The development of service provider's BPO-IT framework

Purpose The decision to operate BPO-IT organisational model by a business process outsourcing (BPO) service provider has far reaching benefits. The purpose of this paper is to develop a service provider’s BPO-IT framework that provides in-house IT function (software) required to process client services. Design/methodology/approach The multi-case study adopted an exploratory sequential mixed method research approach. In the first instance, seven BPO service provider organisations were investigated in the qualitative phase and 156 in the quantitative phase, respectively. Findings The adoption of the developed framework indicates that it could reduce failures in BPO relationships through reduced turnaround time in processing client services, improved quality of service, reduced cost, improved client and provider’s competitiveness, and confidentiality of client operations. Outsourcing clients could lay the foundation for a successful relationship by adopting a selection process that could choose the right provider. Originality/value The paper reveals BPO-IT organisation’s operation towards in-house provision of software required to process client services. A research exploring BPO service providers from a top outsourcing destination like India could provide offshore outsourcing clients the information to move towards onshore outsourcing. </jats:sec

Social media analytics: a survey of techniques, tools and platforms

This paper is written for (social science) researchers seeking to analyze the wealth of social media now available. It presents a comprehensive review of software tools for social networking media, wikis, really simple syndication feeds, blogs, newsgroups, chat and news feeds. For completeness, it also includes introductions to social media scraping, storage, data cleaning and sentiment analysis. Although principally a review, the paper also provides a methodology and a critique of social media tools. Analyzing social media, in particular Twitter feeds for sentiment analysis, has become a major research and business activity due to the availability of web-based application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by Twitter, Facebook and News services. This has led to an ‘explosion’ of data services, software tools for scraping and analysis and social media analytics platforms. It is also a research area undergoing rapid change and evolution due to commercial pressures and the potential for using social media data for computational (social science) research. Using a simple taxonomy, this paper provides a review of leading software tools and how to use them to scrape, cleanse and analyze the spectrum of social media. In addition, it discussed the requirement of an experimental computational environment for social media research and presents as an illustration the system architecture of a social media (analytics) platform built by University College London. The principal contribution of this paper is to provide an overview (including code fragments) for scientists seeking to utilize social media scraping and analytics either in their research or business. The data retrieval techniques that are presented in this paper are valid at the time of writing this paper (June 2014), but they are subject to change since social media data scraping APIs are rapidly changing

TIME-RELATED QUALITY DIMENSIONS OF URBAN REMOTELY SENSED BIG DATA

Abstract. Our rapidly changing world requires new sources of image based information. The quickly changing urban areas, the maintenance and management of smart cities cannot only rely on traditional techniques based on remotely sensed data, but also new and progressive techniques must be involved. Among these technologies the volunteer based solutions are getting higher importance, like crowd-sourced image evaluations, mapping by satellite based positioning techniques or even observations done by unskilled people. Location based intelligence has become an everyday practice of our life. It is quite enough to mention the weather forecast and traffic monitoring applications, where everybody can act as an observer and acquired data – despite their heterogeneity in quality – provide great value. Such value intuitively increases when data are of better quality. In the age of visualization, real-time imaging, big data and crowd-sourced spatial data have revolutionary transformed our general applications. Most important factors of location based decisions are the time-related quality parameters of the used data. In this paper several time-related data quality dimensions and terms are defined. The paper analyses the time sensitive data characteristics of image-based crowd-sourced big data, presents quality challenges and perspectives of the users. The data quality analyses focus not only on the dimensions, but are also extended to quality related elements, metrics. The paper discusses the connection of data acquisition and processing techniques, considering even the big data aspects. The paper contains not only theoretical sections, strong practice-oriented examples on detecting quality problems are also covered. Some illustrative examples are the OpenStreetMap (OSM), where the development of urbanization and the increasing process of involving volunteers can be studied. This framework is continuing the previous activities of the Remote Sensing Data Quality Working Group (ICWGIII/IVb) of the ISPRS in the topic focusing on the temporal variety of our urban environment.</p

How and Why Science Influenced the Founding of Modern Freemasonry and its Role as a Microcosm of the Impact of Science on the Upper Echelons of British Society at that Time

This research began as a routine enquiry into the current wisdom with regard to the 'science' of Masonic Ritual. However after diligent search to my utter amazement nothing of substance came to light and so began this unique enquiry. Modern Freemasonry's ritual places great emphasis on understanding the science which underpins its basic philosophy and insists that Masons must strive to understand its implications. Unfortunately this scientific injunction only remained for the few years whilst its Founder's remained active and from then onwards science became an absolute no-go area to all subsequent freemasons and Masonic historians alike. Yet even today that same (crucial) insistence upon science still punctuates the ritual, suggesting that the Founder's imperative remains central to Freemasonry and life in general. Why then has science been ignored for the last c280 years? It posed the further question why had nobody made any attempt to understand its presence, or even moot its fundamental importance and whether for good or bad, why had it not occasioned a response? I determined to seek my own understanding of what lay behind this enigma

Systems thinking and six sigma: exploring an integrated model for quality management

Despite the popularity and financial benefits Six Sigma programs produce, Six Sigma has its weaknesses. Critics of Six Sigma recommend inclusion of systems thinking, a method that examines an organization as a system and views its processes holistically with Six Sigma. The purpose of this quantitative study is to compare organizations that use Six Sigma only and organizations that use an integrated approach. The research questions explore to what extent organizations that implement an integrated quality improvement method differ in the success and duration of their Six Sigma programs compared to those that implement Six Sigma as a standalone method. In addition, the study investigates factors that contribute to the success of integrating Six Sigma and system thinking, as well as differences in leadership support for an integrated model compared to those that use Six Sigma only. Conceptually, this study is framed within the theories of Six Sigma and systems thinking. The data was collected through an electronic survey of 289 participated from professional associations, whose membership include practitioners of Six Sigma and systems thinking. A descriptive analysis was conducted including frequency distribution and cross tabulation analysis. The results of this study suggest there is no statistically significant difference in the Six Sigma program success between those organizations that use Six Sigma only compared to those that use an integrated approach; they both report success. However, there is evidence of organizations that use the integrated approach of systems thinking tend to use feedback loops more frequently, have a more holistic view of quality management, and examine their organization\u27s interdependencies more than organizations that use Six Sigma only. There is evidence that as the duration of the organization\u27s use of Six Sigma matures so does the respondents\u27 support for factors of systems thinking concept. Evidence also supports that an integrated approach contributes to the success of Six Sigma programs. No empirical research on an integrated approach to quality management was available. This study contributes to providing an explorative foundation for further research as well as creating a survey questionnaire previously not available to explore the integrated approach with Six Sigma programs

A Systems View of IS Governance and IT Governance: A Case Study of the Virginia Department of Transportation

A review of the research related to Information Technology (IT) governance reveals that researchers have yet to use systems theory directly as a basis for understanding IT governance; however, analysis of these researchers’ various definitions of IT governance shows a concurrence between these definitions and the characteristics of a system. This case study research adopts a systems imagination to observe IS and IT governance in the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), which has a budget of over $5 billion and over 7,500 employees and has recently conducted a strategic assessment of its IT organization - including IS and IT governance. The case study posits that VDOT is an indivisible, purposeful, goal seeking (teleological) system where (1) there are three peer elements (governance, management, and operations); (2) there is a governance feedback mechanism (auditing and monitoring); (3) there are peer areas within the governance element that are specialized for a VDOT asset (e.g., capital asset governance, financial governance, human resource governance, etc.) and IS governance is the peer area that is specialized for IT assets; and (4) there are sub-peer areas within IS governance that are specialized for an IT, and this specialized form of IS governance is named IT governance

Knowledge-Based Task Structure Planning for an Information Gathering Agent

An effective solution to model and apply planning domain knowledge for deliberation and action in probabilistic, agent-oriented control is presented. Specifically, the addition of a task structure planning component and supporting components to an agent-oriented architecture and agent implementation is described. For agent control in risky or uncertain environments, an approach and method of goal reduction to task plan sets and schedules of action is presented. Additionally, some issues related to component-wise, situation-dependent control of a task planning agent that schedules its tasks separately from planning them are motivated and discussed

The effects of psychological and biological gender on gender role conflict and mental health of gay and lesbian individuals.

This dissertation represented an examination of the interrelationships between psychological gender (i.e., masculinity, femininity, androgyny, and undifferentiated), biological gender (i.e., male and female), gender role conflict, self-esteem, and loneliness in a sample of gay men and lesbian women. Psychological gender and biological gender served as the independent variables in the study while gender role conflict, self-esteem, and loneliness served as the dependent variables. A two-way factorial MANOVA was used as the statistical model of choice in addition to correlational analyses. A confirmatory factor analysis was also completed on the instrument used to measure gender role conflict, the Gender Role Conflict Scale. The dissertation was divided into five chapters. The first chapter simply served as an introduction to the study including the variables, definitions, and research questions. Chapter two introduced the literature relevant to the study. The literature relative to psychological gender was presented in chronological order, followed by a discussion of the literature addressing self-esteem, loneliness, and gender role conflict. Chapter three described the purpose and design of the current study in addition to all research instruments used. Research instruments included the Bem Sex Role Inventory as the measurement instrument of psychological gender. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale were used to measure self-esteem and loneliness, respectively. Finally, the Gender Role Conflict Scale was used to measure levels of gender role conflict. The study results were presented in chapter four. No significant interaction was found between psychological gender and biological gender on gender role conflict, self-esteem, or loneliness. Significant main effects, however, were observed in psychological gender on all dependent variables. In addition, a significant main effect was observed in biological gender on gender role conflict. The results from the confirmatory factor analysis upheld those found in the literature. Although the fit indices used did not reveal a strong fit of the model to the data, the overall fit was moderate. Chapter five served as a discussion chapter. A summary of major findings was presented along with a discussion of the findings

Anticipation and Risk – From the inverse problem to reverse computation

Abstract. Risk assessment is relevant only if it has predictive relevance. In this sense, the anticipatory perspective has yet to contribute to more adequate predictions. For purely physics-based phenomena, predictions are as good as the science describing such phenomena. For the dynamics of the living, the physics of the matter making up the living is only a partial description of their change over time. The space of possibilities is the missing component, complementary to physics and its associated predictions based on probabilistic methods. The inverse modeling problem, and moreover the reverse computation model guide anticipatory-based predictive methodologies. An experimental setting for the quantification of anticipation is advanced and structural measurement is suggested as a possible mathematics for anticipation-based risk assessment

ARTIFACT EVALUATION IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS DESIGN-SCIENCE RESEARCH – A HOLISTIC VIEW

Design science in Information Systems (IS) research pertains to the creation of artifacts to solve reallife problems. Research on IS artifact evaluation remains at an early stage. In the design-science research literature, evaluation criteria are presented in a fragmented or incomplete manner. This paper addresses the following research questions: which criteria are proposed in the literature to evaluate IS artifacts? Which ones are actually used in published research? How can we structure these criteria? Finally, which evaluation methods emerge as generic means to assess IS artifacts? The artifact resulting from our research comprises three main components: a hierarchy of evaluation criteria for IS artifacts organized according to the dimensions of a system (goal, environment, structure, activity, and evolution), a model providing a high-level abstraction of evaluation methods, and finally, a set of generic evaluation methods which are instantiations of this model. These methods result from an inductive study of twenty-six recently published papers