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To study the influence of process and product parameters on the properties of products in incremental sheet metal‐forming; to create models for process optimisation and to introduce an approach to incremental forming process optimisation.

A new flexible sheet metal‐forming technique, incremental forming, has been studied. The technique can be viewed as a rapid prototyping/manufacturing technique for sheet metal parts. To analyse the process, an experimental study and finite element analysis were performed. For the optimal design of incremental forming process non‐linear mathematical programming was used. To estimate the limitations and main parameters of the process, a complex model was developed.

Introducing optimisation procedures for the incremental forming process allows users to increase productivity and to assure quality.

As finite element analysis of the process is time‐consuming in real life situations, a future study should include creating analytical models for process modelling.

The described approach can be used in practice to improve competitiveness of companies producing sheet metal prototypes.

This paper offers guidelines for shortening processing time of sheet metal prototypes for engineers and researchers. The optimisation that is based on experimental/theoretical/numerical models of incremental forming process has not been covered before in the scientific literature.

Economic assumptions of self-interest and opportunism have sparked a debate about their impact on management behavior. This paper addresses this debate in the context of US hospitals. More specifically, the paper addresses whether self-interest and opportunistic behavior describe pre-existing behavior in hospitals. Our analysis concludes that there is no evidence that opportunism was an underlying industry wide behavior prior to the 1980s when economic theories began to shape policies and the industry. While we cannot determine from the evidence why it emerged, it may be linked to system incentives to reduce costs and/or the propagation of economic theories in health administration programs and business schools. Consequently, there is a necessity for on-going debate and future empirical research on this topic.

Social scientists have long been interested in how political institutions affect economic performance. Nowhere are these effects more apparent today than in the current U.S. financial meltdown. This article offers an analysis of the meltdown by showing how government regulation among other things helped cause it. Specifically, the article shows how regulatory reforms closely associated with neoliberalism created perverse incentives that contributed significantly to the increased lending in the mortgage market and increased speculation in other financial markets even as such behavior was becoming increasingly risky. The result was the failure of mortgage firms, banks, a major insurance company, and eventually the market for short-term business loans, which triggered a general liquidity crisis thereby thrusting the entire economy into a severe recession. Implications for future research are explored. The article also offers a few policy prescriptions and an assessment of their political viability going forward.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) carry huge economic importance worldwide. At the same time, SMEs face specific challenges, some of which may be alleviated by employing accountants. However, research on the role and impact of accountants in SMEs has long remained fragmented and scarce. This paper aims to encourage more research on accountants in SMEs by providing the first comprehensive and systematic review of relevant research.

Based on systematic review methods, the authors critically examine 68 research articles dealing with accountants in SMEs.

The review identifies three dominant roles for accountants in SMEs: providers of reporting services, sources of SME owners’ self-validation and translators between capital providers and SMEs and advisors. Implicitly, many studies assume a value-enhancing effect of employing accountants in SMEs regardless of these specific roles. At the same time, available studies seldom make use of existing theoretical frameworks to more closely analyze the value-enhancing potential of human resources such as accountants. The authors, thus, propose the resource-based view as a robust theoretical framework to improve theory building in research on accountants in SMEs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first systematic review of accountants in SMEs. In addition, the authors develop a resource-based model on accountants in SMEs to guide future research on this topic.