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Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Agency theory postulates that research and development (R&D) investments are subject to managerial discretion and thus may not enhance firm value as expected. The inconclusive empirical findings in the literature is a testament of that. This paper aims to investigate the interplay between board gender diversity (i.e. women on boards) and value relevance of firms’ effort to innovate as indicated by firms’ R&D investments.

Through a sample of 1,626 US-listed firms from the period 2004 to 2019, the authors examine whether board gender diversity promotes or hampers value relevance of firms’ efforts to innovate. The authors use ordinary least squares as the baseline model and address potential endogeneity through instrumental variable two-stage least square, and selection bias through Heckman selection model. Finally, the authors use the financial crisis of 2008 as a natural experiment to investigate the effect of board gender diversity during the crisis period.

The results show that board gender diversity positively moderates the relation between R&D and firm value. In times of financial crisis, R&D does not destroy firm value in firms with gender diverse board. The results are robust to measurement error, endogeneity issue, particularly simultaneity and selection bias.

The findings in this study have several practical implications. Firms that invest heavily in R&D should be mindful of gender diversity in their board recruitment strategies to enhance innovation outputs and firm value. Current and potential investors (i.e. shareholders) should take into consideration board gender diversity in their investment decision-making processes as the results show that gender diverse boards promote more effective governance, which, in turn, leads to better alignment of R&D investments with shareholder value. Regulators aiming to improve corporate governance policies should encourage gender diversity on the boards. The results align with global initiatives such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goal 5 on gender equality. Policymakers may use the findings in this study to advocate for more gender diverse governance structures within corporations.

This study investigates the role gender diverse boards play in creating value from firms’ R&D activities.

In the big data era, image compression is of significant importance in today’s world. Importantly, compression of large sized images is required for everyday tasks; including electronic data communications and internet transactions. However, two important measures should be considered for any compression algorithm: the compression factor and the quality of the decompressed image. In this paper, we use Frei-Chen bases technique and the Modified Run Length Encoding (RLE) to compress images. The Frei-Chen bases technique is applied at the first stage in which the average subspace is applied to each 3 × 3 block. Those blocks with the highest energy are replaced by a single value that represents the average value of the pixels in the corresponding block. Even though Frei-Chen bases technique provides lossy compression, it maintains the main characteristics of the image. Additionally, the Frei-Chen bases technique enhances the compression factor, making it advantageous to use. In the second stage, RLE is applied to further increase the compression factor. The goal of using RLE is to enhance the compression factor without adding any distortion to the resultant decompressed image. Integrating RLE with Frei-Chen bases technique, as described in the proposed algorithm, ensures high quality decompressed images and high compression rate. The results of the proposed algorithms are shown to be comparable in quality and performance with other existing methods.

The purpose of this paper is to further extend the work of Weng and Chen (2009) by considering heat generation/absorption nature of fluid.

Exact solution of momentum equation is derived separately in terms of Bessel’s function of first and second kind for heat-generating fluid and modified Bessel’s function of first and second kind for heat absorbing fluid.

During the course of numerical computations, it is found that skin friction and rate of heat transfer at outer surface of inner cylinder and inner surface of outer cylinder increases with the increase in heat generation parameter while the reverse trend is found in the case of heat absorption parameter.

In view of the amount of works done on natural convection with internal heat generation/absorption, it becomes interesting to investigate the effect of this important activity on natural convection flow in a vertical annular micro-channel. The purpose of this paper is to further extend the work of Weng and Chen (2009) by considering heat generation/absorption nature of fluid.

The question of how the firm responds to performance feedback forms the backbone of the behavioral theory of the firm. Although the literature works with goals aspirations and additional determinants of a firm’s search activity – proximity to bankruptcy and slack resources – the majority of the empirical research assumes the firm’s response to performance feedback to be linear with a spline at the aspiration level. The purpose of this paper is to study possible curvilinear properties of performance feedback itself that may yield insight on the behavior of firms responding differently from the theory’s predictions.

The research uses data from exchange-listed German industrial firms followed from 2001 to 2015. It evaluates hypotheses using historical aspiration models with ROA as a measure of performance and with a spline specification. The fixed-effects panel data models serve as an estimation technique.

The research supports an inverted U-shape relationship between performance feedback and research and development (R&D) intensity for firms below their aspiration levels, and a U-shape relationship for firms above their aspiration levels.

The research is one of the first to directly study curvilinearity in performance feedback relationships. Arguably, there is no such a study directly focusing on a firm’s search as represented by R&D, despite the fact, that R&D forms the backbone of performance feedback research. Also, the population of German industrial firms is new in the literature.

Boards of directors of large companies all over the world frequently have a certain number of shared directors, which can be motivated by social structures that foster different types of links, including investments and vertical relationships. The purpose of this paper is to identify the effects that board interlocking exerts on innovation, considering the different nature of shared directors that finally determines the type of links dominating the boards.

Panel regression analyses were conducted using data collected from 69 Spanish listed innovative sector companies during the period 2010–2014, which provided an unbalanced panel of 325 data observations.

The results suggested that the typology of interlocks determined their effects on innovation, which had a positive influence when independent and extra-industry directors held multiple directorships, whereas it was negative in the case of intra-industry and women interlocking directors.

This study provided evidence for the diverse effects of interlocking directorates and contributed to the open debate on the best board composition for improving business innovation, considering the common feature of shared directorships.

The value of this research was twofold. On the one hand, the study considered a wide typology of interlocking directorates, such as women, affiliated and independent directors, intra- and extra-industry directorships, as well as shared directors from the same country. On the other hand, the effects of these different interlocking directorate typologies were analysed on innovation by considering different innovation indicators.

This study aims to examine whether exploitative and exploratory overseas R&D have independent and significant effects on emerging economy multinational enterprises' (EMNEs’) innovation performance and whether top management team (TMT) nationality diversity and openness have a moderating effect on these relationships.

This study analyzes data collected from Chinese-listed manufacturing enterprises for 2007 to 2018.

Empirical results show that both exploitative and exploratory overseas R&D can help improve EMNEs' innovation performance. The authors further find that TMT nationality diversity and TMT openness strengthen the aforementioned relationships.

This study presents the first empirical evidence showing whether and when exploitative and exploratory overseas R&D have independent and heterogeneous effects on EMNEs' innovation performance.