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This study aims to identify the optimal configuration to enhance the environmental conditions of a terrace house courtyard space in a hot and humid climate. The use of the courtyard has declined in new housing developments although it is an effective element to bring in light and wind to promote passive ventilation to occupants. To achieve the comfort level, the courtyard needs to be open, but some occupants modify it with enclosures, such as polycarbonate, to increase the useable and shaded area. This affects bringing in daylight but deters the passive ventilation from happening. Thus, this research is important to create a courtyard that brings in daylight and wind as well as shades from the harsh sun of the tropics and to educate the occupants on the role of the courtyard as a passive ventilation system.

The research method employed is a simulation study. A terrace house with a courtyard design in Penang was chosen as a case study of the baseline model. The courtyard configurations of the case study were evaluated, and 4 settings based on the literature review were established for simulation. The effects of the courtyard configurations were tested through daylight and CFD simulations. Daylight and ventilation requirements from Malaysia Standard were used to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of the proposed settings.

The results suggested that the semi-enclosed courtyard feature with a shading device could provide the optimal environmental conditions of the courtyard space in a terrace house in a hot-humid climate. This paper will benefit the architectural community in which it is intended to implement courtyard design in modern terrace houses and will also contribute to the discovery of the most suitable courtyard typology in a hot-humid climate.

The study does not include studies on thermal comfort, energy performance, or use behavior of occupants in this courtyard. The study only focuses on the influence of different courtyard configurations in improving the courtyard space's daylight availability and indoor air movement.

The data from this study reveal that alteration of courtyard design needs to suit comfort level that should not alter the functions of the courtyard as a passive design. The simulation method offers data for microclimatic conditions according to the changes in design. This study attempts to design influence on multiple parameters of shading, daylighting and ventilation to optimize the use of tropical climatic conditions.

The terrace house with courtyard would create a passive design strategy that would naturally ventilate, provide daylight, and will save on energy usage. The courtyard then with its enhanced comfort for the user will be able to function as a useable space to foster family relationships.

The study on courtyard design using the simulation method mostly have been conducted using a single parameter. This study highlights the analysis and process of identifying the optimal configuration for the architectural feature of a courtyard to provide a comfort level for occupants in hot and humid climates using the simulation method using data from two pieces of software.

Investments.

The case is suitable for students with diverse backgrounds – from different countries with different cultures, and from different programs (undergraduate or graduate). The case will be used for an all-English course “The research of Chinese stock markets” and has been used for the course “Portfolio theory and management” (junior student level) at Nankai University.

The case introduces Chinese stock markets' uniqueness that there exists a huge number of previously nontradable shares. The release of the shares radically changes the markets' balance and causes the absolute dominance of stock supply over stock demand. Based on the analysis for ICBC, the case demonstrates that the dominance can explain the drop of ICBC's stock price by supply-demand law but fundamental analysis cannot.

The case will help students to understand the uniqueness of Chinese stock markets and the applicability of supply-demand law in the markets and then be able to make investment decisions.

The case can help to educate not only students but also Chinese and foreign investors about the uniqueness of Chinese stock markets and arm the students and investors with the supply-demand methodology to analyse the markets and the reasoning of when and how to invest.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or e-mail support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an experiment to improve residents’ opinions of the police in Portland, Oregon. Officers conducted community engagement patrols (CEPs) in 60 high-crime areas. The CEPs prioritized non-investigative contacts with community members to build trust and promote positive police–community interactions in designated high-crime locations. It is hypothesized that community members living in/near intervention sites would report greater exposure to officers, more positive interactions and feel more positively about police than residents in control areas.

In total, 90 crime hot spots were identified using crime reports and calls for service. Locations were randomized into three groups: 2 CEPs/day (n=30), 4 CEPs/day (n=30), and control (i.e. no supplemental patrols, n=30). Officers were dispatched to treatment locations via the computer-aided dispatch system for 90 consecutive days, resulting in 16,200 scheduled CEPs. Surveys were mailed to 11,760 households immediately after the intervention ended and 1,537 were returned (13.1 percent).

Residents from intervention areas reported a higher number of positive police contacts, whereas contacts that residents perceived as negative did not differ between the three conditions. Community attitudes, including perceived police legitimacy, were generally unaffected by CEP dosage.

This paper documents the outcomes of a large-scale field experiment seeking to improve public attitudes toward police using directed CEPs in crime hot spots. Whereas the intervention succeeded in providing more opportunities for positive contact with police, attitude change may necessitate longer-term strategies.

The author argues for the use of unedited, fixed-camera-position video footage in relationally responsive research grounded in Bakhtinian dialogic theory. The purpose of this paper is to offer an empirical example of such a use, and shows how this contrasts with an ethnomethodological interactionist use of similar types of video footage.

The empirical material is taken from an ethnographic study of a project group in the UK, in which video is used alongside other data during the fieldwork period.

The author proposes that the audio-visual detail of social interaction and the sense of experiential immersion upon re-viewing can provide a “talking back” dialogic potential for video recordings, that helps to show multiple narratives in social interaction other than the researcher’s original interpretation, and that points to new ways to engage with research participants.

The paper focuses specifically on unedited video footage that is generated through fixed-camera positions. It is also limited to the ethnographic fieldwork period rather than the textual practices of writing up research.

The purpose and positioning of unedited, fixed-camera-position video footage in the empirical study is contrasted with other research approaches to video. Through this contrast, the paper offers methodological support for a way of using such footage which brings out a range of voices and alternative perspectives on social interaction.

The paper contributes to the methodological literature by discussing a research approach in which both interactionist and phenomenological qualities of video footage were combined to develop a radically reflexive (Cunliffe, 2003) purpose for video in relational research.

The case is particularly relevant for students studying elements of business strategy with an interest in strategic decision-making, competitive strategy, and growth strategy. The case leverages several strategic frameworks taught throughout business courses and illustrates a real-world application of these frameworks to support sound strategic decision-making. Furthermore, the case examines the relevance of sustainable competitive advantage and the linkages to the appropriate growth strategy for a business. It is recommended that this case be taught once students have covered the applicable theory and frameworks in class.

This case is designed for business administration students, in particular MBA, EMBA, speciality Masters, or executive education students.

MWEB is a leading first-tier South African internet services provider, with an operating history spanning over 22 years. The MWEB brand is a household name across South Africa, seen as one of the pioneers of the internet industry and accredited with bringing the internet to ordinary consumers across the country. The state of competition in the market, however, has intensified and MWEB's traditional operating model has not evolved fast enough to meet the changing landscape. The market is in the midst of a price war, to which MWEB has responded by reducing market pricing and offering attractive deals, undercutting all its competitors. The results have been positive; sales have increased and churn has reduced, but competitors have already started to follow. The dilemma facing CEO Sean Nourse and his management team is how to accelerate growth in a highly commoditised market with intense competition while ensuring the long-term profitability of the business. The case encourages the consideration of the strategic decision-making process by analysing the competitive landscape, evaluating the options, and reaching a decision on the most viable growth strategy for the business.

To analyse the competitive landscape and the forces at play

To conduct a competitor analysis, appraise long-term profitability in the industry, identify profitable strategic positions, and determine how MWEB may achieve and protect its competitive advantage

To identify and analyse the key parameters that, in combination, represent a company's business model

To critically analyse the contextual factors that are presented as business challenges, evaluating and understanding the impact and scale of these challenges

To critically assess relevant growth strategy alternatives for MWEB and analyse the viability of the alternatives presented

To conduct an informal valuation to determine a purchase price for an acquisition target for the business

Ned Piper needs to improve the performance of Acme Lumber’s Broken Arrow store. There are two candidates for the store manager’s position, Larry Frazier and Chip Farmer. Larry has worked for Acme for 35 years in a variety of positions and is related to the Johnson family who has owned and managed Acme for three generations. Chip has worked for Acme for 19 years and has successfully helped to turn around another store. Chip is not related to the Johnsons. Ned is feeling pressure from the business and family to make the right decision. Which candidate should he select to become a manager?

The authors used a case study methodology.

Human resources, selection, staffing, and family business management.

Socioemotional wealth perspective, and agency theory.

The Pasifika (Pacific Island) research methodology talanoa (conversation) has contemporary resonance beyond its local context. At the recent Bonn Climate Change Conference, for example, talanoa was adopted to spark international dialogue about our collective futures. But this and other recent instances raise the question as to whether and how talanoa can and should be applied in a non-Indigenous context – or, indeed, online. As a culturally diverse research team, we undertook a talanoa about our experience of researching historical literacy with Māori and Pasifika students through talanoa. Here we introduce what we learnt from the literature about the nature of talanoa, its use as a methodology, and its application in higher education and reproduce our own recent online talanoa on the experience of learning to do talanoa together. Three key lessons emerged from our research conversation. Firstly, we learnt that time is of the essence: researchers must carefully balance the need for the talanoa to run its natural course with the need to not overburden the participants. Secondly, we learnt that where the researchers undertake the talanoa is less important than attending to the relationships (the vā) between the researchers and participants, and the researchers and participants themselves. And, finally, in keeping with what some Māori researchers and their allies have argued of Kaupapa Māori research methodology, we learnt that indigenous methodologies like talanoa, when employed with care and in recognition of their emergence out of decolonial struggles for indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, can foster a fruitful intercultural research conversation.

Up to the moment consumer intelligence on kids and young people seems to be an increasing obsession these days for brand owners and advertising agencies. They're seemingly desperate for insider information and intelligence on the life of the latest generation — referred to as everything from N‐Geners to Millenials — who rather than challenge society like their forbears seem to define it, in these youthful times. Nowadays everyone from the President (be he Gore or Bush), to Hip‐Hop artists wears Levis and Gap. The last decade saw the commercialization of youth culture (how alternative is a bank sponsored dance lent at an MTV festival?), the alternative and underground became mainstream and the social construct, which stated that you were only young between the ages of 16–24, has been disproved. Teenagers, whilst being in the spotlight as never before, have increasingly had their culture stolen from under their noses by older (and younger) people, whilst ten year olds are demonstrating brand adoption and rejection attitudes that we'd have associated with a fifteen year old, only a short time ago. To clarify the current Life of Kids it is therefore necessary to gain the latest real‐life case histories and learning's, as opposed to mere statistics that give us huge amounts of cold data re: population demographics, growth rates, income levels, behaviour patterns and the like. Therefore, the first global kids marketing conference was held in Lisbon in October, where leading industry figures from the brand owner and agency sides came together to share information. Speakers included those from MTV, Leo Burnett, BMRB International, Cartoon Network, Polaroid, Informer, Chupa Chups, Applied Research & Consulting, B2B, Pokemon and the author.

Scholars have shown that organizations active in social movements are important because they carry out a number of critical tasks such as recruitment, coordination, and sustained contention. However, these accounts do not explain how a number of recent movements using the tactic of occupation and featuring a seemingly minimal formal organizational structure nevertheless engaged in a number of critical organizational tasks. This paper draws from in-depth ethnographic research on the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City and finds that the movement’s sustained occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan carried out four critical functions: messaging, recruitment, building commitment, and connecting participants to each other. These findings move past a general overemphasis in the literature on social movements on organizational structure, and instead point toward the utility of a perspective that accounts for the role of nonorganizational factors in the accomplishment of fundamental movement tasks.

Process mining provides a new means to improve processes in a variety of application domains. The purpose of this paper is to abstract a process model and then use the discovered models from process mining to make useful optimization via predictions.

The paper divides the process model into a combination of “pair-adjacent activities” and “pair-adjacent persons” in the event logs. First, two new handover process models based on adjacency matrix are proposed. Second, by adding the stage, frequency, and time for every activity or person into the matrix, another two new handover prediction process models based on stage adjacency matrix are further proposed. Third, compute the conditional probability from every stage to next stage through the frequency. Finally, use real data to analyze and demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed handover optimization process.

The process model can be extended with information to predict what will actually happen, how possible to reach the next activity, who will do this activity, and the corresponding probability if there are several people executing the same activity, etc.

The contribution of this paper is to predict what will actually happen, how possible it is to reach the following activities or persons in the next stage, how soon to reach the following activities or persons by calculating all the possible interval time via different traces, who will do this activity, and the corresponding probability if there are several people executing the same activity, etc.