The Effect of a Perceived Leader's Influence on the Motivation of the Members of Nonwork-Related Virtual Communities

In the plethora of virtual communities (VCs), the importance of nonwork-related VCs is increasing because organizations want to utilize these VCs to improve their performance by means of the social interaction among the members of the nonwork-related VCs. Despite the growing importance of nonwork-related VCs, only limited research has been conducted to examine the factors affecting their members' motivation and organizational commitment. This study investigated the critical role of leaders in motivating the members of nonwork-related VCs. The influence of the members' perceptions of two leadership styles-consideration (relationship-oriented leadership) and initiating structure (task-oriented leadership)-on the members' motivation was examined. We also tested the moderating effects of the members' perceptions of three sources of power to determine how these sources could increase the leader's influence on the members. The results obtained from 92 individuals in various nonwork-related VCs showed the significant influence of the leader's consideration and initiating structure, as perceived by the members, on the members' motivation and organizational commitment. An additional finding indicated that the influence of the leader's initiating structure on the members' motivation and organizational commitment was greater than that of consideration. Furthermore, expert power had a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the leader's consideration and the members' motivation while reward power and legitimate power had negative moderating effects. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Engineering Management-a personal perspective

Based on my experience as an engineer and educator, I believe that "engineering leadership" rather than "engineering management" should be the goal of engineers in key roles and the focus of their management education. I would also like to see programs in technical organizations led by engineering leaders rather than nontechnical managers. I believe that it is more beneficial to enhance the leadership potential of an engineer than to educate the nontechnical manager in technology.     

科研院所科协基层组织建设初探

中国科协是党和政府联系科技工作者的桥梁和纽带,加强科协基层组织建设对使科协组织提供的服务延伸到每一个科技工作者,团结和带领广大科技工作者为建设创新型国家而奋斗具有重要意义。根据调查,拓展了科研院所科协基层组织的概念,整理了科研院所科协的基本情况,针对科研院所科协基层组织成立数量少,存在着岗位编制、规章制度等约束性问题等,并结合科技工作者的期望,提出应明确＂科技工作者之家＂的工作定位,建立基层组织建设长效工作机制。     

如何有效的将可靠性工程技术应用于企业产品研发过程中

可靠性工程技术做为提高产品研发质量的有效方法,已在国外各大公司得到了广泛的应用。随着WTO的加入,中国的企业将越来越多的面对国际化交流与竞争,在这个过程中,已或多或少了解到产品质量体系中的可靠性工程技术的概念和功用,同时可能也会对它如何与企业的真实状况结合产生实质效用产生疑虑。亿腾科技专注于可靠性技术培训以及产品可靠性工程质量解决方案的领域,在与众多企业客户的合作交流中积累了丰富的经验,在此我们将这些在国内企业的研发部门推进可靠性工作的经验和心得与大家分享,希望能给大家带来有益借鉴。     

Setting up as a consultant the devil is in the details

Making a success of a consultancy means finding a niche where you can offer clients an edge over competing consultants. You cannot be all things to all people. If, for instance, you want to function as a customer's representative reviewing process designs, project economics and schedules, be sure to portray yourself as such. If you want to specialize in particular unit operations, you should emphasize that forte. Among other choices, you may intend to make your name as an expert witness, or as an economic and market analyst, an adviser on educational curricula, a counselor to government or nongovernmental organizations, or to equipment vendors or technology licensors; whatever the choice, be sure to advertise yourself specifically as such. In any case, be objective and never stretch the facts as to your capabilities. Later in this article, we give recommendations on how to market your services.     

软件:有效数字化广告牌背后的"大脑"

日益精密且成本逐渐下降的的显示技术使人们对下一代户内、户外广告的"数字化"充满了期待。然而运行显示网络必不可少的"大脑"是不容忽略的。下面综述了成功的数字广告系统的软件需求,以及这些系统的工作方式。     

Neugestaltung des Rahmens für Forschung, Technologie und Innovation in Österreich

The fields of electrical engineering and information technology have always shown how base innovations can definitely solve problems and influence the modern industrial world. For the future, too, we expect substantial contributions. Thus, companies must recognize their chances on the market and start to invest for the future in time. Austrian electrotechnical companies seem to be aware of that as they are very involved in investments for the future. In Austria, more than one third of all expenditure regarding research and development concerns sectors associated with electrical engineering and information technology.     

Contract research gains adherents for its flexibility and lowoverhead

The use of independent contract research organizations by companies anxious to venture into new territory quickly without the overhead of new staff or equipment is discussed. Contract research firms can be found around the world, but most are concentrated in the United States. Many sprang up after World War II as conduits for transferring to industry the technology developed during the war. Most were founded as independent, nonprofit organizations so they would be unfettered by special interests and the need to make money. Most contract research organizations outside the United States get funding for operating and maintaining facilities, as well as a portion of their contract income, from government sources. The appeal of research firms over universities is their knack for applied as opposed to theoretical research. Advantages of outside research are examined     

A Directory Service for Perspective Access Networks

Network fragmentation occurs when the accessibility of a network-based resource to an observer is a function of how the observer is connected to the network. In the context of the Internet, network fragmentation is well known and occurs in many situations, including an increasing preponderance of network address translation, firewalls, and virtual private networks. Recently, however, new threats to Internet consistency have received media attention. Alternative namespaces have emerged as the result of formal objections to the process by which Internet names and addresses are provisioned. In addition, various governments and service providers around the world have deployed network technology that (accidentally or intentionally) restricts access to certain Internet content. Combined with the aforementioned sources of fragmentation, these new concerns provide ample motivation for a network that allows users the ability to specify not only the network location of Internet resources they want to view but also the perspectives from which they want to view them. Our vision of a perspective access network (PAN) is a peer-to-peer overlay network that incorporates routing and directory services that allow network perspective-sharing and nonhierarchical organization of the Internet. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a directory service for such networks. We demonstrate its feasibility and efficacy using measurements from a test deployment on PlanetLab.     

Personal Virtual Humans — Inhabiting the TalkZone and beyond

One of the fundamental goals of graphics has always been to visually create a three-dimensional person that is indistinguishable from a real person. This target is only slightly short of being reached, as was demonstrated when Columbia Pictures released Final Fantasy in 2001, an animated science fiction film with high-definition emotive characters. Through what has been a cultural and technological convergence, we are now starting to see software tools and techniques that can generate life-like characters while not sacrificing the human judgement and artistic skills that are needed in character animation. Computer games, films, and the Internet are now starting to use virtual humans, which as our conclusion will show will become more realistic. However, a new challenge has been set — people now do not want to just play a computer game with a visually realistic character, or see a television programme with a vivid computer generated character — they want to see themselves in that computer game or film. The future is towards individuals having their own virtual clones, which they can utilise in computer-generated worlds an applications. This paper will discuss the advantages of having a personal computer-generated character, and also describe several systems that BTexact Technologies have successfully developed and deployed to generate them, as well as some of the applications for which they can be used. The paper will finish by glimpsing into the future of what we can expect to see in the next few years, with the advent of this new exciting technology.     

Information systems leadership

Information system (IS) leadership is a critical area for many organizations because of their increasing dependence on ISs both for operational stability and for enablement of process innovation and business strategy. IS Leadership is distinctive from leadership in general because the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is expected to combine IS technical skills with an in-depth understanding of the organization across all functions from operational to strategic. Thus, unique leadership challenges arise due to the technology/business interface. The breadth of the IS Leadership role implies that IS Leadership research needs to cover a wide range of topics concerning the role and characteristics of the CIO, the CIO's interface with the top management team, and the CIO's organizational impact. This essay discusses the distinctive aspects of IS Leadership, identifies the dominant themes in prior IS Leadership research,and introduces five papers on IS Leadership in this issue.     

INFORMATION POTENTIAL: A Concept of the Importance of Information Sources in a Research and Development Environment

Recent research suggests that a few R & D professionals serve as communication nodes for their organizations. A study of these special communicators revealed that they were seen to have more value as information sources to their colleagues. The hypothesis, that individuals with high information source value have exposure to both a greater number of and a greater diversity of information sources, was investigated and was generally supported by research data collected by questionnaire in three separate R & D organizations.     

What ails broadband?

Consumers are offered technology for the sake of technology instead of real services. Do people really want broadband Internet access in their homes? It has been five years since household broadband Internet connections first became available. Yet only 4 percent of US homes with Internet-capable PCs have a broadband connection. In Europe, the figure is a paltry 4 percent. Why would not everyone want broadband? It delivers bits at blinding speeds and it will improve our lives in countless ways. We know that because the "techies" have told us so. And that is the problem. Most people do not care about bits per second, packet switching, and latency. They care about how the technology is going to specifically affect their lives-for the better, hopefully. It is the techies who love technology for its own sake, and they are still running the telecommunications industry, as they have for the past 120 years.     

The impact of Transformational and Authentic leadership on innovation in higher education: The contingent role of knowledge sharing

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of two leadership styles – Transformational and Authentic leadership on process and product innovation in higher education institutions in Jordan. We also examine how the effect of these leadership styles fluctuates based on the extent to which knowledge sharing is prevailing norm in an institution. We examine our suggested model in higher education institutions in the north of Jordan and utilize structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques for data analysis. Findings reveal that Transformational leadership and Knowledge sharing have a positive impact on the innovativeness of higher education institutions in Jordan. On the other hand, Authentic leadership does not show any support for innovativeness in the higher education sector in a non-western country like Jordan. In addition, knowledge sharing norms significantly moderate the effect of Transformational leadership but exhibited no moderating influence on the effect of Authentic leadership.     

Important lessons derived from X.500 case studies

X.500 is a new and complex electronic directory technology that is still unproven in many organizations. The author presents case studies of 15 pioneering pilot and operational X.500 based directory services, and provides valuable insights into how organizations are coming to understand this new technology and derive benefits from it. The case studies presented cover a reasonably broad spectrum of organizations, including computer suppliers, government organizations, universities, and research institutes, as well as the UK and US defense community. Some of the factors that were critical to the success of the X.500 projects studied are identified     

Research in nearly failure-free, high-reliability organizations:having the bubble

The authors note that high-reliability organizations such as nuclear power plants, air traffic control units, and aircraft carriers pose special challenges to organizational researchers. These organizations, where the consequences of failure can be catastrophic, are made relatively inaccessible to organizational research by their technical complexity and sensitivity to scrutiny. Methods for conductive research in these organizations are explicated along with the consequences of failing to bring organizational knowledge to high-reliability work units. The authors define some major characteristics of high-reliability systems and discuss how they affect research on such organizations. They address issues of entre, problem formulation, data collection, data interpretation, researcher relationships with the organizations, and product presentation     

Integrating ICT adoption issues into (e-)leadership theory

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are having a profound effect in society and organizations. However, the literature on ICT adoption—from selection to implementation—has not been well integrated into leadership theory. This is particularly true in terms of adoption. Leaders must adopt ICTs not only for their own competence—an antecedent condition for what is considered e-leadership, but choose, recommend, and support implementation of ICTs for their organizations/units to use. Leaders are also expected to become effective in dealing and navigating the challenges of leading within the digital space. At this moment, there are two pertinent literatures: the technology adoption literature and the enterprise resource planning literature—which can be considered an important special case of leadership change management literature—and which could provide the theoretical basis for developing a unified theoretical perspective on e-leadership. This article provides a framework and propositions to connect these literatures by focusing on the effects of individual leader characteristics on the ICT adoption process from both a personal and enterprise-wide perspective. Study limitations and future research opportunities are outlined.     

Understanding behavioural intention to use information technology: Insights from humanitarian practitioners

The contemporary research in the area of individual technology adoption mainly focuses on commercial supply chains. However, limited research focuses on the context of humanitarian supply chains. This calls to develop structural models that can scrutinize the technology adoption behaviour of the users in the humanitarian context. Therefore, this study is an attempt to empirically examine the technology adoption behaviour of humanitarian organizations. It extends the unified theory of the acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model by integrating personal innovativeness and trust in technology with the behavioural intention to adopt technology in the humanitarian context. Data from 192 humanitarian practitioners, who have experienced a large number of disasters, is utilized to empirically validate the conceptual model. The structural equation modelling results show that - out of four constructs namely performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions under UTAUT - performance expectancy and effort expectancy significantly affect the IT adoption. Contrary to expectations, trust and personal innovation do not affect the behavioural intention. Also, personal innovation does not moderate the relationship between performance expectancy and effort expectancy. This underlines the need to foster a learning culture within these organizations. The efforts made by involved humanitarian organizations may be directed towards improving the level of education, skills and facilitating them with other resources such as appropriate IT and data mining training, so that the technology adoption becomes an integral part of their daily activities. Finally, detailed implications for humanitarian organizations are discussed.     

Media-based continuing engineering education

Continuing education activities in universities and within companies themselves have seen phenomenal growth over the last decade because of the economic competition faced by business to utilize the most recent technology available to them. Engineers and scientists have, as have all citizens, had to cope with this changing technology and the pressures of greater productivity required of them. This paper deals with the interfaces between the individual working in business and the universities, professional societies, and industry to help them maintain their professional competence throughout a rapidly changing career. Individual motivation to maintain a learning attitude and the willingness to accept new techniques is a paramount problem to lifelong learning. The time constraints, cost, availability of programs, and the necessity to set individual goals are a few of the problems facing the professional today. This paper addresses the programs being developed by industry, universities, and the professional societies. Emphasis on the IEEE programs are an example of how the professional societies are attempting to meet the needs of their membership.     

Post-quake lessons for power utilities

The damage done to utility facilities during major earthquakes in southern California is described, and the data and lessons they provide are examined. The primary step has been to build a database that can be used to predict what to expect from an earthquake, i.e., what degree of shaking might be expected at a specific location and how much an earthquake of a specified magnitude will damage facilities in any particular location. The data have been used to design power generation equipment and distribution equipment to withstand earthquakes with minimal damage. Each earthquake provides a test of existing equipment and is used to develop new design criteria