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Article
Publication date: 1 March 1954

E.G. MA Broadbent and A.F.R.Ae.S.

THE primary duties of an aircraft design team are to design an aircraft capable of meeting a certain specification of performance and manoeuvrability with suitable flying…

Abstract

THE primary duties of an aircraft design team are to design an aircraft capable of meeting a certain specification of performance and manoeuvrability with suitable flying qualities, and to ensure that it will be strong enough to withstand any aerodynamic loads it may suffer in flight. It will be found that the aircraft when built is not a rigid structure, but this in itself is not important. We are all familiar with the flexing of an aircraft's wings when struck by a sharp gust of wind in flight, but as long as the wings are strong enough no harm is done. On the contrary, in a passenger aircraft the flexibility of the wings in bending will have a favourable effect, as it will cushion the passengers to some extent from the suddenness of the gust. Flexibility of the structure, however, is not always beneficial and it often introduces new difficulties in the designer's problems. These difficulties arise when the deformation of the aircraft structure introduces additional aerodynamic forces of appreciable magnitude. The additional forces will themselves cause deformation of the structure which may introduce still further aerodynamic forces, and so on. It is interactions of this type between elastic and aerodynamic forces which lead to the oscillatory phenomenon of flutter, and to the non‐oscillatory phenomena of divergence and reversal of control. The study of these three aero‐elastic problems becomes more important as aircraft speeds increase, because increase of design speeds leads to more slender aircraft with thinner wings, and therefore to relatively greater flexibility of the structure. The dangers, in fact, are such that the designers of a modern high‐performance aircraft have to spend considerable effort on the prediction of aero‐elastic effects in order that suitable safeguards can be included in the design. By far the greatest part of this effort is spent on flutter, which will be discussed in Parts II, III and IV of this series, but any of the three problems may force the designers to increase the structural stiffness of parts of the aircraft. The wing skin thickness on a modern aircraft, for example, is nearly always designed by consideration either of aileron reversal or wing flutter. Divergence is usually less important but as it is the simplest of the three phenomena to treat analytically, we shall study it first.

Details

Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, vol. 26 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0002-2667

Article
Publication date: 26 February 2020

Erik Mooi, John Rudd and Ad de Jong

Process innovation is a key determinant of performance. While extant literature paints a clear picture of the drivers of process innovation, the effect of process innovation on…

Abstract

Purpose

Process innovation is a key determinant of performance. While extant literature paints a clear picture of the drivers of process innovation, the effect of process innovation on performance has received little attention. This paper aims to examine how the divergence of process innovation impacts performance. Divergence concerns the extent to which the observed level of process innovation diverges from the expected level of process innovation. Positive divergence occurs when the observed level of process innovation is higher than expected while for negative divergence the opposite occurs. In turn, the authors consider how divergence acts as a driver of performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use survey and archival data from 5,594 firms across 15 countries. The authors analyze the data using an advanced two-step random-effects estimator that accounts for the multi-level data used.

Findings

The authors find negative divergence to reduce performance under high competitive intensity, whereas positive divergence is detrimental under high environmental uncertainty.

Research limitations/implications

The authors present new and unique insights into the relationship between divergence and performance. The authors argue that each firm has an “ideal” level of process innovation, based on their resources and business environment, relative to which performance diminishes. Specifically, the authors argue that divergence from the firm’s expected level of process innovation is associated with the reduced performance during high environmental uncertainty or high competitive intensity. Furthermore, the authors argue that there can be “too much” process innovation. This nuance of the majority of prior empirical studies in this area suggests that more innovation is always better for firms. The more nuanced approach reveals that the process innovation-performance debate should not focus on more or less innovation per se, but on how innovation is constructed and supported.

Practical implications

Some argue the existence of an academia-practitioner gap, with both living in different worlds (Reibstein et al., 2009). The findings suggest that theory is not only useful to practitioners but also has a crucial and central role regarding decisions relating to efficiency and effectiveness of scarce resources, in the field of process innovation. More specifically, the authors demonstrate that the prior study on process innovation seems to be useful in that relative to a theory-predicted level, divergence diminishes performance in the global sample of companies across a wide range of industries. In addition, the authors suggest that firms should not strive for more innovation per se. The findings suggest that positive divergence or too much innovation is detrimental for performance under environmental uncertainty, while negative divergence or too little innovation is harmful to performance under competitive uncertainty. Moreover, the divergence approach is also useful for comparing performance to that of other firms, typically referred to as benchmarking.

Originality/value

This paper is useful and important for managers and theory development as it provides insight into situations where a firm may have “too little” or “too much” process innovation. Thus, divergence advances understanding as, in contrast with the previous study, the authors do not suggest that more innovation is always better.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 54 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 August 2011

Xiao Zuoping

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test how ultimate controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence and government intervention affect choice of capital…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test how ultimate controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence and government intervention affect choice of capital structure (CS), and how the relationship between controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence and choice of CS is affected by government intervention.

Design/methodology/approach

Integrating the institutional background of China, the paper adopts balanced panel data containing related continuously obtainable information of 1,076 non‐financial companies listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2004 to 2008 (a total of 5,380 observed values), and applies a series of generalised least squares to empirically test how ultimate controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence and government intervention affect choice of CS, and how the relationship between controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence and choice of CS is affected by government intervention.

Findings

The empirical evidence provided by this paper indicates that: controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence is negatively correlated with leverage; government intervention is positively correlated with leverage; and government intervention will weaken the negative relationship between controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence and leverage, and make debt capital suppliers (especially financial institutions like banks, etc.) provide loans, especially long‐term ones, to companies with high ownership‐control rights divergence.

Originality/value

So far, it is still little‐known how ownership‐control rights divergence affects choice of CS and how government intervention affects the relationship between ownership and control rights divergence and choices of CS. This paper is the first to test how ultimate controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence and government intervention affect choice of CS, and how the relationship between controlling shareholders' ownership‐control rights divergence and choice of CS is affected by government intervention based on the institutional background of China.

Details

Nankai Business Review International, vol. 2 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-8749

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 August 2009

Vassiliki A. Koutsonikola, Sophia G. Petridou, Athena I. Vakali and Georgios I. Papadimitriou

Web users' clustering is an important mining task since it contributes in identifying usage patterns, a beneficial task for a wide range of applications that rely on the web. The…

Abstract

Purpose

Web users' clustering is an important mining task since it contributes in identifying usage patterns, a beneficial task for a wide range of applications that rely on the web. The purpose of this paper is to examine the usage of Kullback‐Leibler (KL) divergence, an information theoretic distance, as an alternative option for measuring distances in web users clustering.

Design/methodology/approach

KL‐divergence is compared with other well‐known distance measures and clustering results are evaluated using a criterion function, validity indices, and graphical representations. Furthermore, the impact of noise (i.e. occasional or mistaken page visits) is evaluated, since it is imperative to assess whether a clustering process exhibits tolerance in noisy environments such as the web.

Findings

The proposed KL clustering approach is of similar performance when compared with other distance measures under both synthetic and real data workloads. Moreover, imposing extra noise on real data, the approach shows minimum deterioration among most of the other conventional distance measures.

Practical implications

The experimental results show that a probabilistic measure such as KL‐divergence has proven to be quite efficient in noisy environments and thus constitute a good alternative, the web users clustering problem.

Originality/value

This work is inspired by the usage of divergence in clustering of biological data and it is introduced by the authors in the area of web clustering. According to the experimental results presented in this paper, KL‐divergence can be considered as a good alternative for measuring distances in noisy environments such as the web.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 5 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 November 2018

Vladimir Kobelev

The purpose of this paper is to consider divergence of composite plate wings as well as slender wings with thin-walled cross-section of small-size airplanes. The main attention is…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to consider divergence of composite plate wings as well as slender wings with thin-walled cross-section of small-size airplanes. The main attention is paid to establishing of closed-form mathematical solutions for models of wings with coupling effects. Simplified solutions for calculating the divergence speed of wings with different geometry are established.

Design/methodology/approach

The wings are modeled as anisotropic plate elements and thin-walled beams with closed cross-section. Two-dimensional plate-like models are applied to analysis and design problems for wings of large aspect ratio.

Findings

At first, the equations of elastic deformation for anisotropic slender, plate-like wing with the large aspect ratio are studied. The principal consideration is delivered to the coupled torsion-bending effects. The influence of anisotropic tailoring on the critical divergence speed of the wing is examined in closed form. At second, the method is extended to study the behavior of the large aspect ratio, anisotropic wing with box-like wings. The static equations of the wing with box-like profile are derived using the theory of anisotropic thin-walled beams with closed cross-section. The solutions for forward-swept wing with box-like profiles are given in analytical formulas. The formulas for critical divergence speed demonstrate the dependency upon cross-sectional shape characteristics and anisotropic properties of the wing.

Research limitations/implications

The following simplifications are used: the simplified aerodynamic theory for the wings of large aspect ratio was applied; the static aeroelastic instability is considered (divergence); according to standard component methodology, only the component of wing was modeled, but not the whole aircraft; the simplified theories (plate-lime model for flat section or thin-walled beam of closed-section) were applied; and a single parameter that defines the rotation of a stack of single layers over the face of the wing.

Practical implications

The simple, closed-form formulas for an estimation of critical static divergence are derived. The formulas are intended for use in designing of sport aircraft, gliders and small unmanned aircraft (drones). No complex analysis of airflow and advanced structural and aerodynamic models is necessary. The expression for chord length over the span of the wing allows for accounting a board class of wing shapes.

Social implications

The derived theory facilitates the use of composite materials for popular small-size aircraft, and particularly, for drones and gliders.

Originality/value

The closed-form solutions for thin-walled beams in steady gas flow are delivered in closed form. The explicit formulas for slender wings with variable chord and stiffness along the wing span are derived.

Details

Multidiscipline Modeling in Materials and Structures, vol. 15 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1573-6105

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 23 March 2022

Ali Albada, Soo-Wah Low and Moau Yong Toh

This study aims to investigate the moderating role of investor demand on the relationship between the investors' divergence of beliefs and the first-day initial public offering…

1212

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the moderating role of investor demand on the relationship between the investors' divergence of beliefs and the first-day initial public offering (IPO) return.

Design/methodology/approach

The study sample covers the period from 2010 to 2019 and consists of 117 IPOs that are priced using the fixed price and listed on the Malaysian stock exchange (Bursa Malaysia). This study employed both the ordinary least square (OLS) and the quantile regression (QR) methods.

Findings

Investor demand, proxied by the over-subscription ratio (OSR), plays a moderating role in increasing the effect of investors' divergence of beliefs on initial return, and the moderation effects vary across the quantile of initial return. Pure moderation effects are observed at the bottom and top quantiles, suggesting that investor demand is necessary for divergence of beliefs to influence IPO initial return. However, at the middle quantile of initial return, investor demand is a quasi-moderator. That is, the OSR not only moderates the relationship between the divergence of beliefs and initial return but also has a positive effect on the initial return.

Practical implications

Investors' excessive demand for an IPO issue exacerbates the IPO under-pricing issue induced by a divergence of beliefs amongst investors, thus rendering greater equity market inefficiency.

Originality/value

To the authors' knowledge, this study is amongst the first to empirically investigate the moderating role of investor demand on the investors' divergence of beliefs and IPO initial return relationship.

Details

Journal of Asian Business and Economic Studies, vol. 30 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2515-964X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2022

Qilan Li, Zhiya Zuo, Yang Zhang and Xi Wang

Since the opening of China (aka, reform and opening-up), a great number of rural residents have migrated to large cities in the past 40 years. Such a one-way population inflow to…

Abstract

Purpose

Since the opening of China (aka, reform and opening-up), a great number of rural residents have migrated to large cities in the past 40 years. Such a one-way population inflow to urban areas introduces nontrivial social conflicts between urban natives and migrant workers. This study aims to investigate the most discussed topics about migrant workers on Sina Weibo along with the corresponding sentiment divergence.

Design/methodology/approach

An exploratory-descriptive-explanatory research methodology is employed. The study explores the main topics on migrant workers discussed in social media via manual annotation. Subsequently, guided LDA, a semi-supervised topic modeling approach, is applied to describe the overall topical landscape. Finally, the authors verify their theoretical predictions with respect to the sentiment divergence pattern for each topic, using regression analysis.

Findings

The study identifies three most discussed topics on migrant workers, namely wage default, employment support and urban/rural development. The regression analysis reveals different diffusion patterns contingent on the nature of each topic. In particular, this study finds a positive association between urban/rural development and the sentiment divergence, while wage default exhibits an opposite relationship with sentiment divergence.

Originality/value

The authors combine unique characteristics of social media with well-established theories of social identity and framing, which are applied more to off-line contexts, to study a unique phenomenon of migrant workers in China. From a practical perspective, the results provide implications for the governance of urbanization-related social conflicts.

Details

Internet Research, vol. 33 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1066-2243

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 February 2018

Desmond Tutu Ayentimi, John Burgess and Kerry Brown

The purpose of this paper is to adopt the convergence-divergence perspective to examine the extent of similarities and differences in human resource management practices between…

2949

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to adopt the convergence-divergence perspective to examine the extent of similarities and differences in human resource management practices between multinational enterprise subsidiaries and local firms in Ghana.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws from multiple case study evidence using in-depth face-to-face interviews and document analysis. The data were analyzed in four stages using both thematic analysis and cross-case analysis techniques.

Findings

The authors found both convergence and divergence, however, the evidence points to more convergence and direction toward convergence between MNEs and local firms’ HRM practices.

Research limitations/implications

Even though there was evidence of cultural embeddedness within local firms in the adoption of certain HRM practices, the influence of national culture on HRM practice convergence between MNEs and local firms has been limited. Thus, the convergence-divergence debate through the lens of national culture may need to be re-examined.

Practical implications

The evidence of convergence and direction toward convergence tendencies within the context can be argued to be less underpinned by local isomorphism limited host-country influence. Practically, there is something to learn from indigenous Ghanaian organizations that can contribute to HRM advancement, the Ghanaian concept of annual durbars, annual or semi-annual gatherings to take stock of past activities and to award hard working staff, could provide the platform to strengthen the employer-employee relationship at the firm level.

Originality/value

This study fills an important contextual gap (a less developed country’s context) within the convergence-divergence debate and contributes to informing new knowledge of the convergence-divergence debate, which points to more convergence and direction toward convergence between MNEs and local firms’ HRM practices.

Details

Personnel Review, vol. 47 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0048-3486

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 April 2024

Chuyu Tang, Hao Wang, Genliang Chen and Shaoqiu Xu

This paper aims to propose a robust method for non-rigid point set registration, using the Gaussian mixture model and accommodating non-rigid transformations. The posterior…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to propose a robust method for non-rigid point set registration, using the Gaussian mixture model and accommodating non-rigid transformations. The posterior probabilities of the mixture model are determined through the proposed integrated feature divergence.

Design/methodology/approach

The method involves an alternating two-step framework, comprising correspondence estimation and subsequent transformation updating. For correspondence estimation, integrated feature divergences including both global and local features, are coupled with deterministic annealing to address the non-convexity problem of registration. For transformation updating, the expectation-maximization iteration scheme is introduced to iteratively refine correspondence and transformation estimation until convergence.

Findings

The experiments confirm that the proposed registration approach exhibits remarkable robustness on deformation, noise, outliers and occlusion for both 2D and 3D point clouds. Furthermore, the proposed method outperforms existing analogous algorithms in terms of time complexity. Application of stabilizing and securing intermodal containers loaded on ships is performed. The results demonstrate that the proposed registration framework exhibits excellent adaptability for real-scan point clouds, and achieves comparatively superior alignments in a shorter time.

Originality/value

The integrated feature divergence, involving both global and local information of points, is proven to be an effective indicator for measuring the reliability of point correspondences. This inclusion prevents premature convergence, resulting in more robust registration results for our proposed method. Simultaneously, the total operating time is reduced due to a lower number of iterations.

Details

Robotic Intelligence and Automation, vol. 44 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2754-6969

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 November 2016

Mario Krenn

Whether corporate governance systems and practices are converging to the Anglo-American shareholder-value-oriented model or continue to diverge from this model and maintain their…

4315

Abstract

Purpose

Whether corporate governance systems and practices are converging to the Anglo-American shareholder-value-oriented model or continue to diverge from this model and maintain their idiosyncrasies has been controversially debated among scholars in a variety of academic disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to review, critique and integrate the disparate positions in the convergence-divergence debate in corporate governance and to suggest promising directions for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

The author constructs a theoretical framework in which convergence and divergence dynamics are conceptualized as simultaneous processes of institutional change and continuity. This framework takes into account the influence of economic market forces, social embeddedness and cultural forces in shaping corporate governance at the national and the firm levels and provides a holistic and integrative perspective on the extant literature in the convergence-divergence debate.

Findings

The literature review does not support either the predictions of convergence advocates or the predictions of divergence advocates. Instead, the paper finds that convergence and divergence dynamics can coexist and lead to increasing heterogeneity in corporate governance arrangements of firms within and between corporate governance systems. This finding adds complexity to the debate and opens room for interesting research directions.

Originality/value

The paper offers a comprehensive review of the topic and draws from literature in financial economics, comparative law, economic sociology, international business, political science and strategic management. Most importantly, the paper offers a multi-theoretical framework that allows for an integration of the divergent perspectives presented in the literature.

Details

Management Research Review, vol. 39 no. 11
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-8269

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 13000