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Usual lab coats are designed to protect the wearer from the splats of chemicals, oil, dirt, etc. Simple lab coats are damaged by concentrated acids, thus quickly showing typical small holes along the front when worn in a laboratory where acids are used. For intense handling of acids and other chemicals, special protective lab coats with rubber or vinyl apron or chemical-resistant overalls are used. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibility to protect lab coats from acid damages by finishing them with commercially available hydrophobization chemicals.

Two commercial hydrophobic sprays were applied on cotton, polyamide and polyester lab coat materials. Contact and roll-off angles were compared with the untreated textile fabrics before typical laboratory acids were applied on the fabrics. Finally, antibacterial properties of the finished textiles were examined.

Spray 1 resulted in significantly increased hydrophobicity, while spray 2 did not have any influence on the results. With spray 1, the originally hydrophobic fabrics became more hydrophobic, and even the originally strongly hydrophilic fabrics showed large contact angles of 130–140°. Roll-off angles were significantly reduced from 40 to 50° (for the hydrophobic fabrics) or even 90° (in case of hydrophilic fabrics) to approximately 15–25°. Correspondingly, spray 1 showed an increase of the acid resistance of the finished textile fabrics of up to 30 min for the originally hydrophobic fabrics and up to 20 min for the originally hydrophilic ones, with only one polyester fabric showing no acid resistance at all, while spray 2 led to increased antibacterial properties.

While spray 1 can support laboratory safety by increasing the time until acids penetrate through a lab coat, spray 2 can support sterile work in a biological laboratory.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, increasing the acid resistance as well as the antibacterial properties of lab coats with easily accessible sprays has not been reported before in the scientific literature.

Innovation is a key factor in assessing organizational success. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the organizational culture and operations strategy impact organizational innovation. It explores the influence of various combinations of organizational cultures and operations strategies on a firm’s ability to innovate both in process and product.

A conceptual model is developed which attempts to explain how the reciprocal and dynamic interactive relationship between organizational culture and operations strategy and innovation is structured. In total, 233 valid questionnaires were collected from 17 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate the direction and strengths of the relationships and develop a comprehensive picture to illustrate the drivers of successful innovation.

The analysis and conclusions confirm the suitability of Culture–Strategy–Innovation Model and the detailed results demonstrate that a combination of innovative organizational culture and flexibility-oriented operations strategy has the strongest influence on a firm’s innovation process thereby improving their innovative organizational outcomes.

Although based on Taiwanese manufacturing industries these results provide useful insights for manufacturing industries in general. In alternative contexts, the combination of different dimensions of culture and strategy can be expected to cause different levels of success in innovation. This study provides robust evidence to explain the organizational climate needed to guide the innovative and flexibility considerations needed for SMEs in the manufacturing industry.

This is an empirical study which specifically investigates the activities of SMEs in the metal/plastic manufacturing industry in Taiwan and in particular examines organizational culture, operations strategies and innovation. The research model proposed and confirmed offers a new multi-dimensional structure of culture and strategy linked with their various related dynamic interrelationships and the drivers that impact organizational innovation.