From the Back Cover
This book of proceedings collects fifty-one papers presented at the inaugural Colloquium of Administrative Science and Technology (CoAST 2013) event, held at Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. It has been reviewed by 750 experts world-wide and covers three main areas - Administrative Science and Technology, Management, and Arts and Humanities. The papers in this volume reflect:
∙ the importance of the social sciences in academia and in the nations' social-economic growth;
∙ the multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary nature of academia that transcends the broad areas of the social sciences;
∙ the increasing trend towards fundamental studies in the social sciences, management, and the arts and the humanities, which have been characterized under the overarching theme of administrative science and technology;
∙ the growing demand for research outcomes affecting the public and private sectors' service processes. The other overlapping niche areas affecting the civil service scope will ensure more interest in and readability of the findings showcased in this proceedings book;
∙ the popular and contemporary measurement techniques and methodologies employed within the scopes of the social sciences and humanities;
∙ the noticeably changing trends in administrative science and technology, which will greatly impact the governments of the world, allowing the development of a better understanding of governmental processes and their impact on key performance and e-service deliveries. The reporting on technology-based services will improve the public sector's agility;
∙ a knowledge-sharing agenda for other developing and less developed nations to emulate;
∙ some of the major generic developments that have taken place in these thematic areas of CoAST 2013.
Rugayah (Gy) Hashim is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Administrative Science and Policy Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia. She obtained her PhD degree in Information Management (Strategic Digital Government & Social Informatics & Infonomics) from Universiti Teknologi MARA, Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Oklahoma City University, USA and a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA-double major) from Western Michigan University, USA. Currently she is heading the Research Impact Unit of the Research Management Institute (RMI), Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. Dr. Hashim has continued to serve on the editorial boards of several international journals and conferences as well as being appointed as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Professor (Dato) Dr. Abu Bakar Abdul Majeed is the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at the Research Management Institute (RMI), Universiti Teknologi MARA. He obtained his PhD in Neurophysiology at Sheffield University, United Kingdom, his MBA from Universiti Sains Malaysia and a Bachelor's degree in Pharmacy from Al-Zagazig University, Egypt. Professor Bakar has been awarded several fellowships, one of which involved conducting research on bioethics at the Centre for European Integration, Bonn, Germany. He has also been a visiting scientist at the Laboratory for Neural Information Processing, RIKEN, Tokyo, Japan. His research interests include pharmacology, brainomics and bioethics.
