Trade’s Hidden Costs: Worker Rights in a Changing World Economy

[Excerpt] For decades, the U.S. foreign assistance program has sought with limited results to further economic development and growth in Third World countries. We have witnessed some countries making real progress toward development through industrialization, only to find more of their people trapped in hunger and poverty. Hopefully, it is apparent that for development to be effective, it must benefit the broadest sectors of the population within any society. Why are worker rights crucial to the development process? The capacity to form unions and to bargain collectively to achieve higher wages and safer working conditions is essential to the overall struggle of working people everywhere to achieve minimally decent living standards and to overcome hunger and poverty. The denial of worker rights, especially in Third World countries, tends to perpetuate poverty, to limit the benefits of economic development and growth to narrow, privileged elites and to sow the seeds of social instability and political rebellion

Jesse James\u27 Hideout or Civil War Midden?

Whether the infamous outlaw Jesse James (1847-1882) ever lived in Iron County Missouri during his post-Civil War crime spree is a highly debated issue shrouded in legend and myth. A plot of land called “The Hideout” in Southern Iron County is a prime source for these legends to be tested. Archaeologists Benjamin Ebert, Steven Meyer, and Tim Evers will attempt to answer the question “Could Jesse James have stayed at the Hideout?” Iron County is steeped in rich history dating back to the Civil War, and other historic landmarks add credence to the legends and help push tourism and preservation efforts. With constant urbanization and potential erosion as a looming threat to destroying the site, this research becomes more crucial with every passing day. A collection of approximately 100 artifacts previously recovered from the site will be cataloged and examined. Photography and oral interviews with local experts will create a timeframe for the site. Google Earth and old maps will be researched to better understand the geography and historical context of the site during the late 19th century. Digital research and contemporary literature sources will create a living roadmap for the path and timeframe that Jesse James went through in Southern Missouri during his crime spree. Using these methods, a timeline will be established for both Jesse James and the “Hideout” to give credence to any possible link

Overcoming Cloud Concerns with Trusted Execution Environments? Exploring the Organizational Perception of a Novel Security Technology in Regulated Swiss Companies

Trusted execution environments are a new approach for isolating data, specific parts of code, or an entire application within untrusted cloud environments. This emerging security technology could also enable the migration to cloud infrastructures for organizations working with highly sensitive data. As current research does not address the organizational perception of trusted execution environments (TEEs), we conducted an explorative study to clarify the technological, environmental, and organizational views on this technology by health care, life sciences, and banking companies in Switzerland. The interview findings show that in these industries, missing technological knowledge as well as privacy and process regulation are perceived to be the most critical driver for organizational adoption of TEEs. The identified low intrinsic motivation to adopt novel technologies permits us to conclude that clarifying the regulatory impact of TEEs could drive future adoption by organizations

THE DATA COLLABORATION CANVAS: A VISUAL FRAMEWORK FOR SYSTEMATICALLY IDENTIFYING AND EVALUATING ORGANIZATIONAL DATA COLLABORATION OPPORTUNITIES

For organizations, the use of Big Data and data analytics provides the opportunity to gain competitive advantages and foster innovation. In most of these data analytics initiatives, it is possible that data from external stakeholders could enrich the internal data assets and lead to enhanced outcomes. Currently, no framework is available that systematically guides practitioners in identifying and evaluating suitable inter-organizational data collaborations at an early stage. This paper closes the gap by following an action design research approach to develop the Data Collaboration Canvas (DCC). The DCC was rigorously evaluated by practitioners from Swiss organizations in six different industries, instantiated in four workshops, and used to guide innovative data collaboration projects. This artifact gives practitioners a guideline for identifying data collaboration opportunities and an insight into the main factors that must be addressed before further pursuing a collaborative partnership

Cyberangriffe und IT-Sicherheitsmassnahmen in der Schweizer Speditions- und Logistikindustrie : Standortbestimmung im Q1/2023

Anlässlich der akuten Bedrohungslage durch Cyberattacken weltweit wurde im ersten Quartal 2023 im Rahmen einer Masterarbeit untersucht, wie sich die aktuelle Situation bezüglich Cyberangriffe und IT-Sicherheitsmassnahmen in der Schweizer Speditions- und Logistikindustrie darstellt. Das Ergebnis wurde anschliessend mit der Situation in der Schweizer Tech-Industrie (Maschinen-, Elektro- und Metall-Industrie sowie verwandte Technologiebranchen) und mit der deutschen Logistik- und Tech-Industrie verglichen. Es zeigte sich, dass die Unternehmen der Schweizer Speditions- und Logistikindustrie ähnlich, wenn auch technisch und organisatorisch unterschiedlich ausgeprägt, auf Cyberangriffe vorbereitet sind wie die Unternehmen der Schweizer Tech-Industrie. Zudem haben die angegriffenen Unternehmen der Schweizer Speditions- und Logistikindustrie ihre IT-Sicherheitsmassnahmen nach den Angriffen nochmals deutlich verbessert. Abschliessend wird empfohlen, das Thema Cybersicherheit auf Geschäftsleitungsebene in einem zentralen Risikomanagement zu verankern und dem Faktor Mensch künftig noch mehr Beachtung zu schenken. Insbesondere auf künstlicher Intelligenz basierende Cyberangriffe sind immer schwieriger zu erkennen, weshalb in entsprechende Sensibilisierungsmassnahmen bei den Mitarbeitenden investiert werden sollte, um die Cybersicherheit der Unternehmen zu erhöhen

Data collaboration canvas : facilitating data innovation between organizations

The Data Collaboration Canvas (DCC) is a visual framework that allows users to generate ideas for sharing data across (or within) organizations. It can be used by organizations that want to explore the potential of data innovation with other organizations at an early stage of the collaboration to create mutual added value. This simple, visual structuring aid can, among other things, be employed in workshops to identify common potential and hurdles of collaboration. The DCC helps to identify opportunities for data collaboration between companies or within an organization (e.g., between different divisions or departments)

Trusted execution environments : applications and organizational challenges

A lack of trust in the providers is still a major barrier to cloud computing adoption – especially when sensitive data is involved. While current privacy-enhancing technologies, such as homomorphic encryption, can increase security, they come with a considerable performance overhead. As an alternative Trusted Executing Environment (TEE) provides trust guarantees for code execution in the cloud similar to transport layer security for data transport or advanced encryption standard algorithms for data storage. Cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft introduced TEEs as part of their infrastructure offerings. This review will shed light on the different technological options of TEEs, as well as give insight into organizational issues regarding their usage

Evaluation of randomized controlled trials: a primer and tutorial for mental health researchers

Background Considered one of the highest levels of evidence, results of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) remain an essential building block in mental health research. They are frequently used to confirm that an intervention “works” and to guide treatment decisions. Given their importance in the field, it is concerning that the quality of many RCT evaluations in mental health research remains poor. Common errors range from inadequate missing data handling and inappropriate analyses (e.g., baseline randomization tests or analyses of within-group changes) to unduly interpretations of trial results and insufficient reporting. These deficiencies pose a threat to the robustness of mental health research and its impact on patient care. Many of these issues may be avoided in the future if mental health researchers are provided with a better understanding of what constitutes a high-quality RCT evaluation. Methods In this primer article, we give an introduction to core concepts and caveats of clinical trial evaluations in mental health research. We also show how to implement current best practices using open-source statistical software. Results Drawing on Rubin’s potential outcome framework, we describe that RCTs put us in a privileged position to study causality by ensuring that the potential outcomes of the randomized groups become exchangeable. We discuss how missing data can threaten the validity of our results if dropouts systematically differ from non-dropouts, introduce trial estimands as a way to co-align analyses with the goals of the evaluation, and explain how to set up an appropriate analysis model to test the treatment effect at one or several assessment points. A novice-friendly tutorial is provided alongside this primer. It lays out concepts in greater detail and showcases how to implement techniques using the statistical software R, based on a real-world RCT dataset. Discussion Many problems of RCTs already arise at the design stage, and we examine some avoidable and unavoidable “weak spots” of this design in mental health research. For instance, we discuss how lack of prospective registration can give way to issues like outcome switching and selective reporting, how allegiance biases can inflate effect estimates, review recommendations and challenges in blinding patients in mental health RCTs, and describe problems arising from underpowered trials. Lastly, we discuss why not all randomized trials necessarily have a limited external validity and examine how RCTs relate to ongoing efforts to personalize mental health care

QButterfly : lightweight survey extension for online user interaction studies for non-tech-savvy researchers

We provide a user-friendly, flexible, and lightweight open-source HCI toolkit (github.com/QButterfly) that allows non-tech-savvy researchers to conduct online user interaction studies using the widespread Qualtrics and LimeSurvey platforms. These platforms already provide rich functionality (e.g., for experiments or usability tests) and therefore lend themselves to an extension to display stimulus web pages and record clickstreams. The toolkit consists of a survey template with embedded JavaScript, a JavaScript library embedded in the HTML web pages, and scripts to analyze the collected data. No special programming skills are required to set up a study or match survey data and user interaction data after data collection. We empirically validated the software in a laboratory and a field study. We conclude that this extension, even in its preliminary version, has the potential to make online user interaction studies (e.g., with crowdsourced participants) accessible to a broader range of researchers