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LONG before man learnt to make fire by the friction of wood, he experienced the burden of friction in dragging home his kill. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to suppose that the torn sides of his beast gave the first solid lubricant. Blood and mutton fat were seriously recommended as lubricants for church bell trunnions as recently as the 17th century. Indoed we still reckon fatty acids the best of all boundary lubricants. The range of man's activities has increased enormously in the present century, and particularly in the last few decades. Men have circled the earth in space; a space ship is on its way to examine another planet; terrestrial man is boring to the bottom of the earth's crust; others have descended to the depths of the ocean, and oven established a home on the floor of the Mediterranean, Speeds have increased by factors of thousands, temperatures range from near absolute zero to thousands of degrees; and a new environment of high‐intensity nuclear radiation has been created. Still, objects must move over and along each other in these exotic conditions; and to a large extent solid lubricants can provide the answer to the frictional problems.

The first veterinary school was founded in 1761, as a professional school not as a trade school. This has had a lasting impact on the role of the veterinarian in society, in industry, and in organizations. This paper recounts the circumstances of the founding of that first school in France and discusses the impact that professional institutions can have on ethics in organizations more generally.

This paper aims to propose the phenomenography as an approach that may contribute to the organizational studies based on the practice perspective, considering that it analyzes the phenomenon through the practitioner’s view and experience.

It is a theoretical essay about phenomenography as a theoretical-methodological perspective, considering its concept, its relation with practice theories and how its theoretical-methodological approach is capable of bringing a new perspective over the organizations, in the practice perspective.

The phenomenographic method, together with the practice perspective, enables mapping, identifying, describing and relating all the different ways by which an organization, in each one of its structuring dimensions, is effectively experienced. It argues that aspects such as the phenomenographic interview, the second-order perspective, the collective conceptions stated in the outcome space and their relations, the complexity of hierarchy and the abductive theorization about the emerging concepts of collective perceptions form, all together, an alternative and promising theoretical approach to analyze the entanglement between action and the material dimension that constitutes the organizational practices.

The phenomenographic outcome space may become a catalyst of a theorization about practices, which is capable to modify them or modify the way they are understood.

It discusses the possibility of phenomenography to theorize from the agents’ collective consciousness.

The act of reporting illegal and unethical practices in the workplace has become an increasingly important issue for researchers and organizational management over the past several decades. This study tested a model of whistleblowing in which perceived organizational retaliation and upward communication satisfaction were hypothesized to act as predictors of types of whistleblowing intentions using a representative sample of employees working in Kirklareli, Turkey (n = 1,012). Structural equation modeling indicated that perceptions of upward communication satisfaction were positively associated to blowing the whistle to internal channels like immediate supervisor and upper management and negatively related to staying silent and external whistleblowing. In addition, perceived threat of retaliation from an organization was negatively related to blowing the whistle to internal channels and positively related to staying silent and external whistleblowing. The present study has contributed to our understanding of whistleblowing in a relatively new national context by clarifying its associations with perceived organizational retaliation and communication with management.

The WISARD recognition system invented at Brunei University has been developed into an industrialised product by Computer Recognition Systems under licence from the British Technology Group. Using statistical pattern classification it already shows great potential in rapid sorting, and research indicates that it will track objects with positional feedback, rather like the human eye.

The purpose of this paper is to survey UAE legislative initiatives affecting whistleblowing. Many studies claim that whistleblowing is one of the most effective mechanisms in fighting corruption. Either done merely to satisfy regulatory requirements or in genuine efforts to counter internal fraud, many organizations around the world incorporate whistleblowing programs. However, a lack of comprehensive whistleblower protection remains the main impediment for reporting misconduct or wrongdoing. A country’s legislative framework and its cultural and socio-economic specifics impact the effectiveness of such protective measures. Moreover, in the absence of comprehensive, stand-alone whistleblowing laws, whistleblowers can become victims not only of employers’ retaliatory actions but also of criminal and civil charges.

This paper surveys the UAE law and regulations in regard to whistleblower protection. It also raises concerns regarding their effectiveness based on the county’s unique socio-economic and cultural environment and their interplay with other legislations, which can potentially make whistleblowing a criminal offense.

In the absence of stand-alone whistleblowing legislation, cultural aspects and other laws can serve as deterrents for whistleblowers. It is crucial for a jurisdiction to set up an effective legal and regulatory framework to enable synergy across different laws and agencies involved. Implementation of comprehensive, stand-alone whistleblowing legislation might help provide legal certainty and clarity.

In the absence of empirical studies on UAE whistleblowing, the researcher primarily relied on English translations of the country’s laws and regulations, official press releases and English media sources.

This study introduces relevant background to organizations establishing their own whistleblowing policies and employee training.

This paper examines the effectiveness of whistleblowing legislative initiatives through the prism of the country’s cultural, socio-economic and legal environment.

The purpose of this research is to examine different customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics and test their relationship to customer retention, recommendation and share of wallet using micro (customer) level data.

The data for this study come from a two‐year longitudinal Internet panel of over 8,000 US customers of firms in one of three industries (retail banking, mass‐merchant retail, and Internet service providers (ISPs)). Correlation analysis, CHAID, and three types of regression analyses (best‐subsets, ordinal logistic, and latent class ordinal logistic regression) were used to test the hypotheses.

Contrary to Reichheld's assertions, the results indicate that recommend intention alone will not suffice as a single predictor of customers' future loyalty behavior. Use of a multiple indicator instead of a single predictor model performs better in predicting customer recommendations and retention.

The limitation of the paper is that it uses data from only three industries.

The presumption of managers when looking at recommend intention as the primary, even sole gauge of customer loyalty appears to be erroneous. The consequence is potential misallocations of resources due to myopic focus on customers' recommend intentions.

This is the first scientific study that examines recommend intentions and its impact on retention and recommendation on the micro (customer) level.

The purpose of this study is to develop a profile of whistleblowers and to determine whether whistleblowing legislation would encourage those individuals to bring to light some illegal or unethical behaviour that otherwise would remain in the shadows.

Having identified whistleblowing correlation, a survey was carried out in Cyprus of actual whistleblowers and could-have-been whistleblowers.

Males between 46 and55 years of age, regardless of whether they have dependents or hold senior positions in organizations are significantly more likely to blow the whistle. However, could-have-been whistleblowers did not go ahead because they felt that the authorities would not act on their information.

Because of the sensitive nature of the research topic and the fact that only whistleblowers or intended whistleblowers could participate in the study, the sample size is limited as a result. This, in turn, limits both the number of respondents in each category (actual and intended) as well as constrains the statistical analysis that could be carried out on the data.

It remains to be seen whether EU Member States shall implement the European Directive 2019/1937 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union Law, in its entirety by the due date, namely December 2021.

This study provides a literature review of whistleblowing and reports an original survey against the backdrop of the European Directive.

This paper's aim is to assess the practical advances resulting from progress in artificial intelligence affecting vision‐equipped robots.

A short history of artificial intelligence applied to robotic hand‐eye coordination is followed by a description of some of the milestones in pattern recognition, interfacing, operating systems and programming paradigms. Finally, a range of current‐day practical applications is given, from industrial to student project.

The paper finds that advances in the speed and robustness of pattern recognition algorithms have been very important in the development of robots that adapt to randomly positioned workpieces. Event‐triggered object oriented programming, wide address buses, smart cameras, ethernet and other standard cables and communications formats, and the ever‐increasing power of computers are also of great practical importance.

The paper contrasts the current state of robotic vision with that 20 years ago.

The purpose of this paper is to explore issues related to a recent article by Bradley Bowden published in QROM titled “Empiricism, and modern postmodernism: a critique”. The argument presented here is that antagonism between different sub-communities undertaking work related to the “historic-turn” in management and organization studies (MOS) should give way to greater acceptance of different “phenomenal” concerns and different methods of research.

This paper is based on a critical reading and interpretation of relevant texts. This paper critiques recent work by Bradley Bowden. These are then used as a starting point for a discussion of the different ways in which historical research is practiced in MOS.

The central interpretation developed is that despite many strengths, there are both interpretative and argumentational limitations to Bowden’s criticism that the historic-turn in MOS is postmodernist in nature. In pointing to the varieties of historical research and interpretation in the field, this paper calls for greater and more sympathetic understanding between the different related sub-fields that are interested in history in relation to management and organization.

This paper concludes by calling for more historical work that deals with historiographical and theoretical issues, rather than a continuation of methodological debates that focus on antagonisms between different methods of undertaking historical research to the exclusion of advancing the creation of new historical knowledge, however constructed.

This paper articulates a pluralistic and ecumenical vision for historical research in relation to management and organization. The primary contribution is therefore to attempt to dissolve the seeming assumption of dialectical antagonism between different but related sub-communities of practice.