Smart Contracts Implementation, Applications, Benefits, and Limitations

The world today has realized the vast technological evolution that has greatly shaped the production and management functions of business enterprises. Traditional contracts can take weeks or even months to initiate, and there have been numerous instances of breaches and lack of trust for contracts in both the private and public sector. A smart contract can be defined as a self-executing contract that utilizes blockchain technology to digitally enforce, verify, or facilitate the performance or negotiation of a contract. Owing to the security and decentralized system exhibited by blockchain technology, smart contracts can foster transaction credibility between contracting parties without the necessity of third parties as exhibited in traditional contracts. Any business organization that aims at achieving greater heights in management and production dimensions must consider utilizing robust technologies that are aimed at bolstering its competitive edge. Owing to the newness of smart contracts, characterized by very few studies on the same, this research reviews how smart contracts through blockchain technology can be implemented in an organization to enhance performance and outlines the applications, benefits, and limitations associated with such contracts. Keywords: Blockchain technology; smart contracts; smart contract applications; smart contract benefits; smart contract implementation; cryptography; cryptocurrency DOI: 10.7176/JIEA/9-5-07 Publication date:September 30th 201

Assessing the Correlation Between Organizational Competency Development and Learning Activities & Programs - An Investigation of the Kenyan Private Sector

For any enterprise to be successful in its activities, human resources must exhibit great competence. In a workplace setting, competency entails the ability of an employee to execute a task effectively and efficiently. In this regard, competence is highly related to the level of effectiveness and efficiency depicted by the employees of an organization when executing their jobs. If business executives in specific and the shareholders, in general, without clearly understanding the relationship between the competency of the employees and the training programs, not only will they be misappropriating a firm's scarce resources but also imperiling the core vision of the organization as well as the corporate objectives. Business organization managers must conceptualize and understand the relationship between their firms' competency development and learning activities and programs that they use. As such, this study was made to study the workplace context of Kenyan-based business organizations and set out whether there exists a correlation between organizational competency development and learning activities and programs. A quantitative approach was used that entailed the analyses of participants' responses collected through a survey questionnaire. T-Test, Chi-square test, and One Way MANOVA analysis were conducted on the data to test the set hypothesis. It was concluded that learning activities and programs are positively correlated with the organizational competency Keywords: Organizational performance, employees' competency development, organizational learning activities, and programs DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-25-02 Publication date:September 30th 2020

The United States Supreme Court Landmark Cases: Implications on Racial/Ethnic Minorities’ Welfare

Essentially, the United States Supreme Court plays a critical role in setting precedents that are followed by lower federal courts and state courts. This implies that faulty decision by the Supreme Court has a ripple effect, characterized by adversities in the delivery of justice across the board. Over the years, the United States Supreme Court has made various landmark rulings, some of which have been regarded as the worst decisions ever, while others have been deemed exemplary. From the 1900s and to around the mid-1900s, the United States Supreme Court made various rulings, the majority of which touched on racial segregation and discrimination of ethnic minorities. The rulings set critical precedence and gave guidelines to states with respect to the formulation and implementation of state laws. Understanding such rulings can greatly shed light regarding the historical background of the United States judicial system and what can be done to foster justice and equality in the future. This study entailed a qualitative content analysis research design to study and analyze six main cases: Pace v. Alabama (1883), Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856), Loving v. Virginia (1967), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954-55) and Ozawa v. United States (1922). The results of the content analysis are presented. The content analysis is based on the statements and their implicit messages. Keywords: The United States Supreme Court landmark cases, racial discrimination, ethnicity, racial profiling, landmark court decisions, U.S historical cases. DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/110-03 Publication date:June 30th 202

The Superiority of the Ensemble Classification Methods: A Comprehensive Review

The modern technologies, which are characterized by cyber-physical systems and internet of things expose organizations to big data, which in turn can be processed to derive actionable knowledge. Machine learning techniques have vastly been employed in both supervised and unsupervised environments in an effort to develop systems that are capable of making feasible decisions in light of past data. In order to enhance the accuracy of supervised learning algorithms, various classification-based ensemble methods have been developed. Herein, we review the superiority exhibited by ensemble learning algorithms based on the past that has been carried out over the years. Moreover, we proceed to compare and discuss the common classification-based ensemble methods, with an emphasis on the boosting and bagging ensemble-learning models. We conclude by out setting the superiority of the ensemble learning models over individual base learners. Keywords: Ensemble, supervised learning, Ensemble model, AdaBoost, Bagging, Randomization, Boosting, Strong learner, Weak learner, classifier fusion, classifier selection, Classifier combination. DOI: 10.7176/JIEA/9-5-05 Publication date: August 31st 2019

The Impact of Organisational Culture on Employees' Productivity: A Comprehensive Systematic Review

Organisational culture greatly affects how an organisation operates and how the workforce interacts to carry out daily activities. Various scholars have linked strong organisational culture to high workforce productivity as a whole; the effect on specific constructs of productivity is yet to be outset. The main aim of this thesis was to analyse the link between organisational culture and employees productivity and outsets the specific effect of organisational culture on employees, motivation, commitment and leadership effectiveness, which are core components of workforce productivity. The research design took the form of a systematic review based on the structural-functionalist and ecological adaptation theories to ensure the validity and reliability of the findings. The research question was formulated using the PICOC Framework (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome and Context). Specific keywords and phrases were used to search relevant articles in four research databases: ProQuest, EBSCO host, Emerald Insight, and Elsevier. 18 studies were sampled for the research. They were then summarised, synthesised, critiqued and compared to answer the research question. The findings from the study are herein presented. Keywords:Organisational culture, employees' productivity, organisational performance, performance management, employees' motivation. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/14-4-05 Publication date: February 28th 202