Employment Seeking Under Consideration of Social Capital on Social Network Sites

This paper presents a model to measure the social capital of individuals seeking employment. The paper will explain the dimensions, which are used to measure social capital and gives an overview about the influence of social capital for the employment search process. Further define the paper the population for the research and will explain the hypotheses to evaluate the existence of social capital on social network sites. The interest for the scientific community is the existence of social capital in social networking sites and to explain, along the social capital theory the behavior of people on social network sites if possible. This paper describes the construct for measuring social capital with relation to the employment search process. Furthermore the paper describes the channels through which to identify available employment opportunities and explain the changes of social capital under the consideration of social network sites and social media. The paper is the theoretical basis to test the functionality of social capital in social networking sites

Disentangling determinants of ride-hailing services among Malaysian drivers

Ride-hailing has emerged as one of the progressive sharing economy platforms. As a digital platform, both riders and drivers are critical to achieving sustainable ride-hailing transactions. Previous studies have gained little insight into ride-hailing services from drivers’ perspectives. This study investigates the salient factors that determine the usage of ride-hailing services among drivers in Malaysia by extending the technology acceptance model (TAM), introducing governmental regulations, and integrating perceived risk and trust into the model. We collected data from a total of 495 ride-hailing drivers across Malaysia. Our results suggest that a driver’s intention to use ride-hailing services is determined by perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and governmental regulations, which lead to actual usage. However, unexpectedly enough, the results signify that perceived risk does not affect the intention to use ride-hailing unless there is trust among the drivers. Overall, this paper draws attention to the substantial contrast in its results from the majority of prior TAM literature and has thoroughly improved the exploratory power of TAM by introducing new variables into the model, particularly from the perspective of ride-hailing drivers. This study is expected to bring theoretical and practical contributions to improve the country’s ride-hailing industry

Factors Affecting Sharing Economy Usage in Malaysia and Pakistan: A Comparative Outlook

The infancy of the ride-hailing industry in Malaysia and Pakistan has hindered their levels of participation among the users of these services. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate factors affecting the ride-hailing participation levels with the help of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Survey questionnaires will be handed out among the users and the results will be initially evaluated using Structural Equation Modelling and further comparisons between the results from both the countries will be carried out through Multi-Group Analysis (MGA). The results are aimed to provide empirical and practical insights explaining the cause of low usage levels of the ride-hailing services in both countries. Additionally, the conclusion will produce clearer perspectives explaining the factor that most highly affects a user’s decision to use the service or otherwise. The results of this study are expected to help governmental authorities as well as the policymakers of ride-hailing services at implementing effective user-friendly strategies by improving the factors that might be negatively affecting a user’s participation decision

What Influences Employees to Use Enterprise Social Networks? A Socio-Technical Perspective

The adoption of enterprise social network (ESN) for greater employee engagement and knowledge sharing practices within organisations is proliferating. However, ESN investments have thus far not resulted in expected gains in organisational benefits due to underutilisation by employees. Limited understanding of the implications of ESN use leads to a paucity of recommendations for effective use within an organisation. This research-in-progress paper seeks to determine the factors influencing the use of ESN among employees in a large Australian utility organisation, with the aim of contributing to a practical understanding of the key success factors of the use of this new workplace social platform. Our preliminary findings indicated that the employees’ ESN behaviour tends to be influenced by socio-technical factors, including technological (i.e. platform and content quality), organisational (i.e. top management support and ESN facilitating conditions), social (i.e. critical mass and communication climate), individual (i.e. perceived benefits, knowledge self-efficacy and time commitment) and task (i.e. task characteristics) factors. This paper concludes that a successful implementation of ESN in an organisation involves the nexus between these five factors and provides several recommendations about how ESN use can be enhanced

Untangling factors influencing social networking sites use among older adults: A literature review

While social networking sites (SNSs) have become a popular communication tool for younger generations, their use has gained popularity among older adults in recent years. However, studies related to SNSs use and older adults are still in scarcity and lacking a rigorous understanding of what influences them to use SNSs. This literature review aims to provide an overview of existing literature on SNSs and older adults. This review identified 28 relevant articles published between 2010 and 2020 and provided an overview of the older adults’ SNSs usage behaviours, antecedents, and associated outcomes. Older people use mainly SNSs to connect to friends, followed by family, new friends, children, and others. The review has shown that the SNSs use among older adults is generally influenced by ten tentative factors that can be categorized into three dimensions: technological (e.g. perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived enjoyment, quality of content); individual (e.g. trust, self-efficacy, knowledge sharing, compatibility); and social (e.g. social influence, social connectedness). This paper contributes to the Information Systems (IS) field by consolidating previous knowledge about the influencing factors and outcomes SNSs use among elderly people and discussing future research

Travel-Time Estimation By Cubic Hermite Curve

Travel time is a measure of time taken to travel from one place to another. Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation applications such as Waze and Google Maps are easily accessible presently and allow users to plan a route based on travel time from one place to another. However, these applications can only estimate general travel time based on a vehicle’s total distance and average safe speed without considering route curvature. A parametric cubic curve has shown a potential result in travel-time estimation through geometric properties. In this paper, travel time has been estimated using the curvature value obtained from the Hermite Interpolation curve fitted to each section of the selected road. Design speed is determined from the curvature value, and thus an algorithm for travel-time estimation incorporating initial driving information is developed. The proposed method’s accuracy was compared to the existing method’s accuracy using a real-life driving test. This comparison demonstrated that the proposed method estimates travel time more accurately than Google Maps and Waze. Future study can further improve the estimation by embedding traffic data into the algorithm

Households’ Health Expenditures on Acute Gastroenteritis in Malaysia

Acute gastroenteritis (AGE) causes significant health and economic burden on society. The aim of this study is to estimate households’ direct and indirect expenditures on AGE and its predicted factors. This cross-sectional study was conducted between December 2019 and March 2020 using a bilingual proforma distributed using Survey Monkey among individuals with self-reported AGE in all 14 states of Malaysia. The finding revealed the average expenditure for a single episode of AGE was RM395.58 (± SD 798.02). The mean indirect expenditure was higher at RM259.14 (± SD 379.92) vs. direct expenditure of RM136.44 (± SD 596.47). The highest expenditure was seen among those who obtained inpatient care. The multiple linear regression analysis showed that household income (RM0.13; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.27; p=0.043) and type of healthcare facility (private vs government) (RM1842.05; 95% CI: 395.13, 3288.98; p=0.014) had significant association with households’ total health expenditure on AGE. Acute gastroenteritis incurred substantial cost on all affected households regardless of care-seeking modalities. Interestingly, the main economic burden of AGE was the indirect cost of productivity loss; interpreted in terms of days away from work. In conclusion, AGE instigated economic burden on both households and employers. The household income and type of facility were found to be significant factors associated with the households’ health expenditures due to AGE. This study recommends food safety awareness among the public and enforcement of safe food handling practices among food vendors and industries

Friction measurement of modified PDMS surfaces inspired by Malayopython Reticulatus

The lack of limbs on snakes enables its ventral scales to be in almost constant contact with the substrate. Their skin is presumably adapted to generate high and low friction to slither. This frictional characteristics in snakes were hypothesized to be contributed by the be tooth-shaped or denticle-like microstructures found on the snake ventral scales. The frictional properties of the microstructures found on snake ventral scales was studied and its feasibility as an inspiration for surface modifications was observed. This study was carried out to analyze the frictional anisotropy exhibit by the snake ventral scale microstructures and also how it changes the frictional properties of the PDMS surface when the microstructures are replicated on to it. The PDMS embedded-elastomeric stamping method was used in this experiment to replicate the snake ventral scales onto the PDMS. Based on the data collected the microstructures on the snake ventral scales does exhibit frictional anisotropy. The PDMS with replicated snakeskin microstructures displays higher COF compared to PDMS with smooth surface. When sliding on most types of surfaces, the COF of real snakeskin and replicated snakeskin is higher if the surface is semi wet. Whereas for smooth PDMS the COF is lower when the surfaces are semi wet. Generally, from both experiments, when the replicated snakeskin is sliding on the surface in the lateral direction, it is observed that the COF is the lowest followed by the caudal then the rostral direction

Enterprise Social Networks: A Successful Implementation within a Telecommunication Company

Although enterprise social network (ESN) has been implemented within a number of organizations to facilitate communication, collaboration and engagement among employees, many organizations are struggling to realize the benefits of this emergent workplace social platform (due to employee underutilization). This paper aims to elucidate a successful ESN use case among employees within a leading Australian telecommunication company. The findings indicate that the employees’ ESN behavior is gravitated by utilitarian and hedonic values, and driven by socio-technical factors. The factors are generically categorized as technological (i.e. platform and content quality), organizational (e.g. community management and top management involvement), social (e.g. critical mass, and constructive communication climate), individual (e.g. knowledge self-efficacy) and task factors (i.e. equivocal tasks and integration to business processes). We suggest that a successful implementation of ESN within an organization involves the nexus between these five factors and recommendations are also made about how ESN usage can be enhanced

Towards paddy rice smart farming: a review on big data, machine learning, and rice production tasks

Big Data (BD), Machine Learning (ML) and Internet of Things (IoT) are expected to have a large impact on Smart Farming and involve the whole supply chain, particularly for rice production. The increasing amount and variety of data captured and obtained by these emerging technologies in IoT offer the rice smart farming strategy new abilities to predict changes and identify opportunities. The quality of data collected from sensors greatly influences the performance of the modelling processes using ML algorithms. These three elements (e.g., BD, ML and IoT) have been used tremendously to improve all areas of rice production processes in agriculture, which transform traditional rice farming practices into a new era of rice smart farming or rice precision agriculture. In this paper, we perform a survey of the latest research on intelligent data processing technology applied in agriculture, particularly in rice production. We describe the data captured and elaborate role of machine learning algorithms in paddy rice smart agriculture, by analyzing the applications of machine learning in various scenarios, smart irrigation for paddy rice, predicting paddy rice yield estimation, monitoring paddy rice growth, monitoring paddy rice disease, assessing quality of paddy rice and paddy rice sample classification. This paper also presents a framework that maps the activities defined in rice smart farming, data used in data modelling and machine learning algorithms used for each activity defined in the production and post-production phases of paddy rice. Based on the proposed mapping framework, our conclusion is that an efficient and effective integration of all these three technologies is very crucial that transform traditional rice cultivation practices into a new perspective of intelligence in rice precision agriculture. Finally, this paper also summarizes all the challenges and technological trends towards the exploitation of multiple sources in the era of big data in agriculture