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In 2004, the Council for Higher Education (CHE) required a curriculum responsiveness to the teaching and learning of literacies at the programme level, which needed to be addressed across all disciplines. This study aims to describe a situated higher education (HE) collaboration project between mechanical engineering and the Department of Applied Language Studies (DALS) at Nelson Mandela University from 2010 to 2014. The collaboration project aimed to develop the literacies levels of engineering students, reduce the first-year attrition rate and prepare engineering students to meet the high graduate attribute expectations of a competitive workplace amid employer concerns that engineering graduate communication competencies were lacking and insufficient.

The collaboration study used a mixed-method approach, which included student and lecturer questionnaires, as well as an interview with one engineering lecturer to determine his perceptions of the collaboration practices instituted. As the sample was purposeful, two mechanical engineer lecturers and 32 second-year mechanical engineering students from 2012 to 2013 were selected as the study’s participants, as they met the study’s specific needs. From the questionnaire responses and transcribed interview data, codes were identified to describe the themes that emerged, namely, rating the collaboration practices, attitudes to the course, report feedback provided and report template use.

Most of the student participants viewed the collaboration practices positively and identified their attitude as “positive” and “enthusiastic” to the language/engineering report collaboration initiative. The report feedback practices were viewed as improving writing skills and enabling the students to relate report writing practices to workplace needs. The engineering lecturers also found that the collaboration practices were enabling and improved literacy levels, although time was identified as a constraint. During the four-year collaboration period, the language practitioner increasingly gained report content knowledge, as well as unpacking the specific rhetorical structures required to produce the report text by co-constructing knowledge with the mechanical engineering lecturers.

Studies have shown that language practitioners and discipline lecturers need to change their conceptualisation of academic discourses as generic transferable skills and autonomous bodies of knowledge. Little benefit is derived from this model, least of all for the students who grapple with disciplinary forms of writing and the highly technical language of engineering. Discipline experts often tend to conflate understandings of language, literacy and discourse, which lead to simplistic understandings of how students may be inducted into engineering discourses. Therefore, spaces to nurture and extend language practitioner and discipline-expert collaborations are needed to embed the teaching and learning of discipline-specific literacies within disciplines.

For the collaboration project, the language practitioner and mechanical engineering lecturers focused their collaboration on discussing and negotiating the rhetorical and content requirements of the Design 3 report as a genre. To achieve the goal of making tacit knowledge and discourse explicit, takes time and effort, so without the investment of time and buy-in, interaction would not be sustained, and the collaboration would have been unproductive. As a result, the collaboration project required regular meetings, class visits and negotiations, as well as a language of description so that the often tacit report discourse conventions and requirements could be mutually understood and pedagogically overt to produce “legitimate texts” (Luckett, 2012 p. 19).

In practice, peer collaboration is often a messy, complex and lengthy process, which requires systematic and sustained spaces to provide discourse scaffolding so that the criteria for producing legitimate design reports are not opaque, but transparent and explicit pedagogically. The study also describes the organisational circumstances that generated the collaboration, as establishing and sustaining a collaborative culture over time requires planning, on-going dialogic spaces, as well as support and buy-in at various institutional levels to maintain the feasibility of the collaboration practice.

Literacy and discourse collaboration tends to reduce role differentiation amongst language teachers and specialists, which results in shared expertise for problem-solving that could provide multiple solutions to literacy and discourse learning issues. This finding is important, especially as most studies focus on collaboration practices in isolation, whilst fewer studies have focused on the process of collaboration between language practitioners and disciplinary specialists as has been described in this study.

This paper offers design cybernetics as a theoretical common ground to bridge diverging approaches to design as they frequently occur in collaborative design projects. Focusing on the education of architects and structural engineers in China, the paper examines how compatible approaches to design can be established in both disciplines.

The paper analyses relevant literature as well as observations from Chinese practice and academia. Design cybernetics is introduced and examined as a basis for establishing shared narratives to support cross-disciplinary collaborations involving architects and structural engineers.

Design cybernetics offers a body of vocabulary and a rich resource of strategies to address applied designing across design-oriented disciplines such as architecture and science-based disciplines such as structural engineering. The meta perspective of design cybernetics also provides a basis for the implementation of pedagogy supporting cross-disciplinary collaboration in applied design.

The scope of the paper is limited to the examination of the theoretical framing as well as the implementation of pedagogy in the cultural and geographical context of China.

The paper outlines several design cybernetic strategies for pedagogy in support of cross-disciplinary collaborative design processes and illustrates their implementation in applied design education.

Addressing a significant and persistent gap between the two disciplines of architecture and structural engineering in the context of Chinese building practice, this paper examines the particularities of this context and presents an educational approach to support cross-disciplinary collaboration that has value in and beyond the context of China.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a life cycle assessment (LCA)-based ecodesign teaching practice via university-industry collaboration in an industrial engineering undergraduate course.

A new course was designed and taught in the Industrial Engineering undergraduate course of a Federal University in Brazil. The course comprised explanatory lectures and a practical project developed in a partnership between the university and an industry partner where students had to develop Ecodesign proposals based on LCA to improve the environmental profile of both solid and reticulated paint brushes. To that end, students used the LCA software tool Umberto NXT v.7.1.13 (educational version), where they modeled the life cycle of four plastic brushes and assessed it using the impact categories of climate change and resource consumption, and the Ecoinvent v.3.3 database. After course completion, students, professors and industry collaborators were asked to provide feedback on the project performance and expectations.

The course design used was welcomed by both students and the industry partner. Students found the novel approach intriguing and useful to their future careers. The results also exceeded the industry partner’s expectations, as students formulated valuable insights. Professors observed that learning was made easier, as content was put into practice and internalized more easily and solidly. The approach was found to be a win-win-win.

Students acquired a fair share of knowledge on sustainability issues and potential existing trade-offs, which is valuable to industrial practices. The industry noticed the valuable contributions that academia can provide. The university profited from providing students with a real case challenging traditional teaching methods.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first case studies to show how LCA and ecodesign teaching practice can support sustainability learning in an industrial engineering undergraduate course.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which firms in the Sri Lankan apparel industry practice supply-chain-resilience (SCRes) capabilities and examine whether SCRes practices affect the performance and competitive advantage of those firms.

Uses a conceptual framework to assess SCRes capabilities and to investigate their impact on firm performance and competitive advantage. Uses partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to quantitatively analyze questionnaire data collected from 89 Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers.

In the presence of SCRes capabilities in the apparel industry, this study finds that supply-chain risk-management culture positively affects SCRes capabilities, namely re-engineering, agility and collaboration. Agility shows the greatest influence on firm performance and competitive advantage.

This study is limited to the apparel industry sector (a manufacturing sector) in Sri Lanka to maintain the uniformity of the research constructs.

Results imply that management should pay more attention to enhancing SCRMC and prioritizing their SCRes capabilities.

This study is the first to assess SCRes capabilities in the apparel-manufacturing sector and examine the impact of SCRes capabilities on firm performance and competitive advantage.

This study aims to investigate the importance and effect of asymmetric technological collaborations’ key success factors in developing countries. The number of collaborations between large enterprises and SMEs, known as asymmetric technological collaborations (ATC) is growing considerably. But this asymmetry in itself can increase the number and intensity of collaboration challenges. So far, limited studies have been conducted on the stability of ATCs, and most of them have been in the context of developed countries. Meanwhile, studying the strength and stability of collaboration in the nano industry with growing market value and increasing newcomers is of particular importance.

Here, with bionic engineering approach, we used chemistry for the first time to identify the main stability factors of ATCs and build our hypotheses and research model. To this end, we introduced the factors affecting the stability of the dative chemical bond as a bionic counterpart of corporate venture capital (CVC), which is a type of ATC, and proposed 4 hypotheses. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS) method to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The analysis of survey questionnaire data from 26 asymmetric collaborations in Iran’s nanotechnology industry shows that “learning of the acceptor company” with a negative effect, “network ties” and “development of the collaboration host region” with a positive effect and “diversity in the collaboration portfolio” with an inverted U-shaped effect are the most influential factors in the stability and continuity of CVCs, respectively.

The findings of this research can be the beginning of a broad path leading to exploring and getting inspiration from chemistry to analyze management issues.

The main focus of the requirements engineering (RE) literature has been on the technical aspects related to the RE projects. Research has largely focused on the specific methods for collecting the requirements for an information system. Much less research has been conducted on the social and collaboration aspects of RE. To fill this gap, this paper aims to study the contribution of social factors, such as social ties, knowledge sharing and flexibility, for successful collaboration in RE teams.

The research followed the case study methodology. Data were collected from a successful RE and development project in a public sector company in Finland. The model for social collaboration by Kotlarsky and Oshri (2005) was applied as a starting point for analysis, but new concepts emerged during the coding process.

The results suggest that human-related aspects, such as flexibility, collective knowledge and transactive memory, were important for successful collaborative work in the RE team studied. The results show a clear connection between the collaboration factors in the RE process and the success of the end product.

The article fills a clear gap in the RE literature. It shows that human-related aspects are important in the RE process. This opens up new research avenues, such as investigating the effect of human-related factors on the whole lifecycle of a project.

Collaboration is significant but difficult for the development of youth organizations, this research aims to explore whether the online collaboration process is suitable for youth organizations' collaboration and improve their effectiveness and efficiency.

This research has applied a design approach using the collaboration engineering method, to design an online collaboration process for youth organizations to improve their effectiveness and efficiency. Using a self-developed group support systems (GSS) tool, the authors have tested the new collaboration process through an experiment among four youth organizations and conducted a survey afterwards.

The new process improves the collaboration effectiveness and efficiency. The research also identifies the detailed relationships among influencing factors in the online collaboration process.

There is little research in the context of computer mediated youth organization collaboration. This research designs an online collaboration process for the effective and efficient collaboration of youth organizations and has it tested among representative youth organizations, providing practical instructions for digital youth organization collaboration in the context of global pandemic.

There is a gap in the existing literature relating to the implementation of virtual teamworking for engineering collaboration, and concurrent engineering in particular. This paper discusses the development of a methodology focused on guiding companies implementing virtual teamworking for engineering collaboration. The key principle of the methodology is to consider the implementation of virtual teaming as a business project rather than as an IT project. The methodology is derived from an analysis of the key issues identified in the literature, and the empirical findings from an ESRC Innovation funded project on virtual teaming in the automotive supply chain. The methodology identifies 20 important activities around the three key areas of processes, people and technology. The methodology is currently being evaluated with first tier suppliers and SMEs in the automotive sector.

The semiconductor market exceeded US$250 billion worldwide in 2010 and has had a double‐digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the last 20 years. As it is located far upstream of the electronic product market, the semiconductor industry has suffered severely from the “bullwhip” effect. Therefore, effective e‐based supply chain management (e‐SCM) has become imperative for the efficient operation of semiconductor manufacturing (SM) companies. The purpose of this research is to define and analyze the key success factors (KSF) for e‐SCM system implementation in the semiconductor industry.

A hierarchy of KSFs is defined first by a combination of a literature review and a focus group discussion with experts who successfully implemented an inter‐organizational e‐SCM project. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) is then employed to rank the importance of these identified KSFs. To confirm the research result and further explore the managerial implications, a second in‐depth interview with the e‐SCM project executives is conducted.

The KSF hierarchy is constructed with two levels: a top‐level consisting of four dimensions and a detailed‐level consisting of 15 individual factors. The research shows that, in the top‐level, strategy is the most critically successful dimension followed by process, organization, and technical; whereas in the detailed‐level, the top management commitment, clear project goal and business requirements, and business process re‐engineering are the top three critical successful factors.

Research surveys and interviews were conducted with two leading companies: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and ASE; they are the largest front‐end and back‐end SM companies in the world, respectively. Although the data collected was primarily based on the experience of one successful e‐SCM project, the significant roles of these two companies and compelling contribution made by the e‐SCM project leading to the research resulted in valuable guidelines for the companies in the semiconductor industry and a useful reference for companies in other manufacturing industries.

e‐SCM system has a high failure rate and there is little literature discussing the KSF of e‐SCM implementation from a holistic view for certain industries. This paper not only provides a structured and comprehensive list of KSFs but also illustrates the application of the most critical factors by examples. In addition to the contributions made to industries, the research results can also serve as a foundation for related academic research when comparing the KSFs of implementing e‐SCM by different industries.

Progress in theory building in the field of collaborative networks in manufacturing is preponderantly seen in contributions from disciplines outside manufacturing science. Interdisciplinary research is one way of accelerating the development of appropriate theory for this emerging domain where industrial practice has moved beyond the state of the art of scientific knowledge for establishing workable, competitive solutions. The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent interdisciplinary research has contributed to a better understanding of collaborative (manufacturing) networks.

To find out more about provenances of on‐going studies, to identify clusters of contributions and to provide direction for future work of researchers in this domain, publications of the past 22 years have been evaluated. To retrieve these contributions, a structured literature review has been undertaken by applying keywords to selected databases and using a strictly defined stepwise procedure. In total, 202 publications of all kinds have been evaluated.

From the analysis of the results, it appears that most interdisciplinary contributions to collaborative (manufacturing) networks rely on one original outside discipline for either developing solutions or advancing theoretical insight. Consequently, and after further analysis, it seems that researchers in collaborative networks hardly resort to multi‐disciplinary approaches, unless “natural”; further advances might arrive from stimulating these multi‐disciplinary avenues rather than sticking to more mono‐disciplinary, and less risky, takes on both applications and theoretical insight. A more detailed investigation of the value of contributions reveals that efforts to make interdisciplinary advances are either difficult or limited. Also, the findings indicate that researchers tend to follow a more “technical” approach to decision making by actors in networks rather than searching for a shift in paradigm.

While setting out these directions for future research and guiding research, this first‐of‐its‐kind review introduces the collaboration model as a systematic approach to collaborative (manufacturing) networks. This model might serve as a reference model to integrate disciplines for addressing the characteristics of Collaborative Networks. Its use in the review led to the finding that typical traits of networks, such as changeability, supplementary assets and decentralisation of decision making, are under‐researched.