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The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between memory (short- and long-term), a foundational cognition in learning and face-to-face, video-based and flipped instructional modalities.

This study used a one-way analysis of variance and linear regression analyses to compare students’ aggregated answers on multiple-choice questions over two different periods, including a repeat question from an earlier examination. Also, student-level answers were subjected to a binary logistic regression.

Face-to-face unambiguously was associated with superior short-term memory including ethics. Video-based performance was associated with a superior long-term memory, and flipped’s performance lay in between for both memory types.

This study does not account for students’ learning styles, instructors’ preferred teaching approach and computer-aided virtual simulations.

The findings of this study may serve as a reference point for optimally blending multiple instruction modalities to leverage its association with memory for learning matched to instructors’ styles, students’ curricular pathway and coping with institutional imperatives.

This paper provides a way for higher education institutions to match instructional modalities to memory needs, including business ethics as students’ progress on their pathways towards graduation.

This study illuminates the association between memory, a widely accepted foundational cognition in learning that has been under researched compared to critical thinking and reasoning, and three instructional modalities: face-to-face, video-based and flipped classroom.

Outsourcing of information technology jobs outside the USA has resulted in social costs in the form of mass layoffs and displaced workers. The purpose of this paper is to show the social cost of outsourcing from a transaction cost economics (TCE) perspective.

The paper analyses the incidences of mass layoffs in sectors prone to outsourcing and its consequences on displaced workers. Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) and the Displaced Workers Survey (DWS) data generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), USA, between 1996 and 2010, are examined for this purpose.

Outsourcing as a reason for mass layoffs has continued to persist up until 2010. Displaced workers experienced earnings losses after job losses and reemployment. The more educated workers had higher post displacement reemployment rates, while older persons suffered the most earnings losses.

The data pertain to the period 1996 to 2010, including the “Dot Com Bubble Bust” and the “Great Recession.” Changes in data collection methods by BLS over this time period makes it difficult to compare some of the data.

For policy makers, managers and workers, this study focuses attention on the outsourcing by information technology dependent sectors and the accompanying social costs in the form of displaced workers.

Most papers focus on the efficiency gains of outsourcing but this paper focuses attention on the social cost of outsourcing, which is under‐researched and often overlooked.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on previous research and propose a framework for evaluating interest‐based bargaining (IBB) around three criteria: efficient, amicable and wise, where mutual gains are not self‐evident.

This paper reviews both survey and case study research on IBB in the USA and Canada. Based on trends discerned in the data, the paper uses the three criteria to present research and propositions on evaluating the IBB process.

IBB connects front stage acts by negotiators during collective bargaining with backstage environments and fosters collaboration hinging on dialogue across competing values involving online and offline processes during negotiations. Where mutual gains are not self evident, there these findings underpin criteria for evaluating the IBB process’s potential to serve enduring values of industrial democracy and employee voice and the newer values of collaboration and partnership in strategic decision making.

The amicable criterion predisposes the framework favorably towards amicable relations, which creates a favorable bias within the framework towards the IBB process when compared to other bargaining processes. There is a need for updated quantitative data on IBB trends at a national level, similar to the three FMCS surveys last reported in 2004, and a need for institutional linkages that will increase case study research on IBB, similar to recent research on Kaiser Permanente.

Negotiators, trainers and policy makers will gain from the criteria listed here to evaluate IBB where mutual gains are not self‐evident.

The framework presented in the paper advances an original framework to evaluate IBB.

Traditionally, industrial power supplies have been exclusively controlled through analog control to sustain high reliability with low cost. However, with the perpetual decrement in cost of digital controllers, the feasibility of a digitally controlled switch mode power supply has elevated significantly. This paper aims to outline the challenges related to the design of digital proportional-integral (PI) controlled synchronous rectifier (SR) buck converter by comparing controller performance in continuous and discrete time. The trapezoidal approximation-based digital PI control is designed for low voltage and high-frequency SR buck converter operating under continuous conduction mode.

The analog and digital controller are designed using a SISO tool of MATLAB. Here, zero-order hold transform is used to convert the transfer function from continuous to discrete time. Frequency and time domain analysis of continuous plant, discrete plant and close loop system is performed. The designed digital PI control is simulated in MATLAB Simulink. The simulated results is also verified on hardware designed around digital signal processing control.

The continuous and discrete control loops are validated with multiple tests in the time and frequency domain. The detailed steady state theoretical analysis and performance of the SR buck converter is presented and verified by simulation. It is found that the delay in digital control loop results in a low phase margin. This phase margin decreases with higher bandwidth. The hardware experiments with the digital control loop are carried out on a 10 W prototype. The chosen parameters for the SR buck converter are found to be optimum for steady and transient state response.

This paper compares the digital and analog control approach of compensator design. It focuses on the implications created at the time of transforming the control design from continuous to discrete time. Further, it also focuses on the selection of parameters such as phase margin, bandwidth and low pass filter.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the application of business process reengineering (BPR) and benchmarking principles to redesign an undergraduate course on BPR to achieve continuous improvements. The principles are applied on a course on BPR in the curriculum of engineering management (EM) program at Stevens Institute of Technology. The EM program aims to provide the students the knowledge and skills, which are necessary to work effectively at the interface between technology, management, and engineering. BPR course (EM435) is recently added to EM program's curriculum to support the need for providing the bridge between the engineering of systems and business operations.

The research approach design is laid out from the time the EM435 course is first offered in the fall of 2006 to the senior year EM students. The students are surveyed and areas of redesign and improvements are identified based on benchmarking against ABET criteria and their associated outcomes, student expectations, similar academic courses, and industry expectations of skills and knowledge.

The identification of the improvement areas in the BPR curriculum leads to a continuous process improvement (CPI) initiative, which has been continued in a more structured manner. Research findings indicate a strong support for more case studies, use of BPR tool, and real‐life project in their investigation of effective pedagogy for teaching BPR to engineering undergraduates.

This paper demonstrates the value of applying benchmarking and CPI methodology in maintaining effective teaching and learning of BPR concepts. More empirical metrics can be developed in future to measure the success of course, improvements.

The findings of this research will promote adoption of courses on BPR and lay a foundation for BPR curriculum in engineering. The CPI approach will provide opportunities to analyze improvements over a period of time.

This paper is unique in its application of benchmarking and CPI for improving BPR curriculum at an undergraduate engineering level.

The case is written on the basis of published sources only.

Doodlage, a start-up incorporated in 2012 by Kriti Tula, Paras Arora and Vaibhav Kapoor, used discarded waste to create sustainable fashion products. It had a first-mover advantage in recycled fashion goods in the first 10 years of its existence. The company contributed to sustainable fashion by providing an alternative to fast fashion production, creating enormous clothing waste and environmental degradation. In the first quarter of 2022, it saved and reused 15,000 m of fabric waste. From 2018 to 2021, the company grew 150% annually, targeting the right customers and regions to expand its business. It ensured that postproduction industrial waste and postconsumption garments were used to produce clothes. It also confirmed that the waste generated in its fabric screening process was used to create stationery items and other valuable accessories.

However, the sustainable fashion model that gave the company a competitive advantage became obsolete in 2022 due to increasing competition in the industry as various players using unique ideas entered the market. The company is encountering operational and logistical challenges that are affecting its performance. The demand for its products was also subdued due to high prices of upcycled and recycled clothes and less consumer spending post-COVID pandemic. The competitors of Doodlage offered multiple products produced using environmentally friendly farming and manufacturing techniques, attracting sustainable purchasers. What should be the new portfolio of products for the company to explore future growth opportunities? Considering their vast price, can consumers be encouraged to buy upcycled clothes? How should the company ride the winds of change in the industry?

The instructor should initiate the class discussion by asking questions such as how frequently do you shop for clothes? Do you care about the fabric of your apparel? After you discard your clothes, do you think about where these goods finally end up? Data on the amount of total waste generated in the fashion industry should be communicated to students to connect it with the importance of the concept of circular economy. Post this, the instructor should introduce the business model of Doodlage to bring the discussion into the context of the fashion industry before going ahead to discuss the company’s dilemma.