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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of different heating approaches during thermal rounding of polymer powders on powder bulk properties such as particle size, shape and flowability, as well as on the yield of process.

This study focuses on the rounding of commercial high-density polyethylene polymer particles in two different downer reactor designs using heated walls (indirect heating) and preheated carrier gas (direct heating). Powder bulk properties of the product obtained from both designs are characterized and compared.

Particle rounding with direct heating leads to a considerable increase in process yield and a reduction in powder agglomeration compared to the design with indirect heating. This subsequently leads to higher powder flowability. In terms of shape, indirect heating yields not only particles with higher sphericity but also entails substantial agglomeration of the rounded particles.

Shape modification via thermal rounding is the decisive step for the success of a top-down process chain for selective laser sintering powders with excellent flowability, starting with polymer particles from comminution. This report provides new information on the influence of the heating mode (direct/indirect) on the performance of the rounding process and particle properties.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the processability of cohesive PE-HD particles in laser beam melting processes (LBM) of polymers. Furthermore, we present a characterization method for polymer particles, which can predict the quality of the powder deposition via LBM processes.

This study focuses on the application of dry particle coating processes to increase flowability and bulk density of PE-HD particles. Both has been measured and afterwards validated via powder deposition of PE-HD particles in a LBM machine.

For efficient coating in a dry particle coating process, the PE-HD particles and the attached nanoparticles need to show similar surface chemistry, i.e. both need to behave either hydrophobic or hydrophilic. It is demonstrated that dry particle coating is appropriate to enhance flowability and bulk density of PE-HD particles and hence considerably improves LBM processes and the resulting product quality.

At present, in LBM processes mainly polyamide (PA), 12 particles are used, which are so far quite expensive in comparison to, for example, PE-HD particles. This work provides a unique and versatile method for nanoparticulate surface modification which may be applied to a wide variety of materials. After the coating, the particles are applicable for the LBM process. Our results provide a correlation between flowability and bulk density and the resulting product quality.

Due to the many changes that have occurred over the last two decades, especially in connection with the ‘new managerialism’, academia is a complex working environment. Multiple skills are demanded from professors, such as acting as entrepreneurs and mentors with designated leadership competences. This paper investigates the leadership role of academic group leaders in the context of higher education in Germany. It is argued that a servant leadership approach can enable professors to provide effective academic leadership in the current university context. This is due to its strong human orientation and low power distance and its focus on facilitating academic excellence, creativity and innovation. The discussion notes the importance of developing academic group leaders and describes some practical means of implementing servant leadership in higher education.

To advance the learning of professional practices in teacher education and medical education, this conceptual paper aims to introduce the idea of representational scaffolding for digital simulations in higher education.

This study outlines the ideas of core practices in two important fields of higher education, namely, teacher and medical education. To facilitate future professionals’ learning of relevant practices, using digital simulations for the approximation of practice offers multiple options for selecting and adjusting representations of practice situations. Adjusting the demands of the learning task in simulations by selecting and modifying representations of practice to match relevant learner characteristics can be characterized as representational scaffolding. Building on research on problem-solving and scientific reasoning, this article identifies leverage points for employing representational scaffolding.

The four suggested sets of representational scaffolds that target relevant features of practice situations in simulations are: informational complexity, typicality, required agency and situation dynamics. Representational scaffolds might be implemented in a strategy for approximating practice that involves the media design, sequencing and adaptation of representational scaffolding.

The outlined conceptualization of representational scaffolding can systematize the design and adaptation of digital simulations in higher education and might contribute to the advancement of future professionals’ learning to further engage in professional practices. This conceptual paper offers a necessary foundation and terminology for approaching related future research.

This empirical research conceptualises the impact of celebrity effectiveness on consumer purchase intention, with customer perception and attitude as mediators. A cross-cultural approach is adopted to analyse consumer response to celebrity branding across Britain and Pakistan containing non-explicit and explicit sex appeals.

A within-subject experimental design (2 countries × 2 ad designs) is employed to test the research model across Western and South Asian cultures. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and multi-group analysis (MGA) are used to test proposed hypotheses.

SEM results confirm the theoretical model: perception and attitude towards the advert and brand mediate the impact of celebrity effectiveness on purchase intention. Celebrity-endorsed advertising without explicit sex appeals elicited an overall favourable response across markets. British consumers respond to both adverts similarly. Yet, Pakistani consumers filter advert themes through salient cultural values and respond negatively to explicit sex appeals whilst, interestingly, accepting sexuality in associations of a celebrity endorser.

International celebrities can have cross-cultural appeal, and commonalities exist between the markets. A global or domestic marketing strategy can be utilised across the cultures based upon the environmental conditions and the themes and appeals incorporated within advert design.

The conceptual model is developed by consolidating existing models within celebrity endorsement and considering the mediating influence of both the advert and brand. The model is validated across theoretically different cultures. The comparative approach and selection of an underrepresented market provide novel insight into international branding strategies and global consumer culture.

Achieving excellence is a current preoccupation in UK public health organisations. This article aims to use a case study to explain how a mental health trust delivers excellent performance using a balanced scorecard (BSC) management approach.

Reports a project to implement a BSC approach in the South West Yorkshire Mental Health NHS Trust to achieve its “excellence” objectives. The authors were participants in the project. The design of the pilot project was informed theoretically by the work of Kaplan and Norton and practically by in‐house discussions on a strategy to achieve excellence.

Explains the process of building a BSC strategy step‐by‐step. Discusses how the vision and strategies of a mental health trust can be translated into tangible measures, which are the basis for actions that are driven strategically.

There are many possibilities for a BSC management approach and this case study is specific to mental health trusts in the UK, although it is believed that the case has a universally applicable modus operandi.

This article will help healthcare managers to evaluate the benefits of a BSC management approach.

This article explains how actions can be structured in connection with a BSC management approach.

As a consequence of the global financial and economic crisis, the European Commission recently reformed the audit market. One objective was to restore public trust in the auditing profession and thus to enhance the audit function. This study investigates whether perceptions of auditor independence and audit quality are influenced by audit firm rotation, auditor retention and joint audits, because regulators argue that these instruments can improve auditor independence and audit quality. Therefore, we conduct an experiment with bank directors and institutional investors in Germany. The results indicate a negative main effect for joint audits on perceived auditor independence, and that a rotation cycle of 24 years marginally significantly impairs participant perceptions of audit quality, compared to a rotation cycle of only ten years. Besides the main effects, planned contrast tests suggest a negative interaction between rotation and joint audit on participant perceptions of auditor independence. Moreover, a negative interaction effect is revealed between rotation after 24 years and retention on perceptions of audit quality. It is particularly noteworthy that we failed to identify a positive impact of the regulatory measures taken or supported by the European Commission on perceptions of auditor independence and audit quality.

Sustainability investors are in need of updated standards, indexes and in general better tools and instruments to facilitate company information on its impacts on people, planet and profit. Such instruments to reveal reliable, independent metrics and indicators to evaluate companies’ performances on sustainability exist, however, in research fields that previously have not been used extensively, for instance, life cycle assessments (LCAs). ISO 14001:2015 has implemented life cycle perspective, however, without being explicitly clear on which methodology is preferred. This paper aims to investigate LCA as to improve companies’ transparency towards sustainability investors through a literature review on sustainable investment evaluation.

The literature review is conducted through the search engine Google Scholar, which to date hosts the most comprehensive academic database across other databases such as Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge, Science Direct, etc. Search words such as “Sustainable finance”, “Sustainable Investments”, “Performance metrics”, “Life cycle assessment”, “LCA”, “Environmental Management Systems”, “EMS” and “Environmental Profit and Loss Account” were used. Special journals that publish research on LCA such as International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Journal of Cleaner Production and Journal of Industrial Ecology were also investigated in-depth.

The combination of using LCA in, for instance, environmental profit and loss accounts studied in this paper shows a comprehensive and reliable tool for sustainability investors, as well as for social responsibility standards such as ISO 14001, ISO 26000, UN Global Compact, GIIN, IRIS and GRI to incorporate. With a LCA-based hybrid input-output account, both upstream and downstream’s impact on the environment and society can be assessed by companies to attract more funding from sustainability investors such as shareholders, governments and intergovernmental bodies.

The literature review is based on publicly disclosed academic papers as well as five displayed company Environmental Profit and Loss accounts from the Kering Group, PUMA, Stella McCartney company, Novo Nordisk and Arla Group. Other company experiences with integration of LCA as a reporting tool have not been found, yet it is not to conclude that these five companies are the only ones to work extensively with LCA.

The paper may contribute to the clarification of LCA-thinking and perspective implementation in both ISO 14001 and ISO 26000, as well as in other social responsibility standards such as the UN Global Compact, the Global Impact Investing Networks, IRIS performance metrics, the Global Reporting Initiative and others.

The paper is one of the first that evaluates LCA and environmental profit and loss accounts for sustainability investors, as well as for consideration of implementation in social responsibility standards such as the ISO 14001 and ISO 26000, as well as in other social responsibility standards such as the UN Global Compact, the Global Impact Investing Networks, IRIS performance metrics and the Global Reporting Initiative.

Recent reforms to higher education systems in many OECD countries have focused on making universities more effective organisations in competing for resources and reputations. This has often involved increasing their internal cohesion and external autonomy from the state to make them more similar to private companies. However, pre-reform universities differed so greatly in their governance and capabilities that the impact of institutional changes has varied considerably between three ideal types: Hollow, State-chartered, and Autarkic. Furthermore, the combination of: (a) the inherent uncertainty of scientific research undertaken for publication, (b) limited managerial control over work processes and reputations, and (c) the contradictory effects of some funding and governance changes has greatly restricted the ability of universities to function as authoritatively integrated organisations capable of developing distinctive competitive competences.

‘Acceleration’, that is, the performance of activities in ever-shorter periods of time, is a distinctive feature of contemporary organizations and societies that is reflected in, and driven by startups’ attempts to scale up their businesses in ever-faster ways. Although prior research has highlighted that temporary organizing is a key way to accelerate the startup process, little is known about how actors do so. Based on a one-year ethnographic study at a startup accelerator, the authors explore how actors enact temporary organizing to attempt to accelerate the startup process. Their analysis shows that this process involves a plurality of partly conflicting temporal structures. As their study shows, such conflicts invoke tensions that actors live out in their daily activities. The authors identify three temporal practices – sequencing, freezing, and merging – through which actors engaged in temporary organizing enact acceleration in the startup process by reconciling these temporal structures. Their study has implications for understanding time in the expanding literature on temporary organizing and acceleration.