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Social media empower individuals to voice their opinions about issues that they perceive to be unacceptable. When many others add their opinions and large quantities of messages containing negative word-of-mouth suddenly spread online, an online firestorm occurs. By extending the situational theory of problem solving (Kim and Grunig, 2011) into the domain of online communication, this study aims to identify the drivers for participating in online firestorms.

With reference to a fictitious online firestorm trigger (i.e. perceived moral misconduct) posted on Facebook, a qualitative pre-study and quantitative online survey were conducted. Based on the responses of 410 participants, an ordinary least squares regression was modeled to examine the factors of participating in the online firestorm. Later, structural equation modeling was applied to test the model and gauge its fit with the data.

Participants' involvement recognition, perception of being collective actors and approval of slacktivism behaviors positively predicted their participation in the online firestorm, whereas non-anonymity hampered it.

The study's findings not only contribute to the current understandings of online firestorms but are also valuable for developing theory and forms of professional crisis management. Moreover, they offer insights into the factors of online communication environments that encourage users to voice their opinions.

This paper aims to deal with the design optimization of a synchronous reluctance machine to be used in an X-ray tube, where the goal is to maximize the torque while keeping low the amount of material used, by means of gradient-based free-form shape optimization.

The presented approach is based on the mathematical concept of shape derivatives and allows to obtain new motor designs without the need to introduce a geometric parametrization. This paper presents an extension of a standard gradient-based free-form shape optimization algorithm to the case of multiple objective functions by determining updates, which represent a descent of all involved criteria. Moreover, this paper illustrates a way to obtain an approximate Pareto front.

The presented method allows to obtain optimal designs of arbitrary, non-parametric shape with very low computational cost. This paper validates the results by comparing them to a parametric geometry optimization in JMAG by means of a stochastic optimization algorithm. While the obtained designs are of similar shape, the computational time used by the gradient-based algorithm is in the order of minutes, compared to several hours taken by the stochastic optimization algorithm.

This paper applies the presented gradient-based multi-objective optimization algorithm in the context of free-form shape optimization using the mathematical concept of shape derivatives. The authors obtain a set of Pareto-optimal designs, each of which is a shape that is not represented by a fixed set of parameters. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this approach to multi-objective free-form shape optimization is novel in the context of electric machines.

While corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards are amongst the most widely adopted instruments for supporting firms in becoming more accountable, firms who adopt them frequently fail to comply. In this context, the purpose of this study is to explore to what extent CSR standards are designed for accountability. In the analysis, this paper investigates design characteristics related to accountability across different standard types, namely, principle-based, reporting, certification and process standards.

This study reviews the design characteristics of 50 CSR standards in a systematic and comparative fashion. This paper combines qualitative deductive coding with exploratory quantitative analyses methods to elucidate structural variance and patterns of accountability-related design characteristics across the sample.

This study finds that the prevalence of design characteristics aimed at fostering accountability varies significantly between different types of standards. This paper identifies three factors related to the specific purpose of any given standard that explain this structural variation in design characteristics, namely, implementability, comparability and measurability.

Non-compliance limits the effectiveness and legitimacy of CSR standards. The systematic exploration of patterns and structural variation in design characteristics that promote accountability may provide valuable clues for the design of more effective CSR standards in the future.

Better understanding the role of design characteristics of CSR standards is critical to ensure they contribute to greater corporate accountability.

This study strives to expand the current understanding of the design characteristics of CSR standards beyond individual cases through a systematic exploration of accountability-related design characteristics across a larger sample.