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The purpose of this paper is to present a numerical model of coupled heat, moisture transfer and their effects on the mechanical deformations of wood during the drying process.

Coupling among heat, moisture, and mechanical deformations is solved consecutively by use of sparse solver of MATLAB. The weighted residual of the equilibrium equations of drying process of wood, based on finite element method, is investigated. The stress and plastic strain increments can be solved with Newton's method.

The numerical model is applied to a plain strain problem of a long wood board taken from the outer region of the wood log. Numerical simulation reveals the stress reversal during the drying process. The mechanical deformations and the principle stresses of a three‐dimensional wood board in consideration of the orthotropic properties are presented.

Plane strain and plane stress are analysed. The tangential modulus is derived. The transformation of the stress and strain tensors between the local coordinate system resulting from the cylindrical properties of wood and the global one is evaluated. Selection of element type for temperature, moisture content and displacement is discussed.

In large system development efforts organizational and managerial issues are often more challenging than technical ones. One of the key concerns of managers is the control and evaluation of the overall development effort. The purpose of this paper was to analyze the evaluation of system development process in a setting where there are multiple stakeholders in multiple organizations that develop a common information system (IS). The case is a consortium of universities that has developed a common student registrar system over a period of more than ten years.

The authors used a social process model to analyze the episodes and encounters in the system development and evaluation process. The research approach can be characterized as action case.

The authors found that in the early stages of system development the evaluation was emergent or even non‐existent. As the system was developed further and issues, such as delays and missing features, arose, there was a need for better control of the process. Thus, the evaluation process evolved through a series of critical encounters into a more proactive one.

The authors studied only one case so broad generalizations directly from the case cannot be made. However, the results could hold true for similar settings. The authors believe that the results are interesting to both researchers and practitioners since in outsourcing relationships the consortium kind of arrangement is becoming more common.

The authors analyze the evolution of IS evaluation processes in a setting with multiple client and vendor organizations and reveal the complexities of system evaluation in such settings. Moreover, they introduce three new concepts: reactive, transitional and proactive evaluation processes. These concepts can help researchers and practitioners to better understand the nature of the IS evaluation processes and to possibly choose an evaluation approach that has a better “fit” with the development situation at hand.

The aim of this paper is to raise an awareness of intangible assets among large manufacturing firms in Thailand. As a result, the research is to examine empirically the effects of intellectual capital (IC), and its key components (e.g. human capital, structural capital, and innovation capital) on a manufacturing firm's industrial operations and performance.

The required data for this research are collected from leading manufacturing firms' annual reports. These firms are listed in stock exchange of Thailand 100. The value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) is adapted to measure IC. Then, the co‐relation analysis and multi‐regression model are applied to learn more about the roles of VAIC and its impacts on a manufacturing firm's performance.

IC positively and significantly affects a manufacturing firm's performance. It impacts all four performance indicators under study, i.e. return on equity, return on assets, revenue growth, and employee productivity. In addition, based on the relatively high adjusted R², human capital exhibits the relationships with employee productivity.

The findings highlight the role of IC in strengthening a manufacturing firm's long‐term competitiveness advantage. The results from the paper have helped develop policy initiatives for Department of Industrial Work in Thailand such as tax scheme and incentives for R&D spending, promotion of university partnerships for R&D, and training for more effective knowledge management practices.

Centralised workplace and decentralised facilities management organisations combine several interacting functions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the workplace service environment from a ‘network organisation’ perspective comprising workplace knowledge‐holder roles that have both formal and informal connections. This paper proposes that the core business customers, in‐house and outsourced service providers, and the contract managers have a similar need to interact and learn from each other and presents a framework for ‘network service organisations’ to describe their changing collaborative roles. First, the customer interfaces of workplace networks are identified. Secondly, a theoretical framework for a network service organisation is presented, followed by a section on creating centres of excellence for workplace knowledge. Thirdly, a generic governance model for network collaboration is introduced. The aim of the paper is to increase knowledge about understanding and managing network relations in the new workplace environment. The paper ends with a discussion on limitations to formal cooperation and the need for further research on informal relationships within these networks.

This paper aims to present a practical application of Self Organizing Map (SOM) and decision tree algorithms to model a multi‐response machining process and to provide a set of control rules for this process.

SOM is a powerful artificial neural network approach used for analyzing and visualizing high‐dimensional data. Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) process is a complex and expensive machining process, in which there are a lot of factors having effects on the outputs of the process. In this work, after collecting a dataset based on a series of designed experiments, the paper applied SOM to this dataset in order to analyse the underlying relations between input and output variables as well as interactions between input variables. The results are compared with the results obtained from decision tree algorithm.

Based on the analysis of the results obtained, the paper extracted interrelationships between variables as well as a set of control rules for prediction of the process outputs. The results of the new experiments based on these rules, clearly demonstrate that the paper's predictions are valid, interesting and useful.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time SOM and decision tree has been applied to the WEDM process successfully.

This paper aims to analyse the surface evolution of pure recycled titanium subjected to isothermal and cyclic oxidation conditions using dry air as oxidant gas. It is important to mention that the cyclic oxidation behaviour of pure titanium is a process that has been barely studied.

An isothermal and cyclic oxidation reactor was built for these purposes. This installation allows the oxidation of material under the action of any atmosphere and for temperatures up to 1,200°C. For this study, the oxidation behaviour of the material was studied at 850°C and 950°C.

Oxide growth under isothermal oxidation conditions in air follows a parabolic behaviour with an activation energy of 118 kJ/mol, and the oxide phase formed on the surface of the metal was rutile. The cyclic oxidation of the material indicates that oxide is spalled from the surface following linear behaviours; this phenomenon is controlled by the thermal stresses experienced by the samples during heating and cooling cycles.

The material is obtained from the production of electrolytic copper, and during its reprocessing practices at high temperature, it was thought that it could experience some abnormal oxidation. In addition, given that pure titanium is currently used for biomedical application, some surface degree can be given by means of oxidation and subsequent spallation process situation that is found during the cyclic oxidation experiments, which could be a low-cost method to engineer a surface for these purposes.

Even as multi-story apartment building development proposals in existing neighbourhoods represent a substantial component of policy debate at local planning boards, there is limited evidence for the impact of such residential developments on surrounding apartment values. This paper aims to address the void in knowledge, and the impact of multi-story apartment building developments on apartment values in residential high-rise areas located outside city and district centres is investigated in Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland.

Whether a multi-story apartment building development is followed by an increase in housing values depends on both positive and negative externalities. To specify valuation effects of proximate development projects, advanced research design combining matched sample methodology and hedonic-based difference-in-difference approach is used.

It appears from the analysis that completion of a single multi-story apartment building has an immediate positive impact on apartment values within 300 metre radius, while there is no statistically significant impact on price trend.

This paper studies apartment values only in Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Finland, and it is important to notice that local regulations and market conditions may have a notable impact on the outcomes.

This study is the first of its kind to provide with statistically significant evidence for positive impacts from multi-story apartment building development in Finnish residential high-rise areas and may have a crucial role in helping to dispel prejudices related to such developments.

The purpose of this paper is to provide novel and rigorous evidence on the productivity effect of varying attributes of performance-related pay (PRP) and shows that the details of PRP indeed matter.

In doing so, the authors exploit the panel nature of the Finnish Linked Employer–Employee Data on the details of PRP.

The authors first establish that the omitted variable bias is serious, which makes the cross-sectional estimates on the productivity effect of the details of PRP biased upward substantially. Relying on the fixed effect estimates that account for such bias, the authors find: (first, group incentive PRP is more potent in boosting enterprise productivity than individual incentive PRP; second, group incentive PRP with profitability as a performance measure is especially powerful in raising firm productivity; third, when a narrow measure (such as cost reduction) is already used, adding another narrow measure (such as quality improvement) yields no additional productivity gain; and fourth, PRP with greater power of incentives (the share of PRP in total compensation) results in greater productivity gains, and returns to power of incentives diminishes very slowly.

Much of the empirical literature on PRP focuses on a question of whether the firm can increase firm performance in general and enterprise productivity in particular by introducing PRP and if so, how much. However, not all PRP programs are created equal and PRP programs vary significantly in a variety of attributes. This paper provides novel and rigorous evidence on the productivity effect of varying attributes of PRP and shows that the details of PRP indeed matter.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel and new direct measurement of small investor sentiment in the equity market. The sentiment is based on the individual investors’ internet search activity.

The author measures unexpected changes in the small investor sentiment with AR (1) process, where the residuals capture the unexpected changes in small investor sentiment. The author employs vector autoregressive, Granger causality and linear regression models to estimate the association between the unexpected changes in small investor sentiment and future equity market returns.

An unexpected increase in the search popularity of the term bear market is negatively associated with the following week’s equity market returns. An unexpected increase in the spread (the difference in popularities between a bull market and a bear market) is positively associated with the following week’s equity market returns. The author finds that these effects are stronger for small-sized companies.

By author’s knowledge, the paper is the first that measures the small investor sentiment that is based on the internet search activity for keywords used in the American Association of Individual Investor’s (AAII) survey questions. The paper proposes an alternative small investor sentiment measure that captures the changes in small investor sentiment in more timely fashion than the AAII survey.

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