Smart Technologies for Smart Nations

There are still a large number of unbanked people in Indonesia, particularly, in the rural areas. Without proper financial services, there can be no economy as banking is essential for any modern economy. Without economy, the livelihood of rural communities will remain poor. One reason for the large number of unbanked population in the rural areas is the cost of opening bank branches for low-income earners. It may not be cost-effective for banks to open branches in rural Indonesia. The number of customers may not be sufficient to cover the operating cost. This paper discusses digital banking services, such as online banking, SMS banking, and mobile banking. These new technologies could reduce the operating costs of banking services and allow the banks to provide financial services in the rural areas. This could potentially help the unbanked population have access to financial services, revitalize their local economy, and eventually improve the livelihood of rural communities, adding to the range of policy instruments to reduce rural poverty in Indonesia.

We examine the relationship between culture and tax evasion using Hofstede’s cultural measures. Using a mixed modeling approach, our results indicate the presence of an association between tax evasion and Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Twenty-eight nations were used in our two sets of analyses representing two different years, and demographic variables were used in the models as controls. Using the associations found in this study, companies, academic researchers, government officials, and other interested parties may now be better able to predict future tax rates and resulting worldwide micro- and macroeconomic effects.

A transnational empirical research is conducted to investigate the association between values of managers and the tasks they perform. Using data of more than 3000 managers from 52 nations, pooled regressions are conducted. It is shown that values of managers (similar to low-level Schwartz’s type) are associated with three types of tasks: cognitive, creative, and independent, after controlling for national effects, demographic variables, and ICT use. When firm size is additionally taken into consideration, it can be observed that certain values of managers (similar to high-level Schwartz’s type) are associated with these three types of tasks. Firms in smart nations may increase performance of their managers by matching tasks they perform with the values they hold.

IT plays an enormous role in creating conditions for faster socioeconomic development of a nation. Computerized data analysis methods can provide vital information for many businesses to make informed decisions in time and stay competitive. Frequent pattern (FP) mining is a data mining approach for discovering useful market data automatically from seemingly abundant data that are difficult to analyze using conventional statistical approaches. FP approaches have been widely accepted in developed countries for market data analysis and consumer behavior analysis, but seldom evaluated or applied in developing countries, such as Indonesia, due to limited access to data in the regions. However, such data would be tremendously useful for investors and financial institutions who are planning to invest in those developing countries. For this reason, we have collected large itemset transaction data from Indonesia for over 2 years and devised FP mining approaches to explore the quality of the data and extract useful data for foreign and local investors. For the first time, this paper reports the FP analysis results, new analysis approaches for this emerging market using novel datasets. In particular, we show that the average number of items that are bought together frequently in a retail shop in Indonesia is three. This kind of information is useful for formulating various marketing strategies, but difficult to obtain using conventional statistical approaches.

In a typical service-producing organisation, two types of factors (operation and quality based) are required to be considered for developing its performance and evaluation system. While operation-based service characteristics highlight the features of service activities that are needed to be pursued or controlled by any service organisation in an efficient and effective manner so as to increase service outputs and performance, the quality-based characteristics describe its most pertinent feature – quality of service. The multifarious effect of a service is transformed into judgement about its quality by the customers, and a corresponding attempt by service personnel to meet different quality characteristics is to be ensured. Identification of several pertinent service characteristics and choice of suitable performance measures for them are the primary requirements for the development of a methodology for service performance measurement and evaluation. In this paper, details of the application of such a methodology in a service organisation are elaborated highlighting essentially the kinds of relationships among a relevant set of operation- and quality-based performance measures and overall organisational performance to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methodology.

The study focuses on Indian information technology (IT) companies and, at a first level, probes into the impact of Web 2.0 technologies on the performance and functioning of these firms. The design of web information systems requires adaptations to the new developments, if not completely new methods. This is particularly stressed by the focus of user contributions to a community or service and the incorporation of collaboration, to be extended to be fully functional as a Web 2.0 application development method. Consulting firms like McKinsey have carried out research on global companies on similar lines but not on Indian IT companies. The present study attempts to fill this gap in knowledge base. The work reported in the paper attempts to examine the adoption status among Indian IT companies and its impact on corporate performance, leveraging the various tools available. Company-based survey methodology has been adopted through validated instruments, across these performance areas: knowledge management, rapid application development, customer relationship management, collaboration and communication, innovation, and training.

At the current juncture, with the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) 2015 a few steps away, both industry and universities in the region will be faced with an increased mobility of workforce and hence an increased need for producing globally fit graduates. There is little known about how an international work experience affects the development and growth of interns, how internships in a foreign country are monitored and evaluated by the host institution, and what students consider to be the relevance and value of such international learning programs. The authors collected data via an online survey from 325 students after completing a 12-week internship in their final semester of study at a foreign university in Vietnam (FUV). The findings are discussed in terms of attractiveness of international internships, preferences by gender and location, possible benefits in gaining employment, and potential for the FUV to promote cross-border work placements in the light of ASEAN integration.

Education providers can reach their international student recruitment goals through effective management of education agents as a marketing channel. This chapter discusses methods on how to build and maintain relationships between a principal and an agent. Findings suggest that although trust and commitment are important elements in building and maintaining business relations, other elements such as active engagement through regular contact and communication, the provision of good service and honesty, and the provision of rewards such as competitive commission and incentives are more distinct in building and maintaining effective business relations between a principal and agent in the international education industry. This chapter examines business relations between universities and education agents located in Australasia and draws on current research and practitioner experience in outlining approaches to agent management. Research is specific to the global education industry; however, concepts could be considered transferable to other service industry settings involving a principal and an agent.

There was considerable speculation regarding the ideal use and potential impact of massive open online courses (MOOCs) on teaching, learning, and traditional higher educational infrastructures. Many universities and colleges rushed into implementing MOOCs without clear understanding of this potential disruptive force on the educational landscape. This study examines the MOOC phenomenon more closely. The qualitative research approach based on Everett Rogers’ model of innovation diffusion is employed in this study. MOOCs’ early adopters were defined as faculty members from US institutions who offered MOOCs between April 2012 and December 2013. Initial MOOC implementation efforts in order to better determine motivations, implications, and future impact on higher education, which provided greater context to this rapidly shifting innovation, were studied. The findings indicate that the primary institutional motivation to sponsor MOOCs was to raise and/or enhance institutional branding. The findings also indicated that the faculty that was self-selected to participate in MOOCs at the early stage was open to experimentation as well as to the inherent risks associated with the trial of a new educational innovation. This review uncovered important implications on the main pedagogical mission of the university and its professors as a result of instructor and institutional involvement with MOOCs. More specifically, this study revealed that MOOCs have pushed pedagogical issues to the forefront, and faculty early adopters have shifted their classroom teaching in ways believed to improve the classroom experience and create more interactive learning opportunities for students as a result of MOOCs.

The factors that facilitate the interrelationship of organisational learning (OL), knowledge management (KM) and innovation in a distributed organisation are illustrated in this study. While the research was limited to a single organisation, it included multiple sites across Singapore and in a geographically distributed environment. This study illustrated an integrating model emphasising that organisational learning can create common understanding using knowledge-management transferring activities, mechanisms and innovation process. KM activities influences learning, understanding organisational knowledge and practical implementation of new ideas between organisational members that is greater than what individual learning can generate in a distributed environment. The participants’ experiences are intimately entwined in the practice of organisational members at the subject distributed educational organisation.

From ergonomic point of view, work capability, efficiency, and performance of the workers may substantially decrease as they involve themselves in critical man-machine interactions during construction-related manual material handling tasks. Therefore, to improve the existing ergonomic performance of the work system as a whole with respect to a given MMH task, a number of alternatives are required to be developed to minimize latent risk factors and reduce their impact significantly on the performance of the workers, in relation to biomechanical or physiological parameters. In this chapter, a design of experiment-based comprehensive methodology is proposed and applied for a select critical MMH task with observations from a real construction site in India for identification of alternate work systems that are considered superior from biomechanical point of view through biomechanical assessment for calculating the reaction forces for a number of relevant joints and segments in human body, keeping occupational health of the workers as a major priority. The study may help to develop appropriate guidelines for workers which may reduce the occupational hazards and improve health, safety, and performance of workers under prevailing construction work environment in India.

Appointment systems in many service facilities, especially in hospitals, experience walk-ins and emergency arrivals in addition to the scheduled arrivals. While the emergency arrivals need to be served as early as possible with the highest priority, the walk-ins are usually served with the lowest priority and are served on the occurrence of no-shows. This may disrupt the original schedule and affect the performance of the appointment system related to the scheduled patients (their waiting time). In this chapter, an attempt has been made to draw insights about the appropriate appointment scheduling rules for multiple classes of scheduled patients in presence of walk-ins and emergency patients. A number of simple scheduling rules are evaluated under different patterns of walk-ins and emergency arrivals. The analyses are illustrated with an example appointment system of a CT scan department of a hospital.

An ergonomic study of manual material handling tasks in construction needs to address a number of manual material handling task-related problems such as pains in the back, shoulders and wrists, strain and sprain injuries, musculoskeletal disorders, severe fatigue and loss of energy of the workers and those acquired from improperly designed safety gadgets being used. Biomechanical modelling may help an analyst identify work system/manual material handling task-related factors and causes for such problems explicitly. In this paper, the details about the biomechanical modelling and analysis of a select manual material handling task at a construction site in India are presented. Based on a review of literature on available biomechanical modelling approaches, an appropriate biomechanical evaluation methodology is used for the select task. Results as obtained on the current status of occupational risk factors and musculoskeletal disorders among construction workers engaged in the task indicate the need for potential ergonomic performance improvement of critical construction jobs for which compressive force at L5/S1 disc and other joints is beyond their threshold values. The major findings from the study with observations from a real construction site match closely with the opinion of the workers and are indicative of the validity of biomechanical evaluation methodology as proposed.

In recent times, issues like global warming, climate change, sustainability, and health hazards have become the prime concerns to the environmentalists. Industrial activity, such as the iron and steel production, is found to be the foremost emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG). This study is on emission of GHG by a steel plant in India and finding an eco-friendly solution in minimizing the impacts of GHG on population. The steel plant adopted afforestation program which played a significant role in controlling the emission levels of pollutants like dust, noise, etc. This chapter details the effects of such program in cleansing industrial pollutants, and the possibility of adopting such measures in other industries and countries as a part of social responsibility.