Exploring the Influence of Technology, Lifestyle and Flexible Working Arrangements on Cyber Psychology among Employees at a Malaysian Investment Holding Company

This study explores the relationship between cyberpsychology and its influencing factors among employees at an investment holding company (which will be addressed as XYZ Berhad). Understanding the impact of technology, lifestyle, and flexible working arrangements on employees' psychological well-being and behavior is crucial in today's digital workplace. With the prevalence of remote work and flexible arrangements, it becomes essential to examine how these factors influence employees' cyberpsychology experiences. Using a quantitative correlational approach, data was collected from 123 participants out of a total employee population of 174 at XYZ Berhad. The survey utilized Likert scale items to assess respondents' perspectives on technology usage, lifestyle choices, flexible working arrangements, and cyberpsychology. The findings reveal significant relationships between cyberpsychology and the influencing factors. Technology has a strong positive relationship, indicating its substantial impact on employees' psychological well-being and work behaviors. Similarly, lifestyle choices show a moderate positive relationship, highlighting the relevance of personal lifestyle preferences in shaping cyberpsychological experiences. Additionally, flexible working arrangement displays a medium positive relationship, underscoring the importance of work arrangements in influencing employees' psychological responses. The study recommends implementing awareness programs to help employees manage the psychological effects of technology usage and promoting the usage of online communication platforms to foster a positive organizational culture. Guidelines for employees working under flexible arrangements are advised to support their well-being and maintain a healthy work-life balance

NUCLEAR POWER AND ELECTRIC GRID RESILIENCE: CURRENT REALITIES AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

Life as we know it in modern society relies on the smooth functioning of the electric Grid – the Critical Infrastructure system that generates and delivers electricity to our homes, businesses, and factories. Virtually all other Critical Infrastructure systems depend on the Grid for the electricity they require to execute other essential societal functions such as telecommunications, water supply and waste water services, fuel delivery, etc. This study examines the concepts of Critical Infrastructure and electric Grid resilience, and the role nuclear power plants do and might play in enhancing U.S. Grid resilience. Grid resilience is defined as the system’s ability to minimize interruptions of electricity flow to customers given a specific load prioritization hierarchy. The question of whether current U.S. nuclear power plants are significant Grid resilience assets is examined in light of this definition. Despite their many virtues and their “fuel security,” the conclusion is reached that current U.S. nuclear power plants are not significant Grid resilience assets for scenarios involving major Grid disruptions. The concept of a “resilient nuclear power plant” or “rNPP” – a nuclear power plant that is intentionally designed, sited, interfaced, and operated in a manner to enhance Grid resilience – is presented. Two rNPP Key Attributes and Six rNPP Functional Requirements are defined. Several rNPP design features (system architectures and technologies) that could enable a plant to achieve the Six rNPP Functional Requirements are described. Four specific applications of rNPPs are proposed: (1) rNPPs as flexible electricity generation assets, (2) rNPPs as anchors of hybrid nuclear energy systems, (3) rNPPs as Grid Black Start Resources, and (4) rNPPs as anchors of Resilient Critical Infrastructure Islands. The last two applications are new concepts for enhancing U.S. strategic resilience. Finally, a few key unresolved issues are discussed and recommendations for future research are offered. Study results support the overall conclusion that successful development and deployment of rNPPs could significantly enhance U.S. Grid, Critical Infrastructure, and societal resilience, while transforming the value proposition of nuclear energy in the 21st century

Weaving Academic Grace into the Fabric of Online Courses and Faculty Training: First-Year Engineering Student Advice for Online Faculty During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Faculty Responses

Background: In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 forced the majority of higher education online, resulting in a wave of new online students uniquely positioned to offer fresh perspectives and advice to faculty. Purpose: This study investigated the advice offered to online faculty by first-year engineering (FYE) students who were forced online during the pandemic and faculty ideas to address the student advice. Methods: This multi-methods study included qualitative data from 233 FYE students (in 67 teams across four class offerings) who provided advice for online faculty through an end-of-year team assignment, leveraging analytic induction methods for analysis. The Quality Matters Online Instructor Skill Set was used as the theoretical framework for viewing the student results (Quality Matters, 2016). After being presented with the student results, 41 faculty participants within two workshops brainstormed ways to respond to FYEs’ advice. Faculty workshop participants organized their own brainstorming/discussion results by themes within community documents. Results: Students forced online expressed the following needs/desires: instructional design practices appropriate for the online environment; understanding, flexibility, and patience from their faculty (which we defined as Academic Grace); instructor social presence; appropriate pedagogy for online learning environments; effective assessment; technologically capable instructors; and instructor understanding of their institutional context. Faculty advised responding to online students with more Academic Grace. Conclusions: This work reveals a new competency missing from traditional online instructor skills, that of Academic Grace. To embed Academic Grace within online courses, we propose that faculty consider a flexible bichronous model for online courses, in which students can choose to attend synchronous live lectures/classes or cover the material asynchronously at their own convenience. In this model, lecture/class recordings and supplemental asynchronous materials should be provided to foster fluid student movement between the learning modes. We also recommend online faculty training efforts include the components of Academic Grace: understanding, flexibility, and patience

Short papers of the 10th Conference on Cloud Computing, Big Data & Emerging Topics

Compilación de los short papers presentados en las 10mas Jornadas de Cloud Computing, Big Data & Emerging Topics (JCC-BD&ET2022), llevadas a cabo en modalidad híbrida durante junio de 2021 y organizadas por el Instituto de Investigación en Informática LIDI (III-LIDI) y la Secretaría de Posgrado de la Facultad de Informática de la UNLP, en colaboración con universidades de Argentina y del exterior.Facultad de Informátic

Sensemaking in virtual settings: a practice-based approach

Since the mainstream uptake of computers and the internet, our world has become increasingly virtualised. Modern organisations are deeply reliant on virtual technologies to carry out their business across time and distance. Indeed, virtual technologies are now implicated in almost all organisational activities, from (virtual) meetings to (online) collaboration. Many scholars have been drawn to investigate the new organisational phenomena that have resulted from the virtualisation of our world, such a virtual learning, virtual leadership and virtual decision making. My research, however, tackles a more fundamental question about how organising more generally is accomplished in the virtual age. Namely, the research question is, “How does sensemaking, as the basis of organising, take place in virtual settings?” To explain, sensemaking – a foundational concept in Organisation Studies – underpins all organisational activities. Therefore understanding how sensemaking takes place in virtual settings will necessarily illuminate how organising more generally is accomplished virtually. To date, how sensemaking takes place in virtual settings has hardly been studied. Further, the studies that do exist impose Weick’s (1969, 1979, 1995) theory of sensemaking (which was developed at a time pre-dating virtual technologies) on to the new context. As a result, existing studies do not illuminate what is new, unique and interesting about how we make sense in virtual settings. In this thesis I develop an alternative, practice-based conception of sensemaking (which serves as the theoretical framework for the study) that sensitises me to previously overlooked but critical concepts, namely materiality, embodiment and ongoing accomplishment. First, materiality describes how things, which in virtual settings are often digital, are implicated in sensemaking. Second, embodiment describes how physical bodies, and their digital representations in virtual settings, are involved in accomplishment of activities. Finally, ongoing accomplishment describes how sensemaking takes place in the flow of activities as they are carried out in the physical world, the virtual world, or combination of both. This framework also enables me to position activities as the unit of analysis for sensemaking. Taken together, this is a novel approach that reveals new facets of the phenomenon of sensemaking in virtual settings. This theoretical framework is applied in three different fieldsites (of varying levels of virtuality) which are selected using a virtuality continuum developed within the thesis. These fieldsites are Yammer (a social media platform), telepresence (a video-based collaboration platform), and Second Life (a three-dimensional virtual world). The methodology is a hybrid traditional-virtual ethnography in which data is collected through participant observation, complemented by interviews. Empirical data are presented in the form of accounts that exemplify the key activities of practitioners in each fieldsite. The analysis reveals how sensemaking is enabled, constrained and altered owing to activities being carried out virtually (rather than in traditional settings). Further, various unique features of sensemaking as it takes place in each fieldsite are articulated, which become the subject of a cross-fieldsite comparison. By overlaying the results from each fieldsite on to the virtuality continuum, the question of how sensemaking takes place in virtual settings is answered in two ways. First, features of sensemaking that are common across all fieldsites, and therefore levels of virtuality, are identified. Second, I identify features of sensemaking that are specific to particular fieldsites and make inferences about how sensemaking features change depending on the level of virtuality of the setting. Some anomalies arising from this analysis are resolved by suggesting an alternative matrix model of virtuality which has potential to be included in future research. The findings culminate in articulation of a practice-based theoretical account of “virtual sensemaking”. This virtual sensemaking is then compared to traditional sensemaking, further illuminating the uniqueness of how sensemaking takes place in virtual settings. I then articulate contributions to the fields of sensemaking and organising as follows. This is the first study to articulate an account of sensemaking as it takes place specifically in virtual settings. Moreover, the account of virtual sensemaking broadens our understanding of sensemaking generally by opening up previously under-theorised aspects of how we accomplish (virtual) organisational activities. Contributions to broader organising include reconsideration of how we define quintessential organising activities, such as meetings. Practical implications pertain to creators, administrators and users of virtual technologies who may use this knowledge of virtual sensemaking to inform more effective and efficient design, implementation, management and application of virtual technologies in organisations. Finally, exciting avenues for future research are suggested, including opportunities to reconceptualise the theoretical, empirical and analytical landscape for investigating organising in the modern virtual age. Namely, we may let go of notions of organising that are rooted in traditional settings and embrace new conceptions of virtual organising. Organising is no longer place-specific or linear, nor does it require our physical presence or real-time participation. Instead, modern virtual organising is a complex, multi-dimensional blending of the physical and virtual. As technologies evolve and our activities become ever more integrated with them, understanding how we achieve this blending will be paramount to progressing the field of Organisation Studies generally

Evaluating Resilience of Cyber-Physical-Social Systems

Nowadays, protecting the network is not the only security concern. Still, in cyber security, websites and servers are becoming more popular as targets due to the ease with which they can be accessed when compared to communication networks. Another threat in cyber physical social systems with human interactions is that they can be attacked and manipulated not only by technical hacking through networks, but also by manipulating people and stealing users’ credentials. Therefore, systems should be evaluated beyond cy- ber security, which means measuring their resilience as a piece of evidence that a system works properly under cyber-attacks or incidents. In that way, cyber resilience is increas- ingly discussed and described as the capacity of a system to maintain state awareness for detecting cyber-attacks. All the tasks for making a system resilient should proactively maintain a safe level of operational normalcy through rapid system reconfiguration to detect attacks that would impact system performance. In this work, we broadly studied a new paradigm of cyber physical social systems and defined a uniform definition of it. To overcome the complexity of evaluating cyber resilience, especially in these inhomo- geneous systems, we proposed a framework including applying Attack Tree refinements and Hierarchical Timed Coloured Petri Nets to model intruder and defender behaviors and evaluate the impact of each action on the behavior and performance of the system.Hoje em dia, proteger a rede não é a única preocupação de segurança. Ainda assim, na segurança cibernética, sites e servidores estão se tornando mais populares como alvos devido à facilidade com que podem ser acessados quando comparados às redes de comu- nicação. Outra ameaça em sistemas sociais ciberfisicos com interações humanas é que eles podem ser atacados e manipulados não apenas por hackers técnicos através de redes, mas também pela manipulação de pessoas e roubo de credenciais de utilizadores. Portanto, os sistemas devem ser avaliados para além da segurança cibernética, o que significa medir sua resiliência como uma evidência de que um sistema funciona adequadamente sob ataques ou incidentes cibernéticos. Dessa forma, a resiliência cibernética é cada vez mais discutida e descrita como a capacidade de um sistema manter a consciência do estado para detectar ataques cibernéticos. Todas as tarefas para tornar um sistema resiliente devem manter proativamente um nível seguro de normalidade operacional por meio da reconfi- guração rápida do sistema para detectar ataques que afetariam o desempenho do sistema. Neste trabalho, um novo paradigma de sistemas sociais ciberfisicos é amplamente estu- dado e uma definição uniforme é proposta. Para superar a complexidade de avaliar a resiliência cibernética, especialmente nesses sistemas não homogéneos, é proposta uma estrutura que inclui a aplicação de refinamentos de Árvores de Ataque e Redes de Petri Coloridas Temporizadas Hierárquicas para modelar comportamentos de invasores e de- fensores e avaliar o impacto de cada ação no comportamento e desempenho do sistema