Communication through Social Technologies: A Study of Israeli Women

Social technologies have changed the way we communicate allowing users to interact, share knowledge, reach out to friends and family, keep up with the news, and even promote and support a business. A study of Israeli women was conducted to determine how social technologies platforms — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ — are used and the benefits realized. Women worldwide face challenges including economic, educational, health, and political. Israel women, like women in every other country in the world, are challenged with gender inequity. Do women who use social technologies believe that these platforms provide empowerment leading to greater success? This paper discusses Israel’s global gender gap scores and rankings in four categories as compared with 144 other countries and reports the results of a study of the use of social technologies by Israeli women in the workplace

How Well Do Executives Trust Their Intuition

In this age of Big Data and analytics, knowledge gained through experiential learning and intuition may be taking a back seat to analytics. However, the use of intuition should not be underestimated and should play an important role in the decision process. How Well Do Executives Trust Their Intuition covers the Fulbright research study conducted by this international team of editors. The main question of their investigation is: How well do executives trust their intuition? In other words, do they typically prefer intuition over analysis and analytics. And equally importantly, what types of intuition may be most favorable looking at different variables? The research utilizes survey and biometrics approaches with C-level executives from Canada, U.S., Poland, and Italy. In addition, the book contains chapters from leading executives in industry, academia, and government. Their insights provide examples of how their intuition enabled key decisions that they made. This book covers such topics as: Using intuition How gender, experience, role, industry, and country affect intuition Trust and intuition in management Trusting intuition It’s a matter of heart Leadership intuition and the future of work Creating an intuitive awareness for executives Improvisation and instinct. The book explores how executives can use intuition to guide decision making. It also explains how to trust intuition-based decisions. How Well Do Executives Trust Their Intuition is a timely and prescient reminder in this age of data-driven analytics that human insight, instinct, and intuition should also play key roles

Do technology and social media preferences differ with age? A study of the use of social technologies for business purposes in Spain

Social technologies have rapidly become part of the workplace culture with companies using social platforms to communicate, for customer service, to gain exposure and create awareness, to gain new customers, to increase revenue and profits, for marketing purposes, to network and build relationships, and for recruiting purposes. This paper reports the results of a study of the usage of social technologies by working women in Spain to determine the purposes for using these platforms in a business environment. Furthermore, statistical analyses of the data reveal whether the age of the respondents make a difference in social media preferences. Based on these results, organizations will have a better grasp of how to optimize the use of social technologies in business and which age groups are better suited for managing specific platforms based on the purposes studied, thus adding to the literature in the field

Evaluating and profiling student engagement and motivation at a higher education institution

PURPOSE: This study aimed to identify the main areas and features of student engagement at a university. The research also focuses on evaluating the main features of student engagement that can be used for profiling student motivation.METHODOLOGY: The data for this study was gathered at the end of the spring semester of 2018 at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences (WULS), one of the largest life sciences universities in Poland, using an Internet-based instrument called Evolute. The data in this research consisted of self-evaluation responses from 242 undergraduate students on Master’s and Bachelor’s programs. The respondents filled out an online questionnaire.FINDINGS: The results were presented in a three-stage analysis (descriptive statistics, a fuzzy logic-based method, and a clustering method for profiling student engagement). The results identified some key attributes of student engagement. The highest creative tension was noticed in student satisfaction, which reflects a gap in that area that could be improved by the university. The findings showed that highly motivated students presented high values in routinization and goal progress.PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The proposed solution could be used for further profiling according to applied additional criteria, such as type, of course, year of education, lecturers, work experience, etc.ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The study findings hold essential theoretical and practical implications for educators and researchers seeking to understand how students evaluate their engagement and reveal the gaps in university committees.peer-reviewe

The Usability of E-learning Platforms in Higher Education: A Systematic Mapping Study

The use of e-learning in higher education has increased significantly in recent years, which has led to several studies being conducted to investigate the usability of the platforms that support it. A variety of different usability evaluation methods and attributes have been used, and it has therefore become important to start reviewing this work in a systematic way to determine how the field has developed in the last 15 years. This paper describes a systematic mapping study that performed searches on five electronic libraries to identify usability issues and methods that have been used to evaluate e-learning platforms. Sixty-one papers were selected and analysed, with the majority of studies using a simple research design reliant on questionnaires. The usability attributes measured were mostly related to effectiveness, satisfaction, efficiency, and perceived ease of use. Furthermore, several research gaps have been identified and recommendations have been made for further work in the area of the usability of online learning

Knowledge Management, Trust and Communication in the Era of Social Media

The article entitled "Selected Aspects of Evaluating Knowledge Management Quality in Contemporary Enterprises" broadens the understanding of knowledge management and estimates select aspects of knowledge management quality evaluations in modern enterprises from theoretical and practical perspectives. The seventh article aims to present the results of pilot studies on the four largest Information Communication Technology (ICT) companies' involvement in promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through social media. Studies examine which communication strategy is used by companies in social media. The primary purpose of the eighth article is to present the relationship between trust and knowledge sharing, taking into account the importance of this issue in the efficiency of doing business. The results showed that trust is vital in sharing knowledge and essential in achieving a high-performance efficiency level. The ninth article presents the impact of social media on consumer choices in tourism and tourist products' specificity. The study's main purpose was to indicate the most commonly used social media in selecting a tourist destination and implementing Generation Y's journey. The 10th article aims to identify the most critical purposes of using social media by responding to women's attitudes according to age and their respective countries' economic development. The research was done through an online survey in 2017-2018, followed by an analysis of eight countries' results. The article entitled "Integrated Question-Answering System for Natural Disaster Domains Based on Social Media Messages Posted at the Time of Disaster" presents the framework of a question-answering system that was developed using a Twitter dataset containing more than 9 million tweets compiled during the Osaka North Earthquake that occurred on 18 June 2018. The authors also study the structure of the questions posed and develop methods for classifying them into particular categories to find answers from the dataset using an ontology, word similarity, keyword frequency, and natural language processing. The book provides a theoretical and practical background related to trust, knowledge management, and communication in the era of social media. The editor believes that the collection of articles can be relevant to professionals, researchers, and students' needs. The authors try to diagnose the situation and show the new challenges and future directions in this are

Social Media in Communicating about Social and Environmental Issues—Non-Financial Reports in Poland

The main purpose of this article is to analyze the dissemination of social reports among entrepreneurs in order to determine the number of reporting organizations and examples in which Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) areas enterprises report. We analyze the dissemination of social reports among entrepreneurs in Poland and determine the number of reporting organizations and examples in which CSR companies report. This work is a guide for entrepreneurs in Poland to build strategies and activities for transparency and communicating good practice. One of the research goals was to identify and evaluate communication activities with stakeholders in terms of responsible activities, social and environmental. The data analysis comes from a detailed literature review and the Responsible Business Forum (FOB) Reports database for 2008–2019 in Poland. The results of the survey show that many entrepreneurs in Poland, representing small, medium-sized (SME), and even large enterprises underestimate the importance of socially responsible activities. Entrepreneurs communicate with stakeholders to a limited extent and are not informed about good practices. The vast majority of the surveyed enterprises, especially large ones, prepare social reports, which result from obligation: requirements of Directive 2014/95/EU. The SME sector shows a lack of knowledge and uses individual marketing communication tools to a limited extent, limiting itself to advertising activities (very few companies prepare social reports). The article is a practical tip for enterprises showing the impact of business on changes towards sustainable development. Originality/value lies in the fact that the article presents selected research results on various aspects related to social reporting and communicating social and environmental activities to stakeholders