A comparative analysis of information literacy curriculum standards in the educational programs of high schools in China and in the United States

Our study aims to take a closer look at China's current information literacy(IL) program standards at secondary schools and to analyze their level of success and/or failures in a comparative way with those of the United States in terms of fulfilling their each other's mission-oriented mandates. Our research findings show that China's current IL standards of high schools contain a disproportionate emphasis on information technology(IT). Moreover, the stipulations of these IL standards are narrowly construed and without being solidly grounded on a broad and comprehensive educational perspective. We also suggest that there are two underlying causes for this set of unsound IL standards in China.Firstly, there is a lack of collaboration between two major competing forces engaged in the curricular development and research of IL in China: Those professionals in educational IT discipline vis-à-vis those in Library and Information Science. Secondly, library professionals have a very limited influence on major socio-cultural policies, even at their own institutions. As a result, this paper recommends the following three possible measures,which may help remedy this situation strategically: 1) Establishing a set of new IL curriculum standards based on an IL-centered educational perspective; 2) establishing a teacher-librarian's training program to promote school librarians' role in IL education; and 3) strengthening the research and development of an online IL education program and an accompanied evaluation mechanism.

Fuzzy VIKOR Approach to Evaluate the Information Security Policies and Analyze the Content of Press Agencies in Gulf Countries

A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organization, such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television broadcasters. A news agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire, or news service. The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate the security policies and analyze the content of five press agencies in gulf countries which are (Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), Emirates News Agency (WAM), Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Bahrain News Agency (BNA), and Oman News Agency (OMA)) by using a fuzzy VIKOR approach where linguistic variables are applied to solve the uncertainties and subjectivities in expert decision making. Fuzzy VIKOR approach is one of the best Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques working in fuzzy environment. This study benefits security and content analysis experts know which press agency has the mandate and the competence to educate the public on news agencies. Besides, this paper contributes to Gulf agencies in helping them in their resolve to ensure the quality of content information and information security policies over the internet.

An optimal coupling incentive mechanism concerning insider’s compliance behavior towards marine information security policy

It is widely agreed that the insider’s noncompliance to the marine information security policies has brought about a major security problem in the organizational context.Previous research has stressed the potential of remunerative control,i.e.,reward,to better understand this problem.Few studies have been devoted to the exploration of the coupling incentive mechanism of tangible and intangible rewards that would induce insider’s compliance behavior towards the marine information security policy.In the present study,we address this research gap by proposing a theoretical model that explains the optimal coupling incentive mechanism of these two different types of remunerative control.Our findings have delivered insightful implications for practice and research on how to improve the marine information security policy compliance in a more subtle way.

Simulation of the role of emphasis on scheduling in the optimal incentive scheme for marine engineering employee’s routine job and information security compliance

In the organizational context of marine engineering,employee individual often prefers to concentrate herself to the day-to-day routine job,but to shirk the responsibilities of the Information Security Policies(ISPs)compliance,after she has been delegated by the employer to perform the two different tasks in the same time period.This would lead to negative influences on the security of marine information systems and the employee’s routine job performance.In view of the task structures of employee’s routine job and marine ISPs compliance,the variables of emphasis on scheduling are incorporated into a multi-task principal-agent model to explore the optimal incentive scheme to motivate and control the employees to select appropriate effort levels for conducting the two highly structured tasks.The role of emphasis on scheduling on the incentive intensities for the two tasks have been clarified through modeling and simulation,and the corresponding incentive tactics are suggested.The new two-task incentive scheme is expected to provide useful insight for understanding and controlling marine engineering employee’s routine job and ISPs compliance behavior.

Understanding the deterrence effect of punishment for marine information security policies non-compliance

In the organizational setting of marine engineering,a significant number of information security incidents have been arised from the employees’failure to comply with the information security policies(ISPs).This may be treated as a principal-agent problem with moral hazard between the employer and the employee for the practical compliance effort of an employee is not observable without high cost-.On the other hand,according to the deterrence theory,the employer and the employee are inherently self-interested beings.It is worth examining to what extent the employee is self-interested in the marine ISPs compliance context.Moreover,it is important to clarify the proper degree of severity of punishment in terms of the deterrent effect.In this study,a marine ISPs compliance game model has been proposed to evaluate the deterrence effect of punishment on the non-compliance behavior of employee individuals.It is found that in a non-punishment contract,the employee will decline to comply with the marine ISPs;but in a punishment contract,appropriate punishment will lead her to select the marine ISPs compliance effort level expected by the employer,and cause no potential backfire effect.