Alon Kuperman, Yoram Horen, Saad Tapuchi, Inna Katz and Alexander Abramovitz
The purpose of this paper is to present a method to compensate slow varying disturbances and plant parameter drifts using a simple yet robust algorithm called input‐output…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a method to compensate slow varying disturbances and plant parameter drifts using a simple yet robust algorithm called input‐output nominalization.
Design/methodology/approach
In case of known uncertainties, an analytical expression of pre‐computed feed‐forward compensation command is derived. In presence of unknown disturbances and parameter drifts, the control algorithm uses a proportional‐integrative estimator‐based nominalizer. It creates a nominalizing signal, reflecting the deviation of the system from its nominal form using plant input and output. The signal is subtracted from the nominal controller output to cancel the uncertainty and disturbances effects.
Findings
As a result, the uncertain plant and the nominalizer quickly converge to the nominal plant. Therefore, a simple controller tuned according to the nominal plant can be used despite the disturbances and parameter drifts and a nominal response is always obtained. Simulation and experimental results are given to describe the control algorithm performance and inherent limitations.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed method is suitable for linear systems with low frequency uncertainties and disturbances only.
Practical implications
The technique allows compensating errors in plant parameter identifications as well as parameter drifts during plant operations. Constant and slow varying disturbances are also rejected, allowing obtaining a prescribed nominal response.
Originality/value
The proposed approach is different from the common robust control methods to the uncertain linear systems control. Instead of designing a robust controller, efforts are concentrated on the plant input‐output nominalization in a fashion similar to input‐output linearization. The method allows compensating slow varying disturbances and plant parameter drifts using a simple algorithm leading to a simple controller tuned according to the nominal plant parameters.
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Stephen B. Adams and Paul J. Miranti
Purpose — This study assesses the effectiveness of initiatives by expatriate employees of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T, popularly referred to as the ‘Bell…
Abstract
Purpose — This study assesses the effectiveness of initiatives by expatriate employees of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T, popularly referred to as the ‘Bell System’11The use of the term ‘Bell System’ as a synonym for AT&T reflected the firm's initial dependency on the exploitation of the telephone patents of Alexander Graham Bell. The Bell System consisted of AT&T, a holding company, and its affiliates including The Bell Telephone Laboratories (research), Western Electric (manufacturing) and 13 regional telephone operating subsidiaries.) in the revival of the Japan's telecommunications system and allied industries after World War II.
Methodology — Our primary methodology involves historical analysis of archival resources for AT&T and the Civil Communications Section (CCS) of the Supreme Command Allied Powers (SCAP), the American occupation government agency responsible for advising Japanese government and industry during the period 1945–1950.
Findings — Before the war, the Bell System maintained strong direct connections in Japan. AT&T's influence during the occupation, however, was indirect: knowledge dissemination through the activities of the CCS, which had several employees on loan from the Bell System.
Research limitations/implications — While our sample of organisations seems narrow and the duration of time relatively brief, the Bell System's people made a tremendous impact: transforming the Japanese telecommunications system. This suggests that guidance and tutelage by expatriate experts may enable host countries to master best practices rapidly without incurring high costs of evolutionary development.
Social implications — Local social mores and differences in workforce educational attainment may temporarily impede the acceptance of new foreign approaches to management and administration.
Value of the chapter — This chapter demonstrates how firm-specific and proprietary knowledge built up over decades at one firm could, through the agency of expatriates, revolutionise in just a few years the basic approaches followed in another country's telecommunications industry.
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A number of commentators have noted significant changes in the American polity over the last half century. More interest groups with more issues are active in the polity now …
Abstract
A number of commentators have noted significant changes in the American polity over the last half century. More interest groups with more issues are active in the polity now (Dahl, 1994). There is more ideological polarization among political elites (DiMaggio, Evans, & Bryson, 1996, 2004). Participation in voluntary associations has declined among the post 1945 generations, weakening civil society (Putnam, 2000). The new organizations in the polity are more hierarchical in structure, unlike the older voluntary associations that were built on lateral ties (Skocpol, 1996, 1999). Rising education levels have produced lower voter participation rates (Brody, 1978; Nie, Junn, & Stehlik-Berry, 1996). Finally, a number of observers have noted that public opinion, constructed in part by extensive polling, has become a significant force in the polity and this has helped fuel the rise of a media centered politics (Herbst, 1993; Schudson, 1991). This is not an exhaustive list of changes that observers have noted, but it is enough to suggest that the older Tocquevillian polity and the civic culture of the U.S., portrayed so effectively by Almond and Verba (1963), have been transformed in significant ways.
This paper aims to argue that to address the consequences of climate change and variability a greater focus on pre‐emergency planning that engages a wider stakeholder group must…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to argue that to address the consequences of climate change and variability a greater focus on pre‐emergency planning that engages a wider stakeholder group must be adopted.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses UK emergency management and approaches to climate change and climate variability risk.
Findings
The internal focus of UK emergency management inhibits the contribution that it can make to societal resilience and public preparedness. Effective risk reduction requires that all actors, including the public, are engaged in the social learning process. From a UK emergency management perspective this requires a culture shift to an outward proactive focus.
Originality/value
This paper offers insights into emergency preparedness in the UK.
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In his bestselling The Worldly Philosophers, Robert Heilbroner puts the focus on the visions and analyses of the great economic thinkers from Adam Smith to Joseph A. Schumpeter…
Abstract
In his bestselling The Worldly Philosophers, Robert Heilbroner puts the focus on the visions and analyses of the great economic thinkers from Adam Smith to Joseph A. Schumpeter. Worldly philosophy is considered as a child of capitalism and worldly philosophers as system-builders addressing the long-run development of the economy and the society. This implies viewing the economy as historically and institutionally situated demanding a more interdisciplinary perspective and embedding economics in the social sciences. The article compares the work of Heilbroner and Adolph Lowe who was Heilbroner’s main mentor. The focus is on their reflections on Smith and Schumpeter. Heilbroner considered Smith as the first worldly philosopher of whose Wealth of Nations a German translation was published already in 1776 in Stuttgart, Lowe’s native city. Lowe’s early work on business cycles was strongly inspired by Marx and Schumpeter’s emphasis on the role of capital accumulation and technical progress as well as Schumpeter’s distinction between statics and dynamics. Lowe was forced to emigrate from Nazi Germany in spring 1933, only half a year after Schumpeter’s move to Harvard where Heilbroner studied in the late 1930s when Schumpeter enjoyed making provocative statements on the Great Depression which was still not yet overcome.
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The purpose of this paper is to address the ideological narratives which came to comprise a new welfare consensus in the USA and subsequently a welfare state which was more…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the ideological narratives which came to comprise a new welfare consensus in the USA and subsequently a welfare state which was more fiscally austere, demeaning, and coercive. It also explores the role of the political and financial restructuring which facilitated the implementation of retrogressive reforms.
Design/methodology/approach
Macro-level historical forces are investigated through various texts such as policy statements, journal articles, press releases, political addresses, congressional transcripts and testimony, archived papers, newspaper articles, and occasional sound bites and popular culture references pertaining to welfare and which have come to construct the common understanding of it.
Findings
The formation of this consensus was due in part to three factors: first, the growth of and increased influence of an elite policy planning network; second, welfare program administration and financing had been decentralized which allowed greater autonomy of state and local governments to implement their own retrogressive reforms; and third, there emerged an overarching discourse and paradigm for structuring policy and explaining the causes of poverty which emphasized individual behavior.
Originality/value
This paper focusses on the materialization of the contemporary welfare consensus during the 1980s and 1990s in terms of its ideological and political history and on its persistence which has affected the ensuing policy culture and which continues to constrain anti-poverty policy discourse as well as what can be accomplished legislatively. The paper is of value for for readers, fields, courses with work that encompasses an examination of political and social theory, ideology, social policy, power/hegemony, poverty, inequality, families, gender, race, and meaning making institutions.
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Romaine Ferdinands, S.M. Ferdous Azam and Ali Khatibi
This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the innovation environment of a developing nation through the Triple Helix model, revealing the existing inter-relationships…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the innovation environment of a developing nation through the Triple Helix model, revealing the existing inter-relationships between the three Helixes of Academia–Industry–Government. It sets out to find out the relationship and impact of the three Helixes on the most crucial stage of the innovation process: the commercialisation of patents, and to ascertain if there is a varying impact determined by patent ownership.
Design/methodology/approach
This cross-sectional study uses the survey method based on the views expressed by 220 Sri Lankan registered patent holders and categorised by organisational and individual ownership. The sample is drawn from the database of the National Intellectual Property Office of Sri Lanka and patents registered through the Patent Cooperation Treaty, extracted from the World Intellectual Property Organisation Patent Scope database. The survey was carried out in 2019 and limited to patents registered during the period 2010–2014.
Findings
The empirical findings indicate weak inter-relationship between Academia support, Industry support and patent commercial success, while the support of the Government Helix is non-significant in the commercial stage. The findings also indicate two different support standards existing in each Helix for the two ownership groups.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to a five-year window in a relatively early period in the country’s innovation policy development. The study model is also limited by the non-inclusion of mediators such as government-backed affiliated agencies and academia technical transfer offices which if incorporated would improve the study model and be more reflective of the actual environment and their role as change agents bridging the transition to a hybrid Triple Helix.
Practical implications
The study findings capture the inter-relationships of the Triple Helix existing in a developing country at the most crucial stage of the innovation process. It helps policymakers identify the gaps in each Helix that stands wanting and take measures to rectify them by creating a more favourable National Innovation System. An innovative environment that will facilitate patent holders achieve higher technological transfers and commercial success rates.
Social implications
The findings disclosure of two different support standards existing in each Helix for the two patent ownership groups poses a challenge for policymakers and challenges the core objective of increasing the commercial success of patents granted. The findings strengthen the need for a more robust support system to be put in place that would empower and facilitate the individual patent owner to increase the share of economic value arising from this underutilised patent group.
Originality/value
This study contributes by furthering the Triple Helix model in a social context and micro-setting by operationalising the theoretical practices. The study also gives insight into each Helix’s interaction and contribution during the most crucial stage of innovation management in a developing economy and its impact on the two categories of patent ownership which is scarce.
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The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise a dynamic model on the impact on office space and its boundaries of growth firms due to studied factors subject to fluctuations of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise a dynamic model on the impact on office space and its boundaries of growth firms due to studied factors subject to fluctuations of business cycles.
Design/methodology/approach
Theories are based on a literature study on space relation to business cycles, entrepreneurial theories and the service‐oriented society of today. The data are collected from an extensive study of pre‐classified growth firms from all major business sectors in Sweden during the period 1998‐2003, which is studied as an upturn and a downturn period. The study is related to a questionnaire distributed to entire Sweden of 967 listed firms where the response rate was 40 per cent. Investigated factors are: fluctuations of GDP, outsourcing events of core business, events of mergers and acquisitions (Ms&As), creation of subsidiaries, proportion of office workers and temporary staff in offices.
Findings
The detected significant correlations of the survey give a platform for a model that indicates that opposite but various forces due to business cycles seem to adjust the space after the events of outsourcing or M&A.
Research limitations/implications
The study could fruitfully be developed theoretically with inclusion of a transaction cost theory and economics encompassing the society in general.
Practical implications
Significant correlations that are found could certainly function as an input for the various stakeholders in the provision of office spaces of growth firms during fluctuations of GDP and market growth.
Originality/value
An extensive survey is a base for a conceptualisation of the dynamics of office space related to studied factors.
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From 1850 to 1913, the Portuguese economy expanded slowly and diverged from the European core. In contrast, during the interwar period, Portugal achieved higher growth and…
Abstract
From 1850 to 1913, the Portuguese economy expanded slowly and diverged from the European core. In contrast, during the interwar period, Portugal achieved higher growth and partially caught up to the levels of labor productivity of Western Europe. Higher growth in Portugal after World War I occurred in a framework of protection and increasing levels of state intervention. Growth was due to structural changes that favored sectors with higher levels of factor productivity. Such changes were associated with growth in domestic demand and higher levels of investment, and were helped by sustained export levels, the continuation of essential imports, and the restoration of capital inflows.