Project Members Research Articles

The impact of leadership styles and motivations: lessons from Open Source Software projects for educational organizations

ABSTRACT This work focuses on the Open Source Software (OSS) topic in education, using a leadership and motivational perspective. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the teachers’ motivation to contribute to OSS projects for teaching. A structural equation model (SEM) has been defined under the postulates of the Path-Goal leadership theory and Motivational Behaviour. This model has tried to explain and predict the use of OSS solutions by teachers in an educational context. The findings confirm the positive relationships between transactional and transformational leaderships with extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Additionally, the findings show the positive relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations and the contributions to the OSS project in teaching. This research suggests several implications for both leaders and members of an OSS project in an educational context. First, the contribution of teachers and instructors to the project is greater when the motivation is fostered by the leader. Second, this study finds that motivating the participants of a project – teachers in this case – is highly recommended, in order to reach a successful adoption of OSS solutions for education.

Eight Years of Collaboration on Biosafety and Biosecurity Issues Between Kazakhstan and Germany as Part of the German Biosecurity Programme and the G7 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction

In 2013, the German Federal Foreign Office launched the German Biosecurity Programme with the aim to minimise risks associated with biological substances and pathogens. In this context, the German-Kazakh Network for Biosafety and Biosecurity was established in 2013 and constitutes a successful collaboration between Kazakh and German biomedical organisations, under the co-management of the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology (IMB), and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Ever since then, a network of scientists, stake holders and policymakers has been established, aiming to work on highly pathogenic, potential biological warfare agents with the focus on biosafety and biosecurity, surveillance, detection and diagnostics, networking and awareness raising of these agents in Kazakhstan. Over the past 8 years, the project members trained four PhD candidates, organised over 30 workshops and trainings with more than 250 participants and conducted more than 5,000 PCR assays and 5,000 serological analyses for surveillance. A great success was the description of new endemic areas for Orthohantaviruses, the mixture of two Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever virus genetic clusters, new foci and genetic information on tick-borne encephalitis virus and rickettsiae in Kazakh oblasts. The latter even led to the description of two new genogroups. Furthermore, joint contributions to international conferences were made. In this report, we summarise the evolution of the German-Kazakh Network for Biosafety and Biosecurity and critically reflect on the strengths and possible weaknesses. We were able to establish a viable network of biosafety and biosecurity shareholders and to accomplish the aims of the German Biosecurity Programme to lower biosecurity risks by increased awareness, improved detection and diagnostic methods and surveillance. Further, we reflect on forthcoming aspects to lead this interstate endeavour into a sustainable future.

Participatory Design as the Temporal Flow of Coalescing Participatory Lines

This paper argues that the existing literature on participatory design (PD) tends to focus on frontstage design interactions (workshops, participants, methodologies, techniques, etc.) to facilitate PD ‘here and now’—referred to as the interactional approach. In contrast, the paper proposes to contribute to an evolving literature, referred to as the transformational approach, that takes a more longitudinal line and which attends to both the frontstage and backstage within an extended temporal frame. To do this the paper draws on the work of the social anthropologist Tim Ingold, in particular, his concept of the happening of ongoing life as a bundle of flowing lines. The paper argues that PD becomes possible when ongoing participation is conceived of as a set of corresponding (or coalescing) and conditioning lines of flow—each line with its own history, attentionality, rhythms, tempos and so forth. To illustrate what this reorientation might mean for PD the paper draws on an in-depth action research study of a PD initiative that sought to develop a digital service to address loneliness and social isolation in a rural location in the UK. The paper explores how project members, individual participants, non-governmental organisation, government representatives, evaluators and funders co-responded to each other (or not) as they engaged, or became implicated, in the PD process. The paper concludes with some practical implications of what such an Ingoldian reorientation might mean for the ongoing development of PD as a transformational methodology.

CREATION OF DIGITAL TWINS - KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF PHYSICAL TO VIRTUAL TWINNING IN MECHATRONIC PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

AbstractDue to the falling costs of computational resources and the increasing potential of data acquisition, interest in digital twins, a virtual copy of the physical original, and their industrial application is increasing. Nevertheless, there is limited published work on how to support the process of physical to virtual twinning and what its key aspects are. The aim of this study is to present insights with regards to physical to virtual twinning gained from modelling projects in mechatronic product development. We conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with members of modelling projects. In the surveys and interviews we identified how physical products and virtual models were linked, which virtual models were used and which general challenges and key aspects are considered important by the project members. Our findings show that the key characteristics that pose challenges to modelling regarding physical to virtual twinning are model granularity, model validation, and model integration and interconnectivity.

Access to Healthcare for Migrant Patients in Europe: Healthcare Discrimination and Translation Services.

Background: Discrimination based on ethnicity and the lack of translation services in healthcare have been identified as main barriers to healthcare access. However, the actual experiences of migrant patients in Europe are rarely present in the literature. Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess healthcare discrimination as perceived by migrants themselves and the availability of translation services in the healthcare systems of Europe. Methods: A total of 1407 migrants in 10 European Union countries (consortium members of the Mig-HealthCare project) were surveyed concerning healthcare discrimination, access to healthcare services, and need of translation services using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Migrants in three countries were excluded from the analysis, due to small sample size, and the new sample consisted of N = 1294 migrants. Descriptive statistics and multivariable regression analyses were conducted to investigate the risk factors on perceived healthcare discrimination for migrants and refugees in the EU. Results: Mean age was 32 (±11) years and 816 (63.26%) participants were males. The majority came from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, and Iran. Older migrants reported better treatment experience. Migrants in Italy (0.191; 95% CI [0.029, 0.352]) and Austria (0.167; 95% CI [0.012, 0.323]) scored higher in the Discrimination Scale to Medical Settings (DMS) compared with Spain. Additionally, migrants with better mental health scored lower in the DMS scale (0.994; 95% CI [0.993, 0.996]), while those with no legal permission in Greece tended to perceive more healthcare discrimination compared with migrants with some kind of permission (1.384; 95% CI [1.189, 1.611]), as opposed to Austria (0.763; 95% CI [0.632, 0.922]). Female migrants had higher odds of needing healthcare assistance but not being able to access them compared with males (1.613; 95% CI [1.183, 2.199]). Finally, migrants with chronic problems had the highest odds of needing and not having access to healthcare services compared with migrants who had other health problems (3.292; 95% CI [1.585, 6.837]). Conclusions: Development of culturally sensitive and linguistically diverse healthcare services should be one of the main aims of relevant health policies and strategies at the European level in order to respond to the unmet needs of the migrant population.

Enhancing long-term learner engagement through project-based learning

Abstract This paper reports on the implementation of a language learning project in a Japanese EFL classroom in which the trigger, or motivational energy for involvement, came from interacting with English-speaking international students. The project provided a context to investigate the trajectory of one group’s (three learners) sustained engagement across three tasks that formed the subgoals of the project. Data sources include learner diaries, engagement questionnaires, and transcripts of task conversations, which together were used to describe the level of engagement for each learner at key times throughout the project. The findings indicate that engagement is sustained by certain flow-like conditions during tasks (i.e., control, interest, challenge-skill balance), group cohesion among project members, and a growing focus on the long-term goal of the project. The results highlight project design features that teachers should consider when implementing projects with the purpose of engaging students.

Exploring human factors of the agile software tester

Although extensive research has been conducted on the characteristics of the agile developer, little attention has been given to the features of the software-testing role. This paper explores the human factors of the software testers working in agile projects through a qualitative study focusing on how these factors are perceived. We interviewed 22 agile software practitioners working in three international companies: 14 testers, five developers, and three designers. Additionally, we observed 11 meetings and daily work of 13 participants in one of the companies. Our findings show that the views on the human factors shaping the agile software tester’s role were crystallized into seven traits, which the agile team members saw as central for the software-testing role: the ability to see the whole picture, good communication skills, detail-orientation, structuredness, creativeness, curiosity, and adaptability. The testers spent half their day communicating and learned how to mitigate the fact that they had to bring bad news to other project members. They also facilitated communication between the business side and development. Based on our results, we propose the seven traits as dimensions to consider for organizations recruiting agile software testers, as well as a reference for IT and non-IT professionals considering a software-testing career.

A socio-cognitive approach to leading a learning project team: A proposed model and scale development

Abstract This article proposes a theoretical model and measurement scale for leading a learning project team. While leadership is largely recognized as one of the most important mechanisms for transferring learning from individuals to projects, there lacks a succinct measurement scale for project members to report on project leaders’ behaviors that promote collective learning in projects. Drawing from rich theories on multilevel learning, socio-cognitive conflicts, and leading diversity, we develop a measurement scale that captures project members’ experiences of how their leaders (a) support the identification and communication of project members’ individual mental models, (b) support the resolution of differences in mental models among project team members, and (c) create opportunities and time for team members to interact with others outside the project team. Collectively, these three dimensions form a new scale for leading a learning project team. We cautiously conclude sound psychometric measurement properties from an initial sample of 94 valid responses to a questionnaire distributed to project members through international professional project management networks. This study highlights the multi-level nature of leading a learning project team and provides tentative empirical support for the reflective three-dimensional scale predicting learning in project teams better than transformational leadership.

The Effect of Psychological Contract Combined With Stress and Health on Employees' Management Behavior.

In order to effectively manage employees and improve their work enthusiasm, based on the theoretical basis of project team members’ psychological contract, the status quo of employees’ psychological contract, stress and health status are investigated and analyzed. The differences of employees’ psychological contract are analyzed through the questionnaire. A total of 400 questionnaires are distributed and 365 are returned. The method of one-way ANOVA is used to study the psychological contract status of project members from four aspects: gender, education background, position level, and working years, and obtain the results of difference analysis in four aspects. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) is used to evaluate the work stress of employees. The results show that gender, education background, position level and working years have different effects on employees’ psychological contract. Moreover, if employees continue to bear high-intensity work stress, a series of psychological and physical health problems will appear, such as difficulty in concentration. For enterprises, the poor psychological and physical conditions of employees will make the overall work inefficient and the working atmosphere dull. Therefore, enterprises should control employees’ work stress within a reasonable range, and should not blindly impose high-intensity work stress on employees. This exploration demonstrates the way to realize the psychological contract construction of project team members, and targeted employee management countermeasures are put forward.

Ethical accountability and high-stakes recordkeeping: Discussions from the Sex Work Activist Histories Project

Including both academic and sex work activist community partners, panel members will discuss established and developing practices and key findings from the Sex Work Activist Histories Projects’ first two years as we collected and archived sex work activist histories. We draw from feminist and Indigenous frameworks of ethical, affective, and relational accountability (among groups, between academics and non-academics involved in the project, and between people and their records/histories) to productively consider how project relationships might be cultivated that are mutually accountable to the varied and complex analytical and affective positionalities of project members as they work together.

Talk the Poem: Re-positioning Poetry Recitation as Transformative Pedagogy

Poetry is often perceived by many as the genre of Literature, which is only accessible to specific kinds of individuals, with special artistic sensibilities. As much as we have moved away from formalistic notions of engaging with poetry, the text or written word itself, continues to be treated as an isolated substance, awaiting profound interpretation from those who are gifted with the skills of response. This article explores the importance of offering encounters with poetry which will enable sustainable transformation and growth for both teachers and students. The Talk the Poem (TTP) National Poetry Project was established to provide secondary students from across the island with the space and opportunity to engage with and recite Caribbean and British poetry, through interactive workshops and a national recitation competition. Through a series of critical self-reflective moments, core members of the TTP project attempted to determine the role and scope of the project in the lives of the secondary school teachers and students. This article reports findings on the positive and insightful outcomes of the TTP experience for teacher and student participants, deciphered through document analysis, team discussions, interviews, and surveys.

RELIABLE AND VALID MEASUREMENT SCALES FOR DETERMINANTS OF THE WILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT KNOWLEDGE

Before any acquired knowledge is used or adds value to the receiving project (members), it must be accepted by its recipients, leading to an increase in their positive attitudes towards, and intended use of, the acquired knowledge. To be willing to accept knowledge, the receiving project’s team members must perceive it to have value and be easy to use. The focus of this exploratory paper is to develop and empirically test relevant sub-dimensions of perceived value and ease-of-use. The sub- dimensions were identified through a literature review, and measurement scales were developed empirically by applying a well-established scale development methodology.

ANALYSIS OF FLEXIBLE METHODOLOGIES OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT FOR IMPLEMENTATION IN TEAM PROJECTS

The materials of the article analyze the main models of the software life cycle, which underlie the flexible methodologies of software development to identify the features of its application during the implementation of team projects. It was found that the use of classical life cycle models, in particular, cascade, spiral, incremental, V-shaped and iterative, is not effective in implementing all modern aspects of software development based on the use of new information technologies. It was conducted the comparative analysis of the most popular flexible methodologies of software development Agile, Scrum, Kanban, RUP, DSDM, RAD on such indicators as life cycle model, number of iterations, purpose of project creation and types of projects for implementation, priorities, possibility of interaction with the customer, adaptation to change. The advantages and disadvantages of flexible software development methodologies made it possible to single out the MSF methodology, which is based on the harmonization of cascading, spiral and iterative models of the software development lifecycle and allows you to choose the Scrum template as the most successful for implementing and demonstrating work in team development projects. MSF uses an approach that involves the gradual creation of a working product with some functionality that reflects the requirements for the final product at this stage. It is proposed to use Microsoft solutions based on Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server for centralized management of team project elements, use of visual architecture modeling tools, code quality management capabilities and obtaining all project team members up-to-date information on project status. This is because the MSF model combines five following main models: team model; process model (sequence of actions required to build a team project); discipline of project management (provides comprehensive planning of all stages of the team project, budget management, resources, costs, scheduling); risk management disciplines and readiness management disciplines (assessment of team project members' knowledge for further distribution of team roles). The article demonstrates an example of creating a training team project based on the use of the Scrum flexible methodology template in Visual Studio based on Team Foundation Server.

Transdisciplinary Research on Indoor Environment and Health as a Social Process

Although issues concerning indoor environments and their interaction with humans span many disciplines, such as aerosol technology, environmental psychology, health, and building physics, they are often studied separately. This study describes a research project with the transdisciplinary aim of bridging such disciplinary boundaries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the twelve project members to explore their understanding of transdisciplinarity regarding the conceptual as well as social aspects of collective learning and leadership and the measures taken to achieve this. The interviews were coded in NVivo (QSR International, Doncaster, Australia), which was used to identify themes concerning notions associated with transdisciplinarity, collective leadership, collective intelligence, and learning. A shared understanding of transdisciplinarity meant that the researchers transcended their disciplinary boundaries by moving into each other’s fields. This collective learning process was facilitated by introductory lectures on each other’s fields, contributing to collective leadership and a safe atmosphere. We argue that a transdisciplinary approach is appropriate in order to address indoor environment issues as well other complex problems, for which additional time and resources should be allocated for individual and collective learning processes.

Why do agricultural co-operatives fail to attract youth and create rural employment? Evidence from a case study of Zanokhanyo in Butterworth, Eastern Cape

In the National Development Plan, cooperatives and agriculture development are identified as possible solutions for addressing rural poverty and unemployment, especially among the youth. However, according to most research/literature, agricultural cooperatives fail for many reasons, including but not limited to lack of capital, incompetent management and organizational deficiencies. This study applied a qualitative analysis to the qualitative data using a case study of Zanokhanyo Food Security Cooperative (ZFSC) in Ndabakazi, Butterworth. Interviews with the project members, ex-members, extension officers and youth were conducted through a semi-structured questionnaire administered in IsiXhosa. According to the results, lack of intensive production resulting in very low incomes is one of the reasons why projects such as ZFSC fail to attract young people and provide employment for rural people. Agricultural extension advisory services play a very limited role because of their generalist approach; they lack depth of knowledge about diverse agricultural subject areas. This study recommends that agricultural extension and the farmers’ support system be improved by employing or outsourcing specialists to cater to the needs of agricultural cooperatives in order to improve the productivity and income of agricultural cooperatives.

METHOD OF FORMING AN EFFECTIVE TEAM OF EDUCATIONAL PROFESSIONAL PROJECTS

Project management methodology is widely used in various aspects of educational activities, including in the field of adult education. In-service training projects implemented by higher education institutions in the field of adult education, mainly at public expense, are limited, on the one hand, in terms of implementation, which leads to the impossibility of increasing project implementation time, then in the amount of funding regulated by relevant provisions and resolutions on the organization of professional training (advanced training) of specialists, and on the other hand, the internal regulations and rules of educational institutions on the organization of training and implementation of educational projects in the field of higher education, aimed at working with students. At the same time, the implementation of such projects is subject to increased requirements for their quality. Under such conditions, the implementation of educational projects of professional development is quite difficult. Teams of educational projects of advanced training are formed mainly of persons selected from among the internal employees of the educational institution, who are able to work with an adult audience. To form such teams, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of adult learning, the peculiarities of educational projects of professional development and the peculiarities of the teams of such projects. Accordingly, the management of such teams is associated with certain personnel risks that may affect the success of the project. In turn, working with teams whose members have a high creative potential requires effective management methods, one of which is the process of forming a single, coherent team of like-minded people who can effectively achieve the project goal. A method of forming teams of educational projects of advanced training, obtained as a result of cross-evaluation of qualities (creativity) of team members of such projects, taking into account their personnel risks and "degrees of trust", is proposed. It is concluded that this method allows the head of the educational project to increase the efficiency of decision-making on team building or planning of executors for the educational project of professional development, by selecting applicants with the highest "degrees of trust".

System dynamic modeling of risk management in construction projects: A systematic literature review

This literature review discusses risk management research with System Dynamic modeling. Literature is reviewed by summarizing the research that has been done and examining research findings, research relationships, and research problems that require further research. The risk management paper with System Dynamic modeling (2000-2020) is reviewed by dividing risk into 3 groups, namely: internal risk, external risk, and project risk. Each group is further divided into technical risks and non-technical risks. The results of the study stated that risk management with System Dynamic modeling has not been widely used as evidenced by research (2000-2020); there are only 25 papers that match the keywords and can be written reviews. Ten internal risk papers include: project members, location risk, document risk & information. External risk papers are only found in 2 papers that discuss: weather risk and social risk, while the project risks are found in 13 papers discussing: cost risk, time risk, work quality risk, and construction risk.

ASTRID, Back to the Future: Bridging Scales in the Development of Nuclear Infrastructures

Very few papers exist in the field of social sciences that follow and study nuclear infrastructure design projects from the inside. Such a perspective would make it possible to understand the mechanisms of their successes or difficulties at their very origin. At a time when high hopes are placed on civil nuclear energy to solve the climate issue, but when simultaneously, nuclear industry actors are facing major difficulties in a great number of flagship projects, this situated understanding of any given project’s trajectory becomes crucially important. This paper proposes an analysis, from the inside, of a project that, about ten years ago, raised great expectations from both the French and global nuclear industry, but which, in 2019, was finally halted. This project is that of a so-called fourth generation sodium reactor: the Advanced Sodium Technological Reactor for Industrial Demonstration (ASTRID). ASTRID was a new sodium-cooled fast reactor. Begun in 2010, the project’s development was suspended at the end of 2019 by the French authorities. Through an inductive study of the project in the making, conducted from 2015 to 2019, the research team was able to follow the project trajectory and carry out nearly 30 interviews with actors directly involved in the project itself. By studying ASTRID as an infrastructure development project and building on the concepts of scale and infrastructure from the literature, the ASTRID project’s halt can be understood. The project’s suspension was the result of the increasing complexity and ambiguity faced by project members and stakeholders in aligning the local and global scales as the new infrastructure was developed, and more precisely, the ASTRID project infrastructure and the global nuclear infrastructure. Our analyses show that ASTRID’s trajectory gradually drifted as a result of three misalignments between the project’s infrastructure and the global nuclear infrastructure: a temporal, social, and physical misalignment. As a result, the project identity can be described as having been vague and ambiguous. This paper sets out how such a lack of clarity impacted design practices, the project organization as a whole, and the ASTRID trajectory. In consequence, it is crucially important that lessons are learned from the project’s cessation to understand both the difficulties related to the nuclear renaissance and in terms of the field of project management in general.

Teamwork-performance prediction by using soft skills and technological savvy skills

In today’s connected world, forming teams of people to execute projects is seen as a challenge in government agencies and public and private organisations alike. For large enterprises, a small group of thoughtful and committed people performing different roles could essentially change the world. At the same time, however, it is hard to select an effective team with appropriate skills who can work collaboratively. In this project, as a starting point, the study's objectives required formulating skillset models and designing the theoretical framework to investigate project members’ capabilities. This study used three undergraduate courses’ data as input to find the skill features required in team project assignments. Additionally, possessing soft skills and Technological Savvy skills can help minimize member underperformance. Our case study of Predicting Teamwork Performance (PTPA) system also discovered some attributes that directly influence team projects and evaluating the results pointed out team members' strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, this theoretical framework can help team leaders recognize the skillsets necessary for project management.

Project planning, top management support and communication: A trident in search of an explanation

Top management support, innovative project planning, and communication between stakeholders are three ambiguous success factors: they are essential, but not necessarily effective. Our aim is to provide an in-depth exploration of the combined influence of planning, top management support, and communication on project success. The first research phase consisted of interviews with the project lead and the project director, and a questionnaire distributed to project members of a large corporate research centre. The second phase consisted of a survey targeting senior management in innovative enterprises. A large number of different analyses including SEM were used to reveal mutual influences. Planning shows a positive influence on innovative project performance when the mediation of communication is taken into account. TMS wields a non-constant effect on the three success factors: it is a non-linear relationship that must reach a high level to be effective.