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Modern prejudice was examined as a potential predictor of overestimating proportions of minority employees in gender-typed occupations. Strength of conjunction error was considered as an indicator of distorted perceptions of these proportions. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the association between modern prejudice and strength of conjunction error was weaker for gender-untypical than for gender-typical targets.

Modern prejudice was considered as a predictor of overestimations of black female employees in Study 1 (n=183) and black female older employees in Study 2 (n=409). Data were collected using internet-mediated questionnaires.

In Study 1, modern racism, but not modern sexism, was associated with greater strength of conjunction error when respondents were presented with gender-typical targets. In Study 2, using a sample scoring higher on modern prejudice than in Study 1, modern racism, but not modern sexism and modern ageism, was associated with greater strength of conjunction error, irrespective of target occupation. Furthermore, there was an unexpected association between lower sexism and greater strength of conjunction error for gender-typical targets, but not for gender-untypical targets.

The findings lend support to the ethnic-prominence hypothesis in that modern racism, but not modern sexism or modern ageism, was associated with greater strength of conjunction error. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that target non-prototypicality can dilute the effect of modern prejudice on strength of conjunction error.

This is one of the rare studies examining attitudes and conjunction error in a work-relevant context, thereby bridging the gap between social cognition and applied psychology.

This study aims to determine the extent to which the use of coordinating conjunctions enhances or impairs definitional clarity.

In two studies, a sample of 736 construct definitions from the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Consumer Research over a 30-year period was judged for ambiguity and vagueness by both academic and lay judges.

The authors demonstrate that constructing definitions using both “and” and “or” increases the ambiguity and vagueness of the construct’s meaning. The most frequently used conjunction is “and” which appeared in 42 per cent of the definitions. A significant percentage (26 per cent) contain the conjunction “or.”

A framework for understanding alternative interpretations of “and” or “or” is developed. Five recommendations are proposed for evaluating the use of “and” and “or” in construct definitions. Theorists in all academic fields should not use both “and” and “or” in the same construct definition.

A five-step process is proposed for evaluating the use of “and” and “or” in construct definitions. Theorists should not use both “and” and “or” in the same construct definition.

This is the first exploration of how specific wording patterns used in construct definitions in academic research affect the clarity of the definition.

An accurate long-term multi-step forecast provides crucial basic information for planning and reinforcing managerial decision-support. However, nonstationarity and nonlinearity, normally consisted of several types of managerial data can seriously ruin the forecasting computation. This paper aims to propose an effective long-term multi-step forecasting conjunction model, namely, wavelet–nonlinear autoregressive neural network (WNAR) conjunction model. The WNAR combines discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and nonlinear autoregressive neural network (NAR) to cope with such nonstationarity and nonlinearity within the managerial data; as a consequence, provides insight information that enhances accuracy and reliability of long-term multi-step perspective, leading to effective management decision-making.

Based on WNAR conjunction model, wavelet decomposition is executed for efficiently extracting hidden significant, temporal features contained in each of six benchmark nonstationary data sets from different managerial domains. Then, each extracted feature set at a particular resolution level is fed into NAR for the further forecast. Finally, NAR forecasting results are reconstructed. Forecasting performance measures throughout 1 to 30-time lags rely on mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), root mean square error (RMSE), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency index or the coefficient of efficiency (E_f) and Diebold–Mariano (DM) test. An effect of data characteristic in terms of autocorrelation on forecasting performances of each data set are observed.

Long-term multi-step forecasting results show the best accuracy and high-reliability performance of the proposed WNAR conjunction model over some other efficient forecasting models including a single NAR model. This is confirmed by DM test, especially for the short-forecasting horizon. In addition, rather steady, effective long-term multi-step forecasting performances are yielded with slight effect from time lag changes especially for the data sets having particular high autocorrelation, relative against 95 per cent degree of confidence normal distribution bounds.

The WNAR, which combines DWT with NAR can be accounted as a bridge for the gap between machine learning, engineering signal processing and management decision-support systems. Thus, WNAR is referred to as a forecasting tool that provides insight long-term information for managerial practices. However, in practice, suitable exogenous input forecast factors are required on the managerial domain-by-domain basis to correctly foresee and effectively prepare necessary reasonable management activities.

Few works have been implemented to handle the nonstationarity, consisted of nonlinear managerial data to attain high-accurate long-term multi-step forecast. Combining DWT and NAR capabilities would comprehensively and specifically deal with the nonstationarity and nonlinearity difficulties at once. In addition, it is found that the proposed WNAR yields rather steady, effective long-term multi-step forecasting performance throughout specific long time lags regarding the data, having certainly high autocorrelation levels across such long time lags.

A general description of a continuous (‐valued) logic is given, basic operations of the logic are defined, and some problems and particulars of their solutions are discussed. First, we define algebra of continuous logic and enumerate its basic unary, binary and ternary functions. All laws of continuous logic are compared with laws of discrete binary logic. We discuss how to enumerate all functions of continuous logic with specified number of variables and how to represent the functions in a standard form. Procedures of minimization of continuous logical functions and their decomposition into the functions with less clarity are exploited. The procedures are compared with their counterparts from binary logic. We also tackle problems of analysis and synthesis of continuous logical functions, and show that the problem of synthesis may not have a solution. Basics of differential and integral calculus are applied to continuous valued logic. We demonstrate that any continuous logical function has the points where a derivative does not exist. At the end of the paper we briefly discuss an incompleteness problem of continuous logic, application of continuous logic in mathematics, engineering and economy, give examples, draw a perspective of further development and supply extensive bibliography of Russian works in the field.

Customer reviews are one important source that contains valuable information for quality evaluation of products or services. Review sentences contain sentiment words that show whether a user’s opinion is positive or negative. When review sentence has mix opinions, having sentiment words of both polarities, it is difficult to conclude whether it is positive or negative opinion. The purpose of this study is to improve the detection of polarity in such situation.

In this research, methods such as part-of-speech tagging, polarity analysis and rules selection are used to identify the polarity. A set of rules called contrast and conditional polarity rules (CCPR) has been created to improve the polarity detection in cases when there is mixture of sentiment words used in contrast and conditional type of review sentences. The experiment is conducted with data sets from three domains, i.e. restaurant, electronic and Tripadvisor.

The experimental result confirms that CCPR rules have higher baseline of the polarity aggression. In restaurant domain, CCPR rules (62.07%) have increased 13.79% compared with the Pol_Agg_MPQA baseline (48.28%) and 13.79% compared with Pol_Agg_Senti baseline (48.28%). In electronic domain, CCPR rule (79.17%) is higher by 12.50% compared with the Pol_Agg_MPQA baseline (66.67%) and 16.67% compared with Pol_Agg_Senti baseline (62.50%). Another one, CCPR rule (70.83%) is higher by 8.33% compared with the Pol_Agg_MPQA baseline (62.50%) and 12.50% compared with Pol_Agg_Senti baseline (58.33%). In conclusion, result of experiment shows promising outcome with improvement in detecting the positivity and negativity of indirect sentence, especially for the case of sentence with indirect polarity.

To address the problem of mix opinions in terms of polarities, this paper presents a rule-based approach to improve the result of identifying positivity and negativity in sentence with indirect polarities.

The first part of this issue investigated the properties of the adaptive rule initially proposed by Dubois and Prade given in the framework of possibility theory, when the certainty qualification is rather expressed in more general t‐norms and t‐conorms connectives. This led to two new family of adaptive rules expressed using residual implication and t‐conorm connective, respectively. The problem of addressing uncertain inputs has also been examined and a waved decomposition has been proposed in PII we study adaptative combinations with incomplete certainty qualification. However, another problem that arises when combining uncertain inputs consists of the relationship between the certainty attached to the inputs and the certainty attached to the output, conceptualized by the resulting distribution when using adaptive combination rule. In other words, how does the combination rule improves or deteriorates the certainty of the overall system? This paper seeks to address this issue.

This paper fully addresses this issue and attempts to evaluate the combination rule from the certainty viewpoint attached to the result in comparison to initial certainty values attached to the inputs.

Especially, it has been proven that under certain hypotheses, the rule allows the user to hide the local certainties attached to the initial inputs, while highlighting only the certainty due to the lack of consistency among the sources.

New functional adaptative rules are put forward based on residual implicators and t‐conorm operators.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of an ultra-thin film lubricated conjunction through the elastohydrodynamic lubrication of point contacts for various ridge shapes and sizes located within the contact zone including flat-top, triangle and cosine wave profiles, considering the influence of surface forces of solvation and Van der Waals’ in addition to the hydrodynamic effect to predict an optimum geometric characteristics for surface texture for lubricated conjunctions.

Surface features are simulated in a variety of sizes and shapes including flat-top, triangle and cosine wave profiles. While estimating the elastic deformation of the contacting surfaces, surface forces of solvation and Van der Waals’ are taken into account. The Reynolds equation is solved using the Newton–Raphson method to get the pressure profile and film thickness including the elastic deformation, and surface feature.

The geometrical characteristics of the ridge, its placement in relation to the contact zone and its height all have a significant impact on the performance of ultra-thin film lubricated conjunction. When the triangular-shaped ridge is present in contact, it forecasts even sharper peaks in film thickness and pressure. More friction, wear and eventually contact fatigue are brought on by this more acute pressure and film thickness peaks. The flat-top ridge shape shows a better performance for lubricated conjunction where, the minimum film thickness value is comparable to that obtained for the case of a smooth contact surface. This behavior is attributed to the effect of intermolecular force of solvation. An increase in the size of the ridge results in a step increase in the film thickness for different ridge shapes, particularly for the flat-topped ridge pattern.

Evaluation of the performance of elastohydrodynamic lubricated ultra-thin film conjunction related to film thickness and pressure profile for various ridge surface features of different amplitudes, shapes and sizes located through the contact zone considering the influence of surface forces of solvation and Van der Waals’ in addition to the hydrodynamic effect.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-03-2023-0062/

Compression rings are the main sources of frictional losses in internal combustion engines. The present paper aims to present a thermo-mixed hydrodynamic analysis for coated top compression rings. To understand the coating effects, the main tribological parameters are investigated into a ring-cylinder conjunction in a motorbike engine. Furthermore, flow simulations have been carried out on how different worn profiles on the cylinder inner liner affects friction, lubricant film and localized contact deformation of the coated compression rings.

In this paper, the basic geometrical dimensions of the top compression ring-cylinder system are obtained from a real motorbike engine. A 2D axisymmetric CFD/FLOTRAN model is created for coated compression rings. Flow simulations are performed by solving the Navier-Stokes and the energy equations. The load capacity of the asperities is also taken into account by Greenwood and Tripp contact model. Realistic boundary conditions are imposed to simulate the in-plane ring motion. The simulation model is validated with analytical and experimental data from the literature. Under thermal considerations, the contribution of worn cylinder profiles in conjunction with different coated compression rings is presented.

This research shows that because of thermal effects, the boundary friction is higher at reversals and the viscous friction is lower because of reduced oil viscosity. As regards to the isothermal case, the viscous friction is greater because of a higher lubricant viscosity. In the case of chromium-plated ring, boundary friction was 16 per cent lower than a grey cast iron ring taking into account thermal effects. Regarding the localized contact deformation, the coated compression rings showed lower values under different worn cylinder shapes. In particular, hard wear-resistant (Ni-Cr-Mo) coating showed the slighter local deformation. Therefore, the worn cylinder profiles promote boundary/mixed lubrication regime, whereas the lobed profile of cylinder inner liner becomes more wavy.

The solution of the thermo-mixed lubrication model, concerning the piston ring and worn cylinder tribo pair by taking into account the coating of the top compression ring.

On account of its easy and intuitive usage as well as obvious advantages (e.g. access to work data from anywhere, at any time and through any means) the evolutionary cloud computing paradigm favors the use of shadow IT. Since many employees are not aware of the associated risks and possible legal violations, unauthorized use of cloud computing services could result in substantial risk exposure for any company. The purpose of this paper is to explore and to extend the body of knowledge concerning the topic of cloud computing with regard to shadow IT.

The aim of this contribution is to identify the reasons for the use of cloud computing services and the resulting shadow IT from an employee’s perspective, to demonstrate the counteractions a company may take against the unauthorized use of cloud computing services and to elaborate on the inherent opportunities and risks. We follow a mixed-methods approach consisting of a systematic literature review, a cloud computing awareness study, a vignette study and expert interviews.

Based on a triangulation of the data sets, the paper at hand proposes a morphological box as well as a two-piece belief-action-outcome model, both from an employee’s and employer’s point of view. Our findings ultimately lead to recommendations for action for employers to counteract the risk exposure. Furthermore, also employees are sensitized by means of insights into the topic of unauthorized usage of cloud computing services in everyday working life.

The limitations of the triangulation reflect the limitations of each applied research method. These limitations justify why a mixed-methods approach is favored – rather than relying on a single source of data – because data from various sources can be triangulated.

The paper includes recommendations for action for the handling of the unauthorized usage of cloud computing services within a company, e.g., the set up of a company-wide cloud security strategy and the conduction of an anonymous employee survey to identify the status quo.

This paper fulfills an identified need to explore the usage of cloud computing services within the context of shadow IT.