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The purpose of this paper is to examine a recent comprehensive corporate real estate (CRE) alignment model which was derived from previous CRE alignment models. This study proposes several modifications and additions based on business and decision-making literature to increase the framework’s multidisciplinary strength and extend its implementation phase.

Literature from various fields is reviewed and “lessons” incorporated into the framework. The business literature review began with corporate strategy theories cited in CRE alignment theory and extended to critiques of those and more recent theories. Likewise, decision-making and implementation both began with material cited in CRE literature and “rippled” out to encompass pertinent material.

The model used provides a robust framework, and this study has identified several areas that would appear to improve that model from a theoretical and practical perspective. Areas of further research are identified that appear to offer opportunities to further develop the framework.

Historically, there has been a tendency for new CRE alignment models to be created rather than existing ones being developed further. Here, a framework derived from a meta-study of CRE alignment models is reviewed, and improvements are proposed to further develop CRE alignment theory and its application in practice through the addition of viewpoints from the business field and more focus on the implementation phase of the model.

Combustion of fuel with oxidizer inside a combustion chamber of an internal combustion engine forms inevitable oxides of nitrogen (NOx) due to high temperature at different locations of the combustion chamber. This study aims to quantify NOx formed inside the combustion chamber using two fuels, a conventional diesel (n-heptane) and a biodiesel (methyl oleate).

This research uses a computational fluid dynamics simulation of chemically reacting fluid flow to quantify and compare oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in a compression ignition (CI) engine. The study expends species transport model of ANSYS FLUENT. The simulation model has provided the temperature profile inside the combustion chamber, which is subsequently used to calculate NOx using the NOx model. The simulation uses a single component hydrocarbon and oxygenated hydrocarbon to represent fuels; for instance, it uses n-heptane (C₇H₁₆) for diesel and methyl-oleate (C₁₉H₃₆O₂) for biodiesel. A stoichiometric air–fuel mixture is used for both fuels. The simulation runs a single cylinder CI engine of 650 cm³ swept volume with inlet and exhaust valves closed.

The pattern for variation of velocity, an important flow parameter, which affects combustion and subsequently oxides of nitrogen (NOx) formation at different piston locations, is similar for the two fuels. The variations of in-cylinder temperature and NOx formation with crank angles have similar patterns for the fuels, diesel and biodiesel. However, the numerical values of in-cylinder temperature and mass fraction of NOx are different. The volume averaged static peak temperatures are 1,013 K in case of diesel and 1,121 K in case of biodiesel, while the mass averaged mass fractions of NOx are 15 ppm for diesel and 141 ppm for biodiesel. The temperature rise after combustion is more in case of biodiesel, which augments the oxides of nitrogen formation. A new parameter, relative mass fraction of NOx, yields 28% lower value for biodiesel than for diesel.

This work uses a new concept of simulating simple chemical reacting system model to quantify oxides of NOx using single component fuels. Simplification has captured required fluid flow data to analyse NOx emission from CI engine while reducing computational time and expensive experimental tests.

German (corporate-) real estate management departments have been facing the challenge of poor data quality for years. This holds them back from generating efficiency potentials via the use of new methods from the field of digitalisation and from coping with the increasing requirements from the ESG context. The purpose of this paper is to explore why German (corporate-) real estate managements (do not) share data with their real estate service providers to address the data quality challenge and identify possible solutions.

To answer the research question, the reasoned action approach, an established theory from psychology for predicting human behaviour, is used. The relationships between the constructs are determined using linear regression. The study participants are almost exclusively from Germany.

The organisational milieu (perceived behavioural control) has a significant impact on the behaviour of sharing data with real estate service providers. Especially the change of contractual arrangements (data-driven contracts) seems to be crucial for the improvement of information logistics.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, for the first time, the reasoned action approach is used within the German real estate industry to predict organisational behaviour in the context of digitalisation.

Deterioration of integrity is featured in public service across the globe, including Tanzania. Local government authorities (LGAs) are among the areas where such practices have been reported. However, factors compromising integrity in LGAs receives less attention from the literature. Citing 19 LGAs from Tanzania, this study aims to examine contributes to this debate.

A sequential explanatory research design was applied. Data were collected from 54 respondents through survey questionnaires, interviews and a documentary review. The study was guided by Hoekstra theoretical framework for assessing integrity practices in LGAs.

The findings revealed that maintaining integrity in Tanzania's LGAs is still challenging. Poor institutionalization processes, institutional unpreparedness, insufficient integrity policy execution and being less informed of moral development of recruited public servants are said to compromise integrity in Tanzania LGAs. This qualifies to conclude that institutional pathologies and moral history of public servants are the major factors contributing to integrity deterioration in Tanzania LGAs. This has resulted in subpar service delivery and the waste of public funds.

This study confined itself to Tanzania LGAs. More studies could be conducted to LGAs in other countries struggling with the same problem. On the same ground, moral development should be studied more to ensure that the public service receives ethical public servants in the future.

The theoretical framework for assessing integrity systems in LGAs as proposed by Hoekstra (2022) could be applied by other countries struggling with the same challenge.

LGAs must implement an integrity-based self-reflection technique that will allow them to assess their current condition and come up with solutions. Furthermore, institutional policies must be strengthened to govern ethical behavior in LGAs.

Based on the transformative learning theory, this paper analyses a French women-only training programme (WOTP) that aims to develop women’s soft skills in their professional contexts. This paper aims to focus on the process of personal transformation, the collective dimensions and the unexpected effects of the transformation.

This paper used a mixed qualitative design that mainly combines a qualitative two-step study of 47 women to assess their personal changes in terms of self-confidence, self-efficacy and assertiveness. This paper used 13 semi-structured interviews to explore the perceived changes in-depth.

The analysis shows that beyond “fixing their lack of skills” – including self-limiting behaviours, low feelings of self-efficacy and difficulty claiming one’s place – a WOTP can trigger a transformational learning experience at the individual level and can modify the surveyed women’s attitudes and behaviours at work. The results also highlight the collective dimension of transformation and, to some extent, an avenue for a societal transformation.

One can state that these WOTPs may positively contribute to human resources development in organisations, and that they may be considered a relevant practice in the move to promote women and gender diversity in organisations.

The findings reveal that, at their individual levels, these women may become agents of change by influencing and acting in their professional lives. The results stress that training women may contribute to organisational changes in terms of gender diversity. These findings contribute to the enrichment of the transformative learning theory by developing the collective and societal dimensions.

This paper aims to examine how interfirm transactional and relational assets drive firm performance (FP) in digitally integrated supply chains.

The authors combine the Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and Relational Exchange Theory (RET) frameworks to hypothesize that FP will be a function of Asset Specificity (AS), Digital Technology Usage (DTU) and Collaborative Information Sharing (CIS). In addition, the authors hypothesize that Supply Chain Integration (SCI) will partially mediate the effect of DTU and fully mediate the impact of AS and CIS on FP. A cross-sectional survey of supply chain managers is used to test the hypotheses.

Findings indicate that specific investments in digitally integrated supply chains would increase FP. In addition, SCI fully mediates the relationships between AS and FP and CIS and FP, while SCI partially mediates the influence of DTU on FP.

Managers could strategically engage in the technologies that effectively fit within the firm’s supply chain strategies and seek to develop a pragmatic expertise that enables the effective use of technology in a comprehensive setting.

The study enriches the extant literature by incorporating TCE and RET as contradictory viewpoints on AS and investigating how transactional and relational assets affect FP in digitally integrated supply chains.

This study investigates theoretical relationships among personality characteristics, preferences for different types of rewards and the propensity to choose a job in auditing by management-related higher education students. Specifically, the authors consider motivation, locus of control (internal and external) and self-efficacy (SE) as personality characteristics and financial, extrinsic, support and intrinsic as types of rewards.

Data were collected through a questionnaire targeted at management-related higher education students in Portugal. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The full sample results show that different types of motivation, locus of control and SE are related to different reward preferences. The authors also find a positive association between a preference for extrinsic rewards and the propensity to choose a job in auditing. Moreover, when the authors consider the role of working experience in the model, the authors find that the reward preferences that drive the choice of an auditing job differ according to that experience.

This study enriches the literature by assessing preferences for different types of rewards, considering multiple personality characteristics and a comprehensive set of rewards. Furthermore, the authors identify the reward preferences that drive the choice of an auditing career. This knowledge empowers auditing firms to devise recruitment strategies that resonate with candidates’ preferences, which boosts the capacity of these companies to attract new auditors.

This paper focuses on the unconditionally optimal error estimates of a linearized second-order scheme for a nonlocal nonlinear parabolic problem. The first step of the scheme is based on Crank–Nicholson method while the second step is the second-order BDF method.

A rigorous error analysis is done, and optimal L² error estimates are derived using the error splitting technique. Some numerical simulations are presented to confirm the study’s theoretical analysis.

Optimal L² error estimates and energy norm.

The goal of this research article is to present and establish the unconditionally optimal error estimates of a linearized second-order BDF finite element scheme for the reaction-diffusion problem. An optimal error estimate for the proposed methods is derived by using the temporal-spatial error splitting techniques, which split the error between the exact solution and the numerical solution into two parts, that is, the temporal error and the spatial error. Since the spatial error is not dependent on the time step, the boundedness of the numerical solution in L∞-norm follows an inverse inequality immediately without any restriction on the grid mesh.

Organisational strategy becomes reality by connecting organisation’s resources and capabilities in daily operations, and physical workspace is one of the environments in which this takes place. This study aims to explore to what extent factors required for successful strategy implementation are considered when designing, using and managing workspaces of knowledge-intensive organisations.

For the study, managers in 25 large and medium-sized knowledge-intensive organisations were interviewed. The semi-structured interviews focused on organisation’s strategy, strategy implementation practices and workspace design and management. To form a comprehensive framework of strategy implementation success factors for the study, the factors of 11 frameworks were analysed, grouped and renamed.

Current workspace design, usage and management mainly support human-related strategy implementation factors. However, both organisation- and human-related factors are needed for the strategy implementation to be successful. Therefore, the organisations studied may have unused potential in their workspaces to ensure strategy-aligned operations and behaviour.

Due to the potential imbalance between organisation- and human-related strategy implementation factors, a more holistic, organisational-level approach to workspace design, usage and management is recommended to ensure the success of strategy implementation.

Workspaces have extensively been studied from individual strategy implementation factors’ as well as employees’ perspectives. Prior to this work, there are only few studies exploring workspace in the holistic, strategy implementation context.

The main purpose of this paper is to introduce the gradient discretisation method (GDM) to a system of reaction diffusion equations subject to non-homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. Then, the authors show that the GDM provides a comprehensive convergence analysis of several numerical methods for the considered model. The convergence is established without non-physical regularity assumptions on the solutions.

In this paper, the authors use the GDM to discretise a system of reaction diffusion equations with non-homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions.

The authors provide a generic convergence analysis of a system of reaction diffusion equations. The authors introduce a specific example of numerical scheme that fits in the gradient discretisation method. The authors conduct a numerical test to measure the efficiency of the proposed method.

This work provides a unified convergence analysis of several numerical methods for a system of reaction diffusion equations. The generic convergence is proved under the classical assumptions on the solutions.