Search results

Technological process innovation (TPI) is a distinctive organizational phenomenon characterized by a firm-internal locus and underlying components such as mutual adaptation of new technology and existing organization, technological change, organizational change, and systemic impact. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the management of these components at different stages of the innovation lifecycle (ILC) in large manufacturing companies.

The authors adopt an exploratory case-based research design and conduct a multiple case study of five large successful manufacturing companies operating in different industries in Germany. The authors build the study on 55 semi-structured interviews, which yielded 91.5 hours of recorded interview data. The authors apply cross-case synthesis and replication logic to identify patterns of how companies address process innovation components at different ILC stages.

The study uncovers the content of four central TPI components across the ILC and identifies differences between the development of core and non-core processes. Based on the findings the authors describe asymmetric adaptation as a theoretical construct and propose that companies seek different levels of process standardization depending on the type of process they develop, which in turn affects whether there is a greater extent of technological or organizational change.

Awareness of existing structures, processes, and technologies, as well as their value in relation to the company’s core and non-core operations is imperative to determining the adequate structure of mutual adaptation.

The authors provide detailed insight on the management of mutual adaptation, technological, and organizational change, as well as systemic impact at the different stages of the ILC. The authors extend prior research by adopting an ILC perspective for the investigation of these four TPI components and by proposing a construct of asymmetric adaptation to capture key mechanisms of process development and implementation.

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

In previous efforts I have indicated that Social Catholicism, qua Roman‐Catholic Social Economycs or Économie politique chrétienne, is now at the one and a half century mark, given its formal introduction with the publication of Charles de Coux's Essais d' économie politique at Paris/Lyon in 1832. This was soon to be followed by Alban de Villeneuve‐Bargemont's Christian Political Economy, or Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Poverty in France and Europe, etc, (1837), the subsequent founding of the Société d'Economie Sociale in 1856 and publication — inter alia — of La réforme sociale (1864) and Exposition of Social Economics (1867) by P. G. Frédéric Le Play; and, contemporarily, by the separate but related efforts of a host of other “thinkers and doers” to both the left or more radical (“Catholic/Christian‐Socialist”) and the right or “individualist” (cum Christianised individuals!) of Le Play's more centrist‐traditional (and, hence, “reactionary”) position. All this was well prior to the promulgation of the first great social encyclical, Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (RN), in 1891.

On interest in and need for religion. Notion that it is a form of defeatism, escape from reality, etc. Especially on the attitude of youth toward religion. Youth often mystical, sentimental, romantic, full of uncritical enthusiasm, yet, especially in the modern age, tending to be “irreligious.” Their enthusiasm and buoyant optimism tends to center in themselves rather than in outer “powers” of any sort. It is common (and perhaps healthy?) for youth to believe that “the world is my oyster,” and I will find the way to open it. Tendency toward a different view with advancing years, as one finds out how feeble ones powers really are, and how resistant the material with [which] one has to work in realizing ones big ideas and ideals. Story of President Harper, who said his fortieth birthday was the most melancholy day of his life, the day when he first finally admitted to himself that his life was a failure, that all he would ever get done was quite trivial and irrelevant in comparison with his hopes and plans.

The UK is a leader in the implementation of surface mount technology, and SMARTEX '91 sponsored by the SMART Group is one of only a few shows organised worldwide which is dedicated solely to this field. Perhaps it was not surprising then that this year's three‐day event proved a great success.

In a very real sense, the title of this article is overwhelming. The volume of writing both scholarly and otherwise on this subject would deter anyone who seriously sought to assimilate it all. Despite the repeated Biblical appeal for unity among the Church members, there is perhaps no issue which more deeply divides the Christian Church today than economic policies which are advocated as being consistent with the teachings of both the New and the Old Testament.

COVID-19 vaccinations face a backdrop of widespread mistrust in their safety and effectiveness, specifically via social media platforms which constitute major barriers for the public health sector to manage COVID-19 (and future) pandemics. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of the public's engagement behavior toward COVID-19 vaccinations.

Using Netnography, this study explores the public's interactions with vaccine communications by the WHO via Facebook. From WHO posts about the COVID-19 vaccination 23,726 public comments on Facebook were extracted and analyzed.

Building on crisis communication, health and engagement literature, this paper identifies and conceptualizes seven patterns of engagement behavior toward the COVID-19 vaccination and develops the first framework of relationships between these patterns and the extant vaccine attitudes: vaccine acceptance, hesitancy and refusal.

This paper helps policymakers identify and adapt interventions that increase vaccine confidence and tailor public health services communications accordingly.

This research offers the first typology of patterns of engagement behavior toward COVID-19 vaccinations and develops a framework of relationships between these patterns and the existing understanding in health literature. Finally, the study provides data-driven communication recommendations to public health service organizations.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

Economic discussion, as well as other discussions of problems of conduct, and that which aims to be scientific as well as that of a popular character, is permeated with the distinction between economic and non-economic values, and also with the contrasted notions of ends and means or value as such and “power” for realizing value. Both these contrasts, and all their four terms, are, however, exasperatingly vague in meaning. In a former paper¹ I have attempted to simplify and untangle the confusion by showing that both contrasts are merely different ways of viewing the single fact of choice. By way of introduction to the subject of the paper, it is necessary to recapitulate this argument briefly. The notion of means or of the expenditure of “energy” in realizing value is an aspect of the recognition that values are alternative to each other, that to secure one we give up others which might have been had instead. Where this is not the case, if that ever happens, there is a very different sort of problem of conduct involved, if any, and the notion of value itself applies in a very different sense if at all.