Internal Connectedness Research Articles

Internal Connectedness and Accrual Quality: Evidence from Employee LinkedIn Connections

SYNOPSIS We investigate the impact of employee connectedness on a firm’s accrual quality. Using data from the largest professional network, LinkedIn, we measure the degree to which employees are connected—which we label “internal connectedness”—and are therefore likely to interact and share information. We hypothesize and find that a firm’s internal connectedness increases its accrual quality and that the positive effect is stronger when external monitoring or internal formal monitoring is weaker or when accrual estimation is more difficult. That is, the effects of internal connectedness are stronger when greater benefits can be expected from enhanced informal internal information sharing. Our results provide insights for academics and practitioners in understanding the determinants of financial reporting quality and the crucial yet often neglected role of the internal information environment. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources cited in the text.

Vitality of older adults through internal and external connectedness

BackgroundVitality is a relatively unresearched concept and defined in existing literature either on the premise of one's functioning, or in terms of feeling alive. There is, however, little known about the significance of a sense of connectedness to life for vitality, especially from the perspective of older adults. This research aims to explore the association between the concept of connectedness and the perspective of vitality as a sense of aliveness, in order to formulate a theoretical understanding grounded in the subjective perceptions that older adults themselves hold of vitality. MethodsFollowing a constructivist grounded theory approach and theoretical sampling, constant comparative analysis was performed on the transcripts of 15 semi-structured interviews, conducted in the Netherlands with older adults (mean age 73 years, eight females and seven males), regarding their vitality. Concurrently, empirical and theoretical findings were translated into a theoretical conceptualisation. ResultsAccording to the older participants, connecting to life itself enhanced their sense of vitality. This connection was achieved through internal connectedness (connecting to one's own life, intrinsic stimuli and intrinsic goals in an independent manner) and external connectedness (social connectedness, environmental connectedness, engagement with the external world). Furthermore, our findings revealed distinct interactions between internal and external connectedness and facilitating tools, such as freedom from physical constraints, financial freedom and adaptation. ConclusionsOur findings provide a holistic concept of vitality and connectedness and consolidate existing perspectives on vitality into an overarching framework, which can contribute to the development of effective care policy, healthcare interventions and welfare services.

CBreath: Co-Design a Collaborative Breathing Experience to Create Interpersonal Connectedness

The need for interpersonal connectedness and the possibility of applying collaborative breathing in technological artifacts for mediating connectedness has led to the idea of devising an experience that applies internal, physiological synchronization aided by technology to create connectedness. The aim of this research is to explore how to use co-design to help understand jam session performers’ insights on their expected sensory experiences related to interpersonal connectedness and how to devise technological artifacts to meet their needs to establish internal connectedness with each other. In this research-led design project, an iteration model of a series of speculative co-design workshops, prototyping and testing was proposed and applied based on the concept of co-design. The design outcome—CBreath—presents a way of using collaborative breathing to create connectedness between the performers, externalizing their synchronized breathing by multi-sensory experiences via light, wind, and dynamic objects and making such effects parts of the jam session. This research demonstrates the feasibility of incorporating the iterative speculative co-design model into experience-oriented design of technology to ethically design for interpersonal connectedness. Such a design research approach can be further improved and applied in future technological artifact development to prioritize people’s expected experiences of establishing interpersonal connectedness in different contexts.

Industry Interconnectedness and Regional Economic Growth in Germany

Urban systems, and regions more generally, are the epicenters of many of today’s social issues. Yet they are also the global drivers of technological innovation, and thus it is critical that we understand their vulnerabilities and what makes them resilient to different types of shocks. We take regions to be systems composed of internal networks of interdependent components. As the connectedness of those networks increases, it allows information and resources to move more rapidly within a region. Yet, it also increases the speed and efficiency at which the effects of shocks cascade through the system. Here we analyzed regional networks of interdependent industries and how their structures relate to a region’s vulnerability to shocks. Methodologically, we utilized a metric of economic connectedness called tightness which quantifies a region’s internal connectedness relative to other regions. We calculated tightness for German regions during the Great Recession, comparing it to each region’s economic performance during the shock (2007–2009) and during recovery (2009–2011). We find that tightness is negatively correlated with changes in economic performance during the shock but positively during recovery. This suggests that regional economic planners face a tradeoff between being more productive or being more vulnerable to the next economic shock.

Modelling smart grid IT-OT dependencies for DDoS impact propagation

The traditional power network has now evolved into the smart grid, where cyber technology enables automated control, greater efficiency, and improved stability. However, this integration of information technology exposes critical infrastructure to potential cyber-attacks. Furthermore, the interdependent nature of the grid’s composite information and operational technology networks means that vulnerability extends across interconnected devices and systems. Therefore, a DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attack, which is relatively easy to deploy but potentially highly disruptive, can be used strategically against the smart grid with particularly egregious results. In this paper, we take inspiration from epidemiological modelling to propose a compromise propagation model, alongside a behavioural DDoS model, to explore how dependencies between the grid’s networks might influence the scale and impact of DDoS attacks. We found that the internal connectedness of a network amplifies the received impact of failures in an external network on which it is dependent. Furthermore, testing showed that alongside attack force, attack duration influences recovery times, due to both the quantity of resources consumed and the time needed to accumulate recoveries. The models were validated against simulations conducted with cyber-security providers L7 Defense, showing our approach to be a viable companion or alternative to traditional graph-based dependency models.

Implementing Modern Human Resources Strategies in the Public Sector

The implementation of modern human resources concepts to public sector large organizations is still a relatively new topic for researchers and practitioners. Moreover, although branding has become more prominent in the public sector, its role with employees is under explored. By means of a multi-dimensional procedure, the authors have developed a scale of measurement of the internal branding antecedents and consequences in the public sector through 35 items grouped into six dimensions: (1) external customer orientation, (2) internal customer orientation, (3) internal service quality, (4) interdepartmental connectedness, (5) customer satisfaction, and (6) employee satisfaction. The importance of the proposed constructs was theoretically discussed and justified. Using a sample of 304 public sector employees, the constructs are then tested and validated. Amos 27 is used for this purpose. The overall results from the empirical assessment were positive, thus reflecting the appropriateness of the proposed constructs. This study provides new theoretical grounds for studying internal branding in the public sector. It also supplies public sector organizations with a number of operative factors that may be essential if they are to provide enhanced satisfaction to public needs. It is probably the first to provide an integrative perspective of internal branding constructs in the public sector.

Roads to Rule, Roads to Rebel: Relational State Capacity and Conflict in Africa

Weak state capacity is one of the most important explanations of civil conflict. Yet, current conceptualizations of state capacity typically focus only on the state while ignoring the relational nature of armed conflict. We argue that opportunities for conflict arise where relational state capacity is low, that is, where the state has less control over its subjects than its potential challengers. This occurs in ethnic groups that are poorly accessible from the state capital, but are internally highly interconnected. To test this argument, we digitize detailed African road maps and convert them into a road atlas akin to Google Maps. We measure the accessibility and internal connectedness of groups via travel times obtained from this atlas and simulate road networks for an instrumental variable design. Our findings suggest that low relational state capacity increases the risk of armed conflict in Africa.

Inferring Networks of Interdependent Labor Skills to Illuminate Urban Economic Structure.

Cities are among the best examples of complex systems. The adaptive components of a city, such as its people, firms, institutions, and physical structures, form intricate and often non-intuitive interdependencies with one another. These interdependencies can be quantified and represented as links of a network that give visibility to otherwise cryptic structural elements of urban systems. Here, we use aspects of information theory to elucidate the interdependence network among labor skills, illuminating parts of the hidden economic structure of cities. Using pairwise interdependencies we compute an aggregate, skills-based measure of system “tightness” of a city’s labor force, capturing the degree of integration or internal connectedness of a city’s economy. We find that urban economies with higher tightness tend to be more productive in terms of higher GDP per capita. However, related work has shown that cities with higher system tightness are also more negatively affected by shocks. Thus, our skills-based metric may offer additional insights into a city’s resilience. Finally, we demonstrate how viewing the web of interdependent skills as a weighted network can lead to additional insights about cities and their economies.

Inferring Networks of Interdependent Labor Skills to Illuminate Urban Economic Structure

Cities are among the best examples of complex systems. The adaptive components of a city, such as its people, firms, institutions, and physical structures, form intricate and often non-intuitive interdependencies with one another. These interdependencies can be quantified and represented as links of a network that give visibility to otherwise cryptic structural elements of urban systems. Here we use aspects of information theory to elucidate the interdependence network among labor skills, illuminating parts of the hidden economic structure of cities. Using pairwise interdependencies we compute an aggregate, skills-based measure of system “tightness” of a city’s labor force, capturing the degree of integration or internal connectedness of a city’s economy. We find that urban economies with higher tightness tend to be more productive in terms of higher GDP per capita. However, related work has shown that cities with higher system tightness are also more negatively affected by shocks. Thus, our skills-based metric may offer additional insights into a city’s resilience. Finally, we demonstrate how viewing the web of interdependent skills as a weighted network can lead to additional insights about cities and their economies.

Discovering Urban Functional Polycentricity: A Traffic Flow-Embedded and Topic Modeling-Based Methodology Framework

With the rapid development of communication and transportation technologies, the urban area is increasingly becoming an ever more dynamic, comprehensive, and complex system. Meanwhile, functional polycentricity as a distinctive feature has been characterizing urban areas around the world. However, the spatial structure of the urban area has yet to be fully comprehended from a dynamic perspective, and understanding the spatial organization of polycentric urban regions (PUR) is crucial for issues related to urban planning, traffic control, and urban risk management. The analysis of polycentricity strongly depends on the spatial scale. In order to identify functional polycentricity at the intra-unban scale, this paper presents a traffic flow-embedded and topic modeling-based methodology framework. This framework was evaluated on real-world datasets from the Wujiang district, Suzhou, China, which contains 151,419 records of taxi trajectory data and 86,036 records of points of interest (POI) data. This paper provides a novel approach to examining urban functional polycentricity via combining urban function distribution and spatial interactions. This proposed methodology can help urban authorities better understand urban dynamics in terms of function distribution and internal connectedness and facilitate urban development in terms of urban planning and traffic control.

Extended Contact Algebras and Internal Connectedness

The notion of contact algebra is one of the main tools in the region-based theory of space. It is an extension of Boolean algebra with an additional relation C, called contact. Standard models of contact algebras are topological and are the contact algebras of regular closed sets in a given topological space. In such a contact algebra we add the predicate of internal connectedness with the following meaning—a regular closed set is internally connected if and only if its interior is a connected topological space in the subspace topology. We add also a ternary relation $$\vdash $$ meaning that the intersection of the first two arguments is included in the third. In this paper the extension of a Boolean algebra with $$\vdash $$ , contact and internal connectedness, satisfying certain axioms, is called an extended contact algebra. We prove a representation theorem for extended contact algebras and thus obtain an axiomatization of the theory, consisting of the universal formulas, true in all topological contact algebras with added relations of internal connectedness and $$\vdash $$ .

Mental health in Somali youth in the United States: the role of protective factors in preventing depressive symptoms, suicidality, and self-injury

Objectives: Community, school, family, and individual factors protect against mental illness in general samples of adolescents. How these assets apply to Somali youth resettled to the United States (U.S.), a group with significant trauma exposure, remains unclear. We aimed to quantify which protective factors are associated with lower prevalence of depressive symptoms, suicidality, and self-injury among Somali youth in the U.S. compared with their non-Hispanic white peers. Design: Participants consisted of 8th, 9th, and 11th grade respondents to the 2016 Minnesota Student Survey, an anonymous school-administered statewide survey with 85.5% school district participation, who identified as Somali ethnicity (n = 1552) or as non-Hispanic white (n = 80,583). Multivariable logistic regression assessed odds of depressive symptoms, suicidal ideation and attempts, and self-harm, using eight protective factors (i.e. internal developmental assets, school engagement, empowerment, and family and teacher connectedness, caring adults and after-school activity frequency and quality) as independent variables. Models were run separately for Somali and white youth. Results: Somali youth reported similar rates of depressive symptoms, but lower levels of suicidal ideation or attempts and self-harm behaviors than their white peers (p < 0.001). All eight protective factors were associated with outcomes in the expected direction for white youth. For Somali youth, internal developmental assets (aOR 0.79, 95% CI: 0.65–0.97), empowerment (aOR 0.58, 95% CI: 0.45–0.73), family connectedness (aOR 0.60, 95% CI: 0.51–0.71), perception of caring adults in the community (aOR: 0.84, 95% CI: 0.76–0.92), and quality of after-school activities (aOR: 0.72, 95% CI: 0.61–0.86) were protective against depressive symptoms, with similar patterns for other outcomes. Other school factors protected Somali youth less consistently. Conclusions: Previously established protective factors against mental illness, particularly school factors, do not universally apply to Somali youth. Interventions that strengthen individual, family, or community factors, or that increase the relevance of school factors, should be explored for these youth.

A mereotopology based on sequent algebras

Mereotopology is an extension of mereology with some relations of topological nature like contact. An algebraic counterpart of mereotopology is the notion of contact algebra which is a Boolean algebra whose elements are considered to denote spatial regions, extended with a binary relation of contact between regions. Although the language of contact algebra is quite expressive to define many useful mereological relations (part-of, overlap, underlap) and mereotopological relations (external contact, tangential part-of, non-tangential part-of, self-connectedness), there are, however, some interesting mereotopological relations which are not definable in it. Such are, for instance, the relation of n-ary contact, internal connectedness and some others. To overcome this disadvantage, we introduce a generalisation of contact algebra, replacing the contact with a binary relation between finite sets of regions and a region, satisfying some formal properties of Tarski consequence relation. The obtained system is called sequent algebra, considered as an algebraic counterpart of a new mereotopology. We develop the topological representation theory for sequent algebras showing in this way certain correspondence between point-free and point-based models of space. As a by-product, we show how one logical relation in nature notion, Tarski consequence relation, may have also certain spatial (mereotopological) meaning.

A simple greedy approximation algorithm for the minimum connected $$k$$ k -Center problem

In this paper, we consider the connected $$k$$k-Center ($$CkC$$CkC) problem, which can be seen as the classic $$k$$k-Center problem with the constraint of internal connectedness, i.e., two nodes in a cluster are required to be connected by an internal path in the same cluster. $$CkC$$CkC was first introduced by Ge et al. (ACM Trans Knowl Discov Data 2:7, 2008), in which they showed the $$NP$$NP-completeness for this problem and claimed a polynomial time approximation algorithm for it. However, the running time of their algorithm might not be polynomial, as one key step of their algorithm involves the computation of an $$NP$$NP-hard problem. We first present a simple polynomial time greedy-based $$2$$2-approximation algorithm for the relaxation of $$CkC$$CkC--the $$CkC^*$$CkC?. Further, we give a $$6$$6-approximation algorithm for $$CkC$$CkC.

Towards a hermeneutic of technomedical objects

In this article I consider some central aspects of the naturalist philosophy of science and science and technology studies in dealing with the contested status of technoscience in medicine. Focusing on the concepts of realism and representation, I argue that theories of science-as-practice in naturalist philosophy of science should expand their scope so as to reflect more thoroughly on the social and political context of technoscience. I develop a hermeneutic of technomedical objects in order to highlight the internal connectedness between social action, material agency, and the actions of scientific communities. The framework thus developed is used to re-consider the genomic turn in medicine. Pointing to the discrepancies between socially dominant representations of genomic technology and the actual interventions brought about through those technologies, I raise the question of how and where to address problems of theory and policy.

Modeling hydrological responses of karst spring to storm events: example of the Shuifang spring (Jinfo Mt., Chongqing, China)

Reproduction of hydrographs at karst springs has been an approach of understanding the karst aquifer, which normally acts as drains for the groundwater flow. However, its numerical modeling is difficult since factors for the internal geometry and connectedness are unknown and hard to quantify. Hydrographs of the karst aquifer with well-developed conduits in Shuifang spring catchment were obtained from the automatic gauging station at the spring orifice. Data as to the conduit system were also obtained based on results and analyses of tracer tests. With these data, the hydrological responses of Shuifang spring to storm events were simulated by storm water management model (SWMM) developed by USA EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Nash–Sutcliffe efficiencies are used to compare the computed flow to the observed, which are 0.95 and 0.92 for calibration and validation. SWMM was verified and applicable in karst conduit drainage system. The model illustrated correctly quick recharge through conduits and slow and low inflow from the fissured aquifer matrix. The SCS-CN (soil conservation service-curve number) infiltration method was used for computation of losses and runoff. Field tests indicated that permeability was extremely high but different in karst area, which was less sensitive to the computed runoff when exceeded the common value provided by SWMM. Therefore, an improved quantitative infiltration model for karst area will make SWMM possible to be a useful tool for assessing and reproducing spring hydrographs.

ロジカルフローテスト法におけるグラフの類似度係数の特性解析

The traditional paper test is able to measure mainly individual student's the understanding level of individual bits of knowledge. However, it is difficult to measure the internal connectedness among bits of knowledge. The authors had been presented a new testing method, called a Logical Flow Testing (LFT) for formative evaluation. The teacher may draw a graph, called a Logical Flow Graph (LFG) according to the contents to be taught, and then teach the subject based on the LFG. After lecturing, the teacher may give the LFT with elements which are equal to those of the teacher's LFG. The teacher compares individual students' LFGs with the teacher's LFG, and evaluates the structural understanding levels of individual students. This paper discusses similarity index based on qualitative degree of sequencing. As a result of linear translation ψ of the similarity index, the authors show that the index ψ is an expansion of traditional rank order correlation coefficients, such as the γ coefficient. Lastly, this paper shows that similarity index is effective for LFGs with partially ordered data structure from both theoretical and practical view points.

Measuring Connectedness of input-output Models: 1. Survey of the Measures

The concept of scalar measures of the degree of internal connectedness in input – output models is considered. These measures are believed to be important structural indicators, helpful in model estimation. They allow for a summary description and comparative analysis of various linear flow systems. Several measures drawn from the economic and ecological input – output literatures are examined. It is shown that none of the measures represent connectedness adequately.