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The commercial application of expert systems indicates a role for this technology as a competitive tool in a wise variety of business activities. The ability of an expert system to duplicate the problem‐solving process of a human expert can be utilized in the managerial decisions process. Two potential roles of expert systems in this function are examined: a direct role in decision support and an indirect role in systems support. A discussion of the limitations of current expert systems technology yields several observations concerning the function of expert systems in a decision support environment. A strategy is presented to assist in identifying potential areas for developing expert system applications and evaluating their feasibility.

This paper discusses the importance of the Six Sigma selection process, describes a Six Sigma project in a higher educational institution and presents a weighted scorecard approach for project selection.

A case study of the Six Sigma approach being used to improve student support at a university computer help desk was used. An error related to the timeliness of service was defined and improved over the course of the project.

The Six Sigma approach was useful for improving timely service, but a methodology for selecting the project was needed by the project leader. Using such a methodology would have ensured higher probability of project success.

This framework provides directions for selecting a Six Sigma project in a higher educational setting. The weighted scorecard method is presented and may be used for selecting a project which would likely be the most efficient use of time and resources.

While project selection methodologies have been published with regard to Six Sigma projects in business, this paper fills the need for selection criteria as they relate to higher educational settings.

The six sigma methodology has been successfully implemented in many organizations leading to tremendous quality improvements in products manufactured and services delivered. However, academic institutions have lagged other organizations in implementing six sigma. The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges of implementing the methodology in academia and proposes a framework that serves as a guide for implementing six sigma in academic institutions.

Several unique aspects that differentiate an academic environment from a manufacturing setting for six sigma are identified. A three‐tiered framework to organize the six sigma improvement methodology and related academic performance indicators into a hierarchy fitting academic institution governance levels is proposed. Examples of strategic objectives and performance indicators by levels of implementation for the DMAIC process are also provided.

The findings suggest that the unique structure of an academic institution make it an interesting candidate for implementing six sigma. The three‐tiered framework for six sigma can be used by administrators, faculty, staff and students as an implementation guide.

The paper shows that significant differences between the environments make implementation in many areas within an academic institution challenging. However, there are limitations to the application of six sigma in an academic organization. The six sigma methodology has been more thoroughly developed and refined in manufacturing environments than in service systems such as in a university.

This paper helps to stimulate thinking about the application of a proven quality management methodology to academic settings where structured formal improvement programs such as six sigma are not commonly found.

The value of this paper is to provide a three‐tiered hierarchical structure for applying six sigma in academic organizations.

The development of computer technology, artificial intelligence, and simulation modelling has become increasingly complex, and yet the application of these techniques is necessary for a company to be effective and competitive. However, the end users may not have the necessary sophistication to apply these technologies effectively on their own. Combining these technologies to provide intelligent interfaces may be beneficial to the non‐expert user. Discusses a conceptual knowledge‐based simulation system and illustrates its applicability using a hypothetical manufacturing example. The example focuses on interfacing knowledge from an expert with a simulation model to make scheduling decisions in a manufacturing environement. The knowledge system is constructed using the M.1 expert system package and the simulation is performed using SLAM II.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the ability to researchers of using design of experiments (DoE) as a structured and systematic approach to performing systematic literature reviews. The authors demonstrate a simple case study illustrating the application of DoE in executing a systematic literature review on two popular topics in higher education: academic leadership and Lean Six Sigma.

The methodology involves the systematic literature review of linking academic leadership with terms such as Lean, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, Maturity Model and Continuous Improvement. The main tool used to structure the systematic literature review is a Taguchi Orthogonal Array design, specifically an L16 grid and the method is verified by conducting another review, replacing the term academic leadership with simply leadership.

The approach identified at first no research papers linking the terms; however, when academic leadership was replaced with university, 19 research papers where discovered. The verification exercise, linking just leadership with the other search string generated over 1,000 results – demonstrating that the tool can find large volumes of articles if they exist, the search was completed for a ten year time frame – 2004 to 2014.

The case study focussed on a field which is known to have little current research and the verification exercise deliberately targeted a known large body of research. The authors will continue to use the approach and refine the technique over time.

This approach would help any researcher despite of their discipline to identify opportunities and gaps in the current literature.

The paper shows how DoE can be used in an academic research-based process. No other literature review approach currently exists which uses Taguchi approach to DoE to filter the search criteria.

“The definition of auditing calls for the communication of the degree of correspondence between assertions and established criteria” [ASOBAC, 1973]. As the profession has rejected adoption of universal quantitative definitions of materiality as infeasible [FASB, 1979], Don Leslie [1984] recommended adoption of a standard requiring disclosure of specific engagement materiality thresholds in the auditor's report. This study examines how such disclosures might affect perceptions of an auditor's culpability and liability in instances where post publication errors are discovered which alternately aggregate to more or less than reported materiality thresholds. A behavioral experiment was conducted in which eighty‐seven U.S. general jurisdiction judges participated. Findings support the potential for meaningful modifications to the standard auditor's report to reduce perceived auditor liability but also note the importance of jurists' pre‐experimental attitudes and beliefs respecting the public accounting profession. In 1985, the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants published Materiality: The Concept and its Application to Auditing [CICA, 1985]. In that research study, Don Leslie focused on his perceptions of the communication deficiencies of the standard form audit report used in Canada and the U.S. — the most critical of which he found to be the continuing lack of a quantitative definition of materiality. Leslie's remedy for the problem was novel and controversial even if his recognition of this problem was not without precedent. Leslie did not recommend the prompt adoption of universal, quantitative materiality standards (a proposal which has stalemated progress in the profession for years) but rather adoption of a standard making it compulsory that auditors disclose their individual materiality standards, whatever they may be, on each specific audit, in the audit report. To date, no serious research has examined this proposal since the report's publication, and yet the costs of the communications gap between accounting/auditing professionals and the public seem to be getting greater. The Auditing Standards Board recently readdressed the communications provided by the standard form audit report. One of the clearest observa‐tions to emerge from those deliberations was that there is a lack of reliable research data upon which to base regulatory decisions in this area [Elliott and Jacobson, 1987]. This paper contributes to reduce that vacuum. Specifically, on the following pages we outline the genesis of a research project and the findings of that study in which eighty‐seven (87) U.S. judges evaluated whether and to what degree an altered form of the audit report (including quantitative definition of materiality) would reduce the assessed culpability and legal liability of auditors. The remaining sections of this paper are organized as follows: in section one, we will summarize representative recent relevant literature; in section two, we develop testable hypotheses from that background literature; in section three, we provide a description of the design of our study; in section 4, our findings are reported and in section 5 we discuss implications for practice and future research.

This study aims to examine the Taiwan setting, where audit partners’ names are presented in the audit report and where audit committee formation is voluntary in the initial stage of audit committee reform. This paper investigates the effects of the formation of voluntary audit committees on the selection of individual audit partners, and, in turn, the audit quality. This contrasts with previous studies investigating the relationship between audit committees and auditor selection at the audit firm level.

This paper samples all of Taiwan’s publicly listed firms for the period 2007–2012 and uses Heckman’s (1979) two-stage estimation model to achieve our objectives.

Using different characteristics of individual engagement partners as proxies for a higher quality auditor, the main empirical results show that voluntary audit committee formation is positively related to an industry specialist lead partner and a lead partner that has a larger number of clients. In addition, this paper also finds that voluntary audit committee formation has a positive impact on audit quality (proxied by discretionary accruals). The results suggest that the voluntary formation of an audit committee contributes positively to both auditor selection and audit quality. Furthermore, an additional test shows that the main empirical results are robust to a validity threat that firms that have good corporate governance prior to the formation of voluntary audit committees tend to select high-quality audit partners.

The paper contributes to the audit committee literature in the following ways: this paper takes advantage of Taiwan’s unique setting, where forming an audit committee is not compulsory in the initial stage of audit committee reform, to investigate the voluntary audit committee, auditor selection and audit quality; this paper expands on Abbott and Parker’s (2000) study of audit committee characteristics and auditor selection at the audit firm level by examining this relationship at the individual audit partner level; this paper responds to the call by Church et al. (2008) and DeFond and Francis (2005) who propose more studies on audit quality at the individual engagement partner level.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the qualitative and quantitative knowledge on ultrafine particles in air near a steel making plant located in an Italian site.

A combination of experimental methodologies was used for the online and offline monitoring and chemical characterization of particulate matter (PM) in the air near the plant. Two unfiltered twin-sampling systems were adopted, working when the plant was on/off. All condensed air samples were submitted to Ion Chromatography analysis. The same samples were submitted to acid digestion before Graphite Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy Analysis. Continuous daily PM10 samples were collected to characterize ambient air. PM10 samples were also analysed to estimate metals content. The PM size distribution was achieved by continuous online monitoring. The adopted ultrafine particulate monitor classifies particles in the range 20-200 nm. The overall size distribution was inferred from an Optical Particulate Counter able to classify particles in the range 0.3-10 µm.

The obtained results show that no causal relationship can be found between the measurements of anions and metal in the air near the plant under investigation and the presence of the steel making plant. The trend in emissions of micro-particles was found quite characteristic of similar semi-urban areas.

The paper demonstrates that a steel making plant adopting best available techniques could have a local impact compatible with the surrounding environment.

This paper aims to provide and empirically test a conceptual model in which artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge management processes (KMPs) and supply chain resilience (SCR) are simultaneously considered in terms of their reciprocal relationships and impact on manufacturing firm performance (MFP).

In the study, six hypotheses have been developed and tested through an empirical survey administered to 120 senior executives of Italian manufacturing firms. The data analysis has been carried out via the partial least squares structural equation modelling approach, using the Advanced Analysis for Composites 2.0 variance-based software program.

Using a conceptual model validated using an empirical survey, the study sheds light on the relationships between AI, KMPs and SCR, as well as their impacts on MFP. In particular, the authors show the positive effects of the adoption of AI on KMPs, as well as the influence of KMPs on SCR and MFP. Finally, the authors demonstrate that KMPs act as a mediator through which AI affects SCR and MFP.

This study highlights the critical role of KMPs for manufacturing firms that can deploy AI to stimulate KMPs and through attaining a high level of the latter might succeed in enhancing both their SCR and MFP.

This study demonstrates that manufacturing firms interested in properly applying AI to ameliorate their performance and resilience must carefully consider KMPs as a mediator mechanism.