Institutional Theory: Relevance to Supply Chains

Since it was first introduced in the mid-1970s, Institutional Theory has been extensively employed in management research. Previous studies, across disciplines, have mostly used organizations as a unit of analysis. Very few studies apply institutional theory concepts to supply chains. Supply chains are defined by interorganizational processes which conform to organizational fields, a central construct of the new institutional theory. Supply chain, therefore, forms an appropriate unit of analysis for an examination of IT concepts. By relating the fundamental elements of the theory to supply chains, this paper attempts to establish the conceptual validity of institutional theory to supply chains

Storage Solutions for Big Data Systems: A Qualitative Study and Comparison

Big data systems development is full of challenges in view of the variety of application areas and domains that this technology promises to serve. Typically, fundamental design decisions involved in big data systems design include choosing appropriate storage and computing infrastructures. In this age of heterogeneous systems that integrate different technologies for optimized solution to a specific real world problem, big data system are not an exception to any such rule. As far as the storage aspect of any big data system is concerned, the primary facet in this regard is a storage infrastructure and NoSQL seems to be the right technology that fulfills its requirements. However, every big data application has variable data characteristics and thus, the corresponding data fits into a different data model. This paper presents feature and use case analysis and comparison of the four main data models namely document oriented, key value, graph and wide column. Moreover, a feature analysis of 80 NoSQL solutions has been provided, elaborating on the criteria and points that a developer must consider while making a possible choice. Typically, big data storage needs to communicate with the execution engine and other processing and visualization technologies to create a comprehensive solution. This brings forth second facet of big data storage, big data file formats, into picture. The second half of the research paper compares the advantages, shortcomings and possible use cases of available big data file formats for Hadoop, which is the foundation for most big data computing technologies. Decentralized storage and blockchain are seen as the next generation of big data storage and its challenges and future prospects have also been discussed

External Reviewers’ Influence on Citations of Articles Published in Pedagogical Business Journals: Holding Acceptance Rate Constant

An analysis of covariance with a 4 x 3 factorial design was used to compare the citation means of 560 articles published in 28 pedagogy journals. The independent variables were four business fields: accounting, economics and finance, general management, and marketing; three levels of external reviewers were used as the other independent variable. The dependent variable was the number of citations of articles. We found that the means differed on the main effects of four levels of business fields and three levels of external reviewers when acceptance rate was a covariate. The number of citations increase as the number of reviewers increases from one to two

Hybrid Plasmonic Waveguide Fed Broadband Nano-antenna for Nanophotonic Applications

In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid plasmonic waveguide fed broadband optical patch nano-antenna for nanophotonic applications. Through full wave electromagnetic simulation, we demonstrated our proposed antenna to radiate and receive signal at all optical communication windows (e.g. $\lambda$ = 850nm, 1310nm & 1550nm) with around 86% bandwidth within the operational domain. Moreover numerical results demonstrate that the proposed nano-antenna has directional radiation pattern with satisfactory gain over all three communication bands. Additionally, we evaluated the antenna performances with two different array arrangements (e.g. one dimensional and square array). The proposed broadband antenna can be used for prominent nanophotonic applications such as optical wireless communication in inter and intra-chip devices, optical sensing and optical energy harvesting etc.Comment: 4 Page, 7 figure

A tripartite inquiry into volatility-efficiency-integration nexus - case of emerging markets

The objective of this paper is to analyse the time-varying changes of the three parameters, volatility, efficiency and integration on stock markets across emerging markets. We do this using a four-step process with focus on Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis to measure its efficiency. Our analysis show that lower volatility was found in short-term for countries that experienced fast paced economic growth. This increase in volatility is supported by a decrease in efficiency for the short-term, while market integration rose during periods of crises, which represent higher volatility. Hence, a tripartite relationship between our parameters is observed

Student Empowerment / Preparedness: Key to Learning Effectiveness in Remote Teaching

Despite significant investment in resources for online delivery of courses, many universities struggled to ensure quality learning experience for their students during Covid-19. This research analyzes the factors that have a bearing on learning effectiveness. Results of the study clearly establish the criticality of student preparedness to learning effectiveness. We posit that empowering students to take charge of their learning through preparedness of all major stakeholders (student, faculty, and university) would positively affect the learning outcome for students. Effective learning experience is best achieved when institutions focus their efforts on empowering students to take control of their learning as opposed to simply investing in resources to deliver courses remotely