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The design of optical fibres for applications where many performance targets have to be met simultaneously is a non‐trivial process. An evolutionary strategy (ES) combined with an algorithm to model the appropriate fibre parameters was used to design an optical fibre suitable for long haul high bandwidth communications. The ES code was developed using an object oriented approach and a parallel version was also incorporated. This allowed for the rapid implementation and subsequent design of fibres with properties of interest. Design constraints arising from the fibre manufacturing process were incorporated.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of organizational crisis and organizational change management and to provide a guide to crisis prevention, management and recovery by highlighting critical actions to be taken during each stage of an organizational crisis. A second aim is to compare the crisis management of two financial firms during the 2007 financial crisis: Lehman Brothers and Paulson & Company.

The methodology involved a review of the literature and a case analysis related to organizational crisis and organizational change management. The synthesis of these two approaches is a conceptual paper. Furthermore, the article is supplemented by comparing the management of the 2007 financial crisis by both Lehman Brothers and Paulson & Company in an attempt to compare the literature findings to a global organizational crisis.

The literature suggests that organizations with early crisis detection methods and crisis management plans already in place before the onset of a crisis are significantly better prepared to manage and survive a crisis event. In addition, these better prepared organizations have the opportunity to reposition themselves and turn a crisis event into a strategic opportunity. This is evident in the authors' comparisons of both Lehman Brothers' and Paulson & Company's different management of the 2007 financial crisis.

The demand for crisis management is on the rise as the 2007 financial crisis exposed the lack of preparedness among financial institutions, challenged the assumptions crisis management plans were based on and required a regulatory transformation of financial markets. Surviving firms are recovering and learning from the crisis as their crisis management proved to be ineffective.

The scope of this paper offers readers a guide to organizational crisis management, supplemented with examples from a financial crisis that affected almost every organization in the world and from which many organizations are still recovering. Any organization, regardless of industry, can benefit from the guide presented in this research. Moreover, the framework of this paper can enable practitioners to formulate and improve their organization's crisis management plans and capabilities.

The purpose of this two‐part article is to discover why gender plays a significant role in attaining leadership positions. More specifically this article provides a thorough review of the different gender leadership styles, next it outlines the findings regarding whether one gender is more effective than the other on certain dimensions. The article presents the findings of how certain leadership perceptions have evolved. Finally the article will review the challenges faced by women in business contexts.

The authors reviewed a wide array of published works on “gender and leadership” to gain insight on this broad topic. Next, the authors narrowed down their review to focus on four specific aspects of the said topic: gender leadership styles, gender effectiveness on certain dimensions, leadership perceptions and challenges women face.

The literature on the reviewed four aspects suggests that the most effective leadership style is transformational leadership – the style of leadership that is most often associated with women. It was also found that certain behavioral traits found in female managers are considered to be more effective when dealing with employees, such as empathy, supportiveness, and relationship building. However, there are other traits such as vision where male managers tend to rank better than female managers.

The use of a literature review may be perceived as limiting but the scope and breadth of contemporary data and empirical finding utilized in this article has more than compensated for this issue.

The number of working women has and continues to increase, yet the number of women in senior positions of organizations remains nearly unchanged as women are still perceived as inferior leaders when compared to men.

Women are perceived as being less capable than men in leadership roles, thus hindering their aspirations to climb the corporate ladder. What is more, women also find themselves struggling with issues such as the glass ceiling and glass cliff effect as well as balancing both motherhood and career obligations, limiting their workplace advancements.

A useful source to provide arguments as to how and why women demonstrate excellent managerial skill sets. Also, the ill‐conceived communication silos regarding the perceived notion that women are deemed inferior leaders when compared to their male counterparts are challenged.

This paper aims to report two studies with the purpose of demonstrating and establishing the efficacy of using an alternative method of operationalizing relative brand attitudes based on Cheung's latent congruence model (LCM).

Data are collected concerning brand attitudes related to their product (study 1) and retailer (study 2) preferred and best alternative brands. Structural equation modeling is used to demonstrate and validate the LCM model, as well as to relate relative brand attitudes to satisfaction judgments and loyalty behaviors.

Two separate samples of respondents across two unique marketing settings (product and retailer brands) support the LCM‐based view of relative brand attitude proposed herein. In addition, results suggest that preferred brands are most strongly related to satisfaction with the preferred brand, however, relative brand attitudes are alternatively related to preferred brand loyalty. Thus, relative brand attitudes appear to have both direct and indirect (through satisfaction) influences on brand loyalty.

Practical implications include the availability of a usable method of operationalizing relative brand attitudes in a way that fully utilizes hedonic/utilitarian attitude scale for absolute and relative brand attitudes measures and can control for measurement error. The proposed method thus provides a means to strengthen measurement models associated with relative brand concepts.

The reported studies offer an alternative and practical method of measuring relative brand attitudes in a way that results in practical insights about consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Pew and Mavor (1998) called for an integrative representation of human behavior for use in models of individual combatants and organizations. Models with integrated representation of behavior have only been achieved at rudimentary levels according to those performing the studies (e.g. Pew & Mavor, 1998; Tulving, 2002) and those building the models (e.g. Warwick et al., 2002). This chapter will address aspects of cognitive performance that are important to incorporate into models of combat based on acceptance of theory, strength of empirical data, or for other reasons such as to bridge gaps where incomplete knowledge exists about cognitive behavior and performance. As a starting point, this chapter will assess which of Pew and Mavor’s recommendations are still appropriate as determined by a review of selected literature on cognition and its representation. We will also provide some review and extensions of key literature on cognition and modeling and suggest a way ahead to close the remaining gaps. Different aspects of cognition are described with recent findings, and most are followed by an example of how they have been represented in computer models or a discussion of challenges to their representation in modeling.

The overall functioning of this system is based on two approaches: construction and supervision. The first is conducted entirely by the machine, and the second requires the intervention of the designer to collaborate with the machine. The morphological translation of urban rules is sometimes contradictory and may require additional external relevance to urban rules. Designer arbitration assists the artificial intelligence (AI) in accomplishing this task and solving the problem.

This paper provides a method of computational design in generating the optimal authorized bounding volume which uses the best target values of morphological urban rules. It examines an intelligent system, adopting the multi-agent approach, which aims to control and increase urban densification by optimizing morphological urban rules. The process of the system is interactive and iterative. It allows collaboration and exchange between the machine and the designer. This paper is adopting and developing a new approach to resolve the distributed constraint optimization problem in generating the authorized bounding volume. The resolution is not limited to an automatic volume generation from urban rules, but also involves the production of multiple optimal-solutions conditioned both by urban constraints and relevance chosen by the designer. The overall functioning of this system is based on two approaches: construction and supervision. The first is conducted entirely by the machine and the second requires the intervention of the designer to collaborate with the machine. The morphological translation of urban rules is sometimes contradictory and may require additional external relevance to urban rules. Designer arbitration assists the AI in accomplishing this task and solving the problem. The human-computer collaboration is achieved at the appropriate time and relies on the degree of constraint satisfaction. This paper shows and analyses interactions with the machine during the building generation process. It presents different cases of application and discusses the relationship between relevance and constraints satisfaction. This topic can inform a chosen urban densification strategy by assisting a typology of the optimal authorized bounding volume.

The human-computer collaboration is achieved at the appropriate time and relies on the degree of constraint satisfaction with fitness function.

The resolution of the distributed constraint optimization problem is not limited to an automatic generation of urban rules, but involves also the production of multiple optimal ABV conditioned both by urban constraints as well as relevance, chosen by the designer.

Wives of Unemployed Men. Volume 16 Part 3 of the Journal of Social Policy contains a survey article by Kenneth Cooke entitled “The Withdrawal from Paid Work of the Wives of Unemployed Men: A Review of Research”.