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This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Developing individual relationships to drive multilateral, open communication, has the greatest power to connect all levels of an organization to a unifying strategy. This should be a primary consideration in both the due diligence and implementation stages of a cross-border merger/acquisition to ensure a successful transition. The organization considering/executing the merger/acquisition should look inward first, to its own practices, to make necessary adjustments and establish a foundation for integration.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the time-splitting Fourier spectral (TSFS) method to solve the fractional coupled Klein–Gordon–Schrödinger (K-G-S) equations. A time-splitting spectral approach is applied for discretizing the Schrödinger-like equation and along with that, a pseudospectral discretization has been accurately utilized for the temporal derivatives in the Klein–Gordon-like equation. Furthermore, the time-splitting scheme is proved to be unconditionally stable. Numerical experiments guarantee high accuracy of the TSFS scheme for the K-G-S equations. Here, the derivative of fractional order is taken in the Riesz sense.

The focus of this paper is to study the Riesz fractional coupled K-G-S equations using the TSFS method. This method is dependent on evaluating the solution to the given problem in small steps, and treating the nonlinear and linear steps separately. The nonlinear step is made in the time domain, while the linear step is made in the frequency domain, which necessitates the use of Fourier transform back and forth. It is a very effective, powerful and efficient method to solve the nonlinear differential equations, as in previous works (Bao et al., 2002; Bao and Yang, 2007; Muslu and Erbay, 2003; Borluk et al., 2007), the initial and boundary-value problem is decomposed into linear and nonlinear subproblems. Summarizing the technique of the TSFS method, it can be stated that first the Schrödinger-like equation is solved in two splitting steps. Then, the Klein–Gordon-like equation is solved by discretizing the spatial derivatives by means of the pseudospectral method.

The utilized method is found to be very efficient and accurate. Moreover, the time-splitting spectral scheme is found to be unconditionally stable. By means of thorough study, it is found that the spectral method is time-reversible, is gauge-invariant and also conserves the total charge. Moreover, the results have been graphically presented to exhibit the accuracy of the proposed methods. Apart from that, the numerical solutions have been also compared with the exact solutions. Numerical experiments establish that the proposed technique manifests high accuracy and efficiency.

To the authors’ best knowledge, the Riesz fractional coupled K-G-S equations have been for the first time solved by using the TSFS method.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

David Gordon was, at once, a highly creative economist with an enormous range of interests, while also uncompromising in maintaining rigorous research standards. He focused equally on hard-core academic research and pressing policy issues. He was also openly committed to the political left, with this commitment animating all his work. One distinctive feature of Gordon’s work was his keenness to dive into the most important topics engaging mainstream economists and to inject explicitly left political economy perspectives into these mainstream debates. This paper focuses on two important examples of Gordon’s contributions that examine front-and-center mainstream macroeconomics questions. The first is the relationship between aggregate saving and investment. The second is the development of the concept of the “natural rate of unemployment.” The evolution of mainstream research on these two questions played a critical role in overturning what had been, over the first two post-World War II decades, a prevailing Keynesian/social democratic consensus, at both the levels of analytic economics as well as economic policy. As the paper reviews, Gordon challenges the analytic findings and policy implications of these perspectives at their core. Gordon’s own basic premises and results are straightforward. He argues that, in fact, investment decisions, not saving rates, are the main driver of economic activity in capitalist economies and that operating capitalist economies at something akin to genuine full employment – that is, in the range of 2–3 percent official unemployment – is a realistic goal. As such, these papers by Gordon contribute significantly toward envisioning a post-neoliberal social structure of accumulation that is committed to the egalitarian principles that were central to Gordon’s life work.

Solder quality is a critical issue in circuit board production. However, the manufacturing process of today has few built‐in controls to ensure good solder quality. Instead, attention is only paid when a defect is found. The solution lies in the integration of inspection, test and process control. Now a new method, Scanned‐Beam Laminography, takes 3‐dimensional X‐ray slices of solder joints, enabling thorough inspection of each joint. Special software algorithms measure and report the solder joint conditions, creating a system which provides real‐time process control.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how legitimacy as “an entrepreneur” is gained in relation to others during the nascent phase.

The author studies two firm creating teams over a 12‐month incubation period. Data collected through participant observation, documentation and interviews are emploted as narratives in order to explore how nascent entrepreneurs gain legitimacy through social interaction. Positioning theory is used to explore how negotiated rights and duties are employed towards legitimacy‐gaining strategies.

Conforming, selecting and manipulating strategies are used to gain legitimacy during a process of firm creation through interactive dialogue with key stakeholders (role‐set). Positioning facilitates a process of negotiated rights and duties that helps to define the role of “entrepreneur” to which the nascent entrepreneurs aspire.

The study is bounded to a specific contextual setting and thus initial findings would benefit from further investigation in comparable and control settings. Findings illustrate the ways in which nascent entrepreneurs employ legitimacy‐gaining strategies through interaction with key stakeholders, an area of research not well understood. This contributes to an understanding of how entrepreneurial identity is developed.

Designed firm creation environments can facilitate interaction with key stakeholders and support positioning of nascent entrepreneurs as they attempt to gain legitimacy in the role of “entrepreneur”, while creating a new firm. Legitimacy‐gaining strategies can strengthen entrepreneurial identity development, which can be applied to multiple entrepreneurial processes.

The article accesses individuals in the process of becoming entrepreneurs, a phenomenon most often studied in hindsight. Emphasis on stakeholder interaction as contributing to entrepreneurial development is also understudied. Legitimacy‐gaining strategies are explored through narratives using positioning theory, an approach which has been discussed conceptually but not readily applied empirically.

Substitution of lead‐free solders in electronic assemblies requires changes in the conventional Sn:Pb finishes on substrates and component leads to prevent contamination of the candidate solder. Options for solderability preservative coatings on the printed wiring board include organic (azole or rosin/resin based) films and tin‐based plated metallic coatings. This paper compares the solderability performance of electroless tin coatings versus organic azole films after exposure to a series of humidity and thermal cycling conditions. It is shown that the solderability of immersion tin is directly related to the tin oxide growth on the surface and is not affected by the formation of Sn‐Cu intermetallic phases as long as the intermetallic phase is protected by a surface Sn layer. For a nominal tin thickness of 60 ?inches, the typical thermal excursions associated with assembly were not sufficient to cause the intermetallic phase to consume the entire tin layer. Exposure to elevated temperatures, in the presence of humidity, promoted heavy tin oxide formation which led to solderability loss. In contrast, thin azole films were shown to be more robust to humidity exposure; however, upon heating in the presence of oxygen, they decomposed and led to severe solderability degradation. Evaluations of lead‐free solder pastes for surface mount assembly applications indicated that immersion tin significantly improved the spreading of Sn:Ag and Sn:Bi alloys compared with azole surface finishes.