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The surface roughness of products manufactured using the additive manufacturing (AM) technology of electron beam melting (EBM) has a special characteristic. Different product applications can demand rougher or finer surface structure, so the purpose of this study is to investigate the process parameters of EBM to find out how they affect surface roughness.

EBM uses metal powder to manufacture metal parts. A design of experiment plan was used to describe the effects of the process parameters on the average surface roughness of vertical surfaces.

The most important electron beam setting for surface roughness, according to this study, is a combination of “speed and current” in the contours. The second most important parameter is “contour offset”. The interaction between the “number of contours” and “contour offset” also appears to be important, as it shows a much higher probability of being active than any other interaction. The results show that the “line offset” is not important when using contours.

This study examined “contour offset”, “number of contours”, “speed in combination with current” and “line offset”, which are process parameters controlling the electron beam.

The surface properties could have an impact on the product’s performance. A reduction in surface processing will not only save time and money but also reduce the environmental impact.

Surface properties are important for many products. New themes containing process parameters have to be developed when introducing new materials to EBM manufacturing. During this process, it is very important to understand how the electron beam affects the melt pool.

This paper aims to analyse how a multinational organisation uses technocratic and socio-ideological controls to manage tensions arising when integrating its international subsidiaries.

Through interviews and company documentation, the authors analyse how a global German family business firm integrates its international subsidiaries into the corporate context.

The findings suggest that technocratic and socio-ideological controls in combination help the firm manage three tensions – vertical vs lateral relations, standardisation vs differentiation of practices and centralisation vs decentralisation of decision-making – arising in the course of internationalisation. These results have important analytical implications for the understanding of how a high level of compliance to technocratic control initiatives is achieved. Prior work has, in the main, focussed on the resistance to technocratic controls without paying much attention to compliance. Specifically, the authors show how managers can use socio-ideological control to achieve a high level of compliance among employees when implementing technocratic controls.

The results suggest that managers in multinational firms need to pay careful attention to the tensions that are created when they internationalise and to apply a combination of technocratic and socio-ideological controls to manage these tensions.

There is limited knowledge of how managers use socio-ideological control to enact a particular form of experience for their employees and to create a highly valued sense of purpose. The findings suggest that these controls, in combination with technocratic ones, serve important roles when organisations expand internationally.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate farmer’s positional concerns in rural China, and how the positional concerns correlate with household expenditures on visible goods.

The authors conduct a survey-based experiment to measure farmers’ positional concerns, and employ econometric models to examine the determinants of the degree of positional concern and how the positional concern affects household expenditures on visible goods.

The authors find that Chinese farmers have strong positional concerns for income, and high-income households are more concerned with relative position. Furthermore, there is a significant difference between males and females with respect to correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on visible goods. For females, there is a positive correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on clothes, restaurants, and mobile phones, respectively. For males, there is a positive correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on mobile phones.

The government policy thus should pay attention to the positional goods, and the relevant consumption tax by increasing the prices of visible goods could be considered or suggested in the future even in the rural areas.

This paper provides complementary evidence on Chinese farmers’ positional concerns, and how the degree of positional concern relates to household expenditures on visible goods.

The digitalization of schools has intensified in recent years. It is reflected in policy documents as well as in extensive investments in digital technology and professional development initiatives to promote digitalization. At the same time, attempts are being made to “tame” the same digitization sometimes by regulations banning smartphones in class. This study aims to examine how smartphones are interpreted by vocational teachers in Sweden using the theoretical lens of technological frames.

The data consist of ten semi-structured interviews with vocational teachers, representing eight vocational programs in Sweden.

The results show breadth in how teachers understand, interpret and relate to the smartphone in vocational education. The authors show how the smartphone often forms an integral part of professional work and is thus difficult to separate from vocational teaching and nurturing vocational competencies.

The authors’ contributions include using technological frames to explore how smartphones are interpreted and understood by vocational teachers by demonstrating how they relate to the nature of the smartphone, the strategy for the smartphone and the smartphone in use. The theoretical framework is used to interpret restrictions on technology use, in this case a smartphone, in education. The results could be of interest to researchers as well as to teachers, school leaders and policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore drivers of alliance formation in a specialized supply chain from a manager’s perspective, focussing on firm-specific resources, resources embedded in inter-firm relationships and capabilities under the control of the focal firm.

This paper focusses on the resource-based view to obtain insights from the analysis of a manager survey conducted in Canada’s beef sector, applying a logistic regression approach to study alliance formation.

In identifying significant roles for resource richness and diversification of resource usage, the analysis highlights the importance of resource characteristics underlying factor market imperfections as drivers of alliance formation in a single primary input supply chain. The results suggest that resource heterogeneity is important for alliance formation and organizational success in specialized supply chains.

If previous alliance-related experience of managers, controlled for in the underlying cross-sectional survey, serves as an approximation for persistent unobservables impacting the alliance formation decision, we may face spurious state-dependence.

Managers interested in building compatible alliances in specialized single primary input supply chains may benefit from an improved understanding of the differential role of resource characteristics and resource heterogeneity for alliance formation, as these can function as a source of competitive advantage.

The analysis provides new insights from an individual manager’s perspective on alliance formation drivers in a specialized agri-food supply chain, thereby solidifying extant findings on alliance formation obtained in other sectors. The study contributes to the understanding of the role of resources in alliance formation with regard to prior relationship experience, resource heterogeneity and thus causal ambiguity, thereby also contributing to the debate of the role of relational capabilities vs firm-internal resources for sustained competitive advantage.

In both Britain and the USA, the majority of the shares in quoted companies are owned by institutional shareholders such as pension funds and insurance companies. But, in most cases these major shareholders are “passive”, that is they prefer not to become involved in the management of the companies in which they invest – unless there is a crisis. By this time unfortunately it is often too late to prevent their shareholders or pensioners from losing money. In this article Rolf Carlsson describes how the Wallenberg family through their holding company Investor AB have helped a number of Swedish companies to become world leaders by working with their managers as active investors. He tells the story of ABB and L.M. Ericsson but the Wallenberg sphere of influence has also included Atlas Copco, SAAB Scania, SKF, Swedish Match, Alfa Laval, Stora and Electrolux. Also he explains how the Wallenberg family evolved the competencies and structures which they needed to fulfil their role as an active investor. These competencies included: choosing the right businesses in which to invest; “meta‐management” – recruiting and appointing the right chief executives; “legitimization” – building the Wallenberg reputation and good name in Swedish society and internationally by pursuing socially responsible and ethical policies; and nurturing corporations so they can become global leaders. The family works through two key structures: Investor AB – an investment company which has a board of non‐executive directors and two executive vice chairmen most of whom are experienced CEO’s from industry and commerce; and independent company boards, with strong CEO’s – which they change as necessary to ensure that they have the competencies required to deliver the agreed strategies. The Wallenberg’s approach to active ownership is entrepreneurial: “the need for incessant renewal”.

Citizens are demanding better performance from governments and they are increasingly aware of the costs of poor management and corruption. In view of scarce resources and the major transformations already underway in the global economy, identification and awareness of good governance and preventing corrupt practices have become key to ensuring structural reforms and critical investments necessary for encouraging, sustaining, and enhancing economic growth and competitiveness. Political corruption severely undermines government legitimacy and weakens the development of political, economic, social, and environmental structures.

Unlike previous studies which emphasize market oriented performance from the perspective of firms or customers, but mainly internally, the paper proposes that firms should prioritize customer‐focused performance defined totally externally from the perspective of targeted customers, which are the fundamental drivers of purchasing or repurchasing behaviors of customers and consequently the key to successful competition in the customer‐centered era. Then, the role of customer‐focused performance in the overall business performance system is examined. After the components and dynamics of customer‐focused performance are analyzed, much attention is given to its key determinants in perspective of a resource‐based view, which aims mainly at bridging the current gaps between strategic management and service management. In addition, important propositions are presented and future implications are discussed.