Contemporary research on older people information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption underlines conducting studies with objective (frequency and type of use) and also subjective (perceived ...barriers, associated usefulness …) data, and from a multivariate approach. In the current study the use of and the personal experience with ICT, with special reference to personal computer (PC), are analyzed in a sample of 212 community-dwelling Spanish adults aged 60 or older. Participants completed a structured questionnaire about a) perceived barriers, frequency and type of use, associated usefulness, and sense of control with respect to three ICT devices (smartphone, PC, and tablet); and b) attitudes toward PC, assessed (from a multidimensional approach) by the Spanish version of the Computer Attitude Scale. Two multivariate statistical techniques were used to detect profiles of older people related to PC adoption, and to identify the specific attitudinal dimensions that influence members belonging to these profiles. Descriptive statistics show a certain digital divide related to age, but also a relevant heterogeneity in ICT adoption. Multivariate analyses reveal three types of older adult-PC users, and underline usefulness and behavioral attitudinal components as key factors for promoting a more active PC adoption by older people.
•Older people seem to have difficulties for ICT adoption.•Profiles of older people were found in terms of frequency and type of PC use.•Attitudes towards PCs are differently distributed according to the profiles.•Behavioral and usefulness attitudinal dimensions are keys to improve PC adoption.
We examine, in hypercompetitive environments, why some firms fail to benefit from competitive aggressiveness while others experience superior profits. We explore the relationship between competitive ...aggressiveness and performance in a sample of 141 firms from three hypercompetitive industries—personal computers, computer-aided software engineering, and semiconductors—from 1995 to 2006. Contrary to the predominant view within competitive dynamics research, we find that competitive aggressiveness is not a universally effective strategy. For some firms, excessive competitive aggressiveness can escalate costs and diminish performance. Using polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology, we identify the conditions under which competitive aggressiveness enhances firm performance. Our findings reveal that firms benefit from competitive aggressiveness when they have specialized technological resources and support from a dense network of alliance partners.
•Proposed an analytical model for the two- and three-echelon reverse supply chain.•Defined the PC recycling supply chain as foundation for generating the analytical model.•Analyzed the model behavior ...and profit implications by the applicability of a numerical example.
Products that are not recycled at the end of their life increasingly damage the environment. In a collection – remanufacturing scheme, these end-of-life products can generate new profits. Designed on the personal computers industry, this study defines an analytical model used to explore the implications of recycling on the reverse supply chain from an efficiency perspective for all participants in the process. The cases considered for analysis are the two- and three-echelon supply chains, where we first look at the decentralized reverse setting followed by the coordinated setting through implementation of revenue sharing contract. We define customer willingness to return obsolete units as a function of the discount offered by the retailer in exchange for recycling devices with a remanufacturing value. The results show that performance measures and total supply chain profits improve through coordination with revenue sharing contracts on both two- and three-echelon reverse supply chains.
Some joint (synthetic) closed in itself idea about the world and its being is expounded in the paper, which gives the opportunity to invent the parallel definitions of the energy and the information ...not exceeding the bounds of the united world. This allows us to introduce some sufficiently general notion of the evaluated (over natively) producing (transmission stream conservatively-dynamic) surrounded system, described by the proper system of evolutional equations. In the capacity of important partial cases of such systems the proper notions of the energetic evaluated producing surrounded system and the informatic* evaluated producing surrounded system are introduced. The explicitly analyzed earlier examples of the model of heating stove (as the energetic evaluated producing surrounded system) and the model of personal computer (as the informatic evaluated producing surrounded system) expose the applicability of proposed idea to a generalized and formalized description of some wide class of over native systems really existing.
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•The coarse grain model was verified in two-dimensional fluidized beds so far.•In this study, the coarse grain model is verified and validated in a 3D fluidized bed.•Macroscopic ...behavior agreed between the original system and the coarse grain model.•Adequacy of the coarse grain model is shown through this study.•The coarse grain model fabricates application of the DEM in industrial scale system.
Dense granular flows are encountered in various engineering fields. The discrete element method (DEM) is used extensively for the numerical simulation of these flow types. Improvements in computer specifications have made it possible to apply the DEM in various systems. Although the DEM is well-established, it has a fatal problem. The problem is that the number of calculated particles is substantially restricted when the simulation needs to be finished within practical time using a single personal computer. On the other hand, many industries require application of the DEM to large scale systems on a single personal computer. We therefore developed the DEM coarse grain model in our previous studies. In the coarse grain model, a group of original particles is simulated using a large-sized particle termed a coarse grain particle, where the total energy is modeled to agree between the coarse grain and original particles. The coarse grain model therefore makes it feasible to perform large scale DEM simulations by using a smaller number of particles than the actual number. The coarse grain model thus far has been verified in two-dimensional fluidized beds. In this study, adequacy of the coarse grain model is verified and validated in a three-dimensional fluidized bed, where scaling ratio is low and high respectively. Consequently, the coarse grain model is shown to simulate the macroscopic behavior of solid particles in three-dimensional dense gas–solid flows.
This paper examines the hypothesis that ICT penetration has positive effects on economic growth. On theoretical grounds, this paper discusses three channels through which ICT penetration can affect ...growth: (i) fostering technology diffusion and innovation; (ii) enhancing the quality of decision-making by firms and households; and (iii) increasing demand and reducing production costs, which together raises the output level. This paper conducts three empirical exercises to provide a comprehensive documentation of the role of ICT as a source of growth in the 1996–2005 period. The first exercise shows that growth in 1996–2005 improved relative to the previous two decades and experienced a very significant structural change. The second exercise uses the traditional cross-country regression method to identify a strong association between ICT penetration and growth during 1996–2005, controlling for other potential growth drivers and country-fixed effects. The third exercise uses the system Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) for dynamic panel data analysis to tease out the causal link between ICT penetration and growth. This analysis also shows that, for the average country, the marginal effect of the penetration of internet users was larger than that of mobile phones, which in turn is larger than that of personal computers. The marginal effect of ICT penetration, however, lessens as the penetration increases. This paper points out several policy implications drawn from its analyses and findings.
Research Summary
How can inventors in large firms navigate their organizations' innovation processes to commercialize breakthrough inventions? Using historical case studies of three breakthrough ...inventions at Xerox—office workstations, personal computers, and laser printers, we illustrate how inventors navigated multiple evaluation criteria across different organizational units to attract resources toward inventions. These criteria stemmed from Xerox's first successful breakthrough invention, the 914 copier and the specific objectives of the organizational units. We highlight two approaches deployed by Xerox inventors—searching across the organization for more favorable evaluation criteria and shaping the evaluation criteria to help attract resources. While searching leveraged the heterogeneity of evaluation criteria across the different organizational units, shaping required the presence of evaluative uncertainty with respect to the appropriate criteria for evaluating breakthrough inventions.
Managerial Summary
The challenges of commercializing breakthrough inventions in large firms have been studied extensively through a lens of managerial decision‐making and resource allocation. This perspective has characterized the innovation process in large firms as one in which inventors confine themselves to idea generation, leaving idea commercialization to other actors, subject to organizational inertia. We develop a complementary perspective of the innovation process in which inventors may navigate organizational inertia by going beyond idea generation to attracting resources toward commercializing their breakthrough inventions. By offering a novel account of how inventors at Xerox navigated multiple evaluation criteria to commercialize their inventions, the study sheds light on an important yet overlooked aspect of the innovation process in large firms that can facilitate the commercialization of breakthrough inventions.
Although firms are expending substantial resources to develop technology and processes that can help safeguard the security of their computing assets, increased attention is being focused on the role ...people play in maintaining a safe computing environment. Unlike employees in a work setting, home users are not subject to training, nor are they protected by a technical staff dedicated to keeping security software and hardware current. Thus, with over one billion people with access to the Internet, individual home computer users represent a significant point of weakness in achieving the security of the cyber infrastructure. We study the phenomenon of conscientious cybercitizens, defined as individuals who are motivated to take the necessary precautions under their direct control to secure their own computer and the Internet in a home setting. Using a multidisciplinary, phased approach, we develop a conceptual model of the conscientious cybercitizen. We present results from two studies—a survey and an experiment—conducted to understand the drivers of intentions to perform security-related behavior, and the interventions that can positively influence these drivers. In the first study, we use protection motivation theory as the underlying conceptual foundation and extend the theory by drawing upon the public goods literature and the concept of psychological ownership. Results from a survey of 594 home computer users from a wide range of demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds suggest that a home computer user's intention to perform security-related behavior is influenced by a combination of cognitive, social, and psychological components. In the second study, we draw upon the concepts of goal framing and self-view to examine how the proximal drivers of intentions to perform security-related behavior identified in the first study can be influenced by appropriate messaging. An experiment with 101 subjects is used to test the research hypotheses. Overall, the two studies shed important new light on creating more conscientious cybercitizens. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
Traditional discrete-choice models assume buyers are aware of all products for sale. In markets where products change rapidly, the full information assumption is untenable. I present a ...discrete-choice model of limited consumer information, where advertising influences the set of products from which consumers choose to purchase. I apply the model to the U.S. personal computer market where top firms spend over $2 billion annually on advertising. I find estimated markups of 19% over production costs, where top firms advertise more than average and earn higher than average markups. High markups are explained to a large extent by informational asymmetries across consumers, where full information models predict markups of one-fourth the magnitude. I find that estimated product demand curves are biased toward being too elastic under traditional models. I show how to use data on media exposure to improve estimated price elasticities in the absence of micro ad data.
We model the effect of online information search across mobile (smartphone and tablet) and nonmobile (personal computer PC, both desktop and laptop) platforms on frequency of purchasing per online ...shopping session. Using clickstream data from a multinational retailer, we find that device modality drives purchase frequency, likely due to the differential ease of use of PCs, tablets, and smartphones. In particular, frequency of completed orders is highest when information search and purchase completion are highly convenient, such as when shopping via tablet. We also determine that information search in the form of reading online product reviews has no effect on mobile platforms, while it does on other platforms. These findings contribute to information search theory, suggesting that information search increases purchase likelihood when it is goal directed, extensive, and easy to conduct. Thus, the broad role of digital advertising should be to make the information search process easier and more convenient for consumers to stimulate purchases. These findings help digital advertisers understand information search patterns across device modalities. Implications for digital advertisers on electronic commerce (e-commerce) platforms are offered.
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