Understanding the Determinantsof Project Performance: Empirical Evidencesfrom Software Houses of Pakistan

Thisstudy is investigating the effects of project quality, project risk and project governance on project performance. Moreover, this study investigatesthe moderation effect of project leadership on these relationships. Data is collected from 354 respondents of software houses and structural equation modeling (SEM) technique is utilized for data analysis. Results suggest that project quality, project risk and project leadership have positive significant impact on project performance while project governance does not have significant impact on project performance. Significant moderation effect of project leadership on the relationship between project quality and project performance is proved but project leadership has no moderation effect on the relationship between project governance, project risk and project performance. The findings of the study provide significant insights forsoftware houses ofPakistan to formulate strategies in order to develop a governance framework and enhance project performance in IT project management

A trust induced recommendation mechanism for reaching consensus in group decision making

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article addresses the inconsistency problem in group decision making caused by disparate opinions of multiple experts. To do so, a trust induced recommendation mechanism is investigated to generate personalised advices for the inconsistent experts to reach higher consensus level. The concept of trust degree (TD) is defined to identify the trusted opinion from group experts, and then the visual trust relationship is built to help experts ‘see’ their own trust preferences within the group. Consequently, trust based personalised advices are generated for the inconsistent experts to revisit their opinions. To model the uncertainty of experts, an interval-valued trust decision making space is defined. It includes the novel concepts of interval-valued trust functions, interval-valued trust score (IVTS) and interval-valued knowledge degree (IVKD). The concepts of consensus degree (CD) between an expert and the rest of experts in the group as well as the harmony degree (HD) between the original opinion and the revised opinion are developed for interval-valued trust functions. Combining HD and CD, a more reasonable policy for group consensus is proposed as it should arrive at the threshold value with the maximum value of harmony and consensus degrees simultaneously. Furthermore, because the trust induced recommendation mechanism focuses on changing inconsistent opinions using only opinions from the trusted experts and not from the distrusted ones, the HD based changes cost to reach the threshold value of consensus is lower than previous mechanisms based on the average of the opinion of all experts. Finally, once consensus has been achieved, a ranking order relation for interval-valued trust functions is constructed to select the most appropriate alternative

A knowledge coverage-based trust propagation for recommendation mechanism in social network group decision making

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Trust is a typical relationship in social network, which in group decision making problems relates to the inner relationship among experts. To obtain a complete trust relationship of a networked group of experts, firstly, a novel knowledge coverage-based trust propagation operator is proposed to estimate the trust relationship between pairs of unknown experts. The novelty of this trust propagation operator resides in its account of the domain knowledge coverage of experts. Desirable properties regarding boundary conditions, generalisation and knowledge coverage absorption are studied. The comparison with existing operators of boundary conditions shows the rationality of the proposed operator. Next, a knowledge coverage-based multi-paths trust propagation model for constructing complete trust network is investigated. The proposed approach aggregates all trust paths to collect all trust information and penalise trust decay. Secondly, a trust order induced recommendation mechanism is proposed by combining subjective and objective weights. Thus, experts can accept consensus recommendations by subjective and objective trust. This recommendation mechanism allows the inconsistent experts to accept the advices they trust. The validity and rationality of the proposed recommendation mechanism is mathematically proved, and a numerical example is utilised to illustrate the calculation process of the proposed method

The association between reproductive history and the multidimensional health of older adults in rural China and its gender differences: Evidence from the Chinese longitudinal healthy longevity survey

BackgroundFew studies have examined the association between reproductive history and the multidimensional health of older adults with more diverse reproductive histories and poorer health status in rural China. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of parity, sex ratio of children and late childbearing on multidimensional health and its gender differences.MethodsThe analytical sample consisted of 3,377 older adults in rural China who participated in the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) in 2018. Linear regression models were applied to estimate the relationship between reproductive history and multidimensional health, with separate models for each indicator of health outcomes.ResultsOlder adults in rural areas with greater parity were more likely to have better cognitive function (β = 0.409, 95% CI: 0.255–0.563), fewer Activities of Daily Living (ADL) limitations (β = −0.085, 95% CI: −0.137 to −0.034) and symptoms of depression (β = −0.396, 95% CI: −0.577 to −0.216). The social mechanism of intergenerational support from children later in life partly explained the positive effect of parity. Late childbearing had negative effects on cognitive function (β = −1.220, 95% CI: −1.895 to −0.545), ADL (β = 0.253, 95% CI: 0.028–0.478) and symptoms of depression (β = 1.025, 95% CI: 0.237–1.812). Women were more likely to be influenced by the positive effect of parity; the association between late childbearing and health was only significant in the male group.ConclusionsParity and late childbearing are associated with cognitive function, activities of daily living, and symptoms of depression in the older adults in rural China. Older adults with more children might be in better health, and this finding is especially significant in women. However, late childbearing had a negative effect on multidimensional health, especially for men. The social mechanism and gender differences between reproductive history and health need to be further explored

Tackling Complexity in Green Contractor Selection for Mega Infrastructure Projects: A Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic MADM Approach with considering Group Attitudinal Character and Attributes’ Interdependency

Continuous environmental concerns regarding construction industry have been driving general constructors of mega infrastructure projects to incorporate green contractors. Although conventional multiple attributes decision-making (MADM) methodologies have provided feasible ways to select contractor, high complexity in scenarios of megaprojects still challenges existing MADM methods in concurrently accommodating three key issues of decision hesitancy, attributes interdependency, and group attitudinal character. To elicit decision-makers’ hesitant fuzzy assessments more objectively and comprehensively, we define an expression tool called interval-valued dual hesitant fuzzy uncertain unbalanced linguistic set (IVDHF_UUBLS) and develop aggregation operators through its operations. To exploit attributes interdependency, we establish a synthesized attributes’ weighting model to fuse an attributes interdependency-based weighting vector and an argument-dependent weighting vector, which are, respectively, derived through Decision-Making and Trial Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique and maximizing deviation method. To effectively utilize decision-makers’ group attitudinal characters, we also develop a TOPSIS-based method to rationally transform group ideal attitudes into order-inducing vectors. On the strength of the above methods, an integrated MADM approach is then constructed. Finally, illustrative case study and experiments are conducted to validate our approach

Aggregation Operators on Triangular Intuitionistic Fuzzy Numbers and its Application to Multi-Criteria Decision Making Problems

The aim of this work is to present some aggregation operators with triangular intuitionistic fuzzy numbers and study their desirable properties. Firstly, the score function and the accuracy function of triangular intuitionistic fuzzy number are given, the method for ranking triangular intuitionistic fuzzy numbers are developed. Then, some geometric aggregation operators for aggregating triangular intuitionistic fuzzy numbers are developed, such as triangular intuitionistic fuzzy weighted geometric (TIFWG) operator, the triangular intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted geometric (TIFOWG) operator and the triangular intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid geometric (TIFHG) operator. Moreover, an application of the new approach to multi-criteria decision making method was proposed based on the geometric average operator of TIFNs, and the new ranking method for TIFNs is used to rank the alternatives. Finally, an example analysis is given to verify and demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method

Heritage Image and Attitudes toward a Heritage Site: Do They Really Mediate the Relationship between User-Generated Content and Travel Intentions toward a Heritage Site?

Traveling to heritage sites represents a growing sector with great potential in the context of heritage tourism, which is a relevant topic but has received little scholarly attention. The present study tries to bridge this gap by investigating the mediating role of heritage image and attitudes toward a heritage site in the relationship between user-generated content (UGC) and travel intention toward a heritage site. In particular, we applied partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), which is a relatively popular new method, instead of the traditionally used covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) method. The rise in popularity of PLS-SEM has been particularly noticeable since 2013, but in the area of heritage tourism, research is still in an early stage of development because the heritage discipline has hardly exploited the benefits of this approach. We proposed a multimediation model for heritage tourism to address this relatively new research avenue. It was discovered that exogenous variables directly and indirectly influenced travel intentions toward a heritage site through their mediators (i.e., heritage image and attitudes toward a heritage site). The findings provide an appropriate empirical and theoretical conclusion as well as valuable insights for heritage management organizations (HMOs) into the performance of heritage tourism, both for local professionals and the host communities that assist in increasing the development of heritage tourism

IT Project Portfolio Scheduling and Multi-skilled Staff Assignment with Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Human resource is a key factor for IT new product development. Considering multi-skilled employees in IT Project Portfolio Scheduling, a mixed integer nonlinear programming model with three optimization objectives is proposed from the view of project or product managers. The three objectives are to maximize the increments of skill efficiency values for all multi-skilled employees, to minimize R&D cycle and to minimize R&D costs for the IT product respectively. We develop an improved ant colony optimization algorithm combining with the advantages of genetic algorithm to acquire the Pareto solution set of the multi-objective optimization problem and get the optimal solution by a weighted ideal point method. Finally, empirical analysis is done through a new IT product portfolio scheduling and staff assignment problem of the distribution network automation monitoring terminal from an electrical device company. The empirical results show our model accords with the business’s practice and the proposed algorithm is effective