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Scandia, Inc., is a commercial vessel management company located in the New York Metropolitan area and is part of a family of firms including Scandia Technical; International Tankers, Ltd.; Global Tankers, Ltd.; Sun Maritime S.A.;Adger Tankers AS; Leeward Tankers, Inc.; Manhattan Tankers, Ltd.; and Liuʼs Tankers, S.A. The companyʼs current market niche is the commercial management of chemical tankers serving the transatlantic market with a focus on the east and gulf coast of the United States and Northern Europe. This three-part case describes the commercial shipping industry as well as several mishaps that the company and its President, Chris Haas, have had to deal with including withdrawal of financial support by creditors, intercorporate firm conflict, and employee retention. Part A presents an overview of the commercial vessel industry and sets the stage for Parts B and C (to be published in the Spring 2011 issue) where the firmʼs operation is discussed.

Transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies is a fairly new concept with respect to new ventures in such challenging economic environments. Formal institutional voids are sometimes held up as a reason for the difficulties present in distressed economies, along with exogenous shocks and other upheavals. In this research, the authors seek to contribute empirically and theoretically as to ways in which formal institutions voids can be filled by a culture developed by transitional entrepreneurs. Indeed, in transition economies, formal institutions need to be enhanced by informal institutions to control corruption and other misbehavior by authorities. Iranian economists emphasize these essential reforms to be able to manage current difficulties, yet top down policies cannot help transitional entrepreneurs benefit from the country’s value-adding cultural heritage to informally address this. To study this, qualitative research methods were used to interpret transitional entrepreneurs’ ideology and ethical routines as the ingredients of a commercial culture that can establish soft law that substitutes for formal institutions. This helps to reduce the disfunctionality of formal institutions in distressed economies.

A thematic analysis interviewing key Iranian entrepreneurs and economists is conducted. Also based on an interpretive paradigm, a hermeneutic cycle has been carried out on selected texts. Results have been verified throughout related literature as to come up with a solid synthesized interpreted outcome.

This paper contributes to theory from a new perspective by discussing transitional entrepreneurship and navigating a distressed economy; in which, ideology and ethics as the ingredients of soft law (Newman and Posner, 2018) are discussed as the base to further develop a commercial culture that fills voids of formal institutions. The formal–informal institutional cycle in distressed economies as the major difficulty entrepreneurs face (Peng and Luo, 2000) is important, because they try to increasingly enhance their move toward a market orientation (Bruton et al., 2008). The authors contribute as to how transitional entrepreneurs can complete this process of adaptation and also the fact that those informal institutions do actually respond to those adaptations. The other contribution is to enrich theories about institutions from the point of view of culture. Knowing these facts helps transitional entrepreneurs, because in distressed communities, formal institutions’ function has an important effect on economic performance (Amorós, 2009). This research’s contributions shed light to help government leaders understand the pros and cons of their actions forced on the industry. As it has been characterized in this research, it can turn in to new formal set of legitimacies (Ahlstrom et al., 2008) to root out corruption and help set the economy on a path to innovation and new venture creation.

Transitional entrepreneurs can depend on the less formal cultural-cognitive aspect of ethics and ideology. These entrepreneurs can be working on the burgeoning private sector, who want to connect with the outside effectively to overcome an economy in distress. Transitional entrepreneurs may face governmental institutional intermediaries as a barrier. Formal intermediaries tend to benefit from inefficiencies caused by hierarchal orders and will improve informality in order to overcome difficulties. In this research, institutional theory from the third pillar of the cultural-cognitive sheds light on transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies, where inquiry is to fill voids of formal institutions as a process of possible linking between new generated soft law derived by beliefs, ideology and professional morality in order to influence (old) legitimacies. The research’s focus evolves on values transitional entrepreneurs utilize to build informal institutions and then impact further on formal institutions to handle distressed communities. This theoretical background expands on subsections to define conceptual building blocks for the study, essential aspects such as individuals as transitional entrepreneurs, the values they utilize to generate soft law, informal institutions and soft law, to manage voids in formal institutions and legitimacy building aspects in policy agenda setting for transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to get information on how the communication process transaction of commercial sex workers with customer occurs in province that practices Syariah law system.

Design/Methodology/Approach – A qualitative design using phenomenological approach with purposive sampling technique was utilized to obtain data. Subjects were female commercial sex workers with age around 16–45 years. The subjects were from district Banda Sakti and Muara Dua Lhokseumawe.

Findings – The result of study showed that subjects used interpersonal communication of self-disclosure through social media communication which was supported by verbal and non-verbal communication that gives an equal reaction. The type of communication used by commercial sex workers during the process of transactions were through face to face and media communication. However, it was found some barriers that interfere while doing interpersonal communication during the transaction, such as adjustment problem of subject, an error communication, and misperception between the subject and the customer that used their services.

Research Limitations/Implications – The study only focuses on how communication process of transaction occurs; therefore, it is important to do further research that focuses on how the Syariah law system impacts psychological attitudes toward commercial sex workers and how it will reduce the activity of commercial sex workers in Aceh, as well as how the communication occurs between parent and child that contribute them to become a commercial sex worker.

Practical Implications – Government should prevent commercial sex workers increase in Aceh as well as parents should more aware about their children’s activities outside home and be more communicative with their children.

Originality/Value – This paper gives information to the Aceh government to make further decision making and implement Syariah law system consistently and with commitment.

Defence supply chains (SCs) aim at operational outcomes, and armed forces depend on them to provide availability and preparedness in peace and sustainability in war. Previous research has focussed on strategies for SCs aiming at financial outcomes. This raises the question of how suitable commercial supply chain strategies (SCSs) are for supply chain design (SCD) in defence. The purpose of this paper is to explain the constructs of SCSs that satisfy military operational requirements and to propose SCSs that are appropriate in defence.

This paper reports on a Delphi study with 20 experts from Swedish defence authorities. Through three Delphi rounds, two workshops and a validation round, these experts contributed to the reported findings.

The findings demonstrate that commercial SC constructs are acceptable and applicable in defence but not sufficient. An additional strategy is required to satisfy requirements on availability, preparedness and sustainability. The paper shows that different requirements in peace and war make it challenging to design suitable defence SCs and proposes eight SCSs that satisfy these requirements.

The results emanate from the Swedish defence context and further research is required for generalisation.

This paper extends theory by investigating SCs aiming at operational outcomes. For managers in companies and defence authorities, it explicates how the unique issues in defence must influence SCD to satisfy operational requirements.

Advanced driving assistance system (ADAS) has been applied in commercial vehicles. This paper aims to evaluate the influence factors of commercial vehicle drivers’ acceptance on ADAS and explore the characteristics of each key factors. Two most widely used functions, forward collision warning (FCW) and lane departure warning (LDW), were considered in this paper.

A random forests algorithm was applied to evaluate the influence factors of commercial drivers’ acceptance. ADAS data of 24 commercial vehicles were recorded from 1 November to 21 December 2018, in Jiangsu province. Respond or not was set as dependent variables, while six influence factors were considered.

The acceptance rate for FCW and LDW systems was 69.52% and 38.76%, respectively. The accuracy of random forests model for FCW and LDW systems is 0.816 and 0.820, respectively. For FCW system, vehicle speed, duration time and warning hour are three key factors. Drivers prefer to respond in a short duration during daytime and low vehicle speed. While for LDW system, duration time, vehicle speed and driver age are three key factors. Older drivers have higher respond probability under higher vehicle speed, and the respond time is longer than FCW system.

Few research studies have focused on the attitudes of commercial vehicle drivers, though commercial vehicle accidents were proved to be more severe than passenger vehicles. The results of this study can help researchers to better understand the behavior of commercial vehicle drivers and make corresponding recommendations for ADAS of commercial vehicles.

This study considers the case in which governments decide whether to support private commercial banks with a subsidy policy in order to encourage participation in the international ship financing market. We examine two cases: (i) identical efficiency between domestic and foreign commercial banks; and (ii) different efficiencies between these banks. In the first case, the domestic government has the incentive to provide a subsidy strategy for domestic commercial banks to maximize social welfare, while the foreign government does not use the subsidy support. Furthermore, in the second case, foreign governments and commercial banks always prefer the subsidy strategy in order to maximize both social welfare and profits. However, the domestic government uses the subsidy strategy depending on the efficiency gap between the two banks. Our model suggests that governments need to support commercial banks with an appropriate subsidy strategy (direct or indirect) to promote participation in the market.

Scandia, Inc., is a commercial vessel management company located in the New York Metropolitan area and is part of a family of firms including Scandia Technical; International Tankers, Ltd.; Global Tankers, Ltd.; Sun Maritime S.A.;Adger Tankers AS; Leeward Tankers, Inc.; Manhattan Tankers, Ltd.; and Liuʼs Tankers, S.A. The companyʼs current market niche is the commercial management of chemical tankers serving the transatlantic market with a focus on the east and gulf coast of the United States and Northern Europe. This three-part case describes the commercial shipping industry as well as several mishaps that the company and its President, Chris Haas, have had to deal with including withdrawal of financial support by creditors, intercorporate firm conflict, and employee retention. Part A, which was published in the Fall 2010 issue, presented an overview of the commercial vessel industry and set the stage for Parts B and C where the firm℉s operation is discussed.

The US Government is challenged to maintain pace as the world’s de facto provider of space object cataloging data. Augmenting capabilities with nontraditional sensors present an expeditious and low-cost improvement. However, the large tradespace and unexplored system of systems performance requirements pose a challenge to successful capitalization. This paper aims to better define and assess the utility of augmentation via a multi-disiplinary study.

Hypothetical telescope architectures are modeled and simulated on two separate days, then evaluated against performance measures and constraints using multi-objective optimization in a heuristic algorithm. Decision analysis and Pareto optimality identifies a set of high-performing architectures while preserving decision-maker design flexibility.

Capacity, coverage and maximum time unobserved are recommended as key performance measures. A total of 187 out of 10¹⁷ architectures were identified as top performers. A total of 29% of the sensors considered are found in over 80% of the top architectures. Additional considerations further reduce the tradespace to 19 best choices which collect an average of 49–51 observations per space object with a 595–630 min average maximum time unobserved, providing redundant coverage of the Geosynchronous Orbit belt. This represents a three-fold increase in capacity and coverage and a 2 h (16%) decrease in the maximum time unobserved compared to the baseline government-only architecture as-modeled.

This study validates the utility of an augmented network concept using a physics-based model and modern analytical techniques. It objectively responds to policy mandating cataloging improvements without relying solely on expert-derived point solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an issue of critical importance to America’s national security. The Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) is a public/private partnership between US air carriers and the Department of Defense (DOD) for the provision of contingency airlift services to the military in times of national need. Formed in 1951, the CRAF has only been activated twice, but it has continued to be a source of emergency air transportation should the nation require resources beyond those available from the US Air Force. Sweeping changes occurring in global trade, commercial aviation, national defense policy and foreign relations suggest that changes will be needed to maintain the CRAF as a strategic defense transportation resource.

This paper examines the long-standing national policy of relying on commercial interests to provide contingency transportation to the DOD in wartime. The CRAF will be singled out for closer examination in light of environmental changes occurring in the airline industry, international trade and global threats to the nation. The purpose of this analysis is to then assess the partnership’s ability to remain relevant in an uncertain future.

First, commercial cargo aircraft are downsizing thereby becoming less useful to the DOD. Second, there is no new wide-body military airlifter on the horizon. Third, threats from hostile nations are becoming more indirect and subtle, requiring planners to think “outside the box” when assessing the need for strategic airlift over the next 20-50 years.

The CRAF has not fundamentally changed since its inception in 1951. The time has come to reexamine the partnership to ensure that it remains America’s emergency lifeline.

This study aims to examine the concept of innovative technologies and identify their impacts on the environmental sustainability of commercial properties in South Africa. This slow adoption is attributed to South Africa’s energy building regulation, SANS 204, which does not promote energy-conscious commercial property development. Furthermore, it was observed that buildings waste significant amounts of energy as electrical appliances are left on when they are not in use, which can be prevented using innovative technologies.

The researchers attempted to evaluate the impact of innovative technologies through an overarching constructivist mixed-method paradigm. The research was conducted using a multi-case study approach on green buildings which had innovative technologies installed. The data collection took the form of online, semi-structured interviews, where thematic analysis was used to identify emergent themes from the qualitative data, and descriptive statistics was used to evaluate the quantitative data.

It was found that implementing innovative technologies to reduce the energy consumption of commercial buildings could achieve energy savings of up to 23%. Moreover, a commercial building’s carbon footprint can be reduced to 152CO2/m2 and further decreased to 142CO2/m2 through the adoption of a Photovoltaics plant. The study further found that innovative technologies improved employee productivity and promoted green learning and practices.

This research demonstrated the positive impact innovative technologies have on energy reduction and the sustainability of commercial properties. Hence, facility managers should engage innovative technologies when planning a commercial development or refurbishment.