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This paper discusses the impact of aesthetic design of smartphones on users' emotional reactions and preferences towards the product. To this end, the paper presents a study that explores emotional reaction of males to varying aesthetic design of the BlackBerry and empirically evaluates their preferences for the BlackBerry in different colours and overlay patterns. The paper then presents the statistical results of the study in an innovative graphical representation.

A quantitative and qualitative research design was used, including three types of data‐collection instruments (direct observations, rating scales, and interviews) to investigate if males have a stronger positive emotional reaction for visually treated BlackBerry Pearl devices over the original treatment (piano black) of the BlackBerry Pearl. A one‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out with an independent within subjects variable “Pattern” with ten different levels (i.e. ten different visual treatments).

The study indicates that varying the aesthetic design of the BlackBerry Pearl has an impact on emotional reaction of males. However, it was found that males in this population sample prefer the original, piano black treatment of the BlackBerry Pearl over the visually treated versions of the smartphone. Participants reported significantly higher scores for the original treatment of the smartphone, piano black (mean=5.5) than for other visual treatments such as skittles (mean=2.8).

The paper gives an insight the mobile phone industry and the effect that phones have had on people, who see them as a fashion accessory, as well as a communicating tool.

This study aims to understand the extent to which scholarly networks are connected both in person and through information and communication technologies, and in particular, how distance, disciplines, and motivations for participating in these networks interplay with the clusters they form. The focal point for our analysis is the Graphics, Animation and New Media Network of Centres of Excellence (GRAND NCE), a Canadian scholarly network in which scholars collaborate across disciplinary, institutional, and geographical boundaries in one or multiple projects with the aid of information and communication technologies. To understand the complexity in such networks, we first identified scholars’ clusters within the work, want-to-meet, and help networks of GRAND and examined the correlation between these clusters as well as with disciplines and geographic locations. We then identified three types of motivation that drove scholars to join GRAND: practical issues, novelty-exploration, and networking. Our findings indicate that (1) scholars’ interests in the networking opportunities provided by GRAND may not easily translate into actual interactions. Although scholars express interests in boundary-spanning collaborations, these mostly occur within the same discipline and geographic area. (2) Some motivations are reflected in the structural characteristics of the clusters we identify, while others are irrelevant to the establishment of collaborative ties. We argue that institutional intervention may be used to enhance geographically dispersed, multidisciplinary collaboration.

This paper aims to reveal developments in sensors applied to packaging lines.

Machine vision systems including special‐purpose smart cameras and a high‐speed camera are examined. The technology of radio frequency identification (RFID) is explained, and some products relevant to packaging are highlighted. Advances in X‐ray, metal detection and gas‐leak detection equipment are discussed.

Manufacturers are making smart cameras and high‐speed cameras easier to use. There is a trend for manufacturers to provide portable as well as in‐line instrumentation, for example, in code readers and gas leak detectors. RFID is an emerging technique for improving traceability in the supply chain, and some labelling machines additionally program an embedded chip.

Tracks the latest developments in sensors for engineers in the food and pharmaceutical packaging industries.

This paper investigates the moderating influence of cultural values on the relationship between governance and risk in large-scale infrastructure development projects. It integrates cultural psychology theory into interactive governance theory as a moderator of managerial perceptions of external debt as an effective rule-based risk management framework for these projects.

Mixed method integrating quantitative analysis with qualitative insights based on a survey of managerial perceptions in large-scale renewable energy, road and rail projects in Kenya and linear regression was used to test the hypothesis.

Managerial perceptions of country risk, project-specific external debt structure, carbon risk and cultural values significantly influenced their infrastructure risk perceptions. Demographic factors such as gender, years of experience, project tenure, board membership and socio-economic settings moderately influenced these risk perceptions. With 597 responses, the study expands on interactive governance theory by showing that cultural values and certain demographic attributes among managers moderate their view of external debt as an effective rule-based risk management framework for large infrastructure projects.

Cultural values must be appraised when tailoring governance incentives to bolster managerial productivity and performance in mitigating risks in collaborative infrastructure projects.

This paper supports the hypothesis that cultural values moderate the interaction between governance and risk when the historical context incentivises managers to select defensive social learning techniques such as herding to avoid reputational performance risks in collaborative infrastructure projects.

This article aims to explore how mainstream popular cinema, usually a vehicle of effortless and accessible entertainment, produces or reproduces prevailing discursive constructs about managers, management and corporate firms and provides a cultural reading of organizations. Using a post-structuralist framework, it seeks to deconstruct the representations of managers in several popular films. It aims to propose that the analysis of this representation allows complex questions about the nature of power in organizations and the “opportunity costs” of resistance to be addressed.

This article focuses on the discursive formation of managers and employees in popular films. The films were chosen using a popularity measure on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and treated as “visual narratives”. A variation of Rose ' s discourse analysis method was used. To critically view the films, a post-structuralist perspective was adopted, in which questions of power, gender and sexuality are seen as fundamental. Gender is a discursive practice that becomes material through the power and resistance subjectified by the human body while “truth” is referenced through specific words and images – so constructed by the “reality” of popular culture.

The analysis reveals two seemingly competing discourses surrounding the representations of managers that encompass both a description of power and the resistance to this power. In this sense, although popular films position subjects – managers and those managed – in very specific ways, at the same time their construct of power is highly contextual and open to change. This finding leads to, first, a Foucauldian understanding of power and, second, a reconceptualization of power and resistance as one and the same construct, power/resistance, that may help address the “where”, “who”, and “why” of resistance that has previously been ignored.

The article brings popular culture to center stage in organization studies and argues that by not paying attention to its power to inform, society is cut off from valuable knowledge about how management is “done”. The article also reveals that although on surface the representations of managers in films seem to reinforce the dominant discourse of the “macho” manager, at the same time, a second representation – the bright, eager, usually working-class employee who wants to emulate the boss but then “sees the light” and becomes a “hero” – is offering a critique of this construct, making popular culture potentially subversive.

The goal of this research has been to design and field test a multi‐use planetary rover vehicle. SCOUT has been developed to test advanced rover hardware and software technologies and to enable the development and demonstration of mission operations concepts applicable to future planetary rover vehicle development activities.

This paper presents a description of the SCOUT vehicle capabilities and the results of the remote field testing conducted recently in Meteor Crater, AZ. These tests included (among others) onboard driving by suited crewmembers, remote teleoperation, autonomous point‐to‐point navigation, obstacle avoidance, human tracking and following, gesture recognition and onboard suit‐recharge.

SCOUT was successfully tested in all three driving modes (onboard by two suited crewmembers, teleoperation and autonomous) and additional capabilities verified over the course of the testing period.

Various tests experienced periodic telemetry drop‐outs to the vehicle. Future research should improve upon the communications architecture to minimize the loading on system bandwidth.

A multi‐use planetary rover will prove very useful on future Lunar and Martian exploration missions on an assortment of activities. In addition to equipment transport, riding on the rover will allow crewmembers to cover more surface area while conserving important extravehicular activity suit consumables.

Several new concepts for rover technologies are presented here including on‐board suit recharge, stereo‐vision human tracking and following, gesture recognition and autonomous driving and navigation.

Leaders often provide negative feedback to underperforming followers with the intention of helping improve their performance. However, the anger expression that is often involved in the delivery of the feedback may cause followers to infer negative intentions and, thus, harm the effectiveness of the leader. The purpose of this paper is to examine, from a relational perspective, the condition under which the negative effect of leader anger expressions on leader effectiveness can be alleviated.

Data were collected from 355 participants in total through two main studies and two validation studies.

The author found that leader anger expression in negative feedback delivery had detrimental effects on leader effectiveness through follower-inferred negative intentions. More importantly, the detrimental effects of leader anger expressions on leader effectiveness were alleviated when followers had high levels of trust in their leaders.

Integrating leader emotion and trust literatures, the present research is the first to examine from a relational perspective (i.e. follower trust) the boundary condition under which leader anger expressions influence leader effectiveness.

The paper offers insights on the response of a Big4 firm to the COVID-19 crisis vis-à-vis moral considerations. More specifically, the authors draw on Bauman's (1990) “moral impulse” to explore how the interrelated tactics of distancing, effacement of the face and reduction of people to traits tend to weaken moral considerations and negatively influences decisions and actions.

The authors adopt a qualitative approach that involves an interpretive textual analysis of the COVID-19 responses of a Big 4 accounting firm. Their study uses two vignettes in which they problematise aspects of the actions and ethico-social contribution of a Big4 firm in the heat of a global pandemic.

The findings reveal examples of effacement of the human face (depersonalization/dehumanization) and reduction of persons to traits, as well as excessive distancing between the “doing” actors and those individuals who bear the consequences of those actions. Revealing an opportunity lost, the authors’ vignettes indicate that the reduction to traits tactics led to dissembling and dehumanizing employees into resources that perform tasks that are “value-add” for the organisation, consonant with neoliberal ideologies.

The common limitations of qualitative approach apply to the current study for generalisability. The authors also rely heavily on publicly available information given the time frame they were faced with and their chosen research approach.

Drawing on accounting delineation debates, the paper calls for societal dialogues for reshaping the “official” accounting of events.

The authors elaborate moral impulse through the interrelated tactics of distancing, effacement of the face and reduction to traits, during a crisis. Their study mobilises a moral evaluation through which they uncover documented responses by a Big4 firm during the COVID-19 crisis. The study shows how the norms of human action have been systematically cut off from the original moral habitat and subordinated, and evaluated according, to business standards.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.