Higher Education Pedagogy Revisited

This chapter is an update that examines the effect of using “deliberation” as a tool for teaching at the college level. The students in this study considered the economic benefits and expenses of a box store. Deliberation provides a unique insight into what might be a better understanding of what students are thinking. The literature review contains various forms of deliberation including the process of deliberation in education; the outcomes of deliberative polling events; deliberation with technology; and whether working has an impact on students who deliberate. The use of pre- and posttest surveys shows that students who engaged in a deliberative dialogue were more likely to increase their civic learning and to change their opinions about the issues discussed. The findings demonstrate that deliberation pedagogy influences students' beliefs at both the individual and aggregate level.

SALES FORECAST FOR AGGREGATE PLANNING: CASE STUDY OF AN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS COMPANY IN MEXICO

This case study presents the analysis through the use of sales estimation tools for planning demand for aggregate level as a finished product in a leading industrial products company in the market in Mexico. First, it aligned the demand plan and the supply plan, recommending the best execution scenario to increase operational efficiency and reduce the cost of operating the supply chain to increase the company's productivity and stay competitive. Then, after analysing the behaviour of the demand for selected products, the authors determined as the main affectation the inadequate precision of the method forecasting and the lack of an aggregate forecasting strategy that allows reducing the variation. Due to this, the most significant effort was concentrated on determining a better-forecasting model and the decision to aggregate the demand based on three relevant criteria: the demand pattern based on the Soft, Intermittent, Erratic or Irregular quadrant, the best method of the forecast for each product and the time in quarters. As a result, a reduction between 20% and 46% in the forecast variation can be obtained from the above.

Comparing newspapers in mainland China and Hong Kong: The limits of media systems theory

Most comparative studies of media are undertaken between different countries. It is normally assumed that there are considerable commonalities between the media in a given country and it is usually argued that these are sufficient to form a ‘media system’, which can usefully be contrasted with that of another country. It is relatively unusual to find two sets of media within one country that are sufficiently distinct as be considered as different systems. This paper explores one of the exceptions to that general rule: the case of the Hong Kong media as compared with those of mainland China. Given the different historical and current situations of the two locations at the time the research was conducted, it is to be expected that the kinds of journalism practised would be radically dissimilar. The results of a content analysis of five mainland and three Hong Kong papers demonstrate that, at the aggregate level, there are indeed important differences. A more detailed analysis, however, demonstrates that each of the three Hong Kong papers is in fact closer to mainland groupings than they are to each other. One Hong Kong paper, Ta Kung Pao, is closest to the most ‘official’ grouping of mainland papers, while Ming Pao falls in to a grouping with the ‘liberal’ mainland paper. The now defunct Apple Daily, on the other hand, has the closest links with the ‘popular official’ mainland press. Taken together, these findings suggest that the common assumption that different forms of journalism are best compared on a national basis is incorrect and that factors like market position and ideological orientation have an important influence on the kinds of journalism practised across borders.

Profiling Residents’ Mobility with Grid-Aggregated Mobile Phone Trace Data Using Chengdu as the Case

People’s movement trace harvested from mobile phone signals has become an important new data source for studying human behavior and related socioeconomic topics in social science. With growing concern about privacy leakage of big data, mobile phone data holders now tend to provide aggregate-level mobility data instead of individual-level data. However, most algorithms for measuring mobility are based on individual-level data—how the existing mobility algorithms can be properly transformed to apply on aggregate-level data remains undiscussed. This paper explores the transformation of individual data-based mobility metrics to fit with grid-aggregate data. Fifteen candidate metrics measuring five indicators of mobility are proposed and the most suitable one for each indicator is selected. Future research about aggregate-level mobility data may refer to our analysis to assist in the selection of suitable mobility metrics.

Behavioral decision research is not a Linda problem: Comment on Regenwetter, Robinson, and Wang (in press)

Regenwetter, Robinson, and Wang (in press) argue that research on decision making is plagued with conjunction fallacies or “Linda Effects”. As a case study, they provide a critical analysis of Kahneman and Tversky’s seminal paper on Prospect Theory and its 1992 sequel. This commentary evaluates their criticisms and ultimately finds them to be predicated on a number of misconceptions. As argued below, a reliance on stylized effects at the aggregate level is perfectly legitimate when dismissing a received view and first proposing a new account that organizes said effects in theoretically-meaningful ways.

The Effectiveness of Job Rotation in Enhancing Knowledge Accumulation - A Field Study of the Opinions of a Sample of Employees at Al-Kitab University

The study aims to examine the effectiveness of job rotation in enhancing the knowledge accumulation of workers' opinions at the Iraqi Al-Kitab University by measuring the impact and testing the relationship between job rotation and knowledge accumulation. 62 valid questionnaires were distributed. The study used the statistical program (SPSS) to prove the validity of the research hypotheses related to the correlation and influence between the two research variables (functional rotation, knowledge accumulation). The findings revealed a positive moral correlation between the combined job rotation and the combined knowledge accumulation of the university under study in terms of its variables according to the value of the correlation coefficient at the aggregate level. Some recommendations related to the results of the research were made, the most important of which were: the necessity of developing and pumping new blood into the university, helping the employee and the university to get out of the cycle of stagnation, and resisting the change caused by the belief that the job is the property of the employee.

Why have consumers opposed, postponed, and rejected Innovations during a pandemic? A Study of mobile payment Innovations

The highly infectious nature of the COVID-19 virus has made the use of contactless payment methods a health exigency. Yet, consumers are resisting using mobile payments (m-payments) during the pandemic, a confounding behavior that needs to be better understood. The present study explicates this behavior by examining consumer resistance to m-payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, it provides more granular findings by measuring three levels of resistance/non-adoption, namely, postponement, opposition, and rejection. In this way, the study adds depth to the literature, which has largely examined resistance at an aggregate level to yield generic findings. Toward this end, the study draws upon the Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) to propose that usage, value, risk, tradition, and image barriers influence the three levels of resistance/non-adoption differently. An artificial neural network analysis (ANN) of the data collected from 406 non-users of m-payments confirmed that the influence of the five barriers varies for the three levels of resistance/non-adoption. The results further suggest that the usage barrier is the most significant contributor to opposition and rejection intentions toward m-payments, whereas the image barrier is the most influential for postponement intentions. This study thus makes a useful contribution to theory and practice.

Water Security: A Geospatial Framework for Urban Water Resilience

Urban water issues impacting sustainable development can be analyzed, modeled, and mapped through cutting-edge geospatial technologies; however, the water sector in developing countries suffers various spatial data-related problems such as limited coverage, unreliable data, limited coordination, and sharing. Available spatial data is limited to the aggregate level (i.e., National, State, and District level) and lacks details to make informed policy decisions and allocations. Despite significant advancements in geospatial technologies, its application and integration at the policy and decision-making level are seldom. The current research provides a unique, holistic Geospatial Framework to measure and monitor water security through geospatial technologies. The study demonstrates the application of the proposed Geospatial Framework from technical and institutional perspectives in water-stressed zones in Pune city showing where and how to solve problems and where proposed actions can have the most impact on creating a sustainable water-secured future. The research encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration, decentralized activity, employing traditional and indigenous knowledge, green infrastructure, watershed management, and nature-based solutions through Geospatial Framework to solve the primary challenges of water and build our cities' resilience. The current research can collaborate with Municipal Corporation mutually beneficial and work towards open-linked geospatial data for water security.

Changes in Consumption in the Early COVID-19 Era: Zip-Code Level Evidence from the U.S.

Using monthly zip-code level data on credit card transactions covering 16 U.S. cities, this paper investigates changes in consumption at local commercial places during the early coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era. Since using aggregate-level data can suppress valuable information on consumption patterns coming from zip codes, the main contribution is achieved by estimating common factors across zip codes that are controlled for factors that are zip-code and time specific as well as those that are zip-code and sector specific. The estimation results based on common factors across zip codes show that relative consumption of products and services that can be consumed at home (e.g., grocery, pharmacy, home maintenance) has increased up to 56% amid COVID-19 compared to the previous year, whereas relative consumption of products and services that cannot be consumed at home (e.g., fuel, transportation, personal care services, restaurant) has decreased up to 51%. Similarly, after controlling for the corresponding factors, online shopping has increased up to 21%, while its expenditure share has increased by up to 16% compared to the pre-COVID-19 period.