Patrick Aubin, Kelsey Petersen, Hani Sallum, Conor Walsh, Annette Correia and Leia Stirling
Pediatric disorders, such as cerebral palsy and stroke, can result in thumb-in-palm deformity greatly limiting hand function. This not only limits children's ability to perform…
Abstract
Purpose
Pediatric disorders, such as cerebral palsy and stroke, can result in thumb-in-palm deformity greatly limiting hand function. This not only limits children's ability to perform activities of daily living but also limits important motor skill development. Specifically, the isolated orthosis for thumb actuation (IOTA) is 2 degrees of freedom (DOF) thumb exoskeleton that can actuate the carpometacarpal (CMC) and metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints through ranges of motion required for activities of daily living. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
IOTA consists of a lightweight hand-mounted mechanism that can be secured and aligned to individual wearers. The mechanism is actuated via flexible cables that connect to a portable control box. Embedded encoders and bend sensors monitor the 2 DOF of the thumb and flexion/extension of the wrist. A linear force characterization was performed to test the mechanical efficiency of the cable-drive transmission and the output torque at the exoskeletal CMC and MCP joints was measured.
Findings
Using this platform, a number of control modes can be implemented that will enable the device to be controlled by a patient to assist with opposition grasp and fine motor control. Linear force and torque studies showed a maximum efficiency of 44 percent, resulting in a torque of 2.39±1.06 in.-lbf and 0.69±0.31 in.-lbf at the CMC and MCP joints, respectively.
Practical implications
The authors envision this at-home device augmenting the current in-clinic and at-home therapy, enabling telerehabilitation protocols.
Originality/value
This paper presents the design and characterization of a novel device specifically designed for pediatric grasp telerehabilitation to facilitate improved functionality and somatosensory learning.
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Stephanie Anne Shelton, Kelsey H. Guy and April M. Jones
This paper aims to consider the ways that students are shaped by and shape community and critical literacy, along with the ways that community affords student empowerment in an…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to consider the ways that students are shaped by and shape community and critical literacy, along with the ways that community affords student empowerment in an English class during a US high school summer enrichment program.
Design/methodology/approach
The qualitative methodological approach is a narrative-based descriptive case study. To provide a detailed and narrative-based discussion, the authors incorporate ethnographic observation narratives and conversational interview excerpts, and analyze the data through inductive coding.
Findings
Organizing the findings into two sections, “These kids are rebelling”, and “We’re trusting him to teach and do better now”, we first examine the ways that student-led rebellion reshaped the classroom community and then the ways that the teacher's response redefined critical literacy approaches and his interactions with the students.
Research limitations/implications
As this is a qualitative case study that is set during a summer enrichment program, its implications are not wholly generalizable to secondary English education. However, this research does suggest the importance of student agency in considerations of community and critical literacy.
Practical implications
This research emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and exploring ways that students' everyday interactions and agency shape educational spaces. Additionally, this research suggests the importance of community and critical literacy to all teachers, no matter their levels of experience or success.
Social implications
Students have tremendous potential to not only shape and define learning environments, but to transform pedagogy and teacher relationships. This research emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and exploring these implications specifically to transform community and critical literacy in a summer high school English classroom.
Originality/value
First, this paper examines student community as an agentive and rebellious influence within the everyday constructs of schooling, and the authors assert that critical literacy pedagogies may be student-driven as part of community-based activism. Second, this paper seeks to explore both “community” and “critical literacy” as key concepts in positioning students as influential and empowered stakeholders with capacities to reshape education.
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Rebecca Page-Tickell, Jude Ritchie and Therese Page-Tickell
This chapter aims to identify the impact of misbelief and heuristics on the engagement of giggers and customers with gigging organisations. This is of value due to the plethora of…
Abstract
This chapter aims to identify the impact of misbelief and heuristics on the engagement of giggers and customers with gigging organisations. This is of value due to the plethora of gigging opportunities and our lack of knowledge about how and why people choose to take up these opportunities. In addition, the gigs may frequently go unrecorded with payments made through systems such as PayPal which can allow international payments to be made without remittances. This chapter utilises some of the primary evolutionary theories to explore the efficacy and conflict in communications between gigging organisations, their customers and providers (giggers). Those selected are: misbelief in the conscious mind; and heuristics, such as the availability and confirmatory heuristics in the unconscious mind. Misbelief is addressed as a spandrel, and heuristics are discussed through the lens of fast and frugal approaches. Through a text analysis of 77 international gigging organisations, the messages conveyed are assessed against both evolutionary theory and prior research into the gig economy. The findings are that evolutionary psychology provides a useful framework for analysing these messages, as well as aiding understanding of gigging behaviours. HRM practitioners could make use of this form of analysis to support their design of interactions with giggers to ensure clarity on both sides.
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Hank C. Alewine and Timothy C. Miller
This study explores how balanced scorecard format and reputation from environmental performances interact to influence performance evaluations.
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores how balanced scorecard format and reputation from environmental performances interact to influence performance evaluations.
Methodology/approach
Two general options exist for inserting environmental measures into a scorecard: embedded among the four traditional perspectives or grouped in a fifth perspective. Prior balanced scorecard research also assumes negative past environmental performances. In such settings, and when low management communication levels exist on the importance of environmental strategic objectives (a common practitioner scenario), environmental measures receive less decision weight when they are grouped in a fifth scorecard perspective. However, a positive environmental reputation would generate loss aversion concerns with reputation, leading to more decision weight given to environmental measures. Participants (N=138) evaluated performances with scorecards in an experimental design that manipulates scorecard format (four, five-perspectives) and past environmental performance operationalizing reputation (positive, negative).
Findings
The environmental reputation valence’s impact is more (less) pronounced when environmental measures are grouped (embedded) in a fifth perspective (among the four traditional perspectives), when the environmental feature of the measures is more (less) salient.
Research limitations/implications
Findings provide the literature with original empirical results that support the popular, but often anecdotal, position of advocating a fifth perspective for environmental measures to help emphasize and promote environmental stewardship within an entity when common low management communication levels exist. Specifically, when positive past environmental performances exist, entities may choose to group environmental performance measures together in a fifth scorecard perspective without risking those measures receiving the discounted decision weight indicated in prior studies.
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The purpose of this paper is to improve construction project planning capabilities. As project management is a core capability in the construction industry, high‐quality project…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to improve construction project planning capabilities. As project management is a core capability in the construction industry, high‐quality project planning processes are necessary for project success.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper involves data collected from 555 project managers across four industries spanning three different countries. The project planning capabilities of construction project managers are compared with other industrial sectors. In addition, critical project planning processes for the construction industry are identified.
Findings
It is found that, relative to other industrial sectors, organisations belonging to the construction sector obtain a high quality of project planning and the highest success rate. In comparison with other sectors, schedule, quality, and procurement planning are most frequently executed in construction projects. Finally, the impact of the different planning processes on project is success are investigated. The processes that have the greatest impact on project success in the construction sector are “activity definition” and “project plan development.” However, construction project managers do not always invest enough effort in these critical planning processes.
Practical implications
Construction project managers wishing to improve project performance at the planning phase of a project should concentrate more on the accurate identification of all project activities. They should focus on the development of a high‐quality project plan that can be approved by key stakeholders.
Originality/value
This paper identifies the most critical planning processes in construction projects. This represents new information for the construction management body of knowledge.
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Simplice Asongu, Sara le Roux, Jacinta Nwachukwu and Chris Pyke
The purpose of this paper is to investigate loan price and quantity effects of information sharing offices with information and communication technology (ICT), in a panel of 162…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate loan price and quantity effects of information sharing offices with information and communication technology (ICT), in a panel of 162 banks consisting of 42 African countries for the period 2001–2011.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks in 42 African countries for the period 2001–2011. Misspecification errors associated with endogenous variables and unobserved heterogeneity in financial access are addressed with generalized method of moments and instrumental quantile regressions.
Findings
The findings uncover several major themes. First, ICT when integrated with the role of public credit registries significantly lowered the price of loans and raised the quantity of loans. Second, while the net effects from the interaction of ICT with private credit bureaus (PCBs) do not improve financial access, the corresponding marginal effects show that ICT could complement the characteristics of PCBs to reduce loan prices and increase loan quantity, but only when certain thresholds of ICT are attained. The authors compute and discuss the policy implications of these ICT thresholds for banks with low, intermediate and high levels of financial access.
Originality/value
This is one of the few studies to assess how the growing ICT can be leveraged in order to reduce information asymmetry in the banking industry with the ultimate aim of improving financial access in a continent where lack of access to finance is a critical policy syndrome.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of USA Executive Order 13224, one of the most important US counter‐terrorist finance measures, on corporations operating in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of USA Executive Order 13224, one of the most important US counter‐terrorist finance measures, on corporations operating in countries with designated terrorist organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
The effects of Executive Order 13224 are focused on the case of Chiquita Brands International, a major US banana‐exporting corporation that operated in Uraba, Colombia until 2004. The US Government prosecuted Chiquita for “engaging in transactions” with an illicit, Colombian paramilitary group considered by the US a Foreign Terrorist Organization and as a specially‐designated global terrorist. This paper presents the duress defense that Chiquita could have raised at trial under US federal law.
Findings
Executive Order 13224 was drafted hastily and under pressure leading to over‐inclusive language and over‐broad implementation. Chiquita's case suggests that Executive Order 13224, drafted with the intention of reducing terrorist funding, has made it possible for an extortion victim to be prosecuted for payments it has not chosen to make. This paper will suggest narrowly tailoring the language of Executive Order 13224 or providing an exculpatory provision.
Research limitations/implications
Counter‐terrorist finance measure Executive Order 13224 has not been sufficiently examined by scholars. Research on this topic should go hand in hand with enquiry into possible defenses for corporations operating in countries with designated terrorist organizations and having to make extortion payments.
Practical implications
Suggestions are put forward for corporations operating in countries with designated terrorist organizations as well as for drafters of counter‐finance terrorist measures.
Originality/value
Although the designation of terrorist organizations under the executive order has been discussed, few scholars have addressed cases of over‐broad application of the executive order. The unexamined case of Chiquita is a unique case in that the extortion victim, and not the extortion perpetrator, is prosecuted. Also, Chiquita was prosecuted for an activity (making extortion payments to the Autodefensas Unidas Campesinas that became a crime after Chiquita began its engagement with such an activity. Furthermore, examining this case thoroughly is important because it has repercussions on at least two public policy levels: the US' War on terrorism and the rights and remedies of corporations investing in countries with designated terrorist organizations.
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Trace Instruments have announced that Mr Tony Battaglia has been named central regional sales manager.