The impact of workforce agility on organizational memory

Existing literature has generally focused on organizational memory (OM) and workforce agility. Yet, less concentration has been devoted to the impact of workforce agility on OM. This research proposed a model that studies the impact of workforce agility on declarative OM and procedural OM. The model focused on aspects related to proactivity, adaptability, and resiliency. The study targeted the cell phone industry in Jordan. The study sample included 430 individuals involved in managerial and professional knowledge positions in mobile communications companies in Jordan. The article concluded that a proactive workforce has a significant impact on declarative OM and proactivity also improves procedural OM. Consequently, practical implications for managers, and suggested future research are presented.     

The effects of attitudinal versus religious similarity on the neighborhood preferences of Lebanese university students

The main purpose of the present study was to assess the relative importance of attitudinal versus religious similarity on the neighborhood preferences of Lebanese university students shortly after the 1975–1976 war in Lebanon.It was expected that neighborhood preference for a stranger would be affected by: (1) attitudinal similarity — dissimilarity on an important political issue and by (2) the number of strangers involved.The subjects were 169 Lebanese undergraduate students at the American University of Beirut (67 Christians, 96 Muslims, with six subjects not mentioning religious affiliation). In terms of political ideology, 38 subjects were conservative while 131 were liberal and, with respect to displacement during the war, 81 subjects stated that they were displaced while 88 subjects indicated that they remained in their original neighborhoods. Finally, with respect to ethnic (or national) origin, 118 subjects considered themselves as “Arabs” while 48 indicated that their origin was something “other” than Arab, with the remaining three subjects not responding to this item.The results showed that, irrespective of the background characteristics of the subjects, (1) strangers of a different religion who had the same attitudes on an important political issue were significantly more preferred as neighbors than coreligionist strangers who had opposite attitudes on the same issue, and (2) neighborhood preference was significantly greater for one than for many strangers. However, although one stranger was significantly more preferred as a neighbor than many, this preference was found to be stronger under the opposite attitude — same religion condition.     

‘Arrivederci CIAO.com, Buongiorno Bing.com’—Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), antecedences and consequences

The Internet facilitates access to online product reviews and comments written by consumers. This paper offers new insights on the motives and antecedents of the reading behaviour of consumer reviews in online opinion platforms. This research was carried out from 2005 to 2008 using a case study approach. The case involved working with a prominent and successful online opinion platform (CIAO.com). The company was so successful it was purchased by Microsoft for $486 million in 2008 and is now incorporated into their main search engine which is still a market leader today. The research highlights four different types of motives that drive customers to read online reviews: decision-involvement, product-involvement, social-involvement and economic-involvement motives. The outcomes also demonstrated four different new types of motives: self-involvement motives, consumer-empowerment motives, new social-involvement motives and site-administration motives. Several related themes were also investigated, such as the preference for reading or writing online reviews and the reasons for choosing one over the other. The research tested the relevance of the online reading motives and their influence on consumer buying and communication behaviour. In summary, some theoretical and practical implications are highlighted and discussed.     

Exploring the role of a government authority in managing transformation in service re-engineering – Experiences from Dubai police

E-Government adoption and implementation has gained noticeable momentum across many developed and developing economies. Nevertheless, transitioning from the “electronic” to the stage of “transformational” domain – coined as t-Government – is posing the greatest challenge of how government services respond to changes in the broader economy and society. Despite considerable investments and the wide use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), research literature on e-Government suggests that government services have yet to reach the full potential of seamless integration, where all transactions are completed electronically. Through a detailed analysis of the extant e-Government literature and a case study based empirical research, this paper explores the domain of e-Government in identifying the possible reasons for this potential shortfall in achieving full integration. Furthermore, the paper intends to highlight an aspect of complexity surrounding crossing the integration gap as the authors denote by “eChasm” in the e-Government conceptual model that leads to transformation. In addition, it focuses on radical change through Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and the call for strategic style of leadership, for cross-agency collaboration leading to a successful realisation of transformational government (t-Government). It is interesting to note that researchers and public sector leaders have started to realise that implementing and managing the transformation of public services, copiously satisfying the users and stakeholders, is a task of multi-dimensional complexity.     

How to repair the Hill cipher

INTRODUCTION Owing to the advance in network technology, information security is an increasingly important problem. Popular application of multimedia tech- nology and increasingly transmission ability of net- work gradually leads us to acquire information di- rectly and clearly through images. Hence, data secu- rity has become a critical and imperative issue. Hill cipher is a block cipher that has several advantages such as disguising letter frequencies of the plaintext, its simplicity be…     

The Body As Medium in the Digital Age: Challenges and Opportunities

This essay glosses an attempt to capture communication in the Arab uprisings through the prism of the human body. Such an approach to communication and revolution entails several challenges and opportunities. Challenges include tension between biopolitical approaches and a perspective that considers the body as an instrument of practice, the tendency in scholarship that restricts discussions of the body to discussions of gender and sexuality, and not politics at large, and the glossing over of issues of social class and geographic location, all crucial when considering the body as an instrument of communication. Opportunities afforded by using the body as a focal point include a fuller consideration of human agency that eschews technological determinism when studying power and resistance, a historically grounded analytical approach that preempts an uncritical dalliance with presentism, the body being in effect the “oldest medium,” and an analytical advantage whereby the body functions as a heuristic eye of the needle through which all empirical materials, and theoretical considerations are filtered, considered and interpreted.     

Intergenerational effects of war trauma among Palestinian families mediated via psychological maltreatment

We tested the hypothesis that intergenerational effects of parents’ war trauma on offspring's attachment and mental health are mediated by psychological maltreatment. Two hundred and forty children and their parents were sampled from a war-prone area, Gaza, Palestine. The parents reported the number and type of traumatic experiences of war they had had during their lifetime before the child's birth and during a current war when the child was 10–12 years old. The children reported their war traumas, experiences of psychological maltreatment, attachment security, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTSS), depression, and aggression. The direct and indirect intergenerational effects of war trauma were tested in structural equation models. The hypotheses were confirmed for father's past war exposure, and disconfirmed for mother's war exposure. The father's past war trauma had a negative association with attachment security and positive association with the child's mental health problems mediated by increased psychological maltreatment. In contrast, the mother's past war trauma had a negative association with the child's depression via decreased psychological maltreatment. The mother's current war trauma had a negative association with the child's depression and aggression via decreased psychological maltreatment. Among fathers, past war exposure should be considered as a risk factor for psychological maltreatment of children and the associated attachment insecurity and mental health problems. Among mothers, war exposure as such could be given less clinical attention than PTSS in the prevention of psychological maltreatment of children.     

The Delphi Technique in Identifying Learning Objectives for the Development of Science,Technology and Society Modules for Palestinian Ninth Grade Science Curriculum

This article outlines how learning objectives based upon science, technology and society (STS) elements for Palestinian ninth grade science textbooks were identified, which was part of a bigger study to establish an STS foundation in the ninth grade science curriculum in Palestine. First, an initial list of STS elements was determined. Second, using this list, ninth grade science textbooks and curriculum document contents were analyzed. Third, based on this content analysis, a possible list of 71 learning objectives for the integration of STS elements was prepared. This list of learning objectives was refined by using a two-round Delphi technique. The Delphi study was used to rate and to determine the consensus regarding which items (i.e. learning objectives for STS in the ninth grade science textbooks in Palestine) are to be accepted for inclusion. The results revealed that of the initial 71 objectives in round one, 59 objectives within round two had a mean score of 5.683 or higher, which indicated that the learning objectives could be included in the development of STS modules for ninth grade science in Palestine.     

Utilization of discrete transforms to conquer the problems of multi-tone systems

This paper presents a new implementation of discrete multi-tone (DMT) systems based on different discrete transforms that include the discrete sine transform (DST), discrete cosine transform (DCT), and discrete wavelet transform (DWT). The implementation also considers time-domain equalization to mitigate channel distortion. Compared to the fast Fourier transform discrete multi-tone (FFT-DMT) system, the proposed implementations have an advantage in that their energy-compaction property helps in reducing the channel effects. The performance of the DST-DMT, DCT-DMT, DWT-DMT, and FFT-DMT systems, employing a time-domain equalizer (TEQ), is investigated in the paper. It has been demonstrated by computer simulations that the proposed implementations outperform the FFT-DMT system and that the utilization of the TEQ can lead to higher bit rates     

Stability analysis of second-order weak schemes for multi-dimensional stochastic differential systems

Under the infinite logarithmic matrix norm, a criterion for mean square stability of second-order weak numerical methods for multi-dimensional stochastic differential systems is established. Numerical examples are demonstrated to support the theoretical results.