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Optimized Location and Assignment of Emergency Response Assets in Offshore Energy Basins
Get PDFThe global energy industry engages in exploration, drilling, production, and abandonment activities in pursuit of crude oil and natural gas. This paper provides a methodology to optimize the location and assignment of oil spill response containment systems to limit environmental damage. Utilizing 1,802 active offshore sites and 13 eligible service depots in the Gulf of Mexico’s offshore energy basin, this study locates and assigns deployable land-based containment systems while evaluating the progressive enhancement of including additional service depots. The model solves the practical problem of locating and allocating oil spill containment systems to a global optimum. Adding service depots reduces the average distance, or travel time, of response vessels, which minimizes the dispersion of the oil spill. This study represents a critical component of a broader emergency oil spill response plan. Specifically, it addresses the preparation phase of a comprehensive oil spill response plan, which is preceded by the mitigation phase and followed by the response and recovery phases
YouTube Influencers Fostering Audience Engagement Through Parasocial Relationships
Get PDFAs the growing popularity of lifestyle YouTube influencers risks the possibility of over-saturation of sponsored content on YouTube, brands should determine the effectiveness of influencers and identify the characteristics of lifestyle YouTube influencers to make sponsored content successful. Drawing upon parasocial relationship theory, this study incorporates match-up hypothesis and source credibility theories to determine characteristics of lifestyle YouTube influencers and their content that increase their audience engagement and makes social media influencer marketing effective. Using the content analysis of lifestyle YouTube influencers, this study reveals that micro-influencers have a higher engagement with their audience through parasocial relationships than mega and macro-influencers
Blended Learning in Marketing Education: Using Alumni Experiences to Increase Student Motivation
Get PDFDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, both teachers and students underwent significant adaptation and flexibility in higher education courses. The literature documenting these experiences has grown extensively, with educators highlighting challenges and opportunities in distance learning formats. These reports are crucial to understanding how forced adaptations resulted in more productive activities for students than we had thought of before. These experiences also hold fundamental importance for deriving insights for the future, serving as valuable lessons for colleagues to draw inspiration from and apply them to their disciplines. This article describes an experience developed in an introductory Marketing subject that, due to university directives, adopted a blended learning regime during COVID-19. What started as a problem turned into an opportunity. An alumni engagement activity was devised to enhance student motivation — an undertaking that would have been challenging in an exclusively classroom-based setting. This activity became essential, elevating student motivation, promoting new experiences, facilitating networking, and encouraging collaborative work
Cultural Diversity and Classification of EFL Blended Learning Module in Higher Education
Get PDFThe integration of culture and language has played an enormous role in the context of EFL teaching and learning materials in the higher education context. Therefore, evaluating whether the EFL learning materials have been designed to include culture-related content becomes crucial. This research qualitatively analyzed the presentation of an EFL blended learning module’s source culture, target culture, and international culture. The result shows that source culture material is 67%, target culture 9%, and international culture 24%. The findings indicated that the EFL blended learning module is mainly dominated by source culture as the most frequently portrayed, while target cultures were the least frequently portrayed. The present study reveals a vivid imbalance in the exposure of cultural elements in the EFL blended learning module. This result should be well-considered by stakeholders regarding the purpose of the use of the blended learning materials
Teaching as Dwelling Between Two Worlds: Reflection of Being an Educator in the Post-Pandemic Era
Get PDFThis paper discusses the impact of COVID-19 on education, focusing on the rapid shift to online learning. It raises concerns about the ethical implications of AI-generated writing and critiques the dominance of technocratic rationality in education. Drawing from Ted Tetsuo Aoki and Martin Heidegger’s works, it explores the notion of technology, poetic dwelling, and the educators’ beingness in a post-pandemic era. This paper challenges instrumental views on curriculum, teaching, and technology through personal reflections and theoretical analysis, advocating for an existential and poetic understanding. This paper urges rethinking educational practices to embrace human complexity and foster genuine engagement with knowledge
Learning About Grief Triggers Through an Exploratory-Descriptive Study
Get PDFA qualitative study was undertaken to identify what triggers grief in the first two years following the death of a beloved family member, determine how often triggered grief occurs, and gain lived insight into what can be done (if anything) to manage triggers and also triggered grief. Four themes highlighting an uncertain process associated with grief triggers were identified: (a) my whole life was grief, (b) frequently hit by “hard-grief” triggers, (c) reaching a balance with grief and grief triggers to absorb the losses and reshape life, and (d) shifting to good and welcome memories, triggers that keep the person alive. These themes are described, with quotes illustrating their relevance for advising bereaved people about the grief triggers they may encounter. This evidence adds to a limited body of evidence on grief triggers and offers new insights for developments in grief theory and bereavement programs or services
Limited McDonaldization as a Success Recipe: An Ethnographic Study of Yili Driving School in Jinan, China
Get PDFCurrent corporate culture studies mainly emphasize the management and motivation of employees within an enterprise, while little consideration is taken of the interaction between the enterprise, employees and customers. Based on an ethnographic study of Yili Driving School in Jinan, this article explores the success recipe of service-oriented enterprises. It argues that the success of the driving school can be attributed to its corporate culture of limited McDonaldization, consisting of two contradictory but coexisting models, i.e. a rationalized and standardized management model and a relational and emotional work model, in which corporate management, employees and consumers are all involved. So far as the driving school is concerned, the school administrators, coaches and students selectively use cultural resources to adopt different action strategies which enable the participants of the corporate culture to achieve a win-win situation. This study highlights not only the McDonaldized management of the enterprise, but also the mechanism of emotional cultivation between the driving school, instructors and trainees. The result of this study is hoped to contribute to research on corporate culture and enterprise anthropology by breaking with the previous approaches from within the company
Smart Port Construction on the China-Vietnam Border and Smooth Cross-Border Trade: The Case of Dongxing
Get PDFAs the construction of e-commerce platforms and communication tools based on the internet has gradually matured, online transactions and smart customs clearance have emerged as new trends in cross-border trade and port construction. This paper takes the Dongxing Port in Guangxi Province, China, as an example, and analyzes the intelligentization of trade clearance, transactions, settlement and some other aspects including cross-border exchange, recognizing smart port construction as a new development model. It conforms to the current characteristics and the actual needs of borderland residents. On the one hand, it can improve the construction of the border exchange network, stimulate the economic expansion and elasticity of the port regions and promote smooth cross-border trade. On the other, it serves as a powerful means of encouraging the interconnection and mutual benefit of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) member states
An Integrated Stochastic Optimization and Simulation Approach to SERU vs. Assembly Line Manufacturing Systems
Get PDFThis research compares SERU manufacturing systems to traditional assembly lines, focusing on the impact of uncertainty in task processing time on production output. The study considers worker skill levels and team identity, using a stochastic mixed integer linear programming approach to model uncertainty and optimize workforce allocation. Discrete event simulation is then integrated to evaluate performance using five key performance indicators (KPIs). Results show that SERU systems outperform traditional lines in terms of throughput when uncertainty is considered. The integrated approach provides more reliable performance data than deterministic optimization alone. The study also highlights the advantages of SERU systems when worker skill levels and team identity are factored in. This research fills a gap in the literature by proposing a stochastic optimization approach that considers uncertainty and worker skill levels, and by integrating stochastic optimization with simulation for comprehensive analysis. This approach provides valuable guidance for production managers in optimizing production systems
The Impact of Earnings Management on CEO Equity Incentives
Get PDFThis paper investigates whether firms adjust CEO equity incentives in response to prior earnings management. I show that the risk-taking incentives from new equity grants are lower for firms with higher prior real earnings management (REM), but not for firms with higher prior accruals-based earnings management (AEM). These adjustments are associated with sustained earnings management over the three years before the grant, but not with transitory earnings management. Additionally, I show that firms with higher institutional ownership primarily drive the negative relationship between REM and AEM and risk-taking incentives from new equity grants. My results are consistent with firms altering compensation incentives to restrain managers’ value-reducing behavior, in part, due to the monitoring of institutional investors