The body in the library: adventures in realism

This essay looks at two aspects of the virtual ‘material world’ of realist fiction: objects encountered by the protagonist and the latter’s body. Taking from Sartre two angles on the realist pact by which readers agree to lend their bodies, feelings, and experiences to the otherwise ‘languishing signs’ of the text, it goes on to examine two sets of first-person fictions published between 1902 and 1956 — first, four modernist texts in which banal objects defy and then gratify the protagonist, who ends up ready and almost able to write; and, second, three novels in which the body of the protagonist is indeterminate in its sex, gender, or sexuality. In each of these cases, how do we as readers make texts work for us as ‘an adventure of the body’

A comparative analysis of the principal component analysis and entropy weight methods to establish the indexing measurement

Background: As the world's largest coal producer, China was accounted for about 46% of global coal production. Among present coal mining risks, methane gas (called gas in this paper) explosion or ignition in an underground mine remains ever-present. Although many techniques have been used, gas accidents associated with the complex elements of underground gassy mines need more robust monitoring or warning systems to identify risks. This paper aimed to determine which single method between the PCA and Entropy methods better establishes a responsive weighted indexing measurement to improve coal mining safety. Methods: Qualitative and quantitative mixed research methodologies were adopted for this research, including analysis of two case studies, correlation analysis, and comparative analysis. The literature reviewed the most-used multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods, including subjective methods and objective methods. The advantages and disadvantages of each MCDM method were briefly discussed. One more round literature review was conducted to search publications between 2017 and 2019 in CNKI. Followed two case studies, correlation analysis and comparative analysis were then conducted. Research ethics was approved by the Shanxi Coking Coal Group Research Committee. Results: The literature searched a total of 25,831publications and found that the PCA method was the predominant method adopted, and the Entropy method was the second most widely adopted method. Two weighting methods were compared using two case studies. For the comparative analysis of Case Study 1, the PCA method appeared to be more responsive than the Entropy. For Case Study 2, the Entropy method is more responsive than the PCA. As a result, both methods were adopted for different cases in the case study mine and finally deployed for user acceptance testing on 5 November 2020. Conclusions: The findings and suggestions were provided as further scopes for further research. This research indicated that no single method could be adopted as the better option for establishing indexing measurement in all cases. The practical implication suggests that comparative analysis should always be conducted on each case and determine the appropriate weighting method to the relevant case. This research recommended that the PCA method was a dimension reduction technique that could be handy for identifying the critical variables or factors and effectively used in hazard, risk, and emergency assessment. The PCA method might also be well-applied for developing predicting and forecasting systems as it was sensitive to outliers. The Entropy method might be suitable for all the cases requiring the MCDM. There is also a need to conduct further research to probe the causal reasons why the PCA and Entropy methods were applied to each case and not the other way round. This research found that the Entropy method provides higher accuracy than the PCA method. This research also found that the Entropy method demonstrated to assess the weights of the higher dimension dataset was higher sensitivity than the lower dimensions. Finally, the comprehensive analysis indicates a need to explore a more responsive method for establishing a weighted indexing measurement for warning applications in hazard, risk, and emergency assessments

Quality Assurance Driving Factors as Antecedents of Knowledge Management: a Stakeholder-Focussed Perspective in Higher Education

Similar to many other types of organisations, the successful development of higher education institutions generally depends on proactive multi-stakeholder management strategy. As a social responsibility of universities, quality assurance (QA) of higher education is already an established research domain. However, the issues that serve as driving factors in higher education’s quality are acknowledged in this vast knowledge stream in a dispersed way. An objective of this paper is to provide a quick snapshot of the major QA driving factors in higher education. Another objective here is to discuss the significance of these existing QA driving factors in higher education as prospective antecedents of knowledge management among the key stakeholders in the higher education sector and beyond. An inductive constructivist approach is followed to review the relevant QA driving factors from the extant scholarly views. A number of relevant factors are précised from the literature that would be instrumental to uphold quality in higher education. The discussion demonstrates that these factors are also significant to transfer and share knowledge between the key stakeholders not only for universities, but also for businesses, governments and other organisational stakeholders. The paper proposes a framework of the QA drivers’ application for meaningful knowledge transfer between diverse stakeholders and clarifies the framework’s managerial implications. This conceptual framework specifies different scenarios and perspectives of QA drivers’ application in the global education sector. The academic novelty is based on the inductive approach applied in the paper. QA practitioners will be able to follow these factors as steering phenomena to effectively assure quality, in relation to their multi-stakeholder relationships in higher education and beyond

A model for successful implementation of internet-based electronic commerce in business operations

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Business.The dramatic impact of Internet-based electronic commerce is attracting a great deal of attention in the business world. It is a reality that Internet-based electronic commerce is still in its infancy and it will take a few more years or a decade before it becomes a full medium of business operations. However, many long vision organisations are implementing Internet-based electronic commerce (e -commerce) in their business operations in order to be able to cope, survive and obtain competitive advantage in this very dynamic, and rapidly changing global business environment. E-commerce refers to moving business-related operations and transactions from paper-based to a fully electronic (digital) environment over the Internet. Therefore, as we enter the third millennium, business operations all around the world are starting to move inevitably from the traditional method to the Internet-based electronic commerce. Threat or opportunity, e-commerce over the Internet will change the way we do business. The development of Internet-based e-commerce might be seen as one of the most exciting trends in the business marketplace. Research shows that almost every organisation that wants to stay in business beyond the turn of the century must re-evaluate every aspect of its strategy and operations from customer service to marketing, product development to retailing, and logistics to distribution and all value-added supply chain business processes. That is why Internet-based e-commerce is essential for companies entering a virtual distribution marketplace to survive in this very competitive business environment. This study attempts to identify, examine, analyse, test and empirically determine the strategic critical (key) success factors (CSFs) in order to develop a comprehensive model for successful implementation of Internet-based e-commerce in business operations. CSFs were considered in this research from the perspective of Internet-based e-commerce user companies' executives and managers. There is no previous and specific study on the critical success factors for the implementation of Internet-based electronic commerce at the time of this study. This research consists of two parts. In order to realise the research purpose, the study employed two Focus Group sessions, a pilot-test (pre-test) followed by a comprehensive quantitative survey. Questionnaires were mailed to CEOs, Directors and IS/E-commerce executives/managers from randomly selected e-commerce user companies in Australia. There was no comprehensive business index available for e-commerce user companies at the time of this research. Therefore, e-commerce user companies were randomly selected from the Internet by using one of the most powerful and popular search engines, Yahoo! The collected data was examined for validity and reliability. Statistical tests included descriptive analysis, Chi-Square goodness-of-fit, canonical correlation analysis, factor analysis, and regression analysis. As a result of the statistical analysis, the top ten critical success factors for Internet-based e-commerce implementation success were identified. The ten CSFs were statistically significant for e-commerce implementation success and supported the proposed original research model. The expected contribution of this study is to identify and provide knowledge on key or critical success factors for companies who have already implemented or plan to implement Internet-based e-commerce in their business operations. The recommended key strategic success factors for Internet-based e-commerce implementation enables executives, managers or practitioners (implementors) to use effectively and efficiently these strategic factors when planning, developing and implementing an e-commerce business operations system over the Internet. This study also provides a basic knowledge for further research on CSF and e-commerce implementation. E-commerce user companies may also benefit from the results and may be able to utilise the critical success factors for planning purposes. Further, this research, like any other research, is subject to a number of limitations. However, this is the first study of its kind as far as the researcher is aware. The findings are clear and significantly supported by statistical analysis. Additional research is however needed for better understanding of this new medium of digital business operations. Finally, a model was developed to present the most critical success factors for successful implementation of Internet-based e-commerce in business operations. It may be said that the developed model is one of the first developments in this field

A model to demonstrate the common CSFs in e-commerce business satisfaction for measuring e-commerce success

Wu, M ORCiD: 0000-0002-1735-6797Since 2005, the number of small to medium enterprises (SMEs) involved in electronic commerce (ecommerce) has grown significantly. While there were some early success stories resulting from the use of Internet (e.g. Ebay, Dell, Cisco, and Amazon), there were also numerous stories of businesses that failed in their quest for success, such as Webvan, eToys, Boo, etc. (Apigian, Ragu-Nathan, Ragu-Nathan & Kunnathur 2005, p.123). Even for businesses that did not fail, there is still the question of whether there are any benefits from the use of IT/e-commerce since it may be hard to determine whether the benefits of doing business via the Internet outweigh its costs (Apigian, Ragu-Nathan, Ragu-Nathan & Kunnathur 2005, p.123). In the meantime, some businesses are satisfied with e-commerce systems and some are not. More and more researchers have focused therefore trying to gain better understanding of e-commerce success. Thus, the demand is becoming more urgent to find effective methods to measure e-commerce success

China’s e-commerce higher education: A 15 years review from international viewpoint

Wu, M ORCiD: 0000-0002-1735-6797China’s education sector has involved in e-commerce programs since the beginning of this century as one of international pioneers in 2001. However, a gap still exists between China’s e-commerce education and industry demands that China’s e-commerce education seems far from meeting business’s expectations. This paper described firstly the current situation of China’s e-commerce education. Based on the literature review and interviews, the reasons why this gap existed were then analysed with four challenges including argue on separate vs. integrated focus, technical vs. non-technical focus, textbook concerns, and lack of industry involvement. Finally, several suggestions were provided for helping China’s educators to gain input from international experience and solving relevant challenges. Although this research focused mainly on China’s e-commerce education, the introductory materials discussing China’s current state should be valuable for any universities being interested in China’s e-commerce education. This can also serve as a spring board to discuss the overall framework for e-commerce education in developing countries