What drives job satisfaction in IT companies?

Moro, S., Ramos, R. F., & Rita, P. (2021). What drives job satisfaction in IT companies? International Journal Of Productivity And Performance Management, 70(2), 391-407. [Advanced online publication on 19 March 2020]. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-03-2019-0124Purpose: Strategic goal achievement in every sector of a company relies fundamentally on the firm's employees. This study aims to disclose the factors that spur employees of major Information Technology (IT) companies in the United States (US). Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, 15,000 reviews from the top 15 United States IT companies were collected from the social media platform Glassdoor to uncover the factors that satisfy IT employees. To learn the most meaningful features that influence the scores, positive and negative remarks, as well as advice to the management team, were analyzed through a support vector machine. Findings: Results highlight a positive attitude of coworkers, contributing to a positive environment and job satisfaction. However, unsatisfied IT employees reveal that work exhaustion is the main reason for their job dissatisfaction. Practical implications: IT human resource departments can use these valuable insights to align their strategies in accordance with their employees' desires and expectations in order to thrive. Originality/value: The study highlights the relevance of IT companies to understand the reasons behind their employees' satisfaction. Up until now, little is known concerning the variants of job satisfaction among IT employees, enriching the understanding in this particular professional area.authorsversionpublishe

Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey

As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling, reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning. Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Journal, 201

A HAPA Inspired, Agent-Based Model and Simulation of Activity in an Online Community

This thesis is an examination of a Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) developed originally by R. Schwarzer for use in understanding and effecting health behaviour adoption. Although HAPA provides an integral aspect of formulating health treatment strategies by human practitioners for human patients, at the present time no simulation models suited to computer implementation and usage exist for the study of and support for health behaviour adoption within a HAPA framework. This thesis examines the relevant research with respect to HAPA and the components necessary to build a simulation model and platform for an online, self-managing SCI community. We design an architecture for the platform that satisfies the primary requirements suggested by HAPA and SCI patients, particularly directed at gathering relevant data consisting of health indicators. Also, we develop several algorithms used for analysis of HAPA related health states and transitions between states. Since this research did not involve any human subjects, the intention was to simulate certain critical behaviours and changes using an agent based modeling approach. Inasmuch as agents can provide only approximations to real human behaviour, they are still useful and informative. As part of our results, we show that an automated HAPA classification can reduce the risk of agents dropping a health behaviour or program due to misclassification. Further, findings revealed that 6% of the agents are in danger of dropping the adoption of an individual health behaviour within two weeks and that 14% of the agents are at risk of dropping out of the community without continual HAPA reclassification

The Permit Power Revisited: The Theory and Practice of Regulatory Permits in the Administrative State

Two decades ago, Professor Richard Epstein fired a shot at the administrative state that has gone largely unanswered in legal scholarship. His target was the permit power, under which legislatures prohibit a specified activity by statute and delegate to administrative agencies the discretionary power to authorize the activity under terms the agency mandates in a regulatory permit. Accurately describing the permit power as an enormous power in the state, Epstein bemoaned that it had received scant attention in the academic literature. He sought to fill that gap. Centered on the premise that the permit power represents a complete inversion of the proper distribution of power within a legal system, Epstein launched a scathing critique of regulatory permitting in operation, condemning it as a racket for administrative abuses and excesses. Epstein\u27s assessment of the permit power was and remains accurate in three respects: it is vast in scope, it is ripe for administrative abuse, and it has been largely ignored in legal scholarship. The problem is that, beyond what he got right about the permit power, most of Epstein\u27s critique was based on an incomplete caricature of permitting in theory and practice. This Article is the first to return comprehensively to the permit power since Epstein\u27s critique, offering a deep account of the theory and practice of regulatory permits in the administrative state. This Article opens by defining the various types of regulatory permits and describing the scope of permitting in the regulatory state. From there it compares different permit design approaches and explores the advantages of general permits, including their ability to mitigate many of the concerns Epstein advanced. This Article then applies a theoretical model to environmental degradation problems and concludes that if certain conditions are met, general permits can effectively respond to many of the complex policy problems of the future. Finally, this Article adds to the scholarship initiated by Epstein by proposing a set of default rules and exceptions for permit design and suggesting how they apply to complex policy problems

The Twenty Year Test: Principles for an Enduring Counterterrorism Legal Architecture

The United States faces three enduring terrorism-related threats. First, there is the realistic prospect of additional attacks in the United States including attacks using weapons of mass destruction (“WMD”). Second, in responding to this threat, we may undermine the freedoms that enrich our lives, the tolerance that marks our society, and the democratic values that define our government. Third, if we are too focused on terrorism, we risk losing sight of this century’s other certain threats as well as the capacity to respond to them, including the state proliferation of nuclear weapons, nation-state rivalry, pandemic disease, oil dependency, and environmental degradation. The United States should respond to these threats using all available and appropriate security tools, on offense and in defense. Law is one of the essential security tools. Law provides substantive authority to act. Law can also provide and embed an effective process of preview and review to test proposals and validate actions, ensuring that they are both lawful and effective. However, the United States has been slow, or perhaps unwilling, to adopt a legal architecture that maximizes each of these legal benefits. Instead, the political branches have generally adopted an incremental approach, or relied on the President’s authority as Commander in Chief to define the law. This paper describes four principles that should inform the design of a lasting legal architecture to counterterrorism: First, the architecture should reflect an understanding of the strategic value of law in substance, process, and policy. Second, the architecture should reflect the threats it is intended to address, including the potential catastrophic nature of the physical threat, which distinguishes this form of terrorism from that of the past. Third, with limited exception, the law should avoid absolutes—in the authority asserted; in the authority prohibited; or, in bureaucratic design. Finally, the architecture should be lasting, which means among other things that it should be “constitutionally inclusive” in design. A lasting and inclusive architecture will improve security—by maximizing the Executive’s authority to act, sustaining support for tools and policies, and improving the opportunity and efficacy to appraise U.S. actions