Managing a Multicultural Diversity Workforce in the Medical Laboratory Environment at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC)

Governmental facilities are expected to provide public services to meet the demands of the society. Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), being the main health care provider in Qatar is no difference. By 2030, Qatar aims to be an advanced society capable of sustaining its development and providing a high standard of living for its entire population. To achieve this vision, a wide range of facilities with advanced healthcare technology already in operation or in the near future will be operating by high-skilled expatriates' workforce from other countries due to the national workforce shortage. The diverse workforce coming from different cultural background presents a big challenge for any organization. The dual purpose of this project is to study the employment pattern of laboratory personnel at the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology HMC-DLMP, and to investigate HMC-Human Resource (HR) practices in implementing best recruitment approaches of allied health professionals recruiting programs. Ultimately, the project aims to make recommendations regarding diversity issues and to understand the influence of diversity management in the retention of the multicultural workforce at the DLMP at HMC. Laboratory personnel at HMC come from 28 different nationalities with a majority of 28% from the Philippines followed by Indians and Qataris representing 15% and 14%, respectively. The turnover incidents accounted for 85 occurrences in a period of 3 year (2011-2013) questioning the effectiveness of an already existing retention policy. Furthermore, HMC-HR did not have a dedicated recruitment policy for allied health professionals nor it had a diversity strategy. The project concluded the adoption and implementation of diversity strategy management to help HMC achieve the National Health Strategy (NHS) 2011-2016 and Qatar National Vision (QNV) 2030

Abductive Design of BDI Agent-based Digital Twins of Organizations

For a Digital Twin - a precise, virtual representation of a physical counterpart - of a human-like system to be faithful and complete, it must appeal to a notion of anthropomorphism (i.e., attributing human behaviour to non-human entities) to imitate (1) the externally visible behaviour and (2) the internal workings of that system. Although the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) paradigm was not developed for this purpose, it has been used successfully in human modeling applications. In this sense, we introduce in this thesis the notion of abductive design of BDI agent-based Digital Twins of organizations, which builds on two powerful reasoning disciplines: reverse engineering (to recreate the visible behaviour of the target system) and goal-driven eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) (for viewing the behaviour of the target system through the lens of BDI agents). Precisely speaking, the overall problem we are trying to address in this thesis is to “Find a BDI agent program that best explains (in the sense of formal abduction) the behaviour of a target system based on its past experiences . To do so, we propose three goal-driven XAI techniques: (1) abductive design of BDI agents, (2) leveraging imperfect explanations and (3) mining belief-based explanations. The resulting approach suggests that using goal-driven XAI to generate Digital Twins of organizations in the form of BDI agents can be effective, even in a setting with limited information about the target system’s behaviour

Government policies affecting the sheep industry in the northern Jordanian badia and Bedouin responses

This study investigates the Bedouin awareness of and responses to the government’s policies that are related to the livestock industry in Jordan. It presents the government’s policies that have both a direct or an indirect impact on the livestock industry. Policies with direct impact are related to credit, rangeland, feed and subsidy, animal health, co-operatives, water, export and import policies and the Bedouin’s vehicles. Policies with an indirect impact on the livestock rearing related to health and education. The study area was the Jordan Badia Research and Development Programme. Information about the government's policies was obtained from all the responsible organisations. Interviews, using semi-structured interview and focus group methods, were held with Bedouin from the study area in order to know the Bedouin awareness of and responses to the government's policies. The most significant finding of this study is that there is a gap between the government’s policies and their implementation from one side and between the government and Bedouin from the other. Bedouin have no clear idea about these polices and no idea at all in many cases. Other countries' experience, from the literature, has been discussed in this study. Jordan can learn lessons from these experiences in order to bridge the gap mentioned above

Exploring the link between sustainable development practices, institutional pressures, and green innovation

Academics, business leaders, and policymakers are paying more and more attention to sustainable development. The influence of external forces on sustainable development practices, which could predict green innovation, is, however, still unexplored. This paper seeks to explore the role of external pressures on sustainable development practices in the driving of green innovation in Saudi Arabia. We took a quantitative approach through an online survey to collect the required data from manufacturing companies in Saudi Arabia. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. The results revealed that institutional pressures (i.e., governance pressure, customer pressures, and competitive pressure) are key drivers of sustainable development practices and green innovation. They also indicated that sustainable development practices (i.e., environmental sustainability, social sustainability, and economic environmental sustainability) have a significant influence on green innovation. Our findings lead us to propose that green innovation is influenced by external pressures and sustainable development practices

Investigating the use of innovative dynamic capabilities from a structuration perspective: A study of automotive innovation project

The way in which organisations encounter the environmental, technological and innovative fluctuations in the era of market dynamism provides an opportunity to review their growth, survival and failure. Observers found that the fine line between the success and failure of such organisations essentially pertains to their capacity to manage innovative dynamism in their business environments. As a consequence, organisations realised that the development of dynamic capabilities is crucial for their innovation and technological changes. Dynamic capabilities have been conceptualized as a mechanism for addressing turbulent business environments through assisting organizations to extend, amend and reconfigure existing operational capabilities to fit within these environments. Dynamic capabilities have been theoretically investigated in the last decade with interest in the strategic management field and how to inject new vigor into empirical research. However, none of these studies has considered the role of complementarity between action and structure while developing new innovations or maintaining existing ones and the role played by the innovative dynamic capabilities in either constraining or enabling such complementarity. As the issues of action and structure are considered to be fundamental research domain in the field of innovation process, this thesis investigates the use of innovative dynamic capabilities in the development of innovation projects from a structuration perspective. I adopt structuration theory as a framework within which to integrate the perspective of dynamic capabilities with innovation as a complementary field, in order to understand how the activities related to the processes of dynamic capabilities are structurally implemented in the development of innovation projects. I also conceptualise two distinct types of innovative dynamic capabilities: protective and destructive. The latter type enables change in the existing innovation projects and their associated rules, facilitates, agents and actions, and the former acts as a constraint to such change. As a consequence, two promising research gaps – the need to investigate empirically dynamic capabilities in a combination with a complementary field and to understand and investigate dynamic capabilities through the dualism between structure and action – are addressed through providing empirical evidence via integrating the findings of a semi-longitudinal case study with this thesis’s theoretical accounts, which are dynamic capabilities, structuration and innovation. Finally, the contributions of the thesis to knowledge and its practical implications, in addition to a summary of its fundamental findings, limitations and suggestions for future research are all presented

Cochlear Implantation in Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder

20 page(s

Non-linear model error and resolution properties from two-dimensional single and joint inversions of direct current resistivity and radiomagnetotelluric data

For the first time, a comparative analysis of the resolution and variance properties of 2-D models of electrical resistivity derived from single and joint inversions of dc resistivity (DCR) and radiomagnetotelluric (RMT) measurements is presented. DCR and RMT data are inverted with a smoothness-constrained 2-D scheme. Model resolution, model variance and data resolution analyses are performed both with a classical linearized scheme that employs the smoothness-constrained generalized inverse and a non-linear truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD). In the latter method, the model regularization used in the inversion is avoided and non-linear semi-axes give an approximate description of the non-linear confidence surface in the directions of the model eigenvectors. Hence, this method analyses the constraints that can be provided by the data. Model error estimates are checked against improved and independent estimates of model variability from most-squares inversions. For single and joint inverse models of synthetic data sets, the smoothness-constrained scheme suggests relatively small model errors (typically up to 30 to 40 per cent) and resolving kernels that are spread over several cells in the vicinity of the investigated cell. Linearized smoothness-constrained errors are in good agreement with the corresponding most-squares errors. The variability of the RMT model as estimated from non-linear semi-axes is confirmed by TSVD-based most-squares inversions for most model cells within the depth range of investigation. In contrast to this, most-squares errors of the DCR model are consistently larger than errors estimated from non-linear semi-axes except for the smallest truncation levels. The model analyses confirm previous studies that DCR data can constrain resistive and conductive structures equally well while RMT data provide superior constraints for conductive structures. The joint inversion can improve error and resolution of structures which are within the depth ranges of exploration of both methods. In such parts of the model which are outside the depth range of exploration for one method, error and resolution of the joint inverse model are close to those of the best single inversion result subject to an appropriate weighting of the different data set

The effectiveness of cognitive behaviour therapy on social and academic adjustment among Jordan female secondary school students in Jordan

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) as a counselling intervention in education has shown positive evidence in solving some of the school problems such as school adjustment, academic functioning and academic success among adolescent students. However, there is a dearth of CBT application in relation to social and academic adjustment. The current study tested the relevance of CBT to Jordanian adolescent students that accords with the Jordanian educational counselling reforms. The study aims to investigate the effectiveness of CBT on social and academic adjustment among Jordanian adolescent students. The research used a quasi-experimental non-equivalent group design involving 68 female secondary school students. The experimental group underwent a CBT intervention for eight sessions (45 minutes each) in a regular classroom setting aided by a trained counsellor. Whereas, the control group used Regular School Counselling Program for the same amount of time in a regular classroom setting. Data were gathered for pre-test and post-test using SA-Scale by Fudah (2008) and AA-Scale by Nassar (2010) for the variables (social and academic adjustment). The pilot study confirmed the reliability of the questionnaire. A one-way ANCOVA in the post-test revealed that the experimental group shows better significant results compared to the control group for all variables. The significant mean differences were observed between the pre-test and the post-test for the experimental group for social adjustment based on SA-Scale, and between the means of the pre-test and the post-test for the experimental group for academic adjustment based on AA- Scale. The findings have supported the use of CBT in educational counselling which could increase the levels of social and academic adjustment. This study recommends that CBT techniques are updated regularly and conducted consistently to enhance social and academic adjustment among adolescent students