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Examines the use of a precision robot for automatic testing of complex geometries with free‐form surfaces. Each of its three rotation and bending axes have directly driven DC motors and high accuracy optical angle sensors. The distance between the ultrasonic probes and the workpiece can be measured by means of an ultrasonic distance sensor and the data gathered is transmitted to a workstation a graphical representation is produced which is visualised in real time by means of a high‐speed graphics processor. Using menu‐driven software, components with almost any free‐form surface can rapidly be excoriated, modelled and tested with freely selectable paths of very high resolution.

Drilling and routing are the only two conventional mechanical machining techniques used in the production of printed circuit boards. Unfortunately these operations are still often underestimated even though drilling, in particular, is just as important as the other processes involved in achieving the final quality of the finished board. The advantages and disadvantages of the various drilling techniques are discussed. This paper was originally presented at the First Printed Circuit World Convention held at the Cafe Royal, London in June, 1978.

Risk notification is part of a focus on preventive medicine that is dominant in contemporary Western biomedicine. Genomics has forecasted great advances in alleviating disease and prolonging human life, moving from a reactive to a preventative practice. However, in doing so, genomics redraws boundaries, potentially classifying all people as possible carriers of malfunctioning genes. This chapter presents a critical review of the practice of ‘risk notification’ as undertaken by familial cancer genetic testing services, focusing on the right to be informed or not to be informed and implications of knowing.

With backgrounds in anthropology, psychology and public health, the authors draw upon literature around risk notification from a range of disciplines.

In the context of familial cancer, clients may be asked to provide contact information for biological family members to inform them of their potential genetic risk. Through these processes a number of tensions and issues may emerge that relate to fundamental bioethical principles. The ability and decision whether to know, or conversely, to not know, is ethically fraught. We consider the roles and rights of family members and clients, as well as the broader goal of population health.

While much attention has been devoted to clients’ right to know in the context of medical research and treatment, relatively little work has examined the right not to know and adverse consequences of knowing. This review addresses concerns which have rarely been critically examined and debated in the context of risk notification of biological family members.

This paper aims to critically review the most cited literature published from 2000 to 2020 in 24 top-ranked marketing journals on the three most studied branding concepts of the 21st century – brand equity, brand loyalty and brand image – to explore how in these papers they have been defined, measured and examined, and propose how they should move forward in an era where brands are expected to be “socially and socio-politically conscious.”

For each concept a systematic literature review is conducted. In doing so, the definitions, antecedents, outcomes and measures for each concept were accessed and synthesized.

The systematic literature reviews provide a “state-of-the-art” snapshot of each concept and collectively demonstrate there is no consensus on the independence and interdependence of these dynamic multidimensional concepts. Based on the recommended process in the measurement literature, an evolved definition of each concept is proposed. In addition to the corresponding research directions presented in the moving forward sections of each systematic literature review, common research avenues emerged.

This paper acknowledges these three branding concepts as dynamic (i.e. evolving over time), systemically reviews and synthesizes the extant literature, and provides a path forward to defining, measuring and exploring brand equity, brand loyalty and brand image in the present era where brands are expected to be socially and socio-politically conscious with responsibilities to the planet, people and profit.

The present research work is carried out for determining haemoprotozoan diseases in cattle and breast cancer diseases in humans at early stage. The combination of LeNet and bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) model is used for the classification of heamoprotazoan samples into three classes such as theileriosis, babesiosis and anaplasmosis. Also, BreaKHis dataset image samples are classified into two major classes as malignant and benign. The hyperparameter optimization is used for selecting the prominent features. The main objective of this approach is to overcome the manual identification and classification of samples into different haemoprotozoan diseases in cattle. The traditional laboratory approach of identification is time-consuming and requires human expertise. The proposed methodology will help to identify and classify the heamoprotozoan disease in early stage without much of human involvement.

LeNet-based Bi-LSTM model is used for the classification of pathology images into babesiosis, anaplasmosis, theileriosis and breast images classified into malignant or benign. An optimization-based super pixel clustering algorithm is used for segmentation once the normalization of histopathology images is conducted. The edge information in the normalized images is considered for identifying the irregular shape regions of images, which are structurally meaningful. Also, it is compared with another segmentation approach circular Hough Transform (CHT). The CHT is used to separate the nuclei from non-nuclei. The Canny edge detection and gaussian filter is used for extracting the edges before sending to CHT.

The existing methods such as artificial neural network (ANN), convolution neural network (CNN), recurrent neural network (RNN), LSTM and Bi-LSTM model have been compared with the proposed hyperparameter optimization approach with LeNET and Bi-LSTM. The results obtained by the proposed hyperparameter optimization-Bi-LSTM model showed the accuracy of 98.99% when compared to existing models like Ensemble of Deep Learning Models of 95.29% and Modified ReliefF Algorithm of 95.94%.

In contrast to earlier research done using Modified ReliefF, the suggested LeNet with Bi-LSTM model, there is an improvement in accuracy, precision and F-score significantly. The real time data set is used for the heamoprotozoan disease samples. Also, for anaplasmosis and babesiosis, the second set of datasets were used which are coloured datasets obtained by adding a chemical acetone and stain.

This study investigates the influence of corporate culture on financial reporting transparency within Iranian firms.

Leveraging a dataset of 1,480 firm-year observations from the Tehran Stock Exchange spanning from 2013 to 2022, the study employs text mining to quantify linguistic features of corporate culture and transparency, specifically readability and tone, within annual financial statements and Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) reports.

Our results confirm a positive and significant relationship between corporate culture and financial reporting transparency. The distinct dimensions of corporate culture — Creativity, Competition, Control, and Collaboration — each uniquely enhance financial transparency. Robustness tests including firm fixed-effects, entropy balancing, Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) validate the profound influence of corporate culture on transparency. Additionally, our analysis shows that corporate culture significantly affects the disclosure of business, operational, and financial risks, with varying impacts across risk categories. Cross-sectional analysis further reveals how the impact of corporate culture on transparency varies significantly across different industries and firm sizes.

The study’s scope, while focused on Iran, opens avenues for comparative research in different cultural and regulatory environments. Its reliance on text mining could be complemented by qualitative methods to capture more nuanced linguistic subtleties.

Findings underscore the strategic importance of cultivating a transparent corporate culture for enhancing financial reporting practices and stakeholder trust, particularly in emerging economies with similar dynamics to Iran.

This research is pioneering in its quantitative analysis of the textual features of corporate culture and its impact on transparency within Iranian corporate reports, integrating foundational theoretical perspectives with empirical evidence.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The aim of this study is to critically examine the transparency and reporting practice of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) controversies within the pharmaceutical and textile industry. Based on the four core dimensions of transparency, we explore which reporting medium is most frequently chosen for the disclosure of negative ESG contributions, the nature and information content of the disclosed incidents and how voluntary adherence to sustainability reporting standards and independent assurances affect the reporting.

We use conceptual content analysis and employ a counter-accounting approach to analyse the disclosure of 190 ESG controversies in 104 corporate reports from the pharmaceutical and textile industries, covering a three-year period from 2018–2020.

The very large majority of controversies are reported only once in the legal proceedings section of the annual report, but not again in the sustainability report, where it would be necessary to provide a balanced picture. Moreover, companies tend to disclose only those controversies that are either associated with high media attention or are expected to be related to litigation, resulting in 26 per cent of controversies not being disclosed at all. The overall quality of disclosure is unsatisfactory and in need of improvement, but comparably higher in the pharmaceutical industry than in the textile industry. Interestingly, neither the application of sustainability reporting standards nor independent assurance seems to positively impact the disclosure behaviour.

Our paper provides new insights into the shortcomings of current ESG controversy disclosures by revealing patterns of selective reporting practices and the strategic framing of issues. In addition, it contributes to the debates on corporate cherry-picking in the adoption of sustainability reporting guidelines and on the effectiveness of external assurance of sustainability reports. Based on the findings, it offers important implications for practitioners, in particular management, policy makers, rating agencies and assurance providers.

Despite considerable evidence of the benefits of organizational transparency, policies to enhance transparency often fail or are met with resistance and unexpected results. In part, this is due to a lack of knowledge about the drivers of organizational transparency and their interrelationships. This study examines the interplay among the forces that influence organizational transparency, and thus answers numerous calls for developing a deeper theoretical understanding of the determinants of organizational transparency. We propose three forces that influence organizational transparency and theorize how they combine in nonlinear ways to form five archetypical transparency regimes that organizations operate within. We then discuss contingencies to organizational transparency within each regime.

We employ configurational theorizing to capture the complexity of transparency and the nonlinear relationships among the forces of transparency.

We propose three forces that influence organizational transparency: institutional, societal, and leadership. We identify configurations of the three forces that yield five archetypical transparency regimes. We then discuss contingencies for cultivating organizational transparency within each regime. Vanguard transparency and pioneering transparency represent the desired regimes for fostering organizational transparency. In contrast, hollow transparency and deceptive transparency reveal a combination of determinants that cultivate less desirable forms of organizational transparency. Paradoxical transparency represents a regime in which socially desirable outcomes are associated with undesirable consequences for an organization.

This paper is among the first to theorize the drivers of organizational transparency and to discuss the limits and boundaries of organizational responses to transparency determinants.

Despite the many benefits of transparency, we explain why efforts to enhance organizational transparency often fail or are met with mixed results. By considering the three forces, managers and policymakers can avoid unexpected and undesired organizational responses to transparency regimes.

We propose five transparency regimes that place a spotlight on social contingencies to enhance transparency.

This study offers an integrative theory of organizational responses to transparency determinants and develops its theoretical foundations. The model integrates the fragmented empirical findings from previous studies on the determinants of transparency and draws attention to overlooked institutional, societal, and leadership forces that influence organizational transparency.

The purpose of this research paper is to identify the non-financial e-procurement performance measures and find out whether these non-financial performance measures are leading indicator of impact on firm financial performance by adoption of e-procurement in terms of reduction in production cost.

The research model has been tested with the data collected from target procurement professionals in India. Structural equation modelling has been used for testing conceptual model hypotheses including mediation. The phantom model approach for testing multiple mediators has deployed.

The present empirical study found that non-financial performance measure of e-procurement, namely, transparency, coordination, efficiency and effectiveness are leading indicators of the impact of e-procurement adoption on production cost. This paper suggests that managers should try to design the e-procurement platform or opt for third party platform which reduces transaction cost to a minimum for enhanced coordination, work on transparency policy with maximum disclosure of information for enhanced transparency and ask for a fast and responsive system for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness.

This study, first time, attempted to identify non-financial performance measures of e-procurement and tried to understand how these intermediate non-financial performance measures impact the firm financial performance. The interdependence of non-financial performance measures has also been explored, and the research model has been developed to empirically examine the interdependence of these financial measures and its impact on production cost.