Search results for "Unity"
showing 10 items of 3852 documents
Building relational worth in an online social community through virtual structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness
2021
Abstract This research explores the creation of relational worth in an online social community through the lens of social capital theory. Virtual structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness as dimensions of social capital are assessed through the concepts of media dependency and parasocial interaction. Both constructs are regarded as antecedents of relational worth in online social communities, which develops through their users’ self-connection to the community. To test the proposed conceptual model an analysis was undertaken of data from 370 personal interviews with online social community users. The results showed that structural and relational embeddedness are both associated wi…
ICT-SUSTOUR and MARKETOUR: Two second language acquisition projects through a virtual learning environment
2009
We are presenting a methodological approach that aims to increase students' motivation by asking them to develop tasks based on professional settings. In order to meet this objective a collaborative methodology was designed and applied to two multidisciplinary projects: MARKETOUR and ICT-SUSTOUR. Both projects made students face real workplace situations by working collaboratively through the use of a virtual learning environment (VLE) and other information technology (IT) tools at a national and international level. The methodology proposed offers students a professional scenario in which they are required to develop purpose-based tasks using IT. A virtual learning environment was devised …
Improving the Crisis to Crisis Learning Process
2014
While crises may appear to be event-driven, post-mortem accounts often identify factors that accumulate over time and increase the likelihood of failure. These factors are particularly difficult to anticipate when multiple organizations are involved in crisis preparation and event detection. Through the development of a systems-based model of crisis management, it was learned that knowledge sharing can be accelerated or inhibited by the development of trust among organizations through the management of events. Is it possible to operationalize this finding? This hypothesis is one of the findings of the SEMPOC project, which examined crisis preparation and mitigation in the hypothetical conte…
A fuzzy ServQual based method for reliable measurements of education quality in Italian higher education area
2013
In recent years, the attention that the European Community has focused on the education sector has produced a new university commitment addressed to quality aspects for all education related services. In fact, a quality oriented service requires excellence in the design and planning of service activities, as well as during its delivering and also for the adopted service performance evaluation method. However, considering that service performance evaluations are deeply based on stakeholders' judgments, they can be characterized by possible uncertainties related to incompleteness for partial ignorance, imprecision for subjectivity and even vagueness. Therefore, under these conditions, unrelia…
A Participant Experience Method for Illustrating Individuals’ Experiences in the Course of an Evolving Virtual Learning Community
2003
Early definitions of virtual learning communities often abstracted participants from their offline environments. However, often students’ virtual and physical environments are not essentially separated. Likewise, scholars should become more sensitive to and aware of their research principles and practices guiding studies in virtual settings and especially, in the intersections of on- and offline contexts. The participant experience method discussed in this paper, grants access also to the events outside the virtual learning context connecting various social settings and simultaneous events. However, the use of participant experience methods requires critical reflection during its various ph…
A dynamic performance management approach to frame corruption in public procurement: a case study
2021
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to frame the causal relationships between corruption in public procurement and performance of local governments. Design/methodology/approach An outcome-based dynamic performance management approach is adopted to explore a representative case study of a small Italian municipality. The model is based on three sources: qualitative primary data generated by face-to-face convergent interviews; secondary data retrieved from documents describing legal cases linked to procurement and open-access repositories; and an extensive literature review. Findings Emphasizing the role of community civic morality systemically may help to understand some counterintuitive re…
Teams and project performance: an ability, motivation, and opportunity approach
2020
This article analyzes the relationships between project performance and the team’s ability, motivation, and opportunity (AMO). We contribute to the project management literature by exploring which combinations of AMO factors are best for project performance at different levels of complexity. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 285 projects. Our study shows that in simple projects, ability is the key factor both as a main effect and as a constraining factor that acts as a bottleneck for project performance. In the case of complex projects, the multiplicative model is superior given the significant interaction effects of motivation.
User Innovation Networks and Research Challenges
2009
User Innovation Networks (UIN) has been considered the open innovation model for this century as it functions entirely independently of manufacturers. This paper discusses two UIN cases, Daz3D, as well as Linux Dell and IBM cooperation as regards research challenges about the community of practice and interface used. It concludes that current technology only now started touching global and extreme collaboration for creativity and innovation.
Zvaigžņotā Debess: 2007, Pavasaris
2007
Latvijas Zinātnes padome, Latvijas Universitāte
HIV/HCV co-infection: putting the pieces of the puzzle together
2003
The most relevant consequence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is the exposure of the patient to opportunistic agents. In addition, HIV may also modify the natural history of some non-opportunistic pathogens, which in turn may alter the course of HIV infection.