The key objective of this study is to generate a model identifying how decision makers perceive cybercrime risk in logistics supply chain operations taking place in the Baltic Sea Region of the North Atlantic Sea. A mixed-methods approach was applied, using a novel replication-logic case study research design featuring the pragmatist-iterative ideology supplemented with machine learning (ML) to assist with thematic coding. The snowball purposive sampling technique was used to collect online data from confidential informants who worked for large organizations in the Baltic Sea region, after they were cyber-attacked. In the final model, six phenomenological topics across three victim vulnerability keywords were found to be significant. The findings have implications for cybersecurity policy formulation in Europe and globally, where cybercrimes are increasing mostly due to the Russia-Ukraine situation.
Artificial intelligence promises to increase output and productivity by an amount that surpasses any innovation since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The ability to automate routine tasks, perform clerical and research functions, operate robots, and enhance and optimize physical, human, and virtual networks can free labor into alternative uses. Its ability to simulate chemical, pharmaceutical, and physical reactions can speed research and our understanding of the physical and biological worlds around us. However, this technology depends on the fabrication of sophisticated microchips and the employment of large data processing centers, each of which is resource-intensive. This paper analyzes the energy and environmental aspects of this promising technology within the construct of the monopolistic competition model and finds that our economy may be ill-prepared for the resource risks from artificial intelligence if its success mirrors what many prognosticators expect.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increasingly become a transformative force in the education sector, offering unprecedented opportunities to enhance learning experiences and outcomes. This study examines the potential adverse effects of AI-assisted learning on critical cognitive skills, particularly critical thinking and problem-solving, within the context of Albania's educational landscape. Employing a quantitative methodology, a survey of 53 students was conducted across various educational institutions in Albania to gather data on their experiences and perceptions regarding AI-assisted learning. The findings indicate no significant difference in critical thinking skills between students with prior exposure to AI tools and those without. However, there is a statistically significant negative correlation between reliance on AI tools for assignments and students' problem-solving skills, suggesting that excessive dependence on AI can hinder the development of independent problem-solving abilities. Conversely, a strong positive correlation was found between the frequency of AI tool usage and students' perceptions of academic performance and assignment efficiency, highlighting the potential benefits of AI in enhancing these aspects of the educational experience. These results emphasize the need for a balanced integration of AI tools in education to ensure they complement rather than replace traditional learning methods. The study's findings have significant implications for educators and policymakers, suggesting that while AI can enhance certain educational outcomes, it is essential to address its potential risks to promote the development of essential cognitive skills. Future research should focus on larger, more diverse samples, incorporate objective measures of cognitive skills, and explore the long-term impacts of AI-assisted learning.
Companies have increasingly acknowledged the strategic value of lean philosophy and the potential for developing a competitive edge via rigorous lean implementation. However, many companies have struggled to establish and sustain lean. Considering this opportunity, the purpose of this paper is to thoroughly and systematically review the development of lean literature focused on the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for lean adoption in contemplation of identifying what CSFs have been addressed since the genesis of the lean concept through the assessment of secondary data from the literature published during the period 1990 – 2021. The findings of this study will assist companies in making more mature and prudent judgments on how their resources and capabilities can be configured for a successful lean initiative deployment. To the author's best knowledge, this study advances existing knowledge by being perhaps one of the most comprehensive systematic literature reviews covering three decades of lean literature on manufacturing and service industries.
Few financial market innovations offer the opportunities to enhance transaction efficiency, as does the potential of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. The author demonstrates that this industry's unusual demand and supply relationship results in ever-increasing energy consumption if Proof-of-Work currencies rise in price faster than mining rewards decay. This previously undocumented challenge poses global warming risk. In addition, the accessibility and opacity of many cryptocurrencies create financial risks for inexperienced speculators. Digital currencies also reduce the ability of central banks to conduct monetary policy and challenge regulatory authorities to promulgate rules to protect the economy and consumers. The author explores these various risks, demonstrates how the design of Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining frustrates the efficiency they promise and describes mechanisms that would allow cryptocurrencies based on the blockchain to live up to their immense potential.
The paper aims to investigate the perceptual displays of UAE business students on selecting entrepreneurship education as a career option along with challenges faced in the present pandemic situation. The study collected the opinions of 500 business program students from different universities in the UAE by administering questionnaires and personal interviews. Then, the compiled data were encapsulated and inscribed using Software R Studio and Microsoft Excel. The study emphasized that UAE business pupils are not concerned about selecting entrepreneurship as their career option during the pandemic due to the risks involved. Mobilizing capital, uncertainty, and risk of failure impede the UAE business students from becoming entrepreneurs during the pandemic. On the other hand, the empirical evidence indicates that entrepreneurship education is vital to motivating students' professional preferences. Therefore, higher education institutions must play a pivotal role in promoting entrepreneurship as another career option.
Information systems have become part and parcel of today’s business operations, with competition on its rise. The security challenges related to information systems could have a severe impact on the overall business objectives of an institution if not handled at the right time. A well-meaning institution must take a full-blown step towards information security management to achieve information security. Information security management has been seen as any management system to address the security issues affecting an institution and align security needs to the overall business objectives. Conversely, Information security policy is the foundation upon which institutions base their entire information security management. This study looks at the uptake of information security policy among Nigerian institutions. The survey result created a clear picture of the uptake of information security policy among Nigerian institutions.
Informal risk management is widely practiced as it can be more agile and flexible compared to formal methods. There are abundant research studies covering areas such as technical and social aspects of informal risk management. Often a holistic approach is advocated integrating inputs coming from informal networks to consider, inter alia, social, cultural and emotional factors. These studies, though, fail to explore the motivation and do not account for the role of mutual benefit. Using ethnographic and interview data, we tackle the issue of how decision makers consider the interests of all relevant stakeholders, the role mutual benefit plays in informal risk management and the impact of the formal structure on informal risk management. The findings show that mutual benefit is an essential pillar for informal risk management by both stimulating the required response and balancing interests. Also, the formal structure impacts the informal network through the influence and ranks it confers on members, and by setting consequential limits.
Market vulnerability, uncertainty, and risk have always posed challenges to businesses and supply chains. Firms are working hard to survive and sustain themselves in a world of high susceptibility in supply chain networks and intense competition. This study attempts to fill a gap in the literature by looking into how companies in a developing country like Nigeria manage supply chain logistics challenges and capitalize on opportunities in the country's most crisis-prone territory while mitigating the constraints. This was conducted through empirical investigation within the Nigerian supply chain logistics setting to analyze and compare the challenges, tactics, and strategies adopted by two enterprises situated in the North-Eastern region of Nigeria, where the insurgency is rampant. The findings from the analyzed examples serve as the foundation for the analysis. The respondents' answers to the research questions offer more insight into the various constraints and tactics firms employ in the region.
Rice blast disease is strongly dependent on environmental and climate factors. This paper demonstrates the integration of a rice blast disease severity prediction model based on climate factors, providing a decision-support framework for farmers to overcome these problems. The major contribution of the proposed study is to predict the severity of rice blast disease using the linear SVM model. Prediction of rice blast disease severity is divided into four classes: 0, 1, 2, and 3. Data imbalance is the most challenging problem in multi-class classification. This study has efficiently handled imbalanced data using k-means SMOTE and SMOTE oversampling techniques to balance training and testing data. Finally, cross-location and cross-year models are developed using a linear support vector machine and predict the severity of rice blast disease to the classes 0, 1, 2, 3, respectively. Cross-year and cross-location models are cross-validated using five-fold cross-validation.
Agro-tourism based on organic cultivation environments has increased both domestic and international tourism sectors. Homestay in the Farm of Happiness is a form of community-based agro-tourism that incorporates the theme of organic cultivation and cultural landscapes into tourism destinations. However, the existing homestay program needs further attention and development initiatives due to conservation and urbanization difficulties. The purpose of this study is to spread the knowledge of agro-tourism and its relevance to the economy. This study assesses organic cultivation, including cultural landscape preservation through tourism and better knowledge for future generations. The study provides insight into how an ordinary rural agricultural land is transformed into an attractive tourist destination.
The study's main aim is an analysis of economic growth in G7 countries. The period examined in the study in which annual data was used covers 2001-2021. For this purpose, a panel data analysis was conducted. Economic growth is a function of account balance, employment, inflation, and investment, and there is a positive relationship between economic growth and employment and between inflation and investment. Conversely, there is a negative relationship between economic growth and account balance. The results are statistically significant. The highest contribution to economic growth in G7 countries comes from technological innovations. Economic growth is a dynamic area. Many factors affect economic growth, including geography, democracy, market form and technology, and cultural and religious factors. For this reason, economic growth covers a broad study area.
The primary objective of this study is to create the first examination of the global stock markets using the ARDL method. The ARDL model provides a solution that shows the short-run and long-run relationships together by removing the constraint of the series that are stationary in the traditional cointegration models. The period examined in the study, in which daily data is used, is between 01/03/2000 – 12/31/2022. Two significant results were obtained as a consequence of the implementation phase. First, there is a causal cointegration relationship between European stock markets, BRIC stocks, and American stock markets in the short run and long run. The cointegration relationship between global stock markets transforms national economies into international economies. The interdependence between global stock markets is considerably strong. This situation diminishes the utility of international diversification explained in portfolio management. Second, the relatively new ARDL technique gives similar results to conventional cointegration tests.
Albanian banks and finance, following the changes from the communist to the capitalist systems, in their current form, are a relatively new industry. The banking industry is the most important segment of the Albanian financial system and therefore requires more attention when it is about financial analysis. This paper theoretically and analytically deals with a brief presentation of the banking industry in general and the explanation of the primary risks associated with financial instruments. It will also mention the key challenges facing the banking industry and growth prospects.
The current paper focused on the spectatularization of disasters as the main commodity thana capitalism exchanges. The discussion around the crimes against mankind perpetrated by Nazis in the clandestine concentration camps opened the doors towards new insights respecting the roots of thana capitalism. Nazis violated human rights secreting their crimes in a moment of the world where millions certainly died. Today´s philosophers are shocked to see how Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was the sanctuary of the horrors of the Second World War, sets the pace to a new allegory, intended to entertain thousands of tourists, many of them unfamiliar with these events. As a highly-demanded tourist destination, Auschwitz evinces the change of new postmodern ethics that commoditizes the other´s loss as a criterion of entertainment. The example of terrorism shows one of the paradoxes of thana capitalism simply because media covers and disseminates the cruelties of attacks to gain further subscribers and investors while terrorism finds a fertile ground to penetrate the homes of a wider audience.
Blockchain is a technology used to immutably and transparently store information that has gained wide popularity due to the use with cryptocurrency, but it is suitable for many other business scenarios. In this paper, the authors deal with carriers providing voice services by exchanging calls with each other. These companies need to transparently store call detail records (CDR) in order to avoid billing discrepancies which can lead to disputes and risk of interruption of services with heavy consequences from the legal point of view. In this paper, the authors present a solution to this problem by using hyperledger fabric to develop smart contracts, which are invoked to store information about each CDR generated. The proposed solution initially stores CDRs before inputting these to the blockchain network. The paper presents experiments with thorough testing on the blockchain network and also some performance improvements. Results show the effectiveness of avoiding disputes by guaranteeing that CDRs are exchanged effectively and immutably without room for ambiguities or misinterpretation.
Although contingency allocation management is widely accepted as a proactive concept rich in theories, its applications do not seem to be well embraced in many countries due to many factors. This study aims to broadly investigate this theory-practice gap concerning contingency allocation in building projects in Sri Lanka. Twelve case studies with a desk review on seven local projects were carried out to explore the contingency allocation practice at the site level. Fifteen independent consultants were interviewed to share an understanding of the practical relevance of this research while largely eliminating the need for further justification. Code-based content analysis was used to analyze data. Nearly 44 incremental approaches were found to have theoretically evolved in a history of 35 years. It was revealed that the practice of ascertaining contingency sums is ad-hoc, informal, and subjective. More than 25 gaps were detected, while nearly 50 strategies were introduced. An impression among the practitioners is that the formal methods are overly theoretical.
This article discusses the challenges faced in petrochemical industry during planning and execution of brown-field projects. Although the list of the challenges is not exhaustive, it covers the frequently encountered challenges. Along with the challenges, their solutions have been recommended based upon personal experience. This article can serve as practical guide for those responsible for management of brown-field projects in petrochemical, fertilizer, oil and gas, or other similar industries.
Disasters have always been part of human history. Although global safety has increased over the years, it is a question if the positive trend will continue. The most discussed major uncertainty is climate change, temporarily dwarfed by the COVID-19 virus pandemic. There are however many other challenges due to an increasingly connected and complex world. Failure to recognize an approaching danger is as human as the exaggeration by those who get worried too easily. If risk management systems shall handle the new risks, substantial advances in how to identify new risks are needed as well as improvements in the identification of cost-efficient mitigations. The collateral damage caused by mitigative measures can be high. Invasive actions, possibly amplified by social and traditional media, may disrupt supply chains and factories, and whole economies might suffer. A risk management system that can identify types of global risks and evaluate measures on cost-efficiency is needed to see if the cure could become worse than the disease.
The field of resilience is multifaceted and diverse. The foundations of resilience research are embedded in psychology; however, in recent years, the concept has been adopted in many other areas. Moreover, resilience has become more prevalent in disaster response literature but is somewhat confusing in the different ways it is defined and applied. This paper attempts to clarify resilience and interest in developing dialogue about better ways to assist those who deal with tragedy and disaster. If we as a society want to survive, recover, and thrive in the aftermath of disaster and/or traumatic events, we need to start with assisting individuals and organizations in understanding resilience. We need to assist them in tapping into past experiences while enhancing their traits and characteristics for better future resilience. Hence, this paper seeks to address how community resiliency to disasters be taught.
