bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Estimation of parameters in the state space model of stochastic RL electrical circuit
Authors: Farnoosh Rahman , Hajrajabi Arezoo 
Published: April 2013

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider the stochastic differential equation of the RL electrical circuit as the dynamic model of a state space system when the current in the circuit is hidden and corrupted by the measurement noise. Estimation of the corrupted current and the values of missing or unknown parameters (resistance, the observed current variance in the measurement model, the mean and variance of the current prior distribution) which are the main concern in electrical engineering is considered.Design/methodology/approachOptimal filtering is proposed for estimation of the hidden current from the noisy observations. Also, the problem of analyzing this model based on estimation of the unknown parameters is addressed from the likelihood‐based and Bayesian perspective.FindingsComputational techniques for parameter estimation are carried out by the Maximum likelihood (ML) approach using Expectation‐Maximization type optimization and Bayesian Monte Carlo perspective using Metropolis‐Hastings scheme. The explicit formulas for the ML estimator are obtained and it is shown that the smoothers, the filters and the predictions for the current have the best confidence intervals, respectively. Some numerical simulation examples which are performed by R programming software are considered to show the efficiency and applicability of the proposed approaches. Results show an excellent estimation of the parameters based on these approaches.Practical implicationsDue to the fact that in an empirical situation of electrical engineering, observing the current in the circuit regardless of the measurement noise and knowing the exact value of the parameters are unrealistic assumptions, this paper can be used in various types of real time projects.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' information, the problem of analyzing the state space model of RL electrical circuit has not been studied before. Furthermore, the estimation of the hidden current as the state of the system and estimation of the unknown parameters of the model via both ML and Bayesian approaches have been investigated for the first time in the present study.
Linking task and goal interdependence to quality service
Authors: Drach‐Zahavy Anat , Somech Anit 
Published: April 2013

PurposeWith a twofold aim, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the service climate, including its antecedents, consequences, and a moderator. First, it examines whether task‐ and goal‐interdependent configuration facilitates the level of service climate; second, it tests the strength of the moderating role of service climate between service climate levels and service behavior.Design/methodology/approachAmong 54 nursing units at six hospitals, the data were collected using multiple methods (surveys, observations, administrative data).FindingsMixed‐linear model analyses indicated that the joint effects of task and goal interdependence related significantly to service climate level. Service climate strength moderated the relationship of service climate level to quality service behavior.Research limitations/implicationsThe research approach may diminish the generalizability of the research results. Further work should test the propositions in other research contexts.Practical implicationsQuality service behaviors and the service climate could be promoted through well‐designed task‐ and goal‐interdependence structures within units. Assimilating a service climate in units is not enough. To promote high quality service behaviors, managers must direct their efforts toward finding agreement among team members with regard with the importance of service in their unit.Originality/valueThe paper's findings offer empirical support to the persistent social interaction explanation of climate formation and point to the important role of interdependence for creating and maintaining service climate levels and promoting service behaviors in units.
Measuring consumer perceptions of online shopping convenience
Authors: Jiang Ling (Alice) , Yang Zhilin , Jun Minjoon 
Published: April 2013

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the key convenience dimensions of online shopping, as convenience has been one of the principal motivations underlying customer inclinations to adopt online shopping.Design/methodology/approachThe authors first employ in‐depth focus group interviews with online consumers to identify the attributes of online shopping convenience and then develop and validate an instrument of five key dimensions to measure online shopping convenience by analyzing data collected via a Web‐based questionnaire survey.FindingsThe five dimensions of online shopping convenience are: access, search, evaluation, transaction, and possession/post‐purchase convenience.Practical implicationsOnline retailers can employ the five‐factor measurement instrument to assess the degree of customer perceived online shopping convenience. This instrument can assist managers in identifying and overcoming key obstacles to the delivery of a highly convenient online shopping service to customers, and also helps them enlarge their loyal customer base.Originality/valueThis study focuses on uncovering the key dimensions of convenience and their associated sub‐dimensions specific to the context of online shopping. Theoretically, the identified dimensions and their related sub‐items comprise a validated scale for measuring Web‐based service convenience and can serve as building blocks for further studies in e‐commerce customer relationship management.
Ontology and tool support for quality service management
Authors: Alti Adel , Boukerram Abbdellah , Roose Philippe 
Published: April 2013

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to design ontology for describing semantic context‐aware quality services, and to present a new web management tool that provides a great flexibility and enables automatic semantic adaptation and customization of mobile client services.Design/methodology/approachThe tool is developed using ontology‐based approach. This ontology captures a shared conceptual schema common in the tourism domain and maintains semantic quality information in heterogeneous service providers for service model. The results of the tool will be compared to prior works from other quality and distributed based service selection methods for mobile‐based application.FindingsThe tool support is based in the ontology Context‐aware Quality Semantic Web Service called (CxQWS). At the first step, services are defined as a set of semantic metadata, reflecting service requirements and QoS parameters. At the second step, services with a semantic contextual metadata are elaborated. Such a procedure ensures that the selection decisions should be based on the semantic quality representation of the created services. The SELETOR tool results suggest that the level of intelligent method use continue to be high flexibility in World Tourism organisations.Research limitations/implicationsThe tourism services in a mobile environment have a critical role in creating tourist satisfaction. They are neither a uniform group, nor able to give consistently high service quality. Indeed they have significantly different platforms and a variety of heterogeneous service providers which make the management of service qualities complex.Practical implicationsA significant proposition is to integrate new tourism quality attributes of mobile‐based application, to provide a dynamic adaptation of selection services based on context metadata parameters (user, environment, device, and service provider context) and the management of the heterogeneity of service needs, of mobile devices capacities and their various communication protocols (GPRS, WIFI, Bluetooth, etc.) as well as the media variety (sound, video, text and image), possibly reflecting the decreased time responses and the increased visibility of standard services management methods.Originality/valueThe paper proposes SELECTOR, a dynamic service selection tool based on CxQWS ontology, defined as set of semantic metadata, which context and QoS parameters. The tool is based on semantic services and offer architecture, with three layers (semantic query, management and web services). The most innovative characteristic of the tool is that it profits from the potential of semantic representation techniques to express high level explicit constraints, while they may be useful to guide the selection and adaptation process. This tool provides low adaptation effort, e.g. takes into account all the heterogeneous services as its various communication protocols (GSM, 3G, Bluetooth, etc.) as consequences of self‐selection for dynamic context evolution guided by the adaptation policies.
A novel system for video news' sentiment analysis
Authors: Kechaou Zied , Wali Ali , Ben Ammar Mohamed , Karray Hichem , Alimi Adel M. 
Published: April 2013

PurposeDespite the actual prevalence of diverse types of multimedia information, research on video news is still in an early stage. Improving the accessibility of video news seems worth investigating, therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present a new combination mode of video news text clustering and selection. This method is useful for sorting out and classifying various types of news videos and media texts based on sentiment analysis.Design/methodology/approachA novel system is proposed, whereby video news are identified and categorized into good or bad ones via the authors' suggested Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) hybrid learning method. Actually, an exploratory video news sentiment analysis case study, conducted on various news databases, has proven that the feature‐selection‐combining method, encompassing the Information Gain (IG), Mutual Information (MI) and CHI‐statistic (CHI), performs the best classification, which testifies and highlights the designed framework's value.FindingsIn fact, the system turns out to be applicable to several areas, especially video news, where annotation and personal perspectives affect the accuracy aspect.Research limitations/implicationsThe present work shows the way for further research pertaining to the personal attitudes and the application of different linguistic techniques during the classification.Originality/valueThe achieved results are so promising, encouraging and satisfactory, that they highlight the originality and efficiency of the authors' approach as an effective tool enabling to secure an easy access to video news and multi‐media texts.
CSR communication:quo vadis?
Authors: Golob Urša , Podnar Klement , Elving Wim J. , Ellerup Nielsen Anne , Thomsen Christa , Schultz Friederike 
Published: April 2013

PurposeThis paper aims to introduce the special issue on CSR communication attached to the First International CSR Communication Conference held in Amsterdam in October 2011. The aim of the introduction is also to review CSR communication papers published in scholarly journals in order to make a summary of the state of CSR communication knowledge.Design/methodology/approachThe existing literature on CSR communication was approached via systematic review. with a combination of conventional and summative qualitative content analysis. The final dataset contained 90 papers from two main business and management databases, i.e. EBSCOhost and ProQuest.FindingsPapers were coded into three main categories. The results show that the majority of the papers are concerned with disclosure themes. Considerably less salient are papers that fall under process‐oriented themes and the outcomes/consequences of CSR communications. The most important outlets for CSR communication‐related topics areJournal of Business EthicsandCorporate Communications: An International Journal.Originality/valueThis paper represents the first attempt to perform a systematic and comprehensive overview of CSR communication papers in scholarly journals. Its value is in making this rather vast and heterogeneous literature more visible and accessible to all CSR communication scholars.
Non‐destructive quantitative phase analysis of an LTCC material
Authors: Makarovič Kostja , Meden Anton , Hrovat Marko , Belavič Darko , Holc Janez , Kosec Marija 
Published: April 2013

PurposeIn this manuscript the purpose is to present and evaluate the developed non‐destructive method for analysing the phase composition of LTCC Du Pont “Green Tape 951” material fired in the temperature range from 800 to 1,000°C using X‐ray powder diffraction and Rietveld refinement.Design/methodology/approachThe method uses the crystalline Al2O3 which is already present in the material as an internal standard since its mass fraction was previously found to be constant in the described temperature range.FindingsThe results of the non‐destructive analyses and the classical destructive analyses are comparable and the estimated error of the destructive phase analyses and the calculated errors for the non‐destructive phase analyses are of the same order.Practical implicationsThe described method can be used also for analysing another type of LTCC material. In this case it is necessary to check whether the mass fraction of any crystalline phase present in the sample is constant in the given temperature range, because only in this case can it be used as an internal standard for a determination of the phase composition.Originality/valueThe non‐destructive method is a fast and easy approach for analysing the fired samples and is also suitable for controlling the phase composition of LTCC materials on 3D complex structures without destroying them, just by using the X‐ray diffraction patterns collected from their surface.
The effects of process‐oriented organizational design on firm performance
Authors: Kohlbacher Markus , Reijers Hajo A. 
Published: April 2013

PurposeSeveral organizations choose a process‐oriented organizational design as a source for competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically the relationship between process orientation (PO) and firm performance. The paper considers PO as a multidimensional construct and examines how its underlying dimensions impact different aspects of organizational performance.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses an exploratory research design and investigates the effects of the different PO dimensions on profitability, customer satisfaction, product quality, and time‐based performance using a random sample of Austrian manufacturing firms.FindingsThe empirical findings reveal that process performance measurement, a process‐oriented organizational structure, the application of continuous process improvement methods, and – in particular – a culture in line with the process approach, are significantly and positively associated with organizational performance.Originality/valueWhile a few studies examined the effects of PO on financial performance, there is a clear lack of quantitative studies investigating the effects of PO on other, non‐financial performance measures. In addition, since most of the existing studies treated PO as a single measure, there is a clear lack of studies that investigate the performance effects of individual PO dimensions. The paper incorporates the multidimensional nature of PO and examines the effects of individual PO dimensions on several firm performance aspects.
Identifying public‐private partnership (PPP) risks in managing water supply projects in Ghana
Authors: Effah Ameyaw Ernest , Chan Albert P.C. 
Published: April 2013

PurposeThe public‐private partnership (PPP) procurement approach enables the development and management of public infrastructure and services through leveraging private capital, management expertise, and creative commercial skills. This approach, pursued by the Ghanaian Government in the development and management of water supply services, contains a plethora of risks resulting from the complexity and dynamic interactions between municipal and central governments (pursuing monetary and political goals), public movements, private water operators, and international donors pursuing their own objectives. The paper seeks to increase awareness of the risks that can erode or reduce potential benefits of PPPs in the water supply sector.Design/methodology/approachA research approach integrating a literature survey and case study is adopted. A rigorous literature review of PPP risks is first undertaken. Based on six case studies carried out in the Ghanaian water supply sector, this paper identifies and categorises the risks specific to water supply PPP contracts in Ghana.FindingsA total of 40 risk factors are identified, classified into eight categories based on their sources and their content presented in detail. Common risks which are worth practitioners' attention include weak regulatory and monitoring regime; financing; absence of risk allocation mechanisms; inexperience in PPPs; public opposition; delayed and non‐payment of bills, etc.Originality/valueA comprehensive list of risks associated with water supply projects in Ghana has been identified. This list will aid practitioners, municipal and central government authorities, and the domestic and the (potential) international private sector audience in managing risks involved in such projects.
Challenges faced by facilities managers in the Australasian universities
Authors: Aishah Kamarazaly Myzatul , Mbachu Jasper , Phipps Robyn 
Published: April 2013

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to: identify the current and future challenges faced by university facilities managers; analyse their associated risk levels; and establish practical ways to address the identified key challenges.Design/methodology/approachPersonal interviews were conducted with 25 members of the Australasian university facilities managers (UFMs). The constructs generated at the pilot interviews were used to design a structured but open‐ended questionnaire with which the Tertiary Education Facilities Managers Association (TEFMA) members were surveyed. The multi‐attribute method was used in the data analysis.FindingsResults showed that the critical challenges currently facing the UFMs comprised issues relating to the following (in diminishing order of significance): inadequate funding, emergency management and business continuity planning, statutory compliance, sustainability and environmental stewardship, keeping up with rapid changes in technology, operational efficiency, identifying and meeting stakeholder needs, maintenance and manpower. Preparing for and responding to disaster/emergency was perceived as the most critical challenge of the future, perhaps, due to the recent natural disasters. Overall, poor funding was identified as the root of all other issues faced by the UFMs, hence suggested strategies for addressing the key challenges harped on financial improvement measures. Other key measures included optimized asset utilization, supporting business case for capital investment with demonstrable returns on investment, improving FM's strategic relevance through linking FM and corporate strategies, and investment in efficient technologies such as the building automation and management systems.Originality/valueThe findings have contributed to filling an important knowledge gap by not only identifying the current and future challenges facing the UFMs, but also prioritising them based on their relative influences on the achievement of the strategic goals of the FM department. This way, the limited resources at the disposal of the UFMs could be disbursed more cost‐effectively in addressing the critical challenges in line with their identified risk levels. This would be of practical benefit to the facilities and property managers in formulating appropriate responses to the identified critical constraints with a view to achieving more satisfactory outcomes in their operations.
A uniform experience? Reflections on implementing rules into practice
Authors: Norman Karen 
Published: April 2013

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the appropriateness of the term “implementing into practice” when describing the way nurse managers attempt to ensure staff compliance with hospital policy.Design/methodology/approachA narrative exploration of an unexpectedly difficult interaction with a nurse concerning their non‐adherence to uniform policy, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of writers such as Mead, Stacey and Elias.FindingsPersonal and shared reflections on this surprising interaction have uncovered many layers of complexity, not only in an individual's adherence or non‐adherence to policy, but also in the whole process of determining and communicating the need for behavioural changes.Originality/valueThough “implementing into practice” is commonly used in reference to the nurse manager's responsibility for compliance with hospital policy, the term is misleading and appears to derive from taken‐for‐granted assumptions about organisational systems and models of communication. The nurse manager cannot control staff behaviour; and while their intervention does have some influence on the outcome, they in turn are also influenced by ongoing processes of interaction and reflective adaptation that cannot be predicted. This article demonstrates how the behaviour of staff within an organisation is not directed by the nurse manager, but co‐created in continuous interactions through which every participant contributes to the shaping of complex factors that have the potential to influence the development of a policy as well as its degree of acceptance.
Pilot ethnic analysis of routine hospital admissions data and comparison with census linked data: CHD rates remain high in Pakistanis
Authors: Millard A. , Guthrie C. , Fischbacher C. , Jamieson J. 
Published: April 2013

PurposeRoutine data are needed to monitor ethnic health inequalities. The proportion of hospital discharge records with ethnicity information has been improving in Scotland. The aim of this paper is to assess whether routine data can provide valid comparisons of admission rates by ethnic group.Design/methodology/approachRoutine hospital admissions data in four NHS Boards were analysed by ethnic group and sex to compare incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and coronary heart disease (CHD). A previous study linking health and census ethnicity information for 2001‐2003 provided the comparison standard.FindingsThere was a similar risk of AMI for South Asian compared to non‐South Asian people in 2009‐2011 and 2001‐2003. South Asian people and Pakistani women had higher risk of CHD than White Scottish people. The Other White group had higher and the White Irish lower risk of AMI admission in comparison to 2001‐2003 data.Research limitations/implicationsThe comparison used a different age range, did not include community deaths, covered a part of Scotland rather than the whole, and may have been affected by changes to denominators, which were based on the UK census 2001.Originality/valueThe similar IRRs for AMI from census linkage in 2001‐2003 and NHS data from 2009‐2011 suggest routine ethnicity data are valid in some NHS Boards. Analyses can reveal previously unknown variations to justify health improvement action. To maximise the precision of analyses, data completeness needs to be increased and sustained.