The Next Edition of IHO-S-57 (4.0): A Primer

The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) is an intergovernmental consultative and technical organization that was established in 1921 to support the safety of navigation and the protection of the marine environment. IHO Special Publication 57 (IHO S-57) is the IHO Transfer Standard for Digital Hydrographic Data. It is the standard to be used for the exchange of digital hydrographic data between hydrographic offices (HOs), and for the distribution of hydrographic data to manufacturers, mariners and other data users (e.g., GIS). It was developed so that the transfer all forms of hydrographic data would take place in a consistent and uniform manner. To date, S-57 3.0/3.1 has been used almost exclusively for encoding Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs) required for ECDIS. However, S-57 is intended to support all types of hydrographic data. In order to do so, S-57 Edition 3.1 needs to expand in order to accommodate new requirements. This “Primer” explains what is planned in regard to the next edition of IHO S-57 (Edition 4). In particular, it provides a brief description about process required to align with ISO geospatial standards and the benefits to be gained. Included is an explanation about the scope of activity of the TSMAD S-57 Edition 4 Sub-WG, and how others may contribute to the process

Can Auditors Be Independent? - Experimental Evidence

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has transformed the institutional environment in the US by making the audit committee responsible for the appointment, compensation and oversight of the auditor. We examine whether this institutional change successfully resolves the alleged problem of an unconscious favoring of the management (Bazerman et al. 1997, 2002, 2006) by changing the effects of auditors’ economic incentives and psychological pressure. In our experimental design, we make use of the particular features of the German institutional setting as it enables us to manipulate the client of the auditor in a realistic and clear-cut way. 72 German auditors with at least two years of job experience participated in our experiment. Following Turner (2001), we distinguish in our analyses between belief tasks (e.g. evidence evaluation) and action tasks (e.g. audit opinion). Our findings imply that certain institutional features seem to be helpful in ensuring auditor independence. First, we find that auditors demonstrate professional scepticism in belief tasks. This seems to counteract any potentially negative effect of the acceptability heuristic in actions tasks. Second, experience helped auditors in coping with psychological pressure. Third, making the auditor accountable to a supervisory board was helpful in reducing the risk that financial considerations would impair auditor independence.

Identification and Importance of the Technological Risks of Open Source Software in the Enterprise Adoption Context

Open source software (OSS) has reshaped and remodeled various layers of the organizational ecosystem, becoming an important strategic asset for enterprises. Still, many enterprises are reluctant to adopt OSS. Knowledge about technological risks and their importance for IT executives is still under researched. We aim to identify the technological risks and their importance for OSS adoption during the risk identification phase in the enterprise context. We conducted an extensive literature review, identifying 34 risk factors from 88 papers, followed by an online survey of 115 IT executives to study the risk factors\u27 importance. Our results will be very valuable for practitioners to use when evaluating, assessing and calculating the risks related to OSS product adoption. Also, researchers can use it as a base for future studies to expand current theoretical understanding of the OSS phenomenon related to IT risk management

Visualising Time

This study investigates the visualisation of temporal relationships between objects. A popular method employed for such information visualisations is the time line consisting of a single horizontal axis along which temporal events or objects are depicted at specific points or intervals. The orientation of the temporal progression along the axis line will generally coincide with the orientation of the literary writing progression of the culture and language. For example a time line visualised in a Western culture with English as its literary base will exhibit a temporal progression orientation of early/left, later/right whereas Arabian culture with an Arabic literary base will exhibit the reverse temporal progression orientation. In both cultures and languages temporal metaphor use spatial concepts to describe temporal relationships with no discourse to transversal orientation. This is reflected by never hearing the phrase “the months to the right” but rather “the months ahead”. In science, Einstein showed via his special and general theories of relativity that time and space are interlinked. The scientific rationalisation of time and space along with the use of spatial concepts as temporal metaphor implies that the underlying perception of time is spatial. Information visualisations are the externalisations of our perceptions. Therefore temporal information visualisations should employ spatial visualisation techniques. This study evaluated spatial visualisation techniques for temporal information visualisations via a web survey. The spatial temporal information visualisations used in the survey employed no temporal cues such as time or date stamps but conferred all temporal progression via spatial cues. The findings from the analysis of the participant responses to the survey showed that spatial cues do impart temporal cues for temporal relationships

Conceptualising the adoption of sustainable procurement: An institutional theory perspective

Sustainable procurement and supply chain management studies are growing; however several scholars have criticised the lack of theoretical development accompanying this literature. Sustainable procurement and supply chain management activities form part of an organisation's path to adopt sustainability. Some scholars have suggested examining the application of management theories to describe the introduction of corporate sustainability to address this gap. Institutional theory is frequently used to describe how new practices are adopted in organisations and has also been applied to several corporate social responsibility studies. This conceptual paper examines the applicability of institutional theory to describe the adoption of sustainable procurement and concludes by presenting three theoretical propositions to explain sustainable procurement adoption. © 2014 Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand Inc

The Annual Report: A Prime Disclosure Document

Hard real-time task models have evolved from periodic models to more sophisticated graph-based ones like the Digraph Real-Time Task Model (DRT) [1]. These models have in common that tasks are sequential in nature and do not allow for forking structures, modeling job releases that occur in parallel within the same task. To capture these, we present a task model that extends the DRT model with the possibility of forking and joining release paths. We are developing an exact schedulability test for EDF on uniprocessor systems with a pseudo-polynomial bound of its runtime.UPMAR

Corporate Disclosure on Anti-Corruption Practice: A study of Social Responsible

This paper seeks to determine the extent of anti-corruption information disclosure in the sustainability reports originating from Gulf countries. Focus primarily on the fight against corruption, this study utilizes a deeply-rooted content analysis technique of corporate sustainability reporting, covering 66 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) firms during 2014. Strengthened by the application of institutional theory, insight into the results points to a state of limited maturity regarding the disclosure of anti-corruption procedures in the region. More specifically, the results highlight the compliance in the reporting of conduct code, while reporting information on whistle-blowing was significantly less in comparison. Firms in Qatar and UAE ultimately release better informed reports; inclusive of detailed information on internal anti-corruption practices