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The paper discusses the measurement of manufacturing virtuality and, in doing so, contributes to knowledge in the fields of operations strategy, operations management and accounting. Initially, the use of a virtual manufacturing operations strategy within the contemporary business environment is considered. Thereafter, a conceptual scale by which the extent of the virtuality of a manufacturing organisation can be measured is presented. A preliminary version of the scale is described together with its application to three companies manufacturing in the global electronic and electrical industrial sector. These companies, each having adopted different operations strategies, potentially represent the two extremes and a mid‐point on the virtuality scale. The empirical component of the work includes presentation of case study descriptions of the companies and the results of the application of the scale. These are shown to provide evidence of its validity. The final section of the paper analyses the current form of the model and describes how its performance might be informed by the incorporation of concepts from accounting that embrace the financial measurement of intangible company assets. It is a further demonstration of the limitations of conventional financial reporting in dealing with contemporary issues in management and business. The paper concludes by discussing the generic significance of the work and by presenting future directions for the research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between Amartya Sen’s notion of adaptation and his views on identity politics by focussing on the issue of slavery and, more specifically, on the example of the happy or contented slave.

The paper is text based. The methodological approach adopted is that of conceptual analysis, as is typical for work of this kind.

The paper concludes that the example of the happy or contented slave is indeed a fruitful one for those interested in exploring the relationship between Sen’s views on “the adaptation problem” and his views on identity politics, especially in relation to the subjection of women. Here Sen’s debt to the ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill is particularly important.

One implication of the argument of the paper is that there is a need to consider more carefully the differences that exist between the views of Wollstonecraft and Mill, so far as the example of the happy or contented slave is concerned.

One practical implication of the paper is that, hopefully, it establishes the continued relevance of the ideas of thinkers such as Wollstonecraft and Mill today, not least because of the influence that they have had on theoreticians such as Amartya Sen.

The paper addresses issues which are of considerable social and political significance, especially for women in underdeveloped societies today.

The example of the happy or contented slave has not received much discussion in the literature on Sen, although Sen himself has suggested that the distinction between happiness and contentment is an important one, which does merit further discussion.

Drawing on evidence of major Western governments’ concerns with the wider economic, social and environmental impact and performance of transnational firms, we argue that recent emphasis on deregulating industrial development, such as in the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment and ongoing discussions over a multilateral framework on investment, necessitates a fuller and regulated, rather than voluntaristic, corporate accountability, covering further details of the impact and performance of transnationals.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The paper considers the implementation of a virtual manufacturing system as an alternative to outward technology licensing in a high technology industrial sector. Brief theoretical definition and description of the two strategy options is provided to give background and context. This is followed by empirical material from a longitudinal case study of a company that has developed a virtual manufacturing system in addition to its pre‐existing outward technology licensing business stream. A summary account of the company history and development is followed by description of the virtual manufacturing proposal. Analysis of this identified a number of competencies that would be required in order to succeed. The final part of the paper describes the company's response to this analysis and discusses early implementation of the virtual system. It is shown that implementation of the proposal has represented a positive response to the business challenges facing the company.

The purpose of this paper is to present an outline of the development of a new process for the formation of flip‐chip interconnections using metal coated polymer microparticles.

Metal coated polymer microparticles were selectively deposited onto the bondpads of integrated circuits using electrophoresis. Thermocompression bonding was then used to bond the devices to substrates.

Particles obtained a positive surface charge following immersion in an acidic solution and this surface charge allowed the particles to be deposited electrophoretically directly onto the bondpads of an integrated circuit without the need for patterning. Thermocompression bonding of nickel/gold coated particles to gold coated substrates was achieved at temperatures as low as 160°C.

Further work is needed to test this approach using integrated circuits with finer pitch, and to use patterned substrates for assembly and reliability measurements.

This paper presents a new method for the deposition of metal coated polymer microparticles without the need for any masking or patterning processes for the formation of interconnections on integrated circuits.

Recent work on the theory of teams and team reasoning in game interactive settings is due principally to the late Michael Bacharach (Bacharach, 2006), who offers a conception of the individual as a team member, and also to Martin Hollis (1998) and Robert Sugden and Natalie Gold (Sugden, 2000; Gold & Sugden, 2007), and is motivated by the conflict between what ordinary experience suggests people often to do and what rationality prescribes for them, such as in prisoner's dilemma games where individuals can choose to cooperate or defect. The source of the conflict, they suggest, is an ambiguity in the syntax of standard game theory, which is taken to pose the question individuals in games ask themselves as, “what should I do?,” but which might be taken to pose the question, particularly when individuals are working together with others as, “what should we do?” When taken in the latter way, each individual chooses according to what best promotes the team's objective and then performs the role appropriate as a member of that team or group. Bacharach understood this change in focus in terms of the different possible cognitive frames that individuals use to think about the world and developed a variable frame theory for rational play in games in which the frame adopted for a decision problem determines what counts as rational play (Janssen, 2001; Casajus, 2001).In order to explain how someone acts, we have to take account of the representation or model of her situation that she is using as she thinks what to do. The model varies with the cognitive frame in which she does her thinking. Her frame stands to her thoughts as a set of axes does to a graph; it circumscribes the thoughts that are logically possible for her (not ever, but at that time). (Bacharach, 2006, p. 69)Sugden understands this framing idea in terms of the theory of focal points following Thomas Schelling's emphasis on the role of salience in coordination games (Schelling, 1960), and his theory similarly ties decision-making to the way the game is understood (Sugden, 1995). This all recalls what Tversky and Kahneman (1981, 1986) termed standard's theory's description invariance assumption, whose abandonment makes it possible to bring a variety of the insights from psychology to bear on rationality in economics.

Sociology of sport in the United Kingdom is as old as the subdiscipline itself but was uniquely shaped by the prominence of football hooliganism as a major social issue in the 1970s and 1980s. While it remains a somewhat niche activity, the field has been stimulated by the growing cultural centrality of sport in UK society. This quantitative and qualitative development has been recognized in recent governmental evaluations of research expertise. Current research reflects this expanded range of social stratification and social issues in sport both domestically and on a global level, while the legacy of hooligan research is evident in the continuing concentration on studies of association football. Historically, this empirical research has largely been underpinned by figurational, Marxist/neo-Marxist, or feminist sociological theories, but there is now a greater emphasis on theoretical synthesis and exploration. As a consequence of the expansion of the field, allied to its empirical and theoretical diversity, there is a burgeoning literature produced by UK sociologists of sport that spans entry-level textbooks, research monographs, and the editorship of a significant number of specialist journals. The chapter concludes by noting the future prospects of the sociology of sport in the United Kingdom in relation to teaching, research, and relations with other sport-related subdisciplines and the sociological mainstream.