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The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the effect of mobbing in workers’ health.

Using a dataset of Spanish workers from the VI Spanish Survey on Working Conditions, the authors identify mobbed and not mobbed workers and use two different health indicators: the worker's perception that work affects health, and the presence of bad health symptoms. The authors analyze the incidence of both indicators in mobbed and not mobbed workers then estimate an econometric model to explain the probability of suffering bad health in terms of mobbing and a set of job and workers’ characteristics. The authors deal with the potential endogeneity of mobbing.

It is found that, regardless of the health indicator used, the probability of suffering bad health is significantly higher among mobbed workers than among those not being mobbed. Moreover, when the health indicator is based on the worker's perception, not taking into account the endogeneity of mobbing leads to underestimation of its effect on health.

The results can be of interest for workers, firms and policy makers in charge of designing policies related to working conditions. Given the well‐known link between worker's health and productivity, the paper's results can have implications from the economic point of view.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to empirically analyze the relationship between mobbing and health at Spanish workplaces.

What are the conditions that influence the decision of a patentee to start a new venture? Does the possession of a patent make the individual more likely to engage in the entrepreneurial process? Does the possibility of a provisional monopoly limit the danger and the uncertainty in the decision‐making for commercial exploitation of an idea? Literature has given some light on the decision of individual patentees to establish a new venture but either these studies examine a specific group of patentees or cover national patentees’ population without distinguishing between individual and firm patentees. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to literature which aims at the detection of factors affecting the decision of individual patentees to start a new business using data from a national survey on the population of individual patentees in a less technologically developed country.

This paper uses the responses of 434 individuals‐inventors, residents of Greece, from a broader survey conducted by the Greek Organization for Industrial Property in March 2007. Applying the collected data into a logit model, the paper addresses the questions raised in the literature about the source of knowledge, opportunities perception, and the past business experience on the decision of a patentee to start a new business venture.

The findings of the paper show that financial restraints strongly affect the decision of a patentee to start‐up a new venture. The collaboration with a higher education and research institution does not lead to an invention‐patent with technological opportunity content and this reflects the particularities of Greek academia while the opposite is the perception for the knowledge coming from market (incumbent firms). Finally, the new entrepreneur is more likely to decide to start a new venture in order to exploit commercially its patent rather than the patentee with past entrepreneurial experience. This finding contradicts the previous findings for the US and the authors believe that it may be a consequence of the Greek commercial and financial law and national culture idiosyncrasies.

The originality of the paper is due to the fact that for first time data from a survey of the patentees population is used. In addition, this is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, study for a less technologically advanced country. The findings of this paper have significant policy implications since it provides useful inputs for the design of the entrepreneurship policy.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce this special issue on work organization, performance and health.

The authors provide a general review of the literature and describe the main findings of the papers appearing in this special issue.

This issue provides new evidence regarding the impact of work organization (essentially defined in terms of payment methods, teamwork, workforce age structure and labour contracts) on performance (measured through employment, productivity and sickness absenteeism indicators). It also sheds more light on the determinants of workers’ health by gender, with particular attention to working conditions and mobbing.

The papers collected in this special issue provide some fine examples of recent work at the crossroads of health and personnel economics.

Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.

Reconfigurable vibrating screen (RVS) is an innovative beneficiation machine designed at Tshwane University of Technology, Republic of South Africa (RSA); with adjustable screen structure to ensure sorting, sizing and screening of varying mineral particles (sizes and quantities) demanded by the customers in a cost-effective manner through the screen structure geometric transformation. In order to ensure that this machine is optimally maintained and managed when utilized in surface and underground mining industries, there is a need to establish or ascertain the best maintenance practices that would be used in optimally managing the RVS machine using decision making techniques. In view of this, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain the best maintenance practices that would be used to optimally maintain and manage the RVS machine when used in surface and underground mines.

Decision making techniques such as weighted decision matrix (WDM) and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) were used in this research work to establish the best maintenance practice for optimally maintaining and managing the RVS machine using relevant literature survey on maintenance management systems as well as the different maintenance criteria decision indices obtained from different conventional vibrating screen machine manufacturers and maintenance experts.

Based on the results obtained from the WDM analysis, it was anticipated that e-maintenance (e-M) system embedded with diagnosing and prognosing algorithms; with a cumulative weight score of 2.37 is the best maintenance practice for managing the RVS machine when used in surface mines, while AHP with deeper decision making analysis anticipated that the robotic-driven maintenance (RM) system with an important decision criteria; safety, and a cumulative hierarchy score of 28.6 percent, supported by e-M management system with a cumulative hierarchy score of 17.6 percent are the best maintenance mix that could be used in optimally maintaining and managing the RVS machine, when used in a craggy and hazardous underground mining environment.

To this effect, it could be anticipated that e-M management system (endowed with the ability to detect fault on the machine, diagnose and prognose the different subsystems of the RVS machine and ascertain the reconfiguration time and process of the RVS machine in recovering production loss during the maintenance of the machine as well as meeting customers demand, etc.) is the best maintenance practice for optimally maintaining the RVS machine when utilized in surface mines while both e-M management system and RM management system (endowed with the ability to carry out automated maintenance tasks achievement under little or no maintenance manager intervention) are also anticipated as the best customized maintenance practices mix that could be used in optimally maintaining the RVS machine, when used in dangerous and hazardous underground mining environment.

This maintenance management system evaluation and selection for optimal RVS machine functionality will serve as a useful information to different mining machines (and other related machines) maintenance managers, in selecting the best maintenance management system for ensuring optimal functionality, reliability and maintainability of machines used in their industries.

Technological advancements are reshaping the manufacturing industry toward digitalized manufacturing. Despite the importance of top-class maintenance in such systems, many industrial companies lack a clear strategy for maintenance in digitalized manufacturing. The purpose of this paper is to facilitate the implementation of maintenance in digitalized manufacturing by proposing a strategy development process for the Smart Maintenance concept.

This study is designed as a multiple-case study, where the strategy development in three industrial cases is analyzed. Several methods were used to collect data on the case companies' development of smart maintenance strategies. The data were analyzed with an inductive approach.

A process of strategy development for smart maintenance is proposed, including six steps: benchmarking, setting clear goals, setting strategic priority, planning key activities, elevating implementation and follow-up.

The proposed process provides industry practitioners with a step-by-step guide for the development of a clear smart maintenance strategy, based on the current state of their maintenance organization. This creates employee engagement and is a new way of developing maintenance strategies.

Maintenance strategies are traditionally regarded as a selection of corrective/reactive and preventive maintenance actions using a top-down approach. By contrast, the proposed process is starting from the current state of the maintenance organization and allows a mixture of top-down and bottom-up approaches, supporting organizational development. This is a rare perspective of maintenance strategies and will make maintenance organizations ready for the demands of digitalized manufacturing.

Sexual orientation and employment bias is examined in Cyprus by implementing an experiment for the period 2010-2011. The design is aimed at answering three main questions. Do gay males and lesbians face occupational access constraints and entry wage bias than comparable heterosexuals? Do gay males and lesbians benefit from providing more job-related information? Does the differential treatment between gay male/lesbian and heterosexual applicants disappear as the information of the applicants increases? The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The author sent applications to advertised vacancies and experimented with two information sets the “sexual orientation” and “information” of the potential applicants.

The estimations suggest that gay male and lesbian applicants face significant bias than heterosexual applicants. Moreover, both heterosexual and gay male/lesbian applicants gain by providing more job-related information. However, the estimations suggest that the informational premium for sexual orientation minorities could not reduce the discriminatory patterns.

The current results indicate that discrimination against sexual orientation minorities in the Cypriot labour market is a matter of preference, not the result of limited information. One strategy the Cypriot government may employ is to try to affect public opinion and people's attitudes towards sexual orientation minorities.

This is the first nationwide field experiment in the Cypriot labour market and contributes to the literature as it is the first field study on sexual orientation which tries to disentangle statistical from taste-based discrimination in the labour market.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of political instability on rural credit in Lima between 1835 and 1865. In particular, it explores the effects of wars on interest rates for the agricultural sector.

The paper relies on primary sources for the study of the early credit market of Lima. In particular, the study relies on a sample of more than 800 notarized loans for 1835–1865, collected from the National Archives of Peru, to determine the effect of wars on the cost of credit.

The evidence shows that wars increased interest rates on rural loans and that the impact of wars on the cost of credit was greater when the State lacked fiscal resources. Political instability made funding more costly for landlords and farmers, especially in the late 1830s and early 1840s.

This paper is one of the few historical studies on the role of wars on rural credit in Latin America. It contributes to our understanding of the linkages between political instability and financial development.