Digital construction implementation has not yet realized its promised potential after three decades. Across the entire project lifecycle, adoption has encountered difficulties from high-level standard guidance, a lack of strategies, fragmented delivery approaches, and insufficient digital delivery competency. Establishing digital workflows tailored to organizations’ contexts is an essential linkage of the information layer to synthesize the business and technology layers to address these challenges within the ISO 19650 framework. The uneven implementation of building information modelling (BIM) in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operation (AECO) industry provides a holistic perspective to consider the digitalization workflow dynamics. This report performs a case study through a parallel approach to examining multiple projects’ digital construction implementation of an organization in the Forest City development. Applying an observation research method and real-world data of project records, it analyses its workflows’ digitalization and process digitization, combining with its organization’s structure and overall project strategy. Moreover, it highlights bespoke digital construction ecosystems and relevant stakeholders to streamline workflows. The digital construction implementation results and project benefits as project context indicators verify that fundamental digital workflows of design quality checking, project optimization, asset data collection, and defect management have significant applicability compared with the advanced workflows of integrated 5D cost management and precast design and production. Their adoptability keeps consistency with those of applicability using the extra cost, application complexity, and disruption level indicators from the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework to measure. These multiple project studies reveal the feasibility for organizations to achieve lifecycle digital construction implementation competency. The feasibility is underpinned by introducing an in-house digital engineering team to organization structure, cultivating applicable digital delivery capabilities through workflows digitalization and process digitization, and synthesizing ISO 19650 with workflows to enable more contextualized digital construction implementation.
This paper provides an in-depth theoretical analysis of the fundamentals of
information infrastructure and its relationship to economic growth and development. The
study examines the concept and classification of information infrastructure and the
conceptual framework used to understand its role in economic dynamics. Using a
qualitative approach based on a critical literature review and recent empirical research,
the paper explores the differences and connections between economic growth (as a
quantitative process) and economic development, with a focus on the social and
qualitative dimensions. The findings highlight the importance of information
infrastructure as a key factor in improving productivity, competitiveness and social
inclusion. The study concludes that a deeper understanding of these relationships is
essential for the development of effective policies that support sustainable economic
growth and equitable development. Future research directions are proposed, including
exploring the impact of emerging digital infrastructure and regional differences on
economic processes.
Economics as a science, Business records management
В умовах трансформації лісової галузі та посилення вимог до прозорості фінансово-господарської діяльності актуалізується проблема ефективного документального забезпечення процесів оцінки та інвентаризації в системі аудиторського контролю державних лісових господарств, оскільки саме належно оформлена первинна документація і стандартизовані форми обліку забезпечують достовірність фінансової та управлінської інформації. Метою дослідження є узагальнення теоретичних підходів і практичних аспектів документального забезпечення оцінки та інвентаризації, визначення проблем і напрямів підвищення ефективності обліково-аудиторських процесів у державних лісових підприємствах. У роботі застосовано методи системного аналізу, синтезу, порівняння та узагальнення для дослідження нормативно-правової бази, форм і методів документування інвентаризацій та оцінки активів, проаналізовано практику ведення первинної документації, електронного діловодства та аудиту, а також оцінено вплив цифровізації на достовірність і прозорість облікових процесів. У процесі дослідження систематизовано форми та методи документального забезпечення оцінки й інвентаризації, виявлено основні проблеми стандартів і автоматизації обліку, запропоновано заходи щодо впровадження уніфікованих цифрових шаблонів, електронного діловодства, гармонізації процедур з міжнародними стандартами та підвищення кваліфікації персоналу для підвищення точності, прозорості та ефективності аудиторського контролю. Теоретичне значення роботи полягає у систематизації сучасних методів документального забезпечення інвентаризації та оцінки активів у лісовій галузі, а практичне – у підготовці конкретних рекомендацій щодо впровадження електронних форм обліку, стандартизованих процедур і цифрових інструментів аудиторського контролю. Оригінальність роботи полягає у комплексному поєднанні нормативно-правових, методичних та цифрових аспектів документування процесів оцінки та інвентаризації в системі аудиту державних лісових господарств. Перспективою подальших досліджень є оцінка ефективності впровадження електронних систем обліку та інтеграція міжнародних стандартів для підвищення прозорості, достовірності та стійкості обліково-аудиторських процесів.
Economics as a science, Business records management
Kung-Hsiang Huang, Akshara Prabhakar, Onkar Thorat
et al.
While AI agents hold transformative potential in business, effective performance benchmarking is hindered by the scarcity of public, realistic business data on widely used platforms. Existing benchmarks often lack fidelity in their environments, data, and agent-user interactions, with limited coverage of diverse business scenarios and industries. To address these gaps, we introduce CRMArena-Pro, a novel benchmark for holistic, realistic assessment of LLM agents in diverse professional settings. CRMArena-Pro expands on CRMArena with nineteen expert-validated tasks across sales, service, and 'configure, price, and quote' processes, for both Business-to-Business and Business-to-Customer scenarios. It distinctively incorporates multi-turn interactions guided by diverse personas and robust confidentiality awareness assessments. Experiments reveal leading LLM agents achieve only around 58% single-turn success on CRMArena-Pro, with performance dropping significantly to approximately 35% in multi-turn settings. While Workflow Execution proves more tractable for top agents (over 83% single-turn success), other evaluated business skills present greater challenges. Furthermore, agents exhibit near-zero inherent confidentiality awareness; though targeted prompting can improve this, it often compromises task performance. These findings highlight a substantial gap between current LLM capabilities and enterprise demands, underscoring the need for advancements in multi-turn reasoning, confidentiality adherence, and versatile skill acquisition.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) industry advances, the imperative to secure IoT devices has become increasingly critical. Current practices in both industry and academia advocate for the enhancement of device security through key installation. However, it has been observed that, in practice, IoT vendors frequently assign shared keys to batches of devices. This practice can expose devices to risks, such as data theft by attackers or large-scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. To address this issue, our intuition is to assign a unique key to each device. Unfortunately, this strategy proves to be highly complex within the IoT context, as existing keys are typically hardcoded into the firmware, necessitating the creation of bespoke firmware for each device. Furthermore, correct pairing of device keys with their respective devices is crucial. Errors in this pairing process would incur substantial human and temporal resources to rectify and require extensive communication between IoT vendors, device manufacturers, and cloud platforms, leading to significant communication overhead. To overcome these challenges, we propose the OTA-Key scheme. This approach fundamentally decouples device keys from the firmware features stored in flash memory, utilizing an intermediary server to allocate unique device keys in two distinct stages and update keys. We conducted a formal security verification of our scheme using ProVerif and assessed its performance through a series of evaluations. The results demonstrate that our scheme is secure and effectively manages the large-scale distribution and updating of unique device keys. Additionally, it achieves significantly lower update times and data transfer volumes compared to other schemes.
We design a novel, nonlinear single-source-of-error model for analysis of multiple business cycles. The model's specification is intended to capture key empirical characteristics of business cycle data by allowing for simultaneous cycles of different types and lengths, as well as time-variable amplitude and phase shift. The model is shown to feature relevant theoretical properties, including stationarity and pseudo-cyclical autocovariance function, and enables a decomposition of overall cyclic fluctuations into separate frequency-specific components. We develop a Bayesian framework for estimation and inference in the model, along with an MCMC procedure for posterior sampling, combining the Gibbs sampler and the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, suitably adapted to address encountered numerical issues. Empirical results obtained from the model applied to the Polish GDP growth rates imply co-existence of two types of economic fluctuations: the investment and inventory cycles, and support the stochastic variability of the amplitude and phase shift, also capturing some business cycle asymmetries. Finally, the Bayesian framework enables a fully probabilistic inference on the business cycle clocks and dating, which seems the most relevant approach in view of economic uncertainties.
Organizational processes are in a perpetual state of flux because of factors such as new business models, exponential technology, agile ways of working, and laws. Therefore, because most organizations do not understand the demands of their employees and to keep abreast, it is difficult to determine what and how human resource (HR) strategies affect employee engagement. This study aims to reconnoitre the roles and responsibilities of an HR manager in developing employee engagement. This study used an exploratory research method. All the data used in this study were from secondary sources. Information was culled from a broad range of print and digital textbooks, reference works, encyclopaedias, and academic journals and dissertations (both published and unpublished). Work design, recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, performance management systems, career planning, organizational support, knowledge sharing, participation and communication, HR information systems, and HR data and analytics are all examples of human resource management (HRM) activities that have a significant impact on employee engagement. Employees' morale and output decreased as they experienced psychological pressure because of the situation. Employees' concerns about job security may have contributed to their poor participation during the coronavirus disease – 19 (COVID-19). Many businesses have prioritized business needs above employees' emotional well-being, which has had a negative impact on employee engagement and morale. Because of globalization and technological development, the necessity of a rapid transition to a knowledge-based economy and the capacity to penetrate established markets swiftly is expanding.
Business records management, Economics as a science
Pivithuru Thejan Amarasinghe, Su Nguyen, Yuan Sun
et al.
Business optimisation has been used extensively to determine optimal solutions for challenging business operations. Problem formulation is an important part of business optimisation as it influences both the validity of solutions and the efficiency of the optimisation process. While different optimisation modelling languages have been developed, problem formulation is still not a trivial task and usually requires optimisation expertise and problem-domain knowledge. Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated outstanding performance across different language-related tasks. Since problem formulation can be viewed as a translation task, there is a potential to leverage LLMs to automate problem formulation. However, developing an LLM for problem formulation is challenging, due to limited training data, and the complexity of real-world optimisation problems. Several prompt engineering methods have been proposed in the literature to automate problem formulation with LLMs. While the initial results are encouraging, the accuracy of formulations generated by these methods can still be significantly improved. In this paper, we present an LLM-based framework for automating problem formulation in business optimization. Our approach introduces a method for fine-tuning cost-efficient LLMs specifically tailored to specialized business optimization challenges. The experiment results demonstrate that our framework can generate accurate formulations for conventional and real-world business optimisation problems in production scheduling. Extensive analyses show the effectiveness and the convergence of the proposed fine-tuning method. The proposed method also shows very competitive performance when compared with the state-of-the-art prompt engineering methods in the literature when tested on general linear programming problems.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to suggest that a user-centered approach to records management may result in more sustainable, intuitive and defensible records management programs compared to alternatives. Design/methodology/approach A two-part methodology is adopted: part one explores the literature for records management programs that impose a high degree of control over records at cost to users, and part two explores the author’s experience of developing tools that facilitate a user-centred approach. Findings To adopt a user-centred approach to records management requires reassessing the degree of control that should be imposed over records. Originality/value This paper provides an original analysis of the field of records management through the lens of usability, as well as original solutions in the form of technology that supports usability.
MohammadAmin Fazli, Mahdi Lashkari, Hamed Taherkhani
et al.
Solving portfolio management problems using deep reinforcement learning has been getting much attention in finance for a few years. We have proposed a new method using experts signals and historical price data to feed into our reinforcement learning framework. Although experts signals have been used in previous works in the field of finance, as far as we know, it is the first time this method, in tandem with deep RL, is used to solve the financial portfolio management problem. Our proposed framework consists of a convolutional network for aggregating signals, another convolutional network for historical price data, and a vanilla network. We used the Proximal Policy Optimization algorithm as the agent to process the reward and take action in the environment. The results suggested that, on average, our framework could gain 90 percent of the profit earned by the best expert.
Yara Rizk, Praveen Venkateswaran, Vatche Isahagian
et al.
The inception of large language models has helped advance state-of-the-art performance on numerous natural language tasks. This has also opened the door for the development of foundation models for other domains and data modalities such as images, code, and music. In this paper, we argue that business process data representations have unique characteristics that warrant the development of a new class of foundation models to handle tasks like process mining, optimization, and decision making. These models should also tackle the unique challenges of applying AI to business processes which include data scarcity, multi-modal representations, domain specific terminology, and privacy concerns.
Purpose The paper aims to respond to three questions: Are Canadian organizations committed to sustainability? Are there any links between sustainability and records management and archives programs? And, to what extent are records managers, archivists and technologists engaged in climate action? The paper also provides background on climate change in the Canadian and global contexts, defines relevant terminology, and presents a literature review that positions sustainability, adaptation and mitigation in relation to records management and archives. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on qualitative participatory research involving expert interviews in 24 government agencies, universities and businesses located in 10 Canadian cities. Findings The organizations in the study are committed to sustainability and have developed significant programs and activities in support of this aim. Although the records managers, archivists and technologists interviewed are involved in related activities, there is a gap between what they are doing as a matter of course and the wider sustainability efforts of their parent organizations. As resources are tight, sustainability measurement entails more work and there are no real incentives to add sustainability components to programs, the participants are focused on delivering the programs they are hired to do. As a result, there is a sense of serendipity around outcomes that do occur – “sometimes, green is the outcome”. Research limitations/implications This paper presents the results of research conducted at 24 organizations in 10 Canadian cities, a small but meaningful sample that provides a springboard for considering climate action in records and archives. Based on the discussion, there is a need for a records and archives agenda that directly responds the United Nation's climate action targets: strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters; integrating climate change measures into policies, strategies and planning; and improving education, awareness-raising and human institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning. In support of this aim, the paper charts possible material topics from the literature and compares these with research findings. Practical implications From a top-down perspective, organizations need to expand sustainability programs to address all business areas, including records and archives. From a bottom-up perspective, records managers and archivists should include adaptation in disaster planning and consider the program benefits of developing economic, environmental and social sustainability initiatives to mitigate climate change. Originality/value The paper defines resilience, sustainability, adaption and mitigation and positions these terms in records management and archives. The paper examines how records managers, archivists and technologists think about sustainability; where sustainability intersects with records and archives work; and how records managers and archivists can engage in climate action.
Ayed, Nesreen Tayseer, Bataineh, Abdallah Q., Idris, Mohammed
This research aimed at identifying the impact of psychological capital dimensions (self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience) on team performance at advertising agencies operating in Amman city. Moreover, the study examines the moderating role of leadership behavior on the relationship between the psychological capital and team performance. The researchers rely on descriptive and analytical approach, where the research population consists of all employees working in thirteen advertising agencies operating in Amman city. Convenience sampling technique was applied to distribute (250) questionnaires on the research sample. To analyze the research data; the researchers used a set of statistical methods including Cronbach's alpha along with a normality test, standard deviation, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, multiple regression, interactive hierarchical regression and process procedures methods using SPSS-V20 and AMOS-V23. The results indicate that there was a statistically impact of psychological capital dimensions (self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience) on team performance in advertising agencies operating in Amman city. There was also a significant and role for leadership behavior as moderating variable between psychological capital dimensions and team performance.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assist records managers and information governance professionals to understand the challenges presented by their organization’s use of blockchain distributed ledger technology (DLT). Design/methodology/approach An extensive literature review was conducted, which revealed a multitude of articles based on research into blockchain DLT, most written from the technology perspective. This paper differs in that it applies a records management lens to an analysis of the records created, registered or stored on a blockchain. A six-stage blockchain records consideration model is provided to illustrate examples of the records management challenges presented by the implementation of blockchain DLT. Questions are posed and recommendations are made to aid the reader in developing a blockchain DLT records management and information governance strategy. Findings Because there is no one universal configuration for a blockchain DLT solution, each implementation must be analyzed to understand the resultant records management and information governance challenges. A series of questions that should be asked and answered can not only help records management and information governance professionals adapt their policies and practices to the technology but also provide a basis for discussion with those designing the blockchain DLT solutions so they can include records management features in their designs. Originality/value This paper contributes an original analysis of the implications of the adoption of Blockchain DLT for records management and information governance programs through the lens of a six-stage Blockchain Records Consideration Model.
Seyed Najmoddin Mousavi, Amir Ghafourian Shagerdi, Zahra Mohamdiani
In today's highly competitive world, studying consumer behavior is inevitable for any organization, large or small, and neglecting this can lead to the failure of any organization. One of the factors influencing the behavior of consumers is lifestyle. Behavior of members of any society according to culture, religion and values follow a set of beliefs and patterns that understanding these beliefs and patterns and their impact on consumer behavior can be useful. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of Iranian lifestyle and Islamic lifestyle on consumer behavior. The statistical population of the study includes all residents of Khorramabad. A questionnaire was used to collect data. The research method is descriptive-survey and applied in terms of purpose. Statistical data were collected during the first 6 months of 1397 and the structural equation modeling technique was used. According to the research results, Iranian and Islamic lifestyle has a positive and significant effect on consumer behavior.
Basic broadband connectivity is regarded as generally having a positive macroeconomic effect. However, over the past decade there has been an emerging school of thought suggesting the impacts of upgrading to higher speed broadband have been overstated, potentially leading to the inefficient allocation of taxpayer-funded subsidies. In this analysis we model the impacts of Next Generation Access on new business creation using high-resolution panel data. After controlling for a range of factors, the results provide evidence of a small but significant negative impact of high-speed broadband on new business creation over the study period which we suggest could be due to two factors. Firstly, moving from basic to high-speed broadband provides few benefits to enable new businesses being formed. Secondly, strong price competition and market consolidation from online service providers (e.g. Amazon etc.) may be deterring new business start-ups. This analysis provides another piece of evidence to suggest that the economic impact of broadband is more nuanced than the debate has traditionally suggested. Our conjecture is that future policy decisions need to be more realistic about the potential economic impacts of broadband, including those effects that could be negative on the stock of local businesses and therefore the local tax base.
The research deals with application of the LEAN principles to business processes of a typical IT company. The paper discusses LEAN principles amplifying advantages and shortcomings of their application. The authors suggest use of the LEAN principles as a tool to identify improvement potential for IT company's business processes and work-flow efficiency. During a case study the implementation of LEAN principles has been exemplified in business processes of a particular Latvian IT company. The obtained results and conclusions can be used for meaningful and successful application of LEAN principles and methods in projects of other IT companies.
We analyze actively managed mutual funds in China from 2005 to 2017. We develop performance measures for asset allocation and selection. We find that stock selection ability from holding-based model is positively correlated with selection ability estimated from Fama-French three-factor model, which is price-based regression model. We also find that industry allocation from holding-based model is positively correlated with timing ability estimated from price-based Treynor-Mazuy model most of the time. We conclude that most actively managed funds have positive stock selection ability but not asset allocation ability, which is due to the difficulty in predicting policy changes.
We present a general framework for portfolio risk management in discrete time, based on a replicating martingale. This martingale is learned from a finite sample in a supervised setting. The model learns the features necessary for an effective low-dimensional representation, overcoming the curse of dimensionality common to function approximation in high-dimensional spaces. We show results based on polynomial and neural network bases. Both offer superior results to naive Monte Carlo methods and other existing methods like least-squares Monte Carlo and replicating portfolios.