Search results

The purpose of this paper is to provide a design and material selection guideline for a plastic ball grid array (PBGA) package in order to improve its reliability and manufacturing ability after post mold cure.

Numerical experiments based on a three‐dimensional (3‐D) viscoelastic finite element method have been conducted to evaluate governing damage mechanisms after post mold cure (PMC) for PBGA packages. The parametric studies for the PBGA package with various molding compounds have been performed. A wide range of the modulus (1MPa∼15GPa) and the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) (10ppm∼300ppm) are evaluated to see feasibility of a new class of material set in the molding compound. Effects of thermo‐mechanical properties of selected molding compound on the warpage and residual stress of the PBGA are analyzed.

The present study shows that the material properties such as modulus and CTE of molding compounds play an important role in warpages and reliability of PBGA packages. After post mold cure, compressive normal stress σ_xx is observed in the silicon die, while tensile stress occurs in the rest of the PBGA package. The maximum normal stress σ_xx is observed at the center of the silicon die and decreases near the edge of the package. As the coefficient of thermal expansion of the silicon die is substantially less than that of the molding compound or substrate, the molding compound and the substrate are trying to shrink more when temperature decreases and in turn compressing the silicon chip. The molding compound with low modulus produces low stresses in the Si die and the die attach. Moreover, for the low modulus case, the CTE of molding compound does not affect the warpage of the PBGA package and the stresses in the silicon die or the die attach. However, for the high modulus case, the warpage and stresses are increased significantly by increasing the CTE of molding compound.

It is suggested that adhesion strengths of die attaches should be studied in future studies, since those affect the delamination between dies and substrates.

The findings can be used as general design guidelines for a PBGA package.

The results presented in the paper will be very useful to designers of PBGAs.

Extending research on cultural differences in aesthetic appreciation, the purpose of this paper is to show how a more interdependent self-construal, a cultural and individual difference variable related to one’s social self, impacts the influence of visual harmony on consumer evaluations of marketing artifacts’ attractiveness.

Data were obtained via three studies from a total of 1,498 consumers in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, and Italy. Marketing visuals included the design of products, packages, typefaces, and logos. Self-construal was both measured and manipulated.

The results indicate that a person’s self-construal moderates the effect of visual harmony on attractiveness. Specifically, the positive effect of visual harmony on attractiveness – through self-congruity – is more pronounced with consumers possessing a more interdependent self-construal, and with products that are more hedonic than utilitarian.

Given the pivotal role attractiveness has in influencing consumer behavior, understanding what differences, at the individual and cultural levels, impact the harmony-attractiveness relationship helps marketers to better match the visual design of marketing stimuli to target audiences.

This study is among the first to show how the social-self impacts consumer response to marketing visuals. Further, value stems from adopting a holistic perspective on design, clarifying the process mechanism, and identifying boundary conditions.

Considering that the heterogeneity in the composition of deliberation and management bodies can promote a differentiated impact on earnings distribution policies of companies, the purpose of this paper is to examine the marginal influence of female participation on the board of directors and executive board regarding decisions associated with dividend policy in companies operating in Brazil.

The sample is composed of non-financial companies listed on the B3 Stock Exchange between 2010 and 2015, which encompasses 261 companies (1,084 observations per year). The tests aim at explaining the probability of earnings distribution and the payout level of companies through variables that measure the female presence – considering that the explanatory economic attributes of decisions over dividends are kept under control. The econometric analysis was carried out through the descriptive analysis of the variables and LOGIT and TOBIT tests of inference estimated with fixed effects and meeting all econometric requirements.

The proportion of women in both deliberative and executive bodies affects marginally the dividend policy of Brazilian companies. The female presence in management bodies contributes to a higher probability of earnings distribution and increase in the payout level; such tendency is moderated when women are in the board of directors; so, we do not reject the hypothesis of female influence on dividend policy decisions in Brazil.

One can find such investigations in foreign environments, but such tests had not been accomplished in Brazil so far. We discuss, therefore, in an unprecedented way, the heterogeneity in deliberative (governance) and executive (management) bodies and its outcomes in strategic decisions made in Brazilian companies, focusing on the female insertion and on fundamental decisions that are related to the relationship among stakeholders, which is the dividend policy per se.

This article provides a review and conceptual comparison between self‐report and performance‐based measures of emotional intelligence. Analyses of reliability, psychometric properties, and various forms of validity lead to the conclusion that self‐report techniques measure a dispositional construct, that may have some predictive validity, but which is highly correlated with personality and independent of intelligence. Although seemingly more valid, performance‐based measures have certain limitations, especially when scored with reference to consensual norms, which leads to problems of skew and restriction of range. Scaling procedures may partially ameliorate these scoring weaknesses. Alternative approaches to scoring, such as expert judgement, also suffer problems since the nature of the requisite expertise is unclear. Use of experimental paradigms for studying individual differences in information‐processing may, however, inform expertise. Other difficulties for performance‐based measures include limited predictive and operational validity, restricting practical utility in organizational settings. Further research appears necessary before tests of E1 are suitable for making real‐life decisions about individuals.

This paper explores the relationship between droughts and U.S. agricultural sector profitability in select U.S. regions. We also examine the extent to which the farm safety net, including direct government payments and the federal crop insurance program, may compensate for the impacts of drought on farm sector profitability.

Fixed effect regressions estimate the relationship between drought and profitability for the farm sector. The analysis uses a panel of annual, state-level net farm income and its subcomponents (from the USDA, Economic Research Service) and state-level annual drought measures constructed from county crop damage days (as reported in the Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States, or SHELDUS). SHELDUS includes Severe (D2) or more intense drought shocks for the states east of the Rocky Mountains, and these states provide the focus for our analysis.

Market net farm income negatively correlates with the drought measures. This relation is partially driven by the increase in production expenses during drought episodes. Further, sales from inventories tend to increase during drought periods. A significant share of damages to sector performance are offset by federal crop insurance program indemnities. Finally, our results show that drought impacts and the effects of the farm safety net are distributed differently across geographic regions.

To our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to examine drought impacts on the components of agricultural profitability, including the farm safety net and production expenses, at the sector level.

Following the contingency perspective, this paper aims to examine if a good corporate governance structure is able to reduce earnings management made through related party transactions. The authors expect that a high-quality corporate governance influences private benefit acquisition and reduces the positive association between related party transactions and earnings management.

A two-stage least squares instrumental variable approach is used to further address endogeneity concerns in this study. The model is organized into three parts: the construction of the corporate governance indicator, the first stage regression to compute the predicted corporate governance indicator and the second stage regression (ordinary least squares multivariate regressions) to analyze the relationship between related party transactions and earnings management. The analysis focuses on a sample of Italian listed companies over the period 2007-2012.

The study finds that the interaction between sales-related party transactions and corporate governance is negatively associated with abnormal accruals, signaling that corporate governance quality reduces the positive association between sales-related party transactions and earnings management, consistently with the contingency perspective.

The research contributes to literature by empirically testing the assumption of contingency perspective. In particular, the results provide new insights to the academic community, underlying that good corporate governance mechanism helps to reduce earnings management behavior through related party transactions.

The starting point of the paper is the fact that customers participate in the logistics activities of the supply chain (SC) (Johnston, 1989; Granzin and Bahn, 1989). Having established that customers can and do participate in logistics, firms can consider transferring some of their logistics activities to/from their customer. The transfer can take two contrasting forms: outsourcing by the company of some logistics activities to its customers or insourcing by the company of some logistics activities from its customers. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a theoretical understanding of these company/customer transfers.

To address this emerging issue, the authors build on the service management literature and on the study of two contrasting cases of transfer. The first (IKEA) examines the outsourcing of some logistics activities to the consumer. The second (AuchanDrive) examines the reverse process of insourcing.

Based on the service management literature and the two case studies, the authors develop a theoretical model for the transfer of logistics activities between a firm and its customers. The findings confirm several elements, such as the importance of managing customer participation and adapting service production during a transfer. Most importantly, the findings show that a key issue for a firm during a transfer is the need to redesign its SC in terms of transport, warehousing and production. The main contribution of the research therefore is showing that customer participation in logistics is a key variable in SC design.

This research is based on the analysis of two cases. To generalise these results, further research needs to be conducted.

This research proposes recommendations to help managers and organisations to transfer some logistics activities to or from their customers.

The originality of the framework is that it considers both the company and its customers. This comprehensive approach establishes a link between supply chain management research and marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term branded marketing events (BMEs), and examine the role of its experiential components as a strategic tool for the facilitation of customer brand engagement. This study examines five experiential components of BMEs at events held in Australia and France to determine their respective impact on customer brand engagement.

Surveys were distributed to attendees of ten events by six wine brands in South Australia, and six events in five sub-regions of Bordeaux.

Findings suggest that BMEs influence customers’ brand engagement and brand purchase intention in both Australia and France. However, the experiential components within the events had differing effects. Australian customers were influenced by cognitive, sensorial, and relational experiences and their increased customer brand engagement strongly influenced brand purchase intention. French customers, however, required pragmatic event experiences to build brand engagement.

Recognizing their mutual experiential and interactive foundations, this study integrates the research domains of marketing events, customer experiences and customer brand engagement, and contributes to the strategic understanding of how branded event experiences facilitate customer brand engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how cultural differences influence change management in Indian, Chinese and Estonian organisations. The paper focuses mainly on the resistance to change and contributes to management research and management practices in multinational companies by improving the understanding of cultural influences on organisational change management.

The authors interviewed 177 business consultants and managers in India, China and Estonia who had participated in change management projects. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the impact of national culture to change management.

The cause of resistance was found to be mainly fear, in Indian and Estonian organisations, but in Chinese organizations it was the inertia. Increased stress was the most often experienced negative factor during change management projects in all three countries. Stress was caused mainly by leadership problems in India and by increased workload in Estonia. To overcome the resistance, communication was used in India and education together with communication both in Estonia and in China most often. Still, the content of these activities was different.

The interviewees had different relations to the organisations they described and the size of organizations was different.

The paper's findings will help managers of multinational companies to understand the causes of resistance to change in different countries and plan the methods to overcome such resistance.

Papers such as this, about the effect of culture on change management, are increasingly important due to rapid globalization.

Building information modeling (BIM) is a growing technology and methodology for project design in the construction industry. However, when the project design team designs with BIM in a free-form manner (without a qualified instructor), it is not clear how behavior or trust might develop among project team members, nor if there are variables that might influence the improvement of such collaboration.

A sample of 92 responses was obtained from managers of project design firms in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector. The questionnaire data were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

This paper provides an explanation, from a happiness management perspective, to reflect on the importance of establishing policies to enhance effective communication between project team members in BIM design, as it improves trust between team members and their collaborators, developing the overall satisfaction of all the agents involved in the project.

The researchers suggest that there is a gap in the literature on how effective communication influences the implementation of BIM methodology.