A Multi-level Technology Acceptance, Adoption and Implementation Model for Achieving Government-Citizen Dialogue: An Omani Case Study

The number of commercial applications that exploit Web 2.0 social media is increasing rapidly. However, little is known about the challenges that public sector organizations face when they decide to adopt Web or other technology-based applications, and offer them to consumers; particularly when governmental and civil service organizations are involved. This is particularly true in developing non-Western regions, such as the Middle East, where 'Arab Spring' developments in 2011 stimulated interest in the ability of social networking to mobilize citizens against ruling elites. Consequently, this study investigated Oman's public sector to gain a deeper understanding of the adoption and use of information technology innovation and its potential to engage governments more closely with citizens. In essence, it aimed to develop a comprehensive model of ‘organizational adoption’ and ‘citizen use’ of technology for achieving meaningful online dialogue. The focus of this study is not social media applications per se, but rather it concerns any Web or other technology-based application that is suited to improving dialogue between government organizations and citizens. The final model was derived over three distinct phases of research using a mixed method approach. In Phase I, an initial literature review developed understanding of global trends in e-Government adoption and clarified the study aims, scope, and primary research question. A more extensive literature review was then undertaken to derive a tentative 'first-cut model' theoretical framework. This contains factors considered critical to both achieving successful organizational adoption of IT innovations and a meaningful dialogue between governments and citizens. These are presented from three distinct perspectives or levels; the National level, Organization level, and Management level. In Phase II of the research, case studies involving three Omani civil services organizations helped to refine the tentative model. Policymakers and citizens were interviewed to confirm issues and identify additional adoption and use factors. Finally, in Phase III a participatory action research approach was used to test completeness of the refined model, which culminated in the final model. This study has shown that meaningful online dialogue can be used for different purposes: for facilitating access to decision-makers (mainly), for responding to citizens' enquiries and for addressing rumours. At the National level, government support—meaning political, economic and technical aspects—plus social changes has driven the acceptance of technology for improving government-citizen interactions and for sharing of information. In contrast, the major National level inhibitors are: limited availability of broadband services, other digital divide barriers, national culture barriers and political barriers. At the Organization level, having an IT strategy and top management support, adequate human, financial and technical resources, and a strong citizen-centric orientation are all factors that drive the adoption. Conversely, lack of capability, inappropriate internal culture, and resistance to change can all inhibit adoption. At the Management level, good preparation, proficiency with technical issues, accessibility and marketing issues, appropriate consideration of operational issues and end user needs are critical for implementation of Web or other technology-based applications needed to create meaningful online dialogue. Conversely, major implementation challenges concern inadequate IT infrastructure, resistance to change, and inability to recruit a suitable management team. The research also found that creating a management team, recruiting qualified moderators, controlling the discussion, responding to citizens, and defining the interaction characteristics (objectives, target citizens, participation policies and rules, etc.) are all critical for achieving a meaningful dialogue. The developed model has added to the knowledge of how to encourage technology innovations in governmental organizations, in particular through online dialogue that motivates citizens and other stakeholders to engage in meaningful discussions. For non-Omani governmental organizations having similar operational characteristics, the developed model offers lessons for policymakers and others who wish to enhance citizens' interactions; or who wish to improve the reputation of the organization; or bring about citizen-acceptable policies and decisions. Future work should be aimed at testing the developed social networking adoption model in other industries, sectors and national settings

Designing a Software Maintenance System Using a Reverse Engineering Approach

The aim of the software maintenance is to maintain the software system in accordance with advancement in software and hardware technology. There are four activities to software maintenance, namely corrective maintenance, adaptive maintenance, perfective maintenance, and preventive maintenance. Three approaches are used in software maintenance, that is restructure, reverse engineering, and reenginering. Reverse engineering is a process that is currently being used in software maintenance to extract items of information on software products. This research aims to produce a new reverse engineering logic-form tool, to help maintainers by giving them a complete document about the software system. Currently, many tools are used in reverse engineering, but not all can satisfy the problems faced by the users. The thesis describes the design and implementation of an automatic aid system that uses a logic-form reverse engineering approach, with a new data structure called tree module structure. This tool contains four modules, namely, lexical analyzer module, syntax analyzer module, handling module, and interface or query module

Security Returns During Ex-Dividend Period

AbstractThis paper examines the security returns during ex-dividend period for firms listed on the Muscat Securities Market (MSM). We find stock dividends elicit a significant stock market response. In addition, the abnormal return seems not to be confined to the ex-day in Oman. In particular, the positive abnormal return extends for seven days after the stock dividend ex-day. We also find that larger firms in Oman prefer a higher trading range

Becoming Nothing, Becoming Everything: Quantum Posthumanism and the Writing of J.M. Coetzee

Drawing on both posthumanism and quantum theory, this thesis introduces what I am calling a framework of quantum posthumanism. Based on the epistemic and ontic aspects of entanglement, nonseparability, and becoming, and a reworking of ideas of agency and objectivity, the thesis embarks on an interdisciplinary (entangled) reading of J. M. Coetzee’s texts that seeks to move beyond the current historicist framing of his work. Utilising some of the key concepts and laws from various quantum interpretations, it seeks to show how such concepts effectively deconstruct boundaries between self/other, human/animal, animate/inanimate, body/environment and therefore, by extension to the literary, between fact/fiction, story/history, external/internal, and ultimately author/character/reader/text. The thesis approaches Coetzee’s writing by focussing on the centrality in his fiction of becoming, not only on the level of characters, but also in terms of the agencies of meaning within the literary event (the transactions amongst reader, author, and text). Quantum posthumanism deconstructs the fixed role and positionality of the external observer/Cartesian subject, represented as the reader/author outside the literary event. It proposes the term phenomenon of meaning to address the entanglement of reader/text/author that become part of the meaning they claim to own. The thesis also challenges traditional uses of concepts such as time, linearity, and origin with quantum posthumanist ideas such as multiplicity, emergence, contingency, and parallelism. Finally, through the framework of quantum posthumanism, the thesis hopes to support the argument for the entanglement of human knowledge and the detrimental illusion of the divide between the humanities and the sciences by demonstrating and exemplifying how inevitably entangled human knowledge is

New techniques and framework for sentiment analysis and tuning of CRM structure in the context of Arabic language

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyKnowing customers’ opinions regarding services received has always been important for businesses. It has been acknowledged that both Customer Experience Management (CEM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can help companies take informed decisions to improve their performance in the decision-making process. However, real-word applications are not so straightforward. A company may face hard decisions over the differences between the opinions predicted by CRM and actual opinions collected in CEM via social media platforms. Until recently, how to integrate the unstructured feedback from CEM directly into CRM, especially for the Arabic language, was still an open question. Furthermore, an accurate labelling of unstructured feedback is essential for the quality of CEM. Finally, CRM needs to be tuned and revised based on the feedback from social media to realise its full potential. However, the tuning mechanism for CEM of different levels has not yet been clarified. Facing these challenges, in this thesis, key techniques and a framework are presented to integrate Arabic sentiment analysis into CRM. First, as text pre-processing and classification are considered crucial to sentiment classification, an investigation is carried out to find the optimal techniques for the pre-processing and classification of Arabic sentiment analysis. Recommendations for using sentiment analysis classification in MSA as well as Saudi dialects are proposed. Second, to deal with the complexities of the Arabic language and to help operators identify possible conflicts in their original labelling, this study proposes techniques to improve the labelling process of Arabic sentiment analysis with the introduction of neural classes and relabelling. Finally, a framework for adjusting CRM via CEM for both the structure of the CRM system (on the sentence level) and the inaccuracy of the criteria or weights employed in the CRM system (on the aspect level) are proposed. To ensure the robustness and the repeatability of the proposed techniques and framework, the results of the study are further validated with real-word applications from different domains