Search

Although information systems (IS) are increasingly used to provide sustainable solutions for tourism, our understanding of the social mechanisms whereby IS contribute to a sustainable visitor economy is limited. This paper fills the gap by investigating how organisations enact the affordances of IS in preserving intangible cultural heritage (ICH) to contribute to a sustainable visitor economy. Using an organisational aesthetics perspective, we explore the mechanisms through an in‐depth case study of an ICH‐based company in Jingdezhen, a famous historical porcelain city in China. Through the effective use of IS tools, the case organisation has successfully transformed from a ceramic manufacturing plant to a popular tourist attraction. Our study unveils six sustainable affordances of IS in three dimensions, wherein ICH aesthetics act as direct stimuli, knowledge tools and experiences. Affordances emerge from the processes of both creating and managing aesthetics. By enacting these affordances, the case organisation builds a more profound engagement with online audiences, attracts more ICH visitors and transfers ICH knowledge to potential inheritors of the tradition, creating a sustainable visitor economy. Our findings, summarised into a sustainable affordances model, contribute to the IS for sustainable tourism literature by shedding light on the black box of the social mechanisms of IS‐enabled ICH preservation. The sustainable affordances model can also help ICH‐based organisations reflect on how to build a sustainable visitor economy using IS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concentrates on presenting a reliable procedure to compute the stabilizing region of fractional‐order proportional integral derivative (FOPID) controllers for interval fractional‐order plants having an interval time delay. An interval fractional‐order plant is defined as a fractional‐order transfer function whose denominator and numerator coefficients are all uncertain and lie in specified intervals. Also, an interval time delay points to a delay term whose value varies in a specific interval. The D‐decomposition technique and the value set concept are employed to determine the stabilizing region of FOPID controllers. In this study, first, a theorem is presented to compute the boundary of the value sets of systems having interval time day. Then, a lemma is provided for robust stability analysis of the given closed‐loop control system. For a convenient use of the paper results, an algorithm is proposed to solve the problem of robustly stabilizing interval fractional‐order plants with an interval time delay using FOPID controllers. Finally, four examples are provided to illustrate the proposed procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concentrates on computing the stabilizing region of fractional‐order proportional integral derivative (FOPID) controllers for interval delayed fractional‐order plants. An interval delayed fractional‐order plant is defined as a fractional‐order transfer function with a time delay whose denominator and numerator coefficients are all uncertain and lie in specified intervals. In the present study, first, a theorem is proven to analyze the robust stability of the given closed‐loop. Then, a method is proposed to solve the problem of robustly stabilizing interval delayed fractional‐order plants by using FOPID controllers. Moreover, two auxiliary functions are presented to fulfill the additional specifications of design, ensuring better performance of the controlled system with respect to the disturbance and noise. Finally, two examples are provided to illustrate the design procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the event‐triggered resilient recursive distributed state estimation problem for discrete‐time nonlinear systems over sensor networks. An event‐triggered mechanism is employed to save the limited computation resource and network bandwidth while maintaining the desired performance. A resilient Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) with consensus on estimations is developed, and consensus is first achieved with respect to the prediction estimation. The accuracy of the computed estimation is then improved via two recursive equations. By adopting the structure of the EKF, the filter gains are determined in each sensor node via utilization of an upper bound for the cross‐covariance, thereby resulting in a lower computational burden. The boundedness of the estimation errors is analyzed. Simulation results are reported to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed distributed filter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the robust stability of interval fractional order plants with one time delay controlled by fractional order controllers is investigated in a general form. For robust stability analysis of the closed loop system by the zero exclusion principle, the distance between the origin and the value set of the characteristic function needs to be checked. It is known that the outer vertices of this value set may change at some switching frequencies and the repetitive calculation of these vertices at switching frequencies leads to additional calculations. In this study initially, new necessary and sufficient conditions are proposed to check the robust stability of a delayed fractional order closed loop system. Then, a novel robust stability testing function is presented based on some vertices, which are fixed for all positive frequencies. Therefore, no additional calculation is needed to obtain the outer vertices of the characteristic function value set for any pair of the switching frequencies. Also, a finite frequency range is presented to reduce the computational cost noticeably. Eventually, three numerical examples are given to verify the efficiency of the results of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite significant advancements, women executives and professionals have continued to complain about the existence of a glass ceiling in the UK, the USA, Canada and other countries that espouse equal employment opportunities. Little is known about the role and plight of women in the workforce in Islamic countries. In general, Western societies perceive the participation of women in the workforce and their upward career mobility as very limited in Islamic societies. This article seeks to address this limitation in the field by unravelling some of the myths and realities pertaining to women in the Iranian labour force. Based on interviews with 12 Iranians, reality checks were performed on five widely held perceptions of the status of women in Iran, including women's participation in the labour force, appointment to managerial/professional positions, representation in higher education, segregation in the workplace, and Islam's attitude towards non-Muslims. These issues are discussed in the contexts of foreign direct investment in Iran and other Islamic countries. Implications for international human resource management, including the assignment of women expatriates to Iran and other Islamic nations, are also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]