The Impact of Knowledge Management Success Factors on Electronic Business in Jordanian Telecom Companies

Abstract: The study aimed to identify the impact of knowledge management success factors represented (organizational culture, administrative leadership, organizational structure, information technology infrastructure, standards) on electronic business (electronic information, electronic communications, electronic work flow), and the study community included all employees in Jordanian telecom companies, where the three telecommunications companies (Umniah, Zain, Orange) agreed to participate in the study, and (240) questionnaires were distributed to employees in those companies, and (191) questionnaires were retrieved, of which (188) were valid questionnaires for analysis with an actual response amount of (78.3%), which is similar to the final study sample. The study used the descriptive analytical method, and assumed a positive impact of the factors of success of knowledge management on electronic business in Jordanian telecom companies. The results showed that there is an awareness of the factors of success of knowledge management among employees in Jordanian telecom companies, where the arithmetic averages for the organizational culture variables, information technology infrastructure and knowledge measures came within the level of high importance, and the variable of administrative leadership and the organizational structure variable came within the level of intermediate importance in the current study, as well all averages of e-business dimensions came within the high level of importance, as well as the overall e-business variable, in addition to that, the results indicated a positive impact of the factors of success of knowledge management on e-business in Jordanian telecom companies; as the variable of knowledge management success factors explained (65.7%) of the variance in e-business, and the results also indicated that the variable of information technology infrastructure was the most influencing electronic information, and the second ranked in the impact of organizational culture, while the variables of administrative leadership do not affect the organizational structure and measures of knowledge on electronic information, and the results also showed that the variable of the information technology infrastructure ranked first in the impact on electronic communications, followed by the effect of the variable of organizational culture, and then the organizational structure variable, while the administrative leadership and knowledge standards variables do not affect, finally it showed the results indicated that the variable of the IT infrastructure was the most influential in the electronic work flow, and came second in the organizational structure, and the organizational culture ranked third, and the fourth came the variable of administrative leadership, while the electronic work flow variable was not affected by knowledge measures. Based on the results, the study recommended the need to pay attention to the employees awareness of the importance of success factors Knowledge Management, given its impact on e-business, by maintaining the level of organizational culture, and constantly enhancing it, raising the level of awareness of managers and decision makers about the importance of knowledge management success factors and their impact on e-business, developing the capabilities of employees, and creating a special administrative unit, concerned with knowledge management and organization Its operations, in addition to adopting successful organizational structures that increase the level of knowledge, as well as the need to develop and promote electronic business in Jordanian telecom companies, by paying attention to the communication infrastructure, and providing modern electronic workflow systems, the study also recommended researchers to conduct other studies on management success factors Knowledge and e-business in other study societies and other organizational outputs

Skeleton based cage generation guided by harmonic fields

International audienceWe propose a novel user-assisted cage generation tool. We start from a digital character and its skeleton, and create a coarse control cage for its animation. Our method requires minimal interaction to select bending points on the skeleton, and computes the corresponding cage automatically. The key contribution is a volumetric field defined in the interior of the character and embedding the skeleton. The integral lines of such field are used to propagate cutting surfaces from the interior of the character to its skin, and allow us to robustly trace non-planar cross sections that adapt to the local shape of the character. Our method overcomes previous approaches that rely on the popular (but tedious and limiting) cutting planes. We validated our software on a variety of digital characters. Our final cages are coarse yet entirely compliant with the structure induced by the underlying skeleton, enriched with the semantics provided by the bending points selected by the user. Automatic placement of bending nodes for a fully automatic caging pipeline is also supported

The Palestinian primary ciliary dyskinesia population: first results of the diagnostic, and genetic spectrum

BACKGROUND: Diagnostic testing for primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) started in 2013 in Palestine. We aimed to describe the diagnostic, genetic and clinical spectrum of the Palestinian PCD population. METHODS: Individuals with symptoms suggestive of PCD were opportunistically considered for diagnostic testing: nasal nitric oxide (nNO) measurement, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and/or PCD genetic panel or whole-exome testing. Clinical characteristics of those with a positive diagnosis were collected close to testing including forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) Global Lung Index z-scores and body mass index z-scores. RESULTS: 68 individuals had a definite positive PCD diagnosis, 31 confirmed by genetic and TEM results, 23 by TEM results alone, and 14 by genetic variants alone. 45 individuals from 40 families had 17 clinically actionable variants and four had variants of unknown significance in 14 PCD genes. CCDC39, DNAH11 and DNAAF11 were the most commonly mutated genes. 100% of variants were homozygous. Patients had a median age of 10.0 years at diagnosis, were highly consanguineous (93%) and 100% were of Arabic descent. Clinical features included persistent wet cough (99%), neonatal respiratory distress (84%) and situs inversus (43%). Lung function at diagnosis was already impaired (FEV1 z-score median −1.90 (−5.0–1.32)) and growth was mostly within the normal range (z-score mean −0.36 (−3.03–2.57). 19% individuals had finger clubbing. CONCLUSIONS: Despite limited local resources in Palestine, detailed geno- and phenotyping forms the basis of one of the largest national PCD populations globally. There was notable familial homozygosity within the context of significant population heterogeneity

You Thought That This Would Be Easy? Seeking an Understanding of Episodic Volunteering

This article is intended as the leading article in a Special Issue of Voluntas devoted to episodic volunteering from a cross-cultural perspective. This article focuses on summarizing and distilling knowledge about episodic volunteering. Based on a thorough literature review, the authors present state-of-the-art knowledge about episodic volunteering divided into key subsections that include: (1) is episodic volunteering a new area or a new era in volunteering? (2) Defining the concept of episodic volunteering, (3) the singularity of episodic volunteering, (4) assessment of the domains where episodic volunteering is most prevalent, (5) the impact of episodic volunteering on the participating individuals, (6) new parties in volunteer organizations, and (7) managing episodic volunteers. Finally, we present current gaps in our knowledge of episodic volunteers, some of which will be covered in this Special Issue, especially understanding episodic volunteering in non-English-speaking countries

Islamic Activism and Democratization in the Middle East and North Africa

Political Science; European Unio

Green growth, governance, and green technology innovation. How effective towards SDGs in G7 countries?

AbstractIn light of the technological advancement and green growth in G7 economies, this research investigates the trends in sustainable development goals (SDGs) as reflected through social and environmental dimensions. Data were collected from 2000 to 2019 with yearly observation for advanced panel estimations.The preliminary finding raises the issues of cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity; thus, we have applied the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag(CS-ARDL) model.The long-run findings confirm that technological innovations and green growth encourage environmental sustainability. Moreover, economic growth, green technological innovations, and government effectiveness have significantly promoted social development through higher employment opportunities. Similar results are also observed in the short run; however, the influence is more substantial in the long run. These findings imply that green growth, eco-innovations, and institutional governance are core drivers of SDGs in the long run

Skeleton based cage generation guided by harmonic fields

We propose a novel user-assisted cage generation tool. We start from a digital character and its skeleton, and create a coarse control cage for its animation. Our method requires minimal interaction to select bending points on the skeleton, and computes the corresponding cage automatically. The key contribution is a volumetric field defined in the interior of the character and embedding the skeleton. The integral lines of such field are used to propagate cutting surfaces from the interior of the character to its skin, and allow us to robustly trace non-planar cross sections that adapt to the local shape of the character. Our method overcomes previous approaches that rely on the popular (but tedious and limiting) cutting planes. We validated our software on a variety of digital characters. Our final cages are coarse yet entirely compliant with the structure induced by the underlying skeleton, enriched with the semantics provided by the bending points selected by the user. Automatic placement of bending nodes for a fully automatic caging pipeline is also supported