17 research outputs found
Jewish History of Small-Town America
No full textLee Shai Weissbach, author and professor of history, University of Louisville, KY.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/bennettcenter-posters/1311/thumbnail.jp
Maintaining the Own Responsibility
No full textThis chapter introduces an alternative concept against the dominating trend of a complete outsourcing of IT services, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). It argues that the undiscriminating adoption of this trend tends to reduce IT on a cost factor and neglects the importance of specific IT knowledge for the continuous improvement of business processes. Also, it neglects the importance of a “communication interface” between the IS users on the one hand and the software development and IT production on the other hand. In opposition to leading management trends, this chapter will present an approach that bases on an internal competence centre for IS and that demands a steady communication between the IT staff and the various departments. In this approach, only selected IT services are externalized and the continuing growth of specific IS knowledge is essential. This approach was developed since the end of the 1990s at the building society, with about 100 employees, in which the author is working.</jats:p
How Business Departments Manage the Requirements Engineering Process in Information Systems Projects in Small and Medium Enterprises
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The Solar Nation of Tokelau: An adventure in documentary making
No full textCommentary: The Tokelau solar project first came to the attention of this filmmaker at a Pacific Energy Summit in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2013. Three remote islands in the Pacific becoming the first 100 percent solar-powered nation on earth and setting an example for the complete adaptation of sustainable energy sounded like a story too good to be overlooked by mainstream news media. However, research demonstrated that this was indeed widely ignored. So the author set about his usual practice of pitching the idea to his colleagues at German Television. The fact that he had already made a short documentary about Tokelau in 2006 (ARTE TV Reportage: Independence Referendum in Tokelau) and was thus familiar with the territory and its people, which worked in his favour. But funding proved to be a difficult challenge because the logistics of the project demanded a longer than usual shooting schedule and crew time. In the end, a solution was found by accessing additional funding and negotiating a bulk deal with the crew to make The Solar Nation of Tokelau (2014)
‘Pa-jew-cah’: Reclaiming the History of Paducah’s Jewish Community
No full textWhen imagining Kentucky’s religious heritage, most people picture churches, not synagogues. Yet historian Lee Shai Weissbach demonstrates that Kentucky’s first synagogue was built in Louisville in 1849, and Jews had been living in the Commonwealth almost as long as it existed. Kentucky’s Jewish heritage is rich and varied as illustrated by Arwen Donahue’s This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak, Deborah Weiner’s Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History, and Amy Shevitz’s Jewish Communities on the Ohio River: A History. While each of these texts refers to Paducah as an early and important Jewish settlement, none offers exclusive scholarly attention to what is now Kentucky’s third largest Jewish population center. Supported by the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence and the UK Jewish Studies Summer Undergraduate Research Award, this study seeks to fill this gap in scholarship and provide more visibility to Jewish Kentucky generally, and specifically, Jewish Paducah. The author conducted three original oral history interviews, two with individuals who had lived memory of the Paducah Jewish community and one who is an active participant in that community. By closely analyzing the extant scholarship to contextualize first-hand accounts of Paducah’s Jewish community, we call attention to a history that few know about. This study seeks to promote understanding of one of Paducah’s most historically important ethnic groups, and thus show how Paducah’s, as well as Kentucky’s, heritage is far more diverse and inclusive than outsiders often realize
Identity and consumption practices of Northamptonshire Caribbeans c.1955-1989
No full textThe objective of this thesis is to delineate and analyse Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption c.1955-1989. Author-collected and other oral histories alongside complementary primary and secondary references dovetail to unearth and analyse aspects of Post-War Caribbean consumption in a British provincial location that have been significantly unexplored previously. Central to the argument is the contention that identity is fundamentally significant in comprehending and analysing Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption. Various conceptualisations of identity facilitated development of consumer materialisations and aspirations. This thesis explores how multiple forms of identity as Caribbean, Black and British people were significant in shaping local Caribbeans' consumption. The succeeding pages address and analyse how these multiple identities influenced consumption and how provincial consumer behaviour was shaped by Caribbeans' relative co-ethnic isolation in Northamptonshire. Chapter 3 delineates and analyses consumer practices and practicalities of Northamptonshire Caribbeans. Integral within these consumer practices and practicalities are changes in consumption over time, intergenerational differences in consumption, as well as aspects of consumption that could be considered 'typical' and/or 'atypical' Northamptonshire Caribbean consumption; all of which are incorporated within this chapter. Chapter 4 connects identity and consumption through enhancing understanding of Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumer networks. These networks interacted with the combination of identities local Caribbeans psychologically felt part of within various Caribbean, Black and British permutations. Furthermore, such identities varied more widely amongst the younger generation than their co-ethnic elders, a concept which is also addressed. Education and cultural currency are two novel strands through which to analyse connections between consumption and identity. The final two chapters deploy these concepts in an innovative manner creating and developing greater understanding of Northamptonshire Caribbeans' consumption. Chapter 5 expounds on the concept that education can be used as consumption whilst shaping future consumer behaviour, both ideas significantly under-explored previously. Chapter 6 introduces the theory of cultural currency, the idea that aspects of culture have finite, but changing, values and must be shared to have value similar to monetary currencies having exchange values for other monetary currencies. This chapter demonstrates how Northamptonshire Caribbeans shared aspects of Caribbean culture as cultural currency, fostering co-ethnic strength whilst gaining inter-ethnic respect for Caribbeans. Through comprehending Caribbean identity, correlations between empirical and social history, local consumption, as well as educational and cultural circumstances that stimulated and inspired Northamptonshire Caribbeans, this thesis distinctively illuminates how local Caribbeans' consumption interacted with various permutations of Afro-Caribbean, Black and/or British identities whilst representing idiosyncratic local nodes within these larger amalgamations
Business Informatization Level
No full textIT diffusion is central to the new economy and is reflected in a process of informatization of society and businesses. Although initially coined to represent the diffusion and adoption of information technology (IT) in all levels of society, the term informatization is also employed to represent the use of information technology resources in organizations. Weissbach (2003), for instance, defines informatization as being the process of gradual and increasing application of “planned and systematic use of IT penetrating the organization’s functions”. As pointed out by Lim (2001), the evaluation of an organization’s Informatization Level (IL) is an important managerial concern. The author also points out the difficulties associated with this evaluation, stating that “this is not a simple problem because informatization includes many intangible factors such as the quality of information and the organization’s culture”. The purpose of evaluating a company’s IL is to provide information for the organization to improve precisely its informatization level. It is also a means of benchmarking the efficacy and efficiency of IT investments in order to set up the baseline for improvement. This topic depicts a measurement method for the IL of companies and shows results of its application in 830 Brazilian industries (Zwicker, Vidal, & Souza, 2005). The development of this method was based on the principle that IT results in companies are not obtained merely through investments and the implementation of systems but rather through its proper use in business processes. The proposed method extends the informatization dimensions proposed by Lim (2001), using the process-based view of the IT business value creation model proposed by Soh and Markus (1995) and the concept of “information systems coverage” proposed by Ravarini, Tagliavini, Buonanno, and Sciuto (2002). </jats:p
