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1 – 10 of over 1000
Open Access
Article
Publication date: 1 March 2021

Yiqiang Feng, Leiju Qiu and Baowen Sun

The originality of the crowd cyber system lies in the fact that it possesses the intelligence of multiple groups including intelligence of people, intelligence of objects and…

1221

Abstract

Purpose

The originality of the crowd cyber system lies in the fact that it possesses the intelligence of multiple groups including intelligence of people, intelligence of objects and intelligence of machines. However, quantitative analysis of the level of intelligence is not sufficient, due to many limitations, such as the unclear definition of intelligence and the inconformity of human intelligence quotient (IQ) test and artificial intelligence assessment methods. This paper aims to propose a new crowd intelligence measurement framework from the harmony of adaption and practice to measure intelligence in crowd network.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors draw on the ideas of traditional Confucianism, which sees intelligence from the dimensions of IQ and effectiveness. First, they clarify the related concepts of intelligence and give a new definition of crowd intelligence in the form of a set. Second, they propose four stages of the evolution of intelligence from low to high, and sort out the dilemma of intelligence measurement at the present stage. Third, they propose a framework for measuring crowd intelligence based on two dimensions.

Findings

The generalized IQ operator model is optimized, and a new IQ algorithm is proposed. Individuals with different IQs can have different relationships, such as cooperative, competitive, antagonistic and so on. The authors point out four representative forms of intelligence as well as its evolution stages.

Research limitations/implications

The authors, will use more rigorous mathematical symbols to represent the logical relationships between different individuals, and consider applying the measurement framework to a real-life situation to enrich the research on crowd intelligence in the further study.

Originality/value

Intelligence measurement is one of foundations of crowd science. This research lays the foundation for studying the interaction among human, machine and things from the perspective of crowd intelligence, which owns significant scientific value.

Details

International Journal of Crowd Science, vol. 5 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2398-7294

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 11 October 2021

Boban Melović, Marina Dabić, Milica Vukčević, Dragana Ćirović and Tamara Backović

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perception of marketing managers in a transition country Montenegro with regards to marketing metrics. The paper examines the…

9935

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perception of marketing managers in a transition country Montenegro with regards to marketing metrics. The paper examines the degree in which managers are familiar with the way marketing metrics are applied and how important they are in the process of making business decisions in a company operating in a Montenegro.

Design/methodology/approach

Data was collected during 2020 through a survey of 171 randomly selected companies and was analyzed using structural equation model and the statistical method of analysis of variance tests.

Findings

The obtained results show that managers are quite familiar with financial and non-financial metrics. Both groups are applied to a significant degree, as managers believe that these indicators provide valuable information needed during the decision-making process. Still, more emphasis is placed on the knowledge, implementation and importance of non-financial metrics compared to financial metrics. This is probably due to the specificities of the economic activities of the companies operating in Montenegro, as most of them are service companies, which is why non-financial metrics (such as consumer metrics) are the most important indicators when it comes to ascertaining the market position of the company. Additionally, in recent years the primary focus in Montenegro, as country that is still in the process of transformation from planned economy to a free-market form, has been placed on strengthening of competitiveness and advancing the market orientation of companies. This led to an increase in the importance that managers in transition countries attach to non-financial metrics.

Research limitations/implications

The fact that the survey only covers companies from one country is its limitation.

Practical implications

The obtained results will have a significant empirical contribution, which is reflected in providing guidelines for managers on how to improve the system of measuring and controlling marketing performance, all that to strengthen the competitiveness of the company, and can serve managers of hierarchy levels in a company as guidelines for making decisions on the implementation of marketing strategy and marketing metrics, to improve business performance, multi-context customer interaction, cost-saving and strengthen competitiveness.

Social implications

Obtaining necessary knowledge management and implementing marketing metrics are important conditions for consideration when it comes to the continuous monitoring and improvement of business results, increasing competitiveness and advancing the market position of the company.

Originality/value

The originality stems from the analysis of the interconnection that exists between marketing metrics and strategic decision-making, which is expected to be positively reflected in the development of society, i.e. strengthening the competitiveness of companies based on knowledge management achieved through the assessment of the degree of knowledge, the implementation and the significance of each of the metrics covered within this research in business decision-making processes. The paper provides insights into the extent to which managers understand the meaning of these indicators and are able to combine different marketing metrics to obtain more complex indicators, serving as necessary inputs when making strategic business decisions.

Details

Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 25 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1367-3270

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 15 May 2006

Jung Ung Min and Hun-Koo Ha

Reverse logistics has been seen as a necessary cost of business, but more companies are seeing it as a core strategic activity. Every firm needs to find more efficicient ways of…

Abstract

Reverse logistics has been seen as a necessary cost of business, but more companies are seeing it as a core strategic activity. Every firm needs to find more efficicient ways of reclaiming, redistributing, and disposing returns. For a fast growing industry, however, it is difficult to focus on structuring internal processes for reverse logistics because its emphasis is always on time to market and growing sales. In order to capture the most updated trend in the field of reverse logistics, this paper describes best practices of reverse logistics in hi-tech industry and identifies barriers in implementing those practices. The focus areas of the benchmarking survey are outsourcing of the logistics function, organization of the logistics function, return management, and sustainability-green issue. Based on the survey results, we provide an insight for capturing these trends and leveraging them as a strategic core competency for this industry.

Details

Journal of International Logistics and Trade, vol. 4 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1738-2122

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 13 August 2021

Edgar Ramos, Phillip S. Coles, Melissa Chavez and Benjamin Hazen

Agri-food firms face many challenges when assessing and managing their performance. The purpose of this research is to determine important factors for an integrated agri-food…

5336

Abstract

Purpose

Agri-food firms face many challenges when assessing and managing their performance. The purpose of this research is to determine important factors for an integrated agri-food supply chain performance measurement system.

Design/methodology/approach

This research uses the Peruvian kiwicha supply chain as a meaningful context to examine critical factors affecting agri-food supply chain performance. The research uses interpretative structural modelling (ISM) with fuzzy MICMAC methods to suggest a hierarchical performance measurement model.

Findings

The resulting kiwicha supply chain performance management model provides insights for managers and academic theory regarding managing competing priorities within the agri-food supply chain.

Originality/value

The model developed in this research has been validated by cooperative kiwicha associations based in Puno, Peru, and further refined by experts. Moreover, the results obtained through ISM and fuzzy MICMAC methods could help decision-makers from any agri-food supply chain focus on achieving high operational performance by integrating key performance measurement factors.

Details

Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. 29 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-5771

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 28 April 2020

Qamar Naith and Fabio Ciravegna

This paper aims to gauge developers’ perspectives regarding the participation of the public and anonymous crowd testers worldwide, with a range of varied experiences. It also aims…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to gauge developers’ perspectives regarding the participation of the public and anonymous crowd testers worldwide, with a range of varied experiences. It also aims to gather their needs that could reduce their concerns of dealing with the public crowd testers and increase the opportunity of using the crowdtesting platforms.

Design/methodology/approach

An online exploratory survey was conducted to gather information from the participants, which included 50 mobile application developers from various countries with diverse experiences across Android and iOS mobile platforms.

Findings

The findings revealed that a significant proportion (90%) of developers is potentially willing to perform testing via the public crowd testers worldwide. This on condition that several fundamental features were available, which enable them to achieve more realistic tests without artificial environments on large numbers of devices. The results also demonstrated that a group of developers does not consider testing as a serious job that they have to pay for, which can affect the gig-economy and global market.

Originality/value

This paper provides new insights for future research in the study of how acceptable it is to work with public and anonymous crowd workers, with varying levels of experience, to perform tasks in different domains and not only in software testing. In addition, it will assist individual or small development teams who have limited resources or who do not have thousands of testers in their private testing community, to perform large-scale testing of their products.

Details

International Journal of Crowd Science, vol. 4 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2398-7294

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 21 June 2019

Muhammad Zahir Khan and Muhammad Farid Khan

A significant number of studies have been conducted to analyze and understand the relationship between gas emissions and global temperature using conventional statistical…

3165

Abstract

Purpose

A significant number of studies have been conducted to analyze and understand the relationship between gas emissions and global temperature using conventional statistical approaches. However, these techniques follow assumptions of probabilistic modeling, where results can be associated with large errors. Furthermore, such traditional techniques cannot be applied to imprecise data. The purpose of this paper is to avoid strict assumptions when studying the complex relationships between variables by using the three innovative, up-to-date, statistical modeling tools: adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems (ANFIS), artificial neural networks (ANNs) and fuzzy time series models.

Design/methodology/approach

These three approaches enabled us to effectively represent the relationship between global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the energy sector (oil, gas and coal) and the average global temperature increase. Temperature was used in this study (1900-2012). Investigations were conducted into the predictive power and performance of different fuzzy techniques against conventional methods and among the fuzzy techniques themselves.

Findings

A performance comparison of the ANFIS model against conventional techniques showed that the root means square error (RMSE) of ANFIS and conventional techniques were found to be 0.1157 and 0.1915, respectively. On the other hand, the correlation coefficients of ANN and the conventional technique were computed to be 0.93 and 0.69, respectively. Furthermore, the fuzzy-based time series analysis of CO2 emissions and average global temperature using three fuzzy time series modeling techniques (Singh, Abbasov–Mamedova and NFTS) showed that the RMSE of fuzzy and conventional time series models were 110.51 and 1237.10, respectively.

Social implications

The paper provides more awareness about fuzzy techniques application in CO2 emissions studies.

Originality/value

These techniques can be extended to other models to assess the impact of CO2 emission from other sectors.

Details

International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, vol. 11 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1756-8692

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 27 October 2020

Aya Rizk, Anna Ståhlbröst and Ahmed Elragal

Within digital innovation, there are two significant consequences of the pervasiveness of digital technology: (1) the increasing connectivity is enabling a wider reach and scope…

2771

Abstract

Purpose

Within digital innovation, there are two significant consequences of the pervasiveness of digital technology: (1) the increasing connectivity is enabling a wider reach and scope of innovation structures, such as innovation networks and (2) the unprecedented availability of digital data is creating new opportunities for innovation. Accordingly, there is a growing domain for studying data-driven innovation (DDI), especially in contemporary contexts of innovation networks. The purpose of this study is to explore how DDI processes take form in a specific type of innovation networks, namely federated networks.

Design/methodology/approach

A multiple case study design is applied in this paper. We draw our analysis from data collected over six months from four cases of DDI. The within-analysis is aimed at constructing the DDI process instance in each case, while the crosscase analysis focuses on pattern matching and cross-case synthesis of common and unique characteristics in the constructed processes.

Findings

Evidence from the crosscase analysis suggests that the widely accepted four-phase digital innovation process (including discovery, development, diffusion and post-diffusion) does not account for the explorative nature of data analytics and DDI. We propose an extended process comprising an explicit exploration phase before development, where refinement of the innovation concept and exploring social relationships are essential. Our analysis also suggests two modes of DDI: (1) asynchronous, i.e. data acquired before development and (2) synchronous, i.e. data acquired after (or during) development. We discuss the implications of these modes on the DDI process and the participants in the innovation network.

Originality/value

The paper proposes an extended version of the digital innovation process that is more specifically suited for DDI. We also provide an early explanation to the variation in DDI process complexities by highlighting the different modes of DDI processes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical investigation of DDI following the process from early stages of discovery till postdiffusion.

Details

European Journal of Innovation Management, vol. 25 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1460-1060

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 20 June 2019

Per Håkon Meland, Karin Bernsmed, Christian Frøystad, Jingyue Li and Guttorm Sindre

Within critical-infrastructure industries, bow-tie analysis is an established way of eliciting requirements for safety and reliability concerns. Because of the ever-increasing…

4333

Abstract

Purpose

Within critical-infrastructure industries, bow-tie analysis is an established way of eliciting requirements for safety and reliability concerns. Because of the ever-increasing digitalisation and coupling between the cyber and physical world, security has become an additional concern in these industries. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how well bow-tie analysis performs in the context of security, and the study’s hypothesis is that the bow-tie notation has a suitable expressiveness for security and safety.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses a formal, controlled quasi-experiment on two sample populations – security experts and security graduate students – working on the same case. As a basis for comparison, the authors used a similar experiment with misuse case analysis, a well-known technique for graphical security modelling.

Findings

The results show that the collective group of graduate students, inexperienced in security modelling, perform similarly as security experts in a well-defined scope and familiar target system/situation. The students showed great creativity, covering most of the same threats and consequences as the experts identified and discovering additional ones. One notable difference was that these naïve professionals tend to focus on preventive barriers, leading to requirements for risk mitigation or avoidance, while experienced professionals seem to balance this more with reactive barriers and requirements for incident management.

Originality/value

Our results are useful in areas where we need to evaluate safety and security concerns together, especially for domains that have experience in health, safety and environmental hazards, but now need to expand this with cybersecurity as well.

Details

Information & Computer Security, vol. 27 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-4961

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 March 2022

Stephen Bahadar and Rashid Zaman

Stakeholders' uncertainty about firms' value drives their urge to get information, as well as managerial disclosure choices. In this study, the authors examine whether and how an…

2386

Abstract

Purpose

Stakeholders' uncertainty about firms' value drives their urge to get information, as well as managerial disclosure choices. In this study, the authors examine whether and how an important source of uncertainty – the recent COVID-19 pandemic's effect on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure – is beyond managerial and stakeholders' control.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors develop a novel construct for daily CSR disclosure by employing computer-aided text analysis (CATA) on the press releases issued by 125 New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) listed from 28 February 2020 to 31 December 2020. To capture COVID-19 intensity, the authors use the growth rate of the population-adjusted cumulative sum of confirmed cases in New Zealand on a specific day. To examine the association between the COVID-19 outbreak and companies' CSR disclosure, the authors employed ordinary least squares (OLS) regression by clustering standard error at the firm level.

Findings

The authors find a one standard deviation increase in the COVID-19 outbreak leads to a 28% increase in such disclosures. These results remained robust to a series of sensitivity tests and continue to hold after accounting for potential endogeneity concerns. In the channel analysis, the study demonstrates that the positive relationship between COVID-19 and CSR disclosure is more pronounced in the presence of a well-structured board (i.e. a large, more independent board and with a higher proportion of women on it). In further analysis, the authors find the documented relationship varies over the pandemic's life cycle and is moderated by government stringency response, peer CSR pressure and media coverage.

Originality/value

This paper is the first study that contributes to the scant literature examining the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on CSR disclosure. Prior research either investigates the relationship of the CSR-stock return during the COVID-19 market crisis or examines the relationship between corporate characteristics including the quality of financial information and the reactions of stock returns during COVID-19. The authors extend such studies by providing empirical evidence that managers respond to COVID-19 by increasing CSR disclosure.

Details

China Accounting and Finance Review, vol. 24 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1029-807X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 6 July 2020

Basma Makhlouf Shabou, Julien Tièche, Julien Knafou and Arnaud Gaudinat

This paper aims to describe an interdisciplinary and innovative research conducted in Switzerland, at the Geneva School of Business Administration HES-SO and supported by the…

4249

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to describe an interdisciplinary and innovative research conducted in Switzerland, at the Geneva School of Business Administration HES-SO and supported by the State Archives of Neuchâtel (Office des archives de l'État de Neuchâtel, OAEN). The problem to be addressed is one of the most classical ones: how to extract and discriminate relevant data in a huge amount of diversified and complex data record formats and contents. The goal of this study is to provide a framework and a proof of concept for a software that helps taking defensible decisions on the retention and disposal of records and data proposed to the OAEN. For this purpose, the authors designed two axes: the archival axis, to propose archival metrics for the appraisal of structured and unstructured data, and the data mining axis to propose algorithmic methods as complementary or/and additional metrics for the appraisal process.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on two axes, this exploratory study designs and tests the feasibility of archival metrics that are paired to data mining metrics, to advance, as much as possible, the digital appraisal process in a systematic or even automatic way. Under Axis 1, the authors have initiated three steps: first, the design of a conceptual framework to records data appraisal with a detailed three-dimensional approach (trustworthiness, exploitability, representativeness). In addition, the authors defined the main principles and postulates to guide the operationalization of the conceptual dimensions. Second, the operationalization proposed metrics expressed in terms of variables supported by a quantitative method for their measurement and scoring. Third, the authors shared this conceptual framework proposing the dimensions and operationalized variables (metrics) with experienced professionals to validate them. The expert’s feedback finally gave the authors an idea on: the relevance and the feasibility of these metrics. Those two aspects may demonstrate the acceptability of such method in a real-life archival practice. In parallel, Axis 2 proposes functionalities to cover not only macro analysis for data but also the algorithmic methods to enable the computation of digital archival and data mining metrics. Based on that, three use cases were proposed to imagine plausible and illustrative scenarios for the application of such a solution.

Findings

The main results demonstrate the feasibility of measuring the value of data and records with a reproducible method. More specifically, for Axis 1, the authors applied the metrics in a flexible and modular way. The authors defined also the main principles needed to enable computational scoring method. The results obtained through the expert’s consultation on the relevance of 42 metrics indicate an acceptance rate above 80%. In addition, the results show that 60% of all metrics can be automated. Regarding Axis 2, 33 functionalities were developed and proposed under six main types: macro analysis, microanalysis, statistics, retrieval, administration and, finally, the decision modeling and machine learning. The relevance of metrics and functionalities is based on the theoretical validity and computational character of their method. These results are largely satisfactory and promising.

Originality/value

This study offers a valuable aid to improve the validity and performance of archival appraisal processes and decision-making. Transferability and applicability of these archival and data mining metrics could be considered for other types of data. An adaptation of this method and its metrics could be tested on research data, medical data or banking data.

Details

Records Management Journal, vol. 30 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0956-5698

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 1000