Do blind persons have better audiometric hearing threshold values than sighted persons? A pair-matching analysis

Objective: This study aimed to report difference in audiometric hearing threshold values between blind and sighted persons.Methods: This was a comparative cross-sectional study of blind and normally sighted students hearing thresholds. Two groups were formed experimental and control groups respectively, matched for age only. Audiometric threshold hearing values were obtained using an Audiometer in accordance with the modified Hughson-Westlake technique at frequencies of 0.5 to 4 kHz. The Pure Tone Average is the average value at these frequencies for the better ear.Results: Each group had 23 participants, mean threshold values for blind group was 17.45dB (95%CI: 16.59 - 18.30dB); while for the sighted group is 17.59dB (95%CI: 15.90 - 19.28dB). Overall, tests did not reveal a statistical significance  even though normal sighted students had higher threshold values.Conclusion: The study did not reveal a difference between audiometric threshold values between sighted and blind persons.Keywords: Blind, sighted, audiometric values, differenc

Critical success factors for projects in the petroleum industry

The paper identifies the critical success factors for petroleum projects. Factors have been obtained from existing literature and tested in the petroleum industry. The paper identifies 58 success factors that have been categorised into 11 groups. These factors were tested and grouped based on their individual relative importance index. The paper highlights the importance of project risk management and requirements management in achieving project success in the petroleum industry. The study also highlights the importance of the soft aspects of risk management in achieving successful implementation of project risk management and scope management in requirements management implementation

Implementation of a risk management simulation tool

Risk management is an essential part of project management. Proactive management of risk in projects helps increase the success rate of projects and the reduction of potential costs. The paper presents a new tool for implementing the risk management process in projects. The tool allows participants to understand a project further, and to analyse risks in a project using various methods such as risk exposure and Monte Carlo method. From the results of the study, the tool helps in improving the understanding and implementation of risk management in projects. The tool implementation and results are discussed in this paper

Attitudes to risk in petroleum projects

The paper identifies common personality traits and attitudes to risk management for people in the petroleum industry. The research was conducted with the aid of a survey and was addressed to people who have participated in the delivery of petroleum projects, with fifty responses obtained. The questions in the survey were based on Jung's personality theory and risk decisions identified from previous projects. Using Jung's personality classification, it has been concluded that people who deliver petroleum projects are judgers (Relationship with the world), more extrovert than introvert (Focus on attention), more intuitive than sensing (Seeking of information), and finally more thinkers than feelers (Decision makers). The results also show that the respondents are aware of different forms of risk in a project and prefer not to introduce any form of risk to a project

Decision making in Engineering Projects

Even though risk management is a vital aspect of project management, the way that risk-based decisions are taken in projects is not well documented. Economic theory employs the concept of utility and assumes that decision makers are rational. Behavioural economics and prospect theory challenge this idea, making a number of specific claims about how decision-making behaviour deviates from rationality in practice. Based on a focus group discussion with project managers, this research highlights the importance of risk management in underpinning decision making and investigates the extent of rationality and applicability of prospect theory in an engineering project context. Prospect theory’s claims of reference dependence and loss aversion are found to be important, but the claims of diminishing sensitivity and probability weighting appear to be less relevant

Critical success factors for the construction industry

This study aims to identify the critical success factors for projects in the construction industry. A list of factors were identified from the existing literature and grouped into categories. The authors added project risk management and requirements management to the list of categories to test the hypothesis that these should also be considered as critical success factors in the construction industry. The study identified 58 success factors classified into 11 groups, which were tested using an elicitation technique. Forty-nine responses were collected from project managers, who had an average or 15 years of project management experience and had participated in more than 15 projects. Once the data was collected, the authors adopted the use of the relative importance index to rank the categories. From the results, the top five most important are (1) Project Organization, (2) Project Manager Competence, (3) Project Risk Management, (4) Project Team Competence and (5) Requirements Management. This lead to the conclusion that both project risk management and requirements management should be considered as critical success factors. Further analysis of the data highlights the importance of scope management and soft skills in Requirements Management and Project Risk Management respectively

Attitudes to risk management in space projects

This paper aims to examine the personalities of people currently working in the delivery of space projects. The study employed an online survey which included twenty-fi ve Likert scale questions based on risk decision scenarios and personality questions. A total of 50 responses were collected from people with experience in the delivery of space projects. The results of this study suggest that people who have experience in space project delivery have a high level and long term view, are fair and pleasing, extroverted and logical decision takers, prefer to freeze scope and respect deadlines and to make team consensus decisions. The results also show that the respondents are prepared to make risky decisions depending on the situation and case

The Effects of Coordination Mechanisms and Tie Strength on the Adoption and Diffusion of Open Standards

Organizations today face a great challenge from the unpredictable, globalized and competitive business environment. One of the ways that organizations achieve competitive advantages is through the adoption of open standard inter-organizational systems (OSIOS) and its diffusion across supply chains. Despite the benefits that are promised by the adoption of OSIOS, its adoption has slowed down and there are increased cases of failure in OSIOS adoptions. In trying to understand some of its drivers, this study examines various factors relating to the social network theory and coordination theory with the assimilation of OSIOS. A survey questionnaire was administered, collected from 101 companies in China, and examined as a pilot study. Using partial least square analysis, we found that while extent of coordination mechanism plays a role in both adoption and diffusion, tie strength only affects the latter. Results are briefly discussed

Meta-Analysis of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT): Challenging its Validity and Charting A Research Agenda in the Red Ocean

There are both formal and informal cries that UTAUT and by association the stream of research on technology adoption has reached its limit, with little or no opportunities for new knowledge creation. Such a conclusion is ironic because the theory has not been sufficiently and suitably replicated. It is possible that the misspecifications in the various replications, applications, and extensions led to the incorrect conclusion that UTAUT was more robust than it really was and opportunities for future work were limited. Although work on UTAUT has included important variables, predictors and moderators, absent a faithful use of the original specification, it is impossible to assess the true nature of the effects of the original and additional variables. The present meta-analysis uses 25,619 effect sizes reported by 737,112 users in 1,935 independent samples to address this issue. Consequently, we develop a clear current state-of-the-art and revised UTAUT that extends the original theory with new endogenous mechanisms from different, other theories (i.e., technology compatibility, user education, personal innovativeness, and costs of technology) and new moderating mechanisms to examine the generalizability of UTAUT in different contexts (e.g., technology type and national culture). Based on this revised UTAUT, we present a research agenda that can guide future research on the topic of technology adoption in general and UTAUT in particular

AN EXTENSIVE REVIEW OF INTERORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEMS RESEARCH 2006-2015

There has been a large quantity of research that has been carried out on interorganizational systems in recent years. Because research in this area has been carried out for a long time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find new aspects of it to explore. The aim of this study is to identify the published literature on IOS from 2006 to 2015, review them, and apply a suitable framework to categorize them based on the aspect of the topic they explore. The categorization framework employed for the study consists of four broad categories: IOS infrastructure, IOS assimilation, IOS dynamics, and IOS impacts. We further present a comprehensive reference of the reviewed literature. We hope to contribute in guiding future researchers of IOS by showcasing aspects of the topic that has been researched, and help them discover new avenues of IOS to explore