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This roadmap is primarily concerned with the adaptive assembly technology situation in Europe, a topic of particular interest as assembly is often the final process within manufacturing operations. Being the final set of operations on the product, and being traditionally labour‐intensive, assembly has been considerably affected by globalisation. Therefore, unlike most technology roadmaps, this report will not focus solely on particular technologies, but will strive to form a broader perspective on the conditions that may come to influence the opportunities, including political aspects and scientific paradigms. The purpose of this paper is to convey a complete view of the global mechanisms that may come to affect technological breakthroughs, and also present strategies that may better prepare for such a forecast.

The paper describes a technological roadmap.

This paper provides a complete overview of all aspects that may come to affect assembly in Europe within the next 20 years.

The paper gives an original Evolvable Ultra Precision Assembly Systems FP6 project result which will be of general interest for strategic R&D.

International outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 infection has fostered the Italian government to impose the FFP2 protective facial masks in closed environments, including bar, restaurants and, more in general, in the food sector. Protective facial masks are rocketing, both in mass and in costs, in the food sector imposing efforts in fostering reuse strategies and in the achievement of sustainable development goals. The scope of the present paper is to depict possible strategies in manufacturing and reuse strategies that can reduce the carbon footprint (CF) of such devices.

To implement circular economy strategies in the protective facial masks supply chain, it was considered significant to move towards a study of the environmental impact of such devices, and therefore a CF study has been performed on an FFP2 facial mask used in the food sector. Different materials besides the mostly used polypropylene (PP) (polyethylene (PE), polycarbonate (PC), poly (lactic acid) (PLA), cotton, polyurethane (PUR), polystyrene (PS) and nylon 6,6) and different sanitisation alternatives as reuse strategies (both laboratory and homemade static oven, ultraviolet germicidal irradiation) readily implemented have been modelled to calculate the CF of a single use of an FFP2 mask.

The production of textiles in PP, followed by disposal was the main contributor to CF of the single-use FFP2 mask, followed by packaging and transportations. PP and PE were the least impacting, PC, cotton and Nylon 6-6 of the same weight results the worst. PLA has an impact greater than PP and PE obtained from crude oil, followed by PUR and PS. Static laboratory oven obtained an 80.4% reduction of CF with respect to single use PP-made FFP2 mask, whereas homemade oven obtained a similar 82.2% reduction; UV cabinet is the best option, showing an 89.9% reduction.

The key strategies to reduce the environmental impacts of the masks (research for new materials and reuse with sanitisation) should ensure both the retention of filtering capacities and the sanitary sterility of the reused ones. Future developments should include evaluations of textile recycling impacts, using new materials and the evaluation of the life cycle costs of the reused masks.

This paper intends to provide to stakeholders (producers, consumers and policy makers) the tools to choose the best option for producing and reuse environmentally friendly protective facial masks to be used in the food sector, by using both different materials and easily implemented reuse strategies.

The reduction of the CF of protective facial masks in the food sector surely will have relevant positive effects on climate change contributing to reach the goals of reducing CO₂ emissions. The food sector may promote sustainable practices and attract a niche piece of clients particularly sensible to such themes.

The paper has two major novelties. The first one is the assessment of the CF of a single use of an FFP2 mask made with different materials of the non-woven filtering layers; as the major contribution to the CF of FFP2 masks is related to the non-woven textiles manufacturing, the authors test some other different materials, including PLA. The second is the assessment of the CF of one single use of a sanitised FFP2 mask, using different sanitation technologies as those allowed in bars or restaurants.

The purpose of current study deals with the development and wear testing of jute and cotton fiber reinforced with nano fly ash-based epoxy composites. Performance of waste cotton fabric nano hybrid composites are compared with waste jute fabric nano hybrid composites.

Basic hand layup technique was used to develop composites. To optimize the parameters and design of experiments, Taguchi design was implemented to test wear rate and co-efficient of friction as per ASTM standards. Performance of waste cotton fabric nano hybrid composites is compared with waste jute fabric nano hybrid composites.

Result shows that nano fly ash lowers the wear rate and co-efficient of friction in developed composites. Findings reveals that hybrid composites of waste jute Fabric with 3 Wt.% of nano fly ash performed best amongst all composites developed. Morphology of nano composites worn out surfaces are also analyzed through SEM.

Practically, textile waste, i.e. jute, cotton and nano fly ash (thermal power plant) all wastes, is used to develop composites for multi-function application.

Wastes are reused and recycled to develop epoxy-based composites for sustainable structures in aviation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, nano fly ash and jute, cotton combination is used for the first time to develop and test for wear application.

The paper offers insights on the response of a Big4 firm to the COVID-19 crisis vis-à-vis moral considerations. More specifically, the authors draw on Bauman's (1990) “moral impulse” to explore how the interrelated tactics of distancing, effacement of the face and reduction of people to traits tend to weaken moral considerations and negatively influences decisions and actions.

The authors adopt a qualitative approach that involves an interpretive textual analysis of the COVID-19 responses of a Big 4 accounting firm. Their study uses two vignettes in which they problematise aspects of the actions and ethico-social contribution of a Big4 firm in the heat of a global pandemic.

The findings reveal examples of effacement of the human face (depersonalization/dehumanization) and reduction of persons to traits, as well as excessive distancing between the “doing” actors and those individuals who bear the consequences of those actions. Revealing an opportunity lost, the authors’ vignettes indicate that the reduction to traits tactics led to dissembling and dehumanizing employees into resources that perform tasks that are “value-add” for the organisation, consonant with neoliberal ideologies.

The common limitations of qualitative approach apply to the current study for generalisability. The authors also rely heavily on publicly available information given the time frame they were faced with and their chosen research approach.

Drawing on accounting delineation debates, the paper calls for societal dialogues for reshaping the “official” accounting of events.

The authors elaborate moral impulse through the interrelated tactics of distancing, effacement of the face and reduction to traits, during a crisis. Their study mobilises a moral evaluation through which they uncover documented responses by a Big4 firm during the COVID-19 crisis. The study shows how the norms of human action have been systematically cut off from the original moral habitat and subordinated, and evaluated according, to business standards.

The rise of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) during the last decades has made the volunteer a key element. Motivation and satisfaction have been indicated as predictive indices of their retention. The purpose of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to better understand the motivations of the volunteers, addressing the effects of such motivations. On the other hand, it analyses whether the intensity of such antecedents and effects differs depending on the type of NGO with which they work: generalist vs specialist.

A study with 847 volunteers from different types of NGOs was done using structural modelling methodology and multi-sample analysis.

The type of NGO moderates the relationship between the satisfaction of the volunteer and the intention to recommend.

Given that in specialist NGOs the impact of satisfaction on the intention to recommend is significantly stronger than in generalist NGOs, making sure that volunteers are satisfied becomes a priority in this type of NGO. In this regard, satisfaction studies among volunteers could be conducted periodically to detect crisis situations and implement improvement actions to recover satisfaction in the occupied position.

First, to date, the motivations of the volunteer have been investigated from different disciplines, the self-determination theory (SDT) being an important motivational theory widely used in areas such as social, education and sports psychology. However, there is little research from a marketing approach to understand the background of the motivations of volunteers under this conceptual framework provided by the SDT. Second, there is also a scarcity of literature linking the motivations of a volunteer with the emotions they may feel, ultimately achieving consolidated lasting links with the NGO in which they are integrated. Third, most research on volunteering to date has focused on differentiating volunteers from non-volunteers and understanding the reasons for volunteering. However, the presence of studies on the differences in the motivation of the same according to the type of NGO with which they collaborate has been scarce.

The purpose of this paper is to utilize illustrative examples from the industrialisation period in Sweden to analyse the interlace between poor legislation and school legislation.

It deals with how state regulation and societal transformations intervened in the lives of poor children and their parents. In particular, this article examines how collaboration between schools and poor relief resulted in normative judgements about their social inclusion and exclusion.

Overall, the article illuminates a new era in the history of social policy, an epoch when old assumptions were abandoned and fresh links were forged between industrialisation, national economics, education, gender relations, and social welfare. These changes are clarified not only by reference to nineteenth century sources but also to national and international research, and ideas about capital and gender relations associated with, among others, Hannah Arendt and Pierre Bourdieu.

The study illustrates how and why the official public spirit affects children and why understanding of this relationship needs to be broadened as well as deepened.

The main purposes of this paper are to provide evidence about corporate failure diagnosis in SMEs, identify the predictor variables that enhance the accuracy of the corporate failure diagnosis models, and perform comparative analysis of the proposed models with the existing literature. The paper supports the proposition that the majority of the proposed corporate failure diagnosis models in the literature exhibit an endogenous drawback since their construction is based on large entities or listed corporations' samples.

The present study employs multiple discriminant analysis, logit analysis, and probit analysis to construct corporate failure diagnosis models based on SMEs longitudinal data from Greece.

The paper provides evidence that the contribution of human capital is immensely more important to the viability of SMEs than to the viability of large corporations. Moreover, this study identifies interactions among seemingly insignificant variables that exhibit incremental information content and attribute massive discriminant power to the proposed corporate failure diagnosis models.

The results of this study encourage regulatory authorities to adopt enhancements to the Basel II framework and financial institutions as regards to constructing their corporate failure diagnosis models. The models is based upon internal default experience and mapping to external data incorporating both quantitative and qualitative variables.

The contribution of this paper is the proposition of new value-relevant variables that enhance the accuracy of existing corporate failure diagnosis models for SMEs.

Business failure has evolved a major research domain, both of corporate finance generally and of construction management, equally. Much of this attention has focused on assessing business “health” to predict longevity, but less so, on causal agents of failure. The aim of this study is to synthesise published knowledge in the subject domain to explore construction failure agents.

Extant literature drawn from both corporate finance and construction management disciplines are synthesised. Subjective, textual analysis is undertaken and causal agents thematically grouped. A failure relationship model is derived that conceptualises construction business failure in relation to its operating universe.

Generic failure agents (GFA) (ordered, based on percentage frequency among the literature observed) are shown to be: managerial, financial, company characteristics, and macroeconomic. The first three are proffered to reciprocally interact within a “universe” defined by the latter. Numerous sub‐causal agents (SCA) are attributed to each generic agent. The role of innovation is suggested to hold potential negative (as well as positive) impacts on mitigating GFA and SCA.

Limitations relate to synthesis of contemporary published evidence, so a progressive iteration would be empirical study of identified agents within live construction environments. An implication is the call for research realignment; from emphasis on business health assessment, to that of root causal agents.

Advancement of theory relating to business failure has significant implications for construction management research.

The failure relationship model and its linkage to innovation is novel.

Over the last eight years, the Middle East has experienced a series of high profile conflicts which have resulted in over 5.6 million Syrians forced to migrate to neighbouring countries within the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region or to Europe. That have exerted huge pressure on hosting countries trying to accommodate refugees in decent shelters and in quick manner. Temporary shelters normally carry a high environmental burden due to their short lifespan, and the majority are fabricated from industrialised materials. This study assesses the carbon impact for a minus carbon experimental refugee house in Sweden using life cycle assessment (LCA) as tool. SimaPro and GaBi software were used for the calculations and the ReCiPe midpoint method for impact assessment. The results show that using local plant-based materials such as straw, reeds and wood, together with clay dug from close to the construction site, can drastically reduce the carbon footprint of temporary shelters and even attain a negative carbon impact of 226.2 kg CO₂ eq/m². Based on the results of the uncertainty importance analysis, the overall global warming potential impact without and with sequestration potential are mostly sensitive to the variability of the GWP impact of wood fibre insulation.

The methodology is designed to calculate the GWP impact of the refugee house over its entire life cycle (production, operation and maintenance and end of life). Then, the sensitivity analysis was performed to explore the impact of input uncertainties (selection of material from the database and the method) on the total GWP impact of the refugee house with and without sequestration. The ISO standards (International Standard 14040 2006; International Standard 14044 2006) divide the LCA framework into four steps of Goal and scope, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation.

This study has shown an example for proof of concept for a low impact refugee house prototype using straw, reeds, clay, lime and wood as the principle raw materials for building construction. Using natural materials, especially plant-based fibres, as the main construction materials, proved to achieve a minus carbon outcome over the life cycle of the building. The GWP of the shelter house without and with sequestration are found to be 254.7 kg CO₂ eq/m² and -226.2 kg CO₂ eq/m², respectively.

As there are still very few studies concerned with the environmental impact of temporary refugee housing, this study contributes to the pool of knowledge by introducing a complete LCA calculation for a physical house prototype as a proof of concept on how using low impact raw materials for construction combined with passive solutions for heating and cooling can reach a minus carbon outcome. The GWP of the shelter house without and with sequestration are found to be 254.7 kg CO₂ eq/m² and -226.2 kg CO₂ eq/m².