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The purpose of this paper is to present a surgical robot for spinal fusion and its control framework that provides higher operation accuracy, greater flexibility of robot position control, and improved ergonomics.

A human‐guided robot for the spinal fusion surgery has been developed with a dexterous end‐effector that is capable of high‐speed drilling for cortical layer gimleting and tele‐operated insertion of screws into the vertebrae. The end‐effector is position‐controlled by a five degrees‐of‐freedom robot body that has a kinematically closed structure to withstand strong reaction force occurring in the surgery. The robot also allows the surgeon to control cooperatively the position and orientation of the end‐effector in order to provide maximum flexibility in exploiting his or her expertise. Also incorporated for improved safety is a “drill‐by‐wire” mechanism wherein a screw is tele‐drilled by the surgeon in a mechanically decoupled master/slave system. Finally, a torque‐rendering algorithm that adds synthetic open‐loop high‐frequency components on feedback torque increases the realism of tele‐drilling in the screw‐by‐wire mechanism.

Experimental results indicated that this assistive robot for spinal fusion performs drilling tasks within the static regulation errors less than 0.1 μm for position control and less than 0.05° for orientation control. The users of the tele‐drilling reported subjectively that they experienced torque feedback similar to that of direct screw insertion.

Although the robotic surgery system itself has been developed, integration with surgery planning and tracking systems is ongoing. Thus, the screw insertion accuracy of a whole surgery system with the assistive robot is to be investigated in the near future.

The paper arguably pioneers the dexterous end‐effector appropriately designed for spinal fusion, the cooperative robot position‐control algorithm, the screw‐by‐wire mechanism for indirect screw insertion, and the torque‐rendering algorithm for more realistic torque feedback. In particular, the system has the potential of circumventing the screw‐loosening problem, a common defect in the conventional surgeon‐operated or robot‐assisted spinal fusion surgery.

This paper aims to examine information system (IS) outsourcing success through the satisfaction achieved therewith. It simultaneously analyzes how IS outsourcing may influence the IS managers’ job.

The results obtained in a survey on this topic carried out over a 12-year period are described. The proposal consists in a model that relates the degree of outsourcing with the satisfaction achieved therewith, in which the influence exerted by IS on the systems manager’s job acts as a mediating variable.

The study concludes that the way in which outsourcing affects the IS managers positively influences the satisfaction achieved with this service.

Outsourcing poses a great challenge for IS managers because they must devote more time to their managerial functions, and they need more knowledge too. These greater requirements or demands will most probably make these executives feel unsatisfied with outsourcing. However, the paper shows that satisfaction increases insofar as, despite all these demands, the working post characteristics improve, and the satisfaction and autonomy of IS managers grows and most importantly, they believe that their job has a higher added value.

No studies had, hitherto, related outsourcing success and the implications of outsourcing for IS managers.

People can easily track and understand their usage pattern for any content (e.g. movies, games) or service (e.g. card payment, cell phone usage) by using technologies such as the internet and smart phones. When consumers evaluate their past consumption patterns, they may experience two different kinds of regret: content-based or monetary-based. The purpose of this paper is to propose that perceived self-control, defined as the extent to which people believe they can control their usage, plays a moderating role in the tariff-choice process (flatrate vs pay-per-use) for two types of content: vice-based and virtue-based.

Two laboratory experiments were designed to test the hypotheses. There were a total of 200 participants (86 for Experiment 1 and 114 for Experiment 2) who completed the entire experimental process (i.e. stimulus exposure, questionnaire reporting, dependent variable measurement, manipulation of the independent variables, and control checks).

The results of this research provide evidence supporting the role of perceived self-control in tariff preference by showing that preference varies between flat-rate and pay-per-use tariff options. Specifically, virtue-based content users were more likely to prefer the pay-per-use tariff when their perceived self-control was low vs when it was high. In contrast, vice-based content users were more likely to prefer the flat-rate tariff when their perceived self-control was low vs when it was high.

There are three contributions of the present research. First, the authors investigated the effect of content type on tariff preference. Second, the authors suggest that there is a moderating effect of perceived self-control on tariff preference. Third, this study revealed the factors affecting consumers’ perceived self-control.

The causal conditions leading to successful human resources outsourcing (HRO) have until now attracted only limited research attention. To address this shortcoming, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how a firm and a HR provider should work together to ensure successful HRO.

By applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, the authors demonstrate how combining in different ways provider quality, business understanding, trust, and closed HRO networks can lead to HRO success. In addition, this study compares the causal combinations between cases with differing levels of HR-task interdependence and IT use.

The results of this study reveal three common solutions that lead to successful HRO from both economic and relational viewpoints. The findings also indicate that, from an economic viewpoint, trust is a core condition for achieving HRO success. Moreover, HR-task interdependence and IT use alter the number of solutions and the conditions for attaining HRO success.

Based on the solutions proposed herein, firms can consider different ways to achieve HRO success under diverse conditions.

This work also contributes to building new theories regarding HRO, trust, knowledge sharing, and IT use.

This paper investigates and illustrates the potential of using panorama virtual reality to enhance Web‐based library instruction. It describes a project in Sterling C. Evans Library at Texas A&M University that emulates a physical tour and renders it into an attention‐getting virtual tour with 360‐degree realistic views. The paper outlines three progressive developments in the use of tour as an instructional medium: the “physical tour”, the “Web virtual tour”, and the “virtual reality tour”. The project illustrates that panorama VR could be a powerful tool to combine the “physical tour” and the “Web‐based virtual tour” into one, making it a more useful medium that allows navigating, viewing, reading, hearing and remote access. The issues of design, hardware, software, and cost are addressed. The discussion also includes an overview of the Internet‐based VR technologies, a literature review of using VR technologies for learning and some considerations on future applications of panorama‐based virtual reality.

Cross-functional teams engage in developing platform projects which become the basis of many smaller projects. The purpose of this paper is to examine how project teams engage in front-end plan formulation and backend work implementation. This paper shows the critical linkage role of platform product practices.

This study examines the conceptual framework and research model by using a survey questionnaire for the target respondents of product development managers from the USA and Korea. After refining processes, this study determines the items for each variable for the large-scale survey.

Results suggest that when heavy-manager and customers are jointly or separately involved with a project team for the formation of shared team purpose and mission, then there would be differences in terms of information quality, shared team purpose and mission and the project outcomes. If the primary roles of heavyweight leadership and customer involvement are to improve information quality in terms of reduction of uncertainty and equivocality, then the project team is empowered enough to work on the formation of shared team purpose and mission on their own. Platform product practices are a linkage between front-end planning and back-end work doing which guides more specific projects with shared purpose and performance goals.

As the data collection was limited to the USA and Korea, generalizability across diverse contexts requires caution. However, the findings provide meaningful insight on how to manage projects in an environment of increasing complexity and ambiguity.

This study provides interesting insight into how project teams approach platform product development. Based on the empirical test, this study shows how cross-functional teams integrate front-end project plan formulation and back-end project work implementation. This study also presents how heavyweight manager and customer involvement addresses the front-end information challenges and influence platform product practices.

This study empirically tests the role of fuzzy front planning in impacting project team success. In particular, this study highlights the dynamic relationships between heavyweight managers and customer involvement, information quality (i.e. uncertainty and equivocality), and the nature of team purpose and mission which are all crucial for effective cross-functional teamwork.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roots of police corruption, evaluate the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures, and suggest recommendations to prevent and control police corruption in South Korea.

This paper adopts a qualitative approach to identify the key causes and to assess the reform agenda of police corruption in South Korea. In doing so, it introduces a brief history and profile of the police force, explores changes in police corruption, identifies the roots of police corruption, assesses the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures and offers policy recommendations to curb corruption in the South Korean police.

This paper claims that conventional and current anti-corruption measures have not been effective in minimizing police corruption in South Korea. It identifies the scope of police work and duties without proper accountability, a code of silence in police organizations, the low ethical standards of police officers and weak punitive measures against corrupt police officers as the main causes of corruption. Strenuous reform efforts that directly target these causes are needed to reduce corruption in the South Korean police.

This paper will be a useful reference for readers who are interested in why corruption has not been effectively prevented and controlled in the South Korean police.

During the past decades, several researchers have introduced devices that use sonar systems to detect and/or to determine the object location or to measure the distance to an object using reflected sound waves. The purpose of this paper is to use sonar sensor with textile structure and to test it for detection of objects.

In this study, a sonar system based on intelligent textiles approach for detection of objects has been developed. In order to do this, ultrasonic sensor has been integrated to textile structures by using conductive yarns. Furthermore, an electronic circuit has been designed; PIC 16F877 microcontroller unit has been used to convert the measured signal to meaningful data and to assess the data. The algorithm enabling the objects detection has also been developed. Finally, smart textile structure integrated with ultrasonic sensor has been tested for detection of objects.

Beam shape is presented related to identified object and compared with the actual one given in sensor's datasheet in order to test the efficiency of the proposed method of detection. The achieved results showed that the determined beam pattern matches with the actual one given in its datasheet. Therefore, it can be concluded that the integration of sensor was successful.

This is the first time in the literature that a sonar sensor was integrated into textile structure and tested for detection of objects.