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Purpose – This article describes a theoretical model that allows understanding, explaining, and measuring the perceived organizational effectiveness of multinational coalition operations’ headquarters.

Design/methodology/approach – The proposed model is based on subject matter experts’ opinions and on existing general and military models of organizational effectiveness. It is tailored to the particular case of coalition operations’ headquarters.

Findings – The model includes input factors such as structure and processes, people and organizational culture as well as the operative and official goals of the organization. It especially emphasizes the degree of fit, or alignment, among them.

Originality/value – This comprehensive model provides a solid basis for (a) capturing the perceived effectiveness of people deployed in such headquarters, (b) for determining influencing factors in order to identify barriers and, if required, (c) for deducing improvement opportunities for organizational effectiveness of these coalition operations’ headquarters.

The west surgery wing of the University Hospital “Insel” in Bern, which was completed in 1971, no longer meets operational requirements. A decision was made in 1995 that it must be completely renovated. The INO renovation project embraces in particular the Intensive care, Emergency and Surgery Centre. The Building Department of the Canton of Bern, which is responsible for overseeing construction work on the Insel hospital, is pursuing an open building method for the INO project to ensure that the “serviced structure” of the building (with main utility infrastructure) will continue to be highly adaptable, and that the components of the building are interchangeable and reusable. Building sections with differing service lives and designated purposes are therefore kept consistently separate in the planning and execution phases. The use of separate (discrete) systems anticipates the long-term life cycle of the building, and thus safeguards its value in terms of future use. Work is divided into discrete system levels: the primary system (building shell) is designed for a service life of 50 to 100 years, the secondary system (fit-out) for 15 to 50 years and the tertiary system (hospital equipment) for 5 to 15 years.

The project is currently in the execution phase and is being developed in three stages. The 1st stage, the primary system, was completed at the end of 2002, the other stages have not yet been implemented. The 1st stage of the INO project is to go into operation by 2006 and the 2nd stage by 2009.

The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and human resources management researchers, we aim to contribute to the respective bodies of knowledge to provide both employers and employees with a workable foundation to help with those problems they are confronted with. However, what research on research has consistently demonstrated is that the scientific endeavor possesses existential issues including a substantial lack of (a) solid theory, (b) replicability, (c) reproducibility, (d) proper and generalizable samples, (e) sufficient quality control (i.e., peer review), (f) robust and trustworthy statistical results, (g) availability of research, and (h) sufficient practical implications. In this chapter, we first sing a song of sorrow regarding the current state of the social sciences in general and personnel and human resources management specifically. Then, we investigate potential grievances that might have led to it (i.e., questionable research practices, misplaced incentives), only to end with a verse of hope by outlining an avenue for betterment (i.e., open science and policy changes at multiple levels).

This study aims to analyze the use of two concepts, propaganda and advertisement, in two areas of Swedish society during the 1930s; first, their use by the advertisement business, and second, their use by the Swedish Cooperative Union and Wholesale Society.

By adopting a perspective of conceptual history, inspired by Reinhart Koselleck, the author is trying to pinpoint the meanings that were ascribed to these concepts in a 1930s context, the interdependency between these concepts and other keywords that were used in connection with them.

The study reveals how the ambiguous and synonymous use of these concepts served different purposes in the two fields of study. In the 1930s, propaganda was a key concept of communication and was used in manifold ways for selling goods and disseminating ideas. Propaganda was used to explain the newly introduced American marketing terminology. During the 1930s, the field of advertisement was trying to change what previously had been labeled as “idea propaganda” into “advertisement.” The ambiguous use of concepts made it possible for the Swedish Cooperative Union and Wholesale Society to combine advertisement for their produced goods with disseminating ideas of the cooperative ideology. The concepts of enlightenment (upplysning) and propaganda were crucial to hold together the ideological and commercial parts of the cooperative movement.

The interaction of meanings between commercial and political concepts is rarely researched in conceptual history or marketing history, which this article advocates to be an important field of study.

We investigate causes for the cost overrun and delay of the railway project Stuttgart 21. Besides, we try to forecast the actual costs and completion date at an early stage.

The results of exploratory research show the causes for the cost overrun and delay of Stuttgart 21; we compare our findings with other railway projects. To estimate the costs at an early stage, the reference class forecasting (RCF) model is applied; to estimate the time, we apply an OLS regression.

We find that the following causes are relevant for the cost overrun and delay of Stuttgart 21: scope changes, geological conditions, high risk-taking propensity, extended implementation, price overshoot, conflict of interests and lack of citizens' participation. The current estimated costs are within our 95% confidence interval based on RCF; our time forecast underestimates or substantially overestimates the duration actually required.

A limitation of our approach is the low number of comparable projects which are available.

The use of hyperbolic function or stepwise exponential discount function can help to give a clearer picture of the costs and benefits. The straightforward use of the RFC for costs and OLS for time should motivate more decision-makers to estimate the actual costs and time which are necessary in the light of the rising demand for democratic participation amongst citizens.

More realistic estimates can help to reduce the significant distortion at the beginning of infrastructure projects.

We are among the first who use the RCF to estimate the costs in Germany. Furthermore, the hyperbolic discounting function is added as a further theoretical explanation for cost underestimation.

The purpose of this paper is to numerically study the dissolution of solid particles using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method.

To implement dissolution, an advection–diffusion mass transport equation is solved over computational particles. Subsequently, these particles disintegrate from the solute when their concentration falls below a certain threshold.

It is shown that the implementation of dissolution is in good agreement with available data in the literature. The dissolution of solid particles is studied for a wide range of Reynolds and Schmidt numbers. Two-dimensional (2D) results are compared with three-dimensional (3D) cases to identify where 2D results are accurate for modelling 3D dissolution phenomena.

The present numerical model is capable of addressing related problems in pharmaceutical, biochemical, food processing and detergent industries.