Proceedings of the Fifth Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems: Professional Development Consortium

Collection of position statements of doctoral students and junior faculty in the Professional Development Consortium at the the Fifth Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems, Tel Aviv - Yafo

Perceptions of job characteristics, job satisfaction and organisational commitment of e-tutors at a South African ODL university

The general aim of this research was to investigate whether a relationship exists between the perceptions of job characteristics, job satisfaction (JS) and organisational commitment (OC) of e-tutors in a virtual work environment in an Open Distance Learning (ODL) university in South Africa. Considering the nature of the virtual work environment and the Job Characteristics Model (JCM), the design of e-tutors’ jobs does not encompass some of the core dimensions. This creates certain distinctive issues in terms of how e-tutors work, relate and communicate with their supervisors and co-workers. This has the potential to negatively affect their levels of JS and OC and increase their intention to leave the organisation. Accordingly, a quantitative survey was conducted on a sample of 279 (n = 279) e-tutors serving contracts at an ODL institution in South Africa. An exploratory factor analysis in the absence of good fit revealed a three-factor model for job characteristics, a two-factor model for JS, and a three-factor model for OC. Moreover, a correlational analysis revealed a statistically significant relationship between perceptions of job characteristics, JS, and OC. A bivariate-partial correlation revealed that the relationship between job characteristics and JS is stronger than the relationship between job characteristics and OC. Following these correlations, a regression analysis was done to test the influencing nature of job characteristics on JS and OC. Accordingly, the results revealed that 26% of the effect of JS on OC is mediated by job characteristics. Tests for statistically significant mean differences revealed no significant difference between male and female e-tutors, nor differences in terms of their job tenure. However, in terms of educational background, significant mean differences were found between e-tutors holding undergraduate degrees and those holding postgraduate degrees. In order to determine which colleges differ significantly, multiple comparison tests were done, but the results revealed no significant individual differences. These results are applicable to similar populations and may help to improve the work experiences of other virtual workers. In addition, it is envisioned that they may help to improve human resource management practices in virtual work environments.Human Resource ManagementM. Com. (Human Resource Management

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN ROMANIA

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main opportunities and limitations of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The survey was defined with the aim to involve the highest possible number of relevant CSR topics and give the issue a more wholesome perspective. It provides a basis for further comprehension and deeper analyses of specific CSR areas. The conditions determining the success of CSR in Romania have been defined in the paper on the basis of the previously cumulative knowledge as well as the results of various researches. This paper provides knowledge which may be useful in the programs promoting CSR.Corporate social responsibility, Supportive policies, Romania

Post-migration studies and the city: The case of London

ABSTRACT The city has always played a pivotal role in human history because, as Henry Lefebvre reminds us, the physical structure of the urban place is not just a neutral container of social and historical events, but it acts as a sort of dialogic dimension based on symbols, sets of values, and customs, in which people can give order to their reality, anchoring their identity in a sort of collective memory, and in a network of reciprocal human bonds: a community. Despite the vast theoretical background and narrative tradition, the enormous changes that the urban dimension underwent over the last century have brought new challenges and the necessity for new theorizations to the fore. This dissertation aims to offer a glimpse of such a complex contemporary challenge, particularly narrowing the focus on the relationship between the city and the post-multicultural society, taking into consideration the particular case of London. The choice to focus the research on London is based on the fact that the English capital provides a unique example of a post-multicultural city. The study specifically looks into how the concrete local dimension of the city interacts with the complexity of a transcultural and transnational society, whose heterogeneity exponentially increased in the last century, imposing a pervasive condition of superdiversity, as Steven Vertovec defined it. Given this peculiar condition, the study endeavours to investigate, on one hand, how the idea of citizenship and community changes together with the question of "who is the alien?", and, on the other hand, how urban narrations influence the way people live and perceive such changes. The research method employed is based on an interdisciplinary approach, which aims to combine a historical overview with the philosophical and scientific perspective of urban studies, and the sociological points of view of post-multicultural studies. Theoretical evidence provided by the different disciplines is integrated into the literary analysis of three contemporary narrative works. The first chapter outlines the concept of city from an etymological, historical, philosophical and literary point of view. This overview explores several aspects: why belonging to the same city gave people a particular identity, with particular symbols and customs; and finally, how the idea of city has changed together with its conformation, function, and rhythm as a unique organic system, following the evolution of historical and human changes. The second chapter deals with contemporary post-migration societies, specifically that of London, looking into the most important processes and theoretical reconfigurations at stake such as the idea of citizenship, integration, Britishness and identity. The third chapter will open the literary analysis of this dissertation by presenting Kamal Ahmed\u2019s work The Life and Times of a Very British Man. The Anglo-Sudanese British journalist Kamal Ahmed sheds light not only on the present condition of contemporary post-multicultural London, but also investigates the facts and narrations that modern London is rooted in. In the fourth chapter the focus will shift to post-multicultural London seen as a gigantic economic machine, through the analysis of John Lanchester\u2019s novel Capital. The aim is to describe how the increasing commodification of the city has influenced the idea of community and citizenship, profoundly characterised by obliviousness and disconnectedness. The fifth chapter will discuss these questions by narrowing the focus on how the commodified society influence people's perception of the self and the city, leading to a progressive alienation of its inhabitants. Tibor Fischer's Voyage to the End of the Room particularly problematises the idea of the \u2018alien,\u2019 by dealing with the problem of self-alienation, which seems increasingly to affect a large part of urban inhabitants

Novelistic Intimacies: Reading And Writing In The Late Age Of Print

In Novelistic Intimacies, I consider the political and aesthetic structure of intimacy in a diverse set of narrative forms produced in the so-called digital age, or the late age of print—from encyclopedic and metafictional novels to graphic storytelling and Afrofuturist fantasy. As an organizing principle, intimacy forces us to consider, at once, how novelists have attempted to restore language and narrative with personal meaning after postmodernism—often termed New Sincerity or post-irony. At the same time, intimacy allows us to see how novelists have experimented on the materiality of the book and the eroticism of language to invent new, impersonal modes of storytelling in the present. In this way, I think about reading and writing in contemporary fiction affectively, as acting on both the body and the mind. This requires that I consider these novels as material objects in the world. How do they circulate? How and why do readers engage with and activate them in the present? I argue that, in the late age of print, readers have particular bodily, physical, and sensual orientations towards books themselves. In different ways, each of the novels chosen manipulates the reader’s orientation towards the book as an object as a fundamental component of their aesthetic practice. And, I argue that part of the reason these manipulations are effective is because of a broader history of the book and the ways in which deep-seated habits and memories coalesce around and inform how readers engage with books. In doing so, I examine the contemporary novel in the context of a longer history of the book as an erotic threat and/or tool, looking backwards to literary figures like Samuel Richardson, Walt Whitman, and W.E.B. Du Bois to illuminate the aesthetic techniques of these contemporary storytellers. Beginning with an interrogation of the unacknowledged homosocial intimacy between men staged by one of the popular originators of New Sincerity, David Foster Wallace, I develop an alternative account of literary production in the late age of print. Through close readings of the works of Wallace, his contemporary A.M. Homes, the graphic auteur Chris Ware, and #BlackLivesMatter activist Kiese Laymon, I analyze the ways in which intimacy—filtered through the categories of race, gender, and sexuality—undergird and determine the relationships between the reader, narrative, and the book

The Influence of Internet Use on the Development of Internet Addiction and Social Isolation among Al-Quds University Undergraduate Students

Background: Internet use including social networking may cause internet addiction and social isolation. The use of internet and social networks, internet addiction and social isolation had been highlighted by different studies as a major concern in the world and particularly among young adult. However, there is a lack of such studies in Palestine. Aim: To assess the use of internet, including social networking, and its effects on internet addiction and social isolation among Al-Quds University undergraduate students aged 18- 22. Method: A cross sectional design was utilized to achieve this purpose. The data was gathered between beginning of August, 2015 and finished at the end of October, 2015. The sample included 219 students from Al-Quds University - Abu Dies Campus. The data was collected using self-administrated questionnaire including the socio-demographic data, Internet Addiction Test for internet addiction and UCLA Loneliness Scale for social isolation. Statistical analysis was performed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS), version 61.0 and were analyzed by using parametric tests such as frequency, Ttest, ANOVA’s test, Chi-square test and Pearson's test.Findings: Analysis of the participants’ characteristics showed that males were (37.9%) and females were (62.1%). Their ages ranged between (18-22) years old and they were (44%) from the Faculty of Arts and (56%) from Health Complex Building. Findings showed that (57%) of the participants spent equal to or less than 5 hours per day on internet and social networks while (42.9%) spent more than 5 hours. The current study showed a positive correlation between internet use including social networking and internet addiction at PValue =0.01, where those who spent more time on the internet and social networking had higher frequent problem and significant problem of internet addiction. Moreover, the current study showed no relationship between the hours spent on social networking and the social isolation at P-Value (0.635), as severity of isolation and loneliness was almost equal for those who spent more than 5 hours and less or equal to 5 hours per day. The overall result of UCLA Loneliness Scale showed that (52%) of theparticipants had frequent or severe social isolation, compared to (48%) who had average or below average problems. Finally, there was a strong positive relationship between internet addiction and social isolation at P-Value (0.00), which means that those who had higher internet addiction had higher social isolation scores. Conclusion: The study found that the use of social networking may cause internet addiction and social isolation among Al Quds University students and there is a positive relationship between them

Emancipation from Doublethink? Post-Soviet Political Parties and Leadership

This study examines the phenomenon of doublethink as a core feature of the "mental software" that continues to define the character of post-Soviet societies. It is revealed in patterns of prevarication and equivocation that characterize the thinking and behavior of both the elites and the masses. Doublethink is also manifested in incongruous values and duplicitous rules that prevail in society. It accounts for the perpetuation of simulative and fake institutions of "façade democracy." Political parties in post-Soviet Ukraine are analyzed as a major example of simulative and imitative institutions. Here, traditional ideology-based party taxonomies prove misleading. Political parties are quasi-virtual entities with the character of "post-Orwellian political machines": they operate in a topsy-turvy world of imitated supply and deluded demand. The study employs three levels of analysis: macro (surveys data and "Tocquevillean" observations); meso (biographical data and political discourse analysis); and micro (in-depth interviews)

Technical Debt in Software Development : Examining Premises and Overcoming Implementation for Efficient Management

Software development is a unique field of engineering: all software constructs retain their modifiability — arguably, at least — until client release, no single project stakeholder has exhaustive knowledge about the project, and even this portion of the knowledge is generally acquired only at project completion. These characteristics imply that the field of software development is subject to design decisions that are known to be sub-optimal—either deliberately emphasizing interests of particular stakeholders or indeliberately harming the project due to lack of exhaustive knowledge. Technical debt is a concept that accounts for these decisions and their effects. The concept’s intention is to capture, track, and manage the decisions and their products: the affected software constructs. Reviewing the previous, it is vital for software development projects to acknowledge technical debt both as an enabler and as a hindrance. This thesis looks into facilitating efficient technical debt management for varying software development projects. In the thesis, examination of technical debt’s role in software development produces the premises on to which a management implementation approach is introduced. The thesis begins with a revision of motivations. Basing on prior research in the fields of technical debt management and software engineering in general, the five motivations establish the premises for technical debt in software development. These include notions of subjectivity in technical debt estimation, update frequency demands posed on technical debt information, and technical debt’s polymorphism. Three research questions are derived from the motivations. They ask for tooling support for technical debt management, capturing and modelling technical debt propagation, and characterizing software development environments and their technical debt instances. The questions imply consecutive completion as the first pursued tool would benefit from—possibly automatically assessable—propagation models, and finally the tool’s introduction to software development organizations could be assisted by tailoring it based on the software development environment and the technical debt instance characterizations. The thesis has seven included publications. In introducing them, the thesis maps their backgrounds to the motivations and their outcomes to the research questions. Amongst the outcomes are the DebtFlag tool for technical debt management, the procedures for retrospectively capturing technical debt from software repositories, a procedure for technical debt propagation model creation from these retrospectives, and a multi-national survey characterizing software development environments and their technical debt instances. The thesis concludes that the tooling support, the technical debt propagation modelling, and the software environment and technical debt instance characterization describe an implementation approach to further efficient technical debt management. Simultaneously, future work is implied as all previously described efforts need to be continued and extended. Challenges also remain in the introduced approach. An example of this is the combinatorial explosion of technology-development-context-combinations that technical debt propagation modelling needs to consider. All combinations have to be managed if exhaustive modelling is desired. There is, however, a great deal of motivation to pursue these efforts when one re-notes that technical debt is a permanent component of software development that, when correctly managed, is a development efficiency mechanism comparable to a financial loan investment.Ohjelmistokehitys on uniikki tekniikan ala: kaikki ohjelmistorakenteet säilyttävät muokattavuutensa — otaksuttavasti ainakin — asiakasjulkaisuun asti. Yhdenkään projektiosakkaan tietämys ei kata koko projektia ja merkittävä osa tästäkin tiedosta karttuu vasta projektin suorittamisen aikana. Nämä ominaisuudet antavat ymmärtää, että ohjelmistokehitysala on sellaisten suunnitelupäätösten kohde, joiden tiedetään olevan epätäydellisiä—joko tarkoituksella tiettyjen projektiosakkaiden intressejä painottavia tai tahattomasti projektia vahingoittavia puutteelliseen tietoon perustuvia. Tekninen velka on konsepti, joka huomioi nämä päätökset sekä niiden vaikutukset. Konseptin tarkoitus on havaita, seurata ja hallita näitä päätöksiä sekä tuloksena syntyviä teknisen velan vaikutuksen alla olevia ohjelmistorakenteita. Edellisen kuvauksen valossa ohjelmistokehitysprojekteille on erityisen tärkeää huomioida tekninen velka sekä mahdollistajana että hidasteena. Tämän vuoksi kyseinen väitöskirja perehtyy tehokkaan teknisen velan hallinnan fasilitointiin moninaisille ohjelmistokehitysprojekteille. Väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan teknisen velan roolia osana ohjelmistokehitystä. Tarkastelu tuottaa joukon premissejä, joihin perustuen esitellään lähestymistapa teknisen velan hallinnan toteuttamiselle. Viisi väitöskirjan alussa esitettyä motivaatiota kiinnittävät ne premissit,joille ratkaisu esitetään. Motivaatiot rakennetaan olemassa olevaan teknisen velan sekä ohjelmistotekniikan tutkimustietoon perustuen. Näihin lukeutuvat muun muassa subjektiivisuus teknisen velan estimoinnissa, teknisen velan informaatiolle nähdyt päivitystaajuusvaatimukset sekä teknisen velan polymorfismi. Havainnoista johdetaan kolme tutkimuskysymystä. Ne tavoittelevat työkalutukea teknisen velan hallinnalle, velan propagoitumisen havainnointia sekä mallinnusta kuin myös ohjelmistotuotantoympäristöjen ja niiden velka instanssien kuvaamista. Tutkimuskysymykset implikoivat peräkkäistä suoritusta: tavoiteltu työkalu hyötyy—mahdollisesti automaattisesti arvoitavista—teknisen velan propagaatiomalleista. Valmiin työkalun käyttöönottoa voidaan taas edistää jos kuvaukset kehitysympäristöistä sekä niiden velkainstansseista ovat käytettävissä työkalun räätälöintiin. Väitöskirjaaan sisältyy seitsemän julkaisua. Väitöskirja esittelee ne kiinnittämällä julkaisujen taustatyön aikaisemmin mainittuihin motivaatioihin sekä niiden tulokset edellisiin tutkimuskysymyksiin. Tuloksista huomioidaan esimerkiksi DebtFlag-työkalu teknisen velan hallintaan, retrospektiivinen prosessi teknisen velan kartoittamiselle versionhallintajärjestelmistä, prosessi teknisen velan mallien rakentamiselle näistä kartoituksista ja monikansallinen kyselytutkimus ohjelmistokehitysympäristöjen sekä näiden teknisen velan instanssien luonnehtimiseksi. Väitöskirjan yhteenvetona huomioidaan, että teknisen velan hallinnan työkalutuki, teknisen velan propagaatiomallinnus ja ohjelmistokehitysympäristöjen sekä niiden teknisen velan instanssien luonnehdinta muodostavat toteutustavan, jolla teknisen velan tehokasta hallintaa voidaan kehittää. Samalla implikoidaan jatkotoimia, sillä kaikkia edellä kuvattuja työn osia tulee jatkaa ja laajentaa. Toteutustavalle nähdään myös haasteita. Eräs näistä on kombinatorinen räjähdys teknologia- ja kehityskontekstikombinaatioille. Kaikki kombinaatiot tulee huomioida mikäli teknisen velan propagaatiomallinnuksesta halutaan kattavaa. Motivaatio väitöskirjassa esitetyn työn jatkamiselle on huomattavaa ja sitä kasvattaa entuudestaan edellä tehty huomio siitä, että tekninen velka on pysyvä komponentti ohjelmistokehityksessä, joka oikein hallittuna on kehitystehokkuutta edistävänä komponenttina verrattavissa finanssialan lainainvestointiin.Siirretty Doriast

What is Probable Cause, and Why Should We Care?: The Costs, Benefits, and Meaning of Individualized Suspicion

Taslitz defines probable cause as having four components: one quantitative, one qualitative, one temporal, and one moral. He focuses on the last of these components. Individualized suspicion, the US Supreme Court has suggested, is perhaps the most important of the four components of probable cause. That is a position with which he heartily agree. The other three components each play only a supporting role. But individualized suspicion is the beating heart that gives probable cause its vitality