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In a recent issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Blake strongly criticised an article on organisational change by Blumberg and Wiener for the authors' failure thoroughly to review the literature and for missing important material relevant to their study. In response, Blumberg simply stated that they were not aware of the material, because it had appeared in a relatively obscure journal. Indeed, a later writer (Zurcher) criticised one of Blake's papers on the same grounds, and then suggested that an event such as this might easily happen to any of us. Despite their apparent conflict, each of these individuals did agree, of course, that a thorough review of the literature on any given topic is necessary to good research and reporting. Our purpose here is not to pour salt on wounds, but rather to illustrate our raison d'être for presenting the material below.

In this paper, the authors investigate whether coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) impacts household finances, like household debt repayments in the UK.

This paper employs a vector autoregressive (VAR) model that nests neural networks and uses Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) techniques. The authors use data information related to COVID-19, financial markets and household finances.

The authors' results show that household debt repayments' response to the first principal component of COVID-19 shocks is negative, albeit of low magnitude. However, when the authors employ specific COVID-19-related data like vaccines and tests the responses are positive, insinuating the underlying dynamic complexities. Overall, confirmed deaths and hospitalisations negatively affect household debt repayments. The authors also report low persistence in household debt repayments. Generalised impulse response functions (IRFs) confirm the main results. As draconian measures, the lockdowns are eased and the COVID-19 shocks are diminishing, and household financial data converge to the levels prior to the pandemic albeit with some lags.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that examines the impact of the pandemic on household debt repayments. The authors' findings show that policy response in the future should prioritise innovation of new vaccines and testing.

This paper aims to design a modified fractional order proportional integral derivative (PID) (FO[PI]^λD^µ) controller based on the principle of fractional calculus and investigate its performance for a class of a second-order plant model under different operating conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is compared with the classical controllers.

The fractional factor related to the integral term of the standard FO[PI]^λD^µ controller is applied as a common fractional factor term for the proportional plus integral coefficients in the proposed controller structure. The controller design is developed using the regular closed-loop system design specifications such as gain crossover frequency, phase margin, robustness to gain change and two more specifications, namely, noise reduction and disturbance elimination functions.

The study results of the designed controller using matrix laboratory software are analyzed and compared with an integer order PID and a classical FOPI^λD^µ controller, the proposed FO[PI]^λD^µ controller exhibit a high degree of performance in terms of settling time, fast response and no overshoot.

This paper proposes a methodology for the FO[PI]^λD^µ controller design for a second-order plant model using the closed-loop system design specifications. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is demonstrated under different operating conditions such as external load disturbances and input parameter change.

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to identify what types of business process operation controllers are discussed in literature and how can they be classified in order to establish the available body of knowledge in the literature, and then, (2) to identify which concepts are relevant for business process operation control and how are these concepts related in order to offer a reference model for assessing how well are control layers enforced in the dynamic stable nature of an enterprise' business processes operation.

One cycle of the circular framework for literature review as proposed by Vom Brocke et al. (2009) is followed. Five stages are comprised: (1) definition of review scope (Section 1 and 2), (2) conceptualization of topic (Section 3), (3) literature search (Section 4), (4) literature analysis and synthesis (Section 5), and (5) definition of a research agenda (Section 6 that also concludes the paper). Vom Brocke, J., Simons, A., Niehaves, B., Niehaves, B., Reimer, K., Plattfaut, R., and Cleven, A. (2009), “Reconstructing the giant: on the importance of rigour in documenting the literature search process”, ECIS 2009 Proceedings, Vol. 161.

Results indicate that (1) many studies exist in the literature, but no integrated knowledge is proposed, hindering the advance of knowledge in this field, (2) a knowledge gap exists between the implemented solutions and the conceptualization needed to generalize the solution to other contexts. Also, the ontology proposed provides a reference model for assessing the maturity of the business process control operation.

The contents contained in the paper needs to be further deepened to include the concepts of “business process management” and “business process mining”, as well as a semantic equivalence study between concepts can integrate better this conceptual framework and identify similarities. Then, the relationship between industries and dynamically stable business processes operation concepts have not yet been fully investigated. Thirdly, the atypical curve of interest that business processes operational control has been receiving in literature is not fully understood.

Some example applications that could benefit from this ontology are (1) security policy for business processes fine grained access control; (2) business processes enforced with decentralized policies, e.g. blockchain; (3) business process compliance and change; or (4) intelligent enterprise decision-making process, e.g. using AI trained neural network to support the human decision to choose if a control actuation is positive or negative instead of relying only on human-based decisions.

We understand that business process operation is a dynamically stable system, where steady motion is achieved with the continuous imposition of actor's actions. Therefore, all the work that contribute to the development of knowledge regarding the actor's actions in their execution environment offer the ability to optimize, and/or reengineering, business processes delivering more social value or better social conditions.

In the best of our knowledge this work is unique in the sense that integrates a set of concepts that is rarely, or never, combined. Table 3 corroborates this result.

STUDENTS OF engineering thermodynamics and of heat engines alike are confronted eventually with the question ‘What is entropy?’, and the difficulties which can be associated with conveying the answer are well known. One possible source of misunderstanding can be the attempt to define or introduce entropy in physical terms.

OD conceptualisation has been criticised as being both underdeveloped and too unduly narrow in its focus. Several ways that OD′s conceptualisation might be enhanced are suggested: on the one hand by differentiating its models and theories in terms of their conceptual level or scope, and on the other hand in terms of an enlarged set of fundamental organisational tasks, different levels of change agent intentionality, and the time frame involved in change. These suggested ways of reconceptualising the theoretic possibilities for OD would move it away from its mostly fix‐it, how‐to, internal problem‐solving image.

Purpose: This chapter presents a discussion of the COVID-19 global debt crisis.

Methodology: The chapter uses the discourse analysis method to identify the cause of the COVID-19 global debt crisis and suggests ways to overcome the crisis.

Findings: The chapter argues that the high debt incurred by many countries during the COVID1-19 pandemic, combined with tightening global financial conditions, led to a significant increase in global debt. The author suggests ideas to avert a debt crisis. It was argued that rich countries could forgive the debt owed to them by heavily indebted countries or consider interest repayment holidays, debt-for-green swaps, or other debt-relief options. Heavily indebted countries can consider restructuring their debt, reevaluating their economic policy priorities, and raising taxes. Multilateral organisations can assist heavily indebted countries and engage in debt forgiveness advocacy.

Implication: There is a need for rich countries and creditor organisations to offer some relief to heavily indebted countries to help them meet their debt repayment obligations during and after the pandemic.

Originality: The chapter is one of the first to analyse the global COVID-19 debt situation.

Purpose – To study misbehavior as a form of dissent and resistance in an organized labor situation where traditional forms of labor unrest are suppressed and the implications for how we understand the socio-political processes through which misbehavior is constructed.

Methodology/approach – Archival research, cluster analysis, thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, actor-network theory

Findings – Misbehavior is linked to a series of sociological practices not least of which is the production of knowledge through actor-networks and their relationship to far-reaching discourses. In the empirical material we find a conflict between discourses of labor solidarity and unfair management practices and discourses of patriotism and anticommunism.

Research limitations/implications (if applicable) – This research is based on archival data, as such it is subject to the choices of holders to contribute and archivists to collect.

Practical implications (if applicable) – This work has implications for labor leadership in the understanding of which disputes may be constrained by contextual discourses and by management in the exploration of possible means of suppressing labor unrest.

Social implications – We have found that labor unrest may be constrained by contextual discourse but that suppressed unrest may result in misbehavior and other forms of counterproductive workplace activities.

Originality/value of chapter – The relationship between contextual discourse and employee misbehavior has not been studied in depth. This work presents a new view of the struggles of the unionized workplace.

The aim of this paper is to qualitatively examine the ways in which primary school children, aged between 7 and 12, perceive various facets of obesity as defined by the common sense model of illness representation (CCM).

The study was qualitative in nature. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 33 children on all dimensions of the CSM. Twenty four children were normal weight and nine were overweight. A drawing task formed the methodology for the “identity” section of the interview.

Although children identified food intake as a main cause of obesity, almost half did not name sedentary behaviours as a cause of obesity. Duration (timeline) of obesity was regarded by most children as reliant on a person's undertaking of positive health behaviours. Normal weight children were found to list more severe consequences of obesity than the overweight group. It was found that experience contributed to the detailed knowledge of overweight children's perceptions of cures of obesity. Overweight children also spoke of personal incidents of barriers to cures.

The findings suggest that the CSMs can be used to classify children's perceptions of obesity. Future childhood obesity interventions can utilise these findings to create campaigns and strategies that are more consistent with children's understandings of this condition.

To the authors' knowledge, no previous study has examined children's perceptions of obesity beyond perceived causes.

“For many years it has been said that capital is the bottleneck for a developing industry. I don't think this any longer holds true. I think it's the work force and the company's inability to recruit and maintain a good work force that constitute the bottleneck for production. I don't know of any major project backed by good ideas, vigour and enthusiasm that has been stopped by a shortage of cash. I do know of industries whose growth has been partly stopped or hampered because they can't maintain an efficient and enthusiastic labour force, and I think this will hold true even more in the future!”