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The paper investigates the closure mechanisms and strategies of exclusion concerning the establishment and subsequent functioning of the Collegio dei Rasonati, the professional body of accountants that was established in Venice in 1581 and operated until the end of the 18th century.

The research design offers a critical longitudinal explanation of the emergence of the Collegio dei Rasonati as a professional body in the context of Venetian society by relying on the social closure theory elaborated by Collins (1975); Parkin (1979) and Murphy (1988).

The Collegio dei Rasonati was established to overcome the prerogatives of a social class in accessing the accounting profession. However, the pre-existing professional elites enacted a set of social closure strategies able to transform this professional body into a stronghold of their privileges.

As virtually all of the evidence concerning the admission examinations has been lost over time, the investigation is restricted to the study of the few examples that have survived. The main implication of the study concerns the understanding of some dynamics leading to neutralize attempts to replace class privileges with a meritocratic system.

The research investigates the structure of the rules of social closure revealing the possibility of an antagonistic relationship between different co-existing forms of exclusion within the same structure. Moreover, it highlights that a form of exclusion can be made of different hierarchical levels.

The first purpose of this study is to respond to Matthews’ (2017) criticisms of Larson's (1977) professional project and accounting historians' past use of Larson (1977) when researching public accountancy professionalization. The second purpose is to use the response to Matthews (2017) as the foundation to construct a model of socio-economic closures of potential use for research and study.

In order to respond to Matthews (2017), the study provides an interpretive review of Larson (1977) and analyses historical professionalization research published in leading accounting journals over three decades. The review and response, together with prior theory contributions, form the foundation for the proposed model of closures.

Matthews’ (2017) criticisms of Larson (1977) and accounting historians' past use of Larson (1977) are, with some exceptions, not well-founded. Larson's (1977) professional project is an ideal model of professionalization and has been used appropriately by accounting historians to introduce and explain rather than a model or test public accountancy professionalization. The analyzed data from research journals are consistent with Larson (1977) in terms of identifiable historical phases of and specific closures actions in the professionalization process.

The study analyses peer-reviewed studies in selected accounting research journals over a defined period.

The study provides a nuanced review of Larson (1977), clarifies evidence of the past use of Larson (1977) by accounting historians, challenges criticism of this use, identifies primary research that focuses on socio-economic closures and proposes a model of such closures for future research and study.

The study contains a comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed research of public accountancy professionalization and proposes a model of closures inductively derived from empirical evidence and prior theoretical contributions.

This purpose of this paper it to explore the extent to which female part‐time workers experience occupational mobility in UK service sector firms, particularly promotional opportunities, since the implementation of the Part‐time Workers' Directive in 2000.

The research adopts a qualitative methodology. In‐depth interviews were carried out with 62 women and 12 of their managers in five case study workplaces in the service industry, so as to better understand individuals' perceptions of part‐time work and the processes that shape part‐time working at an organisational level.

The findings are not particularly encouraging in terms of female part‐time workers' perceptions of their opportunities for career progression in four of the five case studies. Distinctions were found between legislation, organisational policies and informal workplace practices. It is argued in this paper that each of these levels is important in understanding patterns of change and continuity in the use and structuring of part‐time work.

The originality of this paper lies in its use of occupational closure to explain the stratification of part‐time workers and this paper has significance and value for debates surrounding the progression and career prospects of non‐standard workers and diversity management more broadly.

Determinative locating and riveting distortions are highly coupled at assembly locale. Recent methods only take every tested or assumed locating errors at the mating surface into the process planning for the assemblies in a simple form. However, the growth of part number makes it nearly infeasible to take every locating error at every mating surface into the dimensional precision calculation. This paper aims to provide a solid riveting process planning for the reduction of practical locating-related distortions.

Large-scale metrology firstly measures the determinative coordinates for the locating-deviated key points. Iterative finite element (FE) analyses then calculate the riveting-related key point distortions from every rivet upsetting directions (UDs) and assembly sequence. These key points on the actual assembly contour and relative FE nodes yield two virtual planes. Virtual plane manipulation adds the riveting distortions into the locating-deviated coordinates. Finally, optimal algorithm integrates the iterative FE analyses with virtual plane manipulation.

Case studies validate that the virtual plane manipulation coincides with the test well, and the proposed method has good compensation of practical locating distortion.

The optimized rivet UDs may be set in a chaotic distribution, which may complicate the abundant riveting operations and the assembly appearance. Therefore, the use of automatic riveting systems can overcome the operational complexity, and the industrial design of rivet UD distribution will improve the assembly appearance.

The optimized UDs and assembly sequence are for assembly workers or automatic riveting systems.

The proposed method is the first to reduce the determinative locating distortion by a novel and efficient solid riveting process planning in detail, and the solid riveting process designed is conservative and accurate for practice.

This paper presents a method to elaborate the selections of these parameters to achieve stable grasps. The performance of a prosthetic hand is mainly determined by its mechanical design. However, the effects of the geometric parameters of the hand configuration and the object sizes on the grasp stability are unknown.

First, the thumb functions of human hands are analyzed based on the anatomical model, and the configuration characteristics of the thumbs for typical prosthetic hands are summarized. Then a method of optimizing the thumb configuration is proposed by measuring the kinematic transmission performance of robotics. On the basis of the thumb configuration analysis, a design method of the prosthetic hand configuration is proposed based on form closure theory. The discriminant function of form closure is used to analyze and determine the hand configuration parameters.

An application of this method – the newly developed HIT V prosthetic hand – elaborates the optimization of the thumb configuration and the hand configuration, where the relation between the key hand configuration parameters and the discriminant function on condition of satisfying form closure, sustained by analytical equations and graphs, is revealed and visualized. An experimental verification shows that it is an effective method to design the prosthetic hand configuration available for grasping typical objects in our daily life.

The paper shows how to easily determine the geometric dimensions of the palm, phalanges and hand configuration, so that the desired range of object sizes can be obtained.

An auxiliary jet propulsion engine for use with a rotary wing system comprising a casing of rectangular cross‐section and of streamlined shape except for approximately rectangular inlet and outlet openings has closure members pivoted to two opposite sides of the approximately rectangular inlet and outlet openings so that in the ‘open’ position, the openings are free for the entry of air and the passage of the reaction jet and in the ‘closed’ position they close the openings and form with the casing a substantially closed completely independently streamlined body. A streamlined shape is defined as a shape having low drag at its normal operating speeds. The invention is described with reference to a ram jet unit having a casing 1 of approximately rectangular cross‐section disposed with its major axis horizontal in the rotary wing system of a helicopter. The casing has inner and outer walls 2, 3 and, at its inlet end, a substantially rectangular air inlet opening leading through a short approximately parallel or slightly expanding passage 4 formed by the wall 2 into an expanding section 5 constituting the forward end of the combustion chamber 6. The chamber 6 is followed by a contracting outlet passage 7 terminating in an approximately rectangular opening 8. A rectangular flame tube 9 is mounted in the combustion chamber 6. The forward portions of the upper and lower walls of the passage 4 are formed with two part cylindrical recesses 10. Pivoted on a horizontal axis midway between the upper and lower walls of the passage are a pair of closure members 11. When the closure members are in the ‘closed’ position shown, they block the inlet opening and form a substantially cylindrical nose for the casing. When in the ‘open’ position, the flat surfaces of the closure members form part of the inlet opening. Two flap like closure members 12 are pivoted to the upper and lower edges of the rectangular outlet opening 8. When the members 12 are in the ‘closed’ position shown, the block and the nozzle form part of the faired exterior of the casing 1. The closure members 11, 12 are operated by a servo motor 14. This servo motor is actuated by the supply of fuel to the combustion chamber of the ram jet so that when fuel is supplied to the burners through the conduit 25, the fuel pressure acting through the conduit 24 moves the piston 15 to the right and opens the closure members. The jet propulsion unit may be of the compressor‐turbine type.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association of managerial incentives and political costs with hospital financial distress, recovery or closure. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has stated that hospital closures are important for evaluating the distribution of cost, quality and access to healthcare throughout the US. Using Logistic regression, we demonstrate that hospital closure is associated with low occupancy, return on investment, asset turnover, and lack of affiliation with a multihospital system. It is also significantly associated with urban location, teaching programs, high Medicare and Medicaid patient populations, and high debt. Essential access nonprofit hospitals are less likely to close, while this does not affect governmental and for-profit hospitals. Our research hypotheses are supported by these results.

Proposes the concept of rhetorical closure to address the phenomenon of pervasive IT “fashions”. Suggests that prevailing discourses surrounding IT are dominated by the rhetoric of closure and that such closure, although mutually constructed by suppliers, consultants and managers, has had several adverse consequences in terms of organizational change and results. Stimulates a critical thinking regarding the persistence of successive waves of new IT fashions and the consequences of closure on practice.

Theoretical framework informed by political views within the social shaping school combined with Habermas' theory of communicative action. Illustration of the argument is based on 22 semi‐structured interviews (senior practitioners from client‐firms, software suppliers and consulting‐firms working on ERP projects).

Outlines the nature of the “chain reaction” produced by rhetorical closure from individual practices to the segment level. Identifies occasions for breaking down rhetorical closure at the three levels of analysis. At the individual level, opportunities are related to daily users' practices. At the organizational level, opportunities are related to ongoing organizational decisions and negotiations regarding IT adoption. At the segment level, opportunities are related to forming coalitions, networks and groups of users.

Adopts an original perspective, examining the concept of rhetorical closure from a combination of two approaches: social shaping of technology and communicative action theory. Connects different types of closure to different types of rationality, and recognizes the specific validity claims underlying them. Calls into question current decision‐making processes that sustain IT pervasiveness and taken‐for‐granted assumptions of inevitability associated with new IT fashions.

Knowledge sharing is a fundamental source of competitive advantage. Social networks are thought to play an important role in knowledge sharing, but are presumed to create a trade-off such that a network can be optimized to promote either knowledge seeking or knowledge transfer, but not both. The trade-off, however, is premised on, and representative of a broader tendency to treat, brokerage and closure as contradictory network forms. We challenge this assertion and propose a theory of knowledge sharing with brokerage and closure as compatible and complementary. Evidence from a contract research and development firm broadly supports our theory. We also report the results of a simulation analysis, which illustrate that only in the extremely rare case when a network is characterized by nearly complete balance do brokerage and closure begin to create a trade-off.

The Intelligent Systems and Robotics Center at Sandia National Laboratories supports several ongoing projects oriented towards enabling the creation of more automatic and effective robotic assembly systems, especially for small lot production. Two of these projects are Archimedes, which is an automatic assembly planning system, and HoldFast, which automatically designs optimal form‐closure fixtures. These technologies have application in many automated assembly contexts, whether robotic or not. Discusses the current state and applications of these two technologies. Both are based on use of a 3D CAD model, which currently must be converted to ACIS form for processing. Archimedes reasons about the liaisons between parts, then derives an assembly plan that is geometrically valid. This plan is improved by interaction with the user, who adds “constraints” to guide replanning. Facilities to define and search for a user’s “optimal” plan are under development. Given a workpiece shape, task constraints, and a description of a fixture kit, HoldFast finds the optimal fixture that can be made from the kit to hold the workpiece in form‐closure.