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This paper aims to conduct a comprehensive literature review in the tidal energy physics, the ocean environment, hydrodynamics of horizontal axis tidal turbines and bio-mimicry.

The paper provides an insight of the tidal turbine blade design and need for renewable energy sources to generate electricity through clean energy sources and less CO₂ emission. The ocean environment, along with hydrodynamic design principles of a horizontal axis tidal turbine blade, is described, including theoretical maximum efficiency, blade element momentum theory and non-dimensional forces acting on tidal turbine blades.

This review gives an overview of fish locomotion identifying the attributes of the swimming like lift-based thrust propulsion, the locomotion driving factors: dorsal fins, caudal fins in propulsion, which enable the fish to be efficient even at low tidal velocities.

Finally, after understanding the phenomenon of caudal fin propulsion and its relationship with tidal turbine blade hydrodynamics, this review focuses on the implications of bio-mimicking a curved caudal fin to design an efficient horizontal axis tidal turbine.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a comparative analysis between a straight blade (SB) and a curved caudal-fin tidal turbine blade (CB) and to examine the aspects relating to geometry, turbulence modelling, non-dimensional forces lift and power coefficients.

The comparison utilises results obtained from a default horizontal axis tidal turbine with turbine models available from the literature. A computational design method was then developed and implemented for “horizontal axis tidal turbine blade”. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results for the blade design are presented in terms of lift coefficient distribution at mid-height blades, power coefficients and blade surface pressure distributions. Moving the CB back towards the SB ensures that the total blade height stays constant for all geometries. A 3D mesh independency study of a “straight blade horizontal axis tidal turbine blade” modelled using CFD was carried out. The grid convergence study was produced by employing two turbulence models, the standard k-ε model and shear stress transport (SST) in ANSYS CFX. Three parameters were investigated: mesh resolution, turbulence model, and power coefficient in the initial CFD, analysis.

It was found that the mesh resolution and the turbulence model affect the power coefficient results. The power coefficients obtained from the standard k-ε model are 15 to 20 per cent lower than the accuracy of the SST model. Further analysis was performed on both the designed blades using ANSYS CFX and SST turbulence model. The variation in pressure distributions yields to the varying lift coefficient distribution across blade spans. The lift coefficient reached its peak between 0.75 and 0.8 of the blade span where the total lift accelerates with increasing pressure before drastically dropping down at 0.9 onwards due to the escalating rotational velocity of the blades.

The work presents a computational design methodological approach that is entirely original. While this numerical method has proven to be accurate and robust for many traditional tidal turbines, it has now been verified further for CB tidal turbines.

Enterprise systems (ES) upgrade is fundamental to maintaining a system’s continuous improvement and stability. However, while the extant literature is replete with research on ES upgrade decision-making, there is scant knowledge about how different decision processes facilitate this decision to upgrade. This paper aims to investigate and better understand these processes from an organisational perspective.

The study adopted a qualitative survey design, and used a Web-based questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to collect data from 23 large organisations. Data accrued were qualitatively analysed and manually coded to identify the various decision processes undertaken during ES upgrade decisions.

Analysis results reveal complex interrelations between the upgrade drivers, the need to evaluate the new version’s functionality and the upgrade impact. Understanding the interaction between these elements influences the upgrade decision process.

The study proposes ES upgrade processes that support a decision to upgrade major releases. Further research is required to offer either similar or conflicting arguments on the upgrade decision-making and provide a probabilistic generalisation of the decision-making processes.

The research offers a comprehensive and empirically supported methodical approach that embraces an evaluation of a new version’s functionality, technical requirements and concomitant upgrade implications as intrinsic decision processes. This approach assists in the decisions to establish the upgrade need and determine the level of change, effort required, impacts and associated benefits.

Enterprise systems integration (ESI) is necessary for today’s business environment to access real-time data and quickly respond to fluctuating market demand. business process change (BPC) as a significant prerequisite of ESI encompasses various challenges that must be tackled by employing success factors, techniques and approaches. The purpose of this paper is to focus on BPC challenges and develop a conceptual framework for addressing BPC challenges in ESI.

BPC challenges and their success factors were first identified through a literature analysis. Then, the findings from the literature were thematically analysed and qualitatively validated through 35 unstructured interviews for developing the conceptual framework.

The findings from the literature suggested 17 BPC challenge along with their success factors. During the validation process, 15 BPC challenges were accepted by all interviewees, while most of the respondents disagreed with the two challenges of “consolidation of information system re-engineering with BPR”, and “customization”. Moreover, “risk” was suggested as a BPC challenge by several interviewees. Thus, the study offered a modified list of BPC challenges, which was empirically validated.

The study proposes a conceptual framework for addressing BPC challenges in ESI that enables enterprises to design their systems integration roadmap, based on an understanding of BPC challenges and their success factors, as well as supporting solution providers to develop solutions for effective and efficient BPC. Furthermore, the framework will act as a basis for BPC and developing a similar framework for other related contexts, such as smart cities.

Enterprise systems (ES) upgrade is a complex phenomenon, yet it is possible to reduce the complexity through understanding of the upgrade drivers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the various upgrade drivers, in order to provide a detailed understanding of the factors driving upgrade decisions.

This research is grounded in a qualitative survey design. It utilises a web-based survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to collect data from 41 respondents representing 23 large organisations. The data were qualitatively analysed and coded to identify the various drivers and their influence on ES upgrade decisions.

The findings suggest that the upgrade decisions are dependent on establishing the need to upgrade, which is influenced by various drivers and stakeholders interests. In addition, the findings suggest that organisations would only opt to upgrade when benefits are aligned with the upgrade and when the decision makes business sense.

In this paper, the authors propose that there is a relationship between the upgrade drivers and the upgrade strategy. However, qualitative studies can only formulate logical generalisations. Hence, future research could explore these associations through a quantitative study in order to provide probabilistic generalisation that offers either similar or conflicting arguments applicable to ES upgrade phenomenon.

This paper provides an alternative classification of upgrade drivers, and conceptualises an association between upgrade drivers and the upgrade strategy, which in turn facilitates minimising disruptions and upgrade risks.

Enterprise systems (ES) upgrade is a complex undertaking that recurs throughout the systems’ life span, therefore, organisations need to adopt strategies and methodologies that can minimise disruptions and risks associated with upgrades. The purpose of this paper is to explore the processes undertaken during upgrading ES, to identify the upgrade project stages.

This research is grounded in a qualitative survey approach, and utilises a web-based survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews as methods for data collection. The data were gathered from 41 respondents’ and analysed using qualitatively inductive content analysis principles to derive meaning and to identify the trends about upgrade processes.

The study findings stress the importance of adopting a methodical approach to ES upgrades. Also, it suggests that due consideration should be given to the impact of new version features and functionality, the risks and the effort required for supporting upgrade projects.

The five-stage upgrade process model can be utilised as a strategy to minimise complexity and risks associated with upgrade projects. However, this study only proposes logical generalisations; therefore, future studies could explore these stages in-depth to offer generalisable arguments applicable to ES upgrade phenomenon.

The study proposes a five-stage upgrade process model that offers a systematic approach to support upgrade projects. The proposed model extends previous models by proposing alternative strategies to support ES upgrade projects.

Extensive literature on business process management suggests that organisations could enhance their overall performance by adopting a process view of business. However, there is a lack of empirical research in this field. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the understanding of the process view and process maturity levels in a transition economy and to test the impact of process orientation maturity level on organisational performance.

Empirical investigation combined an exploratory‐confirmatory approach using factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The investigation confirms the impact of business process orientation on organisational performance in a transition economy. The link is even stronger than in the original investigation. The results show that business process orientation leads to better non‐financial performance and indirectly to better financial performance.

The research confirms that business process orientation is advantageous for companies since it has a positive influence on organisational performance. The finding that the impact on financial performance is indirect through non‐financial performance suggests that the companies have to take that view of performance into consideration as well.

The paper is valuable for academics and practitioners because the impact of business process orientation on organisational performance has been confirmed for a transitional economy. Its originality is in the measurement of organisational performance, for which a more detailed specification of organisational performance based on the balanced scorecard concept that includes non‐financial performance measures has been used.

This study aims to address how Islamic banks (IBs) and conventional banks (CBs) manage their liquidity and their speed of adjusting liquidity holdings both in the short- and long term.

This study uses the partial adjustment model (PAM) on a sample of 445 banks from 17 Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries over the period 2010–2018.

Results reveal that despite IBs’ placement of higher short-term liquidity buffer, they experience lower net stable fund ratio (NSFR) in the long term, relative to CBs. This study’s results also reveal that IBs enjoy higher and lower speed of adjustment (SOA) for NSFR in the long- and short term, respectively. Furthermore, the results suggest that bank-specific and macroeconomic factors weaken the liquidity SOA.

This study sheds light on the importance of the adjusting speed of bank liquidity in a bid to provide regulators with insights for enhancing liquidity holdings and emphasising the regulation of banks’ reaction pace to attain the target buffers.

This study estimates the liquidity adjustment speed of IBs and CBs by providing a comprehensive discussion and empirical evidence across countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use PAM for the assessment of liquidity holdings in IBs and the first to examine SOA of short-term liquidity holdings in the banking sector.

To establish these definitions we revisit expression (5.3) of Chapter 5. Since this expression describes a phenomenological model of knowledge transmission from its epistemic origin to the world-system by learning processes, therefore, we first summarize the arguments on what can be the nature of (Ω,S) in this expression. Our arguments were centered on the contrasting nature of moral absolutism and the ethical meaning so derived. This axiomatic core of the arguments stood up against moral relativism of both the rationalist and religious types on which is premised a different meaning of ethics.