Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The benefits and challenges of general data protection regulation for the information technology sector

PurposeThe implementation of European data protection is a challenge for businesses and has imposed legal, technical and organizational changes for companies. This study aims to explore the benefits and challenges that companies operating in the information technology (IT) sector have experienced in applying the European data protection. Additionally, this study aims to explore whether the benefits and challenges faced by these companies were different considering their dimension and the state of implementation of the regulation.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a quantitative methodology, based on a survey conducted with Portuguese IT companies. The survey is composed of 30 questions divided into three sections, namely, control data; assessment; and benefits and challenges. The survey was created on Google Drive and distributed among Portuguese IT companies between March and April of 2019. The data were analyzed using the Stata software using descriptive and inferential analysis techniques using the ANOVA one-way test.FindingsA total of 286 responses were received. The main benefits identified by the application of European data protection include increased confidence and legal clarification. On the other hand, the main challenges include the execution of audits to systems and processes and the application of the right to erasure. The findings allow us to conclude that the state of implementation of the general data protection regulation (GDPR), and the type of company are discriminating factors in the perception of benefits and challenges.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has essentially practical implications. Based on the synthesis of the benefits and challenges posed by the adoption of European data protection, it is possible to assess the relative importance and impact of the benefits and challenges faced by companies in the IT sector. However, this study does not explore the type of challenges that are placed at each stage of the adoption of European data protection and does not take into account the specificities of the activities carried out by each of these companies.Originality/valueThe implementation of the GDPR is still in an initial phase. This study is pioneering in synthesizing the main benefits and challenges of its adoption considering the companies operating in the IT sector. Furthermore, this study explores the impact of the size of the company and the status of implementation of the GDPR on the perception of the established benefits and challenges.
Application of Perception Theory in Hotel Interior Design

The purpose of this article is to explore the application of perception theory in hotel interior design. Through the analysis of the theory of perception, the article sums up its connection with the interior design of Modern Hotel, and sums up the hotel interior design method under the influence of three factors of visual perception, space-time perception, logical perception so as to improve the level of humanization. Finally it will provide a basis for hotel interior design in the future.
Institutional Mechanisms for Sustainable Sanitation: Lessons from Japan for Other Asian Countries

Even though access to sanitation facilities has improved in the urban areas of many Asian developing countries, the pollution of public water bodies remains a serious problem. One of the causes of water pollution is improper decentralized wastewater management. This study explains the evolution of Japan’s decentralized wastewater management system and extracts elements that may be useful in developing countries. These elements include the establishment of a qualification and training system for decentralized wastewater treatment facility installation businesses; the introduction of a regular desludging system; the establishment of a qualification and training system for desludging business/workers; and the establishment of a qualification and examination system for operators of PAWTPs or similar facilities mainly targeted for non-household users.
A Knowledge-Based Recommendation System That Includes Sentiment Analysis and Deep Learning

Online social networks provide relevant information on users’ opinion about different themes. Thus, applications, such as monitoring and recommendation systems (RS) can collect and analyze this data. This paper presents a knowledge-based recommendation system (KBRS), which includes an emotional health monitoring system to detect users with potential psychological disturbances, specifically, depression and stress. Depending on the monitoring results, the KBRS, based on ontologies and sentiment analysis, is activated to send happy, calm, relaxing, or motivational messages to users with psychological disturbances. Also, the solution includes a mechanism to send warning messages to authorized persons, in case a depression disturbance is detected by the monitoring system. The detection of sentences with depressive and stressful content is performed through a convolutional neural network and a bidirectional long short-term memory - recurrent neural networks (RNN); the proposed method reached an accuracy of 0.89 and 0.90 to detect depressed and stressed users, respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed KBRS reached a rating of 94% of very satisfied users, as opposed to 69% reached by a RS without the use of neither a sentiment metric nor ontologies. Additionally, subjective test results demonstrated that the proposed solution consumes low memory, processing, and energy from current mobile electronic devices.
The Economics of Audit Production: What Matters for Audit Quality? An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Mid-level Managers within the Audit Firm

Using proprietary data, we analyze how a variety of audit composition and team characteristics are associated with audit effectiveness and efficiency. We find that more time allocated prior to the final phase of the audit is associated with more effective audits. We also decompose the time allocation and experience characteristics of the core audit engagement team across the following roles: lead partner, engagement quality reviewer, and other experienced team members (comprised of other audit partners, directors, senior managers, and managers). While the lead partner time and experience are not associated with audit effectiveness, we find that more time spent and experience of other experienced team members are associated with more effective audits. Many of the characteristics that improve audit effectiveness do not improve efficiency, but rather are costly to the client, with one exception. Overall, our analysis highlights several cost-benefit tradeoffs to improving audit effectiveness.
Does Social Capital Influence Debt Literacy? The Case of Facebook Users in Poland

Debt literacy has been considered to be a critical competence of modern societies since the recent global financial crisis. Debt-literate individuals are less prone to financial abuse and perform better in terms of credit management. Currently, debt-related information and knowledge are widely accessible through social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook. However, not all SNS users have equal access to debt-related resources, and, consequently, they reach different scores in debt literacy tests. This study examines relational factors (resources) behind the debt literacy of Facebook users (N = 1,055) in Poland by applying the Resource Generator tool built into the online questionnaire. This quantitative instrument helps to diagnose resources that are embedded and mobilised (social capital) from personal networks made up of kin, friends and acquaintances. We found that users with more social capital, that is, better access to resources, perform better in debt literacy tests. Moreover, weak ties (acquaintances) appear to be good sources of debt-related information and knowledge that have positive impact on debt literacy scores.
Earth surface modeling for education: How effective is it? Four semesters of classroom tests with WILSIM-GC

This paper presents results from a randomized experimental design replicated over four semesters that compared students' performance in understanding landform evolution processes as measured by the pretest to posttest score growth between two treatment methods: an online interactive simulation tool and a paper‐based exercise. While both methods were shown to be effective at enhancing students' learning of the landform concepts and processes, there was no statistically significant difference in score growth between the two instructional methods. However, the attitudinal survey indicated that students consistently favored the simulation approach over the paper‐based exercise. With the simulation method, female students showed greater score growth than males, especially for test items requiring higher level thinking. This indicates that the visually rich interactive simulation tool may be integrated to better support female students' learning in geoscience. Science major students generally outperformed non‐science major students in terms of score growth, which suggests that background knowledge played an important role in realizing the potential of computer modeling in enhancing students' learning. Sufficient scaffolding is necessary to maximize the effect of interactive earth surface modeling in geoscience education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Determinants of Brand Loyalty in the Cola Industry of Pakistan: A Case Study of Pepsi Cola

The study has been comprehensively designed to understand the influence of customer satisfaction on brand loyalty. Whereas, customer satisfaction with the influence of brand personality as both the rivalry brand has significantly different positioning and personality. However, the study has purposefully incorporate brand attachment, brand trust and brand commitment as determinants of brand personality. Total 503 responses were collected using convenience sampling technique from the consumer market of Karachi, Pakistan. Primary data have been gathered with the help of quantitative five-point Likert scale questionnaire adapted from various past literature. The study has used Covariance-Based (CB) SEM model is used as data analysis method using SPSS-AMOS Version 22. The results showed that brand attachment, brand trust, and brand commitment have positive and statistically high impact on brand personality. Moreover, brand personality affects customer satisfaction positively and significantly. Also, customer satisfaction also showed statistically significant and positive influence on brand loyalty. Therefore, it has been evidently proven that brand attachment, brand trust and brand commitment were constructive determinants of brand personality, whereas, brand personality inclines customer satisfaction that eventually be translated into greater brand loyalty. It further revealed that among brand attachment, brand trust and brand commitment, brand personality was most influenced by brand trust, followed by brand commitment and least influenced by brand attachment. Hence, the companies can profoundly transform their marketing and brand management strategies accordingly for better outcomes. The study also provides some managerial and future research recommendations on the basis of results and findings.
Placing the Czech Shadow Banking Sector under the Light

The size of the shadow banking sector (SBS) has more than doubled in the Czech Republic over the last decade. This places a potential burden on policy makers. On the one hand, the SBS complements regular banking by expanding access to credit and investments, enabling better risk sharing and maturity transformation, and sup-porting market liquidity. On the other hand, SBS activities can put the stability of the financial system at risk and amplify its procyclicality by exacerbating the build-up of leverage and asset price bubbles. We implement a FAVAR model of the Czech economy to determine the impact of macroeconomic factors on the SBS. We find that the SBS: (i) is sensitive to changes in market interest rates and term spread; (ii) exhibits great procyclicality; (iii) can act as a complement to regular banking and satisfy some additional demand for credit. We also define some potential risks of continued growth of the SBS, linked to our empirical evidence.
Acquisitions and Technology Value Revision

Acquisition announcements coincide with upward value revisions for the target firms’ technology peers, which are not due to economic relations based on product market, supply chain, or geographical location. Such a phenomenon is robust across subsample periods, not specific to merger or technology waves, and not related to product-market structure and the unique innovation features of certain technology-intensive industries. Firms experience more dramatic value revisions when they have deeper technology overlaps with their targets, are more dependent on technology, or when a transaction features higher premium or greater technology overlap between the acquirer and target. Our mechanism analysis provides evidence that is primarily consistent with the acquisition-probability hypothesis whereby acquisition announcements elevate expected technology synergies and merger prospects for peers and partially in line with the enhanced-investment hypothesis that peers’ revaluations correlate with increased technology investments. We do not find any evidence in line with the competition-balance hypothesis that attributes peers’ value revisions to the change in industrial competition intensity. Overall, our results demonstrate that acquisition announcements disseminate novel information about the value of technology that is of common interest among firms with close technologies. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023. 4890 .
The effects of audit client tenure, audit lag, opinion shopping, liquidity ratio, and leverage to the going concern audit opinion

Purpose The going concern audit opinion is an audit opinion issued by an auditor to evaluate the company’s ability in maintaining the business continuity. The purpose of this paper is to discover the effects of audit client tenure, audit lag, opinion shopping, liquidity ratio and leverage on the going concern audit opinion. Design/methodology/approach The study used secondary data obtained from financial reports and independent audit reports published by Indonesian Stock Exchange (ISE) as well as Indonesian Capital Market Directory. Besides, the population of the study included manufacturing companies registered in ISE from 2009 to 2013. Further, the present study applied purposive sampling technique which resulted in 16 companies used as the sample of the study. Then the hypothesis was examined by applying logistic regression. Findings Results of the hypothesis examination indicated that the variables of opinion shopping and leverage affected the going concern audit opinion, whereas the variables of audit client tenure, audit lag and liquidity ratio did not affect the going concern audit opinion. Originality/value Results of the hypothesis examination indicated that the variables of opinion shopping and leverage affected the going concern audit opinion, whereas the variables of audit client tenure, audit lag and liquidity ratio did not affect the going concern audit opinion.
Detecting falsification in a television audience measurement panel survey

Case studies reporting real-world experiences with survey falsification are uncommon. In this article, we document the experience of a panel survey in India that produced TV viewing estimates (“TV ratings”) where external parties were illegitimately trying to influence respondents’ behavior. The usual method to detect possible falsifications was that of analysts poring through data to find suspicious viewing patterns. Here, we develop a method using multilevel models and illustrate its use in the detection of an actual incident. We report how the model-based method was used to direct on-ground investigations that ultimately supported our analytic inferences. The model-based method offers four advantages over the usual method. First, by approximating an interpenetrated sample, the model simultaneously controls for several household characteristics. Second, Empirical Best Linear Unbiased Predictors (EBLUPs) of random effects can be examined separately at both the household and interviewer level, thus suggesting where further investigation efforts should be directed. Third, the method is faster and more objective than the usual method. Fourth, the method is easily implemented and can provide regular quality control for survey organizations.
Understanding Adoption and Continuance of Online Direct Sales Channel

ABSTRACT Many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have built web presence, but few have advanced further to embrace the Internet as an online direct sales channel (ODSC). This study proposes and empirically tests a research model on the role of two risk constructs––perceived risk and risk propensity—in the adoption and continued use of ODSC among SMEs. The results show that the roles of the two risk constructs differ substantially: risk propensity has a direct and an indirect effect, but perceived risk only has an indirect effect, on SMEs’ intention to use ODSC. Furthermore, the impacts of the two risk constructs differ in the two temporal stages––the adoption and continued use––of ODSC. The findings of the study validate behavioral decision theories from a risk perspective that non-rational (i.e., risk propensity) as well as rational factors (i.e., perceived risk and perceived business value) shapes organizational decision-making.
Technostress and social networking services: Explaining users' concentration, sleep, identity, and social relation problems

It is common for users of social networking sites and services (SNS) to suffer from technostress and the various associated strains that hinder their well‐being. Despite prior SNS stress studies having provided valuable knowledge regarding SNS stressors and their use consequences, they have not examined the various strains related to well‐being that those stressors can create nor the underlying SNS characteristics. To address this gap in the research, we used a qualitative approach involving narrative interviews. As a contribution, our findings reveal four types of strains related to well‐being (concentration problems, sleep problems, identity problems, and social relation problems) as well as two different patterns with distinct sets of SNS stressors and SNS characteristics that generate those strains. As practical implications, the findings of this study can help technostressed users to identify their strains, understand their underlying SNS characteristics and SNS stressors, and increase the possibility that they will be able to avoid the strains in the future.
Task-Dependent Algorithm Aversion

Research suggests that consumers are averse to relying on algorithms to perform tasks that are typically done by humans, despite the fact that algorithms often perform better. The authors explore when and why this is true in a wide variety of domains. They find that algorithms are trusted and relied on less for tasks that seem subjective (vs. objective) in nature. However, they show that perceived task objectivity is malleable and that increasing a task’s perceived objectivity increases trust in and use of algorithms for that task. Consumers mistakenly believe that algorithms lack the abilities required to perform subjective tasks. Increasing algorithms’ perceived affective human-likeness is therefore effective at increasing the use of algorithms for subjective tasks. These findings are supported by the results of four online lab studies with over 1,400 participants and two online field studies with over 56,000 participants. The results provide insights into when and why consumers are likely to use algorithms and how marketers can increase their use when they outperform humans.
The Effect of TQM in building customer loyalty in digital banking: A review

The emergence of different kinds of banking channels such as ATM machineries, web banking and phone banking in addition development monetary market and worldwide competition force bankers for exploring the customer loyalty effect. Therefore, researches should focus on the active function of the banking area and its effective monetary market. When a market alters to a buyer’s market, businessmen have faced tremendously competitive things and could provide a type of enterprise value to attract customer’s attention. Though, limited researches have approached total quality management (TQM) and the method the safety business could support loyalty and satisfaction of customers. The main concern of service providers should be improving a thorough TQM system, considerate customer wants and decreasing the occurrence of service gaps in order to achieve customer loyalty and satisfaction. So, this paper concentrates on industry and whether or not these areas have an impact on the customer loyalty level during applying TQM system.
The Role of Rural Women in Agriculture A case study of Algeria

This paper provides evidence on the crucial role of women in agriculture and rural development. It presents the results of a research conducted 140 rural women in agricultural farms in western Algeria concerned women’s participation in agricultural activities. This document re affirms that women make essential contributions to agriculture and rural enterprises across the developing world. Women are major producers of food, earners of household income
Open Innovation in SMEs: Potential and Realized Absorptive Capacity for Interorganizational Learning in Dyad Collaborations with Academia

Due to a variety of barriers to develop innovation, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) find it necessary to collaborate with external sources of knowledge. The current study analyses the collaboration between SMEs and academia over an open innovation setting in Mexico. An absorptive capacity (ACAP) approach has been applied to understanding the process of developing new knowledge for achieving innovation. A two-part questionnaire was developed with the aim of assessing the ACAP of a new joint research unit. Data was collected from a local group of SMEs that collaborated as dyads with academia supported by a government program of innovation in Mexico. The result shows that there was a moderate potential and realized ACAP in the sample; these results are mutually related with both parts of the questionnaire which supports our findings. In conclusion, exploitation of new knowledge is a complex dimension for creating value from collaboration, which makes the outcome difficult to measure using traditional means. It can be argued that exploiting new knowledge for innovation is an iterative process of learning when exploring new sources of knowledge from academia.
Audit Partner Characteristics, Audit Fees and Earnings Quality

Within the auditing profession, there is an implied assumption that audit partners produce identical audit quality and earn statistically equivalent levels of audit fees for similar tasks. However, this is contradicted by individual behavioural literature, which shows that different individual auditor characteristics can influence judgement and thus influence audit outcomes. This paper examines whether specific audit partner characteristics such as gender, experience, industry specialization, partner busyness, education and social connection influence audit outcomes within the US market. Using a unique sample of 600 audit partner names disclosed in the PCAOB, I find evidence that partner gender (female) and industry specialization is significantly and positively associated with higher audit fee premiums. Additionally, my findings suggest that female partners are significantly associated with higher earnings quality. I also explain other variations in audit outcomes with other partner characteristics as observed in the findings.