Adam MROZOWICKI, Jacek BURSKI, Juliusz GARDAWSKI
et al.
Dans cette nouvelle étude sur la diversité du capitalisme, les auteurs s’intéressent aux réponses apportées par les services publics polonais à des crises interconnectées, en l’occurrence la crise chronique des services publics aggravée par la pandémie et l’arrivée des réfugiés de guerre ukrainiens. Pour cela, ils mobilisent des entretiens qualitatifs avec différents acteurs – travailleurs, syndicalistes, cadres et représentants des pouvoirs publics – dans l’éducation, la santé et la protection sociale et montrent qu’en l’absence de réponse publique adaptée, imputable aux caractéristiques du capitalisme hétéroclite ou en patchwork, c’est l’ingéniosité et l’auto-organisation des travailleurs qui ont permis aux services publics de fonctionner.
Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the barriers to implementing the policy of establishing a national identity information database and issuing smart national ID cards, in accordance with Clause (D) of Article 46 of Iran’s Fifth Development Plan.
Methodology: We used a qualitative approach within the philosophical framework of constructivism (interpretive paradigm). From an orientation perspective, it was applied research employing inductive methods. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with managers and experts from the National Organization for Civil Registration. Purposeful judgmental sampling was used, and the sample size was determined based on theoretical saturation. The data collected were analyzed using thematic analysis following the Braun and Clarke model. To enhance the reliability of the findings, peer review and participant feedback were employed. Given the research setting, this study was field research and cross-sectional in nature.
Findings: Data analysis revealed that the barriers to policy implementation can be categorized across four levels:
Level 1: weakness in the supply of raw materials for producing the ID card body is identified as a dependent barrier, while managerial inefficiencies and internal organizational processes within the National Organization for Civil Registration are classified as linkage barriers; Level 2: lack of a coherent policy framework and inter-agency collaboration, along with deficiencies in policy formulation, were recognized as independent barriers; Level 3: weakness in policy monitoring and evaluation emerges as a linkage barrier; Level 4: neglecting cultural context and social dynamics is identified as a fundamental barrier.
Originality: This research offers valuable insights for policymakers seeking to reform the smart civil registration policy and can support managers in enhancing the implementation process.
Implications: This study offers valuable guidelines for policymaking and planning for e-government and exploiting AI for the future of this organization and the country in general.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Nowadays, environmental protection has become a global consensus. At the same time, with the rapid development of science and technology, urbanisation has become a phenomenon that has become the norm. Therefore, the urban greening management system is an essential component in protecting the urban environment. The system utilises a transparent management process known as" monitoring - early warning - response - optimisation," which enhances the tracking of greening resources, streamlines maintenance scheduling, and encourages employee involvement in planning. Designed with a microservice architecture, the system can improve the utilisation of greening resources by 30%, increase citizen satisfaction by 20%, and support carbon neutrality objectives, ultimately making urban governance more intelligent and focused on the community. The Happy City Greening Management System effectively manages gardeners, trees, flowers, and green spaces. It comprises modules for gardener management, purchase and supplier management, tree and flower management, and maintenance planning. Its automation feature allows for real-time updates of greening data, thereby enhancing decision-making. The system is built using Java for the backend and MySQL for data storage, complemented by a user-friendly frontend designed with the Vue framework. Additionally, it leverages features from the Spring Boot framework to enhance maintainability and scalability.
We present a novel form of scalable knowledge representation about agents in a simulated democracy, e-polis, where real users respond to social challenges associated with democratic institutions, structured as Smart Spatial Types, a new type of Smart Building that changes architectural form according to the philosophical doctrine of a visitor. At the end of the game players vote on the Smart City that results from their collective choices. Our approach uses deductive systems in an unusual way: by integrating a model of democracy with a model of a Smart City we are able to prove quality aspects of the simulated democracy in different urban and social settings, while adding ease and flexibility to the development. Second, we can infer and reason with abstract knowledge, which is a limitation of the Unity platform; third, our system enables real-time decision-making and adaptation of the game flow based on the player's abstract state, paving the road to explainability. Scalability is achieved by maintaining a dual-layer knowledge representation mechanism for reasoning about the simulated democracy that functions in a similar way to a two-level cache. The lower layer knows about the current state of the game by continually processing a high rate of events produced by the in-built physics engine of the Unity platform, e.g., it knows of the position of a player in space, in terms of his coordinates x,y,z as well as their choices for each challenge. The higher layer knows of easily-retrievable, user-defined abstract knowledge about current and historical states, e.g., it knows of the political doctrine of a Smart Spatial Type, a player's philosophical doctrine, and the collective philosophical doctrine of a community players with respect to current social issues.
Purpose: The present article intended to reach a paradigmatic model which can show the instability of public policies in the private sector.
Methodology: To identify the main components of the model, related questions were developed based on the literature. Semi-structured interviews were performed with 33 experts from the private sector and in-depth interviews ,too, were performed with a number of specialists from the relevant department. Participant were selected according to both purposeful and theoretical sampling methods.
Findings: Grounded theory approach together with the procedure put forward by Corbin and Strouss were used for data analysis. Through open, selective and central coding; components of paradigmatic model based on instability of poblic policies and causal factors; moderating variables; mediating variables; and strategies, we could finally reach the outcomes and the paradigmatic model of instability in public policies for the private sector, which are now are presented.
Originality: Regarding the type and the nature of this research, as well as the comprehensiveness of the dimentions studied, the most noticeable and the most recent factors of instability of public policies for the private sector (in the industrial domain) brought about the findings of the research. Based on the opinions of the experts, one can utilize the acquired results to expand the vision and knowledge of poliy making in the production area.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Purpose: The intent of this study was to identify the effects of absorptive capacity and intellectual capital on the export performance of technological companies in Guilan Province, considering the mediating role of innovation and imitation strategies.
Methodology: This research was a quantitative and descriptive survey. Using non-probability sampling method, 220 companies were selected. The collected data were analysed by structural equation modelling and the partial least squares approach through Smart PLS software.
Findings: Results show that there is a significant relationship between absorptive capacity, innovation strategies, imitation, and export performance, but the relationship between intellectual capital and imitation strategies is not confirmed. Also, only the mediating role of innovation strategy in the relationship between intellectual capital and export performance is confirmed.
Originality: This article expands the existing literature in the field of imitation strategy by using a model for the effects of absorptive capacity and intellectual capital on export performance with the mediating role of innovation and imitation strategies. It also investigates the characteristics of imitation strategy. The findings of the research increase knowledge and awareness in this field and can be a basis for practical and effective measures.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Sergey Masaev, Andrey Minkin, Evgeniy Troyak
et al.
A review of scientific papers has shown that digital twins are very common for modeling the states of physical objects. It is relevant to consider the creation of a digital twin of an enterprise to obtain various assessments in management, taking into account the human factor. In the research, the impact of the human factor is assessed by the digital twin and staff competencies. The system of goals of staff competencies stands for: cognitive, affective, psychomotor. An enterprise model is created from the description of the set of events taking place on it. Each event is mapped to an element of staff competencies target system. The resulting set of staff competencies is estimated by a universal (integral) indicator. The dynamics of the universal indicator characterizes two modes of operation of the enterprise. The first operating mode is normal. The second mode of operation is based on the implementation of staff competencies. Taking into account the competencies of personnel by Bloom's taxonomy allows you to determine their interconnection: cognitive, affective, psychomotor. It correlation depends on the work performed by the employee and the influence of the external environment. It depends on the efforts of the employee as a learner.
Haar Cascade is a cost-effective and user-friendly machine learning-based algorithm for detecting objects in images and videos. Unlike Deep Learning algorithms, which typically require significant resources and expensive computing costs, it uses simple image processing techniques like edge detection and Haar features that are easy to comprehend and implement. By combining Haar Cascade with OpenCV2 on an embedded computer like the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, this system can accurately detect and match faces in a database for attendance tracking. This system aims to achieve several specific objectives that set it apart from existing solutions. It leverages Haar Cascade, enriched with carefully selected Haar features, such as Haar-like wavelets, and employs advanced edge detection techniques. These techniques enable precise face detection and matching in both images and videos, contributing to high accuracy and robust performance. By doing so, it minimizes manual intervention and reduces errors, thereby strengthening accountability. Additionally, the integration of OpenCV2 and the NVIDIA Jetson Nano optimizes processing efficiency, making it suitable for resource-constrained environments. This system caters to a diverse range of educational institutions, including schools, colleges, vocational training centers, and various workplace settings such as small businesses, offices, and factories. ... The system's affordability and efficiency democratize attendance management technology, making it accessible to a broader audience. Consequently, it has the potential to transform attendance tracking and management practices, ultimately leading to heightened productivity and accountability. In conclusion, this system represents a groundbreaking approach to attendance tracking and management...
Anders Sundelin, Javier Gonzalez-Huerta, Richard Torkar
et al.
Context: In software development organizations employing weak or collective ownership, different teams are allowed and expected to autonomously perform changes in various components. This creates diversity both in the knowledge of, and in the responsibility for, individual components. Objective: Our objective is to understand how and why different teams introduce technical debt in the form of code clones as they change different components. Method: We collected data about change size and clone introductions made by ten teams in eight components which was part of a large industrial software system. We then designed a Multi-Level Generalized Linear Model (MLGLM), to illustrate the teams' differing behavior. Finally, we discussed the results with three development teams, plus line manager and the architect team, evaluating whether the model inferences aligned with what they expected. Responses were recorded and thematically coded. Results: The results show that teams do behave differently in different components, and the feedback from the teams indicates that this method of illustrating team behavior can be useful as a complement to traditional summary statistics of ownership. Conclusions: We find that our model-based approach produces useful visualizations of team introductions of code clones as they change different components. Practitioners stated that the visualizations gave them insights that were useful, and by comparing with an average team, inter-team comparisons can be avoided. Thus, this has the potential to be a useful feedback tool for teams in software development organizations that employ weak or collective ownership.
Claudio Novelli, Giuliano Formisano, Prathm Juneja
et al.
The article argues that AI can enhance the measurement and implementation of democratic processes within political parties, known as Intra-Party Democracy (IPD). It identifies the limitations of traditional methods for measuring IPD, which often rely on formal parameters, self-reported data, and tools like surveys. Such limitations lead to the collection of partial data, rare updates, and significant demands on resources. To address these issues, the article suggests that specific data management and Machine Learning (ML) techniques, such as natural language processing and sentiment analysis, can improve the measurement (ML about) and practice (ML for) of IPD. The article concludes by considering some of the principal risks of ML for IPD, including concerns over data privacy, the potential for manipulation, and the dangers of overreliance on technology.
Marvin Manoury, Theresa Riedelsheimer, Malte Hellmeier
et al.
Digital Twins have evolved as a concept describing digital representations of physical assets. They can be used to facilitate simulations, monitoring, or optimization of product lifecycles. Considering the concept of a Circular Economy, which entails several lifecycles of, e.g., vehicles, their components, and materials, it is important to investigate how the respective Digital Twins are managed over the lifecycle of their physical assets. This publication presents and compares three approaches for managing Digital Twins in industrial use cases. The analysis considers aspects such as updates, data ownership, and data sovereignty. The results based on the research project Catena-X
Purpose: Regarding the need for the implementation of citizenship charter in Iran’s state organizations, the present study tried to deal with this issue.
Methodology: The approach of the research was quantitative and exploratory factor analysis was applied in 35 organizations to identify and categorize the ruling principles of the implementation of citizenship charter.
Findings: Results show that the principles fall into four categories: 1. transparency, value creation, and client tribute; 2. enhancing availability, innovation, and non-stop evaluation; 3. identifying clients and comprehensive supervision; 4. providing facilities and opportunity for filing grievances and creating substitute jobs. With regard to these imperative principles ruling the citizenship charter implementation, we now know that the value for the following principles is below the average of 3: transparency and dissemination of information, enhancing availability and encouraging the right of choice, humility, innovation and improvement, upkeeping the criteria of good service, giving opportunity for choosing substitute services, supervision and appraisal, providing means for client grievance filing, identifying clients, surveying clients and employees for improving services. It is recommended that state agencies take measures to improve all these principles.
Originality: Taking the work of former administrations to implement citizenship charter in government organizations of the country into account, this study, by identifying the ruling principles of citizenship charter and introducing them as a reference, has made a noticeable attempt to contribute to both the theoretical and empirical knowledge applicable for the improvement of services in state agencies and to protect the rights of citizens in the administrative system accountability.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Purpose: The purpose of this article was to examine the role of political development in the context of development planning and public governance in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It also intended to find out if the country has ever followed a formal documented program for political development. Furthermore, it tried to explore the requirements of public governance in the framework of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s system.
Methodology: Data were collected, organized, and analyzed after reviewing and studying documents, articles, interviews, Sand lectures.
Findings: Data analysis shows that there has been no independent, formal, and documented plan for political development ever since the revolution was won. Although some provisions of the Development Plans have focused on political issues, none has provided a noticeable framework to coordinate and align all parts of the Development Plans with political development.
Implications: The goal of political development and the function of public governance in the ideology overshadowing the Islamic Republic is regulating the society based on Islamic teaching. The source of this teaching is Shiait Fiqh; accordingly, ideal governance and dependable public governance will be the product of unanimity among Shiait high ranking clergies (Fuqaha). Considering the importance of political development to advance and realize the society’s ideology and the Islamic civilization, it is imperative for the state to produce a workable theory and an independent plan in accordance with the specific concept of political development in the Islamic Republic of Iran in order to be able to harmonize the set of changes in the society and various programs according to the planned steps in the path of Islamic civilization.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Habibollah Taherpor Kalantari, Yalda Amiri Khaledi, Aliasghar Anvari Rostami
Purpose: The purpose of this research was to identify the effective factors of compliance behavior among taxpayers and the extent these factors impact their tax compliance with a voluntary approach.
Methodology: The statistical population was composed of all taxpayers and business owners in Tehran. Using the availability sampling method, 151 taxpayers and business owners were selected, and the necessary data were obtained from them through questionnaires. Regarding purpose, the research type was applied, and from the viewpoint of data collection method, it was descriptive. Also, field, exploratory, and causal survey methods were employed. For statistical analysis and to achieve the first goal of the research (identification of factors affecting voluntary tax compliance), the exploratory factor analysis method (dimension reduction) was used. To achieve the second (determining to what extent the identified factors affect tax compliance), multivariate regression was used.
Findings: The results of exploratory factor analysis show that eight factors affect voluntary tax compliance including attitude towards the quality of the Tax Organization's services, legitimacy, promotion of justice, complexity, observing ethics, tax knowledge and information, collective determination to pay taxes, and fear and altruism. According to the results of multivariate regression, such factors as attitude towards the quality of services of the Tax Organization, promotion of justice, complexity, observing ethics and fear and altruism have a significant effect on the components of tax compliance.
Originality: Collecting taxes based on taxpayers’ willingness has been one of the goals of governments. If this is realized, it will both have a positive effect on social trust and social capital and help the government save resources that would otherwise be spent for tax collection operations. All these will eventually increase the efficiency of the government. Identifying and examining these factors can have useful messages for policymakers as they lead to the provision of necessary facilities to promote voluntary tax compliance.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
COVID-19 has disrupted society and changed how people learn, work and live. The availability of vaccines in the spring of 2021, however, led to a gradual return of many pre-pandemic activities in Massachusetts in the fall of 2021. Leveraging data that were collected using a map-based survey tool in the Greater Boston area in the fall of 2021, this study explores changes in travel behavior due to COVID-19 and investigates the underlying factors contributing to these changes. First, a structural equation modeling technique is developed to capture the interactions between various travel choices, including working from home, travel mode use and change in car ownership. Moreover, attitudinal factors such as risk perceptions and attitudes towards WFH are incorporated into the framework to explain behavior changes. Second, a discrete choice modeling approach is taken to study shifts in commuting mode choices in the fall of 2021. The results show that in the fall of 2021, people became more likely to use their cars to commute, and for those who bought cars during the pandemic, they tended to work on-site more. Our findings can provide planners and policymakers with information upon which to base travel demand management decisions in the post-pandemic era.
This paper proposes optimal lockdown management policies based on short-term prediction of active COVID-19 confirmed cases to ensure the availability of critical medical resources. The optimal time to start the lockdown from the current time is obtained after maximizing a cost function considering economic value subject to constraints of availability of medical resources, and maximum allowable value of daily growth rate and Test Positive Ratio. The estimated value of required medical resources is calculated as a function of total active cases. The predicted value of active cases is calculated using an adaptive short-term prediction model. The proposed approach can be easily implementable by a local authority. An optimal lockdown case study for Delhi during the second wave in the month of April 2021 is presented using the proposed formulation.
With several microservice architectures comprising of thousands of web services, used to serve 630 million customers, companies like Meituan face several challenges in the verification and validation of their software. This paper reports on our experience of integrating EvoMaster (a search-based white-box fuzzer) in the testing processes at Meituan over almost 2 years. Two user studies were carried out in 2021 and in 2023 to evaluate two versions of EvoMaster, respectively, in tackling the test generation for industrial web services which are parts of a large e-commerce microservice system. The two user studies involve in total 321,131 lines of code from five APIs and 27 industrial participants at Meituan. Questionnaires and interviews were carried out in both user studies with employees at Meituan. The two user studies demonstrate clear advantages of EvoMaster (i.e., code coverage and fault detection) and the urgent need to have such a fuzzer in industrial microservices testing. To study how these results could generalize, a follow up user study was done in 2024 with five engineers in the five different companies. Our results show that, besides their clear usefulness, there are still many critical challenges that the research community needs to investigate to improve performance further.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the case of a privatized manufacturing company assigned under Article 44 of the Constitution, which after privatization entered a crisis for various reasons and caused numerous security and social challenges.
Methodology: The research applied critical ethnography using the Carspecken method, based on which the researcher studied the company in detail for a period over a year long.
Findings: Findings show that there are some tricky ways open to certain individuals to include a certain company in the list of companies to be privatized. This inclusion is a tricky process planned and monitored long enough before the actual privatization is implemented and it is basically meant to bring about illegitimate profits for the people involved. When the privatization is realized, crisis opens up due to mismanagement which supports special,
non-productive interests of the new owners. Then it becomes clear that such companies not only do not help resolve the crisis, but also increase the dimensions of the crisis and in fact they themselves become a challenging factor to intensify tension among the companies involved.
Implications: For the first time in Iran, this study tried to evaluate precisely and analytically the performance of a privatized company and pinpoint the problems it is faced with. It also clearly presents solutions to overcome such a challenge.
Recommendations: The results and suggestions of this study provide a good platform to prevent corrupt privatizations; in addition, it helps companies involved in such crises find ways out of them.
Economic growth, development, planning, Employee participation in management. Employee ownership. Industrial democracy. Works councils
Implementation plans for the National Institutes of Health policy for data management and sharing, which takes effect in 2023, provide an opportunity to reflect on the stakeholders, infrastructures, practice, economics, and sustainability of data sharing. Responsibility for fulfilling data sharing requirements tends to fall on principal investigators, whereas it takes a village of stakeholders to construct, manage, and sustain the necessary knowledge infrastructure for disseminating data products. Individual scientists have mixed incentives, and many disincentives to share data, all of which vary by research domain, methods, resources, and other factors. Motivations and investments for data sharing also vary widely among academic institutional stakeholders such as university leadership, research computing, libraries, and individual schools and departments. Stakeholder concerns are interdependent along many dimensions, seven of which are explored: what data to share; context and credit; discovery; methods and training; intellectual property; data science programs; and international tensions. Data sharing is not a simple matter of individual practice, but one of infrastructure, institutions, and economics. Governments, funding agencies, and international science organizations all will need to invest in commons approaches for data sharing to develop into a sustainable international ecosystem.