In diesem Beitrag verdeutliche ich meine Besorgnis uber zahlreiche Umformungen der Grounded Theory (GT), die mit deren Rezeption durch Methodologien der qualitative Datenanalyse (QDA) einhergehen, und hieraus folgende Erosionen. Ich skizziere zunachst einige Beispiele hierfur, um danach die essentiellen Bestandteile der klassischen GT-Methodologie zusammenzufassen. Ich hoffe, dass dieser Beitrag meine Besorgnis uber die wachsende, aber meines Erachtens missverstandene Einvernahme von GT durch QDA-Methodologien veranschaulicht und zugleich als einfuhrender Leitfaden fur Novizen und Novizinnen dient, die daran interessiert sind, die grundlegenden Prinzipien der GT nachzuvollziehen. \nURN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs040245

Remodeling Grounded Theory

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Structured Systems Analysis: Tools and Techniques

This is an empirical study of knowledge management performance (KMP) at a university and the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between knowledge management process (KMPR), KMP and job performance (JP).,The data were collected using a questionnaire, as the instrument for the primary data collection, with total collected back responses of 207 from university lecturers who have actually participated. Structural equation modeling technique was used to fully analyze the data in order to determine what level of the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and JP existed.,The main findings were related to confirming the two main hypotheses of the research that were related to testing if there were relationships between the KMPR (represented by seven surrogate measures, namely, knowledge identification, knowledge creation, knowledge collection, knowledge organizing, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination and knowledge application) and KMP, as well as if the KMP was related to the JP.,This paper focuses on investigating the actual role of KM at a university, which is assumingly a knowledge factory. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that presumes the importance of KM and specially when there is no proper KM regiment in place, the paper reports the limited influence KM has on staff JP. It is one of the few studies that fills the gap in the literature concerned with the relationship between KM and JP and perhaps the first to provide insights about the KM intricacies at a Jordanian University.

The impact of knowledge management on job performance in higher education: The case of the University of Jordan

HighlightsFlexible, scalable traffic lights dynamic control system for isolated intersections.Multiple parallel fuzzy controllers dynamically manage both the phase and green time.Outperforms other works in terms of vehicle waiting time and balancing between phases.Very effective under heavy traffic and when phases have unbalanced arrival rates.Lightweight effective implementable on COTS devices: broad practical impact expected. This paper proposes a novel approach to dynamically manage the traffic lights cycles and phases in an isolated intersection. The target of the work is a system that, comparing with previous solutions, offers improved performance, is flexible and can be implemented on off-the-shelf components. The challenge here is to find an effective design that achieves the target while avoiding complex and computationally expensive solutions, which would not be appropriate for the problem at hand and would impair the practical applicability of the approach in real scenarios. The proposed solution is a traffic lights dynamic control system that combines an IEEE 802.15.4 Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for real-time traffic monitoring with multiple fuzzy logic controllers, one for each phase, that work in parallel. Each fuzzy controller addresses vehicles turning movements and dynamically manages both the phase and the green time of traffic lights. The proposed system combines the advantages of the WSN, such as easy deployment and maintenance, flexibility, low cost, noninvasiveness, and scalability, with the benefits of using four parallel fuzzy controllers, i.e., better performance, fault-tolerance, and support for phase-specific management. Simulation results show that the proposed system outperforms other solutions in the literature, significantly reducing the vehicles waiting times. A proof-of-concept implementation on an off-the-shelf device proves that the proposed controller does not require powerful hardware and can be easily implemented on a low-cost device, thus paving the way for extensive usage in practice.

http://lobello.dieei.unict.it/public_files/publications/1-s2.0-S0957417415001104-main.pdf

A novel approach for dynamic traffic lights management based on Wireless Sensor Networks and multiple fuzzy logic controllers

The most widely used technique for solving and optimizing a real-life problem is linear programming (LP), due to its simplicity and efficiency. However, in order to handle the impreciseness in the data, the neutrosophic set theory plays a vital role which makes a simulation of the decision-making process of humans by considering all aspects of decision (i.e., agree, not sure and disagree). By keeping the advantages of it, in the present work, we have introduced the neutrosophic LP models where their parameters are represented with a trapezoidal neutrosophic numbers and presented a technique for solving them. The presented approach has been illustrated with some numerical examples and shows their superiority with the state of the art by comparison. Finally, we conclude that proposed approach is simpler, efficient and capable of solving the LP models as compared to other methods.

A novel method for solving the fully neutrosophic linear programming problems

Knowledge management is recognized as an important weapon for sustaining competitive advantage and improving performance. The evaluation of knowledge management (KM) performance has become increasingly important since it provides the reference for directing the organizations to enhance their performance and competitiveness. This paper provides an understanding of factors that involved in implementing knowledge management concept to enhance organizational performance. Also, it provides an assessment tool that helps organizations to assess their knowledge management capabilities and identify the possible existing gaps in their knowledge management systems and suggest the possible ways to enhance organizational performance. The results show that all elements of knowledge management capabilities have a positive significant relationship with all measures of the performance at 1% level of significant; it means that there is a great correlation between knowledge management capabilities and organizational performance

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The Role of Knowledge Management in Enhancing Organizational Performance

E-commerce has been predicted to be a new driver of economic growth for developing countries. The SME sector plays a significant role in its contribution to the national economy in terms of the wealth created and the number of people employed. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Egypt represent the greatest share of the productive units of the Egyptian economy and the current national policy directions address ways and means of developing the capacities of SMEs. Many factors could be responsible for the low usage of e-commerce among the SMEs in Egypt. In order to determine the factors that promote the adoption of e-commerce, SMEs adopters and non-adopters of e-commerce were asked to indicate the factors inhibiting the adoption of e- commerce. The results show that technical barriers are the most important barriers followed by legal and regulatory barriers, whereas lack of Internet security is the highest barrier that inhibit the implementation of e- commerce in SMEs in Egypt followed by limited use of Internet banking and web portals by SMEs. Also, findings implied that more efforts are needed to help and encourage SMEs in Egypt to speed up e-commerce adoption, particularly the more advanced applications.

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Barriers to E-Commerce Adoption in Egyptian SMEs

Supply chain operations are disrupted due to natural disasters or epidemics. In the recent period, the supply chain suffers from obstacles and major challenges that affect its stages directly due to the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic around the world. The impact of this epidemic on supply chain performance is clear in terms of supply, demand, or logistics. This epidemic is characterized by a rapid spread, so countries have taken preventive policies in an attempt to limit its spread. These policies are direct impacts on the performance of the supply chain in all scopes. The extent of its impact varies from one supply chain to another, according to the activities that the supply chain provides. In order to provide a more accurate study of the impact of the measures taken to limit the spread of the epidemic, this research presents a proposed framework that evaluates the impact of these policies on the three main aspects of the supply chain (supply, demand, and logistics). The proposed framework is build using BWM and TOPSIS based on plithogenic set. Plithogenic set provides a more accurate evaluation result that addresses the uncertainty problem. Supply chain aspects were evaluated for the food industry, electronics industry, pharmaceutical industry, and textile industry.

Evaluate the impact of COVID-19 prevention policies on supply chain aspects under uncertainty

In the present aggressive world of competition, knowledge management strategies are becoming the major vehicle for the organizations to achieve their goals; to compete and to perform well. Linking knowledge management to business performance could make a strong business case in convincing senior management of any organization about the need to adopt a knowledge management strategy. Organizational performance is, therefore, a key issue and performance measurement models provide a basis for developing a structured approach to knowledge management. In this respect, organizations need to assess their knowledge management capabilities and find ways to improve their performance. This paper takes these issues into account when study the role of knowledge management in enhancing the organizational performance and consequently, developed an integrated knowledge management capabilities framework for assessing organizational performance. The results show that there is positive correlation between knowledge management capabilities and organizational performance. The results also show that the proposed framework can be used to assess organizational performance and also can be used as decision tool to decide which knowledge management capability should be improved.

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An Integrated Knowledge Management Capabilities Framework for Assessing Organizational Performance

The quadratic assignment problem (QAP) has considered one of the most significant combinatorial optimization problems due to its variant and significant applications in real life such as scheduling, production, computer manufacture, chemistry, facility location, communication, and other fields. QAP is NP-hard problem that is impossible to be solved in polynomial time when the problem size increases, hence heuristic and metaheuristic approaches are utilized for solving the problem instead of exact approaches, because these approaches achieve quality in the solution in short computation time. The objectives of this paper are to describe QAP in details showing its types, nature of the problem, complexity of the problem, importance, and simple example. QAP formulations, problems related with QAP, solution techniques, QAP benchmark instances, applications of QAP, survey of QAP researches are also illustrated.

Abdel Nasser H. Zaied

Papers

The Role of Knowledge Management in Enhancing Organizational Performance

Barriers to E-Commerce Adoption in Egyptian SMEs

Evaluate the impact of COVID-19 prevention policies on supply chain aspects under uncertainty

An Integrated Knowledge Management Capabilities Framework for Assessing Organizational Performance

A comprehensive review of quadratic assignment problem: variants, hybrids and applications