Trust and participation in urban regeneration.

Citizen participation is encouraged in a variety of areas of public policy, not least in urban regeneration projects. Resident involvement is seen as possessing the potential to improve the managerial efficiency of schemes, to increase their legitimacy, to offer developmental benefits to participants and the wider community, and to progress civil rights. Local people who appear uninterested in becoming involved in such initiatives pose a significant challenge to policymakers and practitioners in the field. It has been suggested that developing trust in relevant organisations, officials or other local residents may offer a potential solution to citizens' disengagement. Very little research has been conducted into trust and its relationship with participation in the field of urban regeneration.The thesis presents research which explores resident trust in regeneration officers and its relationship with participation. The research took place in Chandless and Dunston in Gateshead and in West Kensington, London. A sequential mixed methods approach was employed, consisting of three phases: 14 qualitative interviews with residents across all three areas; a self-completion resident questionnaire distributed to 1,566 households in the Dunston and West Kensington regeneration areas from which 144 questionnaires were returned; and a further 12 qualitative interviews with questionnaire respondents living in the West Kensington regeneration area.Drawing upon a constructionism-influenced model of trust, this thesis argues that the specific characteristics which contribute to perceived trustworthiness will vary dependent upon the specific party and scenario in question. Trust in regeneration officers was found to be more closely connected with perceived similarities, such as those of experience, perception, priorities and understanding, than the notions of technical competence associated with trust in some other fields. The findings also demonstrated that residents' interpersonal trust in regeneration officers may be unlikely either to encourage or dissuade participation in projects. Instead the thesis highlights the potential importance of "system trust" in regeneration, where residents' more generalised trust in the entire network of relevant parties to be receptive, based upon their past experience of participatory mechanisms, is the important element in generating their involvement. In addition, the research makes wider contributions to knowledge in relation to interpersonal trust, public participation and professionalism in regeneration

Guest editorial

n/

The impact of virtuality on team effectiveness in organizational and non‐organizational teams:A meta‐analysis

We meta-analytically assess the virtuality-team effectiveness relationship using 73 samples of organizational teams (5738 teams) reporting on a wide range of productive (e.g. earnings), performance (e.g. customer ratings), social (e.g. cohesion), and team member (e.g. project satisfaction) outcomes. Our results suggest that in work organizations, virtuality is not a direct input—negative or positive—to team effectiveness. In contrast, using 109 samples of non-organizational teams (5620 teams), we show that virtuality is a significant negative input to team effectiveness. We also meta-analytically assess the issue of results generalizability from non-organizational to organizational settings, and find that overall, results from non-organizational studies largely fail to generalize to organizational virtual teams. Using moderator analysis, we explore a number of study features that may explain the poor results generalizability from non-organizational to organizational studies. We find that results from non-organizational studies using undergraduate students, short team duration, and laboratory settings drive the non-generalizability effect, whereas results from non-organizational studies using graduate students, longer team duration, and classroom settings produce results comparable to those of organizational studies of virtual teams. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed

A Survey on Explainable AI for 6G O-RAN: Architecture, Use Cases, Challenges and Research Directions

The recent O-RAN specifications promote the evolution of RAN architecture by function disaggregation, adoption of open interfaces, and instantiation of a hierarchical closed-loop control architecture managed by RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs) entities. This paves the road to novel data-driven network management approaches based on programmable logic. Aided by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), novel solutions targeting traditionally unsolved RAN management issues can be devised. Nevertheless, the adoption of such smart and autonomous systems is limited by the current inability of human operators to understand the decision process of such AI/ML solutions, affecting their trust in such novel tools. eXplainable AI (XAI) aims at solving this issue, enabling human users to better understand and effectively manage the emerging generation of artificially intelligent schemes, reducing the human-to-machine barrier. In this survey, we provide a summary of the XAI methods and metrics before studying their deployment over the O-RAN Alliance RAN architecture along with its main building blocks. We then present various use-cases and discuss the automation of XAI pipelines for O-RAN as well as the underlying security aspects. We also review some projects/standards that tackle this area. Finally, we identify different challenges and research directions that may arise from the heavy adoption of AI/ML decision entities in this context, focusing on how XAI can help to interpret, understand, and improve trust in O-RAN operational networks.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figure

Gulfs of Expectation: Eliciting and Verifying Differences in Trust Expectations using Personas

Personas are a common tool used in Human Computer Interaction to represent the needs and expectations of a system’s stakeholders, but they are also grounded in large amounts of qualitative data. Our aim is to make use of this data to anticipate the differences between a user persona’s expectations of a system, and the expectations held by its developers. This paper introduces the idea of gulfs of expectation – the gap between the expectations held by a user about a system and its developers, and the expectations held by a developer about the system and its users. By evaluating these differences in expectation against a formal representation of a system, we demonstrate how differences between the anticipated user and developer mental models of the system can be verified. We illustrate this using a case study where persona characteristics were analysed to identify divergent behaviour and potential security breaches as a result of differing trust expectations

Engineering Multimedia-Aware Personalized Ubiquitous Services

Ubiquitous computing focusing on users and tasks instead of devices and singular applications is an attractive vision for the future. Especially the idea of nomadic, mobile users poses new challenges on hardware and software. Mobile devices provide vastly different presentation capabilities and need to integrate into heterogeneous environments. Network bandwidth is far from being constant and services may be available only when online. This paper presents MUNDO, an infrastructure for ubiquitous computing that addresses these challenges. The infrastructure is intended to be non-monolithic with its parts supporting mobile computing using multi-modal user interfaces, mobile data delivery, and ad-hoc communication and networking

Internet Use for Obtaining Medicine Information: Cross-sectional Survey

Background: The internet is increasingly being used as a source of medicine-related information. People want information to facilitate decision-making and self-management, and they tend to prefer the internet for ease of access. However, it is widely acknowledged that the quality of web-based information varies. Poor interpretation of medicine information can lead to anxiety and poor adherence to drug therapy. It is therefore important to understand how people search, select, and trust medicine information. Objective: The objectives of this study were to establish the extent of internet use for seeking medicine information among Norwegian pharmacy customers, analyze factors associated with internet use, and investigate the level of trust in different sources and websites. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study with a convenience sample of pharmacy customers recruited from all but one community pharmacy in Tromsø, a medium size municipality in Norway (77,000 inhabitants). Persons (aged ≥16 years) able to complete a questionnaire in Norwegian were asked to participate in the study. The recruitment took place in September and October 2020. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, social media was also used to recruit medicine users. Results: A total of 303 respondents reported which sources they used to obtain information about their medicines (both prescription and over the counter) and to what extent they trusted these sources. A total of 125 (41.3%) respondents used the internet for medicine information, and the only factor associated with internet use was age. The odds of using the internet declined by 5% per year of age (odds ratio 0.95, 95% CI 0.94-0.97; P=.048). We found no association between internet use and gender, level of education, or regular medicine use. The main purpose reported for using the internet was to obtain information about side effects. Other main sources of medicine information were physicians (n=191, 63%), pharmacy personnel (n=142, 47%), and medication package leaflets (n=124, 42%), while 36 (12%) respondents did not obtain medicine information from any sources. Note that 272 (91%) respondents trusted health professionals as a source of medicine information, whereas 58 (46%) respondents who used the internet trusted the information they found on the internet. The most reliable websites were the national health portals and other official health information sites. Conclusions: Norwegian pharmacy customers use the internet as a source of medicine information, but most still obtain medicine information from health professionals and packet leaflets. People are aware of the potential for misinformation on websites, and they mainly trust high-quality sites run by health authorities

Organic Leadership—Implicit Followership Interaction: Relations among Trust in Supervisor, Active Followership and OCB

Due to the impact of COVID-19, a large number of employees of organizations around the world have been forced to work remotely from home starting in 2020. As a result, leaders and followers face new communication and interaction challenges. If an enterprise is to be successful in the new wave of economic development, it must embrace the role of employee followers. However, there is currently no relevant research. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the interaction between organic leadership and implicit followers from the perspective of followers who are working remotely and further analyze their relationship with trust in their supervisor, organizational citizenship behavior, and active followership. Using the method of questionnaire measurement, multigroup analysis and ANCOVA and PLS-SEM analysis found the following. First, difference in leadership styles (IV) and implicit followers (IV) had significant effects on employees’ trust in supervisor (DV), organizational citizenship behavior (DV), and active followers (DV). Secondly, the influence of the leaders’ styles (IV) on employees’ trust in supervisor (DV), organizational citizenship behavior (DV), and active followership (DV) was significantly affected only when IFTs were anti-prototypical traits. Finally, organizational citizenship behavior (Med) had an indirect effect between trust in supervisor (DV) and active followership (DV). This article not only fills the gaps in the literature related to leaders and followers, but also provides analytical evidence and new thinking which will enable companies to propose management strategies more effectively for employees working remotely in the face of the impact of the epidemic

The role of customer online brand experience in customers' intention to forward online company-generated content: The case of the Islamic online banking sector in Palestine

The purpose of this study is twofold: Firstly, to assess the impact of customer online brand experience (COBE) with online banking on customer's intention to forward online company-generated content (CGC). Secondly, to explore the role of online brand community engagement (OBCE) and the perceived trust of brand community page (BCP) as mediating variables between COBE and the intention to forward online CGC. This research conducted an online survey among various Islamic bank customers in Palestine who were members of online brand communities (fan pages) on Facebook. 375 valid responses were collected and results revealed that COBE exerts a dual influence on intention to forward CGC. This study is a pioneering empirical research on the role of OBCE in customers' intention to forward online CGC within the fast-growing Islamic banking industry. This study contributes to fill this research gap by assessing the effect of COBE on OBCE and intention to forward online CGC within the context of the Islamic online banking sector in Palestine. In this sense, this study is a first-of-its-kind research on the role of experience on customer engagement with regard to online brand communities of Islamic banks.El objetivo de este estudio es doble: En primer lugar, evaluar el impacto de la experiencia online del cliente con la marca (COBE) en la banca electrónica sobre la intención del cliente de reenviar contenidos online generados por la empresa (CGC). En segundo lugar, explorar el papel del compromiso con la comunidad de marca online (OBCE) y la confianza percibida en la página de la comunidad de marca (BCP) como variables mediadoras entre la COBE y la intención de reenviar CGC online. Esta investigación realizó una encuesta en línea entre varios clientes de bancos islámicos de Palestina que eran miembros de comunidades de marca en línea (páginas de fans) en Facebook. Se recogieron 375 respuestas válidas y los resultados revelaron que el COBE ejerce una doble influencia en la intención de reenviar CGC. Este estudio es una investigación empírica pionera sobre el papel de la OBCE en la intención de los clientes de reenviar CGC en línea dentro del sector bancario islámico, en rápido crecimiento. Este estudio contribuye a llenar este vacío en la investigación evaluando el efecto de la COBE sobre la OBCE y la intención de reenviar CGC online en el contexto del sector de la banca islámica online en Palestina. En este sentido, este estudio es una investigación pionera sobre el papel de la experiencia en el compromiso del cliente con respecto a las comunidades de marca en línea de los bancos islámicos

Potential of Vegetable E-Commerce for Empowering Farmers in Indonesia

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the flow of horticultural products from farmers to consumers. It causes the delivery of vegetables to be hampered, especially in Jabodetabek, which is the center of vegetable consumption. Therefore, a new marketing strategy is needed involving e-commerce to meet people's need for vegetables. This study discusses the buying behavior of vegetables through e-commerce in Jabodetabek and analyzes the role of e-commerce platforms to empower farmers in Indonesia. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative with two data sources, primary data obtained from questionnaires filled out by 153 respondents and secondary data obtained from literature studies. The results showed that 50.33 percent of respondents prefer to shop for vegetables through e-commerce, and 51.63 percent think online vegetable shopping services are better than offline or conventional shopping. The majority of people choose to buy vegetables online through e-commerce because of concerns about the spread of the COVID-19 virus. However, vegetable purchasing behavior is still in the introduction stage. E-commerce plays a role in making it easier for people to get the needs of quality vegetables at competitive prices. Empowering farmers to produce high-quality products is very important in increasing consumer repurchase intentions and improving the welfare of farmers in Indonesia