Librarians’ Preference of Virtual Meeting Platforms

Virtual participation in professional organization and other committee meetings outside of one’s home institution continues to increase as time and money for travel to these events decreases. As the profession moves into a model of increased virtual communication, questions arise as to the best platform and tools to be used for the most effective method of communication. This study seeks to determine which platforms are currently being used, which platforms are preferred by organizers and participants and which platforms will best serve the needs of the committee. Results of this study on preferences for virtual platforms can help individuals and organizations make decisions on the best tools for this method of communication

Assessing the Performance of Raaes: Reliability-Assured and Accessibility-Enriched Storage Structure in Cloud Environment

Cloud computing has revolutionized the world of distributed computing in recent decades, offering new dimensions and enticing opportunities. Presently, numerous organizations and individuals are increasingly transitioning to cloud storage services for their business and personal needs. This shift is primarily driven by the appealing concepts of "on-demand" and "Pay per Use," which provide flexible and cost-effective solutions. Perhaps, that’s why it provides even more services to billions of users in every moment from the most popular companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. However, the numerous cloud services are offered by a multitude of data centers equipped with power, network infrastructure, and backup systems. These services cater to users' demands for high availability and swift response times, necessitating the mirroring of each service across multiple geographically dispersed data centers. Previous research addressed this issue by focusing on the perspectives of vendors and users, aiming to develop economical and improved cloud storing solutions that fulfill stability and obtainability requirements for overall storage process. Furthermore, there is a suggestion to enhance the RAAES framework, aiming for efficient cloud storage by significantly reducing space and cost while still meeting reliability demands. Therefore, this study evaluated the performance of the RAAES through this paper, improved the availability requirements, ultimately reduced the response time, and actively promoted the development of the cloud with an efficient impact stock. As a result, it fosters the advancement of cloud technology by facilitating efficient storage, thereby generating a positive impact

Identification of Critical Factors in Large Crisis Decision Making Processes using Computational Tools: The case of ATHENA

Crises are a constant element of modern day life. Earthquakes, floods, terrorist acts are major examples of crises that occur in different areas under different frequencies. Crisis situations are always dynamic and they are characterised by unpredictable consequences that societies cannot always handle. The dynamics of crisis situations are such that societies have to re-evaluate and re-design their policies. This paper aims to present a Social Media-based system that coordinates the responses of the authorities in a large crisis. The paper performs extensive review of literature in order to identify decision making approaches in crisis situations and the different factors that affect these approaches. It also presents the ATHENA Crisis Management system which is based on a platform that makes combined use of data mining algorithms for the purpose of analysing large amounts of data received through the Social Media during and after a large crisis. A number of conclusions are drawn on the identification of different types of factors that impact large crisis decision making

An ETL Metadata Model for Data Warehousing

Metadata is essential for understanding information stored in data warehouses. It helps increase levels of adoption and usage of data warehouse data by knowledge workers and decision makers. A metadata model is important to the implementation of a data warehouse; the lack of a metadata model can lead to quality concerns about the data warehouse. A highly successful data warehouse implementation depends on consistent metadata. This article proposes adoption of an ETL (extracttransform-load) metadata model for the data warehouse that makes subject area refreshes metadata-driven, loads observation timestamps and other useful parameters, and minimizes consumption of database systems resources. The ETL metadata model provides developers with a set of ETL development tools and delivers a user-friendly batch cycle refresh monitoring tool for the production support team

Does emotional intelligence of employees affect business motivations? example of health employees

Günümüz iş dünyasında yaşanan köklü değişiklikler ve teknolojik gelişmeler gittikçe sertleşen bir rekabet ortamı oluşturmaktadır. Ortaya çıkan bu değişikliklerle baş edebilmek ve başarılı olabilmek için yöneticilerin çeşitli önlemler alması gerekmektedir. Artık örgütlerin başarıya ulaşmak için sadece teknolojiye, güce, paraya sahip olmaları yeterli olmamaktadır. Bu noktada fark yaratacak bir kaynak niteliği taşıyan insan kaynağının biyo-sosyo ve psiko bir varlık olarak örgüt içindeki duygusal dolaşıma katkısı önemlidir. Yine insan ilişkilerinin yoğun yaşandığı ve temeli paylaşımlara dayanan örgütlerde çalışanların duygularını yönetme ve kontrole ilişkin sahip oldukları yetiler ortak amaç ve hedeflere uluşma konusunda artı değer oluşturmaktadır. Bu anlamda çalışmanın amacı bireyin kendisinin ve başkalarının duygularını tanıma, anlama ve yorumlamaya ilişkin becerilerini ifade eden duygusal zeka ve duygusal zekaya ilişkin becerilerin iş motivasyonu üzerine etkisini belirlemektir. Sağlık bakanlığına bağlı iki fizik tedavi ve rehabilitasyon hastanesi çalışanlarından elde edilen veriler yardımı ile gerçekleştirilen araştırmada kullanılan duygusal zeka ve iş motivasyonu ölçeğinin yapılarının belirlenmesi ve doğrulanması amacıyla açımlayıcı faktör analizi ve doğrulayıcı faktör analizinden yararlanılmıştır. Duygusal zeka ile iş motivasyonu arasındaki ilişkiler Yapısal Eşitlik Modelinden (YEM) yararlanarak incelenmiştir. Analiz sonucunda oluşturulan modelin uyum indeksleri modelin iyi ve kabul edilebilir seviyede uyum iyiliği değerlerine sahip olduğunu ve modelin kabul edilebilir olduğunu göstermektedir. Yine test edilen hipotezler sonucunda duygusal zekanın alt boyutları olan iyi oluş, özdenetim ve sosyalliğin iş motivasyonu üzerine pozitif etkiye sahip olduğu, duygusallık alt boyutunun ise iş motivasyonu üzerinde herhangi bir etkiye sahip olmadığı görülmüştür.The radical changes and technological developments in today's business world are becoming increasingly harder and more competitive environment. To cope with these changes, and to be successful, managers need to take various measures. It is not enough for organizations to achieve success to have the technology, power and money. At this point, it is important to contribute to the emotional circulation within the organization as a bio-socio- and psycho-human being. The ability of employees to manage and control their emotions in organizations where human relationships are intense and based on sharing is an added value for achieving common goals and objectives. In this sense, the aim of the study is to determine the effects of the individual's ability to recognize, understand and interpret the emotions of themselves and others, and the effect of these skills on job motivation. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to determine and confirm the structures of the emotional intelligence and work motivation scale used in the study, which was conducted with the help of data obtained from the employees of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Hospital employees of the Ministry of Health. The relationships between emotional intelligence and work motivation were examined using the Structural Equation Model (SEM). The fit indices of the model created as a result of the analysis show that the model has good and acceptable level of goodness of fit values and that the model is acceptable. According to the results of the research carried out on the two physicians working in the Ministry of Health, the sub-dimensions of emotional intelligence are well-being, self-regulation and sociability positively affect work motivation. Emotionality sub-dimension did not have any effect on work motivation

Strategic Intelligence Strategies for Improving Performance in the Nonprofit Sector

Nonprofit leaders face competition, rapid changes, increasing complexity in their operating environments, and diminishing financial support, all of which threaten achievement of their organizational missions. The purpose of this single case study was to explore strategies nonprofit leaders used to develop plans for performance improvement based on strategic intelligence. The research sample was composed of 3 leaders of a nonprofit organization located in the midwestern region of the United States who implemented nonprofit strategic initiatives to improve their organization\u27s performance. The conceptual framework used for this study was Maccoby and Scudder\u27s strategic intelligence conceptual system for leading change. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and a review of public and internal documentation and performance outcomes. Data were manually coded and thematically organized. The results of data analysis showed leadership and organizational philosophy, foresight effectiveness, systems thinking and knowledge centricity, and smart motivation as the key themes. Findings provide evidence that developing and implementing strategic intelligence-based plans can assist nonprofit leaders in improving organizational performance. The implications of this study for positive social change include providing strategies to nonprofit leaders for how to guide their organizations through rapidly changing environments, compete successfully, and sustain delivery of high-impact goods and services to the public and communities that they serve

An Information Infrastructure to Improve International Containerized Shipping

This thesis applies theoretical perspectives from the Information Systems (IS) research field to propose how Information Technology (IT) can improve containerized shipping. This question is addressed by developing a set of design principles for an information infrastructure for sharing shipping information named the Shipping Information Pipeline (SIP). Review of the literature revealed that IS research prescribed a set of meta-design principles, including digitalization and digital collaboration by implementation of Inter-Organizational Systems based on Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) messages, while contemporary research proposes Information Infrastructures (II) as a new IT artifact to be researched. Correspondingly, this thesis applies the concept of and design theory for II to improve containerized shipping. Activity Theory has guided the analysis of containerized shipping, following avocados on their journey from the trees in Africa, to the retail shelves in Europe, revealing the plethora of organizations, activities and documents involved. The implication being that containerized shipping becomes inefficiently; costly, unreliably, and risky. These are posited as the major impediments to creating a more efficient shipping industry, and a number of critical issues are identified. These include that shipments depend on shipping information, that shipments often are delayed due to issues with documentation, that EDI messages account for only a minor part of the needed information, that multiple fragmented II are used throughout, and finally, that there is an unleashed potential for IT to support containerized shipping. Based on the above, the SIP was designed, prototyped and evaluated which, through Internetenabled collaboration on shipments, ameliorates the previously mentioned critical issues and major impediments. This is accomplished primarily through increased transparency into the containerized shipping process and through providing direct access to source information about the shipments. Based on the prototypes an accumulated set of design principles for the design of SIP are articulated. In the particular context of Internet-enabled II utilizing the World Wide Web, an extension of design theory is proposed through the formulation of an additional metadesign principle: share meta-information only and govern access to detailed information by the source. Finally, the practical implications of SIP are estimated, including how it facilitates more efficient containerized shipping and in turn sustainable international trade. The positive acknowledgements of SIP prototypes support how II designed in accordance with the developed set of design principles can be used to significantly improve containerized shipping

Relationship Between Project Manager’s Gender, Years of Experience, and Age and Project Success

Information technology (IT) leaders lose billions of dollars and experience implementation delays because of failed projects. IT leaders must assign the right IT project manager to prevent project failure. Grounded in the critical success factor theory, the purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between project managers’ gender (PMG), project managers’ years of experience (PMY), project managers’ age (PMA), and project success (PS) in the IT industry. Data were collected from 105 project managers in the U.S. IT sector using an online survey distribution platform. The results of the multiple regression analysis were not statistically significant. A key recommendation for IT leaders is to assign a project manager based on competency and leadership skills regardless of PMG, PMY, and PMA. The implications for positive social change include the potential for IT leaders to complete community critical IT projects by selecting the right project manager regardless of PMG, PMY, and PMA

Managing Critical Factors Causing Delays in Public Construction Projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This thesis examines factors contributing to delays in public construction projects in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the implications of applying project management knowledge, tools, and techniques in addressing the problem. Using a triangulation research approach, this study identifies factors influencing public construction delays in KSA and current knowledge of PM concepts for minimising construction delays. Based on the results from qualitative and quantitative studies undertaken, a framework for minimising delays was developed