Search results

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the performance of induction machines with fractional‐slot concentrated‐windings.

This paper examines induction machine performance with fractional‐slot concentrated windings using the standard distributed lap windings as reference. Four designs are compared and various performance tradeoffs highlighted. The first machine has integral‐slot distributed 2 slots/pole/phase lap winding and it serves as the reference winding. The second machine has a double‐layer 1/2 slot/pole/phase winding, a workhorse for brushless DC machines. The third machine has double‐layer 2/5 slot/pole/phase winding. Lastly, the fourth machine has single‐layer 2/5 slot/pole/phase windings. The comparison includes torque‐speed curves (including the effects of major space harmonic components), rotor bar losses, and ripple torque levels.

Based on the analysis results presented here, the traditional distributed lap winding is proven to be superior to FSCW in terms of torque production and rotor bar losses for induction machine applications. The 1/2 spp shows some promising results in terms of torque production, in addition to significant reduction and simplification of end turns with lower number of coils albeit with more turns/coil (12 slots vs 48 slots). The penalty is the additional rotor bar losses due to the 2nd and 4th harmonic mmf components. The 2/5 spp is not promising for torque production and should be avoided. The transient simulation results that simultaneously take into account the effects of all space harmonics and magnetic saturation showed comparable trends compared to the harmonic analysis results. It has also been shown that FSCW tend to have higher torque ripple compared to distributed windings.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper for the first time attempts to quantitatively address the tradeoffs involved in using FSCW in induction machines.

Historically, graduate education’s goal was to prepare academics; now most science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics (STEM) graduate students (GSs) go on to nonacademic careers. STEM GSs must be equipped for success regardless of career aspirations, which can be done by strengthening GSs’ professional identities. This study aims to explore an interdisciplinary partnership designed to strengthen STEM GS professional identity.

The STEM Partnership Project (SPP), asked STEM GSs to serve as disciplinary experts and teach STEM content to elementary teacher candidates (TCs) so the TCs could design and teach an elementary science lesson. GSs also enrolled in a one-credit course to support SPP participation and activities. Over five semesters, the authors collected data from 28 STEM GSs across different disciplines and degree programs in the form of course assignments, surveys and interviews.

The SPP supported the development of a professional identity by having GSs serve as and feel like experts; increasing GSs’ sense of belonging in their field; increasing GSs’ self-confidence that they could (learn to) teach a wide variety of audiences; and raising GSs’ awareness of their ability to serve others via their field.

The SPP’s outcomes were consistent across STEM disciplines, did not require GSs to take on large amounts of coursework, nor did it cost much beyond materials for the various lessons. Furthermore, the key components that strengthened GSs’ professional identities could be adapted for different contexts and institutions.

Public procurement is a major driving force that can be used to advance societal goals such as sustainability. The lack of strategic management and top-level commitment have been found to be major hindrances to the promotion of sustainable public procurement (SPP). This study aims to examine the functioning of a successful Finnish SPP development programme, the KEINO Academy (2019–2020), that tackled these challenges in a holistic way.

The article is mainly based on qualitative analysis of interviews with 24 municipal representatives.

The KEINO Academy advanced SPP management through the following functions: legitimising SPP development work, structuring SPP development work, offering expert support and facilitating peer support. The functions were mainly able to meet the key challenges experienced by the participating municipalities. However, some challenges cannot be directly solved by an intermediary such as the KEINO Academy. These challenges include, for example, a lack of resources.

On the basis of the study, SPP development programmes should: build a holistic working model; respect the versatility of the participating organisations; involve all the key people in the organisations, including the directors; and sustain change.

The main theoretical contribution is the combination of two streams of literature, those of SPP management and intermediary functions. Further, the article makes an empirical contribution by studying the KEINO Academy as a pioneering SPP development case.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of succession planning practice (SPP) on employee engagement (EE) and employee performance (EP) in Malaysian private universities (MPU).

This paper used a survey research design, and the study unit of the analysis consists of the academic staff of MPU. In the selection of the sample from the focused respondents (10,473) of the study, a stratified and simple random sampling method was used, and the study sample consists of 314 MPU academic staff. A questionnaire was used to collect data from the focused respondents while partial least square–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the study hypotheses.

The findings revealed that SPP has a significant effect on EP, and the relationship between SPP and EP is partially mediated by EE.

Sound succession systems for achieving academic staff performance should be put in place by the university management. Furthermore, the outcome of this research urges the policymaker to come up with a sound policy that can allow internal talents of the university to hold key leadership positions of any nature when the need arises before considering external talents, with that the talents will be satisfied and put decisive effort to achieve a positive result.

This paper has made a significant contribution to the knowledge and operationalization of the EE, EP and SPP literature. The research also assists the university management to mobilize qualified and talented staff for an unexpected and sudden resignation of staff which saves the university the cost of hiring and development, and at the same time, it encourages internal hiring.

This paper aims to study the short-term effects of a new procurement policy document on the inclusion of environmental requirements and green award criteria in tenders. The policy document is named “Procurement with Impact” and was released by the Dutch central government to further stimulate Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP).

Central government tenders were quantitatively analyzed in the six months prior and after the release of the new policy on their inclusion of environmental concerns. This judgment was made based on the role of environmental concerns in the requirements and the award criteria. As a control group, the same was done on a municipal level, for which the new policy document does not apply. Each of the four samples contained 60 tenders. Data was acquired via the European public procurement database TED. In the analysis, a chi-square test was used to measure whether a significant difference exists between the two periods for each group.

Results show that central government has procured in a more environmentally concerned way after the release of “Procurement with Impact.” Within a year, the number of green tenders conducted by central government significantly increased from 30% to 55%. No significant difference was found on a municipal level.

SPP has received increasing attention over the past few decades but has not led to implementation of its principles in most public tenders. As SPP can have a major impact on a more sustainable and social society, it is important to understand how policy can influence the sustainability of tenders. The findings of our study show that “Procurement with impact” had a significant positive short-term effect on the inclusion of green award criteria and requirements in public tenders. Implementing similar SPP policies in other government sectors and other countries could have a substantial effect on the worldwide uptake of SPP.

“Procurement with Impact” contains a clear sustainable vision embracing the principles of SPP. This government policy takes into account several SPP barriers and drivers and satisfies several policy theory conditions. The authors show in the paper that this policy is an effective instrument for increasing the inclusion of environmental concerns in tenders. As the difference is already significant within a year, this could also reflect the readiness of tenderers to turn to SPP once there is a clear organization wide policy.

In general, there are many disincentives standing in the way of promoting change in public procurement practices by government agencies. Because engaging in sustainable purchasing requires some level of entrepreneurialism and risk-taking, a sorting framework is adopted to gauge whether some organizations are systematically more likely to pursue sustainable public purchasing (SPP) efforts than others. One-way analysis of variance and other methods are applied to a survey of public procurement practitioners across over 300 governments in the U.S. Results strongly suggest that agencies of various scope and reach tend to abstain from aggressively pursuing SPP efforts. However, when they do employ SPP, these efforts tend to be quite variable across and within levels of government and organizational size. In an effort to bridge theory with empirical data, a strong case can be made that the current state of SPP in the United States is the result of random and very cautious experimentation with little systematic pattern to SPP adoption.

Sustainable public procurement (SPP) lacks common means for its operationalization within legislative latitudes. Through the translation of sustainability indicators (SIs) from CSR and corporate sustainability reporting into the needs of SPP, this paper aims to support the framing process of sustainability in public procurement. This paper does so along with the case of Switzerland.

This paper performs a typological analysis of well-established SIs from CSR reporting to propose a criteria framework for SPP. Second, this paper tests the framework’s usability and feasibility with an expert online survey conducted in the Swiss SPP landscape.

This paper proposes 10 generic criteria to frame the operationalization of SPP. Furthermore, public procurement experts from Switzerland evaluate the SPP framework as useful and feasible.

A limitation of the study can be seen in its deductive approach. Thus, it rather complements recent inductive approaches of SPP type and frame developments than replacing them. Future studies can further refine the understanding and operationalization of sustainability in public procurement.

The generic SPP criteria framework provides a common ground for the operationalization of SPP building on existing sustainability performance measurement knowledge and a frame to operationalize sustainability measurements for public tender processes.

Implementing sustainability in public procurement potentially changes market behaviors globally toward social equality and minimization of climate change impacts. This research aims to support the SPP implementation process.

To the best knowledge, this is the first attempt to directly translate established SIs from sustainability reporting into public procurement to frame SPP and to use existing sustainability measurement knowledge for its operationalization and harmonization.

The purpose of the paper is to emphasize on contamination sources of freshly cultivated vegetables commonly consumed by the Bangladeshi people. Several local studies have been conducted to detect the microbial contamination within fresh vegetables, plantation lands and the irrigation waters separately; however, the correlation of microbial contamination between the fresh produces and the surrounding environment has not been clarified.

Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo), radish (Raphanus sativus) and eggplant (Solanum melongena); their plantations soils and the fertilizers applied across the agricultural lands; and, finally, the irrigation waters used were analyzed from nine districts of Bangladesh using conventional microbiological and biochemical methods.

Almost all vegetable samples studied were found to be immensely contaminated with bacteria and fungi. Among the pathogens, Klebsiella spp., Staphylococcus spp. and Pseudomonas spp. were found to be dominant. Besides, massive microbial growth was also observed in the plantation soils and fertilizers, including Klebsiella spp., Pseudomonas spp., Bacillus spp., Listeria spp., Escherichia coli and Vibrio spp. Existence of the fecal coliforms, E. coli, Klebsiella spp., Salmonella spp. and Listeria spp., was noticed in the irrigation waters.

Although the present study revealed the combined results connecting the vegetable contamination aspect with the knowledge on microbiology ultimately in the food chain, implementation of molecular studies detecting the virulence genes both in the fresh produces and the plantation soils, fertilizers and the irrigation waters would further clarify the microbial dissemination mechanism.

Earlier studies demonstrated the ability of water bodies to disseminate numerous microorganisms into the plantation soils, and to some extent unraveled the ability of organic fertilizers to propagate pathogenic bacteria into the vegetation objects. These microorganisms may pose as a threat to vegetables, particularly by limiting crop production as well as the shelf life of the fresh produces.

The scenario of microbial divergence not only in the vegetables but also within the surroundings is gradually being heightened in Bangladesh principally due to the malpractice of sanitation, dumping the agricultural lands with feces, improperly controlled septic systems, waste water runoff across the agricultural lands, etc. Therefore, the preliminary and replicable experimental approach described in the current study would be feasible for all other developing countries to maintain the public health safety.

Growth and proliferation of microorganisms both in the vegetable samples and the environmental samples nearly to a similar extent indeed projected for the first time in Bangladesh, the agricultural perspective of the contamination sources of vegetables. Such knowledge would aid in the existing knowledge on the hygienic processing during crop production and harvesting for the sake of better consumer safety management.

Based on the social exchange theory, the aim of the present study is to examine the effects, both direct and indirect (through sustainability-oriented innovative behaviors [SIBs]), of sustainable project leadership (SPL) on sustainable project performance (SPP). Project management approaches (PMAs) (traditional, hybrid and agile) were examined as conditional factors in the “SPL–SIBs” relationship.

The study employs structural equation modeling based on data collected from 197 software engineering project team members working in the financial industry in Poland.

The study revealed that SPL significantly, positively affected SPP. It also provided evidence for the significant mediating impact of SIBs in the relationship between SPL and SPP and the conditional effect of agile and hybrid PMAs on the “SPL–SIBs” relationship.

The novelty of this work lies in introducing sustainable leadership into project management research, proposing and testing a unique and complex research framework, designing valid scales for measuring SPL and SPP, and suggesting many theoretical and empirical implications.

Encouraged by the State, the Brazilian public organizations practice sustainable procurement as one of the strategies to promote sustainable development. Performing them requires understanding to manage stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to identify and categorize the stakeholders of Brazilian public organizations’ sustainable procurement system.5

Preliminarily, the stakeholders were identified in the literature and by interviews with experts. Later, in a multi-case study, it was categorized by the model of stakeholder salience.

In general, governmental and intra-organizational stakeholders were classified as more salient. However, some stakeholders considered important by literature and experts have been categorized as less salient by organizations.

The proposed categorization is useful for the system comprehension and will serve as a basis for the development of future works, notably those who propose to understand or evaluate the sustainable public procurement (SPP). Additionally, this work aims to enlarge the knowledge and the better practices of SPP in a large emerging South American country, giving its contribution to the transition to more sustainable societies.