State-Based Formal Methods for Distributed Processing: From Z to Object-Z

In this paper, we look at state-based specification notations and how they may be extended with concepts from object orientation. In particular, we focus on the Z specification language and one of its object-oriented extensions Object-Z. The state-based paradigm is introduced by specifying an ODP trader object in Z. The paper provides an overview of other state-based notations and discusses how such notations have been extended to support object orientation. Finally, we present a specification of the ODP trading function in Object-Z

Philosophical Roots of Classical Grounded Theory: Its Foundations in Symbolic Interactionism

Although many researchers have discussed the historical relationship between the Grounded Theory methodology and Symbolic Interactionism, they have not clearly articulated the congruency of their salient concepts and assumptions. The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough discussion of this congruency. A hypothetical example about smoking among college students is included in this paper to illustrate this relationship. This paper will be useful for qualitative researchers who seek a fuller understanding of how the assumptions and concepts provided by Symbolic Interactionism can inform the researcher who adopts a Grounded Theory methodology to investigate human behaviour. The relevance of this congruency for nursing researchers is discussed

Modellability of System Characteristics - Using Formal Mark-up Languages for Change Capability by Design

AbstractChange capability enables a production system to cope with external influences in an efficient, fast and self-organized manner. Several approaches have been designed for measuring change capability by specific indicators which represent core characteristics of production systems. On the other hand, formal modelling languages are used for production system design. Unfortunately, these languages do not match with system characteristics and especially with those indicators of change capability. Due to this missing linkage, existent production system models don’t facilitate the implementation of a system's change capability by design. Goal of this contribution is to point out the possibilities of operationalization approaches and their potential to be extended for (formal) modelling of system characteristics and sub properties, exemplified by using the concept of change capability. Additionally, the potential of change capability to be representable in a formal language will be exemplarily outlined by emphasizing on Systems Modelling Language (SysML). For this purpose, a qualitative approach with an emphasis on literature- and content analysis will be applied. Results of this contribution are (1) to pinpoint the research gap (which is also of crucial practical relevance) and (2) to point out possible solution approaches for a formal modellability of system characteristics

An Empirical Investigation of Consumer Resistance to Green Product Innovation

Responding to the sustainability imperative has emerged as a key challenge and opportunity for businesses. Developing and marketing innovative ―green‖ products in particular can be a vital strategy for businesses to increase productivity, develop new markets, improve corporate image and ultimately attain competitive advantage. But despite consumer sensitisation towards environmental issues, many sustainable products face slow rates of diffusion in mainstream markets as consumers‘ green preferences regularly fail to translate into adoption behaviour. In this thesis we take a consumer resistance perspective to investigate empirically the so-called attitude–behaviour gap in the context of green product innovation. The aim of this thesis is to advance theoretically and empirically our understanding of consumer resistance, to identify consumers‘ motives for resisting green innovation and to highlight strategic implications for marketers and policy makers. The research was conducted in the context of microgeneration – innovative technologies that can be adopted by households to produce heat and electricity from renewable energy. Microgeneration technologies are green innovations, which have experienced slow rates of diffusion and thus provide a suitable context for this research. Two national consumer surveys (n = 1010; n = 1012) were conducted to investigate specifically three research issues including consumers‘ passive resistance (i.e. awareness), active resistance (i.e. postponement, rejection and opposition) and willingness to pay for microgeneration technologies. The theoretical contribution of this study is thus threefold. First, the findings contribute to innovation literature by highlighting the importance of passive resistance in the innovation adoption process and by stressing methodological implications for the design of adoption of innovation studies. Second, the thesis contributes to the resistance literature by developing, testing and validating a new measure of active resistance behaviours. The design of the measure was built on a recent conceptualisation by Kleijnen et al. (2009) and our scale is shown to be a robust measurement instrument that accounts for more variance in consumers‘ resistance behaviour than conventional measures such as intention to adopt or attitude towards adoption scales. Third, this dissertation contributes to a growing body of literature in the energy policy domain, which questions the predominant economic perspective and gravitates towards alternative explanations of human decision making to explain and encourage behavioural change. In conclusion, the analysis significantly fills the paucity of empirical research in the area of consumer resistance, shedding light on consumers‘ motives to resist green product innovation and providing strategic recommendations for innovation managers and policy makers

Explicit connection actions in multiparty session types

This work extends asynchronous multiparty session types (MPST) with explicit connection actions to support protocols with op- tional and dynamic participants. The actions by which endpoints are connected and disconnected are a key element of real-world protocols that is not treated in existing MPST works. In addition, the use cases motivating explicit connections often require a more relaxed form of mul- tiparty choice: these extensions do not satisfy the conservative restric- tions used to ensure safety in standard syntactic MPST. Instead, we de- velop a modelling-based approach to validate MPST safety and progress for these enriched protocols. We present a toolchain implementation, for distributed programming based on our extended MPST in Java, and a core formalism, demonstrating the soundness of our approach. We discuss key implementation issues related to the proposed extensions: a practi- cal treatment of choice subtyping for MPST progress, and multiparty correlation of dynamic binary connections

PLACES'10: The 3rd Workshop on Programmng Language Approaches to concurrency and Communication-Centric Software

Paphos, Cyprus. March 201