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Intelligent control for unidentified systems with unstable equilibriums is not always a proper control strategy, which results in inferior performance in many cases. Because of the existing trial and error manner of the procedure in former duration of learning, this exploration for finding the appropriate control signals can lead to instability. However, the recent proposed emotional controllers are capable of learning swiftly; the use of these controllers is not an efficient solution for the mentioned instability problems. Therefore, a solution is needed to evade the instability in preliminary phase of learning. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel approach for controlling unstable systems or systems with unstable equilibrium by model free controllers.

An existing controller (model‐based controller) with limited performance is used as a mentor for the emotional learning controller in the first step. This learning phase prepares the controller to control the plant as well as mentor, while it prevents any instability. When the emotional controller can imitate the behavior of model based one properly, the employed controller is gently switched from model based one to an emotional controller using a fuzzy inference system (FIS). Also, the emotional stress is softly switched from the mentor‐imitator output difference to the combination of the objectives. In this paper, the emotional stresses are generated once by using a nonlinear combination of objectives and once by employing different stresses to a FIS which attentionally modulated the stresses, and makes a subset of these objectives salient regarding the contemporary situation.

The proposed model free controller is employed to control an inverted pendulum system and an oscillator with unstable equilibrium. It is noticeable that the proposed controller is a model free one, and does not use any knowledge about the plant. The experimental results on two benchmarks show the superiority of proposed imitative and emotional controller with fuzzy stress generation mechanism in comparison with model based originally supplied controllers and emotional controller with nonlinear stress generation unit – in control of pendulum system – in all operating conditions.

There are two test beds for evaluating the proposed model free controller performance which are discussed in this paper: a laboratorial inverted pendulum system, which is a well‐known system with unstable equilibrium, and Chua's circuit, which is an oscillator with two stable and one unstable equilibrium point. The results show that the proposed controller with the mentioned strategy can control the systems with satisfactory performance.

In this paper, a novel approach for controlling unstable systems or systems with unstable equilibrium by model free controllers is proposed. This approach is based on imitative learning in preliminary phase of learning and soft switching to an interactive emotional learning. Moreover, FISs are used to model the linguistic knowledge of the ascendancy and situated importance of the objectives. These FISs are used to attentionally modulate the stress signals for the emotional controller. The results of proposed strategy on two benchmarks reveal the efficacy of this strategy of model free control.

Modern day manufacturing has seen the replacement of manual transfer of parts between press machines with automatic transfer systems. Higher automation productivity demands greater flexibility of transfer devices. This paper deals with methods to improve the flexibility of fixtures designed to transfer parts between press machines.

Describes methods to improve the flexibility of fixtures designed to transfer parts between press machines in Press Shop 3 at Iran Khodro Company (IKCO). A fuzzy C means clustering‐based method is developed to optimize the number and arrangement of actuators for each fixture. Economical aspects of this novel design are addressed as well.

The simulation results suggest that application of a flexible fixtures system and use of linear motors was the best method of adding flexibility to the loader‐unloader system.

Provides evidence that flexible components are indispensable to increasing production speed and reliability in an automated system.

This paper aims to describe colonial competitive algorithm (CCA), a novel socio‐politically inspired optimization strategy, and how it is used to solve real world engineering problems by applying it to the problem of designing a multivariable proportional‐integral‐derivative (PID) controller. Unlike other evolutionary optimization algorithms, CCA is inspired from a socio‐political process – the competition among imperialists and colonies. In this paper, CCA is used to tune the parameters of a multivariable PID controller for a typical distillation column process.

The controller design objective was to tune the PID controller parameters so that the integral of absolute errors, overshoots and undershoots be minimized. This multi‐objective optimization problem is converted to a mono‐objective one by adding up all the objective functions in which the absolute integral of errors is emphasized to be reduced as long as the overshoots and undershoots remain acceptable.

Simulation results show that the controller tuning approach, proposed in this paper, can be easily and successfully applied to the problem of designing MIMO controller for control processes. As a result not only was the controlled process able to significantly reduce the coupling effect, but also the response speed was significantly increased. Also a genetic algorithm (GA) and an analytical method are used to design the controller parameters and are compared with CCA. The results showed that CCA had a higher convergence rate than GA, reaching to a better solution.

The proposed PID controller tuning approach is interesting for the design of controllers for industrial and chemical processes, e.g. MIMO evaporator plant. Also the proposed evolutionary algorithm, CCA, can be used in diverse areas of optimization problems including, industrial planning, resource allocation, scheduling, decision making, pattern recognition and machine learning.

We conjecture that there are five stages to academic entrepreneurship: motivation, governance, selection, competition, and performance. The process of academic entrepreneurship originates with the motivation of faculty, universities, industry, and government to commercialize knowledge that originates within the university setting. The model conceptualizes that the governance and competitiveness of the commercialized knowledge moderate the mode selection and ultimately the performance of academic entrepreneurship. The conceptual and empirical support for the model are derived from a theory-driven synthesis of articles related to academic entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse through a systematic literature review the evolution of the theme of environmental social and governance (ESG) in universities, correlating variables and presenting a panorama for Latin American universities.

This paper uses a systematic literature review approach. The Web of Science database was used for data collection, and a set of keywords (Environmental, Social and Governance × Universities) and a classification method were used, resulting in 111 articles classified in the Zotero software. After classification, these publications were analysed in the VOSviewer software.

The main evidence about ESG and universities shows that its relevance has been growing worldwide with an emphasis on England, the USA, Spain, followed by Brazil in fourth place regarding the number of papers published worldwide. The most representative areas identified were governance, sustainability, higher education, sustainable campus, environmental science, ecology, science and technology. The journals presenting more published papers under the topic are International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Journal of Cleaner Production and Sustainability. As for the most relevant authors, the Europeans Lozano and Leal Filho, Velasquez from Mexico and Brandli from Brazil were identified. As for institutions, the University Durham, State University System of Florida and State University of Campinas do Brazil stand out.

As the main limitation of the study is related to the sample of articles. This study is focused on the analysis of publications from the last decade, presenting only 111 results. However, this restriction in the timeline is justified as it is a new topic; this study was also limited to the use of a single database; in this sense, future research can carry out a more comprehensive review of the sustainability literature covering periods prior to a decade and an analysis in other databases.

These results provide a basis for improving sustainability in universities and ESG in Latin America. It also allows to explore and reflect on several indicators, enabling the evaluation and planning of actions to improve competitiveness.

This study aims to understand the role of the creative entrepreneur in the development of his business.

For the development of this study, primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews with five creative entrepreneurs in the Douro region. To triangulate the information, interviews were also carried out with four heads of local institutions, namely, a university, two municipalities and a business incubator.

The results obtained suggest that creative entrepreneurs play an important role in the development of their business, since creativity and innovation are fundamental for the sustainability of their business. However, the results suggest that the main difficulties experienced by this type of entrepreneurs are related to poor knowledge and interest in management. As a rule, poor management knowledge leads to the emergence of several obstacles, related to sales, stocks, production costs and bureaucracy.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing new insights into the main difficulties of creative entrepreneurs, how they overcome these obstacles.

The results obtained provide important information for policymakers. The creation of management training programs and cooperation incentives can be important for the growth and development of this type of company. In addition, it shows that it is necessary to create specific policies to encourage and support creative entrepreneurs, since they have different specifications than most entrepreneurs.

This study provides empirical evidence on the ability to explore the intersection between individual entrepreneur creativity and business success. Furthermore, this study demonstrates: i) how your creative entrepreneur management knowledge affects your business; ii) the main difficulties of this type of entrepreneurs; iii) how they have overcome these difficulties; iv) how creative entrepreneurs cooperate with each other.

The current research examines digitalization and advanced technologies operationalization as a central feature of logistics management for efficient and sustainable retail business model in supply chain management. This study’s purpose is to present the main retail practices enforced for retail supply chain (RSC) digitalization and to provide a comprehensive analysis of retail industry digitalization as a fundamental enabler of achieving RSC efficiency and sustainability performance.

This research conducts a five-step systematic literature review of 110 published empirical research articles selected from SCOPUS and Web of Science databases taking in consideration the principle of the deductive research approach in order to build up a condensed and unbiased synthesis of retail industry digitalization in achieving supply chain efficiency and sustainability. Furthermore, the current research employed a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to decipher the subject regions from the selected keywords and to build a cluster to comprehend the areas that retail digitalization impact supply chain efficiency and sustainability.

The outcomes indicate that for retailers, logistics practices embody the main sources of inefficiencies that dampen companies’ productivity and competitiveness. The investment in digital innovations and technologies represents a considerable opportunity to differ from the high competition and optimize more their operational performance in terms of efficiency and sustainability through supply chain links integration, logistics operations optimization, costs and waste minimization, resources management and customer behavior.

Numerous points have shed light on retail managers, digital officers and related partitioners for a deep and holistic comprehension of the digital transition of their firms’ business model and how can this transformation assist in achieving challenging issues faced by every industry which is maintaining operational sustainable efficiency. This framework could be used as a decision-making tool and develop a wide vision for every partner of the RSC on the potentials and opportunities that Industry 4.0 technologies can provide to address costs and resources management issues and to coordinate the corresponding investment efforts.

The traditional retail ecosystem in called into question facing today’s business world changes. This research contribution resides in the fact that it is one of the few research projects to concentrate on conceptualizing digitalization of logistics operations in RSC from for the effective retail processes improvement both from the efficiency and sustainability perspective.

Identifies key activities that network users can perform in order to use the network effectively. Offers recommended reading, from beginner to expert user status. Explains some commonly used terms (e.g. Turbo Gopher with Veronica!). Lists useful Internet resources.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the dimensions of service quality and examining the interrelationships among behavioral intentions, customer satisfaction, perceived value, corporate image and service quality in the gaming industry. A multi-level and hierarchical model is used as a framework to synthesize the effects of customer satisfaction, perceived value, corporate image and service quality on behavioral intentions of customers in the gaming industry.

The data used in this study were based on a sample of 470 at a newly built casino in Macau. Data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and regression analysis.

The findings support using a multi-level model consisting of three primary dimensions and ten sub-dimensions to conceptualize and measure perceived service quality. Perceived service quality significantly influences perceived value and corporate image, respectively. In addition, perceived value and corporate image are main determinants of customer satisfaction. Also, customer satisfaction and corporate image significantly affect behavioral intentions.

This is the first study synthesizing behavioral intentions, customer satisfaction, perceived value, corporate image and perceived service quality in a Macau casino setting.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.