Hybrid Analysis of the Decision-Making Factors for Software Upgrade Based on the Integration of AHP and DEMATEL

Software is a very important part to implement advanced information systems, such as AI and IoT based on the latest hardware equipment of the fourth Industrial Revolution. In particular, decision making for software upgrade is one of the essential processes that can solve problems for upgrading the information systems. However, most of the decision-making studies for this purpose have been conducted only from the perspective of the IT professional and management position. Moreover, software upgrade can be influenced by various layers of decision makers, so further research is needed. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct research on what factors are required and affect the decision making of software upgrade at various layers of organization. For this purpose, decision factors of software upgrade are identified by literature review in this study. Additionally, the priority, degree of influence and relationship between the factors are analyzed by using the AHP and DEMATEL techniques at the organizational level of users, managers and IT professionals. The results show that the priority, weight value, causal relationship of decision factors of users, managers and IT professionals who constitute the organizational level were very different. The managers first considered the benefits, such as ROI, for organization as a leader. The users tended to consider their work efficiency and changes due to the software upgrade first. Finally, the IT professionals considered ROI, budget and compatibility for the aspect of the managers and users. Therefore, the related information of each organizational level can be presented more clearly for the systematic and symmetrical decision making of software upgrade based on the results of this study.

Romania’s urban policy in the context of COVID-19 pandemic time

Under the conditions of frequent changes, of some edifying transformations and perpetual challenges, urban policy undergoes changes/adjustments/updates over certain time intervals. These changes generate increasingly more complex requirements that impose drafting a flexible multidisciplinary framework able to support the future development of a territory. In full debate-process, the new urban policy of Romania promotes sustainability, resilience and inclusive growth, on the background of a critical period under the dominance of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. This new policy brings around the discussion table experts from relevant fields: decision factors, urbanists, economists, architects, citizens, civic initiative groups, etc. The national urban policy must address all categories of urban areas (defined as a city area considered as the inner city plus built-up environs, irrespective of local body administrative boundaries), being fundamental in implementing the goals set by the New EU Urban Agenda, approved in the framework of the Habitat III conference of the United Nations (2016) and the new provisions of the New Leipzig Charter (2020). Urban policy must ensure a single planning framework that would support the implementation of the programs and projects financed from European and national funds, preparing thus the financial exercise 2021-2027. Considering the above mentioned, the present paper aims to review the important and strategic elements of the future urban policy from Romania and its role in promoting and supporting balanced territorial development under the conditions of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic crisis which is far from over.

Clicks or Bricks? Online Shopping Adoption in Australia

Purpose: This research identifies and ranks the decision factors associated with online shopping adoption in Australia. Design/Methodology/Approach: Primary data for this study was collected with self-administered questionnaires and analysed using EFA and logit regression.Findings: The following factors, ranked in order of importance, influence online shopping behaviour in Australia: perceived risk, service quality, website factors, brand image, product variety and Australian product loyalty. The findings also show that demographic characteristics also influence the probability that Australian consumers will shop online. Originality/value: This is the first empirical study in which the decision factors influencing Australian consumers’ decisions to shop online are examined. The research contributes to the empirical literature on online shopping from a theoretical perspective as the modelling framework can be used to analyse online shopping behaviour in different cultural settings. Longitudinal studies based on the modelling framework can also be undertaken to identify emerging decision factors and to track the changes in importance of the current factors. The results will also enable retailers to make informed decisions on their existing or future shopping channels.

Administrative and Compliance Costs of Value Added Tax (VAT): A Review

This article surveys the existing literature on the compliance and administrative costs of VAT incurred by the businesses and the governments respectively. The review focuses on the concepts and components of VAT operating costs, the link between the tax compliance costs and the tax compliance decision, factors associated with compliance costs and the steps taken by various countries to mitigate these costs. The major studies of VAT compliance cost since 1980 and the methodologies adopted are summarised. The review of the studies shows that the VAT compliance costs are higher and significant in both absolute money terms and relative to tax revenue in developed as well as developing countries than the administrative costs and the compliance costs are highly regressive in nature which disproportionately affects the small businesses. Further, the psychological costs are underexplored in the VAT compliance cost literature due to the difficulty in measuring them. This article also highlights the understudied area of VAT compliance costs in India and the importance of exploring the compliance burden in India.

Retreatment with Hyaluronic Acid Viscosupplementation in Knee Osteoarthritis: Agreement between EUROVISCO Guidelines and Current Medical Practice

Objectives This work studied if and how current clinical practice agrees with European Viscosupplementation Consensus Group (EUROVISCO) recommendations and how this agreement might be different according to physician’s specialization. In addition, this work aimed to identify key decision factors that practitioners consider in their decision to retreat or not a patient with hyaluronic acid viscosupplementation. Methods Practitioners have been invited by e-mail to participate in an online exercise on viscosupplementation retreatment. They received a fictional patient case at random among a set of predefined fictional cases. The platform asked the practitioner if he/she would retreat the patient with viscosupplementation or not. To take a decision, the practitioner could select questions among a list of predefined questions. Among them, some were related to criteria used in the EUROVISCO decision tree and others served as confounding factors. Results A total of 506 practitioners participated to the exercise, of which 399 gave their decision about the case assigned to them by the platform. The observed agreement between practitioner decisions and EUROVISCO recommendations was 58.89 ± 4.95% (95% confidence interval [CI]). Overall, the decision to retreat was taken in 47.87% of the cases, while the EUROVISCO guidelines follow-up would have led to 55.89% retreatment for the same cases ( P = 0.03). Conclusions In current practice, physicians tended to reinject their patients less than recommended, although EUROVISCO guidelines for viscosupplementation retreatment consider decision criteria that clearly correspond to those of practitioners in real life. These include the patients’ willingness to be treated or the patients’ perception of the effectiveness of the treatment.

Human-like Decision-Making System for Overtaking Stationary Vehicles Based on Traffic Scene Interpretation

There are multifarious stationary vehicles in urban driving environments. Autonomous vehicles need to make appropriate overtaking maneuver decisions to navigate through the stationary vehicles. In literature, overtaking maneuver decision problems have been addressed in the perspective of either discretionary lane-change or parked vehicle classification. While the former approaches are prone to generating undesired overtaking maneuvers in urban traffic scenarios, the latter approaches induce deadlock situations behind a stationary vehicle which is not distinctly classified as a parked vehicle. To overcome the limitations, we analyzed the significant decision factors in the traffic scenes and designed a Deep Neural Network (DNN) model to make human-like overtaking maneuver decisions. The significant traffic-related and intention-related decision factors were harmoniously extracted in the traffic scene interpretation process and were utilized as the inputs of the model to generate overtaking maneuver decisions in the same manner with the human driver. The overall validation results convinced that the extracted decision factors contributed to increasing the learning performance of the model, and consequently, the proposed decision-making system enabled the autonomous vehicles to generate more human-like overtaking maneuver decisions in various urban traffic scenarios.

A Mixed Methods Literature Review and Framework for Decision Factors That May Influence the Utilization of Managed Wildfire on Federal Lands, USA

There is increasing discussion in the academic and agency literature, as well as popular media, about the need to address the existing deficit of beneficial fire on landscapes. One approach allowable under United States federal wildland fire policy that could help address this condition is by deliberately managing wildfire with a strategy other than full suppression (hereafter referred to as ‘managed wildfire’). To improve the understanding of the managed fire decision-making process, we conducted a mixed methods review of the existing literature. This review spanned 1976 to 2013 and used thematic coding to identify key factors that affect the decision to manage a wildfire. A total of 110 descriptive factors categories were identified. These were classified into six key thematic groups, which addressed specific decision considerations. This nexus of factors and decision pathways formed what we describe as the ‘Managed Fire Decision Framework’, which contextualizes important pressures, barriers, and facilitators related to managed wildfire decision-making. The most prevalent obstacles to managing wildfire were operational concerns and risk aversion. The factor most likely to support managing a fire was the decision maker’s desire to see the strategy be implemented. Ultimately, we found that the managed fire decision-making process is extremely complex, and that this complexity may itself be a barrier to its implementation.

Benchmarking the outsourcing factors of third-party logistics services selection: analysing influential strength and building a sustainable decision model

PurposeOutsourcings always affect crucial supply chain functions concerning flexibility and cost. During the decision to outsource and consider third-party logistics service provider selection, decision-makers need to pay more attention to certain critical outsourcing factors such as coordination, integration and cooperation as these key factors are essential to improve overall supply chain performance. The main purpose of this work is to identify the inter-relations among outsourcing decision factors to highlight the most important and influential factors that should be considered and carefully thought through when making outsourcing sustainable decisions.Design/methodology/approachA two-phased methodology has been used in this study. In the first phase, outsourcing decision factors are identified from existing literature and validated by decision-makers from industry and academia. To understand the influential strength and build a sustainable model, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method is used. A courier company in the UAE is considered for implementation.FindingsAll identified and validated factors are segregated into two categories (cause and effect). The result shows that the most influential factors are developing strategic alliances, uncertainty and risk mitigation and deficiency of internal resources for a service.Practical implicationsThere are several insights for industry managers and practitioners. The results of the study may help practitioners and logistics managers to make the logistics service sustainable and more efficient for businesses.Originality/valueThis study focusses on a courier company to understand the interdependencies among outsourcing decision factors; this is unique in this field of literature.

Knowledge Base Design for Diagnosis Pregnancy Problems

In Indonesia, the death rate of pregnant women was still very high. Lack of knowledge about the perceived symptoms during pregnancy make pregnant women regardless of the specific symptoms that can be harmful and disease records indicate the causes of indirect maternal death in pregnant. Moreover, the risk of pregnant mother mortality is also higher due to the delay in taking the decision factors for referenced. Based on the fact, the proposed solution in the form of expert system diagnosis of diseases of pregnant women using the method of Backward Chaining that can help recognize diseases during pregnancy to take place based on the perceived symptoms of pregnant women as well as references that should be targeted by the patient. The methods of the Backward Chaining have a performance system that is capable of running the functional needs and high accuracy percentage results. With the existence of a system of experts on pregnancy problems that use the Backward Chaining method can describe the level of confidence of an expert on the problem at hand. Based on the test results, obtained results 100% functionality of disease diagnosis expert system of pregnant women worked in accordance with a list of system requirements and the system.