Mobility Patterns and Mode Choice Preferences during the COVID-19 Situation

The empirical research on the COVID-19 epidemic’s consequences suggests a major drop in human mobility and a significant shift in travel patterns across all forms of transportation. We can observe a shift from public transport and an increase in car use, and in some cases also increase of cycling and (less often) walking. Furthermore, it seems that micromobility and, more generally, environmentally friendly and comanaged mobility (including shared services), are gaining ground. In previous research, much attention was paid to the mode choice preferences during lockdown, or early stages of the SARS-CoV-2 situation. The blind spot, and aim of this work, is how long observed changes in mode choice last and when or if we can expect the mode choice to shift back to the situation before the SARS-CoV-2 episodes. The research sample consisted of 636 cases; in total, 10 countries contributed to the sample examined in this study. The data were collected in two phases: the first in the spring of 2020 and the second in the fall of the same year. Results showed that respondents reduced mobility by car, local public transport and walking, but not bicycling during the lockdown, compared to the time before the pandemic started. When the easing came, respondents assessed their own use of the car and walking as almost back to normal. They also reported an increase in the use of public transport, but not reaching the level prior the pandemic by far. It seems that cycling was affected least by the pandemic; use of a bicycle hardly changed at all. As for the implication of our study, it is evident that special attention and actions will be needed to bring citizens back to public transport, as it seems that the impact of the pandemic on public transport use will last much longer than the pandemic itself.

Incentives for Shared Services: Multiserver Queueing Systems with Priorities

Problem definition: We study shared service whereby multiple independent service providers collaborate by pooling their resources into a shared service center (SSC). The SSC deploys an optimal priority scheduling policy for their customers collectively by accounting for their individual waiting costs and service-level requirements. We model the SSC as a multiclass [Formula: see text] queueing system subject to service-level constraints. Academic/practical relevance: Shared services are increasingly popular among firms for saving operational costs and improving service quality. One key issue in fostering collaboration is the allocation of costs among different firms. Methodology: To incentivize collaboration, we investigate cost allocation rules for the SSC by applying concepts from cooperative game theory. Results: To empower our analysis, we show that a cooperative game with polymatroid optimization can be analyzed via simple auxiliary games. By exploiting the polymatroidal structures of the multiclass queueing systems, we show when the games possess a core allocation. We explore the extent to which our results remain valid for some general cases. Managerial implications: We provide operational insights and guidelines on how to allocate costs for the SSC under the multiserver queueing context with priorities.

Surmounting Boundaries: Closing The Governance Gap Governance Arrangements In Public Sector Ict Shared Services

<p>Hundreds of millions of dollars of public money have been spent creating Public Sector ICT Shared Services (PSISS) based on expectations of improved customer service and cost reduction. Unfortunately, the promised benefits have often failed to materialise and governance has been identified as a barrier to PSISS success. The research first locates the concerns that governance, and in particular arrangements for governing PSISS, is contributing to PSISS failure in the academic and practice literatures on PSISS governance. Our current knowledge of PSISS governance is principally informed by literature from three domains: management, public administration and information systems. These domains, to an extent, exist in silos with unique traditions, perspectives and knowledge claims. As a result, how it informs the governance of PSISS could be at best unhelpful and even confusing to practitioners. This state of knowledge is not assisted by “how to govern” guides that obscure their different theoretical origins and do not appear to address the complexity of PSISS governance. Despite this apparent lack of coherent frameworks in the academic and practice literatures, practitioners are expected to use this literature to develop governance arrangements and perform effective PSISS governance. This lack of coherence led me to ask my first research question: How do practitioners perceive PSISS governance in practice? Exploring how PSISS governance occurs in practice through the lived experience of PSISS governance practitioners led me to select grounded theory as an appropriate methodology and research design to examine 20 years of governance practice for an electronic identity (E-ID) PSISS in New Zealand. My grounded theory of practice enabled construction of a public sector governance model to explore vertical and collaborative governance arrangements through three perspectives: system strategy, delivery and assurance. The model has been extended to provide a system-wide public sector governance lens, which was used to reflexively explore current academic literature and seven practitioner informed critical public sector governance issues to answer my refined secondary research question: How have governance arrangements addressed critical issues in public sector governance?</p>

Surmounting Boundaries: Closing The Governance Gap Governance Arrangements In Public Sector Ict Shared Services

<p>Hundreds of millions of dollars of public money have been spent creating Public Sector ICT Shared Services (PSISS) based on expectations of improved customer service and cost reduction. Unfortunately, the promised benefits have often failed to materialise and governance has been identified as a barrier to PSISS success. The research first locates the concerns that governance, and in particular arrangements for governing PSISS, is contributing to PSISS failure in the academic and practice literatures on PSISS governance. Our current knowledge of PSISS governance is principally informed by literature from three domains: management, public administration and information systems. These domains, to an extent, exist in silos with unique traditions, perspectives and knowledge claims. As a result, how it informs the governance of PSISS could be at best unhelpful and even confusing to practitioners. This state of knowledge is not assisted by “how to govern” guides that obscure their different theoretical origins and do not appear to address the complexity of PSISS governance. Despite this apparent lack of coherent frameworks in the academic and practice literatures, practitioners are expected to use this literature to develop governance arrangements and perform effective PSISS governance. This lack of coherence led me to ask my first research question: How do practitioners perceive PSISS governance in practice? Exploring how PSISS governance occurs in practice through the lived experience of PSISS governance practitioners led me to select grounded theory as an appropriate methodology and research design to examine 20 years of governance practice for an electronic identity (E-ID) PSISS in New Zealand. My grounded theory of practice enabled construction of a public sector governance model to explore vertical and collaborative governance arrangements through three perspectives: system strategy, delivery and assurance. The model has been extended to provide a system-wide public sector governance lens, which was used to reflexively explore current academic literature and seven practitioner informed critical public sector governance issues to answer my refined secondary research question: How have governance arrangements addressed critical issues in public sector governance?</p>

Relationship Between Executive Education and Governance: Studies of Brazilian Business Groups

This theoretical and practical discussion intends to connect the formation of human capital of major Brazilian agents with investments in executive education based on demands from the areas of Corporate Governance and Tax. To this end, a literature review of the aforementioned themes was carried out, highlighting historical and contemporary aspects, relating them to the efforts of the companies studied: Petrobras, Braskem and OAS. In addition to the documentary research, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 22 executives from the aforementioned companies in order to reinforce knowledge about the phenomenon of governance, its consequences and consequences in shared services organizations. The text is structured in an introduction, discussion and theory segmented by study area and applied with notes from each business group and conclusions. The scientific contribution lies in strengthening the relationship between what is discussed in the academy and what is done in the market, intensifying the need for corporate education for business results.

A Survey on Improving QoS in Service Level Agreement for Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing is considered one of the most important techniques in the field of distributed computing which contributes to maintain increased scalability and flexibility in computer processing. This is achieved because it, using the Internet, provides different resources and shared services with minimum costs. Cloud service providers (CSPs) offer many different services to their customers, where the customers’ needs are met seeking the highest levels of quality at the lowest considerate prices. The relationship between CSPs and customers must be determined in a formal agreement, and to ensure how the QoS between them will be fulfilled, a clear Service Level Agreement (SLA) must be called for. Several previously-proposed models used in the literature to improve the QoS in the SLA for cloud computing and to face many of the challenges in the SLA are reviewed in this paper. We also addressed the challenges that are related to the violations of SLAs, and how overcoming them will enhance customers’ satisfaction. Furthermore, we proposed a model based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) and an enhanced DRL agent (EDRLA). In this model, and by optimizing the learning process in EDRLA, proposed agents would be able to have optimal CSPs by improving the learning process in EDRLA. This improvement will be reflected in the agent's performance and considerably affect it, especially in identifying cloud computing requirements based on the QoS metrics.

Improving Datacenter Utilization Through Containerized Service-Based Architecture

The modern datacenter's computing capabilities have far outstripped the applications running within and have become a hidden cost of doing business due to how software is architected and deployed. Resources are over-allocated to monolithic applications that sit idle for large parts of the day. If applications were architected and deployed differently, shared services could be used for multiple applications as needed. When combined with powerful orchestration software, containerized microservices can both deploy and dynamically scale applications from very small to very large within moments—scaling the application not only across a single datacenter but across all datacenters where the application(s) are deployed. In this paper, we analyze data from an application(s) deployed both as a single monolithic codebase and as a containerized application using microservice-based architecture to calculate the performance and computing resource waste are both architected and deployed. A modern approach is offered as a solution as a path from how to go from a monolithic codebase to a more efficient, reliable, scalable, and less costly deployment model.

Shared Service Centers and Financial Performance of Panafrican Equipment Group in Kenya

Modern firms have realised the need to take advantage of the opportunities in the emerging markets the concept of centralisation and co sharing of service providers gave rise to Shared Services (SS) and Shared Services Centres (SSC). However, little has been done in sub-Saharan Africa. This study sought to address this gap. For this reason, this study seeks to by determine the effects of shared service centres and financial performance of pan African equipment group in Kenya. The study specifically determined the effects of procurement shared services, finance shared services, inventory management shared services and ICT shared services on financial performance of Pan African equipment group in Kenya. The study was anchored on three theories namely: Transaction Cost Economics Theory, Resource Based View Theory as well as Agency Theory. The study adopted descriptive research design on 137 top-level management staff from the four sectors (mining & mineral processing, civil and infrastructure, power and energy and agriculture & forestry) of operating Pan African equipment group in Kenya. For selecting a sample of 86 participants, stratified random sampling method was used. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect primary data. The tool of studies was tested. The study used both face and content validity to assess the validity of the research tool while testing the accuracy of the research tool using the alpha (α) coefficient of Cronbach. The research considered a coefficient of 0.6 or more to be sufficient. Research information, including mean results, normal deviation and frequencies, was analysed using descriptive statistics. Analysis of conceptual material was also used for primary data analysis. Regression analysis was also used to analyse the effects finance shared services, inventory management shared services and ICT shared services on financial performance of Pan African equipment group in Kenya. Finally, the research considered ethical considerations where the permission to carry the study was obtained from the company and respective government bodies. The study concluded that Pan African Group significantly embraced procurement, finance, inventory management and ICT shared services. The study concluded that the firm by sharing procurement services it centralized and enhanced efficiency of purchases, pricing, supplier evaluation and quality control which contributed to peak performance. It was further concluded that to a significant extent finance shared services influenced financial performance of the firm. It was concluded that sharing of inventory management services at the firm enhanced effective and efficient inventory planning, costing, quantity and quality management and material optimization hence improving financial performance. It was concluded that database management, automation of processes, information security and network and facilities management services affected financial performance of the firm. It was recommended that enhancing more shared service centres will improve efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery and customer service.