The impact of SNSs is tremendous on every aspect of life and people irrespective of region, gender and age are using it to get connected with their families and friends around the globe. This study aims to highlight t...The impact of SNSs is tremendous on every aspect of life and people irrespective of region, gender and age are using it to get connected with their families and friends around the globe. This study aims to highlight the highly used SNSs across the Arab Gulf States comprising Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The database of Stat Counter (http://gs.statcounter.com) was selected for tracing the use and growth of SNSs in this region. The findings show that the three most used SNSs in the Arab Gulf region are: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It is observed that Facebook is the leading social networking site used in the region until now, but Twitter is fast gaining market. Twitter is becoming popular among users and giving a tough competition to Facebook in almost all countries of the region except Iraq. In 2013, it has moved to 1st position in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, replacing Facebook. However, in some countries like the UAE and Qatar, Facebook is still going strong. The paper concludes that the intensive use of social media among citizens’ of the Arab Gulf countries indicates that the internet has the potential to be a multivocal platform through which every segment of the society can have their voices heard. With limited availability of published literature in the field pertaining to the usage of social media by the people of the Arab Gulf countries, the paper aims to understand the practice, implication and importance of social media networks in this Muslim dominated region.展开更多
Survival of a company in today's competitive business environment depends mainly on its supply chain.An adequate supply chain gives a competitive edge to a com-pany.Sourcing,which is the initial stage of a supply ...Survival of a company in today's competitive business environment depends mainly on its supply chain.An adequate supply chain gives a competitive edge to a com-pany.Sourcing,which is the initial stage of a supply chain,can be made efficient by making an appropriate selection of vendors.Appropriate vendor selection results not only in reduced purchasing costs,decreased production lead time,increased customer satisfaction but also in improved corporate competitiveness.In general,the vendor selection problem is a multi-objective decision-making problem that involves some quantitative and qualitative factors.So,we have considered a multi-objective ven-dor selection problem(MOV SP)with three multiple objective goals:minimization of net ordering price,minimization of rejected units and minimization of late delivered units.In most of the cases,information about the price of a unit,percentage of rejected units,percentage of late delivered units,vendor rating value and vendor quota flexibil-ity may not be known precisely due to some reasons.In this paper,imprecision in input information is handled by the concept of a simulation technique,where the parameter follows the uniform distribution.Deterministic,stochastic,a-cut and ranking function approaches are used to get the crisp value of the simulated data sets.The four differ-ent algorithms,namely-fuzzy programming,goal programming,lexicographic goal programming and D1-distance algorithm,have been used for solving the MOVSP.In last,three different types of simulated data sets have been used to illustrate the work.展开更多
文摘The impact of SNSs is tremendous on every aspect of life and people irrespective of region, gender and age are using it to get connected with their families and friends around the globe. This study aims to highlight the highly used SNSs across the Arab Gulf States comprising Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The database of Stat Counter (http://gs.statcounter.com) was selected for tracing the use and growth of SNSs in this region. The findings show that the three most used SNSs in the Arab Gulf region are: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It is observed that Facebook is the leading social networking site used in the region until now, but Twitter is fast gaining market. Twitter is becoming popular among users and giving a tough competition to Facebook in almost all countries of the region except Iraq. In 2013, it has moved to 1st position in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, replacing Facebook. However, in some countries like the UAE and Qatar, Facebook is still going strong. The paper concludes that the intensive use of social media among citizens’ of the Arab Gulf countries indicates that the internet has the potential to be a multivocal platform through which every segment of the society can have their voices heard. With limited availability of published literature in the field pertaining to the usage of social media by the people of the Arab Gulf countries, the paper aims to understand the practice, implication and importance of social media networks in this Muslim dominated region.
文摘Survival of a company in today's competitive business environment depends mainly on its supply chain.An adequate supply chain gives a competitive edge to a com-pany.Sourcing,which is the initial stage of a supply chain,can be made efficient by making an appropriate selection of vendors.Appropriate vendor selection results not only in reduced purchasing costs,decreased production lead time,increased customer satisfaction but also in improved corporate competitiveness.In general,the vendor selection problem is a multi-objective decision-making problem that involves some quantitative and qualitative factors.So,we have considered a multi-objective ven-dor selection problem(MOV SP)with three multiple objective goals:minimization of net ordering price,minimization of rejected units and minimization of late delivered units.In most of the cases,information about the price of a unit,percentage of rejected units,percentage of late delivered units,vendor rating value and vendor quota flexibil-ity may not be known precisely due to some reasons.In this paper,imprecision in input information is handled by the concept of a simulation technique,where the parameter follows the uniform distribution.Deterministic,stochastic,a-cut and ranking function approaches are used to get the crisp value of the simulated data sets.The four differ-ent algorithms,namely-fuzzy programming,goal programming,lexicographic goal programming and D1-distance algorithm,have been used for solving the MOVSP.In last,three different types of simulated data sets have been used to illustrate the work.
