bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A fuzzy synthetic evaluation analysis of operational management critical success factors for public-private partnership infrastructure projects
Authors: Osei-Kyei Robert , Chan Albert P.C. , Ameyaw Ernest Effah 
Published: August 2017

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the factor groupings of a set of 19 critical success factors (CSFs) associated with managing public-private partnership (PPP) projects at the operational stage and examine the most significant factor grouping using fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) technique.Design/methodology/approachThe paper adopted a comprehensive review of the pertinent literature and an empirical questionnaire survey geared towards targeted international PPP experts. Survey responses were analysed using factor analysis and FSE modelling.FindingsThe results from factor analysis show five CSF groupings (CSFGs) for managing operational PPPs. These are proficient service delivery and adequate legal structures, simplified payment mechanism and consistent project monitoring, effective contract variations management, suitable stakeholder management mechanism and environmental health and safety control. The FSE modelling shows that “simplified payment mechanism and consistent project monitoring”, is the most critical CSFG. The operational management CSFs under this grouping are acceptable level of user fee charges, efficient and well-structured payment mechanism, consistent project performance monitoring and long-term demand for public facility.Research limitations/implicationsThe major limitation lies in the low sample size that was used for analysis; however the years of research and/or industrial experience of respondents and the wide coverage of different cultural backgrounds (18 countries from five regions globally) contribute to the authenticity of the survey responses. Future research should adopt interviews and case study analysis to unravel CSFs in managing operational PPPs.Originality/valueThe findings of this study are considerably beneficial to both public authorities and private operators. They inform practitioners of the strategic procedures and measures to employ in optimising the operational performance of PPP projects. Further, the methodology employed allows project management experts to reliably select the operational management CSFs for their projects.
Measuring and mapping the emergence of the digital economy: a comparison of the market capitalization in selected countries
Authors: Mueller Simon C. , Bakhirev Alex , Böhm Markus , Schröer Marina , Krcmar Helmut , Welpe Isabell M. 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a method to quantify the digital economy using a representative measurement approach and use it to analyze the USA, Germany, the Republic of Korea and Sweden.

Design/methodology/approach
The research approach of this paper is based on a developed methodology to identify firms of the digital economy by measuring the market capitalization of selected countries in comparison over time using financial databases.

Findings
Comparing the market capitalization of the digital economy, the USA lead both in absolute as well as in relative terms. The 11 firms with the largest market capitalization are all American. For Germany, the results show that policy measures should be undertaken to ameliorate competitiveness in the field.

Research limitations/implications
This current measurement only includes public firms. An interesting avenue for future research would be to transfer the approach to investigate private firms.

Originality/value
Previous research has focused on comparing information and communication technologies adoption and infrastructure as well as innovation hubs between countries. The authors are not aware of any paper to date which has compared market capitalization in the digital economy between countries using a representative sample. This paper offers a research approach to measure and compare the digital economy between countries. The methodology could be applied to other countries which seek to benchmark their performance and derive policy measures to be able to compete with jurisdictions leading in the digital economy.
School lunch as a break or an educational activity
Authors: Waling Maria , Olsson Cecilia 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to explore to what extent teachers eat together with pupils during school lunches and their attitudes toward using these lunches to reach the educational goals stated in the Swedish compulsory school curriculum; and second, to study to what degree teachers see themselves and school meal personnel as role models during school lunches.

Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire was completed by 3,629 teachers in Swedish schools.

Findings
In total, 90 percent of the teachers ate lunch together with the pupils one or more days per week. The majority reported that meals were fully (54 percent), or partially (40 percent) subsidized when they were eating with pupils. In total, 72 percent thought that school lunches should be considered part of the school’s educational activities while 28 percent thought that it should be a time to get a break from educational activities. Most teachers thought that school lunches could be useful for learning about the issues of food waste and healthy eating while there were more diverse views on using lunches for learning about fundamental values. A majority of the teachers considered themselves to be role models in the school meal situation.

Practical implications
The authors suggest that the educational component of the school meal per se should be regulated in the Educational Act together with guidelines from the Swedish National Agency for Education.

Originality/value
This study is unique since it covers a previously little studied area; teachers’ attitudes toward using the school lunch situation for educational purposes.
Discriminatory related party transactions: a new measure
Authors: Tareq Mohammad , Houqe Muhammad Nurul , van Zijl Tony , Taylor Dennis William , Morley Clive 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a new measure for discriminatory related party transactions (DRPTs). There are currently measures for such discriminatory transactions but the new measure has a strong theoretical basis and is less susceptible to measurement error.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops and tests a new measure for these discriminatory transactions. Type I and Type II error rates and the power of the new measure are compared with an existing measure using computer-simulated and real data.

Findings
The capital market sensitivity of the new measure is also tested and compared with the existing measure. The new measure is found to be superior.

Practical implications
The new measure of DRPTs has the potential to contribute to both further research on the impact of related party transactions and policy-making in relation to DRPTs.

Originality/value
This paper has developed and tested a new measure for DRPTs.
Occurrences of online fraud complaints: 2002 through 2015
Authors: Koong Kai S. , Liu Lai C. , Qin Hong , Ying Tingting 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on the findings and lessons that were learned from the many cases of internet fraud complaints that are gathered by the Federal Trade Commission in the USA. The implications that are contained in the behavior of the complaints and trends identified are critical for addressing all types of online criminal activities in the increasing world of cybercrimes.

Design/methodology/approach
Data for this paper are extracted from the Consumer Sentinel Network Data Handbook covering a period of 13 years. Using the raw data, the occurrences were plotted and trends (number of cycles, time between cycles, and leading state and lagging states) were identified. Descriptive statistics covering the 13 years were examined and discussed. Using 20002 as the base year, the rate of growth of each of the states were ranked annually and were tested for stability and predictability using non-parametric approaches.

Findings
The key findings are indigenous to the occurrences of online fraud complaints in the USA. However, as the leading nation with the best database on fraud complaints, the findings are mission critical to fraud prevention across the globe. Specifically, this study found that since 2002, there have been four distinct cycles. Each cycle is clearly noticeable because there is a rapid growth in the number of crime complaints in the beginning half of the period followed by a slowing down period. However, the speed of change from one cycle to the next is steeper and the time gap is faster. While it is true that from the perspective of all the 50 states, the ranks appear to change every year and thus are not stable. However, the majority of the changes are relatively small so their relative positions by rank are still predictable.

Originality/value
The paper extends existing understanding of online fraud occurrences in the USA. The findings are timely and based on longitudinal data that span over a decade. The four new cycles identified are critical to the body of knowledge. The observed change in time from one cycle to another and its changes from a mathematic to a geometric one are also new. The findings are invaluable to persons working in law enforcement related occupations (auditors, lawyers, forensic experts, among others) and who must deal with the increasing problem of online fraud and cybercrimes.
Simulation evidence on the properties of alternative measures of working capital accruals
Authors: Izadi Zadeh Darjezi Javad , Choudhury Homagni , Nazarian Alireza 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the specification and power of tests based on the DD and modified DD model through the UK data between years 2000 and 2013, and make comparisons with tests using working capital accruals creating a measure of accruals quality as the standard deviation of the residuals value from firm-specific regressions base on working capital accruals on last, current and one-year-ahead cash flows from operations.

Design/methodology/approach
This study focuses both on the DD model and modified DD model to find out which of them can more accurately capture total working capital accrual estimation error and accrual quality. According to the DD model, the past, current and future net cash from operating activities as the three years’ operating cash inflows or outflows become omitted and correlated variables. In this study, the authors continue to document residuals from the DD and MDD models to demonstrate properties that are more consistent with behaviours of accruals estimation errors. Therefore, in this study, the authors are looking to compare the results from both the MDD and DD models and find which one of them is more effective in explaining the working capital accruals in the UK.

Findings
The authors find that adding additional explanatory variables may add additional explanatory power of variables to the DD model and extent to which accruals map into cash flow insights based on the UK data. This study is empirically well fitting with the internal workings of cash flows. As investors fixate only on the accounting earnings, they may fail to reflect fully on information contained within cash flow components and working capital accruals of current and future earnings.

Originality/value
The authors compare different equation to cover more items of working capital accruals. In addition, after examining earnings and accrual quality, the findings show that the average UK company behaviour was quite similar to the behaviour that was founded earlier for both models in the USA. Furthermore, this study results show that more volatility of sales, cash flow, accruals and earnings make a lower accrual quality. The results demonstrate that both models can capture the power to predict working capital accruals. Moreover, we find that adding additional explanatory variable of employee growth rate adds additional explanatory variables to DD model.
The role of person-job fit in the relationship between transformational leadership and job engagement
Authors: Bui Hong T.M. , Zeng Yolanda , Higgs Malcolm 
Published: August 2017

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ work engagement based on fit theory. The paper reports an investigation into the way in which employees’ perceptions of transformational leadership and person-job fit affect their work engagement.Design/methodology/approachTo test the authors’ hypotheses, the authors performed structure equation modeling with maximum likelihood estimation on Mplus with bootstrapping proposed by Hayes (2009) with data from 691 full-time employees in China.FindingsThe results indicate that transformational leadership has as significant influence on employees’ work engagement as person-job fit in China. Moreover, employees’ perception of person-job fit is found to partially mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ work engagement.Research limitations/implicationsThere is a possible bias arising from the use of cross-sectional data. However, certain methods were implemented to minimize it, including survey design and data analysis.Practical implicationsThe paper proposes a number of practical implications for policy makers, HR managers and transformational leaders relating to issues associated with improving levels of employee engagement.Originality/valueThe study contributes to developing leadership and engagement theory by examining a previously unexplored mediator – person-job fit – in a neglected cultural setting. This study promises to open new research avenues in this area.
GrandBase: generating actionable knowledge from Big Data
Authors: Fang Xiu Susie , Sheng Quan Z. , Wang Xianzhi , Ngu Anne H.H. , Zhang Yihong 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
This paper aims to propose a system for generating actionable knowledge from Big Data and use this system to construct a comprehensive knowledge base (KB), called GrandBase.

Design/methodology/approach
In particular, this study extracts new predicates from four types of data sources, namely, Web texts, Document Object Model (DOM) trees, existing KBs and query stream to augment the ontology of the existing KB (i.e. Freebase). In addition, a graph-based approach to conduct better truth discovery for multi-valued predicates is also proposed.

Findings
Empirical studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the approaches presented in this study and the potential of GrandBase. The future research directions regarding GrandBase construction and extension has also been discussed.

Originality/value
To revolutionize our modern society by using the wisdom of Big Data, considerable KBs have been constructed to feed the massive knowledge-driven applications with Resource Description Framework triples. The important challenges for KB construction include extracting information from large-scale, possibly conflicting and different-structured data sources (i.e. the knowledge extraction problem) and reconciling the conflicts that reside in the sources (i.e. the truth discovery problem). Tremendous research efforts have been contributed on both problems. However, the existing KBs are far from being comprehensive and accurate: first, existing knowledge extraction systems retrieve data from limited types of Web sources; second, existing truth discovery approaches commonly assume each predicate has only one true value. In this paper, the focus is on the problem of generating actionable knowledge from Big Data. A system is proposed, which consists of two phases, namely, knowledge extraction and truth discovery, to construct a broader KB, called GrandBase.
On properties of cyberattacks and their nuances
Authors: Happa Jassim , Goldsmith Michael 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
Several attack models attempt to describe behaviours of attacks with the intent to understand and combat them better. However, all models are to some degree incomplete. They may lack insight about minor variations about attacks that are observed in the real world (but are not described in the model). This may lead to similar attacks being classified as the same type of attack, or in some cases the same instance of attack. The appropriate solution would be to modify the model or replace it entirely. However, doing so may be undesirable as the model may work well for most cases or time and resource constraints may factor in as well. This paper aims to explore the potential value of adding information about attacks and attackers to existing models.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper investigates used cases of minor variations in attacks and how it may and may not be appropriate to communicate subtle differences in existing attack models through the use of annotations. In particular, the authors investigate commonalities across a range of existing models and identify where and how annotations may be helpful.

Findings
The authors propose that nuances (of attack properties) can be appended as annotations to existing attack models. Using annotations appropriately should enable analysts and researchers to express subtle but important variations in attacks that may not fit the model currently being used.

Research limitations/implications
This work only demonstrated a few simple, generic examples. In the future, the authors intend to investigate how this annotation approach can be extended further. Particularly, they intend to explore how annotations can be created computationally; the authors wish to obtain feedback from security analysts through interviews, identify where potential biases may arise and identify other real-world applications.

Originality/value
The value of this paper is that the authors demonstrate how annotations may help analysts communicate and ask better questions during identification of unknown aspects of attacks faster,e.g. as a means of storing mental notes in a structured manner, especially while facing zero-day attacks when information is incomplete.
Business models sustaining subsistence economies: evidence from India
Authors: Saripalli Bhavani Shankar , Chawan Vinaysingh 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse interventions of various forms of organisations operating with the objective of connecting subsistence entrepreneurs (SEs) with the formal economy. This work also attempts to understand and analyse the transformational role played by these organisations. Finally, the paper aims to arrive at a conceptual framework for organisations interested in playing a transformational role.

Design/methodology/approach
The paper deals with subsistence entrepreneurship and business models for subsistence economies. It draws from case studies of six organisations operating with the objective to connect subsistence entrepreneurs with formal economy. Each case chosen is unique with respect to the organisational form it takes to achieve the objective. However, a lot of similarity can be seen in the components of the business model adopted by these organisations.

Findings
Organisations which emerge keeping the context of rural producers in mind survive and support SEs in the long run. SEs need not always get converted into transformational entrepreneurs. However, with the help of organisations which collectivise SEs, they can interact with formal economy. Such organisations help large numbers of SEs to sustain and possibly move out of subsistence status over a period of time. These organisations have to fill the voids left by government or market institutions so as to create enabling conditions for SEs to thrive. Despite the efforts of the organisations, it is not possible for all SEs to move out of their subsistence status and existence in informal markets. However, it is possible in case of some SEs at least, as the institutional support gives them more certainty in incomes.

Research limitations/ implications
The paper does not take a business model adopted by government institution for the purpose of analysis.

Practical implications
The paper offers practical suggestions for organisations interested in collectivising SEs with the aim to improve their returns from market transactions.

Originality/value
The paper offers a conceptual framework to enrich the understanding of role played by organisations working towards collectivising SEs. It adds to the debate of subsistence entrepreneurship and transformational entrepreneurship. It elaborates the elements of social capital created by these organisations at the meso level. Finally, it re-emphasises the strengths of informal economy to support the customer value proposition for formal markets.
Memorable projects and aesthetic experiences in an industrial R&D lab
Authors: Ocnarescu Ioana , Bouchard Carole 
Published: August 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show the mechanism of aesthetic experiences of work in a research and innovation context – an R&D laboratory of a multinational communications and information technology company. Analysing memorable projects of this laboratory through the lenses of aesthetics is a useful way to understand organizational and innovation culture and the quality of life of researchers and innovators.

Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory study focusing on memorable projects of 31 researchers who worked on 70 projects during four years was conducted. The data analysis is based on the grounded theory.

Findings
The study reveals six key dimensions that describe the dimensions of R&D researchers’ aesthetic experiences: perceptive, emotional, intellectual, communicative, collective and organizational. These dimensions are closely related and support an innovation culture in an R&D environment.

Research limitations/implications
The aesthetic dimensions have to be correlated to innovation performance indicators to better understand which aspects are the most relevant for innovation.

Practical implications
The paper proposes first examples of implications for the industry to foster an innovation culture through aesthetic experiences.

Originality/value
No study has been done on aesthetic experiences in an R&D environment.
The development of perceptual averaging: learning what to do, not just how to do it
Authors: Jones Pete R. , Dekker Tessa M. 
Published: August 2017

AbstractThe mature visual system condenses complex scenes into simple summary statistics (e.g., average size, location, orientation, etc.). However, children, often perform poorly on perceptual averaging tasks. Children's difficulties are typically thought to represent the suboptimal implementation of an adult‐like strategy. This paper examines another possibility: that children actually make decisions in a qualitatively different way to adults (optimal implementation of a non‐ideal strategy).Ninety children (6–7, 8–9, 10–11 years) and 30 adults were asked to locate the middle of randomly generated dot‐clouds. Nine plausible decision strategies were formulated, and each was fitted to observers' trial‐by‐trial response data (Reverse Correlation). When the number of visual elements was low (N < 6), children used a qualitatively different decision strategy from adults: appearing to “join up the dots” and locate the gravitational center of the enclosing shape. Given denser displays, both children and adults used an ideal strategy of arithmetically averaging individual points. Accounting for this difference in decision strategy explained 29% of children's lower precision. These findings suggest that children are not simply suboptimal at performing adult‐like computations, but may at times use sensible, but qualitatively different strategies to make perceptual judgments. Learning which strategy is best in which circumstance might be an important driving factor of perceptual development.