Search results

Zinc‐Containing Duralumins: Earlier Restricted Use The zinc‐containing duralumins have been around for quite a long time now. However, it is only within the past two decades or so that they have played a major role in aircraft construction, their design use having been restricted by certain aircraft companies because of occasional unpredictable service performance. Accepting the fact that some of the earlier, high strength, aluminium‐zinc alloys had a marked susceptibility to stress corrosion, and that some structural failures were directly attributed to this, it is now an established fact that some real and concrete progress has been achieved in reducing this susceptibility and the status of the modern variants of these alloys, when used for aircraft design purposes, is no longer a question of doubt. The informative article “New High Strength Aluminium Alloy”, by H. A. Holl published in Aircraft Engineering, January 1975, records significant progress in this direction. It covers the successful, sponsored development of 7010, high strength, aluminium‐zinc alloy, by the British Ministry of Defence.

Governments in the US and the UK since the Second World War have taken a keen interest in competition policy. The Thatcher Government in the UK is no exception, and, indeed, a policy of deregulation of the nationalised industries has been instituted, whilst further legislation aimed at reducing the concentration of British industry is likely in the future. In such a political climate merger activity remains an important focus of concern. In this article the authors investigate the relative corporate profitability of growth by merger, including horizontal, vertical and diversifying acquisitions, as compared with that achieved by the internal acquisition of assets, and report on the results of their empirical analysis conducted from data on 52 UK public companies.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

A very different perestroika is currently sweeping through the boardrooms of Europe which will have an impact at least as great as the recent changes in the realpolitik of East‐ West relations. It is the massive industrial reconstruction which is taking place in anticipation of the single European market in 1992. Quietly and with very little publicity companies from every European country have been actively acquiring businesses in all of the EC member states. Between 1985 and 1990 the rate of cross‐border acquiring across Europe has increased five‐fold both in volume and value, with 1989 the first year in which UK companies made more acquisitions in continental Europe than in the USA. Virtually every major European industry — automobiles, banking, chemicals, electronics, food — is in a state of transition, with companies in all of these sectors acquiring and divesting across Europe as they attempt to consolidate their strategic positions. American and Far Eastern competitors are also beginning to line up for a place in a market which many see as having an enormous growth potential.

The Bodleian Binders Book contains nearly 150 pages of seventeenth century library records, revealing information about the binders used by the library and the thousands of bindings they produced. The purpose of this paper is to explore a pilot project to survey and record bindings information contained in the Binders Book.

A sample size of seven pages (91 works, 65 identifiable bindings) to develop a methodology for surveying and recording bindings listed in the manuscript. To create a successful product that would be useful to bindings researchers, it addressed questions of bindings terminology and the role of the library in the knowledge creation process within the context that text encoding is changing the landscape of library functions. Text encoding formats were examined, and a basic TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) transcription was produced. This facilitates tagging of names and titles and the display of transcriptions with text images.

Encoding was found not only to make the manuscript content more accessible, but to allow for the construction of new knowledge: characteristic Oxford binding traits were revealed and bindings were matched to binders. Plans for added functionality were formed.

This research presents a “big picture” analysis of Oxford bindings as a result of text encoding and the foundation for qualitative and statistical analysis. It exemplifies the benefits of interdisciplinary methods – in this case from Digital Humanities – to enhance access to and interpretation of specialist materials and the library's provenance record.

The earth is under massive stress due to current level of consumption which has crossed the sustaining capacity of our planet. Thus, the need of the hour is to promote sustainable production and consumption. The purpose of this study is to identify the basic barriers of sustainable consumer behaviour which are hindering the adoption of sustainable consumption.

This article is divided into two parts. The first part consists of a literature review based on 128 articles (1995 to 2020), which are spread over a period of 25 years. Based on the literature review, nine barriers of sustainable consumer behaviour were identified and put into three categories. In the second part, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process has been used to know about the relative weight of each barrier so that benchmarking/prioritising of basic barriers of sustainable consumer behaviour can be done.

This article identifies critical barriers affecting the acceptance of sustainable electronic products. High price, a perception of no environmental impact, no benefit in personal image, lesser use by family and friends, lack of awareness about the products etc. emerged as the potential barriers which need prime attention. The relative weight of each of these barriers has also been arrived at in this article which is expected to be beneficial for policymakers to focus upon important barriers. Impact of many of these barriers can be reduced through innovative approaches and solutions.

This article will be helpful in future research in the field of sustainable consumer behaviour. Through the understanding of the barriers of sustainable consumer behaviour, companies, governments and industries can take suitable initiatives by modifying the policies and practices to reduce the impact of these barriers so that consumer behaviour can be made more sustainable.

The current article tries to identify the critical barriers to adoption of sustainable electronic products by the consumers. An extensive literature review, expert suggestions and consumer survey have been adopted to identify nine barriers. Although, multiple researches have been done in the field of sustainable consumer behaviour and adoption of sustainable electronic products, there is no research article which solely focuses on implementing Fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (AHP) approach to rank the barriers faced by consumers for adoption of sustainable electronic products. It has been concluded that high price of sustainable electronic products is the most critical barrier in adoption of sustainable consumer behaviour. Moreover, the relative ranking obtained with the help of Fuzzy AHP can be used by policymakers and organisations to promote and implement sustainability in consumer behaviour.

Considerable research has been conducted into the outcomes of vocational lifelong learning (VLL) funding in terms of courses offered and their effectiveness, but much less into the work, professional development needs and careers of staff organising and delivering VLL programmes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the career management and development needs of such university staff.

A survey was conducted of VLL professionals in higher education to establish the position and their future prospects.

A survey revealed that experienced VLL staff are being required, in some cases unwillingly, to move away from activities concerned with external training to take on work in areas such as technology transfer and general student recruitment. This development is likely to be to the detriment of VLL provision by universities.

VLL staff identify further knowledge of new developments in the field, stronger IT skills, and competence in conducting research as their major development needs.

The paper puts forward some concrete suggestions for improvements.

Examines the disastrous industrial accidents globally since the Second World War. Change and innovation development have accelerated dramatically through this century. The war itself influenced various developments. Argues that environmental problems are problems of development. Bhopal, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, Kuwait’s oil wells and Siberian pipelines are all used as examples. Industrial activity and social change have increased vulnerability to man‐made hazards. Hazardous industries tend to be sited nearer the poorest and most vulnerable people, making the effects of any disaster even greater. Discusses the changing attitudes to man‐made disasters ‐ from fatalistic resignation to a desire to gain greater control. Assessment, legislation and mitigation have meant improvements and are indicators of willingness and ability to handle the threats.

Organic food market has grown rapidly on a global level and so is the interest of customers. The present paper ranks the factors and sub-criteria which are taken into consideration while making organic purchase decisions resulting in understanding the behaviour of consumers.

The present paper considered a sample of 550 respondents in the area of Punjab. Fuzzy AHP technique was applied to understand the key factors and sub-criteria which play a major role in organic food purchase decisions. The paper is empirical and descriptive in nature. The factors considered for the study include price, consumer knowledge, trust, attitude, behavioural intentions, subjective norms, perceived personal relevance and perceived consumer effectiveness.

The three major influential factors include price, trust and attitude ranked in the same order of preference which majorly affects the purchase decisions and talking about sub-criteria the three major criteria to purchase organic food include: “Price plays a significant role in purchase decisions (P2)”, “Organic food keeps me fit and healthy (A1)” and “Organic food intake makes me feel energetic (A2)”.

The present paper is limited to the area of Punjab and majorly eight factors have been taken into consideration. Further research can be explored on broader geographical and cultural areas with new dimensions in criteria and sub-criteria.

The findings of this paper will surely help the marketers to understand the behavioural intentions and preferences of the customers. Accordingly, they will strategize the policies to convert organic food market into a niche market with a high growth rate.

The existing literature explored various key factors. However, the present study comes up with ranking to the factors according to their priority in purchase decisions. This will definitely help marketers, business houses, practitioners and academicians about the key factors which affect purchase decisions, and it will surely add incredible knowledge into the existing database.

This study aims to investigate if different types of negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) have various negative effects on the attitude of the consumer toward a product (Laptop) and whether this newfound attitude remains unaffected by the subsequent influence of positive eWOM.

A quantitative study in Germany was conducted. In the two-part experimental setting, first, a factorial repeated-measures between-subjects design was used in which the types of negative eWOM have been manipulated. The second part is characterized by a mixed between–within subjects design to test the durability of attitudinal changes.

The results demonstrate that destructive and ethical eWOM only provoke a small decline in consumer attitude compared to functional product criticism. Furthermore, the examination shows that renewed positive eWOM can improve the attitude, whereas ethical criticism is the most difficult to correct.

The study views negative eWOM differentiated. Researchers could adopt this approach by analyzing online communication more precisely. Ambivalent relationships between negative eWOM and their outcomes can be explained.

The findings lessen the fear of permanent loss of brand reputation caused by negative reviews. The harmful effects on the attitude can be compensated through targeted marketing management actions. The study shows which content companies need to focus on.

Previous literature has predominantly overlooked the complex nature of negative eWOM. Therefore, the study provides first empirical results about the divergent effect of different content types of negative eWOM on consumer attitude toward a product. Additionally, the durability of consumer negativity could be measured over time.