Search results

This study aims to investigate the potential of using polymer multi-material additive manufacturing (MMAM) to produce miniature hydraulic piston actuators combining rigid structures and flexible seals. Such actuators offer great potential for medical robots in X-ray and magnetic resonance environments, where conventional piston actuators cannot be used because of safety issues caused by metal components.

Hydraulic pistons with two different integrated flexible seal shapes are designed and manufactured using MMAM. Design 1 features a ring-shaped seal made from a flexible material that is printed on the surface of the rigid piston shaft. Design 2 appears identical from the outside, yet an axial opening in the piston shaft is added to enable self-reinforced sealing as fluid pressure increases. For both designs, samples with three different outer diameters are fabricated leading to a total of six different piston versions. The pistons are then evaluated regarding leakage, friction and durability.

Measurement results show that the friction force for Design 2 is lower than that of Design 1, making Design 2 more suitable for the intended application. None of the versions of Design 2 shows leakage for pressures up to 1.5 MPa. For Design 1, leak-tightness varies with the outer diameter, yet none of the versions is consistently leak-tight at 1.5 MPa. Furthermore, the results show that prolonged exposure to water decreases the durability of the flexible material significantly. The durability the authors observe may, however, be sufficient for short-term or single-use devices.

The authors investigate a novel design approach for hydraulic piston actuators based on MMAM. These actuators are of particular interest for patient-specific medical devices used in radiological interventions, where metal-free components are required to safely operate in X-ray and magnetic resonance environments. This study may serve as a basis for the development of new actuators, as it shows a feasible solution, yet pointing out critical aspects such as the influence of small geometry changes or material performance changes caused by water absorption.

Previous studies show that the implementation of gender equality encounters resistance in military organizations, but it is often invisible or seen as confined to anonymous structures or troubled individuals. This paper aims to show how the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) use organizational principles to resist implementing gender equality measures.

The study is a qualitative analysis of discursive strategies in the SAF’s 2013–2018 annual reports to government.

The organizing principles of instrumentality and distance, while existing in parallel with gender equality efforts, actually pursue logics that prevents the SAF from implementing gender equality. The principle of instrumentality in this context means that gender equality in the SAF is of secondary interest to organizational members. The principle of distancing from the problem includes strategies that alienate female from male officers.

The contribution of this paper is the finding that the use of organizing principles represents conscious organizational resistance to gender equality efforts. This kind of use needs to be revealed and criticized to change military organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the intended and unintended consequences of compliance and auditing pressures in the Bangladeshi garment industry. To explore this issue the authors draw on three medium-sized suppliers. The institutional changes that followed the Rana Plaza accident in April 2013 make Bangladesh in general and the garment industry in particular an interesting and suitable research setting for standards compliance.

The study adopts a multiple case study approach. Face-to-face interviews have been conducted with the owners of three Bangladeshi garment manufacturing firms and several workers. Additionally, organisational documents and local newspaper articles had been collected wherever possible.

The results indicate that the pressure for compliance has led the case companies to prioritise the implementation of measurable standards over the socially grounded needs and priorities of workers. As a consequence certain initiatives instead of adding new social value in fact destroyed previously existing social value. Furthermore, the pressure for compliance created the necessity to find ways to cover the sizable cost of compliance. This prompted firms to pursue process upgrading through technological advancements and increased work pressures on the labour force. These initiatives led to an increased power imbalance and the exclusion of unskilled workers from the job market.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the human rights implications of compliance and auditing pressures and initiatives. Furthermore, in order to further enrich existing knowledge in the critical accounting literature, the study draws on insights from the global value chains (GVC) and international business (IB) literatures.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the human rights implications of compliance and auditing pressures and initiatives. Furthermore, in order to further enrich existing knowledge in the critical accounting literature, the study draws on insights from the GVC and IB literatures.

Existing public–private partnership (PPP) literature that explicitly adopts neo-institutional theory, tends to elucidate the impact of isomorphic pressures and organizational fields and structuration on PPP projects. This paper advances this literature by presenting the institutional work and micro-level dynamics through which actors initiate and implement a new form of project delivery. The authors show how actors enact responses to institutional structuration in the expansion and transformation of an airport from a public entity into a PPP in Saudi Arabia.

The authors use a single case study design that offers an empirically rich and thick description of events such as the dynamic processes, practices and types of institutional work carried out by actors and organizations to deliver the project under investigation.

Religious symbolic work as social integration triggered system integration work, which expanded the power capabilities of individual actors leading the project. Repair work then followed to alleviate the negative effects of disempowering the agency of actors negatively affected by the PPP model and to streamline the project implementation process.

This research offers several practical implications. For PPPs to operate successfully in contexts similar to the Gulf region, policymakers should provide strong political support and be willing to bear a considerable risk of losses or minimal outcomes during the early phases of experimentation with PPPs. Also, policymakers should not only focus their attention on technical requirements of PPPs but also associate new meanings with the normative and cultural-cognitive elements that are integral to the success of PPP implementation. In order to design strategies for change that are designed to fit the unique cultural and sociopolitical settings of each country, policymakers should empower capable individual actors and provide them with resources and access to power, which will enable them to enforce changes that diverge from institutionalized practices.

This research connected the PPP literature with theoretical frameworks drawn from neo-institutional theory and power. It would be valuable for further research, however, to connect ideas from the PPP literature with other disciplines such as psychology and social entrepreneurship. PPP research examines a recent phenomenon that can potentially be combined with non-traditional streams of research in analyzing projects. Expanding the realm of PPP research beyond traditional theoretical boundaries could potentially yield exciting insights into how the overall institutional and psychological environments surrounding projects affect their initiation and implementation.

The paper contributes new insights regarding the roles of religious symbolic work, allied with social and system integration of power relations in implementing PPP projects. It suggests a theoretical shift from structures and organizational fields – macro- and meso-levels of analysis – to individuals – micro-level – as triggers of new forms of project delivery that break with the status quo.

COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be enacted in the future of the sustainable workplace. The objective of the study is to examine the patterns of management control change in the Big 4 accounting firms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adopting an exploratory qualitative research design, the authors draw on 42 interviews with directors and associates in the Big 4 professional services firms.

The findings reveal two pathways of management control change including alignment and displacement. The authors found that relatively minor adaptions to action and result controls were relied upon to respond to substantial cultural and personnel control changes.

The contributions are threefold: the authors take a temporal perspective to (1) unpack the changes to management control arrangements; (2) theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways encompassing pace, scope and longevity of management control change and (3) contextualise management control arrangements in a hybrid work setting.

1. COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.

2. Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.

3. The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.

4. Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.

5. The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.

COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.

Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.

The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.

Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.

The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.

This study intends to understand if managerial coaching, a sustainable competitive strategy, has an impact on sales performance, through customer and results orientation of the salesforce. It also aims to investigate whether pressure for results, one of the predominant demands in organizations today, and the centralisation of decisions, a traditional management demand still present in several organizations, undermine the effect of coaching on performance.

The 167 responses collected, through the distribution of questionnaires among workers in the commercial area, were analysed through a structural equation model using the partial least square (PLS) technique.

The results of this study confirm that managerial coaching has a positive impact on sales force performance through customer and results orientation, with customer orientation having a greater impact on performance. It was also found that centralised decision-making and pressure for results do not undermine the relationship between managerial coaching and performance, and they even reinforce the positive impact of results orientation on performance.

Managerial coaching practices can impact sales, especially when associated with customer orientation, freeing employees from the pressure for results and the centralisation demands. This scenario favours a more sustainable and emancipatory sales force management.

This study is the first to integrate organizational demands, namely pressure for results and centralisation, to better understand the effect of managerial coaching on sales performance, through customer and results orientation, thereby extending previous research on this topic.

This study aims to study the gas film stiffness of the spiral groove dry gas seal.

The present study represents the first attempt to calculate gas film stiffness in consideration of the slipping effect by using the new test technology for dry gas seals. First, a theoretical model of modified generalized Reynolds equation is derived with slipping effect of a micro gap for spiral groove gas seal. Second, the test technology examines micro-scale gas film vibration and stationary ring vibration to determine gas film stiffness by establishing a dynamic test system.

An optimum value of the spiral angle and groove depth for improved gas film stiffness is clearly seen: the spiral angle is 1.34 rad (76.8º) and the groove depth is 1 × 10^–5 m. Moreover, it can be observed that optimal structural parameters can obtain higher gas film stiffness in the experiment. The average error between experiment and theory is less than 20%.

The present study represents the first attempt to calculate gas film stiffness in consideration of the slipping effect by using the new test technology for dry gas seals.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of organisational conditions and workplace characteristics in midcareer and senior employees’ intention to volitionally provide career support to junior organisational members, their protégés.

Hypotheses are tested using multilevel linear modelling on a heterogeneous sample of Dutch employees ages 29 to 69 who participated in a vignette study in the autumn of 2017.

In line with the hypotheses, the findings of this study show that volitional (informal) mentoring is positively related to an organisation’s endorsement of intrinsic values (e.g. learning opportunities) and negatively to the presence of hindrance demands (e.g. time pressure).

Practitioners could facilitate co-mentor consultation, employ autonomy-supportive direct supervisors and fulfil psychological contract obligations by providing job security and learning opportunities. Organisations could also lower time pressures through job carving.

This study extends extant mentoring research by combining insights from perceived organisational support (POS) and self-determination theory (SDT) to examine the role organisational conditions and workplace characteristics play in aiding or hindering volitional mentoring. It enriches extant knowledge management studies on the link between organisational aspects and (intended) knowledge sharing behaviour by showing that similar organisational motivators predict volitional mentoring, thereby launching a call to study knowledge management through volitional mentoring using a SDT- and POS-based lens. A methodological novelty is the reliance on a vignette study.

In developing countries, how risk management technologies influence management accounting and control (MAC) practices is under-researched. By drawing on insights from institutional studies, this study aims to examine the multiple institutional pressures surrounding an entity and influencing its risk-based management control (RBC) system – that is, how RBC appears in an emerging market attributed to institutional multiplicity.

The authors used qualitative case study research methods to collect empirical evidence from a privately owned Egyptian insurance company.

The authors observed that in the transformation to risk-based controls, especially in socio-political settings such as Egypt, changes in MAC systems were consistent with the shifts in the institutional context. Along with changes in the institutional environment, the case company sought to configure its MAC system to be more risk-based to achieve its strategic goals effectively and maintain its sustainability.

This research provides a fuller view of risk-based management controls based on the social, professional and political perspectives central to the examined institutional environment. Moreover, unlike early studies that reported resistance to RBC, this case reveals the institutional dynamics contributing to the successful implementation of RBC in an emerging market.

This study aims to examine the contribution of board role performance and isomorphic forces on internet financial reporting.

This study is cross-sectional and correlational. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 40 financial services firms. The study’s unit of analysis was a firm. Chief Internal Auditors and Chief Finance Officers were the study’s unit of inquiry. Data were analyzed through correlation coefficients and linear regression using Statistical Package for Social Sciences.

The results suggest that board role performance and isomorphic forces are significant predictors of internet financial reporting. However, board role performance is not a significant predictor of internet financial reporting in the presence of isomorphic forces. The control and strategic roles of the board are positively and significantly associated with internet financial reporting unlike the service role. Only the coercive isomorphism is positively and significantly associated with internet financial reporting unlike the normative and mimetic isomorphism.

This study provides initial empirical evidence on the contribution of board role performance and isomorphic forces on internet financial reporting using evidence from Uganda’s financial service firms. To the researcher’s knowledge, this is the first perception-based study on internet financial reporting.