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This paper aims to propose a multi-agent approach to adaptive control of fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tracking a moving ground target. The approach implies that the UAVs in a single group must maintain preset phase shift angles while rotating around the target so as to evaluate the target’s movement more accurately. Thus, the controls should ensure that the UAV swarm follows a moving circular path whose center is the target while also attaining and maintaining a circular formation of a specific geometric shape; and the formation control system is capable of self-tuning because the UAV dynamics is uncertain.

This paper considers two interaction architectures: an open-chain where each UAV only interacts with its neighbors; and a cooperative leader, where the leading UAV is involved in attaining the formation. The cooperative controllers are self-tuned by fuzzy model reference adaptive control (MRAC).

Using open-chain decentralized architecture allows to have an unlimited number of aircraft in a formation, which is in line with the swarm behavior concept. The approach was tested for efficiency and performance in various scenarios using complete nonlinear flying-wing UAV models equipped with configured standard autopilot models.

Assume the target follows a rectilinear trajectory at a constant speed. The speed is supposed to be known in advance. Another assumption is that the weather is windless.

In contrast to known studies, this one uses Lyapunov guidance vector fields that are direction- and magnitude-nonuniform. The overall cooperative controller structure is based on a decentralized and centralized consensus.

Effective leadership is important to performance in both organisational and sporting arenas. The authors theorised that follower personality would influence perceptions of leadership, and that perceived effective leadership would be associated with performance. The authors drew on Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1986), Transformational Leadership and personality theory to develop a research model designed to assess leadership effectiveness and performance. The purpose of this paper is to test the research model in a sporting context.

The context of the research was a round the world sailing race, a ten-month competitive circumnavigation with ten identical boats. Quantitative data were gathered concerning participants’ personality, their perceptions of transformational leadership and boat performance. Qualitative data on transformational leadership and leadership effectiveness were gathered from a subsample of crew members.

Results showed that transformational leadership was associated with leadership effectiveness and performance. Personality influenced perceptions of leadership and, for moderate performing boats, there were associations between perceptions of leadership and performance.

The data have implications for the extension of transformational leadership theory. Further consideration of follower personality could enhance leadership effectiveness. A limitation is the relatively small scale of the study.

The main implication is that leaders should take follower personality into account, and adapt their leadership style accordingly. Doing so has consequences for performance.

This novel study examined personality, leadership, and performance and has implications for enhancing leadership and performance in sports and business.

The purpose of this short commentary reflects upon how feminist theory might be used to advance the contemporary gendered critique of women’s entrepreneurship. Drawing from gender theory, a diverse and complex critique has arisen to challenge the discriminatory discourse of entrepreneurship that fundamentally disadvantages women. To progress debate, the author suggests that greater attention should be afforded to feminist theories as explanatory analyses for such subordination and particularly to challenge contemporary postfeminist ideas which fuel a false promise of entrepreneurship for women.

A conceptual paper drawing upon extant literature to develop suggestions for future research .

Conceptual arguments challenging current approaches to analysing the relationship between women, gender and entrepreneurship.

Somewhat controversially, it is suggested that such a critique might encourage us to refocus research such that it challenges, rather than seeks to confirm, the axiom that under current conditions, entrepreneurship is “good” for women and society so ergo, we need more women entrepreneurs. Greater acknowledgement of feminist theory will also facilitate a stronger intersectional analysis, vital if we are to acknowledge how socio-economic and contextual diversity constrains or enables entrepreneurial behaviour.

This article challenges contemporary researchers to reconsider current thinking regarding the value of entrepreneurial activity for women.

The commentary concludes by identifying how the next generation of scholars might take such ideas forward to build upon established foundations.

Thorstein Veblen, though recognized as a “classic” author, has been since his death in 1929 virtually ignored by the public (academic and otherwise). In light of the fact that he may possibly have been the most important social scientist of the modern era, such neglect is a shame that needs to be erased. This article, a conceptual paper, aims to focus on the particular philosophical view that supports the whole edifice of Veblen's social frescoes.

The article argues that the extraordinary tenor of Veblen's economic investigation stems from a semi‐hidden fascination of the author with “occult agencies,” that is, with the invisible realms of idolatry, devout belief, and national “genius.”

Veblen, the article maintains, is the first modern, unconfessed, explorer of the spiritual world, whose uncharted domains he mapped for laying the foundations of economic analysis. A radical, unique turn in the history of thought, whose effects, however, have suffered the most profound incomprehension owing to a certain queerness of style: this strangeness was the tormented combination of Veblen's confessed atheism with his instinctive draw towards the praeternatural.

This fundamental question surrounding the inner mechanics of Veblen's beautiful political economy – the only social scientist Einstein would read – is presented coherently in this article for the first time.

This opening chapter sets a frame for the chapters of this volume, dealing with how the dynamic dialectic interplay between forceful global societal forces and context shape humanity’s education response in various parts of the world. “Context” as a perennial threshold concept in Comparative and International Education is explicated. It will then be explained how, during its long historical evolution, scholars in the field each time had to contend new contexts, or reconceived the notion of “context” in a new way. Subsequently the problems of an overly fixation on the historical and the present, to the detriment of the future, and inertia are extant in the field, will be explained. The unprecedented, seismic changes currently impacting on the societal context worldwide, will then be enumerated. These changes can be subsumed under the collective name of globalization. The concept globalization is then clarified, and the take of the scholarly community on the impact of globalization on education is then mapped and interrogated. The authors’ stance on this is stated, namely that a dynamic interplay between global focus and contextual realities shape education in various parts of the world. It is in this theoretical frame that the remainder of the chapters of the volume is presented, combing out the main features of education development in each part of the world, as a dialectic between global forces and contextual imperatives.

Governments of all political complexions seek economic advantage through supporting high profile projects in the field of high technology. “High tech” becomes a mantra, comprising activities with a wide range of possible outcomes, inevitably demanding large investments, and promising high rewards. It is a relative term and every generation defines its “leading edge” projects in a similar way; although the substantive technology differs, building on the learning previously achieved and assimilated into the paradigm of “normal science”. Some of these projects work, but many do not: some end in spectacular and catastrophic failure. The resulting disasters are subsequently ascribed to exogenous causes, such as “Acts of God”, or are explained as due to the inherently risky consequence of working at the frontiers of new technology and of the dangerous but none the less essential choices made at the political level, without which “progress” would not be achieved. Politicians, technologists and managers bear specific and local responsibilities for the failure of systems on their watch but it is arguably the failure of the academic theorists of disaster to contribute in a more socially engaged way that most supports the ability of society not to hear the messages it wishes to evade.

Religion and religious people have been viewed as detrimental to human and social progress. In a now classic case, Edward Gibbon's The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire held the blame for the decline of the Roman Empire squarely upon Christianity. But, among the great variety of denunciations of religion, perhaps the most acerbic criticism came from the pen of Karl Marx. He wrote:

The purpose of this research is to understand what motivates 7–11-year-old children to participate in online brand communities (OBCs). Prior research has concentrated on prescriptive product categories (games and gaming), predominantly adolescent groups and the social aspects of community engagement and actual behaviour within communities, rather than the motivations to participate with the OBC. This has ultimately limited what has been gleaned, both theoretically and managerially, from this important segment.

An interpretive, longitudinal position is adopted, using a sample of 261 children (113 male and 148 female) from across the UK, using event-based diaries over a 12-month period, generating 2,224 entries.

Data indicate that children are motivated to participate in a brand community for four reasons: to support and ameliorate pre-purchase anxieties, resolve interpersonal conflicts, exact social dominance in terms of product ownership and perceptions of product knowledge and to actively engage in digitalised pester power. The study also reveals that certain motivational aspects such as conflict resolution and exacting dominance, are gender-specific.

Knowledge of children’s motivation to engage with OBCs is important for marketers and brand managers alike as the data reveal markedly different stimuli when compared to known adult behaviours in the field. Given the nature of the study, scope exists for significant future research.

The study reveals behaviours that will assist brand managers in further understanding the complex and untraditional relationships that children have with brands and OBCs.

This study makes a novel examination of a hitherto little-explored segment of consumers. In doing so, it uncovers the theoretical and practical characteristics of child consumers that contemporary, adult-focussed literature does not recognise. The paper makes an additional contribution to theory by positing four new behavioural categories relating to community engagement – dependers, defusers, demanders and dominators – and four new motivational factors which are fundamentally different from adult taxonomies – social hegemony, parental persuasion, dilemma solving and conflict resolution.