Search results

From a relational political brand perspective, newly elected governments are primarily concerned with maintaining the trust of the electoral coalition that brought them in office in order to secure their re-election. Hence, as Needham (2005) has suggested, governing parties tend to employ a political communication strategy aimed at promoting an effective brand consisted of six components: simplicity, uniqueness, reassurance, aspiration, values and credibility. In this context, this study examines the communication strategies of three Greek governments (PASOK, New Democracy and SYRIZA) in the period 2009–2019 that failed to be re-elected once they implemented the bail-out packages, against the six branding criteria. Following a qualitative methodological approach, this chapter analyses the key speeches of the respective prime ministers along with polling evidence and secondary data. It argues that all these three governments failed to be re-elected once they implemented the memoranda, not only because of the unpopular nature of the austerity measures but also because of their failure to fully retain their political brands in office since they hardly succeed to deliver on their promises, though it is unclear whether they employed self-consciously such a branding strategy.

The authors conceptually theorize the obstacles and opportunities that women encounter in family businesses embedded in Latin America, by differentiating between two clusters of countries embedded in this continent.

Using secondary data obtained from various sources, the authors adopted a flexible pattern matching methodology, which involves linking theoretical propositions with actual observed patterns. For each proposition, the authors categorize the comparison with the observed data as either confirming or rivaling the expected patterns in the clusters.

This study’s findings reveal that women have more leadership and employment opportunities in the first cluster (Brazil, Chile, and Mexico) than in the second (Argentina, Colombia, and Peru). The authors propose that these differences are the result of higher tolerance for women in political leadership positions and of the presence of larger and more internationally expanding corporations in the first cluster. We also find differences between two groups of women: female family members and female nonfamily members, with the former being granted much more opportunities than the latter.

This research increases the understanding of potential avenues for managers and policymakers in Latin America to foster gender diversity as a means to remain competitive in a global market. While actions at the state level may be more long-term oriented, others, such as those taken by small and medium-sized family businesses may have more immediate effects in minimizing gender biases and encouraging a greater participation of females in business.

By differentiating between two clusters of countries in Latin America, and by making careful consideration of whether females have family ties, the authors provide a more realistic and contextualized theoretical map that depicts the situation of women in Latin American family businesses. This contextualization is one of the first that attempts to examine how multiple institutional logics impact women in family businesses in an underexplored region of the world while differentiating between female family members and female nonfamily members. These findings inform policymakers and family business owners in Latin America on the peculiar challenges that women encounter in their context, while calling for more measures promote the active presence of females in Latin American family businesses.

The purpose of this study is to explore the drivers for proactive workplace social performance in family firms through a configurational approach. Comparative research on family versus non-family firms and workplace social performance has produced mixed results. Consequently, several calls have been made to account for family business heterogeneity to understand better how family involvement in the business affects the workplace social performance. The authors respond to these calls by exploring the governance antecedents that can catalyze family firms’ workplace social performance.

Using qualitative comparative analysis, the authors analyze 131 family firms from the STEP survey data.

The authors find two governance configurations that lead to better family business workplace social performance. The first configuration is the combination of 100% family ownership, high family involvement in management and a mix of outside directors and family members on the board. The second configuration is the combination of less than 100% family ownership and low family involvement in management.

The study builds on and extends the nascent work suggesting the integration of agency and stewardship theories. The authors show that these two theoretical approaches are able to not only coexist, but that they can also be complementary in helping to understand the unique workplace social behaviors of family firms.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the aircraft design problems which can be efficiently solved using a special solid finite‐element model of variable density.

Optimization algorithms based on fully‐stressed design philosophy, sensitivity coefficients, and employing material density as a design variable provide means to generate optimal topology layouts, subject to a wide range of design constraints. A novel non‐dimensional criterion is used for assessment of load‐carrying efficiency of structures and knowledge accumulation.

Variable density model, together with non‐dimensional criterion of structural efficiency, yields a new versatile approach to a structural weight estimation at early design stages. New weight equations are used. The approach is a powerful tool for addressing complex multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) problems such as aerodynamic load prediction taking aeroelastic deformations into account and aerodynamic‐structural design optimization of unconventional aircraft configurations.

For accurate estimation of wing weight and deflections, the method should be tuned by regression analysis of existing aircraft to properly account for secondary structural weight.

The developed software tools for aeroelastic behaviour prediction and coupled aerodynamic‐structural design optimization are ready for integration into the complex MDO framework.

The variable density model is shown to have broad predictive opportunities for design problems at early stages of a product development.

Adolescents are a vulnerable age group in the human life cycle for the development of anemia. Despite limited health infrastructures, there are limited studies in the pastoral community of the Afar region. Thus, this study aims to assess anemia and associated factors among adolescent school girls in the Aysaita district, the pastoral community of the Afar region, Ethiopia.

An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 522 randomly selected adolescent girls in the Aysaita district. A pretested structured questionnaire was used to collect data, and a systematic random sampling technique was used using school registration rosters. Hemoglobin was measured using a complete blood count machine from the vein blood sample. Anthropometric measurements were done to assess the nutritional status of adolescents. Descriptive logistic regression analysis was used to summarize the results and identify the factors associated with anemia.

In this study, the prevalence of anemia among adolescent school girls was 109 (21.7%) [95% CI: (18.1%, 25.3%)]. School adolescent girls from rural residence [adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 3.42, 95% CI (1.97, 5.94)], who had a minimum dietary diversity score less than 4 [AOR = 3.4, 95% CI (2.1, 5.42)] and menstrual duration 5 and above days [AOR = 2.34, 95% CI (1.36, 4.01)] were associated with increased odds of anemia.

This is original manuscript. Not submitted and published elsewhere.

This paper aims to describe main ideas and demonstrates results of the research activities carried out by the authors in the field of optimal design concepts for induction heater for surface hardening. The main goal of the research studies is the application of different optimization methods and numerical finite element method (FEM) codes for field analysis to solve the optimal design problem that is mathematically formulated in terms of the one of the most important optimization criteria for surface hardening technology, e.g. maximum temperature uniformity within the hardening surface layer.

Evolutionary algorithm based on Adaptive Gaussian Process-Assisted Differential Evolution for MEMS Design Optimization (AGDEMO) and alternance method of parametric optimization based on optimal control theory are applied as effective tools for the practice-oriented problem for optimization of induction heater design based on non-linear coupled electromagnetic and temperature field analysis. Different approaches are used for combining FEM codes for interconnected field analysis and optimization algorithms into automated optimization procedure.

Optimization procedures are tested and investigated for optimal design problem solution on the examples of induction hardening of steel cylindrical billet.

Solved problems are based on the design of practical industrial applications. The developed optimization procedures are planned to be applied to the wide range of real-life problems of the optimal design of different electromagnetic devices and systems.

This paper describes main ideas and results of the research activities carried out by the authors in the field of optimal design of induction heaters for hardening based on numerical coupled electromagnetic and temperature field analysis. The implementation of the automated procedure that combines a numerical FEM code for coupled field analysis with an optimization algorithm and its subsequent application for designing induction heaters makes the proposed approach specific and original. This paper also demonstrates that different optimization strategies used (evolutionary algorithm based on AGDEMO and alternance method of optimal control theory) are effective for real-life industrial applications for optimization of induction heaters design.

One of the challenges encountered in the design of guided projectiles is their prohibitive cost. To diminish it, an appropriate avenue many researchers have explored is the use of the non-actuator method for guiding the projectile to the target. In this method, biologically inspired by the flying concept of the single-winged seed, for instance, that of maple and ash trees, the projectile undergoes a helical motion to scan the region and meet the target in the descent phase. Indeed, the projectile is a decelerator device based on the autorotation flight while it attempts to resemble the seed’s motion using two wings of different spans. There exists a wealth of studies on the stability of the decelerators (e.g. the mono-wing, samara and pararotor), but all of them have assumed the body (exclusive of the wing) to be symmetric and paid no particular attention to the scanning quality of the region. In practice, however, the non-actuator-guided projectiles are asymmetric owing to the presence of detection sensors. This paper aims to present an analytical solution for stability analysis of asymmetric decelerators and apprise the effects of design parameters to improve the scanning quality.

The approach of this study is to develop a theoretical model consisting of Euler equations and apply a set of non-dimensionalized equations to reduce the number of involved parameters. The obtained governing equations are readily applicable to other decelerator devices, such as the mono-wing, samara and pararotor.

The results show that the stability of the body can be preserved under certain conditions. Moreover, pertinent conclusions are outlined on the sensitivity of flight behavior to the variation of design parameters.

The analytical solution and sensitivity analysis presented here can efficiently reduce the design cost of the asymmetric decelerator.

The study reveals how the role of the largest cities – regional capitals in the urban settlement system – and the economy of the country changed during the period of social and economic transformations at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The object of the study is the largest cities with a population of over 1 million people, the administrative centers of the regions. Unlike Moscow and St. Petersburg, these are administrative centers or “capitals” of large territories that have the status of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation. The authors emphasize the special role of cities – regional capitals in post-socialist and developing countries – where there are significant and rapid changes in the distribution of functions between the center and the regions. At the same time, cities – regional capitals – are not considered as isolated objects, but as elements of a national settlement system, the leaders among Russian second-tier cities. The common features of the evolution of the largest regional capitals, the continuity of the factors of city formation, are revealed. Considerable attention is paid to assessing the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union for the development of the urban settlement system. It was concluded that the “compensatory” nature of the accelerated growth of the largest regional capitals in post-Soviet Russia. “Compensatory” growth is considered as a form of adaptation of the urban settlement system to the weakening of links between its essential links. A methodical approach is proposed that allows a comparative analysis of the role of the largest regional capitals and the capital of the state in the economy of the country. In the process of testing it, an assessment was made of population dynamics, as well as key economic indicators, such as the volume of products shipped, retail turnover, investments, the volume of work in the construction of major regional pages, as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg. The evaluation results allowed the classification of the largest regional capitals in terms of their role in the economic development of the country, as well as in terms of the extent of the gap between the indicators; on the one hand, the largest regional capitals, and on the other, Moscow and St. Petersburg.