Charities and ICTs: Can IS-enabled Innovation in Business Critical Activities Be Delivered?

This article looks at the ways in which a number of charities are leading the United Kingdom’s ‘Third Sector’ in their use of ICT/IS capabilities to deliver innovations in a range of business critical activities. It shows that new ICT/IS capabilities afforded opportunities within different types of charities to deliver change. In the older charities established in the ‘pre-Internet’ era, these shifts tend to work with and reflect the existing ‘enterprise logic’ or established ‘ways of doing’. In the younger ‘Net generation’ organisations, the shifts tend to be more fluid in nature, enabling the delivery of new ways of doing and denoting the more flexible model of organisation upon which they were founded. Our research also shows that, in all of the charities, information and data capture and interrogation are intensifying

Factors Affecting Perceptions of Web Site Quality

Companies of all sizes are increasingly using Web sites as a means to communicate with potential and existing customers. Over the life of these Web sites, designs tend to become more complicated over time (Haley, Carte et al. 1996). Yet, lack of comprehensive measures of Web site quality prevents accurate assessments of these changes. To date many companies have based Web design on trial-and-error, gut-instinct, and feedback from customers. This paper describes the initial phases of developing a comprehensive Web site quality measure using a series of exploratory research groups

Embedding information skills training on student learning: making a difference

This article was first published in the Wolverhampton Intellectual Repository and E-Theses (WIRE). There is no printed version.This embedding project builds on one that was delivered in 2001, headed by Oliver Pritchard, Dudley Learning Centre Manager, leading a research team with staff working from different Learning Centres in the University. In the 2001 project, sessions on information skills were run in three differing subject areas for second and third years and their impact on student learning was assessed using questionnaires and focus groups for students and in-depth interviews with academic staff. Findings were encouraging. Skills and experience gained within the sessions were taken on and applied within assignment work to good effect. Within this small study there is evidence of a progression in student awareness, confidence and skills and Information Skills sessions bring a longer-term, practical and tangible element to the learning experience and are a valuable part of helping students to become more effective learners

The detrimental effects of emotional process dysregulation on decision-making in substance dependence

Substance dependence is complex and multifactorial, with many distinct pathways involved in both the development and subsequent maintenance of addictive behaviors. Various cognitive mechanisms have been implicated, including impulsivity, compulsivity, and impaired decision-making. These mechanisms are modulated by emotional processes, resulting in increased likelihood of initial drug use, sustained substance dependence, and increased relapse during periods of abstinence. Emotional traits, such as sensation-seeking, are risk factors for substance use, and chronic drug use can result in further emotional dysregulation via effects on reward, motivation, and stress systems. We will explore theories of hyper and hypo sensitivity of the brain reward systems that may underpin motivational abnormalities and anhedonia. Disturbances in these systems contribute to the biasing of emotional processing toward cues related to drug use at the expense of natural rewards, which serves to maintain addictive behavior, via enhanced drug craving. We will additionally focus on the sensitization of the brain stress systems that result in negative affect states that continue into protracted abstinence that is may lead to compulsive drug-taking. We will explore how these emotional dysregulations impact upon decision-making controlled by goal-directed and habitual action selections systems, and, in combination with a failure of prefrontal inhibitory control, mediate maladaptive decision-making observed in substance dependent individuals such that they continue drug use in spite of negative consequences. An understanding of the emotional impacts on cognition in substance dependent individuals may guide the development of more effective therapeutic interventions

Online Mood Induction

The purpose of this study is to examine whether affect-laden online materials, such as news stories and ads, can induce mood. In particular, this study examines whether viewing a positive online ad or reading a positive online story can induce a positive affect similar to other established mood inductions such as receipt of a surprise gift. Based on the results of previous “offline” studies we expect to see that both online news stories and ads affect mood

Migrant Workers Access to Justice at Home: Indonesia

Each year, around half a million Indonesians travel abroad to work, half of those to the Middle East. Many are women who suffer abuse and exploitation when they work abroad but have virtually no access to recourse within their host country's legal system. The vulnerability of migrant workers abroad makes it crucial for them to be able to seek redress in their own countries.Migrant Workers' Access to Justice at Home: Indonesia is the first comprehensive study of migrant workers' access to justice in their country of origin. A collaborative effort by the Open Society International Migration Initiative, the Tifa Foundation, and the Migrant Worker Access to Justice Project, the report analyzes how migrant workers may access justice in Indonesia, and identifies the systemic barriers that prevent them from receiving redress for harms they suffer before, during, and after their work abroad.The report also provides recommendations for improving access to justice and private sector accountability in 11 key areas, addressed to government, parliament, civil society, donors, and others.Migrant Workers' Access to Justice at Home: Indonesia is an important contribution to advancing the rights of migrant workers and will serve as a valuable guide for civil society groups in Indonesia and elsewhere to better understand, use, and test existing justice mechanisms to enforce migrant workers' rights