Electronic Publishing: Research Issues for Academic Librarians and Users

published or submitted for publicatio

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Information knowledge and technology for Development in Africa

Information, knowledge, and technology occupy significant space in the information and knowledge society and ongoing debates on development such as sustainable development goals (SDGs) agenda 2030 and the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). Disruptive technologies and cyber-physical systems, obscuring the lines between the physical, digital and biological, escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic, present a ‘new normal’ that profoundly affects the nature and magnitude of responses required to sustain and benefit from the new developments. Africa, known for late adoption of new technologies and innovations, is leapfrogging development stages in several enviable ways. This book, Information knowledge and technology for development in Africa’, written by eminent African scholars, comprises chapters that satisfactorily address information access, artificial intelligence, information ethics, e-learning, library and information science education (LISE) in the 4IR, data literacy and e-scholarship, and knowledge management, which are increasingly essential for information access, services, and LISE in Africa. We expect the book to support research, teaching and learning in African higher education and worldwide for comparative scholarship

Exploring the impact of social axioms on firm reputation: a stakeholder perspective

This study proposes a model of how deeply held beliefs, known as ‘social axioms, moderate the interaction between reputation, its causes and consequences with stakeholders. It contributes to the stakeholder relational field of reputation theory by explaining why the same organizational stimuli lead to different individual stakeholder responses. The study provides a shift in reputation research from organizational-level stimuli as the root causes of stakeholder responses to exploring the interaction between individual beliefs and organizational stimuli in determining reputational consequences. Building on a conceptual model that incorporates product/service quality and social responsibility as key reputational dimensions, the authors test empirically for moderating influences, in the form of social axioms, between reputation-related antecedents and consequences, using component-based structural equation modelling (n = 204). In several model paths, significant differences are found between responses of individuals identified as either high or low on social cynicism, fate control and religiosity. The results suggest that stakeholder responses to reputation-related stimuli can be systematically predicted as a function of the interactions between the deeply held beliefs of individuals and these stimuli. The authors offer recommendations on how strategic reputation management can be approached within and across stakeholder groups at a time when firms grapple with effective management of diverse stakeholder expectations

Information knowledge and technology for Development in Africa

Information, knowledge, and technology occupy significant space in the information and knowledge society and ongoing debates on development such as sustainable development goals (SDGs) agenda 2030 and the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). Disruptive technologies and cyber-physical systems, obscuring the lines between the physical, digital and biological, escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic, present a ‘new normal’ that profoundly affects the nature and magnitude of responses required to sustain and benefit from the new developments. Africa, known for late adoption of new technologies and innovations, is leapfrogging development stages in several enviable ways. This book, Information knowledge and technology for development in Africa’, written by eminent African scholars, comprises chapters that satisfactorily address information access, artificial intelligence, information ethics, e-learning, library and information science education (LISE) in the 4IR, data literacy and e-scholarship, and knowledge management, which are increasingly essential for information access, services, and LISE in Africa. We expect the book to support research, teaching and learning in African higher education and worldwide for comparative scholarship

Stigma and risky behaviors among male clients of sex workers in the UK in 2001

This paper builds on existing theoretical work on sex markets (Della Giusta, Di Tommaso, and Strøm, 2009a). Using data from the British Sexual Attitudes Survey, we aim to replicate the analysis of the demand for paid sex previously conducted for the US (Della Giusta, Di Tommaso, Shima and Strøm, 2009b). We want to test formally the effect of attitudes, risky behaviors and personal characteristics on the demand for paid sex. Findings from empirical studies of clients suggest that personal characteristics (personal and family background, self-perception, perceptions of women, sexual preferences etc), economic factors (education, income, work) as well as attitudes towards risk (both health hazard and risk of being caught where sex work is illegal), and attitude towards relationships and sex are all likely to affect demand. Previous theoretical work has argued that stigma plays a fundamental role in determining both demand and risk, and that in particular due to the presence of stigma the demand for sex and for paid sex are not, as has been argued elsewhere, perfect substitutes. We use data from the British Sexual Attitudes Survey of 2001 to test these hypotheses. We find a positive effect of education (proxy for income), negative effects of professional status (proxies for stigma associated with buying sex), positive and significant effects of all risky behavior variables and no significant effects of variables which measure the relative degree of conservatism in morals. We conclude with some policy implications

Individual entrepreneurial orientation in higher education and unsettling emerging market conditions: The cases of Malaysia and Thailand

The triggers that guide university students individual entrepreneurial orientation towards new venture creation are an emerging theme. The novel settings of entrepreneurship education the developing country context of South East Asia Malaysia and Thailand are used, while comparing them to key assumptions on general business in Asia and the west. A total of 332 participants were recruited. The items were reduced to five components using principal component analysis, and, using binomial logistic regression, shown to predict some of the variance in perceptions on individual entrepreneurial orientation in Malaysia and Thailand. The study shows that individual entrepreneurial orientation motivators can be separated into the distinct dimensions of which innovation, proactiveness, risk taking, and culture correlate with the the decision to become an entrepreneur in Southeast Asia. In addition, assumptions on business and education in the west and in Asia hold partially in Southeast Asia and entrepreneurial new venture creation particularly regarding risk and autonomy

Beyond the PDF: Transforming data-driven government publications through participatory information design

As data becomes a commodity to today's society, government bodies that publish data have the unique opportunity to become reliable sources for data as well as for insight into this data. Lately, open government data has become widely available through database interfaces and dashboards. In contrast, the interpretation of data is often still published in PDF reports that are hard to access and inconvenient to use. At the same time, a growing number of data visualization and design tools would allow for more advanced formats that match the expectations of today's users. The Master's thesis Beyond the PDF examines how a participatory information design approach can be applied to create more useful, useable, and meaningful data-driven government reports for a broad target audience. The thesis addresses two challenges: 1) The methodological challenge of defining a participatory information design approach; and 2) The applied challenge of developing a proposal for an online report format that addresses the needs of researchers, policymakers, journalists, and citizens alike. Following a research through design approach, the thesis constructs the participatory information design approach in theory and applies it in a design project, using the report Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe as a case study. The project employs participatory field research methods to involve audiences in the design process, and design methods to create a design solution that meets their needs. Narrative design patterns, in particular, are examined and applied as a means to translate tacit audience needs into meaningful design artefacts. The outcomes from the design project address the applied challenge. They consist of a visual summary of the audiences' needs, tasks, and behaviors and a prototype of an online report portal that provides new tools and content formats to engage these audiences on multiple levels. Regarding the methodological challenge, the study demonstrates how participatory, information-focused, and designerly methods can be applied to further the dissemination of insight from government data

Corporate social responsibility and innovative capacity: intersection in a macro-level perspective

This study explores the link between macro (country-level) corporate social responsibility penetration and innovative capacity presenting new findings on the potential influence that various elements shaping innovation have on the endorsement of social responsibility among national business systems. Relying on cross-sectional data, a composite index for quantifying the proliferation of corporate social responsibility is employed and well-established innovation metrics are utilized. Findings do not contradict the preceding but limited evidence on corporate social responsibility practices considering innovation, nevertheless, the negative relationships found in our empirically supported and internally consistent proposed models merit supplementary consideration and examination. The paper offers new insights to innovation theorists and political economy researchers for more detailed investigations of critical drivers, such as innovation, which shape country-level corporate social responsibility specificities of and potentially encapsulate a critical parameter in the self-regulation agenda-setting of business entities. In these lines the study indicates that innovation, as moderator of corporate social responsibility adoption, has to be included in empirical models where measures of corporate social responsibility penetration and innovative potential are employed