Fuzzification of quantitative data to predict tumour size of colorectal cancer

Regression analysis has become more popular among researchers as a standard tool in analyzing data. This paper used fuzzy linear regression model (FLRM) to predict tumour size of colorectal cancer (CRC) data in Malaysia. 180 patients with colorectal cancer received treatment in hospital were recorded by nurses and doctors. Based on the patient records, a triangular fuzzy data will be built toward the size of the tumour. Mean square error (MSE) and root mean square error (RMSE) will be measured as a part of the process for predicting the size of the tumour. The degree of fitting adjusted is set between 0 and 1 in order to find the least error. It was found that the combination of FLRM model with fuzzy data provided a better prediction compared to the FLRM model alone. Hence, this study concluded that the tumour size is directly proportional to several factors such as gender, ethnic, icd 10, TNM staging, diabetes mellitus, Crohn’s disease

Determinant Factors of E-commerce Adoption by SMEs in Developing Country: Evidence from Indonesia

The aim of this study is to investigate those factors that influence SMEs in developing countries in adopting e-commerce. This study is motivated by the fact that the adoption of e-commerce by SMEs, especially in developing countries, is still very far behind the adoption by large companies. Yet to be able to survive in the new economic era, which is the information era; businesses, including SMEs, are forced to adopt e-commerce. Non-adopters will be left behind by the adopters. In addition, studies regarding e-commerce adoption by SMEs are rarely found. Therefore, the results of this study provide a timely understanding of e-commerce adoption by SMEs in developing countries. The model developed in this study is based on the TOE framework. Eleven variables are proposed as the factors that influence SMEs in adopting of e-commerce. These are organized into four groups, namely: technological factors, organizational factors, environmental factors and individual factors. Based on a survey of 292 Indonesian SMEs, it was found that perceived benefits, technology readiness, owners’ innovativeness, owners’ IT ability and owners’ IT experience are the determinant factors that influence Indonesian SMEs in their adopting e-commerce

Electronic government procurement adoption behavior amongst Malaysian SMEs

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between a model of electronic procurement (e-procurement) adoption behavior and the level of Government e-procurement adoption amongst Small Medium Enterprise (SME) in Malaysia. Data was collected through questionnaires that were distributed to SME selected randomly in all SME in Malaysia.The data were analyzed using factor analysis, reliability analysis, independent-sample t-test, descriptive statistics, Pearson Correlation and multiple regressions. Regression results reveals that ‘power’, ‘trust’ and ‘value’ have a positive relationship with the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME in Malaysia.All dimensions, namely; the power of supplier, power of procurement, trust on supplier, trust on information technology, value of implementation system efficiency and value of cost efficiency were also correlated with the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME. Past studies on e-procurement are beset by problems of buyer-seller relationship perspective.In addition, these studies are skewed towards Government-SME relationship perspective which the Government possesses more power than SME and provide a better incentive to educate and influence SME to adopt e-procurement.In investigation the relationship between a model of e-procurement adoption behavior and the level of Government e-procurement adoption amongst SME in Malaysia, this study also tries to provides recommendation to Malaysian government for improving the level of e-procurement adoption amongst SME

A framework on information behaviour of SME managers for decision-making on emerging ICTs

The aim of this study is to explore the perceived information needs and information behaviours of manager of UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As technology advancement and innovation are changing rapidly affecting organisations in different ways, organization executives are introducing new technologies for their operations and business environment becomes more complex and dynamic, government introducing different policies to guide the use of these emerging ICTs. As a result, information becomes significant during adoption decision-making process for SME managers to make an inform decision. To achieve this aim, a framework is developed based on existing literature, using the technology organization environmental (TOE) model as the theoretical underpinning for empirical investigation on information behaviour of SME managers in this study. This study is qualitative in nature, and semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with twenty SME managers in the UK service sector. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Following Myers and Newman’s (2007) guidelines for qualitative interview and triangulation method were used to validate the conceptual framework and established the research rigour and quality. The research findings explained information behaviours of SME managers in the contexts of technology organisation environment as information behaviour triggered and perceived information needs during the adoption decision in SMEs. These findings provide further insight into ICT adoption in SMEs through information behaviours and highlighted the significant of sources of information and pre-information needed during the decision-making process. The research also contributes to theory in the information systems field by using relevant literature from information science field to explore information behaviours of SME managers. Future research can be done in other sectors of the economy to show more holistic behaviours of SME managers

Strength properties of rice husk ash concrete under sodium sulphate attack

The use of pozzolanic materials in concrete provides several advantages, such as improved strength and durability. This study investigated the strength properties of rice husk ash (RHA) concrete under severe durability (sodium sulphate attack). Four RHA replacement levels were considered in the study: 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% by weight of cement. The durability performance of the RHA blended cement exposed to sodium sulphate solution was evaluated through compressive strength, reduction in strength, and weight loss. Test results showed that RHA can be satisfactorily used as a cement replacement material in order to increase the durability of concrete. Concrete containing 10% and 20% of RHA replacements showed excellent durability to sulphate attack. The results also indicate that the amount of Ca(OH)2 in the RHA blended cement concrete was lower than that of Portland cement due to the pozzolanic reaction of RH

E-commerce technology adoption: A Malaysian grocery SME retail sector study

This is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: S. Kurnia, et al., “E-commerce technology adoption: A Malaysian grocery SME retail sector study”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 68(9): 1906-1918, September 2015, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neo.2016.09.002 This manuscript version is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License CC BY NC-ND 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.Electronic commerce (EC) has substantial potential to foster the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developed and developing countries alike. However, EC adoption by SMEs in developing countries has faced many challenges that have not been adequately addressed due to the complex nature of EC adoption in such countries. The aim of this study is to systematically examine the influence of organizational, industry, and national readiness and environmental pressure on the adoption of diverse EC technologies by SMEs in developing countries. A quantitative survey was conducted with retail SMEs within the Malaysian grocery sector to validate the proposed multi-level model. Findings indicate significant influence of environmental pressure on the adoption of various EC technologies. Organizational and national readiness have different influences across diverse EC technologies, while the influence of industry readiness is shown to be insignificant. This study extends the current understanding of the influence of micro-, meso- and macro-level factors and has important implications for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Technological, Organizational, and Environmental Antecedents to Web Services Adoption

The proliferation of web services within the last two years enables organizations to assimilate software and services from different companies and locations into an integrated service capable of streamlining important processes. Widespread adoption of web services has not yet occurred across all industries. To better understand the key determinants of web services adoption at the firm level, a conceptual model of factors impacting web services adoption was developed. The conceptual model was grounded in the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework (Tomatzky and Fleischer, 1990) to support the formulation of eleven propositions that may affect adoption and continued utilization of web services. Specifically, factors for each of the contexts within the TOE framework were formulated and supported including: (1) technological factors (security concerns; reliability; deployability); (2) organizational factors (firm size; firm scope; technological knowledge; perceived benefits); and, (3) environmental factors (competitive pressure; regulatory influence; dependent partner readiness; trust in the web service provider). A summary of the relationships between the key constructs in the model and recommendations for future research are provided

A meta-analysis of relationships between organizational characteristics and IT innovation adoption in organizations

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Information & Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2012 Elsevier B.V.Adoption of IT in organizations is influenced by a wide range of factors in technology, organization, environment, and individuals. Researchers have identified several factors that either facilitate or hinder innovation adoption. Studies have produced inconsistent and contradictory outcomes. We performed a meta-analysis of ten organizational factors to determine their relative impact and strength. We aggregated their findings to determine the magnitude and direction of the relationship between organizational factors and IT innovation adoption. We found organizational readiness to be the most significant attribute and also found a moderately significant relationship between IT adoption and IS department size. Our study found weak significance of IS infrastructure, top management support, IT expertise, resources, and organizational size on IT adoption of technology while formalization, centralization, and product champion were found to be insignificant attributes. We also examined stage of innovation, type of innovation, type of organization, and size of organization as moderator conditions affecting the relationship between the organizational variables and IT adoption

Internet sales as a new mode of internationalization

The way that organizations explore the Internet has been the focus of a substantial body of scientific studies and non-academic reflection. The main goal of this study is to analyze the potential of the internet as a mode of internationalization and the factors that influence the results of the adoption of this mean to access foreign markets. For this purpose, we examine the determinants of the level of international sales made via internet estimating an ordered probit model. The results show that the importance of previous experience in using the internet and developing international activity, together with the level of internet marketing budget , the level of investment on internet sophistication, the firm dimension, the business age and the type pf activity are variables that determine the results obtain in the international sales trough the internet.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Factors Affecting Egyptian Small and Medium Sized Owners’ Intentions to and Adoption of E-business

The revolution in communications and information technology has played an important role in changing people's day to day life, this in fact has reflected on the way people performing business. Nowadays, modern business is being shifted from paper-based, and people-intensive systems toward electronic-based procedures using new communication tools. It is widely known that the adoption of new technology is not established from scratch, it is a product of cumulative factors and actions, that can be treated as a planned behaviour. In an analysis to investigate the intentions towards adoption of e-business as an entrepreneurial activity, this study relies on theoretical framework of Ajzen theory of planned behaviour. According to this theory human action is guided by three kinds of beliefs: beliefs about the future outcomes of the behaviour (behavioural beliefs), beliefs about the normative expectations of others and motivation to comply with these expectations (normative beliefs), and finally beliefs about the presence of factors that may facilitate or impede performance of the behaviour and the perceived power of these factors (control beliefs). Purpose- the purpose of this paper is to explore and explain the factors that determine the intention for adopting e-business among small and medium sized firms in Egypt. Design/Methodology/ Approach- A review of the literature on e-business, technology adoption and entrepreneurial orientation and behaviour. Develop an integrated model linking endogenous factors and exogenous factors that determine intention of adopting e-business. Originality/ Value: The paper is among the first studies to examine factors enabling/ hindering the adoption of e-business among small and medium sized firms in Egypt