Social capital and geography of learning: Roles in accelerating the spread of integrated pest management

This paper aims to show the relevance of spatial proximity and social capital in accelerating the spread of agricultural technologies such as integrated pest management (IPM). The research was done in response to the problem of slow diffusion of agricultural technologies. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used in investigating the process of sharing and learning of IPM. Results show that social capital in terms of kin networks and spatial proximity such as found among farm neighbours are essential in the learning process and hence, diffusion of IPM among Filipino farmers. Kin networks and farm location are then important considerations in sampling participants strategically for the long-season IPM farmer field schools (FFS).     

A Study of the Causes of User Dissatisfaction in Academic Libraries: A Case of University Students in a Developing Country

ABSTRACT

This article investigates students’ perceptions and expectations of service quality to understand the causes of dissatisfaction with the services delivered by the university libraries in Bangladesh. A total of 623 usable responses were collected from ten public and private university libraries in the country. The survey data were collected using a modified five dimensional SERVQUAL-based questionnaire, consisting of 26 service items. To determine the level of user satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the service items, the study used the disconfirmation theory with slight modification. It was found that users’ unrealistically high expectation for quality services is one of the key sources of their dissatisfaction. The other causes of dissatisfaction include lack of user-employee relationships, lack of attention to users’ needs, an external communication gap between library and users, lack of attention to enhance staffs’ performance, etc. Based on the service deficiencies identified, the study offers some measures that could be used as a way to improve service quality, and thereby user satisfaction.     

Exploring connections to unrelated social clusters in a socio temporal communication network

In this study, we first explore whether individuals with the greatest number of weak ties to others will have more connections to a greater number of unrelated social clusters. Secondly, we explore whether individuals with the greatest number of weak ties to others will serve as bridges between isolated social clusters. Thirdly, we analyse whether the level of call activity is dependant on different types of social network structures (i.e. strong ties and weak ties). Here, we investigate the effects of social ties on mobile phone usage behaviour. The research conceptual model represents the relationship between three independent variables and one dependant variable. The three independent variables — (i) call activity; (ii) connection to unrelated social clusters; and (iii) social bridges between unrelated social clusters. We suggest that each of the three independent variables has an impact on the way individuals use mobile phone devices. By exploring the MIT Reality Mining Data, we first found a trend where the individuals who have the greatest number of strong social ties to others display the highest levels of call activity. On the contrary, individuals who have a modest number of strong ties, but have a high number of acquaintances show lower levels of call activity purely because the weak tie relationships do not require as much maintenance as the strong ties. Secondly, we visualise where unrelated social clusters within a social network displayed some connections to one another. We propose that the majority of these connections interlinking such unrelated social clusters would be weak ties. Thirdly, we discover that the individuals who display the greatest number of weak tie relationships are linked to the individuals in various social clusters.     

Parent-Infant Rough Play: Its Cultural Specificity

The salience of father-infant rough play in some industrialized and nonindustrialized countries around the world was reviewed, and data were presented on the physical play interactions of 34Indianmothers and fathers with their year-old infants in the home. Our review of the parent-infant physical play literature failed to show that fathers had a uniformly greater propensity to engage in vigorous rough activity with infants than mothers did. The data from the observational study suggest that Indian parents are not vigorous play partners to infants. Mothers were more likely to engage in object-mediated play than were fathers. In total, the data reviewed do not support the contention that rough play is a major activity between fathers and infants across cultures. Rather, the data from parent-infant play in the nonindustrialized countries suggest that rough play may be culture specific, casting doubts about its biological underpinnings.     

What improves citizens’ privacy perceptions toward RFID technology? A cross-country investigation using mixed method approach

Privacy is a serious concern to radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Worldwide, several companies scrapped RFID projects because of high resistance from consumers and their advocacy groups – which actually demand RFID-specific privacy policies. This concern is even more acute when RFID is used in public applications; because, in general case, citizens cannot refuse to provide data, and the data collected by a government agency would offer serious threats if are shared among third parties. Limited research has been performed in this specific issue; they all agree that perceived privacy increased RFID acceptance. But, what drives privacy perceptions are yet to be researched – this study closes this research gap. In order to conduct the current research, mixed method of research approach has been adopted. In the qualitative research stage, the authors conducted two focused-group discussion sessions and eight in-depth interviews in two different countries: Australia and Bangladesh; arguing that the status, and the perceptions and tolerance of the citizens on privacy are different in these two regions. The explored factors have been examined with empirical data obtained from these two countries. It is found that, there are distinct differences in perceptions in developed and developing countries. The detail findings offer practical suggestions to the agency managers so that they can ensure better privacy of the citizens. As a significant theoretical contribution, this study enhances existing literature identifying the antecedents of privacy, which play even different roles in different cultural backgrounds.     

Communication network dynamics during organizational crisis

Communication network is a personal or professional set of relationships between individuals or organizations. In other words, it is a pattern of contacts which are created due to the flow of information among the participating actors. The flow of information establishes various types of relationships among the participating entities. These relationships eventually form an overall pattern that could form a gestalt of the total structure within organizational context. In this paper, we analyze the changing communications structure in order to investigate the patterns associated with the final stages of organizational crisis. Organizational crisis has been defined as organizational mortality, organizational death, organizational exit, bankruptcy, decline, retrenchment and failure to characterize various forms of organizational crisis. We draw on theoretical perspectives on organizational crisis proposed by social network analysts and other sociologists to test 5 key propositions on the changes in the network communication structure associated with organizational crisis: (1) a few actors, who are prominent or more active, will become central during the organizational crisis period; (2) reciprocity within the organizational communication network will increase during crisis period; (3) organizational communication network becomes less transitive as organizations experience crisis; (4) number of cliques increases in a communication network as organizations are going through crisis; and (5) communication network becomes increasingly centralized as organizations go through crisis.     

An analytical technique to find approximate solutions of nonlinear damped oscillatory systems

Combining Krylov-Bogoliubov-Mitropolskii (KBM) and harmonic balance methods, an analytical technique is presented to determine approximate solutions of nonlinear oscillatory systems with damping. The first approximate perturbation solutions in which the unperturbed solutions contain two harmonic terms agree with numerical solutions nicely even if the damping force is significant. With suitable examples it has been shown that the combination of classical KBM and harmonic balance methods sometimes fails to measure satisfactory results; but the combination of extended KBM method (by Popov) and harmonic balance method always give the desired results. The method is illustrated by several examples and the solutions are compared to some existing solutions.