A Multi-channel Application Framework for Customer Care Service Using Best-First Search Technique

It has become imperative to find a solution to the dissatisfaction in response by mobile service providers when interacting with their customer care centres. Problems faced with Human to Human Interaction (H2H) between customer care centres and their customers include delayed response time, inconsistent solutions to questions or enquires and lack of dedicated access channels for interaction with customer care centres in some cases. This paper presents a framework and development techniques for a multi-channel application providing Human to System (H2S) interaction for customer care centre of a mobile telecommunication provider. The proposed solution is called Interactive Customer Service Agent (ICSA). Based on single-authoring, it will provide three media of interaction with the customer care centre of a mobile telecommunication operator: voice, phone and web browsing. A mathematical search technique called Best-First Search to generate accurate results in a search environmen

One-dimentional magnonic crystal as a medium with magnetically tunable disorder on a periodical lattice

We show that periodic magnetic nanostructures (magnonic crystals) represent an ideal system for studying excitations on disordered periodical lattices because of the possibility of controlled variation of the degree of disorder by varying the applied magnetic field. Ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) data collected inside minor hysteresis loops for a periodic array of Permalloy nanowires of alternating width and magnetic force microscopy images of the array taken after running each of these loops were used to establish convincing evidence that there is a strong correlation between the type of FMR response and the degree of disorder of the magnetic ground state. We found two types of dynamic responses: anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) and ferromagnetic (FM), which represent collective spin wave modes or collective magnonic states. Depending on the history of sample magnetization either AFM or FM state is either the fundamental FMR mode or represents a state of a magnetic defect on the artificial crystal. A fundamental state can be transformed into a defect one and vice versa by controlled magnetization of the sample.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Letter paper, already submitted to PR

WHAT DRIVES TECHNOLOGY UTILISATION, LEARNING AND TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURE? LESSONS FROM NIGERIAN WOMEN FARMERS

This study examines the factors that drive technology utilisation, learning and transfer among women farmers in Nigeria. It assesses both modern and indigenous technologies used in farming activities. Three states were purposively selected from the six that comprise the South West geopolitical zone of the country. Structured questionnaire was administered to 180 women smallholder farmers who were randomly selected in equal proportion across the three states. Some 128 copies of questionnaire were retrieved representing a response rate of about 71%. The study reveals that majority of the women (about 67%) use indigenous technologies while only a few (17%) and 16% use modern technologies and a combination of both respectively. Family and friends are the main source of learning indigenous technologies while extension agents are the major source of modern. The study uses spearman correlation to determine the drivers of the dependent variables. Age, level of education, years of experience and learning intensity are significantly correlated with technology utilisation at 1% level of confidence while primary occupation and learning have significant correlation with technology learning at 5% and 1% confidence level respectively. The study also reveals that farmers’ age, experience and availability of learning system are have significant correlation with technology transfer. The study advocates the introduction of need and gender-specific new technologies. There is the need for integration of indigenous technologies into research so that it can be attractive to the older women. Also, farmers should be integrated into the technology development process. This will help in sustaining the rising interest of younger women in adapting modern and indigenous technologies in agriculture. The study also advocates the need for deeper and broader interactions among key actors, such as, R&D institutions, extension agents, NGOs, CBOs and farmers on the effectiveness and variety of channels used in technology learning, utilisation and transfer. Appropriate public policy interventions should also be introduced to develop ‘smallholder-friendly’ technologies, especially among women, to curb market failures in technology adoption

Managing Organizational Change in Nigeria Manufacturing Enterprises: Lessons from the Unilever Nigeria Pic

The study examines the level of acceptance of organizational change among workers and identifies factors that may impede the effective implementation of change among the manufacturing companies in Nigeria engaging the unilever Nigeria Plc as a case study. Utilizing data collected from a randomly selected sample of 720 senior/management staff and junior/non-managerial staff, regression analysis was performed to identify the determinants of acceptance of change among employees at the Unilever Nigeria Pic, Lagos, Nigeria. The results show some levels of employee acceptance of innovations and reveal that of the two categories of employees analyzed, non-managerial staff were more amenable to change. This study suggests that a more participative approach to the management of change process must be put in place to guarantee the acceptance of change in the manufacturing organizations in Nigeri

Human Capital Development Practices and Organizational Effectiveness: A Focus on the Contemporary Nigerian Banking Industry

The main purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the theoretical and empirical relationship between Human Capital Development (HCD) practices and some dimensions of Organizational Effectiveness ofNigerian Banks particularly after the banking sector reforms of June 2004. Data were generated by means of two sets of questionnaire administered to some selected Banks in Lagos, Nigeria. The study generated responses from ten Banks. Responses from the survey were statistically analyzed using descriptive statistics and pearson product movement correlation. The result of the study indicates that Nigerian banks are actively involved in HCD practices. The study shows that organizational effectiveness of the selected and participating banks is to a large extent satisfactory. Obviously, involvements in HCD practices are found to correlate positively with organizational effectiveness. The implications of this study include the need to encourage Nigerian banks and indeed all organizations willing to operate effectively and efficiently in the contemporary Nigerian business arena, to devote a substantial amount of their resources on the development of human element

An Evaluation of Human Resource Management (HRM) Practices in Nigerian Universities: The Impact of Size

This study examines empirically, the relationship between size of the organization and Human Resource Management (HRM) practices that have been shown to contribute to organizational perfonnance. The study draws on the resource-based view of the finn and hypothesized that big universities, operational! zed as having > 1 000 academic and administrative staff can be differentiated from small Universities, defined a;; employing <1 000 academic and administrative staff in their use of human resource management pract1ces x.tontrary to prior research findings, it was follild that size did not conelate with the usage of HRl\1 bc~t pr~ctices. Both big and small universities used similar and identical HRM practices. Apparently, size did not _8-i[ferentiate between HRM practices employed inN igeria Universitie