOs) play a fundamental role in the safe, orderly and efficient management of air traffic. In the interests of improving safety, it would be beneficial to know what the workload thresholds are that permit ATCOs to carry out their functions safely and efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a simulation platform to be able to validate an affective-cognitive performance methodology based on neurophysiological factors applied to ATCOs, to define the said thresholds.

The process followed in setting up the simulation platform is explained, with particular emphasis on the design of the program of exercises. The tools designed to obtain additional information on the actions of ATCOs and how their workload will be evaluated are also explained.

To establish the desired methodology, a series of exercises has been designed to be simulated. This paper describes the project development framework and validates it, taking preliminary results as a reference. The validation of the framework justifies further study to extend the preliminary results.

This paper describes the first part of the project only, i.e. the definition of the problem and a proposed methodology to arrive at a workable solution. Further work will concentrate on carrying out a program of simulations and subsequent detailed analysis of the data obtained, based on the conclusions drawn from the preliminary results presented.

The methodology will be an important tool from the point of view of safety and the work carried out by ATCOs. This first phase is crucial as it provides a solid foundation for later stages.

In exploring the impact of reflective and work applied approaches, the authors are curious how vivid new insights and collective “Eureka” momentums occur. These momentums can be forces for work communities to gain competitive advantages. However, the authors know little of how learning is actively involved in the processing of creating new insights and how such a turning to learning mode (Pässilä and Owens, 2016) can be facilitated. In the light of cultural studies and art education, the purpose of this paper is to explore how the method of dramatising characters (DC) in a specific innovation culture can be facilitated. In this viewpoint, the authors are suggesting one approach for this type of turning to learning which the authors call Beyond Text, outlining its theoretical underpinnings, its co-creative development and its application.

In this Beyond Text context, the authors are introducing the method of DC and the method of iStory both of which are the authors’ own design based on the theory of the four existing categories of a research-based theatre.

The findings of this viewpoint paper are that both iStory as well as DC methods are useful and practical learning facilitation processes and platforms that can be adopted for use in organisations for promoting reflexivity. Especially they can act as a bridge between various forms of knowing and consummate the other knowledge types (experiential, practical and propositional) in a way that advances practice-based innovation.

The originality and value of iStory and DC is that they can be utilised as dialogical evaluation methods when traditional evaluation strategies and pre-determined indicators are unusable.

This paper aims to argue that Economics is not a neutral science.

Post-structuralist perspective of Lyotard (1984), alongside the Pragmatics of Searle (1979) and Travis (1981) are useful for analyzing enunciations in mainstream Economics.

Economists use illocutionary acts expressed in formal language to achieve perlocutionary effects. Because of the importance attached to objectivity in mainstream Economics, the use of artificial languages is preferred to natural language. However, formal language is preferred regarding its perlocutionary effects on economists' community.

This paper puts together the Continental and the Analytical Philosophy and show, in an original manner, how their intersections and how they can be useful to better understand the epistemology of Economics.

Older people living in nursing homes have complex care needs and frequently need specialists’ advice and support that can be challenging to deliver in a rural setting. The aim of this paper is to describe a model of integrated care in a rural area supported by a nurse case manager.

A real-world evidence study of people living in Ribes de Freser nursing home, was conducted between specific timeframes in 2019 and 2022, comparing the casemix and outcomes of a traditional care model with the integrated interdisciplinary model.

The integrated care model led to a significant reduction in transfers to the emergency department, hospitalisations, outpatient medical visits and a reduction in the number of medicines. In addition, the number of residents receiving end-of-life care at the nursing home showed a substantial increase.

This case study contributes valuable evidence supporting the implementation of an integrated model of nurse case manager support in nursing homes, particularly in the rural contexts, where access to specialist medical staff may be limited. The findings highlight the potential benefits of person-centred integrated care for older adults, addressing their complex needs and improving end-of-life care in nursing home settings.

The purpose of this study is to establish a systematic framework to characterise the safety of air routes, in terms of separation minima infringements (SMIs) between en-route aircraft, based on the definition of models known as safety performance functions.

Techniques with high predictive capability were selected that enable both expert knowledge and data to be harnessed: Bayesian networks. It was necessary to establish a conceptual framework that integrates the knowledge currently available on the causality and precursors of SMIs with the hindsight derived from the analysis of the type of data available. To translate the conceptual framework into a set of causal subnets, the concepts of air traffic management (ATM) barrier model and event trees have been incorporated.

The model combines analytics and insights, as well as predictive capability, to answer the question of how airspace separation infringements are produced and what their frequency of occurrence will be. The main outputs of the network are the predicted probability of success for the ATM barriers and the predicted probability distribution of the vertical and horizontal separation of an aircraft in its closest point of approach.

The main contribution of this work is that, by virtue of the calculation capacity obtained, the network can be used to draw conclusions about the impact that a modification of the airspace and of the traffic, or operational conditions, would have on the effectiveness of the barriers and on the final distributions of distance between aircraft in the CPA, thereby estimating the probability of SMI.

Despite the technological paradigm shift presented to the architecture, engineering, construction and operations sector (AECO), the full-fledged acceptance of the building information modelling (BIM) methodology has been slower than initially anticipated. Indeed, this study aims to acknowledge the need for increasing supportive technologies enabling the use of BIM, attending to available human resources, their requirements and their tasks.

A complete case study is described, including the development process centred on design science research methodology followed by the usability assessment procedure validated by construction projects facility management operational staff.

Results show that participants could interact with BIM using openBIM processes and file formats naturally, as most participants reached an efficiency level close to that expected for users already familiar with the interface (i.e. high-efficiency values). These results are consistent with the reported perceived satisfaction and analysis of participants’ discourses through 62 semi-structured interviews.

The contributions of the present study are twofold: a proposal for a virtual reality openBIM framework is presented, particularly for the semantic enrichment of BIM models, and a methodology for evaluating the usability of this type of system in the AECO sector.

Instigated by the trend of collaborative economics, taking into consideration the particularities pointed out by Simis (2015), such as a new social, economic and technological scenario, this paper aims to identify which factors serve as motivators for collaboration among the technologies of this scenario.

In this paper, the authors analyzed Waze, an application that works based on traffic information made available by the users of the platform. For the development of this qualitative work, aspects that served as the basis for the interview script applied were classified into three different categories: utilization, personal values and gamification; the latter being an important aspect for collaboration in the application in question. Two distinct groups were interviewed; one of regular users of Waze, and the other of advanced users, who also work voluntarily in the maintenance of the app.

The results indicate that personal values are determinant factors for both groups; however, there are distinct incentives for the different users interviewed, like reciprocity, altruism and empathy. The first one is an important aspect to share information by the regular users, while the other ones are characteristics advanced users.

The study presents some limitations in terms of the restricted group and focus on only one of the many collaborative technological social, as well as lacking on-site analysis of the use of Waze.

This is a valid research when taking into consideration studies that approach the app Waze, as the issues explored in this paper are new in the academic studies considering previous app’s analyses that are related to functionality.

The results presented in this study help to understand the current relationship between sharing economy and the technology provided to those who use these platforms.

This research opens the horizon for future studies applied on other collaborative technological user platforms, to see if the results would be similar and construct a user journey in relation to information sharing through experimental monitoring.