Assessing social media adoption and maturity in small and medium enterprises: case of Saudi Arabia

The proliferation of social media has changed marketing and branding of organisations around the world. Social media has proved to create business value for companies; however, there is a lack of coherent and sequent studies in the field of social media for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the literature lacks a systematic approach providing a practical means to support SMEs in getting value through social media. Since companies are affected by the social, economic and political circumstances in which they operate, this research focuses on Saudi Arabia-based SMEs. The research aims to develop an online tool based on a social media maturity assessment model that includes maturity criteria, levels of progress and a formula to automatically calculate the overall maturity and provide guidance. Developing such a tool requires studying different aspects related to the use of social media in business and examining their statistical associations. The areas include investigation of social media adoption factors, examination of the social media value to SMEs as well as identification of barriers to success. Moreover, the research examines the maturity level of SMEs in using social media as well as consumers` social media readiness related to interacting with corporate social media accounts in Saudi Arabia. The research used cross-sectional surveys to collect primary data from SMEs, experts and social media users to answer the research questions. The findings revealed that there is high awareness of the usefulness of social media as a marketing channel and strong support from the owners and top management in using such interactive technologies among Saudi SMEs. However, there is also clear evidence that there is a need for training in using social media in these companies which is something that the majority of companies do not provide. The main obstacles that SMEs face when using social media are insufficient dedicated staff as well as a lack of time and skills. The main reasons why SMEs do not use social media are the low perceived usefulness, the perception that there are types of businesses that do not need social media engagement as well as the lack of knowledge and skills in the field. Also, the findings demonstrate that Saudi consumers have positive perception towards using social media to interact with brands. However, there are concerns regarding trust and privacy when using corporate social media accounts. The research develops a social media maturity assessment model for SMES and also discovers new maturity criteria which are statistically associated with the overall social media maturity of companies. These new criteria include: Number of hours dedicated for social media per week, LinkedIn corporate presence, perceived usefulness of social media, consistency of business goals with social media, providing social media training to employees, availability of financial resources and social media infrastructure in the company

Theorising the take-up of ICT : can Valsiner's three zones framework make a contribution?

This paper explores the contribution of theory to understanding the take-up of ICT and, in particular, it describes how Valsiner’s three zones framework came to be used in a study of lecturers in Saudi higher education institutions. The paper describes the value of theory and, in the process, illustrates some of the approaches taken in the literature on teachers’ use of ICT. The challenges faced in theorising are also covered. The paper then gives the background to a study of ICT use among university lecturers before moving to a discussion of methodology and presentation of key findings. Next, attention shifts to explaining key aspects of Valsiner’s zones framework and showing how this framework was applied to explain the modest but differentiated use of ICT across eight institutions. Finally, the paper discusses the strengths and limitations of the zones framework and highlights some of the wider challenges which theorisation pose

Project Management Practice: Redefining Theoretical Challenges in the 21st Century

From the incessant project failures, project delay and cost overrun to extreme difficulty in agreeing on what constitute project success and project management success, project management practice is more challenging in the 21st century than previously propounded. Therefore, the theoretical challenges facing project management practice were examined and the research findings indicate several ways in which the use of project management methods and standards can help in delivering successful output. This work has significant implications in the way project managers actually manage projects in practice. For example, we proposed that project management theory and practice are interdependent only when project management theories are beneficial and can be applied. This proposition has implications on project management practice because if project management theories are not particularly applied to manage current projects then it would be difficult to assess project management validity. In conclusion, the research limitations are highlighted and recommendations for future research were made. Key words: project management practice, project failures, project and complexity, project evaluation and performance.

Data for Theorising the take-up of ICT : can Valsiner's three zones framework make a contribution?

This paper explores the contribution of theory to understanding the take-up of ICT and, in particular, it describes how Valsiner’s three zones framework came to be used in a study of lecturers in Saudi higher education institutions. The paper describes the value of theory and, in the process, illustrates some of the approaches taken in the literature on teachers’ use of ICT. The challenges faced in theorising are also covered. The paper then gives the background to a study of ICT use among university lecturers before moving to a discussion of methodology and presentation of key findings. Next, attention shifts to explaining key aspects of Valsiner’s zones framework and showing how this framework was applied to explain the modest but differentiated use of ICT across eight institutions. Finally, the paper discusses the strengths and limitations of the zones framework and highlights some of the wider challenges which theorisation pose

Training Software Effectiveness Applied by the Mothers to Their Autistic Children at Home Remotely to Develop Their Self-Care Skills Under the Supervision of the Specialist

This study represented a Training software applied by mothers to their autistic children at home remotely to develop their self-care skills through computer activities such as toothbrushing, hand washing, toilet use skills, wearing and taking off clothes skills Under the supervision of the specialist, the Course-lab program will introduce the software & flowchart to define the flow of the software. The main objective of the study here is twofold, one of which is to develop the capacity of the mother in training her autistic child in self-care skills and to recognize the effectiveness of the software in developing the capacity of the autistic child. This study is based on an experimental approach. Researchers prepared a questionnaire consisting of 60 phrases to measure a childs performance on these skills before and after the use and practical application of the software. The participants consist of 11 children and 11 mothers in a six-month period, and a sample was collected from mothers and children of rehabilitation centers in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Data were analyzed by statistical methods using the SPSS program, version No. 24. The descriptive statistics were used to process data and the percentage of gains of Blacks Modifies adjustments. Among the most important findings of the study was the improved performance of children in acquiring self-care skills, as well as the improved performance of mothers in applying self-care skills to their children this is reflected in Blakes modified gains to detect the effectiveness of the application 1.42, indicating acceptable and highly effective categories, and average pre-training scores calculated. (Before the introduction of the self-care skills development program for children with autism) where the average in tribal measurement was 40.13 by contrast, the corresponding average in dimensional measurement was 88.43 in favor of dimensional measurement and the calculated Z value exceeded the scheduled test value of Z (0.05 and 0.01, respectively; p ≤ 0.000) indicating the effectiveness of the software used

Plasma accelerator driven coherent spontaneous emission

Plasma accelerators [1] are a potentially important source of high energy, low emittance electron beams with high peak currents and generated within a relatively short distance. While novel plasma photocathodes [2] may offer improvement to the normalised emittance and brightness of electron beams compared to Radio Frequency-driven accelerators, a challenge is the energy spread and chirp of the beams, which can make FEL operation impossible. In this paper it is shown that such an energy-chirped beam, with a dynamically evolving current profile due to ballistic bunching, can generate significant coherent radiation output via the process of Coherent Spontaneous Emission (CSE) [3]. While this CSE is seen to cause some FEL-induced electron bunching at the radiation wavelength, the dynamic evolution of the energy chirped pulse dampens out any high-gain FEL interaction

Crystal structure of 1,1-dimethyl-3-(2-phenylethyl)urea, C11H16N2O

Abstract C11H16N2O, orthorhombic, Pbca (no. 61), a = 10.7388(6) Å, b = 9.8449(5) Å, c = 21.1259(14) Å, V = 2233.5(2) Å3, Z = 8, R gt (F) = 0.0582, wR ref (F 2) = 0.1795, T = 293 K.</jats:p

Modern extreme value statistics for Utopian extremes. EVA (2023) Conference Data Challenge: Team Yalla

Capturing the extremal behaviour of data often requires bespoke marginal and dependence models which are grounded in rigorous asymptotic theory, and hence provide reliable extrapolation into the upper tails of the data-generating distribution. We present a modern toolbox of four methodological frameworks, motivated by classical extreme value theory, that can be used to accurately estimate extreme exceedance probabilities or the corresponding level in either a univariate or multivariate setting. Our frameworks were used to facilitate the winning contribution of Team Yalla to the EVA (2023) Conference Data Challenge, which was organised for the 13 International Conference on Extreme Value Analysis. This competition comprised seven teams competing across four separate sub-challenges, with each requiring the modelling of data simulated from known, yet highly complex, statistical distributions, and extrapolation far beyond the range of the available samples in order to predict probabilities of extreme events. Data were constructed to be representative of real environmental data, sampled from the fantasy country of “Utopia”

Time-Dependent Physicochemical Changes of Carbonate Surfaces from SmartWater (Diluted Seawater) Flooding Processes for Improved Oil Recovery.

Over the past few decades, field- and laboratory-scale studies have shown enhancements in oil recovery when reservoirs, which contain high-salinity formation water (FW), are waterflooded with modified-salinity salt water (widely referred to as the low-salinity, dilution, or SmartWater effect for improved oil recovery). In this study, we investigated the time dependence of the physicochemical processes that occur during diluted seawater (i.e., SmartWater) waterflooding processes of specific relevance to carbonate oil reservoirs. We measured the changes to oil/water/rock wettability, surface roughness, and surface chemical composition during SmartWater flooding using 10-fold-diluted seawater under mimicked oil reservoir conditions with calcite and carbonate reservoir rocks. Distinct effects due to SmartWater flooding were observed and found to occur on two different timescales: (1) a rapid (&lt;15 min) increase in the colloidal electrostatic double-layer repulsion between the rock and oil across the SmartWater, leading to a decreased oil/water/rock adhesion energy and thus increased water wetness and (2) slower (&gt;12 h to complete) physicochemical changes of the calcite and carbonate reservoir rock surfaces, including surface roughening via the dissolution of rock and the reprecipitation of dissolved carbonate species after exchanging key ions (Ca2+, Mg2+, CO32-, and SO42- in carbonates) with those in the flooding SmartWater. Our experiments using crude oil from a carbonate reservoir reveal that these reservoir rock surfaces are covered with organic-ionic preadsorbed films (ad-layers), which the SmartWater removes (detaches) as flakes. Removal of the organic-ionic ad-layers by SmartWater flooding enhances oil release from the surfaces, which was found to be critical to increasing the water wetness and significantly improving oil removal from carbonates. Additionally, the increase in water wetness is further enhanced by roughening of the rock surfaces, which decreases the effective contact (interaction) area between the oil and rock interfaces. Furthermore, we found that the rate of these slower physicochemical changes to the carbonate rock surfaces increases with increasing temperature (at least up to an experimental temperature of 75 °C). Our results suggest that the effectiveness of improved oil recovery from SmartWater flooding depends strongly on the formation of the organic-ionic ad-layers. In oil reservoirs where the ad-layer is fully developed and robust, injecting SmartWater would lead to significant removal of the ad-layer and improved oil recovery