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The paper aims to cover a numerical routine design calculation module for treating the magnetic circuit of hydrogenerators.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to cover a numerical routine design calculation module for treating the magnetic circuit of hydrogenerators.
Design/methodology/approach
A leading manufacturer of hydrogenerators proposed to overcome the standstill in the development of conventional design calculation tools by replacing his existing program module for treating the magnetic circuit of hydrogenerators by a new one based on numerical algorithms. The new module should use the existing interfaces and not change the scope of the existing design program providing hundreds of additional design results. Fulfilling these requirements the numerical calculation module using an enhanced finite integral method had to be self‐organising with regard to everything, e.g. the grid system generation for discretising the calculation area, the handling of the input data including the currents driving the magnetic field, the handling of the boundary conditions and the iterative load case treatment providing the field current producing exactly the required terminal voltage and factor at the machine terminals. Efforts were made for employing grid generation techniques, numerical algorithms and various iteration strategies which were easy to handle and to minimize the calculation time.
Findings
The effort necessary for automating the calculation approach so that interference of a numerical field calculation expert is unnecessary was found to be more challenging than handling the numerical algorithms.
Practical implications
The program module is ready for implementation.
Originality/value
The paper describes the transfer of numerical field calculation software into existing tools for routine design calculations.
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This chapter offers the first full translation from Russian to English of the Balance of the National Economy of the USSR, 1924–26’s first chapter. Involving 12 authors…
Abstract
This chapter offers the first full translation from Russian to English of the Balance of the National Economy of the USSR, 1924–26’s first chapter. Involving 12 authors and composed of 21 chapters, the Balance is a collective work published in June 1926 in Moscow by the Soviet Central Statistical Administration under the scientific supervision of its former director, Pavel Illich Popov (1872–1950). In this first chapter, titled ‘Studying the Balance of the National Economy: An Introduction’, Popov set the theoretical foundations of what might be considered as the first modern national accounting system and paved the way to multisector macroeconometric modelling.
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During the socialist calculation debate, Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek made a positive argument regarding the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism. In…
Abstract
During the socialist calculation debate, Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek made a positive argument regarding the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism. In this study, I argue that the arguments made by Mises and Hayek have normative implications for capitalism. I do so by drawing an analogy between an Austrian account of the market process and a neo-Aristotelian account of human flourishing. Neither economic calculation follows passively from implementing a set of profit-maximizing rules nor does human flourishing follow passively from following a set of universal moral norms (be they of utilitarian, deontological, or natural law inspiration). Both economic calculation and human flourishing are inherently based on individual acts of knowledge creation, actualized only by self-directed individuals. In both cases, the creation of such knowledge is both contextual and specific to the unique circumstances of each individual of a particular time and place. Therefore, to assume that such knowledge exists ex ante, and is objective and transpersonal across time, place, and institutional context renders both economic calculation and human flourishing into a technological problem of given means and given ends, in essence defining both activities out of existence. The possibility of economic calculation and human flourishing are therefore dependent upon a political/legal order that protects the possibility of self-directed knowledge creation in both the economic and moral realms, that is, to say an institutional framework of private property rights.
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Aziza Laguecir, Christopher S. Chapman and Anja Kern
The purpose of this paper is to examine the organizational construction of profit at the responsibility-centre level, how underlying cost calculations are challenged, and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the organizational construction of profit at the responsibility-centre level, how underlying cost calculations are challenged, and the role of accountants therein.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper analyses profit calculation in a public social housing organization that experienced New Public Management (NPM). Participant observations, archives and interviews inform the study over three years, enabling access to day-to-day practices.
Findings
This study examines a trial of strength that revisited long-existing profitability and cost calculations. Accountants held competing views of how to treat labour costs. Some were anti-programme during a trial of incompatibility, while others were programme defenders. The authors also provide evidence of the stability of an established network and its resistance to the claims of an adversary spokesperson in a trial of strength. The concept of trial of incompatibility proved helpful in showing how the actor networks within OMEGA played out the tension between profit orientation and the social mission of offering affordable dwellings.
Research limitations/implications
The paper provides rare qualitative data on the significant and complex role of calculative costing choices in determining intra-organizational profitability and its interference with the inherent social mission of the organization.
Practical implications
The authors suggest that profitability calculations are influenced not only by economic context but also by different views of organizational actors regarding how to calculate profit. These calculations would benefit from a more detailed and explicit documentation of reasons for choices made, given the potential for different and, in principle, equally valid approaches. The authors provide further evidence of the complexity of the public social housing sector.
Social implications
This research points to a departure from the mission of public social housing in the face of NPM reforms and further questions the compatibility of a profit orientation with the provision of affordable dwellings.
Originality/value
The findings show intra-accounting variation regarding a specific element of profit calculation (labour costs) relating to the organization’s wider mission and status.
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Most carbon accounting consists of valuing what has not happened; such absent entities and their materialisation through simulated calculations can enact political…
Abstract
Purpose
Most carbon accounting consists of valuing what has not happened; such absent entities and their materialisation through simulated calculations can enact political participation, however. By using Marres’s (2012) notion of an “experimental site of material politics”, this paper aims to investigate the mediating role of simulated calculations of prevented carbon emissions in deploying environmental politics’ discourses. Here, such calculations become seductive forces for public engagement and help performing engaging spaces for supporting the diffusion of innovation technologies.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical analysis concerns a simulated calculative device developed by Autostrade, a motorway management firm, in its work to translate questions about capacity utilisation, through the fluidity of traffic, into reductions in CO2 emissions. These reductions took the form of a simulation that required an apparatus to be performed and involved alternative scenarios focussing on hypothetical rather than absolute CO2 reductions.
Findings
The Autostrade case highlights how simulated calculations of absent CO2 emissions participate in the construction of a collective experience by interfacing concerns that encompass the rationalities of the domestication of technological innovation and make motorway mobility a responsible and ac-countable action.
Practical implications
The paper shows how simulated and experimental calculations on absent carbon emissions act as mediators between public engagement and the deployment of environmental politics discourses. They both extend political participation and propagate and reproduce the trials, which, from time to time, challenge the enticement and forcefulness of a technological innovation.
Social implications
The paper suggests a different dimension of politics that relies on material politics. Rather than considering human centric discursive acts, it looks at the power of technical objects and their augmented calculative devices in engaging the public in environmental politics. This is where absence, which is made visible and materialised through simulations, deploys affordances that reframe power relationships.
Originality/value
This is the first case study that addresses the issue of the role of accounting calculation on absent carbon emissions in enabling innovation and engaging publics in environmental politics.
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Jinliang Liu, Yanmin Jia, Guanhua Zhang and Jiawei Wang
The calculation of the crack width is necessary for the design of prestressed concrete (PC) members. The purpose of this paper is to develop a numerical model based on the…
Abstract
Purpose
The calculation of the crack width is necessary for the design of prestressed concrete (PC) members. The purpose of this paper is to develop a numerical model based on the bond-slip theory to calculate the crack width in PC beams.
Design/methodology/approach
Stress calculation method for common reinforcement after beam crack has occurred depends on the difference in the bonding performance between prestressed reinforcement and common reinforcement. A numerical calculation model for determining the crack width in PC beams is developed based on the bond-slip theory, and verified using experimental data. The calculation values obtained by the proposed numerical model and code formulas are compared, and the applicability of the numerical model is evaluated.
Findings
The theoretical analysis and experimental results verified that the crack width of PC members calculated based on the bond-slip theory in this study is reasonable. Furthermore, the stress calculation method for the common reinforcement is verified. Compared with the model calculation results obtained in this study, the results obtained from code formulas are more conservative.
Originality/value
The numerical calculation model for crack width proposed in this study can be used by engineers as a reference for calculating the crack width in PC beams to ensure the durability of the PC member.
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The purpose of this paper is to develop the method of taking the eddy current losses in the laminated magnetic circuits into account during implicit transient calculations…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop the method of taking the eddy current losses in the laminated magnetic circuits into account during implicit transient calculations. The nonlinear magnetization characteristic of iron and the hysteresis losses can also be considered in the simulations done with the developed method.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents complex equivalent magnetic permeability derived from the presumed angular frequency in a laminated magnetic circuit. On this basis, the synthesis of a magnetic permeability as a function of the Laplace variable “s” is presented. After transformation of the variable “s” to a variable “z” of the Z transformation, it is possible to conduct discrete time calculation of transient states of magnetic circuits including the eddy current losses. An iterative process is developed to take the saturation of the magnetic circuit in these calculations into account. As regards hysteresis losses, the scalar model of magnetic hysteresis by Juhani Tellinen was implemented. The new method is validated by calculations of a two-coil transformer.
Findings
It is important to take into account the losses in sheet metal directly in the implicit transient calculations. This possibility is provided by the presented method based on the synthesis of the equivalent magnetic permeability μ^(s). The presented method was proved to be correct and efficient. The calculated sheet metal losses were compared with the results presented in literature. Good conformance of results was attained.
Practical implications
The method enables calculation of eddy current and hysteresis losses in laminated magnetic circuits during calculations of transient states. It does not need, unlike the previous methods, previously provided information (“a priori”) about the content of higher harmonics in waveforms. The method takes into account mutual dependence of transient waveforms of currents in the analysed system and losses of laminated magnetic circuit, expressed by eddy currents and hysteresis losses. Its implementation comes down to using in calculations a filter of the IIR type and corresponds to its calculation complexity. The author plans to use the presented method in the finite elements method transient calculations.
Originality/value
A new approach is a synthesis of the equivalent magnetic permeability in Laplace domain, which creates an equivalent RC circuit for permeability. Analytic equations for parameters of this equivalent circuit are original. A method for considering nonlinear magnetization characteristic and hysteresis losses was presented. In calculations of transient states of systems with magnetic circuits, one can use the developed equivalent circuit of magnetic permeability in a form of the IIR filter. Operator magnetic permeability includes fractional derivative of Laplace’s variable “vs”. Therefore, the equivalent IIR filter includes “history” of the processes that take place in the laminated magnetic circuit to the current, calculated time moment. This “history” in terms of its content is limited only by the degree of the applied IIR filter. It enables to calculate “step by step”, without previous (“a priori”) knowledge about harmonic components of the whole waveforms. It was necessary in the previously used methods, when determining parameters of magnetic permeability. The method proposed in the paper allows for calculations with taking into account direct dependence of an electric part of the system on its magnetic part.
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Bo Karlsson and Monika Kurkkio
The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe how calculations are used in the early phase of strategic capital investment projects (SCIPs) in the mining context…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe how calculations are used in the early phase of strategic capital investment projects (SCIPs) in the mining context and thereby create an understanding of what calculations do in these situations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a case study based on interviews with project managers, controllers and top-level managers, as well as documents and observations.
Findings
The empirical evidence provides key insights into the different uses of calculations in the early phase of SCIPs in the mining industry. The authors found evidence that calculations in the early phase of SCIPs are used to generate ideas, support learning and discussions, evaluate decisions and act as a mediating device.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is based on a single organization, and therefore, the findings of the paper are limited to theoretical generalization.
Practical implications
The study has practical implications directed toward top management, controllers and project managers working with SCIPs. This study suggests that calculations in the early phase are used to unite and create a shared view in the early phase rather than to present rational answers to different investment decision. Calculations can also be used to direct attention toward important areas, sort out and prioritize among ideas, communicate a shared view and function as a template. Thus, calculations are essential in the early phase as they help to transform activities into actions.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the accounting literature in which it has been emphasized that we still know little of strategic capital budgeting processes, with insights into the multiple uses of calculations in the early phase of SCIPs. We also argue that calculations act as mediating devices in the early phase of SCIPs as they provide a common frame of reference and a basis for action.
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The purpose of this research is to examine the role of accounting numbers in one organisation's attempts to enact and calculate customer intimacy, given renewed interest…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to examine the role of accounting numbers in one organisation's attempts to enact and calculate customer intimacy, given renewed interest in organisation‐customer relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper utilises actor‐network theory in conducting an ethnography at a wholesale financial services firm pursuing a strategy of customer intimacy. The main empirical site was the sales and marketing department, where actors were attempting to further their knowledge of customer needs in the present and anticipate them into the future.
Findings
The paper finds heterogeneous enactments of “customer intimacy” through a “numeric calculation network” and a “sales calculation network”. The former sought to use accounting numbers to calculate how customer intimacy was enacted and impose upon a sales‐force periphery a regime of performance measurement. The latter eventually destabilised the proposed performance measures by promoting their own basis for calculating customers. These were more diverse and “implicit”, comprising talk and communication through co‐location and proximity with customers.
Originality/value
The paper provides a number of insights into the role of accounting as a calculative practice. The observed emergence of novel means of producing accounting numbers outside the domain of the accounting function and within the sales and marketing department has important implications for the practice and study of accounting. In addition, potential limits to the use of accounting in enabling “action at a distance” are identified through the observed contest between “hard” accounting' numbers and softer modes of calculation.
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Koen Casier, Sofie Verbrugge, Jan Van Ooteghem, Didier Colle, Mario Pickavet and Piet Demeester
The purpose of this paper is to show how in a converged network, all services are provided over the same network infrastructure. This obfuscates the costs of the different…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to show how in a converged network, all services are provided over the same network infrastructure. This obfuscates the costs of the different services in an overall sunk cost. When deploying a new service over the network it is important to know the price that will cover the costs incurred by this service. This paper aims to investigate different approaches to calculate this price, to propose an optimal calculation approach and to estimate the sensitivity of this approach to changes in the inputs or when the inputs will recursively depend on the price set for the service.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses existing cost allocation schemes to this particular problem and within simulations, it investigates their outcome on the bottom price margin. Additionally dedicated Monte‐Carlo simulations give information on general sensitivity and iterative simulations are used for detecting the impact of this recursive influence of price on its inputs.
Findings
The optimal calculation approach uses a combination of incremental allocation and full allocation which places a bottom margin on the price which is both sustainable and competitive in the long run. Simulations show large differences of up to 50 percent with other approaches. Additionally the simulations indicate the importance of the length of the calculation horizon as a too small calculation horizon could also lead to differences of up to 50 percent. Sensitivity results indicated a low impact of changes on the bottom margin obtained using this optimal calculation approach and a much higher impact on the non‐optimal margins. Finally iterative calculations showed the importance of highly detailed market research as a 10 percent mismatch between market‐research implicit price and calculated price margin will lead to at least 10 percent difference and might lead to up to 25 percent difference.
Originality/value
The paper links the research field of cost allocation and bottom up cost calculation to the pricing margins calculated in a typical business case evaluation phase. It also links the pricing recursively to adoption and completes the calculations in an iterative manner. Finally the research is completed with sensitivity analysis of the results to changes in the input adoption.
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