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In the context of professional learning networks (PLNs), there are many studies which address knowledge mobilization (KMb). The majority of these focus on how research is mobilized by various actors. This paper explores the concepts of KMb both on an individual and an organizational level and discusses the role of PLN participants and PLNs as catalysts for institutional change (IC). To illustrate this, a model was developed which draws on a concept that depicts the mobilization processes at the various levels.

The model was developed by drawing on theoretical approaches to both KMb on an individual and an organizational level of schools. The strengths and limitations of the model are then assessed as part of an exploratory study. Interviews of PLN participants (n = 7) from two schools and detailed logbooks of two participants were used to reconstruct experiences of KMb in the PLNs and the process of KMb among schools. By contrasting two schools, the study traces how mechanisms of KMb occurred. Data sources were analyzed using a structured content analysis alongside a deductive–inductive code system.

The results of the exploratory study show that, although the model is able to map the KMb practices, some refinement is still needed. While the extension of concepts describing the work of knowledge mobilizer (KM) leads to a more theoretically differentiated perspective, the data also showed that PLN participants only partially define themselves as KMs. The connection to concepts of strategies of knowledge mobilizing on an organizational level led to an increased transparency in the theoretical model. The data showed that KMb is influenced by organizational and individual beliefs.

The paper adds to the current knowledge base through a theoretical model that addresses the underinvestigated topic of KMb regarding the link between the individual and organizational levels. With a special focus on individual and organizational levels, a connection between KMb and IC is provided. The theoretical framework and research findings from an additional explorative study can be used to further develop relevant insights into the actions of participants from PLNs that enable IC processes among their schools.

In difficult geographical zones (mountain, intra-cities areas, etc.), many shippers, from small and medium enterprises to individuals, may demand delivery of different food products (fresh, refrigerated, frozen, etc.) in small quantities. On the other side, carrier companies wish to use their vehicles optimally. Taking into account the perishability constraints (short-shelflife, temperature limits, etc.) of the transported food products and environmental constraints (pollution, carbon impact) while consolidating multiple kinds of food products to use vehicles optimally is not achieved by current transportation planning solutions. The purpose of this paper is to present an interoperable solution of a marketplace, formed by shippers and carriers, dedicated to the schedule of food transport orders.

This transportation planning system named Interoperable-Pathfinder, Order, Vehicle, Environment and Supervisor (I-POVES) is an interoperable multi-agent system, based on the SCEP (supervisor, customer, environment and producer) model (Archimede and Coudert, 2001). Ontologies are developed to create the planning marketplace comprising demands and offers from different sources (multiple shippers and carriers).

A hierarchy ontology for food products. A transporter system ontology. A global ontology that contains all shared concepts used by local ontologies of both shippers and carriers. I-POVES an interoperable model, which facilitates collaboration between carriers and their shippers through its active agents.

I-POVES is tested on a case study from the TECCAS Poctefa project, comprising transport and food companies from both sides of the Pyrenees (France and Spain).

There has been much work in the literature on the delivery of products, but very few on the delivery of food products. Work related to delivery of food products focuses mostly on timely delivery for avoiding its wastage. In this paper, constraints related to food products and to environment (pollution and carbon impact) of transport resources are taken into account while planning the delivery.

The first well-known liner shipping conference was created for the UK/Calcutta trade in 1875. However, the European Union (EU) decided to abolish repeal the liner conferences system with effect from October 18 2008. This paper aims to study the governing regulations on shipping conferences in Taiwan along with investigating the impact on the EU to repeal conferences. The regulation on liner conferences in the USA is also briefly referred.

Literature review and questionnaire survey are used to conduct the study. This paper reviews important literature relating to the EU to repeal the conferences system and its impact on liner market competition to/from European trade routes, with discussions on the US and Taiwan regulations on shipping conferences. Questionnaire survey data, collected from published report and this research present shippers’ and carriers’ responses on the changes of regulations on liner conferences.

Shippers are strongly supporting the repeal of the conferences system. Academic research results basically reveal that the liner market will be more competitive in the trades to/from the USA and the EU after the repeal of the conferences. For Taiwan, its regulations are rather simple and loosely control over the liner conferences; therefore, if the shipping administration intends to enhance the inspection of the agreements of conferences and strategic alliances, more detailed regulations should be prepared, and the provisions of the EU or USA would be a good reference.

Through the discussions on the legal treatments of shipping conferences from the USA, the EU and Taiwan perspectives, this paper provides shipping researchers with not only a clear evolution of the liner conferences but also a deep understanding of the impact to repeal the conferences on liner market competition.

This paper reviews important literature and related legislations on liner conferences including the USA, the EU and Taiwan. The different responses on the EU to repeal the conferences system from shippers and carriers are discussed. The impact on liner market competition is presented.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt “whole network” perspective and analyzes the governance and control mechanisms in the Universal Postal Union (UPU), one of the oldest and largest inter-governmental networks, through the lens of institutional entrepreneurship theory. The purpose is to introduce a typology of network governance forms to the accounting literature and to analyze the governance and management control mechanisms within the UPU, a “participatory federation” (Provan, 1983) type of network that has managed the challenges of collective collaboration since 1875.

The study benefits from unlimited access to all archival materials of the UPU such as minutes of Congress and committee meetings since 1875 as well as secondary documents and market studies related to the postal sector. The data reported in this study are derived from the archives of the UPU in Berne, Switzerland and interviews conducted with senior officials.

Drawing on the work of Provan (1983) and Provan and Kenis (2008) the authors identify five “ideal type” network governance forms based on such variables as differences in the relative power of network participants and whether these networks have arisen spontaneously or due to external coercion, the authors classify the UPU as a “participatory federation.” Within the theoretical boundaries of this typology the authors identify the multi level governance structures and the use of management control mechanisms by each level of governance. The authors introduce a distinction between the “network constitutional organization” that focusses on the socialization of network members and strategy-level orchestration of the overall network and the “network administrative organization” (NAO) that mobilizes management accounting and control mechanisms to monitor, encourage and facilitate member collaboration. The authors propose that control within a participatory federation is enacted through collective entrepreneurship by governance bodies using management accounting and control mechanisms as institutional carriers.

The paper is focussed on the current state of the UPU’s network structure and processes and did not explore the dynamics around the emergence of the different network governance and control mechanisms. An exploration of the collective construction by network participants of the need for these mechanisms would provide insights into how they emerge and might lead to a better understanding of the role of NAOs in networks.

The paper highlights the challenges faced by collaborative networks and identifies enabling characteristics of a participatory federation’s governance bodies. The empirical observations within the context of the UPU contribute to the theoretical understanding of the desirable characteristics of participatory federations that might be applicable to similar public and private collaborative networks

This study expands the knowledge of management accounting and control systems in networks. It bridges a gap in the accounting literature by adopting a “whole network” perspective and by differentiating types of network governance structures that use management accounting and control systems. This contributes to the understanding of accounting and control across the full range of organizational forms.

A full consistent discretization scheme of the improved carrier density, momentum‐ and energy‐conservation equations is presented. The carrier heat flux as well as the convection and recombination terms are considered. The convection terms are averaged and then the differential constitutive relations of the current density and the energy flux are solved. The proposed discretization scheme generalizes the Scharfetter‐Gummel (S‐G) difference approximation to the generalized hydrodynamic model (HDM). On the basis of this scheme the hydrodynamic equations (HDE's) are solved for both electrons and holes. The transport of hot carriers in the p‐i‐n diode is investigated over a large scale of biasing values. The electric field distribution is not severely purturbed by the hot electron effects up to the medium biasing range. However, the minority carrier distribution is significantly affected by the carrier temperature‐gradients near the space‐charge‐regions. The minority carriers that are diffused to the edge of depleted regions are heated and if the carrier temperature gradient is sufficiently strong they diffuse back to the neutral cold region rather than to be captured by the electric field as known from the standard DDM theory.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the operation of p-type side gate junctionless silicon transistor (SGJLT) in accumulation region through experimental measurements and 3-D TCAD simulation results. The variation of electric field components, carrier’s concentration and valence band edge energy towards the accumulation region is explored with the aim of finding the origin of SGJLT performance in the accumulation operational condition.

The device is fabricated by atomic force microscopy nanolithography on silicon-on-insulator wafer. The output and transfer characteristics of the device are obtained using 3-D Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) Sentaurus software and compared with experimental measurement results. The advantages of AFM nanolithography in contact mode and Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology were implemented to fabricate a simple structure which exhibits the behaviour of field effect transistors. The device has 200-nm channel length, 100-nm gate gap and 4 μm for the distance between the source and drain contacts. The characteristics of the fabricated device were measured using an Agilent HP4156C semiconductor parameter analyzer (SPA). A 3-D TCAD Sentaurus tool is used as the simulation platform. The Boltzmann statistics is adopted because of the low doping concentration of the channel. Hydrodynamic model is taken to be as the main transport model for all simulations, and the quantum mechanical effects are ignored. A doping dependent Masetti mobility model was also included as well as an electric field dependent model with Shockley–Read–Hall (SRH) carrier recombination/generation.

We have obtained that the device is a normally on state device mainly because of the lack of work functional difference between the gate and the channel. Analysis of electric field components’ variation, carrier’s concentration and valence band edge energy reveals that increasing the negative gate voltage drives the device into accumulation region; however, it is unable to increase the drain current significantly. The positive slope of the hole quasi-Fermi level in the accumulation region presents mechanism of carriers’ movement from source to drain. The influence of electric field because of drain and gate voltage on charge distribution explains a low increasing of the drain current when the device operates in accumulation regime.

The proposed side gate junctionless transistors simplify the fabrication process, because of the lack of gate oxide and physical junctions, and implement the atomic force microscopy nanolithography for fabrication process. The optimized structure with lower gap between gate and channel and narrower channel would present the output characteristics near the ideal transistors for next generation of scaled-down devices in both accumulation and depletion region. The presented findings are verified through experimental measurements and simulation results.

In times of increasing shipping risks and uncertainty, the purpose of this paper is to analyze fiercely competitive shipping markets in the Asia-Pacific region and help the carriers develop the optimal pricing schemes, shipping networks (e.g. routes and shipping frequency), and future investment plans.

This paper develops viable maritime logistics strategies based on the non-cooperative game theory which determines the optimal vessel size/type, shipping route, and shipping frequency, while taking into account multiple cost components and unpredictable shipping market dynamics.

This study revealed that the container carrier’s optimal shipping strategy was insensitive to changes in freight rates, fuel prices, and loading/unloading fees at the destination ports. However, it tends to be more sensitive to an increase in the shipping volume than the aforementioned parameters. In other words, aggressive pricing schemes and drastic cost-cutting measures alone cannot enhance carrier competitiveness in today’s shipping markets characterized by overcapacity and weak demand.

This paper is one of a few attempts to identify a host of factors influencing the container carrier’s competitiveness using the game theory and develop an optimal shipping strategy in the presence of conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders (e.g. carriers, shippers, and port authorities). To validate the rigor and usefulness of the proposed game-theoretic model, the authors also experiment it with an actual case study of container carriers serving the Northeast Asian shipping market.

A compound emitter heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) structure that incorporates an additional heterojunction within the emitter for minority carrier confinement has been proposed. In this new device configuration, the single wide band‐gap emitter layer in a conventional HBT is replaced by two sub‐layers of wide band‐gap material, with the sub‐layer nearer the base having a narrower band‐gap. By means of numerical simulations, the compound emitter HBT was found to perform better than comparable conventional HBTs. With the AlGaAs(n) / GaAs heterostructure system, the optimum compound emitter HBT structure was found to be Al0.3Ga0.7As(n) ‐ Al0. 2Ga0.8As(n) / GaAs with grading at the two hetero‐interfaces. It has a low turn‐on voltage that is almost identical to that of a homojunction GaAs bipolar transistor with similar doping conditions. Compared with a conventional single emitter layer Al0.3Ga0.7As/GaAs HBT, the optimum compound emitter HBT has an enhancement in the current gain by approximately 2 folds, an improvement in the uniform current gain region from 2 to 4 decades of collector current density, and a slight increase in the unity‐gain cut‐off frequency fT by about 7 %.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive review on development and future trends in zinc oxide thin film transistors (ZnO TFTs). This paper presents the development of TFT technology starting from amorphous silicon, poly-Si to ZnO TFTs. This paper also discusses about transport and device modeling of ZnO TFT and provides a comparative analysis with other TFTs on the basis of performance parameters.

It highlights the need of high–k dielectrics for low leakage and low threshold voltage in ZnO TFTs. This paper also explains the effect of grain boundaries, trap densities and threshold voltage shift on the performance of ZnO TFT. Moreover, it also addresses the challenges like requirement of stable p-type ZnO semiconductor for various electronic applications and high value of ZnO mobility to meet growing demand of high-definition light emitting diode TV (HD-LED TV).

This review will motivate the readers to further investigate the conduction mechanism, best alternate for gate-dielectric and the deposition technique optimization for the enhancement of the performance of ZnO TFTs.

This is a literature review. The technological evolution of TFT in general and ZnO TFT in particular is presented in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a rapid and robust axisymmetric hybrid algorithm to create dynamic temporal and spatial charge distributions, or charge map, in the simulation of bipolar charge injection using Schottky emission and Fowler-Nordheim tunneling, field-dependent transport, recombination, and bulk and interfacial trapping/de-trapping for layered polymer films spanning the range from initial injection to near breakdown.

This hybrid algorithm uses a source distribution technique based on an axisymmetric boundary integral equation method (BIEM) to solve the Poisson equation and a fourth-order Runge-Kutta (RK4) method with an upwind scheme for time integration. Iterative stability is assured by satisfying the Courant-Friedrichs-Levy (CFL) stability criterion. Dynamic charge mapping is achieved by allowing conducting and insulating boundaries and material interfaces to be intuitively represented by equivalent free and bound charge distributions that collectively satisfy all local and far-field conditions.

Charge packets cause substantial increase of electric stress and could accelerate the breakdown of polymeric capacitors. Conditions for the creation of charge packets are identified and numerically demonstrated for a combination of impulsive step excitation, high charge injection, and discontinuous interface.

Metallized bi-axially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) dielectric thin film capacitor with self-clearing and enhanced current carrying capability offer an inexpensive and lightweight alternative for efficient power conditioning, energy storage, energy conversion, and pulsed power. The originality is the comprehensive physics and multi-dimensional modeling which span the dynamic range from initial injection to near breakdown. This model has been validated against some empirical data and may be used to identify failure mechanisms such as charge packets, gaseous voids, and electroluminescence. The value lies in the use of this model to develop mitigation strategies, including re-designs and materials matching, to avoid these failure mechanisms.