Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Readiness Assessment of Project Managers in Tanzania

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is transforming the way we live, learn, work, and relate to one another. However, there is still an awareness inadequacy of the 4IR among project managers and the society in Tanzania, thus low readiness to conceptualize, implement and manage 4IR-related projects in the country. This study aimed to assess the 4IR readiness of project managers in Tanzania. The assessment is made in the frame of 4 readiness dimensions: strategy and governance structure, technology awareness, human capital digital skills development, and social-economic impact. The research used a quantitative method with the diffusion of innovations theory perspective, and data were collected mainly through an online survey questionnaire. The survey aimed at answering the research question concerning the project managers’ readiness for the 4IR. The 50 valid samples were completed by project managers from various industries such as agriculture, finance, consulting, construction, education and training, government, healthcare, Information Technology, and manufacturing. Data were analysed using SPSS. The results revealed that despite the generally low awareness of 4IR, several project managers in Tanzania have some varying awareness of 4IR technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, blockchain, robotics, cryptocurrency, chatbots, drones, and other digital transformation platforms. The results also indicated that project managers in Tanzania had little extent in readiness to initiate, develop and implement 4IR products and services due to inadequate 4IR-related awareness, strategy and governance structure, human capital digital skills development, and social economic impact. Consequently, some recommendations are made in the frame of the four assessed readiness dimensions for improvement. The value of this research is mainly to provide the state of 4IR readiness of project managers and associated recommendations to policymakers, practitioners, academia, donors, business industry and youth in digital innovation. The study also contributes to the body of knowledge on 4IR, project management and digital transformation.

Fourth Industrial Revolution:Technological Drivers,Impacts and Coping Methods

The world is marching into a new development period when the digital technology,physical technology,and biological technology have achieved an unprecedented development respectively in their own fields,and at the same time their applications are converging greatly.These are the three major technological drivers for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.This paper discusses the specific technology niches of each kind technological driver behind the Fourth Industrial Revolution,and then evaluates impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on global industrial,economic,and social development.At last this paper proposes possible measures and policies for both firms and governments to cope with the changes brought by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Education and the Fourth Industrial Revolution:Lessons from COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted educators to rethink educational practices,especially with regard to technology.The COVID-19 pandemic is a huge challenge to education systems around the world.This Viewpoint offers guidance to teachers,institutional heads,and officials on addressing the crisis.This study investigated technology use in teaching during the COVID-19 lockdown inMalaysia,focusing on technology-based teaching methods,modifications necessitated by this new teaching style,and challenges teachers faced when using technology.Using purposive sampling,a qualitative study was undertaken with a sample of 10 English language teachers from Arabic schools in Malaysia.The results indicated that a digital leap occurred in education during the COVID-19 lockdown because teachers had to quickly adapt to a more technology-based teaching style.The challenges teachers faced included managing virtual classes,ensuring reliable Internet connections,overcoming a lack of preparedness and low digital competence,and dealing with students’mental health.Such changes in teaching methods have created new roles for teachers while also increasing their acceptance of e-learning and remote learning.The contribution of this research is to provide a holistic picture of remote education activities during the pandemic period to establish a linkage between the online teaching-learning process during the COVID-19 outbreak as to ensure the resumption of teaching-learning education as a normal course of procedure in the education system.Despite the human suffering brought by the pandemic,the new norms of education during COVID-19 generally have some pockets of excellence to drive the education into the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Usefulness of the Artificial Intelligence Data in Analyzing the Skin in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

In the World economy forum Global Challenge Insight Report titled “The Future of Jobs-Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR) in 2016”, a new industrial revolution was predicted to occur in the near future. This is followed by the opinion that it would be mandatory to prepare for the FIR because it will definitely change people’s way of working, consuming and thinking. There is a controversy as to the potential of AI in health care. To date, however, remarkable achievements have been made in the field of medicine, particularly entailing dermatology. Therefore, this study explored the usefulness of the AI data in analyzing the skin in the era of the FIR. The current study finally included a total of 300 subjects, for whom a self-reporting questionnaire survey was performed between June 09 and July 18, 2020. The current study proposed the following hypothesis: The AI data might be useful in analyzing the skin in the era of the FIR. This hypothesis was accepted. In conclusion, the current study suggests that the AI data might be useful in analyzing the skin in the era of the FIR. But this deserves further study.

Project Planning and Scheduling in the Face of the Fourth Industrial Revolution(4IR)

This paper addresses the integrated processes of planning and scheduling of projects using technologies advanced tools as means for managing change in the era of the 4IR.The paper explores the traditional project management planning and scheduling tools in conjunction with what technology has to offer,to bridge the gap between the traditional project management planning and scheduling tools and what the modern-day business market demands.An analysis of literature covering a wide range of theoretic and empirical studies was performed.The theories underlying various planning and scheduling methods were analysed in relation to the design of projects.A descriptive quantitative secondary data was used as a tool to assess the impact of technology on project planning for scheduling.The analysis of the study’s data was conducted using the principles of cross-tabulation.Inferences were drawn on the significant impact of the use of advanced technological tools on project planning for scheduling in current business time.Organisations can make use of the findings of this study to correctly apply the available advanced technological tools for more efficient schedule management planning to enhance the successful delivery of their projects.Further,this research can be used to provide learning opportunities for new and inexperienced planners and schedulers,and as a basis for further research in this field of knowledge.

Constructionist Learning in School Mathematics:Implications for Education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Highlights Amid rapid technological development in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,this article engages with an important question,especially in the context of science,technology,engineering,and mathematics(STEM)education:Can technology transform STEM teaching and learning?

Big Data and Data Science:Opportunities and Challenges of iSchools

Due to the recent explosion of big data, our society has been rapidly going through digital transformation and entering a new world with numerous eye-opening developments. These new trends impact the society and future jobs, and thus student careers. At the heart of this digital transformation is data science, the discipline that makes sense of big data. With many rapidly emerging digital challenges ahead of us, this article discusses perspectives on iSchools＇ opportunities and suggestions in data science education. We argue that iSchools should empower their students with ＂information computing＂ disciplines, which we define as the ability to solve problems and create values, information, and knowledge using tools in application domains. As specific approaches to enforcing information computing disciplines in data science education, we suggest the three foci of user-based, tool-based, and application- based. These three loci will serve to differentiate the data science education of iSchools from that of computer science or business schools. We present a layered Data Science Education Framework （DSEF） with building blocks that include the three pillars of data science （people, technology, and data）, computational thinking, data-driven paradigms, and data science lifecycles. Data science courses built on the top of this framework should thus be executed with user-based, tool-based, and application-based approaches. This framework will help our students think about data science problems from the big picture perspective and foster appropriate problem-solving skills in conjunction with broad perspectives of data science lifecycles. We hope the DSEF discussed in this article will help fellow iSchools in their design of new data science curricula.

When Tomorrow Comes:The Present and the Future of Advertising

The aim is to analyse the present and the possible future of the concept of advertising.The present concept is more related to the fact that marketers moved from a product focus to a sales focus,and now to eventually a relationship focus.The future concept is related to the growing customization of strategies based on the nature of the product category and the life-cycle stage of the product and the customers in the context of the development of the convergence culture,the experience economy and the new technologies connected to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Global Value Chains in the Era of 4IR: New Paradigm of Business Models for SMEs

This paper presents a brief literature review of previous studies methodologies,models,and contexts in studying firms’upgrading in Global Value Chains(GVCs).The key context of this paper is set within Fourth Industrial Revolution(4IR).Through the literature review,this paper offers to identify the opportunities of theoretical novelty and ways to elaborate on understanding firm dynamics in Global Value Chains in the context of 4IR.The approach based on Business Model(BM)innovations and new forms of organizing for business(such as platforms)is used to synthesize from previous research findings and build on to newer explanations of firms’entry,learning,and upgrading within GVCs.

International Telecommunication Union Standardization for Trust Provisioning in Information, Communication and Technology Infrastructure toward Achieving United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals

The advancement of the fourth industrial revolution has shaped the integration and interaction of different information, communication and technologies (ICTs) in the merging cyber, physical, and social infrastructures. The impact of ICT has accelerated the progress of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and influenced the evolution of smart, sustainable, stable society development. Making the trustworthy information and communication technologies infrastructure widely available will promote the community innovation needed to stimulate domestic economics, provide decent work, and reduce inequalities. This article attempts to outline a big picture about the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)’s trust provisioning framework, including its motivation, current status, and application for achieving the UN SDGs by 2030. This article first describes the purpose of the UN SDGs and the evolution of the industrial revolution, then demonstrates the challenges of global risks affecting the fourth industrial revolution and the need for trustworthy ICT infrastructures. Subsequently, the article evaluates the ITU trust provisioning framework and assesses its applications in the future knowledge society, trust provisioning ecosystem, and cyber, physical, and social infrastructure toward achieving UN SDGs. Use cases are also presented in this article to show the effectiveness of the ITU trust provisioning framework on achieving UN SDGs.

Briefs

China＇s robotics industry saw a steady development in 2017 with about 1,686 robotics com- panies established, according to a report released at the Fifth China Robot Summit. By the end of 2017. the number of robotics companies in China exceeded 6,500. mainly located in China＇s Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, said the report.

Impact of Industry 4.0 in service oriented firm

The first part of this study is devoted to concepts, approaches and some examples of the fourth industrial revolution. The basis of this revolution also well known as Industry 4.0 builds so called cyber-physical systems. They contain the integrated smart software systems including the internet address to enable the communication with envi- ronment as for product itself as for means of production and employees. All these enable the next level of efficiency and flexibility for both organizing and controlling of the value-creation chain over the whole lifecycle of products. In the first three chapters several Internet references and documents published by German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy were used. Because of multiple cross references in documents, this report is written without detailed references in each paragraph of mentioned chapters. The last three chapters of the research presented undertake the short review of interdependencies between the Industry 4.0 and the well-known approach of computer-supported-cooperative-work established in the late 1980s. Long list of publications can be found in Wikipedia, and in many proceedings of ACM conferences on computer supported cooperative work （CSCW）.