Books/Books chapters

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Addressing Academic Stress: Implications for Female Students in Saudi Arabia
(IGI GLOBLE Scientific, 2024) Rajapaksha, W
Saudi Arabia's higher education policies have propelled a surge in female enrollment, mitigating female unemployment and bolstering the Saudization initiative. This surge in national education has curbed reliance on foreign institutions and facilitated access to higher education for local high school graduates. However, despite these advancements, student dropout rates and academic underperformance persist. This study investigates the influence of stressors on academic performance among female students in Saudi Arabia. Findings indicate that academic stress and stressors related to personality significantly affect academic performance, while stressors linked to career paths do not exhibit a similar impact.
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AI and Inclusive Democracy: Transforming Governance for Equitable Societies
(CRC Press, 2026) Harasgama, K. S.; Arora, V; Singh, M; Qureshi, T
The interaction of artificial intelligence (AI) and democracy today is a confluence of opportunities for advancement around foundational values. The development of AI technologies, by leaps and bounds, holds the promise to enhance democratic processes by increasing efficiency in decision-making, streamlining governance, and stimulating civic engagement. Concerns are raised in issues of data privacy, algorithmic bias, and concentration of power in technology corporations, situations that call for very robust regulatory mechanisms if democratic values are to be upheld. The fact that AI can, therefore, lead to increased socioeconomic inequalities, manipulate public opinion, and threaten democratic institutions directly requires a proactive stance toward grappling with ethical, legal, and social implications. Governance of the various issues arising from the intersection of AI and democracy is a complex task that requires the cooperation of policymakers, technologists, ethicists, and representatives of civil society. They should strive to find the right balance between innovation and responsibility. Effective governance models need to ensure that AI systems retain and operate on the principles of fairness, transparency, and human rights. This paper discusses the challenges of AI and democracy considering electoral politics, cyber threats, psychographic profiling, and its regulation.
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AI Applications for Sustainable Development Goals
(IGI Global, 2024-01-01) Herath, S.K; Sodige, D.S; Kalupahanage, D.P
The emergence of artificial intelligence and the pursuit of sustainable development are two major forces shaping our world, The need to reorient the existing socioeconomic systems towards sustainability has never been more prescient. The United Nation identified ‘Sustainable Development Goals’, more conveniently known as SDGs, in 2015 as a guideline to fashion a new world that is quite equitable, prosperous and environmentally sustainable by the year 2030. AI can be applied to energy systems in enhancing the use of energy resources, in risk assessment and mitigation of natural occurrences, and in creating new clean technologies. Artificial intelligence is influencing many sectors of society and reshaping numerous industries. This chapter will explore specific examples of how AI is being used to address critical challenges related to the SDGs, discuss the potential benefits and limitations, and examine ethical considerations for responsible AI development and deployment in the context of sustainable development.
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Analytical hierarchical process in decision making
(IGI Global, 2023) Jayawardena, S; Gopura R.A.R.C
In the introduction, what decision making is and the significance of the decision making was introduced. Few popular decision-making techniques were listed out and three rational techniques were discussed in a nutshell. Then Professor Saaty's seminal work, Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) was described, starting with the evolution of AHP and moving towards its practice through a four-step process. The AHP generates weights on a relative ratio scale with an input of measurements on a standard scale and due to the normalization process linearity of the results was destroyed. Finally, the four-step analytical hierarchical process was illustrated through an example of the selection of a job. During the progression, outcomes of the key theoretical aspects have been touched on without providing proof.
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Analytical network process in decision making
(IGI Global, 2023) Jayawardena, T.S.S; Jayawardena, C.S
Analytic Network Process (ANP) is a generalizedform of the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP). AHP is an objective theory of deriving the decision makings on absolute scale values starting from subjective relative measurements perhaps on tangible or intangible or a mix of both rated by the experts. A consistency measure of the relative ratings is verified with a consistency ratio to assure the ratings of the experts are consistent. The clustering of criteria/sub-criteria with inner and outer dependencies as well as feedback is taken into account in ANP. In ANP rather than a hierarchical process, a network structure is assumed and all nodes in the network are treated equally with interaction between nodes and grouping into clusters. A supermatrix is constructed, then normalized it to get weighted super matrix and raised it to a sufficient power to converge this into a unique eigen vector representing the final weights in limit super-matrix. Step by step iterations of ANP was demonstrated with a selection of car example.
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Designing a Compensation Strategy
(IGI Global, 2025-01-01) Rajapakshe, W
This chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of compensation design as a strategic lever for organizational success. It examines strategic compensation planning, highlighting the alignment of pay systems with business objectives to motivate desired behaviors, enhance productivity, and support long- term goals. Factors affecting employee compensation—including internal equity, external competitiveness, performance, skills, experience, and market benchmarks—are explored to inform effective pay decisions. The chapter distinguishes job evaluation from performance appraisal, emphasizing its role in establishing fair, transparent pay structures. Key features and methods of job evaluation—ranking, classification, point- factor, and factor comparison—are discussed, offering practical guidance for designing compensation systems that attract and retain talent, reinforce performance, and sustain competitive advantage in evolving business environments.
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Determinants of dividend policy in the financial sector in sri lanka: A GMM approach
(Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., 2024-05-13) Tharanga, T.M.N; Banda, Y.K.W; Dewasiri, N.J; Peiris, T.U.I
Introduction: Why companies pay dividends and the determinants of dividend policy are considered an unresolved dividend puzzle. To reach a consensus over the puzzle, researchers must investigate the factors affecting dividend policy by incorporating all the determinants into a single research effort. Purpose: We examine the dividend policy determinants of Sri Lankan firms, explicitly focusing on the banking, finance, and insurance (BFI) sectors. Methodology: This study uses the quantitative approach applying the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) system to examine the dividend policy determinants by obtaining secondary data from 51 listed BFI organisations in Sri Lanka. Findings: The analysis disclosed that the variables of changes in revenues, firm size, liquidity, corporate tax, business risk, and profitability have a positive relationship with dividend yield, whereas investment opportunities, leverage, change in revenues, corporate tax, and firm size impact positively on the propensity to pay dividends in BFI organisations in Sri Lanka. Our findings opine that managers in the BFI industries should prioritise changing their dividend policies by paying close attention to factors, such as dividend yield, changes in revenue, firm size, liquidity, corporate tax ratio, business risk, and profitability because the dividend policy is critical to retaining current investors and luring new ones.
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Doing Social Research and Publishing Results: A Guide to Non-native English Speakers
(Springer Nature, 2023) Saliya, C.A
This book provides a guide to such budding social researchers, who are non-native English speakers drawing examples from literature to show how to conduct a research, present research results, integrate with existing literature to draw conclusions through real-world examples. Existing English books teaching research methods and philosophy of academic research are written in ‘academic English’ and, it is hard for non-native English-speaking budding researchers to study and understand those books. Also, this book uses examples to show how to communicate with journal editors and peer reviewers to get published the research results as journal articles, book chapters or conference papers. This book connects different quantitative techniques, qualitative methodologies (case studies, phenomenology and ethnography and Grounded theory) as well as Mixed methods methodology through a single example. This book attempts to describe a holistic approach introducing a 10Ps model that incorporates the essential elements of the research process. The process focuses on combining philosophical framework and arguments from research results. This book focuses not only on conducting a research project, but also on the approach and procedures to be followed to achieve higher marks for course work assignments and publishing research articles in international journals. This book shows how to create many papers from one research/data set to increase number of publications and citations. This book has fewer words and more illustrations, tables, figures, pictures and YouTube tutorial links. This book outlines how to present test results in APA style for all the statistical test used in this book, using examples.
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Eco-friendly porous carbon materials for wastewater treatment
(Springer, Singapore, 2019-08-07) Thambiliyagodage, C. J; Cooray, V. Y; Perera, I. N; Wijesekera, R. D
Different porous carbon materials were applied to remove organic compounds and heavy metals from wastewater. Hierarchically, porous nitrogen rich monolithic carbon (HPC) was synthesized through the sol-gel synthesis method and carbonization process. Rice husk (RH), an agricultural waste material followed by carbonization at two different temperatures (RH400 and RH600) was used as the naturally generated porous carbon composite. Activated carbon (AC) was used as the control. According to the FT-IR spectra, different functional groups are present in all adsorbents. Scanning electron microscopic (SEM) images show an irregular shaped, random disordered macropore structure in RH and a robust sponge-like disordered macropore structure with ligaments in HPC. Transmission electron microscopic (TEM) images of these materials show a disordered mesopore network. Adsorption capacities of these porous carbon materials were determined for organic dyes and metal ions. Methylene blue and Methyl orange were used as the model organic compounds and Pb2+, Cu2+, Ni2+, and Cd2+ ions were selected as the metal ions. The experimental data demonstrate that the adsorption capacity of AC for Methyl orange (5.88 mg/g) is much higher than that of the alternatives (RH400–1.97 mg/g, RH600–0.69 mg/g, and HPC – 1.14 mg/g). Adsorption capacity of all the adsorbents for Methylene blue is quite similar. Adsorption capacity of RH400 for Pb2+ is much higher than that of RH600, AC and HPC. RH400 has a greater adsorption for Cu2+ and Ni2+ than the other adsorbents. All adsorbents show a low adsorption capacity for Cd2+. RH400 is a promising adsorbent for wastewater purification.
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An Empirical Study on Paddy Harvest and Rice Demand Prediction for an Optimal Distribution Plan
(wiley, 2022-03-04) Rankothge, W. H
This book provides the state-of-the-art applications of Machine Learning in IoT environment. The most common use cases for machine learning and IoT data are predictive maintenance, followed by analyzing CCTV surveillance, smart home applications, smart-healthcare, in-store ‘contextualized marketing’ and intelligent transportation systems. Readers will gain an insight into the integration of Machine Learning with IoT in various application domains.
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Employee performance management for improved workplace motivation
(IGI Global, 2024-08-24) Rajapakshe, W
In the dynamic landscape of organizational management, the challenge of effectively evaluating and enhancing employee performance stands as a pivotal obstacle to maximizing workplace productivity and motivation. Traditional performance appraisal methods often fall short in providing meaningful insights into employees' contributions and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. This gap between outdated evaluation techniques and the evolving demands of the modern workforce presents a pressing dilemma for Human Resource Management professionals and organizational leaders worldwide. Employee Performance Management for Improved Workplace Motivation emerges as a definitive solution to this critical problem, offering a comprehensive guide to revolutionizing performance management systems. This book meticulously explores the intricacies of performance evaluation, from planning and monitoring to reviewing and rewarding. By integrating theoretical frameworks, practical case studies, and strategic insights, the book equips HR professionals, managers, and scholars with the tools and knowledge needed to implement effective performance management practices that drive employee motivation and organizational success. The book identifies common challenges in performance evaluation and addresses global cultural differences and ethical considerations inherent in the process. By providing actionable strategies and best practices, this book serves as a beacon of guidance for those seeking to optimize performance management systems and cultivate a culture of high performance and engagement within their organizations. Whether utilized in academic research, staff training programs, or executive consultations, this book offers a transformative approach to redefining performance evaluation and enhancing workplace motivation.
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Exploring Public Perceptions of COVID-19 Vaccine Adverse Effects Through Social Media Analysis
(IGI Global, 2023) Nimanthika, S; Kuhaneswaran, B; Wijeratne, A.K; Kumara, S
This study examines social media content to identify adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccination as perceived by the public. Existing studies did not categorize tweets on vaccine adverse effects as personal experience, informative, or advice-seeking. Authors manually classified tweets into categories and used the data to train four machine learning models. LSTM algorithm yielded the highest accuracy of 90.13%. The LSTM model with GloVe embedding was determined to be most suitable. This research aims to fill a research gap and increase public awareness of COVID-19 vaccine side effects. The study highlights the importance of analyzing social media content to better understand public perception of vaccines.
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HemoSmart: A Non-Invasive Device and Mobile App for Anemia Detection
(John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2021-04-06) Jayakody, A; Edirisinghe, E. A. G. A; Lokuliyana, S
The Hemoglobin concentration in human blood is an important substance to health condition determination. With the results which are obtained from Hemoglobin test, a condition which is called as Anemia (a low level of Hemoglobin) can be revealed. Traditionally the Hemoglobin test is done using blood samples which are taken using needles. The non-invasive Hemoglobin level detection system, discussed in this paper, describes a better idea about the hemoglobin concentration in the human blood. The images of the fingertip of the different hemoglobin level patients which is taken using a camera is used to develop the neural network-based algorithm. The pre-mentioned algorithm is used in the developed non-invasive device to display the Hemoglobin level. Before doing the above procedure, an account is created in the mobile app and a questionnaire is given to answer by the patient. Finally, both the results which are obtained from the mobile app and the device are run through a machine learning algorithm to get the final output. According to the final result patient would be able to detect anemia at an early stage.
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Integrated-flexible research methodology: An alternative approach
(IGI Global, 2023-03-10) Saliya, C.A
The research process is not a smooth process that moves from one stage to another, or a sequential process growingfrom the roots of ontology and epistemology towards the data collection and analytical techniques and interpretations. The existentialist position of the interpretive / reformist paradigm is that reality is subjective and multiple, that it does not exist independently in the human mind. Their epistemological stance is that the available knowledge depends on the researcher's thoughts and desires. That is, "knowledge" is created by the seeker and deploying a specific methodology which is not necessarily a sequential set of "stages", a "step-by-step" course or a "layer-by-layer" peeling activity like peeling-off an onion.
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Intelligent Vision Impaired Indoor Navigation Using Visible Light Communication
(Springer, Cham, 2020) Jayakody, A; Murray, I; Hermann, J; Lokuliyana, S; Dunuwila, V
Recent statistics of the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate that over 253 million of the world’s population to be visually impaired. Most of these individuals use the white cane as an assistive tool or are often accompanied by caretakers or voluntary helpers as indoor navigation is particularly challenging for them. This chapter describes a substitute vision system designed to assist vision impaired individuals through the use of visible light communication and geomagnetism. Furthermore, the use of database optimization increases the speed and efficiency of data retrieval thus reducing system response time. Though navigation systems that support the visual impaired are readily available, there have been no systems that use both visible light communication and geomagnetism capable of providing accurate and secure indoor navigation assistance, which in turn would increase the overall satisfaction of the system users.
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Introduction to Compensation Management
(IGI Global, 2025-01-01) Rajapakshe, W
This chapter examines compensation management, emphasizing its vital role in modern organizations. It defines compensation management, distinguishing between direct (salaries, bonuses) and indirect (benefits, non- monetary rewards) forms. The chapter highlights its importance in attracting, retaining, and motivating talent, linking these outcomes to performance and sustainability. It explores how compensation reflects and reinforces culture and values, shaping behavior and commitment. The evolution from an operational to a strategic HR function is outlined, showing alignment with goals such as innovation and efficiency. The role of compensation in managing change, supporting globalization, and embracing diversity is discussed, illustrating adaptability to complex environments. Key principles of effective compensation management and a six- step process—from job analysis to wage and salary implementation—are presented, underscoring its contribution to a motivated, engaged, high- performing workforce aligned with strategy.
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Investigation of an Extended Typology for Marketing Destinations with YouTube
(IGI Global, 2020) Sambhanthan, A; Thelijjagoda, S; Good, A; Scupola, A
This article describes how YouTube has been evolving as an e-tool for marketing activities over the past decade. Utilizing YouTube for enhancing marketing endeavours is a strategy practiced by marketing professionals across a growing number of industries. The research documented in this article investigates virtual community-based destination marketing using an extended conceptualisation of a virtual community typology. A non-participant netnographic investigation of virtual communities through a content analysis has been applied in this article to investigate the research questions. The contribution includes the application of an extended typology of virtual communities to YouTube leading to a number of managerial implications for marketing practice on using YouTube as an effective marketing tool.
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“iParking” – Smart way to Automate the Management of the Parking System for a Smart City
(2020 2nd International Conference on Advancements in Computing (ICAC), SLIIT, 2020-12-10) Jayakody, J.A.D.C. A.; Karunanayake, S.A.H.M.; Ekanayake, E.M.C.S.; Dikkubura, H.K.T.M.; Bandara, L.A.I.M.
An efficient and effective smart outdoor parking system is a crucial need with the rapid development of the economy and the improvement of smart city modernization level, traffic and parking have become serious problems due to the explosive growth of the capital number of vehicles. This research will propose proper management for outdoor parking issues with an efficient solution for parking slots availability and occupancy detection using a classification approach and providing real time environment positioning accurate enhancement approach for global positioning system using map matching algorithm to classify vehicle direction on the road with the high precision location. The image processing technology is used to identify a vehicle's license plate and activate access control systems for automatic gate access to authorized members. The proposed system can provide information on promotions for a target audience on a screen where all consumers can view while using the parking facility with the use of machine learning algorithms, this will help to enhance the market value of the proposed system.
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Learning Style Preferences of Business Students in Saudi Arabia
(IGI GLOBLE Scientific, 2024) Rajapakshe, W
This chapter describes different types of learning style models It further explores Saudi Arabian business students' behavior regarding their preferences for different learning styles, as defined by the VAK learning styles model. 138 respondents who registered for theoretical courses and 128 for mathematical courses participated in the study. The data was gathered using a VAK modality questionnaire. The analysis indicated an apparent inclination towards multimodal learning compared to unimodal learning, with visual learning being the most favored unimodal mode. Moreover, the results of the independent sample t-test reveal no statistically significant difference in preferences among students enrolled in theoretical modules and those enrolled in mathematical modules.
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Mentorship in Global Mental Health
(Taylor and Francis, 2023-01-01) Kohrt, B.A; Citrin, D; Gauchan, B; Gurung, D; Sangraula, M; Mutamba, B.B; Kaiser, B.N; Elnasseh, A; Tesfaye, M; Girma, E; Abeysinghe, N; Rimal, P; De Jong, J.T.V.M
This chapter advocates for a mentorship framework that is not solely focused on individual self-promotion but is grounded in addressing the global gap in equity for access to and use of quality mental health services. Engaging with this global mission can best be initiated from a position of humility and reflexivity that should be cultivated in the mentoring relationship. Moreover, transforming mental health services worldwide will only be achieved through equitable, transparent, and sustainable collaborations. Mentorship that is embedded in such collaborations should focus on how to build and maintain these relationships. Ultimately, to achieve the goals of global mental health, institutions will need to make equity, including gender and other types of equity, a top priority in mentorship programs. Mentor–mentee relationships in global mental health should be grounded in the mission to promote equity in access to and use of quality mental health services. Mentors should model and promote key competencies of humility and reflexivity, development and maintenance of strong collaborations, and participatory research skills to identify locally salient clinical and community needs. To assure equitable global mental health careers for women, mentors should establish mandatory gender-sensitivity training for researchers, develop leadership packages for women, and promote equal decision-making power between female and male supervisors.