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The purpose of this paper is to propose an optimum design of a corona ring for insulator strings using optimisation techniques, which are gravitational search algorithm (GSA) and imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA).

An insulator string model geometry with a corona ring was modelled in a finite element analysis software, and it was used to obtain the electric field distribution in the model. The design was optimised using GSA and ICA. The variables were the corona ring diameter, ring tube diameter and vertical position of the ring along the insulator string.

Using optimisation method, the minimum electric field magnitude on the insulator string with a corona ring design is lower than without using optimisation method. GSA yields better results than ICA in terms of the optimised corona ring design.

The proposed methods can help in improvement of corona ring design in reducing the electric field magnitude on the energised end of insulator strings.

A new method to design an optimum corona ring for insulator strings, which is using optimisation methods, has been developed in this work.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of social sustainable consumption in the context of improved ridership in public bus transport (PBT). It investigated the social predictors and implementation intention of drivers to use PBT.

The empirical data were collected through online survey. The respondents of the online survey were 313 drivers in Penang, Malaysia. A conceptual model was designed to test implementation intention of the drivers in using the PBT. Data analysis was performed using the variance-based structural equation modeling technique of partial least squares.

The findings indicate that the drivers’ intention to use PBT is significantly influenced by their referent group, gender role, and commitment to environment. In addition, their implementation intention is significantly predicted by the intention to use PBT.

This study was performed in Penang using convenience sampling method. The results need to be replicated using a different sample in other developing countries to test its stability.

Policy makers and transport managers need to be guided by the importance of the drivers’ referent group, gender role, commitment to environment, and intention in order to improve ridership of the PBT.

The research on referent group, gender role, commitment to environment, intention, and the implementation intention of the drivers using the theory of interpersonal behavior in PBT is unprecedented.

The purpose of this paper is to identify research priorities to guide transportation stakeholders in their practice, education, and research.

A literature review of published, conference proceedings, agency reports, books, and web site documents was conducted, aiming at the identification of the diverging strategies and practices undertaken by transportation stakeholders in order to be able to generate initial meaningful insights about a sustainable transportation system.

Sustainable transportation systems are in certain way a new paradigm where a business-as-usual approach is not possible. Vehicle makers produce more energy efficient vehicles. Nevertheless, fossil fuel is still the predominant source of energy. Regarding the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, non-motorized transport modes are preferable over motorized transport modes, and public transportation modes preferable to private transportation modes. It is also import to include environmental consideration along the design, construction, maintenance, and operation of the transportation infrastructure. While vehicles powered by alternate fuel such as biofuel, electricity, and/or fuel cell are becoming more popular, shifting to more sustainable transport modes would also require changes on commuter behaviors and individual preferences.

The paper discusses the efforts that are underway for decoupling transport and CO₂ emissions, being useful for transportation stakeholders to implement or improve the effectiveness of their potential or current sustainability transport initiatives through the identification of strategies, opportunities, and barriers.

Although there is plenty of good information about sustainability and transportation modes in literature, most of the articles analyzed focus on specific factors of the whole transportation system. The originality/value of this paper is found in the holistic perspective, here presented, of the state of the art issues that a sustainable transport system would encompass.

The purpose of this study is to propose a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to explore whether media richness and social interaction as environmental feature antecedents to nurses’ learning engagement (LE) can affect their continuance intention of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and task performance.

Sample data for this study were collected from nurses at five university-/medical university-affiliated hospitals in Taiwan. A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed, and 303 (60.6%) usable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling in this study.

This study proved that nurses’ perceived media richness and social interaction in MOOCs positively influenced their behavioral LE and psychological LE elicited by MOOCs, which jointly caused their continuance intention of MOOCs and, in turn, enhance their task performance. The results support all proposed hypotheses and the research model, respectively, explains 84.3% and 63.7% of the variance in nurses’ continuance intention of MOOCs and task performance.

This study uses the S-O-R model as a theoretical base to frame nurses’ continuance intention of MOOCs and task performance as a series of the internal process, which is affected by environmental stimuli (i.e. media richness and social interaction) and organismic states. Noteworthily, while the S-O-R model has been extensively used in prior literature, little research uses this paradigm to expound nurses’ continuance intention of MOOCs in the work settings. Besides, there is a dearth of evidence on the antecedents of nurses’ task performance in the context of MOOCs. Hence, this study’s empirical evidence contributes significantly to the existing literature on bridging the gap of limited evaluation for the research on the impact of nurses’ MOOCs learning on their task performance in the work settings, which is very scarce in the S-O-R view.

Conceptual model in this paper combines existing scientific knowledge grounded in theories of planned behavior, diffusion of innovation and a unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, while aiming to identify relevant determinants of continuous use of e-learning by employees who used e-learning in the past year at their workplace.

The authors developed and empirically tested the positive impact of professional, personal, IT and environmental factors on the continued use of e-learning among 672 employees across different sectors using the structural equation modeling technique.

Research results suggest that the most powerful determinant of continuous use of e-learning are personal factors. Environmental influences and technological aspects also exhibit a positive and significant impact on the continuous use of e-learning. Research hypothesis related to the positive influence of professional factors on the continuous use of e-learning has not been empirically confirmed. Also, results demonstrated that continued use of e-learning contributes to better individual business performance.

The practical contribution is threefold: to companies, education institutions and human resource managers. For companies, identification of key determinants will lead to a better understanding of employees needs regarding continuous job improvements. The findings can be used by educational institutions to design e-learning programs according to results and real value to employees. On the other hand, human resource managers can benefit from this study in terms of getting concrete factors that motivate employees for continuous job improvement.

The research sheds light on the proposed integrated model that tests the post-adoption of the continuous use of e-learning within an organizational context.

This study aims to examine the relationship between digital financial literacy (DFL) and entrepreneurial performance in Sri Lanka. In order to identify the gap, this study has done a systematic literature review. Accordingly, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used to bridge this gap. A survey of 385 small and medium business enterprises was conducted in Sri Lanka, and a descriptive analysis, correlational analysis, and partial least squares model was used for data analysis for two models. The first model examines the relationship between DFL and performance and the second model examines Access, Mobile literacy, and social media literacy and performance. Findings of this study includes DFL level is average in Sri Lankan SMEs. The measurement model is evaluated in two models and ensures reliability and validity. The results of the structural model of the first model reveal a positive relationship between DFL and entrepreneurial performance. The second model reveals the positive relationship between access and entrepreneurial performance. This research provides guidance on how DFL can improve SMEs performance which is important to achieve success in current businesses which faced a pandemic situation plus distress situation in Sri Lanka. Based on a systematic literature review, there is no empirical evidence about the relationship between DFL and entrepreneurial performance using the TAM model in the Sri Lankan context perhaps in the international context. This identified gap is bridged in this study in the Sri Lankan context.

Information and digital literacy have recently received much interest, and they are being viewed as critical strategic organisational resources and skills that employees need to obtain in order to function at their workplaces. Yet, the role of employees' literacy seems to be neglected in current literature. This paper aims to explore the roles that information and digital literacy play on the employees' perception in relation to usefulness and ease of use of digital technologies and consequently their intention to use technology in the practices they perform at the workplace.

This paper builds a conceptual model with key constructs (information literacy and digital literacy) as new antecedents to the technology acceptance model and aims to establish that information literacy and digital literacy are indirect determinants of employees' intention to use digital technologies at the workplace. The data set used in this paper comprises of 121 respondents and structural equation modelling was used.

The findings reveal that both information literacy and digital literacy have a direct impact on perceived ease of use of technology but not on the perceive usefulness. The findings also show that both literacies have an indirect impact on the intention to use digital technology at work via attitude towards use.

Managers and decision-makers should pay close attention to the literacy levels of their staff. Because literacies are such an important skillset in the digital age, managers and chief information officers may want to start by identifying which work groups or individuals require literacy training and instruction, and then provide specific and relevant training or literacy interventions to help those who lack sufficient literacy.

This is one of the first studies to consider information literacy and digital literacy as new antecedents of the technology acceptance model at the workplace environment.

Nowadays, global warming, due to large-scale emissions of greenhouse gasses, is among top environmental issues. The purpose of this paper is to present a problem involving the incorporation of environmental aspects into logistics, which provides a comparison between pollution reduction and distance-based approaches.

In green vehicle routing problem (VRP), the aim is to model and solve an optimization problem in order to minimize the fuel consumption which results in reducing energy consumption as well as air pollution. The Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) is adapted and used as a powerful heuristic.

Here, it is shown that a set of routes with minimum length is not an optimal solution for FCVRP model since the total distance is not the only effective factor for fuel consumption and vehicle's load plays an important role too. In many cases, a considerable reduction in emissions can be achieved by only an insignificant increase in costs.

Green transportation is a policy toward reducing carbon emissions. This research focussed on routes problem and introduce FCVRP model. GSA is used as a powerful heuristic to obtain high quality routes in a reasonable time. Considering other factors that affecting fuel consumption could make this study more realistic.

When a distribution center receives all the information it needs about the demand from all the retail stores it supplies, a VRP is produced. So the models are valid for use by all goods producers and distributors. The preliminary assessment of the proposed model and method carried out on benchmark problems up to 200 nodes.

Fuel consumption is one of the most influential factors in transportation costs. This paper introduces an innovative decision-making framework to obtain optimum routes in a vehicle routes problem considering air pollution. The results were compared from fuel consumption as well as total travel distance viewpoints.

Information technology (IT) personnels’ technical, business and behavioral skills are critical enablers for generating IT value. In an increasingly digitalized working environment where non-IT employees participate in digital innovations, a focus on IT personnels’ skills only doesn’t meet researchers’ need for a framework to study digital skills and managers’ need to address digital skills challenges across an enterprise’s workforce. Nevertheless, the digital skills topic is complicated by conceptual ambiguity and a lack of theoretically derived and empirically validated model. The purpose of this study is to address this problem.

Theoretically, this study draws on human capital (HC) and resource-based view (RBV) theories. Empirically, it follows mixed method combining interviews and a survey.

The digital skills construct is a multidimensional second order reflective construct. While its development is influenced by an organization’s commitment and exposure to digitalization, it influences the value organizations obtain from digitalization.

This study conceptualizes the digital skills construct, identifying technology agnostic subdimensions that are meaningful beyond a particular digital domain [information and communication technology (ICT), information, Internet, Inter of Things (IoT)] and establishing a valid measure. Other researchers can improve both the indicators of the existing four conceptually distinct and managerially recognizable workplace digital skills dimensions as well as testing new ones.

Managers can use the instrument to assess the extent to which their non-IT workforces are equipped with digital skills and get strategic insights for specific interventions such as upskilling or buying in skills.

The main theoretical contribution of the paper is the conceptualization and validation of the digital skills construct for the non-IT workforce. Furthermore, we provide a theoretical framework to explain the factors that could influence the development of digital skills and demonstrate the impact that digital skills have on selected digitalization value indicators. This contribution provides the foundation for investigating the drivers, outcomes and the relationship of digital skills to other constructs such as digital transformation, innovation and firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to combine task-technology fit, theory of planned behaviour and individual technology optimism, and propose a better hybrid technology behavioural intention model to explain Taiwanese students’ usage behaviour for weblog learning.

A 31-item questionnaire with eight constructs was administered to undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in three universities in Taiwan. A total of 380 voluntary, usable responses were received, and a research model estimated using Smart PLS was used to interpret the structural relation results.

The results of the research model were analysed using a structural equation modelling approach to test six hypotheses and three moderating hypotheses; significant support were found for seven of them. Accordingly, this study considered the level of technology optimism as a moderator to explore whether it impacts perceived behavioural control, attitudes and social influences on behavioural intention related to weblog learning.

This research provides a better understanding of individual and system characteristics, as well as social factors regarding weblog learning system acceptance and intention.