The mechanics of trust: a framework for research and design

With an increasing number of technologies supporting transactions over distance and replacing traditional forms of interaction, designing for trust in mediated interactions has become a key concern for researchers in human computer interaction (HCI). While much of this research focuses on increasing users’ trust, we present a framework that shifts the perspective towards factors that support trustworthy behavior. In a second step, we analyze how the presence of these factors can be signalled. We argue that it is essential to take a systemic perspective for enabling well-placed trust and trustworthy behavior in the long term. For our analysis we draw on relevant research from sociology, economics, and psychology, as well as HCI. We identify contextual properties (motivation based on temporal, social, and institutional embeddedness) and the actor's intrinsic properties (ability, and motivation based on internalized norms and benevolence) that form the basis of trustworthy behavior. Our analysis provides a frame of reference for the design of studies on trust in technology-mediated interactions, as well as a guide for identifying trust requirements in design processes. We demonstrate the application of the framework in three scenarios: call centre interactions, B2C e-commerce, and voice-enabled on-line gaming

Characteristics of an effective teamwork : Analyzing the role of psychological safety on team effectiveness and performance

In high-pace and ever-changing business world, organizations rely increasingly more and more on teams, and teamwork has become one of the sought-after business tools for organizations of the 21st century. Organizations create teams and bring together talent in order to achieve competitive edge. However, much of that talent is wasted if people are afraid of speaking up and share their thoughts. Psychological safety refers to an intrapsychic state of how safely and unguardedly individuals can express themselves without a fear of becoming ridiculed, ignored, or compromised. In research literature it has been established that organizations investing and harnessing psychological safety, possess more committed, innovative, and effective personnel, leading to an improvement in several sectors such as performance and well-being. This paper set to explore team psychological safety and its relation on team effectiveness and performance. By interviewing an alliance-based teamwork project, the paper aimed to discover key characteristics of an effective teamwork. By applying Edmondson’s model of Antecedents and Consequences of Team Psychological Safety, the paper aimed to observe the role of team psychological safety. Results reveal three key factors of an effective team: Engaging work climate, workshop training and management, and culture of discussion. Moreover, psychological safety is present in all key factors. Finally, when applying the model, the results strengthen the theory that psychological safety leads to performance improvement. Based on the results, it is encouraged to continue research on team psychological safety in more complex teams as well as remote work teams to further expand on the research

Suppression of emission rates improves sonar performance by flying bats

Echolocating bats face the challenge of actively sensing their environment through their own emissions, while also hearing calls and echoes of nearby conspecifics. How bats mitigate interference is a long-standing question that has both ecological and technological implications, as biosonar systems continue to outperform man-made sonar systems in noisy, cluttered environments. We recently showed that perched bats decreased calling rates in groups, displaying a behavioral strategy resembling the back-off algorithms used in artificial communication networks to optimize information throughput at the group level. We tested whether free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) would employ such a coordinated strategy while performing challenging flight maneuvers, and report here that bats navigating obstacles lowered emission rates when hearing artificial playback of another bat’s calls. We measured the impact of acoustic interference on navigation performance and show that the calculated reductions in interference rates are sufficient to reduce interference and improve obstacle avoidance. When bats flew in pairs, each bat responded to the presence of the other as an obstacle by increasing emissions, but hearing the sonar emissions of the nearby bat partially suppressed this response. This behavior supports social cohesion by providing a key mechanism for minimizing mutual interference

Service innovation - lessons from modularization and open innovation - a new service value

The traditional manufacturing model of volume-variety influencing the conduct of business is not entirely representative of service-centric business. The latter has two key differences â it is much more end-user centric and individualistic in experience. The complex nature of service attributes also make it much more convoluted. The notion of product being the centre of interaction is being replaced with service processes involving participants and generally defined between a service provider and service consumer. The aim of this paper is to validate the service innovation hypotheses put forward based on significant developments in value networks, open interfaces, and business models recently. In doing so, this theoretical paper substantiates the claim that prescriptive volume-variety relationships are little meaningful in service delivery environment

A God of Wealth: Religion, Modernity, and the Rhetoric of the Christian Prosperity Gospel

The Christian Prosperity Gospel (CPG) is a type of Christian preaching which asserts that the right type of faith and practice will deliver wealth and well-being to believers. In an era of stagnating religious belief and distorted cultural symbols, the CPG is gaining adherents in congregations numbering of tens of thousands and media audiences in the millions. In this dissertation I argue that the rhetoric of the CPG operates by altering conventional religious and secular methods of reading texts and the signs of the world in order to give the audience a greater sense of agency in a period of social, economic, and spiritual uncertainty. Individual chapters take up questions of textual hermeneutics, the hermeneutics of lived experience, the use of Christian tropes in new social conditions, the political implications of the CPG, and its method of appealing to the audience. I conclude that the rise of the CPG is not only an attempt to resolve the problems of a fragmented symbolic environment, but is also both a product of, and reliant upon, the erosion of unified frames of religious and secular interpretation

Towards versatile access networks (Chapter 3)

Compared to its previous generations, the 5th generation (5G) cellular network features an additional type of densification, i.e., a large number of active antennas per access point (AP) can be deployed. This technique is known as massive multipleinput multiple-output (mMIMO) [1]. Meanwhile, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) evolution, e.g., in channel state information (CSI) enhancement, and also on the study of a larger number of orthogonal demodulation reference signal (DMRS) ports for MU-MIMO, was one of the Release 18 of 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP Rel-18) work item. This release (3GPP Rel-18) package approval, in the fourth quarter of 2021, marked the start of the 5G Advanced evolution in 3GPP. The other items in 3GPP Rel-18 are to study and add functionality in the areas of network energy savings, coverage, mobility support, multicast broadcast services, and positionin

The Fifth Epoch: Socio-Economic Approach to Sustainable Capitalism

The purpose of this conceptual essay is to challenge the inevitability of living with the destructive beast of speculative market economics in the 4th epoch of global capitalism. We are facing an existential socio-ecological threat from the short-term excesses of financial capitalism, a socially irresponsible form that consumes without producing value and without bearing entrepreneurial risk, benefitting only the few. The fate of roughly 90% of humanity hangs in the balance. The primary contribution of this paper proposes a 5th epoch of capitalism, inspired by Savall and Zardet’s socio-economic and sustainable approach that restores human potential and value creation to spacetimemattering. Applying their conceptual innovation moves capitalism to a Bernácer-Perroux economic universe, with a different curvature capable of reconfiguring organizational story spacetime and resituating the antenarrative of global capitalism