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This paper aims to explain the design of a novel leg mechanism for SLEGS robot. SLEGS means both “S”-shaped for the legged robot and “O”-shaped for the wheeled robot. It is a reconfigurable/transformable mobile robot.

First, a novel robot leg is designed by inspiration from previous studies. Second, the SLEGS robot’s leg is modeled using 3D computer model, and kinematics analysis performed on the leg mechanism. Finally, the prototype of the novel leg was developed for the SLEGS robot.

The robot leg mechanism has both flexible and self-reconfigurable modular features. All legs automatically take the form of both a rotating wheel and a walking leg with a self-reconfigurable modular feature.

The modeled leg is original in terms of its novel locomotion mechanism in both the walking and wheeled configurations.

Examines the effect of relationship selling activities on salesperson performance. It further explores the link between demographic selection criteria and the propensity of a salesperson to perform relationship selling behaviors. Relationship selling behaviors as examined in this study include interaction intensity, mutual disclosure, and cooperative intentions. The study was based on a sample of 487 business‐to‐business insurance salespeople. Findings indicate that interaction intensity and mutual disclosure have a significant effect on salesperson performance. Cooperative intentions do not influence performance. Results further demonstrate that some demographic criteria appear to be related to a salesperson’s likelihood of engaging in relationship selling.

Within the last two decades, entrepreneurship education has become institutionalized in Germany. It is offered as a stand-alone program or as part of a business degree, combining academic knowledge, practical skills, and personal development to enhance the entrepreneurial success of university graduates. While entrepreneurship education has experienced similar growth worldwide, its emergence in Germany is closely tied to the country’s political and economic developments. The significance of entrepreneurship education for a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem and contemporary economic policy has been instrumental in advancing its academic recognition. This chapter provides a historical analysis of the academization of entrepreneurship in Germany. It explores the recursive and often idiosyncratic processes involving state and financial institutions, companies, and universities that have created, respecified, and mutually reinforced a subdiscipline and field of study. Academic entrepreneurship knowledge successively not only became relevant for starting a business but also for employment within the entrepreneurial infrastructure and beyond. This chapter follows a chronological order, highlighting three key stages in the academization of entrepreneurship education. First, the academic, financial, and political roots (I) of entrepreneurship up until the 1970s. Second, it explores the transformation (II) of entrepreneurship into a viable policy alternative and the challenges faced in establishing complementary research and education in higher education institutions during the 1980s. Finally, it sketches the institutionalization (III) of entrepreneurship as a central driver of government economic policy, allowing for the late bloom of entrepreneurship education and research at universities around the turn of the millennium.

The concept of key account management (KAM) has received considerable attention from practitioners and scholars for well over 20 years now. However, numerous articles build on a set of tacit assumptions for which we lack empirical evidence. This paper seeks to propose an empirical test of several of these assumptions.

The contribution draws on a study conducted among 297 purchasing managers in two industries (packaging goods, market research data).

The findings indicate that parts of the foundations of KAM are not as solid as they may appear at first sight.

This paper invites managers of KAM programs to carefully consider the objectives they assign to such programs by integrating the idea of value created both for key customers and for suppliers implementing such programs.

The paper extends knowledge of key account management in the business field by providing new – and, in the light of the extant literature, sometimes rather counter‐intuitive – insights in this important management phenomenon. It does this by systematically comparing key account relationships and non‐key account relationships.

Despite the pivotal importance of marketing‐oriented boundary spanners for successful relationship development, only a few studies have investigated the influence of these boundary spanners on relationship outcomes. Findings of this study show that relationship advancement through a relationship promoter in the supplier or customer firm have a positive significant impact on the growth of sales within the relationship and the supplier’s share of a customer’s business. Relationship promoters are persons who identify appropriate partners of different organizations, bring them together, and facilitate the dialogue and the exchange processes between them. Relationship promoters support interactive learning processes and solve inter‐organizational conflicts. Furthermore, they fulfil an important social task. Relationship promoters overcome existing distances between partner firms and develop an understanding for the situation and objectives of the respective partner.

Business to business marketers tend to view distribution as the weakest link in the marketing chain. Furthermore, strategies to improve distribution tend to be under‐emphasized in the typical business marketing plan. These factors underline the need for more creative thinking about alternative ways to improve distributor performance. Building closer relationships with distributors can be one effective vehicle for accomplishing this and at the same time enhancing a company’s overall competitiveness. Using a case study, this paper reviews how one highly successful paper company has partnered with its distributors (paper merchants) in order to enhance sales performance.

This chapter examines the influence of outsourcing on airlines’ performance from countries of the Asia Pacific region. Performance in the context of this study is drawn from productivity growth and technical efficiency scores that are calculated using the standard data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach. We utilize data from airlines over the period 2003–2011 and estimate the impact of outsourcing on productivity and technical efficiency using generalized method of moments (GMM) estimators. The findings from DEA reveal an improvement in the technical efficiency score of airlines from Asia Pacific. Nonetheless, productivity estimates indicate fluctuations in the productivity growth trend of airlines, attributable to global economic recession in 2007/2008. GMM estimation results, however, suggest negative impacts of outsourcing on technical efficiency and productivity of the airlines from Asia Pacific countries. We offer several explanations for these outsourcing findings. Heavy outsourcing of airlines activities particularly maintenance of aircraft may negatively affect aircraft utilization and ultimately erode the service level of airlines. The erosion of the service level of airlines would affect the demand for air travel in a downward manner, thereby lowering the technical efficiency and productivity of airlines. Also, relatively low labor costs enjoyed by airlines in the Asia Pacific region would suggest that having many airline activities in-house would save operating expenses attributable to labor costs.

The purpose of this study is to examine winery visitors’ use of information sources in making decisions regarding the choice of wineries to visit. Enrichment theory is used as a framework for determining how previous experience influences the decision on how much and what type of information individuals will use when planning a trip using wine tourism as the context for the research.

A visitor study was conducted at 23 wineries in the US Southeast. Data were collected from winery visitors using a structured self-administered questionnaire.

Results from 832 consumers indicate that an individual’s previous travel systematically influences the number and type of information sources that they will seek out when making future consumer decisions. Findings confirmed the hypothesized expectations about wine tourist information search behavior and help to partially explain the nature of bounded rationality in the case of tourists’ winery visit decisions.

Because the study focused only on winery visitors in the US Southeast, the research results may lack generalizability.

These findings can assist winery owners and destinations with wineries in their promotional efforts. Of major importance is the finding that increases in experiential knowledge from prior travel are monotonically associated with increases in the number of information sources marked to be valuable in selecting a winery. The influence of experience is particularly dramatic in that the mean number of information sources marked to be valuable moves from a low of 2.5 to a high of 10.0 out of 16 as travel experience increases.

The study contributed significant and useful findings that advance the application of enrichment theory to wine tourism. Enrichment theory does not currently differentiate between types of knowledge that enrich a consumer’s ability to more easily encode and use new information. The current study confirms that experiential knowledge is an important knowledge construct in models of bounded rationality.

In November 2002, with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the University of Nebraska‐Lincoln and the University of Virginia embarked on a project to create a unified finding aid to Walt Whitman manuscript collections held in many different institutions. By working collaboratively, the project team is developing a finding aid that is tailored to the needs of Whitman scholars while following a standard developed in the archival community, encoded archival description (EAD). XSLT stylesheets are used to harvest information from various repositories' finding aids and to create an integrated finding aid with links back to the original versions. Digital images of poetry manuscripts and descriptive information contribute to an ambitious thematic research collection. The authors describe the National Leadership Grant project, identify key technical issues being addressed, and discuss collaborative aspects of the project.

The number of university students seeking mental health support is rapidly increasing. To provide additional psychological support to students accessing well-being services, this study aimed to pilot a mental health Web application (app) called Orpheus®.

Guided by student consultations, a multi-methods approach was adopted, including an examination of in-app data, chart reviews of routinely collected student information and interviews with mental health practitioners. Usage data were analysed descriptively. Changes in mental health outcomes were examined using means, standard deviations and reliable change indices for anxiety and depression scores. Inductive and deductive thematic analysis was conducted on qualitative data from staff interviews and student feedback.

A total of 26 students registered an account with 39 completed app visits. On 37 of the 39 (94.9%) occasions, students reported reductions in the intensity of unwanted negative emotions. Statistically significant reductions in the average pooled anxiety and depression scores were observed. Of the 15 students who completed pre- and post-routine outcome measures, between 20% and 60% showed reliable and meaningful symptom improvements. Students reported that the app was helpful and easy to set up and use, with no adverse events. Practitioners highlighted barriers and facilitators related to the technology features, situational contexts and individual differences.

Integrating Orpheus in real-world settings resulted in promising implementation processes, potential for future uptake and positive outcomes. However, ongoing research, staff training and app testing are needed to further improve the implementation processes for digital mental health interventions.