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Mainstream economists now consider their discipline to be a technical one that is free from ethical concerns. I argue that this view only arose in the twentieth century. In this paper I set out a brief history of economics as a moral science. First, I sketch the evolution of economics before Adam Smith, showing that it was generally (with the exception of the mercantilists) conceived of as a part of moral philosophy. Second, I present elements of the new interpretation of Smith, which show him as a developer of economics as a moral science. Third, I show that even after Smith, up to the beginning of the twentieth century, a number of leading economic theorists envisioned economics as a moral science, either in theory or in practice. Fourth, I sketch the decline of economics as a moral science. The key factor was the emergence and influence of positivism. Overall, I show that the current view of the detachment of economics from morals is alien to much of the history of the discipline.

Metal casting industry is in recovery phase after the crisis in 2008; customer demand continues to increase, with 98.6 million metric tons cast in 2011. Traditional ferrous and non-ferrous casting techniques require one shot or permanent moulds which require tooling to produce. Tooling particularly for developmental projects can be costly and take valuable time to produce. Additive manufacturing (AM) has been used to manufacture sand patterns for metal sand casting using laser sintering and sand bonding. This research aims to focus on characterising the sand-bonded process developed by ExOne GmbhH Germany.

The approach taken in this research is to evaluate characteristics of parts built in the build volume for dimensional accuracy, tensile and compressive crush strength, density, impact strength and high temperature resistance. These properties are required to compare the 3D sand printing (3DSP) process to direct laser sand sintering (DLSS) and traditional Furan-based casting sand mixtures. The samples were taken from a production machine over a period of 30 days to ensure consistency.

The 3DSP process has the capability to manufacture sand patterns to an accuracy of ±0.5 mm or error less than 0.3 per cent; it has also demonstrated the best build position to achieve accurate parts. The research has demonstrated the 3DSP patterns are comparable to traditional methods for important casting material characteristics such as tensile, compression and impact strength. It has been shown that the 3DSP process is capable manufacturing significantly larger parts, with build production rates up to 30 times higher compared to similar parts manufactured via the DLSS process.

As they has been very few 3DSP machines sold in Europe and particular UK, they has been little research into this new technique, and, therefore, they is a reliance on machine manufactures data for assessment. This research into 3DSP has increased the knowledge of this process significantly.

This research would be of interest to designers and manufacturing engineers wishing to take advantage of the implications of having new design freedom, tool less manufacturing with short lead times in a wide range of materials using fundamentally tried and tested century’s old casting techniques.

The research for this paper revealed very little published academic research in this area; therefore, this work will increase the body of knowledge for this niche AM process.

The purpose of this study is to formulate the most probable future scenario for the use of blockchain technology within the next 5–10 years in the electricity sector based on today’s experts’ views.

An international, two-stage Delphi study with 20 projections is used.

According to the experts, blockchain applications will be primarily based on permissioned or consortium blockchains. Blockchain-based applications will integrate Internet of Things devices in the power grid, manage the e-mobility infrastructure, automate billing and direct payment and issue certificates regarding the origin of electricity. Blockchain solutions are expected to play an important big role in fostering peer-to-peer trading in microgrids, further democratizing and decentralizing the energy sector. New regulatory frameworks become necessary.

The Delphi study’s scope is rather broad than narrow and detailed. Further studies should focus on partial scenarios.

Electricity market participants should build blockchain-based competences and collaborate in current pilot projects.

Blockchain technology will further decentralize the energy sector and probably reduce transaction costs.

Despite the assumed importance of blockchain technology, no coherent foresight study on its use and implications exists yet. This study closes this research gap.

This paper aims to showcase the trends in the research topics and their contributors over a time period of 30 years in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (IJCHM). To be specific, this paper uncovers IJCHM’s latent topics and hidden patterns in published research and highlights the differences across three decades and before and after Social Sciences Citation indexing.

In total, 1,573 documents published over 199 issues of IJCHM were analyzed using two computational tools, i.e. metaknowledge and structural topic modeling (STM), as the basis of the mixed method. STM was used to discover the evolution of topics over time. Moreover, bibliometrics (and network analysis) were used to highlight IJCHM’s top researchers, top-cited references, the geographical networks of the researchers and differences in the collaborative networks.

The number of papers published continually increased over time with changes of key researchers publishing in IJCHM. The co-authorship networks have also changed and revealed an increasing diversity of authorship and collaborations among authors in different countries. Moreover, the variety of topics and the relative weight of each topic have also changed.

Based on the findings of this study, theoretical and practical implications for hospitality and tourism researchers are provided.

It is the first attempt to apply topic modeling to a leading academic journal in hospitality and tourism and explore the diversity in contemporary hospitality management research (topics and contributors) from 30 years of published research.