This article presents part of the findings of the Research Marketing and Technology Commercialization Survey conducted in South Africa during 2005 and 2006. Part IV (Q4) of this survey was designed to examine nine drivers of knowledge transfer between South African universities in their research and development (R&D) collaborations with industry firms. Respondents from a judgemental sample ranked the knowledge transfer for R&D collaboration between university departments and industry as: (a) the need to extract appropriate knowledge at the right time to make critical decisions; (b) the perception that knowledge is a valuable resource; (c) the emphasis on getting a return on investment in research; (d) the need to protect knowledge for competitive advantage; (e) the need to close the knowledge gap; (f) international trade; (g) the need to protect intellectual property such as patents and trademarks; (h) geographic proximity between the knowledge source and recipient; and (i) war, terrorism and natural disasters.
Information and communications systems are increasingly being used to capture, record, store, transmit and retrieve data to manage the maintenance of equipment and physical infrastructure. The justification for the costs incurred in implementing computerised information systems subsumes that acceptance of the associated technology by the users will provide the desired future benefits to the business organisation. The study assumes that the respective organisations were ready for the implied change, and thus applied the premise that perception influences acceptance to assess the implementation of computerised maintenance management software systems in a number of user organisations. Respondents to the study indicated that ease of use, usefulness and system characteristics were strongly dependent on the level of training of the user during the implementation of the computerised maintenance management software system, thus reiterating that user training influences perception which, in turn, influences user acceptance of technology. A model to predict user perception is developed based on data arising from respondent feedback.
The spread of the coronavirus concomitant with the Covid-19 disease highlights the interconnectedness between systems that serve humanity. These systems are typically portrayed in economic, ecology and environment, physical/technological, and socio-political contexts and maybe delineated in terms of the interconnectedness between these contexts. Any delineated socio-technological system represents an intriguing class of interconnected systems in the novel era of Society 5.0 concomitant with fourth industrial revolution. This article describes a framework and resiliency model for socio-technological systems plus an application of the lens of vulnerability and resilience to a case study energy systems enterprise. It is intriguing that the energy systems enterprise is usurping extant socioeconomic robustness thereby undergoing an absorptive phase of resilience. The discourse complements existing body of literature on energy systems and society by emphasizing that the principles of vulnerability and resilience are paramount for sustainable management of socio-technological systems, and more so in a post-Covid-19 world.
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