Search results

The advancement of a profession depends on factors such as firm education, training programmes and vibrant professional associations. The purpose of this study is to provide baseline information on archives and records management (ARM) professionals from Africa, including their views on education and training programmes. Related studies have been limited to investigating the experiences of graduates from a few institutions within a limited jurisdiction. Similar studies have not been conducted by African-based ARM associations.

This study’s survey approach was administered electronically. Two surveys explored themes through 10 research questions in three categories: background information; characteristics of the education; and types of courses and extent covered during the study.

The two surveys had 107 and 179 respondents, respectively, domiciled in 19 African countries. In both studies, about 75% of the respondents had an undergraduate- or master-level qualification. Between 69% and 87% of the respondents from the first and second surveys, respectively, had completed their educational programmes within their home countries. There was varied sentiment on the types of courses and level of coverage within their studies. Legal and technology aspects were less covered in the curriculum than core subjects.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first with findings from ARM respondents across several African countries. It provides insight into the demographics and educational programmes. This study’s unique contribution provides baseline data for more detailed and nuanced studies that will explore data and investigate patterns within and among individual countries on the continent.

Although there is a growing body of work on immigrants' information behavior, little is known about the pre-arrival information experiences of immigrants who consult formal information sources such as immigration agents. Drawn from a larger study on the information behavior of immigrants, this paper mainly reports the semi-structured interview findings on the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants who used formal information sources with discussion on how that affected their post-arrival settlement into Canada.

The study used a mixed method approach with semi-structured interviews (n = 60) and surveys (n = 205) with participants who arrived in Canada between the years of 1971 and 2017. Data were collected from May 2017 to February 2018.

Although the overall scope of the original study is much larger, this paper features findings on the pre-arrival information experiences derived mainly from an analysis of interview data. This study provides insights into the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants consulting formal information sources such as immigration firms, individual immigration consultants and more formal government agencies. The author introduces a new concept of “information crafting” by exploring the negative consequences of selective information sharing by immigration consultants/agents in newcomers' settlements in Canada, primarily positive information about life in Canada, sometimes with exaggeration and falsification. The interview participants shared story after the story of the settlement challenges they faced after arriving in Canada and how the expectations they built through the information received from immigration consultants and government agencies did not match after arrival. This study emphasizes the importance of providing comprehensive information about life in Canada to potential newcomers so that they can make informed decisions even before they apply.

The findings of this study have theoretical and practical implications for policy and research. This study provides insights into the complicated culturally situated pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants. Moreover, the study findings encourage researchers in various disciplines, including psychology, migration studies and geography, to delve more deeply into newcomers' information experiences using an informational lens to examine the information newcomers receive from diverse sources and their effects on their post-arrival settlement in a new country. The study challenges the general assumptions that formal information sources are always reputable, useful, and comprehensive, and it provides some future directions for research that seeks to understand the culturally situated information behavior of diverse immigrant groups.

This study aims to provide information concerning practices for creating strategic plans in municipal policing organizations and their use in practice.

This study surveyed a sample of Canadian police services, including four of the ten largest services in Canada, to investigate their planning practices and the study’s findings to the results of a content analysis of strategic plans reported by Rogers et al. (2020). This study did not conduct content analysis and therefore relied on the findings of Rogers et al. (2020).

Some respondents indicated they do not apply some practices generally considered advisable. Other respondents indicated they undertake a practice even though doing so is not evident from a review of the associated strategic plans.

This study is based entirely on self-reported survey data. The study did not interview respondents to find out why they responded as they did.

This study points to specific improvements municipal policing organizations could adopt which offer the prospect of creating better strategic plans and better strategic planning outcomes.

Policing organizations are important institutions in society. As a regular part of their activities, they interact with a broad cross-section of the society within which they operate. This paper presents ideas concerning how policing organizations can improve how they adapt themselves to their social environment to improve those interactions.

No other study collects self-reported data on how police services conduct strategic planning and use strategic plans at this level of detail.

This study responds to the calls from the literature on identifying interactions among the sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) drivers, which influence focal firms’ SSCM decisions. It also determines how the effect of SSCM drivers differs across the upstream and downstream supply chains (SCs) entities of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) companies.

We employ a multi-method design encompassing three studies: study 1 (multiple-case study), study 2 (quantitative survey), and study 3 (multiple-criteria decision-making or MCDM modeling).

The results show that the external drivers such as customer pressure, competition, and supplier pressure and internal drivers such as top management commitment interact to influence the adoption of SSCM practices, and this interaction is diverse across upstream and downstream SC entities of the FMCG sector. The study provides empirical evidence of relationships among the SSCM drivers, which influence SSCM decisions.

Understanding these interactions will help managers derive strategies to manage the overall SSCM ecosystem and recognize the multiplier effects of upstream to downstream and vice versa.

In urban studies, understanding how individuals perceive density is a complex challenge due to the subjective nature of this perception, which is influenced by sociocultural, personal and environmental factors. This study addresses these complexities by proposing a systematic framework for comprehending how people perceive density within urban contexts.

The methodology for developing the framework involved a systematic review of existing literature on the perception of density and related concepts, followed by integrating insights from empirical investigations. The framework designed through this process overcomes the limitations identified in previous research and provides a comprehensive guide for studying perceived density in urban environments.

The successful application of the framework on case studies in Glasgow and international settings enabled the identification of 20 critical spatial factors (buildings, public realm and urban massing) influencing density perception. The research provided insights into the subjective nature of density perception and the impact that spatial characters of urban form play, demonstrating the framework's effectiveness in understanding the impact of urban form, which is the realm of design and planning professions, on individual experiences.

The paper's originality lies in its comprehensive synthesis of the existing knowledge on the perception of density, the development of a user-responsive framework adaptable to future research and its application in case studies of different natures to identify recurrent links between urban form and user-specific constructs.

Agile principles have been widely used in software development team practice since the creation of the Agile Manifesto. Studies have examined variables related to agile principles without systematically considering the relationships among key team, agile methodology, and process variables underlying the agile principles and how these variables jointly influence the achievement of software development agility. In this study, the authors tested a team/methodology–process–agility model that links team variables (team autonomy and team competence) and methodological variable (iterative development) to process variables (communication and collaborative decision-making), which are in turn linked to software development agility (ability to sense, respond and learn).

Survey data from one hundred and sixty software development professionals were analyzed using structural equation modeling methods.

The results support the team/methodology–process–agility model. Process variables (communication and collaborative decision-making) mediated the effects of team (autonomy and competence) and methodological (iterative development) variables on software development agility. In addition, team, methodology and process variables had different effects on the three dimensions of software development agility.

The results contribute to the literature on organizational IT management by establishing a team/methodology–process–agility model that can serve as a basis for developing a core theoretical foundation underlying agile principles and practices. The results also have practical implications for organizations in understanding and managing holistically the different roles that agile methodological, team and process factors play in achieving software development agility.

One of the most important phenomena that have been confronted in the field of household finance is the stock market participation puzzle. The puzzle describes the anomaly that the majority of households do not have ownership of stock market products, though empirically stocks give higher expected returns than risk-free assets. The stock market participation rate plays an important role as it has a direct bearing on the equity premium. In this study, the authors aim to investigate how financial literacy and various proxies of social interaction are associated with stock market participation in South Africa.

The study uses probit regression and ordinary least squares using the South African National Income Dynamics survey Wave 5 of 2017 to investigate whether financial literacy and social interaction are significantly associated with stock market participation. The financial literacy index is computed using factor analysis on the responses to the financial literacy questions used in the survey. The authors use three proxies for social interaction, namely membership in a Stokvel, membership in a men's association and membership in a women's association.

The results reveal that an increase in financial literacy increases the odds of respondents participating in the stock market. Among the control variables, age, race and level of education are significantly associated with stock market participation. When it comes to social interaction, it is belonging to a men's association that is significantly associated with stock market participation. The other proxies for social interaction are insignificantly associated with stock market participation.

The study contributes to the extant literature by using a set of proxies for social interaction that have the potential to influence stock market participation which have not been used in a South African context.

This study aims to investigate motivators, mediator and moderator of users' sustained information seeking on academic social networking sites (ASNSs).

Drawing upon the expectancy–value theory and related information-seeking literature, the study developed a theoretical model to explain why and how users intend to continue seeking information on ASNSs. Thereafter, a field survey with 385 participants was conducted to test the model. Finally, a content analysis of participants' post-survey feedback was performed to complement the model test results by showing more fine-grained findings.

Results suggest that information usefulness and information adoption (IA) are significant to users' sustained information seeking on ASNSs, while users' satisfaction with ASNSs may play a mediating role in the relationship between information usefulness and sustained information seeking. Additionally, self-efficacy for critical thinking (SCT) weakens the impact of IA on users' satisfaction with ASNSs. The post-survey feedback analysis indicates that information usefulness is more critical to sustained information seeking for users with high SCT, whereas IA becomes more crucial to users' satisfaction with ASNSs and sustained information seeking for users with low SCT.

Although the extant literature has distinguished between information seeking and sustained information seeking, empirical research into users' sustained information seeking on ASNSs is limited. The study fills this gap by proposing and validating relevant factors and the boundary condition of users' sustained information seeking.

This study analyzes the effect of the techniques of active teaching and learning as a way of delivery on the outcomes of quality learning. Focusing on the courses of architectural science taught in a nontraditional method using various active learning strategies, the study takes the case study of the course Building Illumination and Acoustics (BIA) delivered in the academic year 2019–2020 at the University of Sharjah (UoS)'s Architectural Engineering Department (AED).

Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative research approaches, the study applied a case study and survey as methods. A questionnaire was designed and performed to assess the level of students' satisfaction with the implemented active teaching method.

The vibrant learning setting made the students actively engaged and more motivated and enthusiastic. The active learning practices used, including employing senses as in sight and hearing, reasoning rationally and intuitively, reflecting and acting, working steadily and in fits and starts, creating mathematical models, visualizing and memorizing and drawing analogies, were efficient in boosting their ability to comprehend theoretical concepts more effectively. The delivery style effectively enhances quality learning when various active techniques are used pedagogically beyond being merely a utilitarian instrument to prepare novice students of architectural engineering to fulfill practical challenges.

This article focuses specifically on a theoretical, scientific non-studio course in a particular program of architectural engineering in a particular semester before the dramatic changes in styles of teaching delivery that happened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Future research could further highlight its results by comparing them to statistical evidence of the development of the course, especially for the duration of online teaching during the pandemic and the hybrid teaching period after it.

This article contributes to the development of teaching and learning of architectural engineering in the local Emirati context by putting original theories of teaching into practice. This paper further contributes to the field of architectural pedagogy in terms of the effect of active learning in the architecture field in the non-studio courses in higher education in the United Arab Emirates.

The purpose of this quantitative study was to fill the knowledge gap and to investigate relationships between cultural background and various demographic factors influencing parental involvement behaviors that prompt them to engage in their children's academic activities.

A quantitative research method was used to collect data to answer research questions and explore relationships between variables (Fraenkel et al., 2015). The researchers created the survey on Qualtrics and conducted a pilot study to improve the survey based on the recommendations of the pilot study's participants. Some items were reworded suggested by an expert committee to finalize the instrument. This survey mainly consisted of two sections to collect data on participants' demographics and cultural background. The participants used multiple-choice options to answer items pertaining to family demographics. They were asked to use a 5-point Likert scale: very often = 5, often = 4, sometimes = 3, rarely = 2 and never = 1 to respond to survey items regarding cultural background and parental involvement behaviors.

The correlation coefficient showed a statistically significant relationship between parents' expectations, educational level and their involvement behaviors in children's academic achievement. However, parents' income and cultural background had no statistically significant relationships with parental involvement in their children's academic achievement.

The results of this study have potentially broad implications for educational leaders, policymakers, educators and parents to develop policies for diverse students to enhance their educational achievements.

The researchers reviewed extensive literature and found the gap in regional studies particularly related to one of the fastest-growing, financially stable and highly educated ethnic groups in the country. The researchers developed a brand new instrument on Qualtrics and distributed a survey via online and direct administration to collect primary data from 200 participants.