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To preserve both cultural collections and historical buildings that house them, a technologically simple yet robust climate control system was installed in the Historic Archive of the Canary Islands. The archive is located in a municipal building, a late nineteenth century massive masonry building in the city of La Laguna, on Tenerife Island, Spain. The system was designed to maintain the RH level necessary for preventing microbial activities on collections in cultural institutions, by operating residential‐type ventilators and a convective heater under a humidistatic control. We have confirmed that the system not only successfully eliminated events of high relative humidity but also stabilized the climate. The annual temperature variation was significantly reduced, although daily variations increased. The room's moisture content was reduced to less than that of the outside, and microbial activities were reduced in the environment. The system was simple to install and inexpensive to operate.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways in which scholars have proposed organizational forms combining elements of markets and hierarchies. These hybrid forms are based on networked connections and bottom‐up entrepreneurship, fostering knowledge sharing among semi‐independent units. Despite their suitability to knowledge‐intensive companies, scholars are divided on their views on governance in internal hybrids. While knowledge management scholars emphasize soft community‐like dimensions, organizational economists seek to reduce opportunism through hard hierarchical governance. Because these views act as complementaries, this paper synthesizes them to present organizational governance in internal hybrids.

A case study with 56 interviews describes the functioning of soft and hard governance mechanisms in the Japanese company Maekawa Manufacturing Ltd.

The case study indicates that soft and hard governance mechanisms work in complementary ways in a successfully implemented internal hybrid.

Internal hybrids tend to function most efficiently with a mix of soft knowledge management practices and hard control devices.

Instead of taking an “either/or” perspective, this paper seeks to synthesize contrasting views of knowledge management and organizational economics.

This paper aims to propose a multi-scale simulation approach for the concrete macro-mechanical damage caused by mixed micro-pore pressures, such as the coupled alkali–silica reaction (ASR) and freeze-thaw cycles (FTC).

The micro-physical events are computationally modeled by considering the coupling effect between ASR gel and condensed water in the mixed pressure and motion. The pressures and transport of pore substances are also linked with the concrete matrix deformation at macro-scale through a poro-mechanical approach, and affect each other, reciprocally. Once the crack happens in the nonlinear analysis, both the micro-events (water and gel motion) and the macro mechanics will be mutually interacted. Finally, different sequences of combined ASR and FTC are simulated.

The multi-chemo mechanistic computation can reproduce complex events in pore structures, and further the macro-damages. The results show that ASR can reduce the FTC expansion for non-air-entrained concrete, but may increase the frost damage for air-entrained concrete. The simulation is examined to bring about the observed phenomena.

This paper numerically clarifies the strong linkage between macro-mechanical deformation and micro-chemo-physical events for concrete composites under coupled ASR and FTC.

The purpose of this paper is to explain a new scandal ingredient in Japanese politics called sontaku. This word refers to cases when officials grant special treatment to a project because they believe they are acting in accordance with the wishes of an associated powerful person.

This paper describes the specific construction of major scandals involving sontaku from 2017 based primarily on newspaper accounts, examines the consequences of these scandals for politicians and bureaucrats, and discusses their implications for combating corruption in Japan.

The scandals after 2017 damaged to some extent the public support for the current Japanese administration and influenced the prime minister's decision to call a snap election. The scandals also highlighted systematic problems in the bureaucracy and motivated the government to reform laws concerning the management of public documents.

This paper will be useful to scholars and policy makers interested in studying the causes and consequences of scandals and political corruption in Japan.

In the past, the profit from property investments was always higher than that from other assets, because of the expectation of high rates of increase in land prices. However, as Japan′s economic growth has been slowing down, these circumstances for property investments have changed. The income yield rate of commercial property investments in Tokyo decreased sharply from 1982 to 1987 because of the sharp increase in land prices. Though commercial land prices in Tokyo have decreased since 1992, the income yield rate is too low because of decrease of office rents. If the income yield rate does not increase, demand for commercial property investments will not recover because a high rate of increase in land prices cannot be expected in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and evaluate how the governments in six Asian countries have dealt with selected grand corruption scandals.

This paper is based on the comparative analysis of 11 corruption scandals examined in the six articles on India, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore included in this special issue of Public Administration and Policy.

The responses of the governments in the six countries depend on the strength of their political will in combating corruption. The responses of the governments in Malaysia, Philippines, India and Japan reflect their weak political will in combating corruption and lack of accountability of the corrupt offenders. By contrast, the strong political will of the governments in Singapore and Macau is reflected in the investigation and punishment of the corrupt offenders without any cover-up of the scandals.

The findings would be of interest to scholars, policymakers and anti-corruption practitioners and activists.

Reviews new applications of robots in the automotive industry. Describes new compact robot designs which can fit into very small spaces and provide greater flexibility in the body shop. Outlines how paint shop technology is evolving to make greater use of robots. Highlights pioneering applications of robots for machining and laser welding.

Universities strategically organize themselves around sustainability, including transformative goals in teaching and learning. Simultaneously, the role of online education has become more prominent. This study aims to better understand the purpose and process of creating online sustainability education (OSE) and to identify challenges and opportunities for implementing these courses and programs to achieve universities’ broader transformative sustainability goals.

This study uses a multiple case study design to research three universities in diverse geographical and institutional contexts (Finland, the USA and Colombia). Qualitative data was collected by interviewing program-related experts (n = 31) and reviews of universities’ strategic documents.

The findings suggest that despite important advances, further attention is merited regarding aligning the purpose of OSE with student learning outcomes, clarifying the values underlying the process of online program/course creation and developing transformative and process-oriented approaches and pedagogies to implement OSE. The authors also highlight emerging challenges and opportunities in online environments for sustainability education in different institutional contexts, including reaping the benefits of multilocality and diverse student experiences regarding sustainability issues.

There is a paucity of studies on university-level sustainability education in relation to online environments. This research expands on the existing literature by exploring three different geographical and institutional contexts and shedding light on the relationship between the practical implementation of OSE and universities’ broader sustainability goals.

Digesting too much information—as well as neglecting key bits of information—often prevents companies from capitalising on emerging opportunities. What is taking place in Japan is a good example.

The potential for improving the quality of working life through increased shopfloor involvement in decision‐making, work redesign experiments, etc., is greater in Japan than in many Western countries because of various historical and cultural factors. Japan has many more examples of worker participation and work humanisation projects than most Western observers realise. The lack of widespread information about these developments is due to the few examples that are reported outside of Japan (in English) and to the difficulties of translating many of the Japanese publications into English. Due to the paucity of literature available in the West we thought it might be useful to examine a sample of the voluminous activities taking place in Japan in the quality of working life field.