Search results

In the industry, there is always a demand to shorten the task completion durations to maximize the efficiency of the operation. This work focuses on making use of a special type of kinematic redundancy, macro–micro manipulation, to minimize the task completion duration. The purpose of this paper is to develop the most convenient trajectory planner to be integrated with industrial computerized numerical control (CNC) systems to resolve kinematic redundancy for task duration minimization.

A special type of kinematic redundancy is devised by using two kinematically different mechanisms that have different advantages, which are named as macro and micro mechanisms. In this case, the control design including the trajectory planning should be devised taking into account the distinct advantages of both mechanisms. A new trajectory planning algorithm is designed and used for the constructed planar laser-cutting machine, and some benchmark pieces are cut.

Offline method has practical limitations for employment in a real case scenario such as assuming infinite jerk limits for each axis motion. This limitation was removed by using an online trajectory generation technique. Experimental test results indicate that the online trajectory planning technique developed for the macro–micro mechanism to shorten the task duration was successful.

Although the new trajectory planning algorithm is implemented for a laser-cutting machine, it can also be used for other manufacturing systems that require higher acceleration and accuracy levels than the conventional machines. The new algorithm is compatible with the commercially available CNC systems.

In this work, a new approach to reducing the task duration for planar machining operations was introduced by making use of macro–micro manipulation concept. The core novelty of the work is devising trajectory planning algorithms to get the most efficiency in terms of acceleration limits from a macro–micro manipulation while making these algorithms deployable to most of the CNC systems.

Entrepreneurial opportunity (EO) identification pertains to the core processes of entrepreneurship and innovation. The initial phase of this process starts with individual cognition, which is why cognition has been established as a critical theoretical perspective.

Knowledge and new information have been confirmed as essential cognitive impact factors. However, it is not understood well, how individuals apply those factors and how they actually identify innovative and economically viable EOs. To address the limitations of current research, this chapter investigates the current literature on underlying cognitive processes of opportunity identification.

The literature analysis demonstrates that there is not a single cognitive process but rather a magnitude of different micro-mechanisms that are necessary for the successful identification of EOs. The findings are grouped to four categories of cognitive processes and entail their micro-mechanisms: pattern recognition, information processing, and creative thinking. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that those micro-mechanisms have seldom been related to each other within the scope of opportunity identification. This chapter closes this gap by discussing and contrasting and the different process categories and respective micro-mechanisms and suggests an integrative theory development and avenues for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the new concept of trust governance and how to design trust‐related governance mechanisms.

The paper defines trust governance based on the nature of governance, and proposes the micro design approach from the perspective of active interpersonal strategy. Based on a literature review, trust governance emerges as a new organizing principle which needs to be taken into account when considering the fast development of knowledge. Active interpersonal strategy is highlighted as a way to build trust and several governance mechanisms are proposed.

This paper concludes that trust governance is an important and new research field, and is also a necessary route of organizational promotion from human control to self‐control. Interpersonal threat control strategy could understand and drop a hint about others'cognitive risk. Active trust could excite trust by virtue of active express friendship. Such active interpersonal strategies enable the manager to explore the situational confidence from the micro individual level, and facilitate the micro‐mechanism design.

The paper shows that trust governance could initiate the innovation performance of individuals, and promote interpersonal trust development and evolution.

In transitional economies, government support (GS) is considered to influence the development of the economy and industries and, consequentially, firms' intellectual capital (IC). However, empirical research has yet to explore the micro-mechanisms through which GS operates. Hence, the purpose of this study is to conduct an empirical inquiry into the specific role of GS on IC, considering the mediating effect of firm operational performance (OP).

Combining the institution-based theory, the resource orchestration paradigm and a dynamic perspective on IC, a new framework is constructed to evaluate the direct and indirect relationships existing among GS policies, firms' operational performance and IC. These processes and their outcomes are evaluated using mediating models with three steps and a panel regression based on panel data from 3,211 high-tech companies operating in China from 2008 to 2015.

Empirical findings confirm the existence of a significant direct relation between GS and IC and also suggest a mediating effect through operational performance.

(1) GS can be considered an institutional signal that boosts the attractiveness of a firm, thus enabling it to hire talent (human capital), build a wide network of relationships in the ecosystem (structural capital) and enhance its current relationships with financial service institutions and other stakeholders (relational capital). (2) This study, which considers GS an external resource, is one of the first attempts to explore how external resources influence firms' IC development through institutional pressures and mechanisms. The study confirms that multiple strategies exist through which government authorities and policymakers can influence firms' IC and in particular a combination of institutional factors and firm's resources and capabilities.

This study aims to present the overview of intellectual capital creation micro-mechanisms concerning formal and informal knowledge processes. The organizational culture, transformational leadership and innovativeness are also included in the investigation as ascendants and consequences of the focal relation of intellectual capital and knowledge processes.

Based on a sample of 1,418 Polish knowledge workers from the construction, healthcare, higher education and information technology (IT) industries, the empirical model was developed using the structural equation modeling (SEM) method.

The study exposes that the essence of transformational leadership innovativeness oriented is developing all intellectual capital components. To do so, leaders must support both formal and informal knowledge processes through the organizational culture of knowledge and learning. Furthermore, for best results of the knowledge transformation into intellectual capital, the learning culture must be shaped by both components: learning climate and acceptance of mistakes.

Presented findings can be directly applied to organizations to enhance innovativeness. Namely, leaders who observe that the more knowledge is formally managed in their organizations, the less effective the knowledge exchange is-should put more effort into supporting informal knowledge processes to smoothly develop human and relational intellectual capital components. Shortly, leaders must implement an authentic learning culture, including the mistakes acceptance component, to use the full organizational potential to achieve intellectual capital growth. Intellectual capital growth is essential for innovativeness.

This study presents the “big picture” of all intellectual capital creation micro-mechanisms linking transformational leadership with organizational innovativeness and explains the “knowledge paradox” identified by Mabey and Zhao (2017). This explanation assumes that intellectual capital components are created informally (i.e. human and relational ones) and formally (i.e. structural ones). Therefore, for best effects, both formal and informal knowledge processes, must be supported. Furthermore, this study exposes that the intensity of all explored micro-mechanisms is industry-specific.

As the risks and uncertainties faced by construction projects increase, the study of organizational resilience becomes more and more important for construction project management. Therefore, this study aims to deepen the understanding of the micro-mechanisms of organizational resilience in construction projects and explore the impact of employee resilience on organizational resilience.

By combining the conservation of resources, this study constructs the mechanism of employee resilience on organizational resilience in construction projects and considers the mediating role of task types. A partial least squares structural equation model (SEM) was used to test hypotheses based on data collected from 224 respondents.

The results show that employees' work resilience has a direct positive impact on the organizational resilience in construction projects and is also mediated by inter-team tasks. However, the psychological resilience of employees will have a direct adverse effect on the organizational resilience in construction projects and will be mediated by inter-team tasks and intra-team tasks.

This study verifies the impact mechanism of employee resilience on organizational resilience, including direct effects and indirect effects through different types of team tasks, and reveals the micro-mechanisms of using employee resources to build organizational resilience. This article sheds light on how project managers and employees can develop resilience to deal with the uncertainty and complexity of construction projects.

The present work investigates the micro-mechanisms underlying the link between psychological contract violation (PCV) and incivility in women employees. Building on social exchange theory (SET) and the norm of reciprocity, the authors utilized a multi-dimensional variable, labeled “Aggressive Reciprocal Attitude” (ARA), composed of three sub-constructs, namely anger, hostility and negative reciprocity, to explain negative women's uncivil behaviors. Further, the effect of conscientiousness is hypothesized to restrain the mechanism of ARA.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Covariance-based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM) were used on a sample of 194 women from 4 different organizations to empirically validate the proposed conceptual model and test the hypothesized relationships.

Women's ARA is shown as a partial mediator of the relationship between PCV and incivility. Conscientiousness significantly moderates the link between ARA and incivility.

Managers should avoid stereotyping women as more compliant and submissive. Based on women's tendency to reciprocate negatively, this study’s findings suggest that reducing the negative reciprocity attitude is advisable by demonstrating that negative responses are an unsuccessful strategy and encouraging other forms of reaction.

By introducing the negative reciprocity attitude in the construction of the variable ARA, the authors overcome the contradiction between the social role theory, according to which women avoid unsociable behaviors, and studies demonstrating a remarkable presence of conflicts among women.

This paper aims to analyse the construction of gender in business media through identification of media discourses in terms of vocabulary and vocabulary structures.

The authors conduct critical discourse analysis and linguistic text analysis of media articles in two Swedish business magazines, focussing on vocabulary and vocabulary structures used to describe men and women as managers.

Media texts fall into traditional, gender-stereotyped patterns. The use of metaphors, choice of words and sentence structures construct and maintain stereotyped models of gender. The linguistic practices and use of specific and gender-biased vocabulary shape discursive practices, contributing to the construction and reconstruction of institutionalised gender-stereotyped patterns of behaviour and established social norms.

The focus on vocabulary and vocabulary structures extends the technique and application of critical discourse analysis, enabling fine-grained analyses, in this case of media texts. This research also indicates a need for future studies that adopt a critical discourse analysis to take into account analytical procedures that shed light on micro-mechanisms that support the materialisations of gender inequalities.

Texts that portray both men and women show gender bias that is deeply rooted in the vocabulary and vocabulary structures and thus help to reinforce established discursive practices and gender inequalities. Therefore, there is a need for a fundamental change in the media reports on managers.

The research contributes to the analysis of media texts and representations of men and women as managers by providing a detailed analysis of discursive practices that takes into account vocabulary and vocabulary structures. The findings show the deeply rooted structure of gender-stereotyped patterns in media texts.

This paper focuses on the “how” of business analytics (BA) value creation, which remains an open research problem and a practical challenge. The main purpose of this paper is to propose a novel BA value creation mechanism that is BA-enabled improvement of Knowledge-intensive Business Processes (KIBPs), with experiential knowledge of decision makers as the key to a more sustainable BA-enabled competitive differentiation.

This research uses a qualitative research case study, conducted in a large retail distribution company. The research insights were observed through a combined lens of work systems theory and the knowledge-based view (KBV) of the firm, using an interpretive approach.

The proposed theoretical model identifies three stages of KIBP improvement through BA and explains how they lead to a sustainable BA-enabled competitive differentiation. Stage 1 focusses on BA support for individual knowledge-intensive tasks, Stage 2 focusses on individual decision makers and their ability to gain KIBP-related analytical insights and turn them into action; and Stage 3 on sharing of the acquired experiential knowledge amongst decision makers using BA.

In addition to proposing a novel mechanism for BA value creation, this research demonstrates the importance of leveraging experiential knowledge of decision makers as a pathway to a more sustainable competitive differentiation through BA. This, in turn, creates new opportunities for knowledge management researchers to engage in BA-related research. It also opens a new approach for BA researchers to investigate BA value creation mechanisms through the lens of KBV, rather than more common resource-based or capability-based views.

We study organizational vocabularies as complex social structures emerging from the association between organizational participants and words they use to describe and make sense of their experiences at work. Using data that we have collected on the association between managers in a multi-unit international company and words they use to describe their organizational units and the overall company, we examine the relational micro-mechanisms underlying the observed network structure of organizational vocabularies. We find that members of the same subsidiary tend to become more similar in terms of the words they use to describe their units. Members of the same subsidiary, however, do not use the same words to describe the corporate group. Consequently, the structure of organizational vocabularies tends to support consistent local interpretations, but reveals the presence of divergent meanings that organizational participants associate with the superordinate corporate group.