Improving the quality of strategic decision-making process in universities through employing expert systems: A case study from a developing country

Strategic decisions represent the fundamental core of the strategic planning process and strategic management in universities and they are essential in shaping the universities' policies and achieving their strategic goals. Without those strategic decisions, the universities stand unable to achieve their strategic goals and mission; therefore, specialists realized the critical importance of improving the quality of strategic decision-making in the current complex fast-changing environment that its dynamism continuously increases and which is based on the use of cutting-edge information and communications technology (ICT). Undoubtedly strategic decision-making process requires processing a huge amount of information with different robust smart methods and the extensive use of experts knowledge. There are many discussions about the uses and applications of expert systems (ESs), which are evolving rapidly in solving real problems in many fields that require experienced experts with deep sound experiences, and despite these many applications in many different fields and domains. Literature reveals that there is a scarcity of scientific research on how to employ expert systems to raise the quality of strategic decision-making processes in universities. Thus the purpose of the research is to fill this research gap by investigating how expert systems will enhance the quality of the strategic decision-making process in universities. The research design is a case study applied in Ain Shams University as a model of public universities in a developing country. This research makes a new research contribution by suggesting a futuristic proposal for improving the quality of the strategic decision-making process in universities through employing expert systems that are based on the theoretical framework of the research and the results of the field study.

existence of tourism higher education under the ministry of tourism and creative economy (PTNP) toward Indonesia’s golden generation 2045

The purpose of this study was to analyze and determine the strategy of Tourism Higher Education (PTNP) operated by the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy Republic of Indonesia towards vision Indonesia’s Golden Generation 2045. This research is a policy research to solve social problems that aims to identify the implementation of adaptation, innovation, and collaboration strategy. The results of this study indicated that Tourism Higher Education (PTNP) in the face of two main trends, namely globalization and pandemic COVID-19. The winning strategy of Tourism Higher Education (PTNP) were, 1) Adaption strategy, by provided facilities and support the lecturer and faculty members to use hightech and also strictly discipline with CHSE standard to protect the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. 2) Innovation strategy, by using hightech in education and curriculum designed to facilitate long distance learning as well as the development of big data for personnel, finance, logistics and students so that it will facilitate access to information and strategic decision making. 3) Collaboration strategy, by sharing utilization and industry expert on training and education as well as job recruitment and internship program.

A model for sustainable, partnership-based telehealth services in rural India: An early process evaluation from Tuver village, Gujarat

Background Telehealth can improve access to high-quality healthcare for rural populations in India. However, rural communities often have other needs, such as sanitation or employment, to benefit fully from telehealth offerings, highlighting a need for systems-level solutions. A Business of Humanity approach argues that innovative solutions to wicked problems like these require strategic decision-making that attends to a) humaneness, e.g., equity and safety and b) humankind, or the needs and potential of large and growing markets comprised of marginalized and low-income individuals. The approach is expected to improve economic performance and long-term value creation for partners, thus supporting sustainability. Methods A demonstration project was conducted in Tuver, a rural and tribal village in Gujarat, India. The project included seven components: a partnership that emphasized power-sharing and complementary contributions; telehealth services; health promotion; digital services; power infrastructure; water and sanitation; and agribusiness. Core partners included the academic partner, local village leadership, a local development foundation, a telehealth provider, and a design-build contractor. This early process evaluation relies on administrative data, field notes, and project documentation and was analyzed using a case study approach. Results Findings highlight the importance of taking a systems perspective and engaging inter-sectoral partners through alignment of values and goals. Additionally, the creation of a synergistic, health-promoting ecosystem offers potential to support telehealth services in the long-term. At the same time, engaging rural, tribal communities in the use of technological advances posed a challenge, though local staff and intermediaries were effective in bridging disconnects. Conclusion Overall, this early process evaluation highlights the promise and challenges of using a Business of Humanity approach for coordinated, sustainable community-level action to improve the health and well-being of marginalized communities.

Openness and Entrepreneurial Performance During COVID-19 Pandemic: Strategic Decision Comprehensiveness as an Inconsistent Mediator

The COVID-19 pandemic severely hit small and micro-businesses. In the face of the impact of the pandemic, how to help entrepreneurs, especially small- and micro-businesses that are more sensitive to the impact of the pandemic, make decisions to reduce losses has become an issue worth paying attention to. From the perspective of personality approach, this article studied openness, which is the strongest predictor of entrepreneurial performance among the big five personality traits, and explored the impact of entrepreneurs’ openness on entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the inconsistent mediating role of strategic decision comprehensiveness on entrepreneurial performance. An online questionnaire survey was conducted among 238 entrepreneurs of small- and micro-businesses when China was recovering from the pandemic and starting to resume work and production (February 18 – February 26, 2020). Entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic was measured by comparing the business conditions before and after the pandemic. The results showed that entrepreneurs’ openness positively impacted strategic decision comprehensiveness and entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the two competing hypotheses proposed by summarizing previous research, the results supported that strategic decision comprehensiveness negatively affected entrepreneurial performance. It indicated that entrepreneurs who tend to collect and analyze information extensively and then make decisions during the pandemic could not seize opportunities and improve their entrepreneurial performance. The results further supported that strategic decision comprehensiveness was an inconsistent mediator between openness and entrepreneurial performance, showing that entrepreneurs with low openness can also reduce the loss of entrepreneurial performance during the pandemic by making incomplete but rapid strategic decisions. This study found that the openness of entrepreneurs had a positive impact on strategic decision comprehensiveness for the first time and provided more empirical evidence for the negative effect of strategic decision comprehensiveness on entrepreneurial performance in the context of information uncertainty and unanalyzable situations. The inconsistent mediating effect of strategic decision comprehensiveness revealed in this study also has practical significance for helping entrepreneurs make correct decisions to reduce the losses caused by the pandemic.

Fortune heart healthy oil: when a strong brand strategy hits a cardiac roadblock!

Learning outcomes The case will familiarize students to TEARS model and No TEARS approach for brand endorser selection. It will enable the students to understand the extent of influencer impact on the brand. It will make students to realistically assess the pros and cons of ambassador marketing using celebrities. It will also enable the student to devise brand strategies to mitigate the risk associated with ambassador-based marketing. Case overview/synopsis The case explains the strategic challenge the brand faces in ambassador marketing due to the uncontrollable personal crisis of the celebrity. Brand ambassador is an integral element of the brand persona and is appointed to boost the brand’s unique proposition and sales. The selection of the brand ambassador is a strategic decision with direct implication on the brand equity. A strong celebrity–brand congruence is ideal to establish credibility, but it can backfire if anything negative occurs on either side. This case evaluates the crisis faced by Fortune oil which has been positioned as “the heart healthy oil” when its celebrity ambassador suffers heart attack. In the backdrop of the case, the students can analyse brand strategies with respect to ambassador marketing, TEARS model with No TEARS approach for endorser selection and endorser-related credibility risk management. Complexity academic level MBA BBA PG/Graduation in Marketing/Advertising. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 8: Marketing.

Challenges of Uncertainty in Sustainable Strategy Development: Reconsidering the Key Performance Indicators

The planning and development of the university strategy is closely linked to the university’s current performance, key priorities, and capabilities. A systematic literature review of factors that influence decision-making for strategy development has been applied in this research. To determine the external factors that influence strategic decision-making for universities nowadays there has been chosen a structure from the PESTLE analysis. The systematic literature review was limited to only higher education factor analysis. Based on the literature review, the authors have developed an approach for strategic direction evaluation and ongoing key performance indicator analysis. The approach is based on the Importance-Performance Matrix–IPA and developed further to include a comprehensive analysis of the strategic directions, organizational sources, and capabilities. An assessment of the university’s main strategic priorities with influencing factor analysis can be done using the developed approach adapted by the authors. It integrates the principles of resource-based strategy, key stakeholder engagement and creating shared value in the strategy development process. The adapted method was used in the 3rd generation university strategy development. The research contributes to the literature on a systematic approach development in the strategy evaluation process. This article puts emphasis on the resource-based view and key stakeholder involvement in the evaluation process.

Responsible I(m)ovation in Asia Pacific regions

Over the past 20 years, a debate has developed on the differences between innovation and imitation strategies as mechanisms by which businesses operating in the Asia Pacific region may gain a competitive advantage. The current research contributes to this debate from a different perspective by exploring some of the challenges and opportunities associated with the combination of both strategies into what has been defined as imovation. Imovators and imovations do not stand alone in business ecosystems. Rather, they should be embraced in the context of sustainability-related virtues and emerging capabilities, such as ethical behaviour, co-responsibility and positive social impact. Taking dynamic capabilities as a theoretical lens, this paper conducts an empirical investigation of responsible imovation in a sample of 180 enterprises operating in the Asia Pacific market. In particular, this research evaluates the relationship between dynamic capabilities and imovation capabilities using a logistic regression analysis whereby we correlate the three main features of imovation strategies: strategic alliances, strategic decision-making and product innovations. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study to focus on responsible imovation in the Asia Pacific market from an empirical perspective. The research highlights the key organisational and individual actions with the potential both to preserve existing capabilities and to create and integrate new ones. Our findings highlight the importance of technology adoption for responsible imovation to become more effective and accessible to imovators in the Asia Pacific business ecosystem. We conclude that responsible imovations combined with product-level innovations and core dynamic capabilities pave the way towards more rapid growth and a more sustainable competitive advantage.

Validation of CERES-Rice v3.5 under the climate of Andhra Pradesh state, India

Crop growth simulation models, properly validated against experimental data have the potential for tactical and strategic decision making in agriculture. Such validated models can also take the information generated through site specific experiments and trials to other sites and years. For proper calibration and evaluation of crop simulation models, there is a need for collection of a comprehensive minimum set of data on soil, weather and crop management in all agronomic experiments. Keeping this in view, field experiments were conducted at Rajendranagar (17°19' N, 78°23' E; 542.3 m amsl) during 1994-97 for three popular varieties of rice viz. Sambamasuri, Rajavadlu and Tellahamsa under irrigated conditions and data collected. Genetic coefficients required for running the CERES-Rice v3.5 model were calculated and the performance of the model under the climate of the area was evaluated. The results of the study show that the model simulations of date of flowering for Sambamasuri, Rajavadlu and Tellahamsa were within an average error of 6.2, 5.7 and 6.7 days respectively. Similar errors in predictions of physiological maturity dates were 7.6, 6.7 and 7.2 days. The error in grain yield predictions by the model averaged at 7.9%, 8.3%, and 5.7% respectively for the three crop varieties. These results indicate that the CERES Rice v3.5 model is capable of prediction of grain yield and phenological development of the crop in the climatic conditions of Andhra Pradesh with reasonable accuracy and hence, the model have the potential for its use as a tool in making various strategic and tactical decisions related to agricultural planning in the state.

Identification and Control of Game-Based Epidemic Models

The effectiveness of control measures against the diffusion of the COVID-19 pandemic is grounded on the assumption that people are prepared and disposed to cooperate. From a strategic decision point of view, cooperation is the unreachable strategy of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, where the temptation to exploit the others and the fear of being betrayed by them drives the people’s behavior, which eventually results in a fully defective outcome. In this work, we integrate a standard epidemic model with the replicator equation of evolutionary games in order to study the interplay between the infection spreading and the propensity of people to be cooperative under the pressure of the epidemic. The developed model shows high performance in fitting real measurements of infected, recovered and dead people during the whole period of COVID-19 epidemic spread, from March 2020 to September 2021 in Italy. The estimated parameters related to cooperation result to be significantly correlated with vaccination and screening data, thus validating the model. The stability analysis of the multiple steady states present in the proposed model highlights the possibility to tune fundamental control parameters to dramatically reduce the number of potential dead people with respect to the non-controlled case.

Decision-Making Approach Based on Generalized Aggregation Operators with Complex Single-Valued Neutrosophic Hesitant Fuzzy Set Information

A strategic decision-making technique can help the decision maker to accomplish and analyze the information in an efficient manner. However, in our real life, an uncertainty will play a dominant role during the information collection phase. To handle such uncertainties in the data, we present a decision-making algorithm under the single-valued neutrosophic (SVN) environment. The SVN is a powerful way to deal the information in terms of three degrees, namely, “truth,” “falsity,” and “indeterminacy,” which all are considered independent. The main objective of this study is divided into three folds. In the first fold, we state the novel concept of complex SVN hesitant fuzzy (CSVNHF) set by incorporating the features of the SVN, complex numbers, and the hesitant element. The various fundamental and algebraic laws of the proposed CSVNHF set are described in details. The second fold is to state the various aggregation operators to obtain the aggregated values of the considered CSVNHF information. For this, we stated several generalized averaging operators, namely, CSVNHF generalized weighted averaging, ordered weighted average, and hybrid average. The various properties of these operators are also stated. Finally, we discuss a multiattribute decision-making (MADM) algorithm based on the proposed operators to address the problems under the CSVNHF environment. A numerical example is given to illustrate the work and compare the results with the existing studies’ results. Also, the sensitivity analysis and advantages of the stated algorithm are given in the work to verify and strengthen the study.