Critical Times for Organizations: What Should Be Done to Curb Workers’ Noncompliance With IS Security Policy Guidelines?

This study was designed to examine the impacts of employees’ cost–benefit analysis, deterrence considerations, and top management support and beliefs on information systems security policy compliance. Surveys of Canadian professionals’ perceptions were carried out. A research model was proposed and tested. The results confirmed that top management support and beliefs, sanction severity, and cost–benefit analysis significantly influenced employees’ information systems security policy compliance. The implications of the study findings are discussed, and conclusions are drawn.     

How to Get 3-D for the Price of 2-D—Topology and Consistency of 3-D Urban GIS

This article deals with topological concepts and models which are necessary to represent three-dimensional urban objects in a geographical information system (GIS). Depending on the shape and the representation of features, several classes with increasing topological complexity are identified and described. This complexity has strong impacts on the models and tools which are required to represent, manage and edit the data. One specific model we call 2.8-D map is identified, which covers many 3-D applications in GIS. It is a slight extension of a 2-D or 2.5-D model and preserves the algorithmic and conceptual simplicity of the 2-D case as much as possible. The model is described in a formal way. Integrity axioms are given, which detect errors in corresponding data sets safely and guarantee the consistency of 2.8-D maps in a mathematically sound and provable way. These axioms are effectively and efficiently checkable by automatic procedures. The model extends digital terrain models (2.5-D) by allowing for vertical walls and projections like balconies or ledges. The conceptual simplicity is due to the two-dimensional topology of the model. Thus bridges and tunnels are special cases; it is shown how to detect and handle these cases efficiently. Based on this model, thematic objects and their aggregation structures are defined in a consistent way.     

To M-Pay or not to M-Pay—Realising the potential of smart phones: conceptual modeling and empirical validation

The variety of products and services available through Smart Phones is predicted to increase significantly over the coming years as the commercial potential of Smart Phones for M-Commerce is widely acknowledged. In fact, it is predicted that M-Commerce will achieve in the next three to four years, what E-Commerce has achieved in the last fifteen years. However, while Smart Phones present significant opportunities for organisations, the M-Commerce channel is entirely contingent on consumers?? willingness to not only use these devices to engage in transactional tasks such as bookings, ticketing, and accessing information on products and services, but rather to actually make an M-Payment using the Smart Phone, and as such complete the M-Commerce transactional loop. Hence, M-Payments are a critical enabler of the true commercial value of the Smart Phone. Thus, gaining an understanding of consumers?? perceptions of using Smart Phones to make M-Payments is essential for theoretical explorations of the M-Payment phenomena, and in the practical implementation of M-Commerce services. This paper makes a number of contributions which are relevant to both academics and practitioners. The paper develops and empirically validates a conceptual model for exploring the impact of Vendor and Mechanism Trust on consumers?? willingness to use Smart Phones to make M-Payments for both Push and Pull based products. The empirical findings of the developed Partial Least Squares model illustrate that a pull-based model (where consumers have high levels of control over the transaction process) is the model consumers are most likely to adopt, and most likely to use to make M-Payments. To realise the M-Payments vision, vendors need to clearly communicate to consumers how their data is secured and privacy protected. Furthermore, the findings illustrate the critical importance of ensuring that adequate legislation is in place pertaining to the protection of consumers, and that such legislation is communicated to consumers to maximise their willingness to make M-Payments.     

Volunteer community service providers during the COVID-19 crisis response in China: What are their personal needs and how to respond?

The needs of volunteer community service providers (VCSPs), who are the main responders to community crises, have received significantly less attention for the contributions they have been making during the COVID-19 crisis. A mixed-method research framework was used in this study, which involved semi-structured interviews with 13 NGOs and questionnaire responses from 430 VCSPs in Hubei, China to assess the VCSPs' personal needs based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It was found that the VCSPs had safety, love, belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization personal needs, all of which were closely related to family, partners, organizations, society and the government. The discussions revealed that the more experienced VCSPs needed special attention and family support was extremely significant for VCSPs in crisis. Several recommendations to meet VCSPs' personal needs are proposed that could have valuable reference value for emergency managers when organizing and supporting VCSPs in contingencies.     

A two-stage Ant Colony optimization algorithm to minimize the makespan on unrelated parallel machines—part II: enhancements and experimentations

In a previous paper (Arnaout et al in J Intell Manuf 21:693–701, 2010), an Ant Colony optimization (ACO I) algorithm was introduced for minimizing the schedule’s makespan on unrelated parallel machines with sequence-dependent setup times. Optimal solutions for small instances of this problem were obtained by solving a mixed integer program. However, for larger instances (up to 10 machines and 120 jobs), heuristic and approximate algorithms were necessary to reach solutions in reasonable computational times. ACO I’s performance was evaluated by comparing its solutions to solutions obtained using Tabu Search and MetaRaPS (metaheuristic for Randomized Priority Search). While the results indicated that ACO I outperformed the other heuristics, it also showed that MetaRaPS had a better performance when all ratios of N/M (jobs to machines ratio) were considered. In this paper, we introduce an enhanced ACO which will be referred to as ACO II and compare its performance to other existing and new algorithms including ACO I, MetaRaPS, and SA. The extensive and expanded experiments conducted prove the superiority of the enhanced ACO II.     

SOA$$^\mathrm{}$$: a new way to design the decision in SOA—based on the new standard Decision Model and Notation (DMN)

In recent years, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technologies are emerging as a powerful vehicle for organizations that need to integrate their applications within and across organizational boundaries. In addition, organizations need to make better decisions more quickly. Moreover, they need to change those decisions immediately to adapt to this increasingly dynamic business environment. It is primarily a question in ensuring the decisional aspect by adopting the SOA as a support architecture. In this paper, we describe a new approach called SOA\(^\mathrm{+d}\) based on a certain number of standards. It is going to be studied on three dimensions: The first is related to the definition of the information system implied in the SOA based on the use case model. The second develops the business dimension which is based on the BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation). The last dimension addresses the need of decision; we use the new standard decision model and notation (DMN) which is recently approved by Object Management Group (OMG) and considered as a simple notation to specify the decision. Finally, Service Oriented Architecture Modeling Language (SoaML) will be used for design of several services. We also present our meta-model Decisional Model of Service (DMS) to define a new set of concepts necessary for modeling the three levels. Some of them are already known, whereas others are new and are proposed as an element of this work. we illustrate our proposal with a real case study in the Pharmacy Inventory Management.