The Four-C Framework for High Capacity Ultra-Low Latency in 5G Networks: A Review

Network latency will be a critical performance metric for the Fifth Generation (5G) networks expected to be fully rolled out in 2020 through the IMT-2020 project. The multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) technology is a key enabler for the 5G massive connectivity criterion, especially from the massive densification perspective. Naturally, it appears that 5G MU-MIMO will face a daunting task to achieve an end-to-end 1 ms ultra-low latency budget if traditional network set-ups criteria are strictly adhered to. Moreover, 5G latency will have added dimensions of scalability and flexibility compared to prior existing deployed technologies. The scalability dimension caters for meeting rapid demand as new applications evolve. While flexibility complements the scalability dimension by investigating novel non-stacked protocol architecture. The goal of this review paper is to deploy ultra-low latency reduction framework for 5G communications considering flexibility and scalability. The Four (4) C framework consisting of cost, complexity, cross-layer and computing is hereby analyzed and discussed. The Four (4) C framework discusses several emerging new technologies of software defined network (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV) and fog networking. This review paper will contribute significantly towards the future implementation of flexible and high capacity ultra-low latency 5G communications

Open source software GitHub ecosystem: a SEM approach

Open source software (OSS) is a collaborative effort. Getting affordable high-quality software with less probability of errors or fails is not far away. Thousands of open-source projects (termed repos) are alternatives to proprietary software development. More than two-thirds of companies are contributing to open source. Open source technologies like OpenStack, Docker and KVM are being used to build the next generation of digital infrastructure. An iconic example of OSS is 'GitHub' - a successful social site. GitHub is a hosting platform that host repositories (repos) based on the Git version control system. GitHub is a knowledge-based workspace. It has several features that facilitate user communication and work integration. Through this thesis I employ data extracted from GitHub, and seek to better understand the OSS ecosystem, and to what extent each of its deployed elements affects the successful development of the OSS ecosystem. In addition, I investigate a repo's growth over different time periods to test the changing behavior of the repo. From our observations developers do not follow one development methodology when developing, and growing their project, and such developers tend to cherry-pick from differing available software methodologies. GitHub API remains the main OSS location engaged to extract the metadata for this thesis's research. This extraction process is time-consuming - due to restrictive access limitations (even with authentication). I apply Structure Equation Modelling (termed SEM) to investigate the relative path relationships between the GitHub- deployed OSS elements, and I determine the path strength contributions of each element to determine the OSS repo's activity level. SEM is a multivariate statistical analysis technique used to analyze structural relationships. This technique is the combination of factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. It is used to analyze the structural relationship between measured variables and/or latent constructs. This thesis bridges the research gap around longitude OSS studies. It engages large sample-size OSS repo metadata sets, data-quality control, and multiple programming language comparisons. Querying GitHub is not direct (nor simple) yet querying for all valid repos remains important - as sometimes illegal, or unrepresentative outlier repos (which may even be quite popular) do arise, and these then need to be removed from each initial OSS's language-specific metadata set. Eight top GitHub programming languages, (selected as the most forked repos) are separately engaged in this thesis's research. This thesis observes these eight metadata sets of GitHub repos. Over time, it measures the different repo contributions of the deployed elements of each metadata set. The number of stars-provided to the repo delivers a weaker contribution to its software development processes. Sometimes forks work against the repo's progress by generating very minor negative total effects into its commit (activity) level, and by sometimes diluting the focus of the repo's software development strategies. Here, a fork may generate new ideas, create a new repo, and then draw some original repo developers off into this new software development direction, thus retarding the original repo's commit (activity) level progression. Multiple intermittent and minor version releases exert lesser GitHub JavaScript repo commit (or activity) changes because they often involve only slight OSS improvements, and because they only require minimal commit/commits contributions. More commit(s) also bring more changes to documentation, and again the GitHub OSS repo's commit (activity) level rises. There are both direct and indirect drivers of the repo's OSS activity. Pulls and commits are the strongest drivers. This suggests creating higher levels of pull requests is likely a preferred prime target consideration for the repo creator's core team of developers. This study offers a big data direction for future work. It allows for the deployment of more sophisticated statistical comparison techniques. It offers further indications around the internal and broad relationships that likely exist between GitHub's OSS big data. Its data extraction ideas suggest a link through to business/consumer consumption, and possibly how these may be connected using improved repo search algorithms that release individual business value components

Sustainable Human Resource Management

The concept of sustainability is important for companies both in the case of SMEs and worldwide multinational companies. Some key factors to help a company achieve its sustainability objectives are based on human resource management. Sustainable human resource management is a typical cross-functional task that becomes increasingly important at the strategic level of a company. Industry 4.0 technologies, Internet of Things, and competitive demands, as signs of globalization, have led to significant changes across the organizational structures and human resource strategies of companies. The increasing importance of sophisticated human resource strategies in the life of companies and the intention to find optimal design and operation strategies for sustainable human resource management were a motivation for launching this book. This book offers a selection of papers which explain the impact of smart human resource management on economy. Authors from 14 countries published working examples and case studies resulting from their research in this field. The aim of this book is to help students at the level of BSc, MSc, and PhD level, as well as managers and researchers, to understand and appreciate the concept, design, and implementation of sustainable human resource management solutions

The impact of negative events in scenic spots on tourists' behavioral intention: an analysis from the perspective of event system theory

Tourism is an important economic activity in China representing about 11.04% of GDP and 10.29% of total employment. In recent years, negative events occurred frequently in Chinese tourism spots, especially in scenic spots, and tended to be promptly divulgated through social networks. The impact of these fast-running news on tourism activity is still to be appraised. This study reviews the literature on negative events, and e-word-of-mouth effects, jointly with personality characteristic theory, and consumer behavior intentions to address the impact of negative events on tourism. The study contributes to the existent knowledge by using the event theory system framework to explore how negative events affect tourists’ intentions concerning visiting places where negative events took place. The results are meaningful both theoretically and practically, showing that, on the one hand, the dimensions of space and intensity proposed by the event theory system have a significant impact on tourists’ behavior and, on another hand, tourists’ personality, namely risk-taking tendencies and openness, has a significant impact on tourists' willingness to recommend. Further, the study addresses its limitations and proposes management contributions, and future directions of research.O turismo é uma atividade muito importante na China representando cerca de 11.04% do seu PIB e 10.29% do seu emprego total. Recentemente, acontecimentos negativos têm ocorrido com frequência em locais turísticos, especialmente em locais de espetáculos, e têm sido rapidamente difundidos através das redes sociais. O impacto sobre a atividade turística destas notícias aceleradas está ainda por avaliar. Este trabalho revê a literatura sobre acontecimentos negativos e efeitos de difusão eletrónica "boca-a-boca", em conjunto com a teoria da personalidade e das intenções de consumo, para analisar o impacto de acontecimentos negativos no turismo. O estudo contribui para a literatura existente ao usar o quadro do "event theory system" para explorar como os acontecimentos negativos afetam as decisões dos turistas em visitar os locais onde estes ocorreram. Os resultados são significativos, quer do ponto de vista teórico, quer prático, demonstrando, por um lado, que as dimensões espaço e intensidade sugeridas pelo "event theory system" têm impacto significativo no comportamento dos turistas e, por outro, que a personalidade dos turistas, nomeadamente a sua tendência para aceitar o risco e a sua abertura, tem um impacto significativo na sua vontade de recomendar os locais afetados pelos acontecimentos negativos. Adicionalmente, o estudo discute as suas limitações e propõe contribuições para o processo de gestão, bem como linhas de investigação futuras

Business-IT alignment from operational level: empirical evidence from the Bank of Qingdao, China

Business-IT Alignment (BITA) has long been a significant topic for scholars as well as enterprise managers especially in the Internet era. Although numerous studies have identified the factors influencing the aligning process and relationships between them and organization successes from strategic perspective, few consider the impact of these elements on employees’s performances from an operational level. To fill this gap, this thesis first discusses the state-of-art and the challenges of BITA in China’s city commercial banks (CCBs) and further develops a theoretical framework to empirically evaluate the BITA in China banking industry. Finally, some recommendations for improving the level of BITA in China’s CCBs are provided. Taking the Bank of Qingdao (BQD) as a sample, this thesis empirically examines BITA maturity model with the results that five factors including communication, IT competency/value measurement, IT governance, partnership, and IT skills are positively related to the BITA while IT scope and architecture are not significant. In addition, the moderating effect of service quality between BITA and employee’s working performance is also supported by the survey. This study also develops a new theoretical model namely, business-IT punctuated equilibrium alignment model (BIPEAM), based on life cycle theory and punctuated equilibrium theory to describe the alternately leading roles between business and IT strategies. This model may contribute towards the better understanding of the mechanism of business-IT strategic alignment process from a longitudinal perspective within an enterprise.O alinhamento entre o negócio e as Tecnologias de Informação (TI) ou alinhamento business-IT (BITA) tem sido desde há muito um tópico significativo para académicos bem como para gestores de empresas, especialmente na era da Internet. Embora numerosas investigações tenham identificado os fatores que influenciam o processo de alinhamento e as relações entre eles e os sucessos da organização do ponto de vista estratégico, poucas consideram o impacto destes elementos no desempenho dos empregados a partir de um nível operacional. Para preencher esta lacuna, esta tese começa por discutir o estado da arte e os desafios do BITA nos bancos comerciais das cidades da China (CCBs) e desenvolve um quadro teórico para avaliar empiricamente o BITA na indústria bancária Chinesa. Por último, são fornecidas algumas recomendações para melhorar o nível de BITA nos CCBs da China. Tomando o Banco de Qingdao (BQD) como amostra, esta tese examina empiricamente o modelo de maturidade do BITA com os resultados de que cinco fatores, incluindo comunicação, competência/avaliação de TI, governação de TI, parceria, e competências de TI estão positivamente relacionados com o BITA enquanto que o âmbito e a arquitetura de TI não são significativos. Além disso, o efeito moderador da qualidade do serviço entre a BITA e o desempenho de trabalho do empregado é também apoiado pelo inquérito realizado. Este estudo também desenvolve um novo modelo teórico, nomeadamente o modelo de alinhamento de equilíbrio pontuado de business-IT (BIPEAM) baseado na teoria do ciclo de vida e na teoria do equilíbrio pontuado para descrever os papéis alternadamente de liderança entre as estratégias empresariais e de TI. Este modelo pode contribuir para uma melhor compreensão do mecanismo do processo de alinhamento estratégico entre empresas e as TI, a partir de uma perspetiva longitudinal dentro de uma empresa

The Hidden Investment War: State Intervention and Relative Gains Seeking from Inward Foreign Direct Investment in the U.S. and China

This dissertation aims to analyze and compare the evolution of the regulatory regimes for inward foreign direct investments (IFDIs) in the U.S. and China. The theoretical-analytical framework combines the theory of relative gains-seeking and historical institutionalism. Since some cutting-edge technologies generate positive externalities across different industrial sectors and have both commercial and military applications, firms and countries that possess them can yield long-term relative gains from international economic cooperation and global value chains. As indigenous innovation demands long-term and large capital investments, especially in R&D-intensive sectors, a late developer such as China can accelerate the general process of technology diffusion by intervening in IFDI deals to promote the transfer of cutting-edge technologies possessed by foreign entities to domestic firms. For an early developed economy such as the U.S., its task is to protect the advanced technologies from being transacted or taken over by foreign firms – to defend relative gains from international economic cooperation. The comparative-historical analysis in this study first places the institutional origins and evolutions of the two regulatory regimes in the broader historical context. It gives special attention to the institutional origins of the contemporary IFDI regulatory regimes in the 1970s and 1980s in both countries, and illustrates how the institutions have evolved and effectively worked to serve states’ political goals. The empirical findings show that relative gains-seeking driven by the political logic of globalization – insecurity and competition – has enabled both countries to transform the domestic regulatory institutions. However, at some critical junctures, the historically constituted institutional relations within the two states also constrained the recasting of domestic institutions. In the U.S., even though capital and technology transfer had impaired its domestic productive capabilities and U.S. companies’ economic positions in strategic sectors in the 1970s and 1980s, the Treasury Department steered the institutional change of CFIUS and shielded it from the more politicized – yet also more democratic – site of decision-making in Congress. In China, institutional change and policy liberalization have also been mainly characterized with an elite-led process, which countered the demands of the greater conservative social coalition in the 1970s and impeded the legalization of a national security review regime for IFDIs amid the trade war. A comparison of the two cases shows that the state capacity to regulate IFDI for strategic goals increased in the U.S., while decreased somewhat in China. Today’s policy instruments are outcomes of long-term exposure to the changing international markets. Lastly, these findings also demonstrate that historical institutionalism and neorealism can complement each other in explaining change and continuity in world politics