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The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that will demonstrate how the integration of Salam (exclusive agricultural commodity trade) with Takaful (micro-Takaful – a subdivision of Islamic insurance) and value chain can address major challenges facing the agricultural sector in Kano State, Nigeria.

The study conducted a thorough and critical analysis of relevant literature and existing models of financing agriculture in Nigeria to come up with the proposed model.

The findings indicate that measures undertaken to address the major challenges fail. In view of this, this study proposed Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain model to solve a number of challenges such as poor access to financing, poor marketing and pricing, delay, collateral requirement and risk issues in order to avail farmers with easy access to finance and provide effective security to financial institutions.

The paper is limited to using secondary data. Therefore, empirical investigation can be carried out to strengthen the validation of the model.

The study outcome seeks to improve the productivity of the farmers through enhancing their access to finance. This will increase their level of production and provide more employment opportunities. In addition, it will boost financial inclusion, income generation, poverty alleviation, standard of living, food security and overall economic growth and development.

The novelty of this study lies in the integration of classical Bay-Salam with Takaful and value chain and create a unique model structure which the researchers do not come across in any research that presented it in Nigeria.

A procedure is discussed wherein an infra‐red detector is used for controlling the quality of solder joints being formed by laser‐beam heating on printed circuit boards while, at the same time, automatically inspecting the quality of each joint. The joint‐by‐joint soldering method avoids the thermally induced stresses between the components and the printed circuit board which can occur when the entire board is mass soldered by conventional means. It also eliminates the ‘after the fact’ human inspection process, while at the same time making available real‐time data for process control of the soldering operation.

A FACTOR that is becoming of increasing importance in the economic operation of airline services, and has long been recognized as a necessity in the military field, is the reduction of aircraft ‘turn‐round’ times to the minimum. Many examples may be quoted to illustrate the degree to which engineering ingenuity has been applied to this problem, for example in the use of airstairs to facilitate the rapid transfer of passengers and freight, pressure refuellers that can dispense fuel at the rate of 1000 galls./min., and the design of the aircraft to facilitate rapid servicing of the various systems. At the same time the advent of the high speed aircraft has introduced the penalty of high wing loadings and consequent high landing speeds, which in turn have resulted in the extension of runways and a continual search for ways of reducing the ground run of aircraft. The most common methods of braking aircraft during this ground run are by use of wheel brakes, reverse thrust and parachutes, or a combination. The evolution of the non‐skid brake has improved the performance of conventional wheel brakes but with the steady increase in aircraft weights and landing speeds the difficulty of dissipating the heat evolved presents the brake designer with another difficult problem.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.

Since the publication of the report “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” by the US Institute of Medicine in 2000, much has changed with regard to patient safety. Many of the more recent initiatives to improve patient safety target the behavior of health care staff (e.g., training, double-checking procedures, and standard operating procedures). System-based interventions have so far received less attention, even though they produce more substantial improvements, being less dependent on individuals’ behavior. One type of system-based intervention that can benefit patient safety involves improvements to hospital design. Given that people’s working environments affect their behavior, good design at a systemic level not only enables staff to work more efficiently; it can also prevent errors and mishaps, which can have serious consequences for patients. While an increasing number of studies have demonstrated the effect of hospital design on patient safety, this knowledge is not easily accessible to clinicians, practitioners, risk managers, and other decision-makers, such as designers and architects of health care facilities. This is why the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation launched its project, “More Patient Safety by Design: Systemic Approaches for Hospitals,” which is presented in this chapter.

The impact of executive characteristics on firm internationalization has already been extensively explored. However, relatively few studies have examined the critical role of chief executive officer (CEO) personality attributes, and especially CEO openness, in firm internationalization. This research aims to deepen the understanding of firm internationalization, by exploring whether and when CEO openness influences firm internationalization.

A sample of private high-tech listed firms in China is used, with data from 2004 to 2020.

Based on upper echelons theory, this study theorizes and finds that CEO openness will positively influence firm internationalization. Further, based on the behavioral theory of the firm, this study finds that the performance aspiration gap weakens the positive effect of CEO openness on firm internationalization, but also finds that the potential slack strengthens this effect.

First, the study reinterprets firm internationalization strategies from the perspective of CEO openness, a personality attribute; CEO openness is an important but so far rarely discussed topic in the field of international business. Second, for the first time, problemistic search and slack search into a research framework are introduced to explore the relationship between CEO characteristics and firm internationalization. This approach can further define the boundary conditions under which CEOs can project their values, preferences and personalities into the process of formulating and implementing a firm's internationalization strategy.

This paper aims to evaluate the use of community visioning in Montgomery, Alabama and Chattanooga, Tennessee, as each municipality seeks to become a globally competitive 21st century smart city while also fostering participatory and inclusive planning processes.

This research is qualitative, drawing upon discourse analysis of relevant mass media and public documents to map the consultation process and identify the key themes and challenges arising in the two visioning projects.

Montgomery and Chattanooga are committed to using participatory visioning to generate inclusive pathways to smart city status by 2040. Each used the local utility company as the key platform to enable a smart city because of each company’s inclusive demographic reach and historical status. The two cities are at different stages of the smart city trajectory and each faces ongoing challenges in ensuring that the benefits of smart city development reach beyond elites to include communities across racial and economic lines. To date, the planning process in each city is more accurately classified as a responsive community visioning rather than participatory.

This is a pilot assessment of community visioning in Montgomery and Chattanooga. Implementation of each vision is ongoing and further research is needed to illuminate how each city meets ongoing challenges and opportunities, particularly in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and its flow-on economic and social shocks.

The value of this work lies in the comparison of community visioning across two mid-sized and diverse American cities in the Southern region that must compete with larger and more established technology-hubs in both the USA and globally for investment, amenities and human capital.

THE work described in this paper is part of a programme concerned with the plastic, creep, and relaxation properties of metals under complex stress systems at elevated temperatures.which is being carried out in the Engineering Division of the N.P.L. It comprises data on the criterion of departure from elastic behaviour, of a low carbon steel over the temperature range 20–550 deg. C, and of an aluminium alloy over the temperature range 20–200 deg. C, and the creep properties under complex stress systems of the low carbon steel at 350 deg. C, and of the aluminium alloy at 150 and 200 deg. C.