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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to knowledge about workplace diversity and equality in an under-researched country. Focusing on the south-eastern European transition economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), it elaborates on the country’s legislation, public debate and previous research in the field.

The paper draws on a synopsis of the legislative framework, existing literature, public media and personal communications with human resource (HR) practitioners.

There is only limited research on diversity and equality in BiH. Ethnicity and gender are the most common grounds for discrimination. Although a solid body of legislation addressing anti-discrimination and equality issues exists, implementation is insufficient. The public debate tends to reinforce inter-ethnic conflicts and a negative atmosphere regarding sexual minority rights.

Due to the general lack of research on diversity and equality in BiH, the findings presented in this paper only can serve as a first approximation of the topic. Further academic research on concrete business practices and perspectives of HR managers is needed.

Firms not only need to increase compliance with anti-discrimination law, but they should also focus more on the benefits a multi-ethnic society can offer.

This is the first paper in the management literature that provides comprehensive insight into workplace diversity and equality in BiH.

This study focuses on HR practices that foster employee engagement during Covid-19. Companies in transition economies are particularly vulnerable to crisis and downsizing and other recessionary practices are frequently used.

Drawing on the model of caring human resource management, we utilise interviews with human resource representatives of 10 banks in the transition economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We analyse the banks at two different times to demonstrate how and why companies adapt their HR practices.

Our findings show a changing mindset in the deployment of highly context-specific HR practices. Strengthening company culture through a sense of community and communication ensure stability and continuity in work. Rather than layoffs, flexible work has become standard.

By highlighting the interplay between HR practices and employee engagement, we contribute to the discussion on engagement in exceptional circumstances and challenging settings and demonstrate how caring responsibilities “migrate” into HR practices in the professional context of a transition economy.

We propose a context-specific “protective caring approach” to foster employee engagement during crises.

This chapter grapples with questions of agency in the development of African higher education, with a special focus on the Association of African Universities (AAU), an organization outside of formal education policymaking on the continent. Through the lens of rhetorical institutionalism, findings illustrate how the AAU has adopted and adapted competing institutional logics to exert influence over development policymaking. Next, I will discuss how systems of persuasion were cultivated and symbols employed to establish the legitimacy of the organization in a heterogeneous institutional field that includes universities, development agencies, nongovernmental organizations, supranational arrangements, and the influence of international financial institutions. This enabled the AAU to extend institutional logics into African higher education. This case study seeks to upend the pervasive crisis narrative that perpetuates both the impotence of African institutions and the stewardship of outside development elites. Finally this chapter considers the implications of this critical case study for development discourse and practice.

For many years the analysis of contaminant residues on PWB surfaces has been of major importance to the industry. While the identification of residues left on metallic surfaces has proven to be relatively straightforward, the analysis of organic contamination of similar composition to that of the underlying board surface has not been as successful. Through the use of modern XPS instrumentation, the non‐ionic component of water soluble flux has been identified and differentiated from the chemically similar FR‐4 and soldermask substrates. This paper presents the XPS results for a series of experiments aimed at determining the location and relative concentration of water soluble flux residues on standard surface insulation resistance (SIR) comb patterns. The data show that the water soluble flux residue is not present as a uniform coating on the board surface but appears in localised sites in high concentrations while being absent in other locations. Through more aggressive cleaning procedures the sites of high residue concentration can be significantly reduced.

Higher education institutions around the world have increasingly come to see information and communication technology (ICT) as vital to the business of teaching and learning. Institutions invest a considerable amount of time and resources to erecting the appropriate institutional infrastructure, creating policy and practice, instituting strategy, training faculty, and building the capacity of technology staff. However, in under-resourced regions of the world, such as Africa, ICT, the availability and use of, has several challenges to overcome: a lack of institutional infrastructure, sufficient bandwidth, and limited capacity to employ ICT in the research process or the classroom. Universities report inadequate funding, poor management and infrastructure, resistance to change, inadequate training, and high costs associated with effective ICT use. Moreover, critiques of Western technopositivism surface misgivings related to the performance outcomes and appropriateness of ICT adoption in Africa. In this chapter, the author will explore the work of international organizations and regional and national research and education networks in the diffusion of ICT discourse, consider on-the-ground adoptions and innovation at universities in Nigeria, and reflect on the suitability and sustainability of technology adoption, all within an ICT for development (ICT4D) framework that lenses the evolution of technological applications in higher education. This chapter is significant in that it connects African higher education to ICT4D and frames the various discourses, policy landscapes and practice arenas, as they relate to international actors, continental initiatives, networks, universities, and faculty.

The paper aims to design a process to mechanize traditional chasing and repoussé which is the art of creating an artistic pattern on a sheet metal by making high and low points through utilization of hammer and chisel. In scientific literature, it is a kind of incremental sheet metal forming.

In the designed process, a magnetic actuator is used as a hammer which converts electric energy into kinetic reciprocal impact energy, and hammering sequence is completely controlled via the designed software. The sheet is bound not to move easily. Then, a hammering mechanism is connected to the numerical control machine. As the magnetic hammer is moved gradually along the defined path, the sheet is chased gradually by controlling the consecutive impacts. Different methods of test sheet entanglement are also discussed to reduce noise and undesired deformations of sheet, and indents are also clarified.

The designed mechanism enables the user to form desired art patterns faster with more precision via the automated process. The hammering sequence is controlled via computer successfully. The designed magnetic actuator could be commercialized easily. Experiments show that the pitch under sheet is the best. Typical art patterns are chased successfully.

In incremental sheet metal punching, there was no control on hammering sequence before. In this process, the designed magnetic hammer is quite controllable. Also, it is easily attached to the computerized numerical control (CNC) and is suitable for commercial use. Furthermore, the stuff under sheet was not taken into consideration before.

It is unfortunately too easy to find examples of absurd functioning in the university. It has never been a perfect institution, because that is an impossibility. One observes in recent years that while its chronic problems have not disappeared, they have lost prominence in the face of a steamroller working at the planetary level. The university has plunged into an even greater absurdity. This institution that was created to be free and clearly work for human emancipation, through the expansion of knowledge, has chosen to submit itself as a slave to the dynamics of the current global model of society. By so doing, it further fosters slavery by strengthening this global hegemony. In the present contribution I choose three concrete examples of this absurdity. The first alludes to the recruitment and shaping of obedient teachers. In this sense, the university is not an exception to the banking system of education, but it raises the production of individual adaptation and obedience to its maximum exponential. The second example refers to the renunciation of the social usefulness of the knowledge that it produces. This is done by adopting operational models from the production of commodities, such as quality measurement and the like, which undermine the institutional mission of universities. The third great absurdity refers to the destruction of thought and language diversity, which are two sides of the same coin. While the aforementioned processes are readily noticed, there are alternatives to the absurd university that entail encouraging projects and realities under construction. My aim with this contribution is to present an analysis of the absurd university, and give visibility to these alternatives under way, linked to grassroots university movements and other hopeful socio-educational projects. This chapter has a particular focus on language, due to its complexity and relative neglect in academia.

The purpose of this study is to examine the aspects of workplace environment and the experiences of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) employees in an Asian context; a subject that has hitherto been somewhat neglected. It responds to a call for more contextual research in the field of employment diversity in organizational management in general.

This is a mixed method study, which utilizes multiple sources of primary and secondary data and consists of in-depth personal interviews, a survey of LGBT employees, published data (including legislation and state policies), reports issued by social and media organizations, documentary evidence from Taiwanese companies and insights drawn from the existing literature.

It was found that there is an interplay between the macro, meso and micro levels in the multilevel relational framework applied to diversity of employment in Taiwan. Macrolevel factors, such as supportive legislation, mass media and social tolerance toward LGBT community positively affect mesolevel factors, such as stable and secure social networks among the LGBT community in the form of legal and social organizations (NGOs, social media, bars, restaurants, etc.) as well as many companies inclusion of sexual orientation in their definitions of diversity. However, this is opposed by macrolevel, cultural values related to family structure and intergenerational relationships that inhibit pro-active integration and equality of LGBT individuals at the meso organizational level. Companies headed by older-generation leadership can be slow to advocate, support and promote sexual-orientation diversity in their workplaces. In contrast, microlevel data shows that LGBT employees receive robust psychological support from their peer group, friends and the LGBT community, although gaining acceptance by family and coworkers remains a challenge.

Future studies need to focus on the dynamics of the meso- and microlevel factors by investigating how organizational structure, perspectives of leaders and HR managers, diversity management practices and attitudes and behaviors of LGBT employees and other coworkers affect development and integration of sexual-orientation diversity programs within organizations.

Managers, policy makers in organization as well as educators benefit from the context-sensitive findings and recommendations offered in this paper.

Understanding of LGBT individuals employment environment helps to facilitate or hinder the positive development of equal society and benefit both LGBT employees, their coworkers and managers.

Limited research exists on the LGBT employees experiences at work in Asia. This study makes unique contribution to the understanding of sexual orientation category of diversity at work in Taiwan context.

The internal combustion engine operated on gaseous fuels shows great potential in terms of integration of the renewable and traditional sources for an effective solution for clean energy production challenge. Different fuel mixtures that can be used to power the engine are characterized by various combustion properties, which can affect its overall efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to provide reasonable answer, how the operation condition can change due to different fuel, without enormous cost of prototyping processes using physical models a digital model can be seen as promising technique.

Presented work discusses the application, and extensive description of two commercial codes Ansys Fluent and Forte for modeling stationary engine fueled by compressed natural gas (CNG) and biogas. To check the model accuracy, all carried out numerical results were compared against experimental data collected at in-house test rig of single cylinder four stroke engine. The impacts of tested gaseous fuel on the engine working conditions and emission levels were investigated.

Carried out simulations showed good agreement with experimental data for investigated cases. Application on numerical models give possibility to visualize flame front propagation and pollutant formation for tested fuels. The biogas fuel has shown the impaired early flame phase, which led to longer combustion, lower efficiency, power output, repeatability and in some cases higher HC and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions as a result of combustion during the exhaust stroke. Looking at the CO formation it was observed that it instantly accrue with flame front propagation as a result of methane oxidation, while for NOx formation revers effect was seen.

The application of new approach for modeling combustion process in stationary engines fueled by CNG and alternative biogas fuel has been discussed. The cons and pros of the Forte code in terms of its application for engine prototaping process has been discussed.

This interview with the authors of Strategy – Beyond the Hockey Stick offers their insights into a major problem which has bedevilled the strategy process in too many companies over the years - the combination of bold but delusional “hockey-stick” forecasts and timid strategic moves – a coupling that severely limits the impact of any strategy.

The McKinsey authors examined publicly available information on the world’s 2,393 largest companies, and plotted their average annual economic profit

They found that the curve is extremely steep at the both ends: those in the top quintile average some 30 times as much economic profit as those in the middle three quintiles.

One of the biggest pitfalls in the strategy process is this very human propensity for bold forecasts and timid actions. Strategy requires confronting uncertainly head-on by embracing the notion of probability by calibrating the odds of a strategy succeeding, building in explicit trigger points to re-examine decisions as we learn more. 10;

What has been largely missing from the literature is a study of the average-to-top transition based on an extensive data set, one that encompasses a greater range of performance profiles and average-to-top transition trajectories. This is the knowledge gap that Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds fills.