Search results

The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel methodology for predicting reliability for consumer electronics or any other hardware systems that experience a complex lifecycle environmental profile.

This Physics-of-Failure–based three-step methodology can be used to predict the degradation rate of a population using a Monte Carlo approach. The three steps include: using an empirical equation describing the degradation of a performance metric, a degradation consistency condition and a technique to account for cumulative degradation across multiple life-cycle stress conditions (e.g. temperature, voltage, mechanical load, etc.).

Two case studies are provided to illustrate the methodology including one related to repeated touch-load induced artifacts for displays.

This novel methodology can be applied to a wide range of applications from mechanical systems to electrical circuits. The results can be fed into the several stages of engineering validation to speed up product qualification.

Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.

This chapter discusses the cross-sectional relationships between national and local government, citizens and hybrid organisations via a historical case study, that of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) during its existence 1933–1948. It finds that the LPTB was a good example of hybridity located in an earlier time period than most research examines, and that the arrangements by which it was governed resulted in some counter-intuitive outcomes which challenge the findings from research located in more recent periods concerning the performance of hybrid organisations. However, it supports other research proposing that the role of elites as well as institutional contexts is a key factor in the creation and operation of semi-autonomous organisations, and it accepts that objectively measuring the performance in order to make meaningful comparison is not only extremely problematic but may even inhibit performance.

Organizational behavior scholars have long recognized the importance of a variety of emotion-related phenomena in everyday work life. Indeed, after three decades, the span of research on emotions in the workplace encompasses a wide variety of affective variables such as emotional climate, emotional labor, emotion regulation, positive and negative affect, empathy, and more recently, specific emotions. Emotions operate in complex ways across multiple levels of analysis (i.e., within-person, between-person, interpersonal, group, and organizational) to exert influence on work behavior and outcomes, but their linkages to human resource management (HRM) policies and practices have not always been explicit or well understood. This chapter offers a review and integration of the bourgeoning research on discrete positive and negative emotions, offering insights about why these emotions are relevant to HRM policies and practices. We review some of the dominant theories that have emerged out of functionalist perspectives on emotions, connecting these to a strategic HRM framework. We then define and describe four discrete positive and negative emotions (fear, pride, guilt, and interest) highlighting how they relate to five HRM practices: (1) selection, (2) training/learning, (3) performance management, (4) incentives/rewards, and (5) employee voice. Following this, we discuss the emotion perception and regulation implications of these and other discrete emotions for leaders and HRM managers. We conclude with some challenges associated with understanding discrete emotions in organizations as well as some opportunities and future directions for improving our appreciation and understanding of the role of discrete emotional experiences in HRM.

The paper proposes that public sector organizations facing institutionalized reform pressure may not only integrate the reform into their operation when it fits but also pace the integration while undergoing organizational cultural transformations to fit with the reform. The newly cultivated cultural characteristics, nonetheless, need to be compatible externally with the ideational basis of the reform and internally with existing values and beliefs embodied by the organizations.

Building on a neo-institutionalist perspective, the paper develops a model which considers the possibilities and conditions that local cultural change in the reforming organizations may facilitate reform integration. To test the model's analytical potential, the paper analyzed reform responses of semi-autonomous agencies from Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden under the New Public Management (NPM) reform. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression models were performed on the survey data collected from agency heads (or representative) during the peak of the reform trend. Analyzing this sample of later adopters whose government generally enjoyed high degrees of capacity and autonomy provided a preliminary test to the model's potential.

Significant statistical relations were found between the adoption of operation-level NPM practices and the extent that an agency's cultural characteristics fit with both the ideational basis of NPM and the exiting value-belief mix the agency embodied. Agency characteristics of “proactive responsiveness” and “goal-oriented cooperation” were found significantly related to adoption of NPM practices, showing the possibility of cultivating local cultural changes in reforming organizations.

While compatible with neo-institutionalist emphasis on local continuity, the paper describes an alternative scenario of reform integration for public managers.