Business Commons^™

Graduate Faculty Workloads: Recognizing Scholarship And Student Engagement At The Comprehensive Institution, Mark Doggett

Mark Doggett

No abstract provided.

Toward A Technology Management Core: Defining What The Technology Manager Needs To Know, Mark Doggett, Pam Mcgee, Sophia Scott

Mark Doggett

No abstract provided.

A Review Of International Best Practice In E-Governmentsome Lessons For New Adopters, Deogratias Harorimana Sr

Dr Deogratias Harorimana

Efficient bureaucratic processes as essential to attract and retain investment, as well as promote SME growth. The e_Gov is one of many ways emerging economies have used to streamline public service delivery and create a freindly and conducive atmosphere for business -both MNC and SMEs. This presentation provide an overview of some of the World's most recent case examples on the successful design-plan-implementation of eGov to build a strong basis to attract investment and deliver seamless essential services to Citizens.

A Critical Review Of The Effectiveness Of Fiscal And Monetary Policies In The Pacific Island Countries (Pics) Between 1990-2010, Deogratias Harorimana Mr

Dr Deogratias Harorimana

The purpose of this paper is to critically assess the effectiveness of Fiscal and Monetary Policies in the South Pacific Island Countries. The paper tracks down the economic growth for the last 20 years between 1990-2010, and drawing from key fiscal and monetary policies in place during the time under consideration, as well as specific interventions in the region, we find that: 1) While the South Pacific Island Countries (SPICs) particularly the six major economies (Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG, Samoa, Tonga) pursued fiscal and monetary policies for promoting growth and diversification of their economies, their fiscal policies relied heavily …

Issues In Human Capital Development : Lessons For Public Administration And Governance, Deogratias Harorimana Mr

Dr Deogratias Harorimana

With few minerals or other natural resources, Rwanda believes that she can still achieve her ambitions by investing in human capital - her unique resource. If this ambition can be achieved, then is this the next role model for international development? We used a case study design and analysis methods to examine development models used elsewhere in recent decades, using both qualitative and quantitative data on Rwanda to establish the comparative advantages in relation to Singapore’s economic development model. The implications for international development are that (1) an effective human capital development strategy should be inclusive enough to respond to …

Collaboration Tools For Education - "Learn And Teach Online”, Nader Ale Ebrahim

Nader Ale Ebrahim

No abstract provided.

Assessment System Based On Fuzzy Scoring In European Foundation For Quality Management (Efqm) Business Excellence Model, J Dodangeh

Javad Dodangeh

There are a few popular business excellence models that provide standard criteria against which an organization can measure its performances. European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is the most popular one. The organizational self-assessment process is an admissible system in the area of Total Quality Management (TQM). Most specialists concur to the description of self-assessment that is presented by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). However, the current selfassessment methods in EFQM model have some drawbacks and problems which are scoring in these methods influenced by experts’ judgment and thus, are subjective. Furthermore, these methods cannot consider the empirical …

Managing Communication In New Product Development Process: Virtual R&D Teams And Information Technology, Nader Ale Ebrahim, Shamsuddin Ahmed, Salwa Hanim Abdul Rashid, Zahari Taha

Nader Ale Ebrahim

Literature proves the importance of the role of information technology in increasing the effectiveness of virtual R&D teams’ communication for new product development. However, the factors that make information technology construct in a virtual R&D team are still ambiguous. Managers of virtual R&D teams for new product development do not know “which type of technology should be used”. To address the gap and answer the question, the paper presents a set of factors that make a construct that contribute to effective communication strategy for virtual R&D teams. The proposed construct has been modified based on the findings of a field …

Designing Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Making Model For Best Selection Of Areas For Improvement In Efqm, J Dodangeh

Javad Dodangeh

In a growingly competitive business environment, numerous organizations adopt the total quality management (TQM) approach, to struggle for business excellence. To monitor the progress towards business excellence, thousands of organizations across the world use self-assessment on a regular basis. There are a few popular business excellence models, that provide standard criteria against which an organization can measure its performances. European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is the most popular ones. The EFQM Excellence Model was introduced at the beginning of 1992, as the framework for assessing organizations for the European Quality Award. It is now the most widely used organizational …

The Effectiveness Of Virtual R&D Teams In Smes: Experiences Of Malaysian Smes, Nader Ale Ebrahim, Salwa Hanim Abdul Rashid, Shamsuddin Ahmed, Zahari Taha

Nader Ale Ebrahim

Institutionalization And Structuration: Studying The Links Between Action And Institution, Stephen R. Barley, Pamela S. Tolbert

Pamela S Tolbert

Institutional theory and structuration theory both contend that institutions and actions are inextricably linked and that institutionalization is best understood as a dynamic, ongoing process. Institutionalists, however, have pursued an empirical agenda that has largely ignored how institutions are created, altered, and reproduced, in part, because their models of institutionalization as a process are underdeveloped. Structuration theory, on the other hand, largely remains a process theory of such abstraction that it has generated few empirical studies. This paper discusses the similarities between the two theories, develops an argument for why a fusion of the two would enable institutional theory to …

How To Increase H-Index#11;, Nader Ale Ebrahim

Nader Ale Ebrahim

Publishing a high quality paper in scientific journals is a halfway of receiving citation in the future. The rest of the way is advertising and disseminating the publications by using the proper “Research Tools”. Familiarity with the tools allows the researcher to increase his/her#11; h-index in the short time. H-index shows the academicians influences in the specified field of research. Therefore, a person with higher level of h-index has more high quality publications with high amount of citations. This presentation, covers the following topics: Why publish and increase h-index?, Definition of h-index and g-index, Importance of h-index, How to use …

Virtual Collaborative R&D Teams In Malaysia Manufacturing Smes, Nader Ale Ebrahim, Shamsuddin Ahmed, Salwa Hanim Abdul Rashid, Zahari Taha

Nader Ale Ebrahim

This paper presents the results of empirical research conducted during March to September 2009. The study focused on the influence of virtual research and development (R&D) teams within Malaysian manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The specific objective of the study is better understanding of the application of collaborative technologies in business, to find the effective factors to assist SMEs to remain competitive in the future. The paper stresses to find an answer for a question “Is there any relationship between company size, Internet connection facility and virtuality?”. The survey data shows SMEs are now technologically capable of performing …

Virtual R&D Teams: A Potential Growth Of Education-Industry Collaboration, Nader Ale Ebrahim, Shamsuddin Ahmed, Zahari Taha

Nader Ale Ebrahim

Introduction: With the advent of the global economy and high-speed Internet, online collaboration is fast becoming the norm in education and industry [1]. Information technology (IT) creates many new inter-relationships among businesses, expands the scope of industries in which a company must compete to achieve the competitive advantage. Information systems and technology allow companies to coordinate their activities in distant geographic locations [2]. IT is providing the infrastructure necessary to support the development of new collaboration forms among industry and education. Virtual research and development (R&D) teams represent one such relational form, one that could revolutionize the workplace and provide …

Virtual Teams And Management Challenges, Nader Ale Ebrahim, Shamsuddin Ahmed, Zahari Taha

Nader Ale Ebrahim

Introduction: Collaboration is becoming increasingly important in creating the knowledge that makes business more competitive. Virtual teams are growing in popularity [1] and many organizations have responded to their dynamic environments by introducing virtual teams. Additionally, the rapid development of new communication technologies such as the Internet has accelerated this trend so that today, most of the larger organization employs virtual teams to some degree [2]. A growing number of flexible and adaptable organizations have explored the virtual environment as one means of achieving increased responsiveness [3]. Howells et al. [4] state that the shift from serial to simultaneous and …

How To Conduct A Literature Review, Nader Ale Ebrahim

Nader Ale Ebrahim

No abstract provided.

Data Warehouse As A Backbone For Business Intelligence: Issues And Challenges, Mutaz M. Al-Debei

Dr. Mutaz M. Al-Debei

The aim of this research is to identify and classify the main issues and challenges facing different business organizations when implementing Data Warehouse (DW) technologies. This is highly significant given the theoretical and practical implications and importance of such technologies. It is also important to highlight these challenges given the scarcity of research in this domain despite its value. To determine DW issues and challenges, a qualitative research methodology was followed. A semi-structured interview protocol was used with 17 DW project managers and seniors’ members. The gathered data were analyzed by utilizing a bottom-up content analysis technique where content is …

Nested Circles Boundary Algorithm For Rotated Texture Classification, Mutaz M. Al-Debei, Suzan Awienat, Rana Abu-Laila

Dr. Mutaz M. Al-Debei

A new simple yet efficient classification algorithm named as Nested Circle Boundary (NCB) is proposed in this study. This algorithm provides features from measuring the average of the sum of boundary pixels for a number of nested circles inside the texture image. It was tested on different 91 rotated texture images for 13 texture classes using Brodatz texture database. The proposed algorithm achieves 100% accuracy when it comes to rotated texture classification. The methodology of NCB algorithm is based on two phases. Phase one mainly measures the features of the 13 texture classes and the original texture images. Then, the …

Business Model Requirements And Challenges In The Mobile Telecommunication Sector, Mutaz M. Al-Debei, David Avison

Dr. Mutaz M. Al-Debei

The telecommunications business is undergoing a critical revolution, driven by innovative technologies, globalization and deregulation. Cellular networks and telecommunications bring radical changes to the way telecom businesses are conducted. Globalization, on the other hand, is tearing down legacy barriers and forcing monopolistic national carriers to compete internationally. Moreover, the noticeable progress of many countries towards deregulation coupled with liberalization is significantly increasing telecom market power and allowing severe competition. The implications of this transition have changed the business rules of the telecom industry. In addition, entrants into the cellular industry have had severe difficulties due to inexistent or weak business …

A Semi-Automatic Ontology Extension Method For Semantic Web Services, Mutaz M. Al-Debei, Mohammad Mourhaf Al Asswad

Dr. Mutaz M. Al-Debei

this paper provides a novel semi-automatic ontology extension method for Semantic Web Services (SWS). This is significant since ontology extension methods those existing in literature mostly deal with semantic description of static Web resources such as text documents. Hence, there is a need for methods that can serve dynamic Web resources such as SWS. The developed method in this paper avoids redundancy and respects consistency so as to assure high quality of the resulting shared ontologies.

Scoring Rules And Decision Analysis Education, J. Eric Bickel

Eric Bickel

Experiential learning is perhaps the most effective way to teach. One example is the scoring procedure used for exams in some decision analysis programs. Under this grading scheme, students take a multiple-choice exam, but rather than simply marking which answer they think is correct, they must assign a probability to each possible answer. The exam is then scored with a special scoring rule, under which students’ best strategy is to avoid guessing and instead assign their true beliefs. Such a scoring function is known as a strictly proper scoring rule. In this paper, we discuss several different scoring rules and …

Discretization, Simulation, And Swanson’S (Inaccurate) Mean, J. Eric Bickel

Eric Bickel

Swanson’s Mean (SM) is heavily used within the oil and gas industry to approximate continuous probability distributions such as the lognormal. In this paper, we document the errors induced by this practice, which, as we show, has no theoretical justification for any distribution other than the normal. In parallel, we review methods to discretize continuous distributions and compare these methods to Monte Carlo simulation. We demonstrate that the best discretization methods have an accuracy equivalent to that of tens of thousands of Monte Carlo trials.

Comparing Nws Pop Forecasts To Third-Party Providers, J. Eric Bickel, Eric Floehr, Seong Dae Kim

Eric Bickel

In this paper, the authors verify probability of precipitation (PoP) forecasts provided by the National Weather Service (NWS), The Weather Channel (TWC), and CustomWeather (CW). The n-day-ahead forecasts, where n ranges from 1 to 3 for the NWS, from 1 to 9 for TWC, and from 1 to 14 for CW, are analyzed. The dataset includes almost 13 million PoP forecasts, or about 500 000 PoPs per provider per day of lead time. Data were collected over a 2-yr period (1 November 2008–31 October 2010) at 734 observation stations across the contiguous United States. In addition to verifying these PoP …

Checking The Feasibility Of Dial-A-Ride Instances Using Constraint Programming, Gerardo Berbeglia, Gilles Pesant, Louis-Martin Rousseau

Gerardo Berbeglia

No abstract provided.

Business Ethics As Rational Choice, John Hooker

John Hooker

No abstract provided.

The Best Selection Of Strategic Plans In Balanced Scorecard Using Multi-Objective Decision Making Model, J Dodangeh

Jay Daniel