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This paper investigates the endogenous relationships between banking performance and social welfare in Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries.

A comprehensive three-stage multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach based on alternative informational assumptions is applied.

Results indicate that banking performance is paradoxically associated with stagnant economic activity and higher wealth concentration for the minority. The authors found that SADC banking performance promotes higher Human Development Index (HDI) standards possibly via efficient financial intermediation, dissemination of best managerial practices and other forms of positive spillovers in these countries.

This paper contributes to the MCDM literature by simultaneously exploring the key concepts of “utility functions” (using COPRAS) and “distance to ideal solutions” (using TOPSIS) in mapping and explaining the feedback and cause-effect processes between banking performance and social welfare that may exist. Another distinctive aspect is related to the computation of bias-free criteria weights, using a robust SWARA order-rank based on information entropy. Finally, this paper is concerning the endogeneity measurement, using a novel stochastic structural relationship non-linear programme.

Science of systems requires a specific and constructive mathematical model and language, which describe jointly such systemic categories as adaptation, self‐organization, complexity, evolution, and bring the applied tools for building a system model for each specific object of a diverse nature. This formalism should be connected directly with a world of information and computer applications of systemic model, developed for a particular object. The considered information systems theory (IST) is aimed at building a bridge between the mathematical systemic formalism and information technologies to develop a constructive systemic model of revealing information regularities and specific information code for each object.

To fulfill this goal and the considered systems' definition, the IST joins two main concepts: unified information description of interacted flows, initiated by the sources of different nature, with common information language and systems modeling methodology, applied to distinct interdisciplinary objects; general system's information formalism for building the model, which allows expressing mathematically the system's regularities and main systemic mechanisms.

The formalism of informational macrodynamics (IMD), based of the minimax variational principle, reveals the system model's main layers: microlevel stochastics, macrolevel dynamics, hierarchical dynamic network (IN) of information structures, its minimal logic, and optimal code of communication language, generated by the IN hierarchy, dynamics, and geometry. The system's complex dynamics originate information geometry and evolution with the functional information mechanisms of ordering, cooperation, mutation, stability, diversity, adaptation, self‐organization, and the double helix's genetic code.

The developed IMD's theoretical computer‐based methodology and the software has been applied to such areas as technology, communications, computer science, intelligent processes, biology, economy, management, and other nonphysical and physical subjects.

The IMD's macrodynamics of uncertainties connect randomness and regularities, stochastic and determinism, reversibility and irreversibility, symmetry and asymmetry, stability and instability, structurization and stochastization, order and disorder, as a result of micro‐macrolevel's interactions for an open system, when the external environment can change the model's structure.

This study analyzes whether power in the supply chain, based on governance modes and network centrality, explain financial performance at different levels of analysis: buyers, suppliers and dyads.

The study employs a dual macro-micro lens based on global value chain (i.e. market, modular, relational and captive governance modes) and social network analysis (network centrality) to assess the impact of power (im)balance onto financial performance. Different from previous research, this study adopts information reliability techniques – such as information entropy – to differentiate the weights of distinct financial performance metrics in terms of the maximal entropy principle. This principle states that the probability distribution that best represents the current state of knowledge given prior data is the one with largest entropy. These weights are used in TOPSIS analysis.

Results offer insightful reflections to SCM research. We show that buyers outperform suppliers due to power asymmetry. We ground our findings both analyzing across governance modes and comparing network centrality. We show that market and modular governances (where power balance prevails) outperform relational and captive modes at the dyadic level – thus inferring that in the long run these governance modes may lead to financially healthier supply chains.

This study advances SCM research by exploring the impact of governance modes and network centrality on performance at both firm and dyadic levels while employing an innovative combination of secondary data and robust set of techniques including TOPSIS, WASPAS and information entropy.

Although in principle prior information can significantly improve inference, incorporating incorrect prior information will bias the estimates of any inferential analysis. This fact deters many scientists from incorporating prior information into their inferential analyses. In the natural sciences, where experiments are more regularly conducted, and can be combined with other relevant information, prior information is often used in inferential analysis, despite it being sometimes nontrivial to specify what that information is and how to quantify that information. In the social sciences, however, prior information is often hard to come by and very hard to justify or validate. We review a number of ways to construct such information. This information emerges naturally, either from fundamental properties and characteristics of the systems studied or from logical reasoning about the problems being analyzed. Borrowing from concepts and philosophical reasoning used in the natural sciences, and within an info-metrics framework, we discuss three different, yet complimentary, approaches for constructing prior information, with an application to the social sciences.

Once introduced and conceptualized as a factor that causes erosion and decay of social institutions and subsequent deinstitutionalization, the notion of entropy is at odds with predictions of institutional isomorphism and seems to directly contradict the tendency toward ever-increasing institutionalization. The purpose of this paper is to offer a resolution of this theoretical inconsistency by revisiting the meaning of entropy and reconceptualizing institutionalization from an information-theoretic point of view.

It is a theoretical paper that offers an information perspective on institutionalization.

A mistaken understanding of the nature and role of entropy in the institutional theory is caused by conceptualizing it as a force that counteracts institutional tendencies and acts in opposite direction. Once institutionalization and homogeneity are seen as a product of natural tendencies in the organizational field, the role of entropy becomes clear. Entropy manifests itself at the level of information processing and corresponds with increasing uncertainty and the decrease of the value of information. Institutionalization thus can be seen as a special case of an increase in entropy and a decrease of knowledge. Institutionalization is a state of maximum entropy.

It is explained why institutionalization and institutional persistence are what to be expected in the long run and why information entropy contributes to this tendency. Contrary to the tenets of the institutional work perspective, no intentional efforts of individuals and collective actors are needed to maintain institutions. In this respect, the paper contributes to the view of institutional theory as a theory of self-organization.

This study aims to analyze entropy generation and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) natural convection of hybrid nanofluid in a square cavity, with a heated elliptical block placed at the center, in presence of a periodic-variable magnetic field.

In this paper, simulations were performed with a FORTRAN home code. The numerical methodology used to solve Navier–Stokes, energy and entropy generation equations with corresponding boundary conditions, is essentially based on the finite volume method and full multigrid acceleration.

The cavity is filled with Ag–Tio₂/Water hybrid nanofluid. The main objective of this investigation is to predict the effects of body’s size (6 cases), type of applied magnetic field (variable or uniform), the non-dimensional period number of the variable magnetic field (VMF) (0.2 ≤ Λ ≤ 0.8), the inclination angle of the VMF (0 ≤ χ ≤ 90), Rayleigh number (5 × 103 ≤ Ra ≥ 105) and Hartmann number (5 ≤ Ha ≥ 100) on thermal performance, heat transfer rate, entropy generation and flow patterns.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this paper is the first numerical investigation deals with the entropy generation and natural convection of hybrid nanofluid in a two-dimensional cavity, with specific thermal boundary conditions, containing an elliptical block under periodic-variable magnetic field. Different combinations between flow-governing parameters were made to find optimal thermal performance.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a grey target decision model based on cobweb area in order to overcome the effect and influence from the extreme value of the index on the decision result. However, it does not take into account the impact of the correlation between indicators on the angle of the index, and produce a certain degree decision information distortion as a result of the equal angle between the indicators. In order to solve the above problems, a novel grey decision-making model based on cone volume is proposed.

In this paper, the model uses the whitening weight function to whiten the interval grey number, and the Delphi method and the maximal entropy method are exploited to integrate the weight of the index. On the basis of this, the center of the bull’s eye, the weight and the index value are constructed as the center circle, the radius, and the high cone, respectively. The scheme is selected by the volume of the cone, the decision is made according to the order relation, and the example is utilized to prove and analyze the validity of the proposed model.

The results show that the proposed model can well improve the traditional grey target decision-making model from the modeling object and modeling method.

The method exposed in the paper can be used to deal with the grey target decision-making problems which characteristics are multi-indexes, and the attribute values are interval grey numbers.

The paper succeeds in overcoming the disadvantages of grey target decision making based on the target center distance and the cobweb area.

Vytvorology, which is an exact science of human processes, offers new, acute and reliable research possibilities in this field of human and social processes. Describes briefly how the difficulties, that have made the creation of a modern theory of society and civilization impossible for decades, are now overcome. Furthermore, the paper characterizes the fundamental elements of this new analysis method applied to the human individual and to the social examination of processes; it also presents some important results for the practice of politics. Hence, it gives a vision of human and social processes that is a coherent whole with the description of the material Universe made by physics. This method permits not only the development of the general civilization theory and the analysis of the material aspect of our life, but also the spiritual aspect of human beings, setting a very thorough and coherent image of human presence on Earth in unity with the Universe.

The purpose of this paper is to present a numerical analysis of the flow and heat transfer in a tube with a wire coil insert. A second law analysis of the results is accounted for, in order to assess the local and overall entropy generation in relation with the increased pressure drop and convective heat transfer. A wire coil with p/D=1.25 and e/D=0.076 is selected as insert device. A Reynolds number range between 100 and 1,000 is investigated, which corresponds to the typical operating regimes in the risers of liquid solar collectors. Different wall heat fluxes and inclination angles allow to analyze the potential impact of mixed convection in the presence of tube inserts.

Three-dimensional numerical simulations are performed using a finite-volume solver, assuming laminar flow conditions. Pure water and a mixture of water and propylene-glycol (20 percent) are used as working fluids, with temperature-dependent properties. Fanning friction factor, Nusselt number and local entropy generation results are obtained in the fully developed region.

The friction factor results are successfully compared with a well-known experimental correlation for wire coil inserts. The earlier onset of transition is devised at Re > 300. Nusselt number augmentations between 2.5- and 6-fold are reported with respect to the smooth tube. The mixed convection regime encountered in the smooth tube for the operating conditions investigated is canceled in the wire coiled tube, owing to the opposed effect of the swirl flow induced and the bouyancy forces. Frictional, heat transfer and overall entropy generation rates are computed locally in the fully developed region, allowing to relate these results with the flow structures in the mixed convection smooth tube and in the wire coiled tube. A threefold decrease in the entropy generation rate is reported for tubes with wire coil inserts.

An holistic understanding of the heat transfer enhancement in tubes with wire coil inserts is provided through the analysis of the flow pattern, Fanning friction factor, Nusselt number and local entropy generation rates. The reduced entropy generation in the enhanced tube serves as a performance criteria to confirm the positive effect of wire coil inserts in heat transfer for the operating regime under investigation, in spite of the increased pressure drop.