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In vernacular buildings, many climatic and passive solutions have been used to create indoor thermal comfort. Seasonal occupant movement is an example of a traditional response to increasing thermal comfort. This article investigates the influence of these user behaviours on thermal comfort in courtyard houses.

Parametric models of three different scenarios of courtyard houses are simulated. The courtyard houses are located in Shiraz, Iran, and share the same orientation and construction materials. To enhance the accuracy of the study, the indoor adaptive thermal comfort (ATC) analysis is performed with three different window-to-wall ratios (WWR) of 25, 50 and 75%. The ACT analysis is performed on an hourly basis for summer and winter scenarios.

The results demonstrate that the indoor ATC is 8.3% higher in winter than in the summer in the seasonal zones. During the summer, the amount of ATC is relatively sustained in all zones. Unlike common beliefs, seasonal movement can enhance the ATC, especially during winter, specifically in the northern part of the courtyard. In northern zones, the seasonal movement of occupants improves the indoor ATC from 10.1 to 23.7%, and in southern zones, the improvement is from 2.2 to 4.8%.

This research presents a new numerical investigation into occupants' seasonal movements in courtyard houses during summer and winter. It provides a precise pattern to show how much this seasonal movement can affect the habitant's ATC.

A major challenge faced by West Africa is to find comfortable housing as a result of climate change and population growth. The climatic adaptation of buildings and their indoor environment become an essential condition for maintaining the health and productivity of the occupants. This paper proposes a model to assess the thermal comfort of naturally ventilated buildings in hot and dry climates in Burkina Faso.

The proposed method is an adaptive model which relies on a combination of parameters such as the operative temperature, the new effective temperature and the basic parameters of thermal comfort. It consists in proposing the zones of thermal comfort on the diagram of the humid air for each climatic region.

A decision-making tool is set up for evaluating the comfort of buildings to better consider the bio-climatic concept through a long-term comfort index. This comfort index is defined and is used to assess the degree of thermal discomfort for various types of housing. Two natural ventilation pilot buildings located in Ouagadougou were considered. The results show that the pilot building whose wall are is made of Earth blocks achieves 26.4% of thermal comfort while the building made of hollow cement block achieves 25.8% of thermal comfort.

The decision-making tool proposed in the present study allow building stakeholders to better and easily design, assess and improve the thermal environment of buildings.

The situation with Enron illustrates that leaders have been tempted to stretch their company's image of growth and success beyond acceptable limits. Even with the best intentions, leaders keep their organization in a stranglehold by reinforcing behaviors that match their comfort zone. However, when these behaviors no longer respond to the needs of an organization, leaders should face up to the limits of their rule. In fact, leadership should become much more sensitive to the temporal (time‐related) needs of companies and their organizations. How does this affect the qualities of leaders? Does leadership style bring resolve or is it something else? And, what kind of a leader are you? A conceptual framework is needed as much as a practical approach. In a holistically learning organization, leadership, in its broadest sense, must accept the existence and limits of so‐called temporal comfort zones. In fact, an adequate management process requires the adoption of a triple‐loop learning process.

Ride comfort is one of the important factors affecting passenger health. Therefore, the elevator industry usually uses the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 18738-1 standard to evaluate elevator ride quality and optimize elevator design. However, this method has certain limitations in its evaluation of comfort due to the problem of boundary division. The ISO 2631-4 standard is used as a general method of comfort evaluation in the current rail transit system, but it has not been applied in the elevator industry. In order to explore the difference and connection between the two standards, the author aims to conduct a detailed analysis on this.

Based on the elevator internet, a large amount of measured data of normal and abnormal vibration of elevator car were collected and analyzed and preprocessed; based on ISO 18738-1:2012 standard and ISO 2631-4:2001 standard, the differences of ride comfort assessment methods in the two standards were analyzed, and the ride comfort assessment study of elevator under normal and abnormal vibration conditions was carried out.

The experimental results show that the comfort assessment results of ISO 2631-4:2001 standard and ISO18738-1:2012 standard are consistent under two vibration conditions. At the same time, ISO 2631-4:2001 can not only provide a more accurate quantitative description of comfort, but also roughly determine the comfort interval of each vibration, which can provide theoretical reference for elevator vibration classification and car comfort design.

The authors designed an Internet of Things (IOT)-based elevator vibration signal acquisition method to address the shortcomings of the previous elevator ride comfort assessment methods, which can realize the dynamic assessment of elevator ride comfort; by comparing the assessment results of elevator ride comfort under normal vibration and abnormal vibration, the feasibility of ISO 2631-4:2001 for elevator ride comfort assessment was fully verified. In addition, the experimental results also give the influence of abnormal vibration on elevator riding comfort under the stages of start-stop, uniform speed, acceleration and deceleration, which can provide theoretical support for elevator vibration suppression and comfort transformation.

This study investigates restaurant patrons' comfort level with the sudden shift in the dining-in climate within the state of Massachusetts during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An exploratory study utilized learning algorithms via gradient boosting techniques on surveyed restaurant patrons to identify which restaurant operational attributes and patron demographics predict in-dining comfort levels.

Past consumers' eating habits determine how much their behavior will change during a pandemic. However, their dining-in frequency is not a predictor of their post-pandemic dining-in outlook. The individuals who were more comfortable dining in prior to the pandemic dined in more often during the COVID pandemic. However, they had a poorer outlook on when dining in would return to normal. Although there are no clear indicators of when and how customers will embrace the new norm (a combination of pre-, peri-, and post-pandemic), the results show that some innovative approaches, such as limiting service offerings, are not well accepted by customers.

The study offers several managerial implications for foodservice providers (i.e. restaurants, delivery services, pick-up) and investors. In particular, the study provides insights into the cognitive factors that determine diners' behavioral change in response to a pandemic and their comfort level. Operators must pay attention to these factors and consider different offering strategies when preparing to operate their business amid a pandemic.

This is a study of a specific location and period. It was conducted in Massachusetts before a vaccine was available. The restaurant industry was beset with uncertainty. It fills a gap in the current literature focused on the COVID-19 pandemic in customers' transition from pre-COVID-19 dining-in behaviors to customers' refreshed COVID-19 outlook and industry compliance with newly established hygiene and safety standards.

The study aims to highlight and understand, and bring the human agency into the debate on the theory of normative control. While, the previous literature has highlighted the problem of the missing subject. However, the actual human agency in terms of agential properties has not been seriously addressed. This study is an attempt to overcome this problem of the missing subject.

A two-phase design inspired by retroductive inference was adopted for this study. In the first phase, abduction was used to explore the literature on normative control to highlight the forces of attraction, which may pull the employees to participate willingly within normative control systems. In the second phase, following retroductive inference, agential explanations of the forces of attraction identified in the first phase were explored by venturing into other related fields, e.g. psychology and sociology.

The study highlights four strategies used by organizations using normative control, i.e. comfort zoning, relational bonding, moral trapping and elitist appeal. These strategies rely on attractive forces. These forces of attraction pull employees to participate in the normative control system. The attractive element in the identified strategies is due to the fact that these strategies target specific agential properties, i.e. the need for comfort, sense of belonging, moral agency and pride. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals drive their concerns from culture but in relation to their capacity as needy beings for being enculturated.

Theoretically, this study adds conceptual strength to the explanations of normative control. It is suggested that neglect of human agency renders explanations conceptually weak. The study fills this gap in the research. Practically, this study would be beneficial for better design and implementation of normative control. Several studies have pointed out that normative control does not yield the intended results. Out of many reasons, a lack of understanding of human agency is a major cause of unsuccessful attempts to normatively control employees. This study provides some basis to understand the human subject for better design of soft systems of control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study that explores agential properties with reference to normative control systems. This study is important for researchers and practitioners.

The earth-sheltered building is an adaptive strategy reducing energy consumption as well as increasing thermal comfort of the residents. Although this idea historically implemented in the city of Yazd, Iran, its effects on thermal comfort have not been studied thoroughly. This paper aims to discuss and analyze energy performance, in terms of parameters such as orientation, underground depth, nocturnal ventilation and its subsequent effects on thermal comfort in earth-sheltered buildings in Yazd.

Using EnergyPlus software, the obtained numeric data are precisely modeled, simulated and analyzed.

Results show that there is a direct relationship between depth of construction and energy consumption savings. The more construction depth of earth-sheltered buildings, the more percentage of energy consumption savings, that is of a higher rate in comparison to the aboveground ones. However, in south orientation, energy saving significantly reduces from depth of 2 m downwards and the annual indoor temperature fluctuation decreases by 50%. This subsequently yields to experiencing indoor thermal comfort for a significant number of days throughout the year. Considering the effects of orientation factor, the south orientation regardless of the depth provides the most desired outcome regarding energy savings.

Simulating the model generalized to the sunken courtyard can approve that the results of this research can be applied to the other models.

The goal of the leadership development process is to enable the individual to learn how to become a self-leader and for any organization to develop leaders. Self-leadership represents an individual's ability to exercise control (self-efficacy) over his or her choice of situations in which to participate in and to provide intrinsic rewards that are usually associated with achieving goals. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study presents and describes a conceptual model that will help us to understand the critical dimensions (e.g. self-esteem) associated with self-leadership and the interrelatedness of these dimensions.

The conceptual model that the author describes in this paper provides a comprehensive overview of self-leadership that extends Neck and Manz's (2010) conceptual model. It does so by identifying all the critical super ordinate mediators referred to by Deci et al. (1981) as internal states (referred to in this study as “dimensions”). These “dimensions” are then organized into his or her own singular system which leads to specific types of behavior. Through elucidating the important mediators and learning about and understanding how behavior, an individual's internal processes and external forces influence each other (in what Manz, 1986; Bandura, 1978 refer to as reciprocal determinism), we can begin to understand how to design more effective leadership development programs. Additionally, by studying these mediators any organization can develop clearly defined profiles of potential leaders; in turn, this will help an organization screen candidates more effectively to fill leadership jobs.

This concept piece offers a comprehensive model of the self-leadership process that includes all the important issues and the relationship among the important issues.

Evidence (Barry, 2001; Lansdown, 2010) suggests that children often do not have the opportunity to claim their participation rights and instead the focus of professionals can sometimes be solely on the child's rights to protection or assumed needs. This imbalance results in their voices, views, opinions and input potentially being missed and unheard when concerning decision-making processes that impact on them in their day-to-day lives. This chapter will explore social pedagogical theory and social pedagogical practice, as well as values, children and young people's participation, cultivating empowerment, developing positive and authentic relationships, creating opportunities for holistic learning and working alongside children and young people in a child-centred way to bring about a positive change in their lives and increase their happiness and well-being.

This study aims to highlight the value of stressful and challenging environments as a strategy to enhance learning and to provide an inventory of strategies for use in cases where participants experience anxiety‐related blockages to learning.

This article adopted a qualitative research strategy which consisted of a literature review which was then triangulated with a survey and practitioner interviews.

This paper describes the behaviour of anxious learners when faced with a stressful learning environment. It then reviews suggestions from the literature which indicate theoretical solutions to debilitating anxiety and, finally, reports on the techniques that trainers actually use when helping delegates to overcome anxiety‐related blockages to learning. The Yerkes‐Dodson law, and not Rohnke, would appear to be the foundation for the various “comfort‐stretch‐panic” models. Moderate levels of stress would appear to encourage and stimulate learning.

The findings are presented as an initial investigation only, and further work would be required to indicate if the experiences of this small sample are representative of the wider population of training and development practitioners. Further work is being undertaken to categorise approaches to resolving debilitating learner anxiety and to develop a simple practitioner‐oriented model which may assist trainers who face this issue.

Anxiety is idiosyncratic and therefore it is difficult to design programmes which provide optimum development opportunities for all delegates. The article provides practical guidelines for trainers who wish to make use of challenging activities but who, as a result, need occasional recourse to strategies to alleviate any temporary debilitating state anxiety that delegates might experience.

This paper investigates the role of anxiety on learning and makes the case for the inclusion of carefully‐managed challenging learning environments in contrast to the majority of articles which advocate supportive learning environments.