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Comparison of Hofstede’s and Schwartz’s Cultural Frameworks for Enterprise Social Media Adoption
Get PDFThe introduction of Enterprise Social Media (ESM) has been driven by many factors that can be grouped into organizational activities namely, communication, cooperation, collaboration, and connections in real-time and asynchronous times. However, research shows that organizations struggle with enterprise-wide adoption. Research also indicates that one of the factors impeding adoption is organizational culture. It is essential to further understand the cultural dimensions that contribute to readiness for ESM because such understanding could help organizations better prepare for ESM adoption. This paper, therefore, compares two of the most prominent cultural studies, Hofstede’s and Schwartz’s cultural frameworks, within the context of ESM
The Impact of Contact Structure and Mixing on Control Measures and Disease-Induced Herd Immunity in Epidemic Models: A Mean-Field Model Perspective
Get PDFThe contact structure of a population plays an important role in transmission of infection. Many ‘structured models’ capture aspects of the contact pattern through an underlying network or a mixing matrix. An important observation in unstructured models of a disease that confers immunity is that once a fraction 1−1/R0
has been infected, the residual susceptible population can no longer sustain an epidemic. A recent observation of some structured models is that this threshold can be crossed with a smaller fraction of infected individuals, because the disease acts like a targeted vaccine, preferentially immunising higher-risk individuals who play a greater role in transmission. Therefore, a limited ‘first wave’ may leave behind a residual population that cannot support a second wave once interventions are lifted. In this paper, we set out to investigate this more systematically. While networks offer a flexible framework to model contact patterns explicitly, they suffer from several shortcomings: (i) high-fidelity network models require a large amount of data which can be difficult to harvest, and (ii) very few, if any, theoretical contact network models offer the flexibility to tune different contact network properties within the same framework. Therefore, we opt to systematically analyse a number of well-known mean-field models. These are computationally efficient and provide good flexibility in varying contact network properties such as heterogeneity in the number contacts, clustering and household structure or differentiating between local and global contacts. In particular, we consider the question of herd immunity under several scenarios. When modelling interventions as changes in transmission rates, we confirm that in networks with significant degree heterogeneity, the first wave of the epidemic confers herd immunity with significantly fewer infections than equivalent models with less or no degree heterogeneity. However, if modelling the intervention as a change in the contact network, then this effect may become much more subtle. Indeed, modifying the structure disproportionately can shield highly connected nodes from becoming infected during the first wave and therefore make the second wave more substantial. We strengthen this finding by using an age-structured compartmental model parameterised with real data and comparing lockdown periods implemented either as a global scaling of the mixing matrix or age-specific structural changes. Overall, we find that results regarding (disease-induced) herd immunity levels are strongly dependent on the model, the duration of the lockdown and how the lockdown is implemented in the model
Integrating statistical correlation with discrete multi-criteria decision-making
Get PDFThis paper analyses two hypotheses that considers a correlation between the number of alternatives and the number of criteria considered in a multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem with the minimum percentage change required in the lowest criterion weight to change the outcome of a method. Two MCDM methods are considered, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the preference ranking organisation method for enrichment of evaluations II (PROMETHEE II) were applied to the same sets of criteria weights and performance measures. More than two thousand randomly generated sets of criteria weights and performance measures are considered. The minimum percentage change in the lowest criterion weight required to change the outcome of a method is calculated. Pearson's r parametric test is used to test the hypotheses. Results from parametric test were statistically significant and shows a weak negative correlation for Hypothesis 1 and weak positive correlation for Hypothesis 2
"Dans la rue et le bitume ne poussent que les fleurs du mal": jouer et déjouer Charles Baudelaire et sa poésie dans le rap français'
No full textEvolving Frames: British Newspaper Coverage of Repression and Resistance in China over Time, 1949–2009
Get PDFThis study sets out to see if the Western media frames of China change over time and how the dominant ideology emerges in the representations. It investigates how the Tibet-China conflict was portrayed and represented in the British national daily newspapers across four research periods from 1949 to 2009. It examines the frames chosen by the press and the influence of the sources (especially external journalistic influence) reflected on the frame-building process. In this research, both content analysis and qualitative frame analysis were used to analyse 955 news articles from ten newspapers. The present study shows that the British media frames of the Tibet-China conflict evolved over the period of fifty years. During the Cold War period, the coverage reflected the ideology of anti-Communism and during the post-Cold War period, it presented China as a human rights violator in Tibet. The changes in frames can be attributed to the external reality of the Cold War, the constantly changing international relations, and other internal or external journalism factors. It indicates that the frame-building process not only reflects news frames as tools used by journalists to construct reality, but also explains which external journalistic factors influence this evolving process
Overview on Binary Optimization Using Swarm-Inspired Algorithms
Get PDFSwarm Intelligence is applied to optimisation problems due to its robustness, scalability,
generality, and flexibility. Based on simple rules, simple reactive agents - swarm (e.g. fish, bird, and ant) -
directly or indirectly exchange information to find an optimal solution. Among multiple nature inspirations
and versions, the dilemma of choosing proper swarm-based algorithms for each type of problem prevents their recurrent application. This scenario gets even more challenging when considering binary optimisation because of the absence of overview papers that assembles the trends, benefits and limitations of swarmbased techniques. Based on 403 scientific papers, we describe the basis of the leading binary swarm-based algorithms presenting their rationales, equations, pseudocodes, and descriptions of their applications to tackle
this research gap. We also define a new classification based on the mechanism to update the solutions and
the displacements, indicating that the Binary-Binary approach - binary decision variables and binary search
space - is more efficient for binary optimisation in accuracy and computational cost
Upholding digital rights and media plurality: does self-regulation by social media platforms contravene freedom of expression?
Get PDFThe paper questions whether the big tech companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, are
breaching freedom of expression by regulating and blocking content on their platforms and
by delinking and delisting people like Donald Trump or Tommy Robinson? Does this amount
to self-regulatory censorship of the big US tech companies by enforcing their own rules and
‘by laws’ on their users, or are they right to ban the promotion of self-harm, suicide, bullying
and incitement to racial hatred? The new Facebook Oversight Board will be scrutinised with
its appointment of twenty global oversight panel members and algorithmic fact checkers. The
meaning of media plurality will be explored as well as the re-examination of fake news and
disinformation on social media platforms. There will be an examination of whether ISPs and
operators of websites are publishers – looking first at the meaning in US law, followed by
UK common law examples. Steps taken by the EU Commission as well as the UK
Government, following the Online Harms White Paper (2019), will end the discussion. We
will discuss whether the big tech companies should be able to self-regulate content on their
platforms or whether the time has come for legislation by governments
