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The purpose of this paper is to show that forgotten classics, such as Melvin T. Copeland’s (1924) Principles of Merchandising, can still teach lessons to students of the history of marketing thought.

The method involved using various key words on several internet search engines. The extensive internet search produced more than a dozen contemporaneous reviews and commentaries. Additionally, there was an intensive search through the histories of marketing thought literature. The extensive and intensive searches allowed a meta-analysis reexamining Copeland’s principles in light of future historical developments from the mid-1920s to the 21st century.

Historically, Copeland’s principles established the commodity school of marketing thought. (One of the three traditional approaches to understanding marketing taught to generations of students from the mid-1920s until the mid-1960s.) Although the traditional approaches/schools have long gone out of favor, Copeland’s classification of consumer and industrial (business) goods (products and services) have stood the test of time and are still in use 100 years later. Long overlooked, Copeland’s (1924) Principles of Merchandising also anticipated the marketing management/strategy as well as the consumer/buyer behavior schools of marketing thought, dominant in the discipline since the 1960s, for which he has seldom – if ever – been acknowledged.

Historical research is limited because some relevant source material may no longer exist or may have been overlooked.

There have been no reviews of Copeland’s principles in almost a century, and no published meta-analysis of this forgotten classic exists. New discoveries reveal the value in studying marketing history and the history of marketing thought. For marketing as a social science to progress, it is invaluable to understand how ideas originated, were improved and integrated into larger conceptualizations, classification schema and theories over time.

This study aims to propose an aerodynamic force decomposition which, for the first time, allows for thrust/drag bookkeeping in two-dimensional viscous and unsteady flows. Lamb vector-based far-field methods are used at the scope, and the paper starts with extending recent steady compressible formulas to the unsteady regime.

Exact vortical force formulas are derived considering inertial or non-inertial frames, viscous or inviscid flows, fixed or moving bodies. Numerical applications to a NACA0012 airfoil oscillating in pure plunging motion are illustrated, considering subsonic and transonic flow regimes. The total force accuracy and sensitivity to the control volume size is first analysed, then the axial force is decomposed and results are compared to the inviscid force (thrust) and to the steady force (drag).

Two total axial force decompositions in thrust and drag contributions are proposed, providing satisfactory results. An additional force decomposition is also formulated, which is independent of the arbitrary pole appearing in vortical formulas. Numerical inaccuracies encountered in inertial reference frames are eliminated, and the extended formulation also allows obtaining an accurate force prediction in presence of shock waves.

No thrust/drag bookkeeping methodology was actually available for oscillating airfoils in viscous and compressible flows.

The building sector contributes one-third of the energy-related carbon dioxide globally. Therefore, framing appropriate energy-related policies for the next decades becomes essential in this scenario to realize the global net-zero goals. The purpose of the proposed study is to evaluate the impact of the widespread adoption of such guidelines in a building community in the context of mixed-mode buildings.

This study decentralizes the theme of improving the energy efficiency of the national building stock in parcels by proposing a community-based hybrid bottom-up modelling approach using urban building energy modelling (UBEM) techniques to analyze the effectiveness of the community-wide implementation of energy conservation guidelines.

In this study, the UBEM is developed and validated for the 14-building residential community in Mumbai, India, adopting the framework. Employing Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) compliance on the UBEM shows an energy use reduction potential of up to 15%. The results also reveal that ECBC compliance is more advantageous considering the effects of climate change.

In developing countries where the availability of existing building stock information is minimal, the proposed study formulates a holistic framework for developing a detailed UBEM for the residential building stock from scratch. A unique method of assessing the actual cooling load of the developed UBEM is presented. A thorough sensitivity analysis approach to investigate the effect of cooling space fraction on the energy consumption of the building stock is presented, which would assist in choosing the appropriate retrofit strategies. The proposed study's outcomes can significantly transform the formulation and validation of appropriate energy policies.

This paper aims to outline the role that serendipity can play in providing a complementary and previously unrepresented vector in deliberate and emergent strategies within organizations.

The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon the serendipity pattern in sociological theory and serendipitous relations in developmental sciences to provide a framework for executives to consider when examining the process of strategy formation. Two case vignettes are used to illustrate the difference between luck and serendipity and the paper also traces key micro foundations of serendipity by returning to the original serendipity fable and a famed science experiment producing “floppy-eared” rabbits.

The notion of chance favoring the “prepared firm” is espoused where the prepared organizational mind is positioned as an antecedent of serendipitous strategy formation. This is based on Louis Pasteur’s famous aphorism, “chance favors the prepared mind.” Components of the prepared firm include deep domain knowledge, anticipatory mindset, noticing, abductive reasoning, elaboration and relations development.

The paper is a conceptual articulation of a novel concept that now requires deeper empirical case development and ultimately statistical validation. The paper suggests linkages between serendipity and theories of absorptive capacity and the attention-based view of the firm.

Several mindsets, capabilities and relations for architecting organizational serendipity are suggested for executives using a stylized framework.

From a strategy process perspective, the Mintzberg and Waters seminal article “Of strategies deliberate and emergent” is complemented by considering “floppy-eared” strategy characterized by unexpected, anomalous and strategic datum.