Covid-19 global pandemic, workplace spirituality and the rise of spirituality-driven organisations in the post-digital era

PurposeDespite the growing importance of workplace spirituality, organisations have been reluctant to integrate spirituality into their workplaces; this paper discusses how to integrate spirituality into the workplace.Design/methodology/approachThis is a theoretical paper that builds its arguments on the synthesis of workplace spirituality and contemporary management paradigms.FindingsThe study argues that workplace spirituality is an extremely important driving force for the sustainable and healthy growth of any organisation; however, infusing workplace spirituality into companies in the industrial and digital eras would be a futile effort, as industrial organisations are built on an ethos highly incongruent with spiritual principles. Therefore, in the post-digital era, spirituality-driven organisations (SDOs) will emerge, marking the beginning of a true “spiritual paradigm” for business and human society at large. The study also elaborates on the characteristics of the post-digital era and the nature of SDOs.Originality/valueWorkplace spirituality has been a research topic for years but has never gained sufficient momentum. The Covid-19 global pandemic has made workplace spirituality a more pertinent issue on corporate agendas. Therefore, this paper provides the theoretical foundation to embed workplace spirituality in contemporary management thoughts and practices.

AntTrust: An Ant-Inspired Trust Management System for Peer-to-Peer Networks

In P2P networks, self-organizing anonymous peers share different resources without a central entity controlling their interactions. Peers can join and leave the network at any time, which opens the door to malicious attacks that can damage the network. Therefore, trust management systems that can ensure trustworthy interactions between peers are gaining prominence. This paper proposes AntTrust, a trust management system inspired by the ant colony. Unlike other ant-inspired algorithms, which usually adopt a problem-independent approach, AntTrust follows a problem-dependent (problem-specific) heuristic to find a trustworthy peer in a reasonable time. It locates a trustworthy file provider based on four consecutive trust factors: current trust, recommendation, feedback, and collective trust. Three rival trust management paradigms, namely, EigenTrust, Trust Network Analysis with Subjective Logic (TNA-SL), and Trust Ant Colony System (TACS), were tested to benchmark the performance of AntTrust. The experimental results demonstrate that AntTrust is capable of providing a higher and more stable success rate at a low running time regardless of the percentage of malicious peers in the network.

Historical review and future opportunities for wider scaling of conservation agriculture in Tunisia.

In Tunisia, rainfed agriculture is facing the major challenges of low and irregular rainfall, as well as natural resources degradation. These are further accentuated by climate change. Changes in technical and management paradigms are needed to boost agricultural productivity. Since the early 1990s in Tunisia, a Conservation Agriculture (CA) system has been proposed as an adapted set of management principles to ensure more efficient and resilient agricultural production systems. In the last 20 years several research and development (R&D) projects have been implemented. Research findings in Tunisia show that the long-term adoption of CA allows increased crop yields and water use efficiency of cereals, enhanced soil biological life and soil organic carbon and reduced energy costs at farm level. Despite promising research results, adoption and up-scaling of CA in Tunisia has been rather modest (currently some 16,000 ha are managed under CA systems). The purpose of this book chapter is to summarize the previous R&D projects dealing with CA in Tunisia. It also aims to provide better insights into the complexity and potential ongoing solutions for integrating crops and livestock into CA systems. Crop-livestock systems dominate a large part of northern and central Tunisia where most of the rainfed field crops are produced.

Application of Operational Load Monitoring System for Fatigue Estimation of Main Landing Gear Attachment Frame of an Aircraft

In this paper, we present an approach to fatigue estimation of a Main Landing Gear (MLG) attachment frame due to vertical landing forces based on Operational Loads Monitoring (OLM) system records. In particular, the impact of different phases of landing and on ground operations and fatigue wear of the MLG frame is analyzed. The main functionality of the developed OLM system is the individual assessment of fatigue of the main landing gear node structure for Su-22UM3K aircraft due to standard and Touch-And-Go (T&G) landings. Furthermore, the system allows for assessment of stress cumulation in the main landing gear node structure during touchdown and allows for detection of hard landings. Determination of selected stages of flight, classification of different types of load cycles of the structure recorded by strain gauge sensors during standard full stop landings and taxiing are also implemented in the developed system. Based on those capabilities, it is possible to monitor and compare equivalents of landing fatigue wear between airplanes and landing fatigue wear across all flights of a given airplane, which can be incorporated into fleet management paradigms for the purpose of optimal maintenance of aircraft. In this article, a detailed description of the system and algorithms used for landing gear node fatigue assessment is provided, and the results obtained during the 3-year period of system operation for the fleet of six aircraft are delivered and discussed.

From Citizen Science to Citizen Management: Suggestions for a pervasive fine-grained and operational approach to biodiversity conservation

Citizen Science involves people as part of a scientific enquiry. However, in an age of great environmental changes, citizens are faced with degradation that affects ecosystem structure and function. Their role as drivers of change can be also relevant for biodiversity conservation. As in Citizen Science, where the citizens, properly trained, can initiate a widespread and fine-grained knowledge process, it is also possible to start a Citizen Management process, where citizens, adequately trained in problem solving, can change the state of an environmental system, with positive effects on the latter and on themselves. To prepare citizens for the acquisition of a problem solving and management paradigms, a quick meeting carried out with citizens by a senior manager as facilitator can be an opportunity to explain some basic steps: introducing them to the concept of ‘problem’, the definition of a project team and SMART objectives, the use of creativity during brainstorming, choosing an approach to the decision-making process and defining a strategy (actions, times, roles, resources, monitoring, and adaptation). According to the Hill and Westbrook’s SWOT approach, we suggest a list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that characterize the Citizen Management approach.

The management of public libraries during COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic literature review through PRISMA method

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the literature regarding the impact of global coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) pandemic on PLs and their management responses during COVID-19 pandemic as well as for the post-pandemic era.Design/methodology/approachThe systematic literature review is based on preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) method and includes publications in the English language published at online scholarly resources during the period of COVID-19 outbreak, i.e. from January 2020 to June 2021.FindingsThe number of the eligible and relevant studies for the COVID-19 impact on PLs was 79, which were included in the literature review profiling and in the qualitative analysis.Originality/valueThe systematic review provides a useful overview of existing PL management paradigms that could be contemplated at an organizational, national or international level while developing a strategy for public libraries in the post-pandemic era.

USING THE HACKATHON ECOSYSTEM AS AN EFFECTIVE TOOL FOR MANAGING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF AN INSTITUTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES. Management of competitiveness of higher educational institution as a science is a system of ordered knowledge in the form of concepts, theories, principles, ways and forms of management. We present scientific-methodological bases of competitiveness management in university as a system of ordered knowledge, concepts, theories including basic statements of modern competition theories, self-organization theory, system and integrative approaches of new management paradigms, which universality will contribute to the best interpretation of the process of development of appropriate principles and ways of competitiveness management in higher educational institution. These principles can be implemented with the help of the Hackathon Ecosystem, the main task of which will be to manage the competitiveness of the institution of higher education.METHODS. In the study to determine the level of competitiveness of the institution of higher education achieved with the help of the Hackathon ecosystem, the integr al indicator of competitiveness of the university as a set of quality potentials of education, competitiveness of educational services provided, efficiency of marketing activities, efficiency of investment management activities were used.FINDINGS. Management of university competitiveness as a process is a set of managerial actions, providing the achievement of objectives by transformation of resources at "input" into products at "output". We consider the university competitiveness management as a set of tools and methods for maintaining and increasing competitiveness. The main tool in this case is the quality of educational services. The factors of modern paradigm of university service quality management are revealed and the specific directions of quality assurance of university educational services are offered.CONCLUSION. The creation of an educational cluster as a group of geographically adjacent interrelated educational institutions of a certain profile (general, primary vocational, secondary vocational and higher vocational education) and related employers headed by branch ministries, state and municipal governments with a coordinating center, will increase the competitiveness of the basic university.

Total Quality Management: An Islamic Perspective

Quality management has occupied a vast space of the management literature in general and the quality management literature in particular. Academics as well as practitioners devoted much attention to the Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy and its impact on business performance. It is found that the roots of TQM and its successor can be traced to more than 1400 years ago in the holy book Al-Qur’?n and the teachings of Prophet Mohammad, Peace and Blessings of All?hbe upon him. Many verses in the holy Qur’an stressed the impact of good deeds and doing the right things. Not only we will explain these principles, but we will give some business applications of these principles from an Islamic perspective. This paper is therefore structured as follows. First, we will offer some of the existing concept of the quality management paradigms, literature review and suggest definition to reflect our contribution from an Islamic perspective. Second we will discuss the dimensions of the philosophical under pinning of quality management from Islamic Perspective and then principles quality management from Islamic perspective and finally quality leadership for quality management.

A Review on Wearable Technologies for Tremor Suppression

Tremor is defined as a rhythmic, involuntary oscillatory movement of a body part. Although everyone exhibits a certain degree of tremor, some pathologies lead to very disabling tremors. These pathological tremors constitute the most prevalent movement disorder, and they imply severe difficulties in performing activities of daily living. Although tremors are currently managed through pharmacotherapy or surgery, these treatments present significant associated drawbacks: drugs often induce side effects and show decreased effectiveness over years of use, while surgery is a hazardous procedure for a very low percentage of eligible patients. In this context, recent research demonstrated the feasibility of managing upper limb tremors through wearable technologies that suppress tremors by modifying limb biomechanics or applying counteracting forces. Furthermore, recent experiments with transcutaneous afferent stimulation showed significant tremor attenuation. In this regard, this article reviews the devices developed following these tremor management paradigms, such as robotic exoskeletons, soft robotic exoskeletons, and transcutaneous neurostimulators. These works are presented, and their effectiveness is discussed. The article also evaluates the different metrics used for the validation of these devices and the lack of a standard validation procedure that allows the comparison among them.

Modular and Distributed Management of Many-Core SoCs

Many-Core Systems-on-Chip increasingly require Dynamic Multi-objective Management (DMOM) of resources. DMOM uses different management components for objectives and resources to implement comprehensive and self-adaptive system resource management. DMOMs are challenging because they require a scalable and well-organized framework to make each component modular, allowing it to be instantiated or redesigned with a limited impact on other components. This work evaluates two state-of-the-art distributed management paradigms and, motivated by their drawbacks, proposes a new one called Management Application (MA) , along with a DMOM framework based on MA. MA is a distributed application, specific for management, where each task implements a management role. This paradigm favors scalability and modularity because the management design assumes different and parallel modules, decoupled from the OS. An experiment with a task mapping case study shows that MA reduces the overhead of management resources (-61.5%), latency (-66%), and communication volume (-96%) compared to state-of-the-art per-application management. Compared to cluster-based management (CBM) implemented directly as part of the OS, MA is similar in resources and communication volume, increasing only the mapping latency (+16%). Results targeting a complete DMOM control loop addressing up to three different objectives show the scalability regarding system size and adaptation frequency compared to CBM, presenting an overall management latency reduction of 17.2% and an overall monitoring messages’ latency reduction of 90.2%.