1,720,974 research outputs found
Benchmarking digital technology adoption in the utility retail industry using capabilities
No full textTechnology, Policy and ManagementSystems engineerin
An Agent-mediated Approach to Promote Knowledge Sharing Through Enterprise Social Networks
No full textBroadening adoption of social network tools within the enterprise suggests a new and valuable source for insight into the social structure through organizations. While online social media tools are being evolved by enterprises in recent years, the social media are used much for knowledge sharing. This paper focuses on how enterprise social network builds within and between the departments and utilize an agent-based model of social networks to clarify employees with critical network positions who other employees trust to them for receive knowledge. The structure of the paper is: first, the concept of the social network and trusting are described in the social network environment with effective knowledge sharing construct through the enterprise social network. Next, the paper presents complex network models which be used for agent based simulation. Finally, the last part investigates the agent based model to impact knowledge recipient trust on sharing knowledge through the enterprise social networks. Our results show the position of critical employees in the network and network with high trust between employees keeps close social proximity to people who actively share knowledge.System EngineeringTechnology, Policy and Managemen
Designing an integrative approach to regional water schemes in South Africa
No full textSouth Africa has to cope with a varying freshwater supply. In doing so it has constructed over 500 dams that capture half of the countries annual rainfall. Despite this shortages do occur and are expected to become more prevalent due to a combination of population and economic growth and an increase in the variability in the freshwater supply. Researchers indicate that the current decision-making processes to govern the allocation and rationing of water are inadequate. The aim of this research is to gain understanding in the functioning of the South African water management and design an improvement for the allocation and rationing of water during periods of drought. The main research question for this research is as follows: how does water management work in South Africa? And how can decision-making on water management be improved?Policy AnalysisMulti Actor SystemsTechnology, Policy and Managemen
Conceptual Clustering of Patents: Enhancing insight for the decision making process in Strategic Technology Planning
No full textWithin technological R&D companies, the decisions made within their Strategic Technology Planning (STP) process are of great importance due to their financial, legal and competitive repercussions. For this reason their R&D managers want to be as widely informed as possible about the risks and benefits of developing a certain technology. As the subjects for which these decisions are made, are too complex to comprehend, there is exploitation of so-called Decision Support Systems. This research focusses on those Decision Support Systems in the STP process which are based on patent analysis. Patent analysis is relevant to apply in this process as the patent database is considered to be a comprehensive collection of technological concepts. This is due to the fact that companies voluntarily deliver the information, and benefit from describing their technological innovation as complete as possible. Throughout the STP process multiple needs for insight to make informed decisions can be detected. However, as every applied form of analysis will present a representation of the selected subject, which’ outcome is based on assumptions made as well as on the underlying method applied. The user cannot be sure that this given outcome is always correctly representing reality. Hence, they are applying multiple representation methods on the same subject, a process which is also referred to as multiplism. Within this process they are searching for robust outcomes that hold true under all the different representations. Due to this process, there is an ever present interest in new methods of representation and analysis, to extend the R&D division’s decision support toolkit. Due to the ever present need for more insight, alongside a methodological interest, this research focusses on the evaluation of the applicability of conceptual clustering to patents, as well as its potential usability in the STP process. Conceptual clustering is a machine learning technique developed in the 1980’s, which automatically categorizes the entered information, resulting in a tree shaped hierarchy. The conceptual clustering technique hasn’t been found to be applied to patents before and this research will therefore also focus on identifying its potential use within the STP process. To gain insight into the different needs for patent analysis within the STP process, as well as to provide a source for evaluation, a design has been made for the decision support system by applying the Axiomatic Design method. The inputs for this design are customer needs which have been based on a literature study and expert input on the different applications for patent analysis in the STP process. To assess its potential applicability, a prototype Decision Support System, constructed around the method of conceptual clustering applied to patents, has been developed. For which the implementation of the conceptual clustering functionality is done based on the COBWEB algorithm as proposed by Fisher. The prototype entails two software products written in Python which are respectively a text-mining and a conceptual clustering program, combined with a visualization tool based on the D3 JavaScript library, for which an online environment has been developed. To illustrate the evaluation, a complete selection of patents related to additive manufacturing (3D printing) retrieved from Thomson Reuters’ Derwent patent database is used. This patent set (containing 9360 patents) has been parsed through-, and visualized by-, the developed prototype, showing a representation of this technological field’s inter-patent relational structure. Through evaluation based on the design, the prototype has been proven to be usable within the STP process for Exploration analysis, Competitor analysis and Portfolio analysis. The highest added value to the R&D division’s toolkit is perceived to lay in the explainability of the outcome, the accessibility through the online visual representation and the possibility of using the decision support system in an interactive way. Allowing the technology scouts and managers to interact with the data, discussing and continuing exploring based on newly gathered insights. Furthermore implementable solutions are presented, allowing to extend the developed prototype’s applicability for use to the inclusion of Freedom to operate analysis capabilities, trend analysis and to a limited extend inventive problem solving analysis capabilities. Further evaluation of the prototype based on a comparative analysis of the case with the output created with a self-organizing map technique, leads to further conclusions on the conceptual clustering technique. Firstly, the same high level clusters can be detected, however not all inter-relations of these clusters match. Forcing the user to further investigate, increasing robustness of knowledge obtained. Secondly, the conceptual clustering shows more application domains in addition to the technical concepts. Thirdly, multiple representations can be made of the same set based on user needs. Fourthly, the influence of the attribute number, for which it is suggested to perform a high level search first. Then select a subset of patents for reprocessing and visualization, in order to obtain more insight into sub-branching. Finally, the combinational use of the two methods enhances the insight, due to the explanatory value of the nodes in the conceptual clustering output.Engineering & Policy AnalysisPolicy AnalysisTechnology, Policy and Managemen
Understanding the causal relations in organizational structures of project teams: How simulations can contribute to better work processes
No full textThis thesis is about understanding organizational complexities that can occur during project execution. By focusing on the project team structures using a simulation modeling process, characteristics of project team structures were identified that influenced seven organizational complexities.System Engineering, Policy Analysis and ManagementSection Systems EngineeringTechnology, Policy and Managemen
Dealing with carbon credit points in city logistics domain: An agent-based modeling approach to implement carbon market based mechanisms derived from Kyoto Protocol
No full textSystem Engineering, Policy Analysis and ManagementTransport & PlanningTechnology, Policy and Managemen
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
- …
