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Describes the results of research carried out in a large commercial telecommunications organisation where the information systems group was undergoing a change from developing systems in a traditional third generation environment to a fourth generation development environment. Exposes a number of difficulties, notably ′people problems′ associated with innovation. Concludes that even where the technical aspects should lead to increased efficiency, this might not be the end result.

This research aims to inspect the existence of the “environmental Kuznets curve” (EKC) in the presence of foreign direct investment (FDI), financial development (FD) and urbanization throughout 1972–2018 for Pakistan.

For time series analysis, Phillips and Perron (PP) and Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) unit root tests are used to confirm the level of integration. For robustness, Kim and Perron (2009)’s structural break unit root test is employed, which identifies the order of integration in the presence of structural break years. Further, combined cointegration analysis is performed to confirm the existence of a long-run association between underlying variables. Furthermore, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) analysis is employed for the robustness of the cointegration approach.

The cointegration analysis confirms the existence of a long-run association among variables. The authors find a positive and significant impact of urbanization, FD and foreign development on environmental degradation in the long run. Similarly, only FDI increases environmental degradation in the short run. In addition, the authors find an inverted U-shape relationship between economic growth and environmental quality which, further, confirms the presence of EKC in Pakistan.

This research contributes to applied economics in many ways: the combined effect of urbanization, FD, FDI and economic growth on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission is checked simultaneously. To avoid ambiguity, this study constructs the FD index through the principal component analysis (PCA). Moreover, the role of structural breaks has been considered through the analysis. Novel Bayer-Hanck combined cointegration analysis is employed to detect the existence of long-run relationships among underlying variables.

This study aims to investigate the status of library and information science (LIS) education in Pakistan, as well as LIS progress, level of employment and issues, infrastructure and facilities, challenges faced by LIS institutions and future prospects of the profession.

A total of 115 permanent/regular and visiting academic members from different Pakistani institutions/universities participated in the research. A mixed-method was used, and data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. The data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.

This study’s results showed that assistant, associate and associate professors have been very involved in producing high-quality research articles and producing quality graduates. This study also found that there are several problems with LIS education in Pakistan, such as a lack of qualified teachers, resources and facilities. This study provides all the answers to these problems. They are useful for LIS teachers and students in Pakistan because LIS education has been around for a long time, but there are still some problems that need to be fixed. The results could have an immediate effect on the direction, ability to survive and future of LIS education in Pakistan.

Previously, different studies have been conducted on evolution and challenges to the LIS profession, but to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study has been reported based on the professional experiences in other Universities of Pakistan. According to the research, the findings are crucial for LIS professors and students in Pakistan. In addition, the research investigates the challenges faced by LIS teachers in Pakistan. It concludes with suggestions on how to address some of these problems. It is also said that Pakistan must develop universal standards for LIS to close the gap between what users want and what library workers can do.

The purpose of this study is to examine how two organizational members, i.e. business and information technology (IT) managers evaluate the success measures of acquired enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Surveys were conducted in two Northern European countries – Finland and Estonia.

Prior studies suggest that business and IT managers evaluate organizational‐IT issues, including ERP success evaluations differently. However, this study's data analysis showed that no significant statistical differences exist between the two groups on the six dimensions of ERP success operationalized with the exception of one, i.e. vendor/consultant quality. In brief, both groups seem to have a similar view of ERP success in their respective organizations.

Discusses the implications for practitioners and researchers.

The banking industry, which is one of the most significant industries when taking into account both deposit sizes and employment statistics in Turkey, is one of the country's primary economic drivers. In this regard, it is highly important to evaluate banks as it is necessary to present to what extent they use their resources efficiently. The main purpose of the study is to analyze the efficiencies of Turkish banks by the two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) and Malmquist productivity index (MPI).

The authors aim to analyze both the efficiency and productivity of Turkish banks by two-stage DEA and the MPI, which enable decomposing into sub-sections of production processes. Hence, more detailed insight into the Turkish banking system can be presented through two-stage efficiency and production approaches.

DEA results indicate that two out of three state-owned banks achieved resource efficiency while none of the investigated banks performed profit efficiency throughout the investigated period. Besides, average resource efficiency is found higher than average profit efficiency in Turkish banks. MPI results reveal that both technological and technical improvement prospects exist for Turkish banks.

The original contribution of this paper is to employ two-stage DEA and the MPI, which reflect both the static and dynamic performance of the Turkish banking sector. In this regard, this study aims to be a pioneer by both reflecting the static and dynamic performance analysis of Turkish banks.

This paper aims to discuss the physical and thermal properties of the three-dimensional (3D) printing natural composite filament, as well as the tensile behaviour of the printed composites to get an insight of its possibility to be used as an ankle–foot orthosis (AFO) material.

Physical test that was conducted includes scanning electron microscopy analysis, thermogravimetric/differential scanning calorimetry analysis as well as the effect of fibre load after extrusion on the filament morphology. Tensile test was conducted with different amounts of fibre loads (0, 3, 5 and 7 Wt.%) on the printed specimens.

There is an increment of strength as the fibre load is increased to 3 Wt.%; however, it decreases significantly as it is increased to 5 and 7 Wt.% because of the presence of voids. It also shows that the extrusion temperature severely affects the structure of the filaments, which will then affect the strength of the printed composites. Based on the results, it is possible to use kenaf/polylactic acid (PLA) filament to print out AFO as long as the filament production and printing process are being controlled properly.

The unique aspect of this paper is the investigation of kenaf/PLA filament as a material for 3D printing, as well as its material consideration for AFO manufacturing. This paper also studies the effect of extrusion temperature on the morphological structure of the filament and its effect on the tensile properties of the printed kenaf/PLA specimen.

Considering the influence of environmental noise and modeling error during the process of the robotic automatic grinding aero-engine blade, this study aims to propose a method based on the extended state observer (ESO) to reduce the fluctuation of normal grinding force.

First, the measurement range of the six-dimensional force sensor is calibrated according to the maximum acceleration of end-effector and grinding force. Second, the gravity and zero drift compensation model is built to compensate for measurement error. Finally, the switching function is designed based on the difference between the expected grinding force and the actual feedback value. When the value of function stays within the switching band, a nonlinear active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) loop is applied. When the function value reaches outside the switching band, an ESO-based sliding mode control (SMC) loop is applied.

The simulated and experimental results show that the proposed control method has higher robustness compared with proportion-integral-derivative (PID), Fuzzy PID and ADRC.

The processing parameters of this paper are obtained based on the single-factor experiment without considering the correlation between these variables. A new control strategy is proposed, which is not only used to control the grinding force of blades but also promotes the development of industrial control.

ESO is used to observe environmental interference and modeling errors of the system for real-time compensation. The segment control method consisting of ESO-based SMC and ESO-based ADRC is designed to improve the robustness. The common application of the two parts realizes suppression of fluctuation of grinding force.

This paper investigates the (a)symmetric effects of financial development in the presence of economic growth, energy consumption, urbanization and foreign direct investment on environmental quality of South Africa between 1980 and 2017.

A robust measure of financial development is generated using banking institutions and non-banking institutions market-based financial development indicators, while environmental quality is measured using carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint. The objectives of the study are captured using linear and non-linear autoregressive distributed lag.

The result from the symmetric analysis suggests that financial development stimulates carbon footprint and ecological footprint in the short run; however, financial development abates non-carbon footprint. In the long run, financial development has a significant negative effect on carbon footprint and ecological footprint. However, the asymmetric analysis established strong asymmetric effect in the short run, while no asymmetric effect is found in the long run. The short run asymmetric analysis reveals that positive shock in financial development increases carbon footprint and ecological footprint; however, positive changes in financial development reduce non-carbon footprint. Negative shocks in financial development, on the other hand, have a positive impact carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint.

The study's outcome implies that the concept of “more finance, more growth” could also be applied to “more finance, better environment” in South Africa. The study offers vital policy suggestions for the realization of sustainable development in South Africa.

This empiric adds to the body of knowledge on the influence of financial development on various components of environmental quality (carbon footprint, non-carbon footprint and ecological footprint) in South Africa.

This article provides a general introduction to using catastrophe models to optimally manage the risk of a portfolio of Property & Casualty (P&C) liabilities. There is increasing emphasis on the enterprise‐wide allocation of risk capacity for all financial intermediaries, e.g. banks, pensions, investment funds, as well as life and P&C insurers. The optionality (the skewness, kurtosis, and correlation with asset risk) of liability risks contribute substantially to earnings volatility. The severity of low‐probability events, i.e. natural catastrophes (e.g. hurricanes, earthquakes), combined with increases in geographic concentrations of wealth can adversely affect the diversification of the liability risk at the portfolio level. Since in both finance and insurance, optimally allocating risk at the portfolio level is generally based on (linear) combinations of nonlinear risks, finding an optimal allocation is not always tractable. The author describes a well‐established optimization algorithm and produces a reasonable approximation for an optimal solution.