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To achieve higher customer satisfaction (CS), companies implement continuous improvement (CI) programs, regardless of the growing evidence of their failure to achieve declared goals. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify whether companies are able to improve CS through the application of CI; and, second, to identify what organizational practices are able to facilitate the impact of CI on CS.

To test the developed assumptions, the study uses the structural equation modeling technique. The data for analysis were collected from 304 service companies via a custom web-survey.

The research confirms the direct positive impact of CI on CS. Further, the study demonstrates that management commitment and rewards system that encourages employees to participate in CI play the major facilitating role in improving CS through CI. These practices accompanied by quality-oriented culture and employee training in the improvement tools provide necessary infrastructure to sustain CI in the companies over time. Additionally, regardless of the vital role of goal setting for CI established in previous research, the proposed study finds a limited ability of goal setting, as compared to other organizational practices, to facilitate CI–CS relationship.

The study contributes to the scarce field of research on CI implementation in the services environment. Further, the research assesses CS as a variable of interest, as opposite to the previous studies, considering CS as a part of the composite variable. The research assesses the impact of the training in CI methodology on the CI–CS relationship, while previous research focuses on the general, work-related training. The findings provide an important basis for further academic work in the area of quality management. The identified practices can serve as guidance for managers, implementing CI in their companies due to the high fit of the proposed model.

The participatory action research project described in this chapter took place with an established campaigning and research organisation in Manchester. The young activists who were part of the work were all living without legal status in the UK, and had all been failed by the asylum system and cast as the ‘abject’ (Tyler, 2013) and unwanted. Building upon decades of protest against racist and ‘othering’ polices in Britain (Copsey, 2016; England, 2019), the project illustrates a powerful example of young people who are very much on the margins, neglected and disbelieved by the state, and vilified by wider society and deliberate distortions of what it means to ‘seek asylum’, coming together to activate and find a voice in public to call for justice and change. Utilising Voloshinov’s (1929/1986) method of ‘language creation from below’ to create a shared understanding of their experiences in the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ (Goodfellow, 2019), the young activists engaged in consciousness-raising together to explore the commonality of their lives as ‘(young) people seeking asylum’. Rejecting the dominant ideological sign of ‘asylum seeker’, they created a play, ‘Faceless’, to depict the reality of their experiences, to present a counterstatement (Voloshinov, 1929/1986), in the public sphere (Fraser, 1990), and to exercise what Castells (2015) refers to as ‘counterpower’.

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of two parallel boosters fixed to the ILR 33 AMBER 2 K core rocket stage on its aerodynamic characteristics in the subsonic and transonic regimes and for M = 2.3.

Wind tunnel tests of the rocket model were carried out in a trisonic wind tunnel using a six-component internal balance. Three rocket model configurations were investigated.

The results of the presented studies showed that the presence of boosters causes a significant increase in the total rocket drag, which depends on both the Mach number and the rocket flight phase. Experimental tests of the rocket model allowed to determine the difference in drag coefficient between active and passive flight versus Mach number. It was found that, in the case of a deviation from the rocket’s flight direction, the aerodynamic coefficients strongly depend on the location of the boosters in relation to the direction of the deviation.

Studies of the rocket model aerodynamic characteristics allow the assessment of the influence of parallel boosters on rocket performance, which is important when the decision of a rocket staging type is taken.

The presented wind tunnel test results of the rocket model equipped with the two parallel boosters are an original contribution to the rocket research results presented in the literature.

This paper reviews existing research to understand when, how and with what results robotic process automation (RPA) is implemented by organizations.

The authors have identified 84 sources across eight databases and have analyzed them through the lens of a context–intervention–mechanism–outcomes framework (CIMO). The CIMO analysis maps the contextual drivers, intervention approaches and value related outcomes associated with RPA implementation.

The result of the analysis is the identification of four mechanisms explaining the approach organizations take to implement RPA: digitizing business processes, performing knowledge work together with humans, replacing outsourcing with RPA robots and developing a new business model. Therefore, in this paper, in order to reduce RPA literature fragmentation, the authors take into account the digital transformation (DT) perspective, by considering RPA as one example of digital technology.

This study sensitize organizational adopters to the different mechanisms they can deploy to conduct RPA implementations to achieve different desired outcomes in response to different drivers. Moreover, having a clear picture of the key enablers and associated barriers to the realization of these alternative paths serve as a useful map to guide the implementation process.

The findings contribute to DT research by conceptualizing these mechanisms through which organizations deploy automation tools—such as RPA.

We examine the influence of ownership structure on a blockholder’s power in a firm. We first describe the presence and ownership stakes of blockholders in a comprehensive sample of US firms. We develop a measure of the influence of the ownership structure on a blockholder’s power and show that an average blockholder loses 12% of her potential power due to the presence and size of the ownership stakes of other blockholders. Further, the influence of ownership structure varies systematically with a blockholder’s rank and identity, with the second and nonfamily manager blockholders experiencing the largest loss of power.

With the foundation of the National Quality Circle Society in the Federal Republic of Germany, a forum has been established for small group work and the promotion of Quality Circle ideas. The number of firms in the FRG who use Quality Circles is growing and a historical account is provided. Examples of Quality Circle work in German firms is given.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the articles presented in the Special Issue on the topic of “Marketing and flexibility”, and to discuss key issues associated with major debates relating to flexibility in order to position the articles within a wider context and highlight some key issues for further research.

Themes in prior research relating to “Marketing and flexibility” are documented and the growth of research interest into strategic flexibility is tabulated. The contributions of each article are briefly discussed.

There has been a steady growth of research interest into flexibility. To provide an example of this growth, the increase in the number of articles published on the topic of strategic flexibility in scholarly journals is highlighted over a 20‐year period. Key issues in prior research such as alternative definitions and the different postulated relationships between market orientation and strategic flexibility are revealed, as are issues for future research.

Key issues relating to research into flexibility for marketing scholars are revealed.

Engineering components/structures with geometric discontinuities normally bear complex and variable loads, which lead to a multiaxial and random/variable amplitude stress/strain state. Hence, this study aims how to effectively evaluate the multiaxial random/variable amplitude fatigue life.

Recent studies on critical plane method under multiaxial random/variable amplitude loading are reviewed, and the computational framework is clearly presented in this paper.

Some basic concepts and latest achievements in multiaxial random/variable amplitude fatigue analysis are introduced. This review summarizes the research status of four main aspects of multiaxial fatigue under random/variable amplitude loadings, namely multiaxial fatigue criterion, method for critical plane determination, cycle counting method and damage accumulation criterion. Particularly, the latest achievements of multiaxial random/variable amplitude fatigue using critical plane methods are classified and highlighted.

This review attempts to provide references for further research on multiaxial random/variable amplitude fatigue and to promote the development of multiaxial fatigue from experimental research to practical engineering application.