Managing artificial intelligence in international business : Toward a research agenda on sustainable production and consumption

The collaboration between artificial intelligence (AI) and humans is reshaping international business (IB) management dynamics, aiming to achieve global sustainable development. Recent IB literature indicates that managing AI brings benefits such as better resource reconfiguration, reduced transaction costs, and global sustainable development. However, existing IB literature provides only meager knowledge about the characteristics of AI and how these characteristics can be employed for international expansion at the intersection of sustainable development. In response, our aim is to construct these characteristics by employing directed qualitative content analysis of empirical AI research. Based on our three constructed characteristics of AI, we contribute to current IB literature by providing a framework to balance economic and social goals and utilizing AI for global sustainable development. Further, we provide future IB research themes to guide IB and AI research toward achieving a sustainable production and consumption agenda.© 2024 The Authors.Thunderbird International Business Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Stress Stimulators for the Employees of Service Industry in Dhaka & Its Vicinity

The aim of this study is to investigate the main causes of stress for employees working in service organizations in Dhaka and its vicinity. Stress is taken as dependent variable whereas independent variables are categorized into extra-organizational and intra-organizational stressors. Data were collected from service organizations including banks, insurance companies, universities and buying houses. Data were collected through self-administrative questionnaire consisting of 30 questions. Respondents were the employees working at different levels. From the results it was quite clear that employees working in different areas feel great stress, there were different causes due to which employee experience stress. Findings have been classified into extra-organizational and intra-organizational stressors. Extra-organizational stressors include variables such as Traffic Jam, Hyper Inflation, Political Unrest, Social Insecurity, Lack of transportation facility, insufficient income, Unemployment, Residential problems whereas intra-organizational stressors include variables such as inappropriate workload, Salary-responsibility mismatching, Recruitment policies, Over office timing, Career prospect, Working condition, Work-family balance issues. According to results the major intra-organizational stressor is workload (Mean-3.39, Median-3.00 and Mood-3) because employees are been utilized more than their capabilities, second major cause for stress is salary-responsibility matching (Mean-3.19, Median-3.00, Mood-3), as most of the employees feel that their salary is remarkably less than the responsibility they are taking over and the third major intra-organizational stressor is Recruitment policies (Mean-3.15, Median-3.00, Mood-5) as they feels this policy is not fair and transparent enough. The most influential extra-organizational stressor is Traffic Jam (Mean-3.27, Median-4.00, Mood-5) as in Dhaka city most of the people work in a distant place from home as because most of the offices are in the commercial elegant places where the house rent is too high and houses are not available as well, and the second influential extra-organizational stressor is Hyper Inflation (Mean-3.22, Median-3.00, Mood-3) as due to inflation purchasing power is reducing so people find it really difficult to fulfill their needs this ultimately results into stress, the third major extra-organizational stressor is Political Unrest (Mean-3.20, Median-3.00, Mood-3). These are the major three intra and extra organizational stressor on which the organizations and the country as a whole should concentrate to minimize it, as a stressful employee is less productive than a stress free employee. Keywords: Stress, Service Organizations, Dhaka

Numerical Study of the Dispersion Properties of an X-band Backward Wave Oscillator with Rectangularly Rippled Wall Resonator

AbstractBackward Wave Oscillators (BWOs) are devices that transform the electron beam energy into electromagnetic radiation at microwave frequencies. O-type BWOs consist of an axial electron beam propagating through a resonant cavity comprising of a slow wave structure (SWS). The electron beam is guided by a strong magnetic field while propagating through the cavity. The SWSs are used in BWOs in order to slow down the phase velocity of the electromagnetic wave so that the electron beam can resonantly interact with the wave which is the prerequisite of microwave generation. Dielectric loaded periodic structures were used as SWSs during the early stage of development of BWOs. However, this method of slowing down the wave suffers from dielectric breakdown as it cannot support high electric field. In order to prevent the dielectric breakdown, periodically corrugated metallic hollow waveguides are now being used as SWSs in BWOs. The sinusoidally corrugated SWS (SCSWS) has received the greatest attention among different corrugation profile. However, the fabrication process of this profile is complex and requires sophisticated tools. In an attempt to mitigate the fabrication problem, SWSs with simpler geometry have been proposed by the researchers. In this work, an earlier work on rectangularly corrugated SWS (RCSWS), which was investigated for non-relativistic electron beam has been extended for relativistic BWO in the X-band frequency range. The dispersion properties and the temporal growth rate of the axisymmetric transverse magnetic (TM) modes of have been analyzed numerically. In order to avoid the complicated boundary condition at the discontinuous boundaries of the rectangular radial profile, Fourier series has been used to approximate the axial profile of the SWS and the linear Rayleigh-Fourier theory has been utilized to determine the dispersion properties. The study shows that the growth rate of microwave for the RCSWS is somewhat lower than that for the case of SCSWS; however, a design tradeoff can be made to obtain a comparable performance

Modelling and Interactional Control of a Multi-fingered Robotic Hand for Grasping and Manipulation.

PhDIn this thesis, the synthesis of a grasping and manipulation controller of the Barrett hand, which is an archetypal example of a multi-fingered robotic hand, is investigated in some detail. This synthesis involves not only the dynamic modelling of the robotic hand but also the control of the joint and workspace dynamics as well as the interaction of the hand with object it is grasping and the environment it is operating in. Grasping and manipulation of an object by a robotic hand is always challenging due to the uncertainties, associated with non-linearities of the robot dynamics, unknown location and stiffness parameters of the objects which are not structured in any sense and unknown contact mechanics during the interaction of the hand’s fingers and the object. To address these challenges, the fundamental task is to establish the mathematical model of the robot hand, model the body dynamics of the object and establish the contact mechanics between the hand and the object. A Lagrangian based mathematical model of the Barrett hand is developed for controller implementation. A physical SimMechanics based model of the Barrett hand is also developed in MATLAB/Simulink environment. A computed torque controller and an adaptive sliding model controller are designed for the hand and their performance is assessed both in the joint space and in the workspace. Stability analysis of the controllers are carried out before developing the control laws. The higher order sliding model controllers are developed for the position control assuming that the uncertainties are in place. Also, this controllers enhance the performance by reducing chattering of the control torques applied to the robot hand. A contact model is developed for the Barrett hand as its fingers grasp the object in the operating environment. The contact forces during the simulation of the interaction of the fingers with the object were monitored, for objects with different stiffness values. Position and force based impedance controllers are developed to optimise the contact force. To deal with the unknown stiffness of the environment, adaptation is implemented by identifying the impedance. An evolutionary algorithm is also used to estimate the desired impedance parameters of the dynamics of the coupled robot and compliant object. A Newton-Euler based model is developed for the rigid object body. A grasp map and a hand Jacobian are defined for the Barrett hand grasping an object. A fixed contact model with friction is considered for the grasping and the manipulation control. The compliant dynamics of Barrett hand and object is developed and the control problem is defined in terms of the contact force. An adaptive control framework is developed and implemented for different grasps and manipulation trajectories of the Barrett hand. The adaptive controller is developed in two stages: first, the unknown robot and object dynamics are estimated and second, the contact force is computed from the estimated dynamics. The stability of the controllers is ensured by applying Lyapunov’s direct method

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights: How Does This Crucial Component of Corporate Social Responsibility Leads to Sustainable Development of an Organization and of the Society as a Whole?

The main objective of this review paper is to explain the concept of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights as an integral component of Corporate Social Responsibility and to explain its rationality for companies, its impact on global issues and its participation in the business strategy of the organizations as far as sustainable development is concerned. CSR is a voluntary contribution of the organizations toward their stakeholders and the environment through its ethical practices in order to elicit a proper economic return for itself and the society as a whole. From a theoretical viewpoint, the concept of CSR encompasses a multitude of components, the compilation of which, makes it complete. Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights is one of those important components. Keywords: Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), corporate social responsibility (CSR), Sustainable development, Society

Smartphone and Our Students: Is It Being Good for Their Study?

The objectives of this study are to: (I) find out the discriminations or variations (if any) between the attentive and inattentive university students in terms of their purposes of using smartphones, (II) analyze the cause-effect relationship between “the purposes considered to have good or bad impact on study” and “the smartphone usage behavior of the attentive students”, and (III) analyze the cause-effect relationship between “the purposes considered to have good or bad impact on study” and “the smartphone usage behavior of the inattentive students”. 400 students (200 attentive and 200 inattentive) students are surveyed.  Based survey and statistical analysis results, it is found that attentive and inattentive student are differentiating from each other in terms of their purposes of using smartphones for learning and study, social networking and entertainment. Moreover, the reasons of using smartphones believed to be in favor of their learning activities have positive impact on the attentive students’ smartphones usage behavior, whereas inattentive students are not acting likewise. Corrective actions by the interested parties should be undertaken to reform this unexpected scenario. Keywords: Smartphone, Students, Education, Bangladesh

Design methodologies for M-health innovations: A content analysis

Miah, Gammack, Hasan and Hoque © 2016 authors. Whilst researchers and professionals recognize that M-health offers great opportunities, most existing work has comprised individual project-based developments in specialised areas. Existing review papers generally utilise medical literature and categories: none investigates M-health from an IS design point of view. Identifying application areas, design issues and IS research techniques will demonstrate models, issues, approaches and gaps to inform future research. A comprehensive analysis of up to date literature from this viewpoint is valuable, both for theoretical progression and for guiding real-world innovative developments. Drawing from key IS and multidisciplinary journals we analyse recent (2010-2016) articles concerning M-health application developments and their associated design or development issues. We identify eight application categories, ten design issues (security, privacy, literacy, accessibility, acceptability, reliability, usability, confidentiality, integrity and knowledge sharing) and the stakeholders and development techniques involved. The analysis suggests M-health is an emerging field to which design science is particularly appropriate

Design methodologies for M-health innovations: a content analysis

Whilst researchers and professionals recognize that m-health offers great opportunities, most existing work has comprised individual project-based developments in specialised areas. Existing review papers generally utilise medical literature and categories: none investigates m-health from an IS design point of view. Identifying application areas, design issues and IS research techniques will demonstrate models, issues, approaches and gaps to inform future research. A comprehensive analysis of up to date literature from this viewpoint is valuable, both for theoretical progression and for guiding real-world innovative developments. Drawing from key IS and multidisciplinary journals we analyse recent (2010-2016) articles concerning m-health application developments and their associated design or development issues. We identify eight application categories, ten design issues (security, privacy, literacy, accessibility, acceptability, reliability, usability, confidentiality, integrity and knowledge sharing) and the stakeholders and development techniques involved. The analysis suggests m-health is an emerging field to which design science is particularly appropriate

Designing Social Networking Mobile App for Diabetes Management

The knowledge required for diabetes prevention and management among the rural people in developing countries vastly remains in the state of non-existence. To address this, a diabetic knowledge sharing platform, as an effective means for diabetes prevention, control, and treatment, can play role in increasing diabetes awareness and literacy. Currently researchers have emphasized the scope of peer-led learning by knowledge sharing on social media platforms in healthcare context. Therefore, by identifying this scope, we have prototyped a mobile app integrated with social media features to enable diabetic patients for cost-effective peer-led learning, knowledge sharing, and awareness building. In this process, we resorted to follow the cycles and guidelines as proposed in the Information System Research (ISR) framework for identifying users\u27 needs and preferences as well as building the theoretical foundation for the design of an app. This study demonstrates that the users had positive response and well acceptance to this prototype app as a medium for peer-led for diabetes management. Based on the findings, the researchers are optimistic about the potentiality of the app for a wider scale adoption by diabetic patients as a cost-effective peer-led learning platform