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In recent times, the operating landscape of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) environment can be described as constantly changing. Their performance is more dependent on the managers' ability to implement effective control/management practices suitable for their context and operating environment. Through a multi-site case study, we examine the peculiarities of control/management practices in four SMEs in the city of Bukavu to ascertain whether and how those practices contribute to SMEs' performance. Our findings indicate the predominance of informal practices, which include coordination methods similar to the balanced scorecard, budgeting practices, cost imputation, cash monitoring and inventory management. Compared to the results from literature, these practices did not differ much from those observed in the SMEs of developed countries and are likely to contribute to performance achievement, which corroborates the proposition of the contingency theory.

In the past decades, Dutch public sector organizations (PSOs) have been encouraged to become more “business-like” in their internal control and accountability processes, following a more general trend toward New Public Management (NPM) in Western societies. However, in the Netherlands, this trend has met with increasing resistance and discontent among public sector professionals. In this chapter, a framework is developed that enables these public sector professionals themselves to discuss and reflect on their internal control and accountability processes, and possibly to effect changes in it.

The chapter contains a critical analysis of existing research on management control, accountability, and learning in PSOs and describes a reflection and discussion session with a group of senior staff employees at a Dutch university, employing the framework developed in this chapter.

It is argued that, generally speaking, the “business-like” approach of NPM does not appear appropriate for most public sector activities and may even negatively affect accountability and learning in PSOs.

The chapter critically assesses the impact of NPM on PSOs and provides an alternative to NPM in the form of experimentalist governance, with possible positive implications for the effectiveness of public sector activities.

This chapter is among the first to adapt a framework, developed for scientific and descriptive use, for more practical and prescriptive purposes, that is, as an instrument for public sector professionals to discuss and reflect on their internal control and accountability processes.

Existing theoretical explanations about the influence of affect in the process of creating ideas (ideation) and their corresponding empirical findings are contradictory. The purpose of the present chapter is to provide new insights by providing a theoretical explanation that is able to encompass these contradictions, and to support this theoretical approach with empirical data. We draw on personality-systems-interactions (PSI) and use an experimental design to capture dynamic effects between affect and ideation. Our findings emphasize the mediating role of affect in the ideation process and the moderating role of individual action-control in the regulation of affect and respective creative behavior.

The ROV ground control simulator (Fig. 1) used in this multi-sensory research consists of two workstations: pilot and SO. At the left workstation, the pilot controls ROV flight (via stick-and-throttle inputs as well as invoking auto-holds), manages subsystems, and handles external communications. From the right workstation, the SO is responsible for locating and identifying points of interest on the ground by controlling cameras mounted on the ROV. Each station has an upper and a head-level 17″ color CRT display, as well as two 10″ head-down color displays. The upper CRT of both stations displays a ‘God's Eye’ area map (fixed, north up) with overlaid symbology identifying current ROV location, flight waypoints, and current sensor footprint. The head-level CRT (i.e., “camera display”) displays simulated video imagery from cameras mounted on the ROV. Head-up display (HUD) symbology is overlaid on the pilot's camera display and sensor specific data are overlaid on the SO's camera display. The head-down displays present subsystem and communication information as well as command menus. The simulation is hosted on four dual-Pentium PCs. The control sticks are from Measurement Systems Inc. and the throttle assemblies were manufactured in-house.

Purpose: This study explores how computer video games can promote creative techniques. It specialises in innovative elements of special educational video games: Virtual Recreation Based Mastering (VRBM), behavioural analytics and defined research results to measure the creative energy of leisure activities on laptops. The involvement and inclusion of gaming in learning are being adopted globally and becoming true global citizens. The macro problems and awareness, such as sustainability, climate changes, etc., around it can be easily created through the advent of PC games.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Examining job incentives, true tales, and inventive skill-related elements allow for measuring creative aspects. The Player’s Statistics for Pride (PSFP) survey technique employs a heuristic checklist in the world of sports games to look at the areas of participating sports that are important to a participant’s overall performance and to assess the participant’s knowledge. Energy, freedom and control, connections and presence contribute to player happiness. This examination evaluates how these sports affect participants’ knowledge and the impact of the teacher’s information on student learning. The study aimed to enhance the understanding of the inventive capacity of persons engaged in developing knowledge and abilities while playing video games.

Findings: The findings demonstrate that a region’s capacity for innovation propels it to a certain degree of overall success in the leisurely game of service activity mastery. Results on how video games broaden crucial research as a foundation for the research version of creative skills are anticipated (CPLN). CPLN openly discusses the link between research concepts and innovation. The results’ interpretation is crucial.

If these tasks are broken down by aircrew position, the pilot (often called the operator) is the prime command and control coordinator, while the second crew member (the sensor operator) is responsible for collecting, processing and communicating sensor data. There is often an overlap of duties between these two crew members, but the operation of smaller UAVs is commonly only controlled by these two personnel. An illustration of the ground control shelter interface used by a typical Army UAV pilot (AVO, Air Vehicle Operator) for the US Army Shadow UAV follows (Fig. 1).

This chapter explores how the narrative-based walking simulator What Remains of Edith Finch ludifies traditions of Gothic fiction. Combining Gothic themes of death, the family and the family curse, the game involves the protagonist investigating her abandoned childhood home where every family member died a dramatic and untimely death. Sealed rooms, preserved since their inhabitants’ demise, contain shrine-like displays including a document of some form allowing players to experience the last moments of each Finch. Play involves penetrating these spaces, according to the ludo-Gothic emphasis on boundary crossing, piecing together interactive narrative fragments consistent with Gothic fiction’s patchwork storytelling. In accessing each lost manuscript, players engage in a generically specific process of multi-media trans-subjectivity, experiencing various first person perspectives and engaging with numerous gameplay interfaces. The title’s series of ambiguous unreliable narratives, its refusal of a consistent subjective position, and unreal dream-like sensation contribute to the game’s Gothic atmosphere. In a restriction of videogame agency and control, consistent with horror games, no player option is available other than to complete each pre-determined death. Gothic pastiche, a compulsion to repeat the past, and the embalming processes of photographic media are variously employed across these sequences. Play evokes the melancholy heroine, consumed by maternal loss, masochistically replaying her family’s sorrowful past, hunting for lost objects and exhuming the ghosts of her history. With its nested narrative, morbid preoccupation and ambivalent supernatural presence, the game effectively translates Gothic traditions into the videogame medium.

Purpose – This study is intended to extend scholarship on the management of organizations by examining the long-term performance of orphaned products.

Design/methodology/approach – This study uses the historical context of the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression to examine the long-run appeal (performance) of orphaned products – products from start-ups that fail soon after production. I use this setting to determine how factors within the purview of management, as well as the role of changing tastes, affect the appeal of music from short-lived start-ups founded in 1929 and 1933.

Findings/originality/value – I find that while the evolution of tastes has a substantial effect beyond the control of a firm's managers, a start-up's decision-makers were able to positively influence the long-run appeal of music when they (a) recorded tunes with new artists and (b) were able to create an early big hit with the tune. These results demonstrate how and why, even with cultural producers in one of the greatest economic disasters in U.S. history, managerial decisions were meaningful for product performance. Finally, I show that the effect of being a start-up on the long-run appeal of a tune is time-varying such that being a start-up in 1929 or 1933 does not harm a tune's appeal until after World War II. These final analyses point to further ways in which strategy, history, and sociology might combine to further scholarship on the management of organizations.

Does the adoption of the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) improve bank profitability? Does ERM also reduce bank risk? By analyzing a sample of banks located in European emerging markets between 2005 and 2013, the aim of this chapter is to empirically investigate the determinants of firm performance, both in terms of bank profitability and risk, with respect to the adoption of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). In order to capture the effect of the ERM program adoption on banks’ performance, we both use market-based measures as well as accounting-based indexes. Following the seminal literature on the topic (Aebi, Sabato, & Schmid, 2012; Eckles et al., 2014; Ellul & Yerramilly, 2013; Hoyt & Liebenberg, 2003, 2011; Lin, Wen, & Yu, 2012; Pagach & Warr, 2010), we adopt a binary proxy variable, that is, the appointment of a Chief Risk Officer (CRO), to define whether the firm is currently undertaking an ERM program. Our results show that a post-ERM firm experiences an increase in the risk-adjusted profits and a reduction of the overall risk.