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Benchmarking is a powerful tool that, when applied properly, provides an organization with invaluable insights to support the achievement of their objectives. This paper describes how the results of a consortium benchmarking study on performance measurement were used to develop an audit template. A recognized benchmarking methodology was used consisting of five phases: plan, collect, analyze, adapt and review. The resulting performance measurement audit template can be used as a basis to examine and improve performance measurement in organizations.

The purpose of this viewpoint is to provide a perspective on political and military leadership in a current geo‐political situation, with some reflections on how this relates to other public services.

This paper makes use of historical and political sources in order to reflect on current aspects of leadership in public services.

Throughout history, Afghanistan has often played a pivotal role between the superpowers of any particular era. In the ancient world, the Greeks of Alexander the Great's Macedonian hegemony: Persians; Mongols under Genghis Khan and his successors; and a host of other groups have vied for control, often leaving ethnic traces within a complex tribal and ethnic makeup in modern Afghanistan. In the nineteenth century it was part of the “Great Game” between Great Britain and Russia; in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries, there have been both Soviet and NATO incursions; and now, Afghanistan retains a pivotal role between India and Pakistan, China, Iran and former Soviet Republics. NATO is engaged in a task of “declared nation building”, and also to ostensibly make the streets of Western cities safe. But is this not just a “great game” but a “grand illusion”? Afghanistan has often been internally divided, but has never welcomed foreign domination, an experience which tends to bring Afghans together against the invader. Foreign troops, however well intentioned, propping up an unpopular central government, usually leads to resentment and the opposite of what was intended.

This paper links a number of perspectives to assist in the understanding of how and when strategies follow the wrong path.

Outlines the comprehensive training and development programme embarked upon by Prudential Life Administration and designed to raise customer service levels and improve productivity through Total Quality Management. Discusses training techniques and the key deliverables. Suggests that TQM means forever and that the emphasis needs to be placed on the future rather than on the past.

The Lesley University PhD program in Educational Studies offers a new specialization in adult learning and development. This hybrid, interdisciplinary degree is geared toward mid-career professionals in higher education, community services, non-formal adult learning, and a number of other fields. Since 2008, the program has graduated 36 students whose dissertations have a strong focus on practitioner research. This case study covers the planning process of an interdisciplinary faculty team responding to the need for educators to teach and research adult learners. The guiding philosophy of adult learning and the delivery method of this competency-based curriculum are explained. Students present a research interest upon application and begin to develop a dissertation question in their first year. They attend a weeklong campus residency every semester where they work on competencies through workshops and lectures. This is followed by online course completion in dialogue with faculty mentors and peers. Students finish 45 credits before beginning the dissertation. The importance of a cohort learning community, advising as pedagogy, online support, library resources, qualifying examination, pilot study, and dissertation preparation are discussed. Data gathered from a current self-study highlight both the strengths and the challenges posed by this unique program.

This study aims to investigate the causes of leakage in radial oil seals under dynamic eccentricity, elucidate the influence of operating parameters on leakage failure and develop methods for predicting and preventing such leakage.

Based on the principle of cam motion and considering viscoelasticity, develops a motion model of the compression and release of the shaft seal and proposes a method to determine its failure. In addition, this study quantifies the leakage gap and formulates a quantitative calculation model to accurately determine the location and shape parameters of the leakage gap.

Leakage gaps predominantly occur during the release phase of the shaft seal. Their presence can be identified by comparing the descending times of the seal and the shaft during this phase. An increase in rotation speed and eccentricity heightens the likelihood of gap formation, with both the dimensions and leakage rate of the gap increasing as these factors escalate. Eccentricity, in particular, has a more pronounced effect on gap formation.

This study clarifies the failure mechanisms of radial oil seals under dynamic eccentricity and introduces a criterion for identifying leakage gaps, providing valuable theoretical guidance for the design and optimization of radial oil seals.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2024-0192/.

In recent times, there has been some disquiet within certain sectors of the Singapore business community over the role of auditors in detecting corporate fraud. The cause of this concern can perhaps be attributed partly to the Barings collapse in February 1995 and the subsequent suggestions that the auditors of the Barings subsidiary in Singapore, Barings Futures Singapore Pte Ltd (BFS), may have been negligent in their audit work. More recently, in mid‐1996, a substantial locally listed company, Amcol Holdings Ltd (Amcol), was placed under judicial management amid rumours alleging possible misdeeds by senior executives and directors. The Amcol saga has, once again, focused some attention on the role of auditors and their duty to detect fraud in company accounts.

This paper aims to study the motion trajectory of the oil seal for shaft in eccentric state and derive equation of lip motion trajectory.

This paper analyzes the force during the motion of the eccentric lip by considering the material viscoelasticity, and a cam-plate mechanism is established as an equivalent model for the motion between the shaft and the lip; according to this, the equation of lip motion trajectory is derived.

The trajectory of the lip lags that of the shaft in the eccentric state because the viscoelasticity-affected lip recovery velocity is lower than the shaft recovery speed. The lip trajectory enters the lag phase earlier and the lag phase’s duration is longer with the increase of the eccentricity and rotational speed, because the deviation of the recovery velocities between the lip and the shaft will be exacerbated.

Innovatively, by considering the viscoelasticity of the material, the cam-plate mechanism is used to equivalent the motion of the shaft-lip to derive the equation for the radial motion trajectory of the eccentric lip. The regularity of lip motion is the key to determining the performance of oil seals, and the eccentric lip trajectory research method revealed in this paper provides a research basis for the performance research and optimization of eccentric oil seals.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-06-2023-0161/

Microfoundations of institutions are central to constructing place – the interplay of location, meaning, and material form. Since only a few institutional studies bring materiality to the fore to examine the processes of place-making, how material forms interact with people to institutionalize or de-institutionalize the meaning of place remains a black box. Through an inductive and historical study of Boston’s North End neighborhood, the authors show how material practices shaped place-making and institutionalized, or de-institutionalized, the meaning of the North End. When material practices symbolically encoded meanings of diverse audiences into the church, it created resonance and enabled the building’s meanings to withstand environmental change and become institutionalized as part of the North End’s meaning as a place. In contrast, when the material practices restricted meaning to a specific audience, it limited resonance when the environment changed, was more likely to be demolished and, thus, erased rather than institutionalized into the meaning of the North End as a place.