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For the past eight years the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change has conducted a major stream of research looking at service change in the NHS and aspects of the implementation of the NHS reforms (Pettigrew, Ferlie and McKee, Ashburner, Ferlie and Fitzgerald, Bennett and Pettigrew, Ferlie and Bennett). This paper is based on the emerging findings from a new empirical study of the development of the process of contracting in the NHS.

This paper presents design considerations for a shock tube experimental rig used to investigate the dynamic failure mechanisms of shell geometries subjected to water shock impact loading. In such setup, it is desirable that the drive pressure used within the tube can provide a wide range of impulsive loads on the test structures and some flexibility can be achieved on the applied pulse durations. With this aim a review of various existing shock tube experimental setup is presented and choices are made based on scientific merits. Finally design parameters are drawn for right set of conditions required for the experiments.

Academic institutions are undergoing drastic changes in recent years due to dwindling funds, low enrollment numbers, and fierce domestic and international competition, along with a two-year closure of university premises due to the pandemic. Quality assurance of academic institution has also come under scrutiny with mounting criticism for its failure to adapt to current social and economic requirements. Incoherent and ad hoc reform system and hurried strategic vision have been blamed on the role of the leaders and their lack of engagement with the stakeholders. Students have been repeatedly asking for the necessity to focus on academic teaching along with learning activities, active participative strategies with a focus toward increasing acquired competence and capabilities that will enable their marketability, post-completion of their education. This book volume stresses the role of leaders in educational institutions. The collection of work by various authors talks about the autonomy of faculty members based on bonds created on ethics. The style of leadership and the concept of democracy and social justice also play a role in leadership. Authors have emphasized that higher educational institutions need to look beyond regular extrinsic motivators to ensure employee engagement to mentor students effectively as well as explore the concept of the glass ceiling and regressive cultures that poses impediments to women as leaders in universities and other educational institutions.

EVERY now and again, one of the solemn monthly or quarterly magazines, by way of enlivening its pages, inserts a terrific onslaught on municipal libraries, in which the judgment of heaven is called down upon the fiction reader, and the library authorities are condemned as a set of ignorant and inefficient office‐holders, who pander to a depraved public taste. The last assailant of this sort whom we had the pleasure of setting right was Mr. J. Churton Collins, who used the Nineteenth Century and After, as the medium for conveying his accusations. Now comes Mr. W. H. Harwood, who fills six‐and‐a‐half pages of the Westminster Review for February, 1906, with a quantum of twaddle about libraries, which differs from most recent articles of the same sort only in its dulness. In his use of this journalistic cliché, Mr. Harwood displays the customary ignorance of the Public Libraries Acts, by styling his paper “Free Libraries and Fiction,” and by his failure to prove even one of his statements by reference to a single concrete fact. Briefly, Mr. Harwood's position is this:—

This chapter contributes to addressing the gap in the literature on entrepreneurs and enterprise in island and remote rural environments.

The research, policy and practice literature on island enterprises and entrepreneurs is reviewed, taking Scotland as a focus within wider international contexts. Islands – as spaces and cultural places – are recognised in terms of ‘otherness’ and difference, not least in respect of tourism and culture. The importance of distance, isolation and peripherality is discussed as social constructions – myths and narratives – as well as in their mainstream measured equivalences. Agencies and policies are introduced at different levels and given significance reflecting their particular relevance in remote and isolated communities. The significance of the dominant paradigm founded on agglomeration, clusters, connectivity, proximity and competitiveness in the peripheralisation of those establishing and running businesses on islands is explored critically. This is contrasted with experiences from comparative northern European locations of smart specialisation, innovation and resilience, and the underpinning key roles of social capital, relationships and cultural values and norms are identified. Sectoral case studies and enterprise are offered to examine these issues in context.

As this is an exploratory study, results are neither comprehensive nor definitive. However, they are indicative of how forces and obstacles apply in island and remote rural environments.

The study confirms the need to recognise social relations locally, and for policies and strategies to be proofed for locational differences.

The depletion of fossil fuel and emissions of harmful gases forced the pioneers in search of alternate energy source. The purpose of this study is to present an effective use of hydrogen fuel for turbojet engines based on its exergetic performance.

This study was performed to measure the assessment of exergetic data of turbojet engines. Initially, the test was carried out on the Jet A-1 fuel. Then, a series of similar tests were carried out on turbojet engines with hydrogen fuel to measure their performance results. Finally, the exergetic values of both were compared with each other.

The introduction of hydrogen fuel reduced the exergy efficiency, and a 10 per cent reduction was observed in exergy efficiency. Simultaneously, the waste exergy rate increased by 9 per cent. However, because of the high specific fuel exergy, hydrogen fuel was better than Jet A-1 fuel. Note that parameters such as environmental effect factor and ecological effect witnessed an increase in their index owing to the addition of hydrogen.

Introduction of alternative blends is necessary for achieving lower emission of gases such as CO, NOx and CO₂ from gas turbine engines without compromising on performance. The Jet A fuels were replaced by blends to obtain better emission characteristics.

The use of hydrogen in turbojet engines showed an adverse effect on exergetic performance. However, it was very impressive to see a 200 per cent reduction in emissions. From the comparison of exergy efficiency results of inlet, combustion and nozzle, it is evident that the combustion chamber has the largest values of exergy ratio, waste exergy ratio, cost flow, ecological factor, environmental factor and fuel ratio owing to irreversibility in the combustion process.

Efforts to address climate change need to focus on curtailing carbon emissions to the atmosphere, and these efforts need to focus in large part on energy processes and activities, given the significant contributions to carbon emissions of the energy sectors of countries. This paper aims to describe key energy‐related steps needed to address climate change.

The key energy‐related steps needed to address climate change are identified, discussed and illustrated.

Several key energy‐related steps are identified that need to be addressed to combat climate change. These include: use non‐carbon‐based energy sources; use non‐carbon‐based energy carriers and/or energy carriers that facilitate the use of non‐carbon‐based energy sources; remove and sequester carbon‐based atmospheric emissions; and increase efficiency.

Given the major contributions of energy processes to climate change, it is anticipated that initiatives to address these steps will allow major advances to be achieved regarding addressing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The key energy‐related steps constitute a logical and pragmatic approach that provides a coherent overall structure to guide efforts to address climate change. It is expected that addressing these steps should assist broader efforts to achieve sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a text extraction tool for scanned documents that would extract text and build the keywords corpus and key phrases corpus for the document without manual intervention.

For text extraction from scanned documents, a Web-based optical character recognition (OCR) tool was developed. OCR is a well-established technology, so to develop the OCR, Microsoft Office document imaging tools were used. To account for the commonly encountered problem of skew being introduced, a method to detect and correct the skew introduced in the scanned documents was developed and integrated with the tool. The OCR tool was customized to build keywords and key phrases corpus for every document.

The developed tool was evaluated using a 100 document corpus to test the various properties of OCR. The tool had above 99 per cent word read accuracy for text only image documents. The customization of the OCR was tested with samples of Microfiches, sample of Journal pages from back volumes and samples from newspaper clips and the results are discussed in the summary. The tool was found to be useful for text extraction and processing.

The scanned documents are converted to keywords and key phrases corpus. The tool could be used to build metadata for scanned documents without manual intervention.

The tool is used to convert unstructured data (in the form of image documents) to structured data (the document is converted into keywords, and key phrases database). In addition, the image document is converted to editable and searchable document.

This paper aims to examine the economic rationale for the shotgun clause, a legally specified protocol for the dissolution of a partnership or a private corporation that empowers one investor to acquire ownership of all the venture's assets.

Employing simple mathematics, the behavior of the initiating party or offeror is modeled in a situation of informational asymmetry and then optimized. The implications of offeror optimal behavior are then examined.

The paper finds that the introduction of a shotgun clause lowers the offeror's optimal offer price. Whereas in the absence of the clause, the offer price must exceed the offeror's private valuation of the business, in the presence of said clause the offeror's price may not exceed the offeror's private valuation. Situations where the shotgun clause improves versus impairs economic efficiency are delineated. For high (low) offeror private valuations of the business, the shotgun clause induces a greater (lower) discrepancy between said valuation and the offer price. Offerors with high private valuations of the business are shown to prefer the inclusion of the shotgun clause.

The behavioral ramifications of the shotgun clause are presented, thus providing potential partners and private corporation shareholders a guide for the clause's inclusion or exclusion when the small business is structured.

This is the first paper to provide an analysis of the shotgun clause in the context of informational asymmetry, employing refinements and simplifications of extant models that address other small business dissolution procedures.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a personal interpretation of the nature and impact of alternative narratives of public management reform evident in the UK since the 1980s. These reforms are examined through the prism of alternative bodies of public management scholarship. They are applied to the specific case of the health care sector as a concrete focus.

The study is a personal overview of various streams of policy reforms in the UK health care sector and associated public management scholarship. This is an interpretive essay.

The new of public management remains the dominant reform, narrative and highly embedded, even if dysfunctionally so. Network governance reforms have had some enduring influence. Digital era governance has so far had only weak influence. A reprofessionlisation counter narrative shows variable and oscillating influence.

The study contributes to a developing narrative-based stream in public management scholarship. It also provides a “big picture” assessment of reforming in the UK health care sector since the 1980s.