Civic Transformations
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Opportunities and Threats of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the Quantity Surveying Profession in South Africa View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Josephine Llale
Since the First Industrial Revolution, societies have entrusted their lives and wellbeing to professional organizations; social institutions that exercise control over the use of specific bodies of knowledge. These institutions are granted privileges based on the benefit to society this knowledge brings. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) contests the role of these professions in society. Using the quantity surveying profession as an example, this study highlights the threats and opportunities 4IR presents to professions and how this may have an impact on their relevance in society. This study is based on a literature review that specifically interrogates the role of professions in society and explores how their role has evolved. The study evaluates how those technologies associated with 4IR will have a direct impact on the existing legitimacy and practices of the quantity surveying profession. The study focuses specifically on the opportunities and threats posed by AI in South Africa, particularly the existential threat to the concept of professional judgement, and AI’s challenge to the status quo of quantity surveying and its role in society. General opinion regarding AI is that it is capable of performing professional tasks far quicker and at a much higher quality than those for whom this was previously regarded as their purview—highly trained and educated professionals. In some quarters, AI is regarded as an enhancer to humans, while in others it is regarded as a substitute for humans. What remains unknown is the extent to which AI is likely to cause disruptions within these professions.
An Examination into Corporate Philanthropy: Practices in Islamic Banks - The Case of Saudi Arabia View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amal Hamlan
The study explores the way Corporate Philanthropy (CP) is implemented by a full-fledged Islamic bank in Saudi Arabia with the aim of determining whether the bank’s CP engagement is instrumental or non-instrumental. The author sets out to determine whether in the context of Islamic banking, where banks are required to abide by the principles of the Sharia, CP is pure philanthropy or the pursuit self-interest. This study is premised on the contention that understanding CP requires the interpretation of meanings or the analysis of human perspectives and interpretations. The human perspectives and interpretations captured and analysed are those of managers of the full-fledged Islamic bank and managers of charities that have received donations from the bank. These perspectives and interpretations are captured using the semi-structured interview. The main findings demonstrate that CP is a multifaceted issue in Islamic banking, and the stakeholder theory and institutional theory are mutually supportive. Although the finding shows that CP’s practices can be both instrumental and non-instrumental in Islamic banks, the analysis of primary qualitative data in this study reveals that it is mostly instrumental. Managers of both the Islamic bank and Charities emphasize the strategic value of each stakeholder’s interests. They only consider intrinsic value at the individual level. Bank’s mangers believe that the bank is primarily accountable to the shareholders, and CP is designed to fulfill this obligation in the long run.
