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Competence management should no longer be considered as disconnected activities with few relationships with the organizational goals. It is the viewpoint that competence management as a whole consists of different mechanisms and strategies that involve many functions in the organization and link strategy, product/service development, and innovation. The purpose of this paper is to explore how a public knowledge-intensive, project-intensive organization manages competence in relation to its organizational goals and to identify which mechanisms are involved in this process as well as the underlying factors of those mechanisms.

The research was conducted following a single case study approach using several sources of evidence in a public organization responsible for public transport in the south of Sweden.

A theoretical framework called the competence loop is used as a platform. The results expand the framework by identifying underlying factors constituting the mechanisms and categorizing those factors in organizational and social dimensions. Another contribution is the competence concept including the factors that generate new competence. Furthermore, the study highlights that organizational culture has an impact on efficient competence management.

This study was conducted in a public organization; similar studies should be conducted in other kinds of knowledge-intensive, project-intensive organizations.

The results provide support to practitioners when trying to understand how competence evolves, how to facilitate learning in organizations that are reliant on human resources, how to manage competence to achieve organizational success, and show the role of the project as a competence arena.

Knowledge-intensive organizations tend to be project intensive having many projects of different size and importance. In this context, competence evolves through projects. The purpose of this paper is to identify the mechanisms that steers competence management in these kinds of organizations and also the factors that are involved in the human capital contribution to competitive advantage in relation to the interaction between parent organizations and projects.

This study has a contingency theory perspective and consists of a literature search in the following domains: project-intensive organizations, knowledge-intensive organizations, competence management, human resource management and dynamic capabilities and learning.

The main contribution of this study is the theoretical framework derived from different domains. The framework is called the competence loop and explains how projects generate competence that the parent organization can either exploit in further activities or use for strategy adjustment. It also explains how an organization can use learning strategies to support competence exploration/exploitation. Another contribution is the description of the relationship between dynamic capabilities and organizational learning in project-intensive organizations.

This paper is a conceptual paper intended to create a base for further empirical studies.

The paper combines different domains to define a framework that is a new approach to competence management in a project-parent organizational context. The framework includes learning and competence management characteristics and has both theoretical and practical value.

To decrease wear and friction, zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP) has been used in engine oil for several decades, but the mechanism of the tribofilm formation is still unclear. The purpose of this study is to characterize the chemical details of the tribofilm by using high-resolution approaching.

An ISO VG 100 mineral oil mixed with ZDDP was used in sliding tests on cylindrical roller bearings. Tribofilm formation was observed after 2 h of the sliding test. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and atom probe tomography (APT) were used for chemical analysis of the tribofilm.

The results show that the ZDDP tribofilm consists of the common ZDDP elements along with iron oxides. A considerable amount of zinc and a small amount of sulfur were observed. In particular, an oxide interlayer with sulfur enrichment was revealed by APT between the tribofilm and the steel substrate. The depth profile of the chemical composition was obtained, and a tribofilm of approximately 40 nm thickness was identified by XPS.

A sulfur enrichment at the interface is observed by APT, which is beneath an oxygen enrichment. The clear evidence of the S interlayer confirms the hard and soft acids and bases principle.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-01-2020-0035/

The purpose of this paper is to test whether performance differences between labour‐managed (LOFs) and mercantile (PCFs) firms are due to the measures used in the comparison, rather than to their distinct capital‐ownership configurations.

Tests for the equality of two means and two variances of a variety of performance measures were used to ascertain whether differences between LOFs and PCFs firms are due to the measures used in the comparison, rather than to their distinct capital‐ownership configurations

The indicators analyzed do not provide either type of organizational structure a definite superiority in either short‐economic performance or in short‐term profitability and the profitability indicators assign as good a chance of survival to LOFs as to PCFs of similar size, even if the analysis of their respective debt structures indicates some clear limitations on their growth prospects.

The paper stresses the importance of using proper measures of the performance of LOFs, to avoid a common practice of being short‐changed in their evaluation of their economic performance, profitability, return of labour and financial structure.

The study will be useful to the worker‐owners of the LOFs and to those evaluating their performance, such as lenders, regulators, other public officials and the like.

THE question of the advisability of exercising a censorship over literature has been much before the public of late, and probably many librarians have realised how closely the disputed question affects their own profession.

In contrast to the dominant accounts in post-Soviet studies that see public and private as two spheres existing in parallel, the purpose of this paper is to argue that in Armenia the public-private dichotomy can be better understood as a spectrum of different kinds of interactions between the state and private actors/social groups representing different sets of socio-cultural values, which are mirrored in Yerevan’s city planning and housing.

The data derives from long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Yerevan. To analyse the data set the author used methods common in social and cultural anthropology. The theoretical background derives from urban anthropology (Liu), theories on housing (Carsten and Hugh-Jones), the anthropology of values (Dumont), and the anthropology of states (Herzfeld) linked to the debate on modernity.

The author demonstrates that basic cultural concepts, norms, expectations, rules, beliefs, and values currently take effect on both sides (public and private/state and people), and that personal networks in Armenia are no longer used to trick an alien state, but also used by the state elites to gain advantage. The degree of intimacy of social relations thereby structures urban space and behaviour.

The paper looks at the public-private dichotomy in post-Soviet states from a new perspective, which is inspired by the anthropology of (socio-cultural) values, and argues that cultural intimacy (Herzfeld) is – simultaneously – a unifying and a separating fact in the relationship of states and people.