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This case aims to assist students to learn about leadership theory and leadership effectiveness in terms of organizational change. It is best suited for undergraduate courses in leadership development, organizational behavior and specific teaching modules in Master in Business Administration courses.

Leadership and leadership effectiveness; organizational change.

This case is about a decade (2010–2020) of a transformation journey of the School of Business at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU). Dr Durnin has been the first female Dean of School of Business in Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) who made this transformation possible and continuing on. With listening ears and a supportive heart, Dr Durnin first moved faculty and staff members out of a “sick” office building and then created a supportive and collaborative culture to build the consensus among faculty and staff members to change for good. It has been her personalized influence, charisma and extraordinary upward negotiation that lead the School to shape its collective effort toward a multi-year Association to Advance Collegiate School of Business accreditation process since 2014. When dealing the uncertainty caused by the 2020 global pandemic, her autonomy-supportive approach once again connected people meaningfully together to excel the challenges brought by COVID-19 pandemic.

This case provides an example of female leader in higher education to illustrate a successful transformational leadership (TFL) example in the USA, as well as its implications on gender issues and leadership effectiveness. Upon completing the analysis of this case, students should be able to: – understand the TFL concepts, theory and its behavioral implications on gender and leadership effectiveness; and – assess and evaluate effectiveness of TFL styles in organizations.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or e-mail support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 6: Human resources.

Transformational leadership, Organizational change, Gender and leadership effectiveness

Transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) are individuals that migrate from one country to another, concurrently maintaining business-related linkages with their former country of origin and currently adopted countries and communities. TEs are active social actors who enact networks, ideas, information and practices for the purpose of seeking business opportunities or maintaining businesses within dual-social fields, which, in turn, force them to engage in varied strategies of action to promote their entrepreneurial activities (Drori, Honig & Wright, 2009). This case research focused on the ethic, legal and cultural challenges TE has been facing when operating their business across boards.

The data used in this case were collected from mainly third-parties, including the office de la protection du consommateur; Office of consumer protection (OPC), securities and exchange commission (SEC) reports, news as well as marketing materials posted on public media by Sinorama Corp. and Vacances Sinorama. The authors conducted interviews with former employees of Vacances Sinorama to gain the understanding of the owners and the business challenges faced during the years of operation. The authors also communicated with the OPC through to obtain specific case-related information through the Canadian freedom of information channels. Triangulation of such information from multiple resources had been conducted to validate and support the details described in the case content.

A Chinese immigrant couple migrated to Canada and started Vacances Sinorama Inc. (“Vacances Sinorama”) in 2005. The focus of this case is on the expansion of their travel businesses after 2015. In 2016, they established a financing shell company, Sinorama Corporation (“Sinorama Corp.”), in Florida, USA, which became the holding company to the operation subsidiaries. Born during the 1970s and raised in Mainland China, the owners were culturally traditional and operated the company with the values and norms from their heritage culture. Vacances Sinorama successfully penetrated the local tourism market using Web-based technology and aggressive low-pricing strategies after the scaling-up strategies. However, Vacances Sinorama was operating in the red for several consecutive years (2015–2018). Sinorama Corp. received additional capital of US$4.4m by listing a portion of its shares on the NASDAQ over-the-counter market during 2016 and 2017. Canadian regulators began to investigate its operational and financing activities in 2017. They found a comingling of client and operation funds, which directly violated Canadian consumer protection laws. As a result of these violations, the license for Vacances Sinorama was nonrenewed in August 2018. The majority of owners fought to overturn the regulators’ decision and failed at all levels of appeal, administrative and judicial. This entrepreneurial endeavor ended with Vacances Sinorama declaring bankruptcy in October of 2018.

This multipurpose teaching case aims to assist students from an integrated approach whom are learning about entrepreneurship, international business, business law and business ethics. It is best suited for advanced undergraduate courses in entrepreneurship, business ethics, international business and business law as well as specific teaching modules in MBA courses.

Wear greatly influences the machine lifetime, performance and reliability and its quantification is very important. This paper aims to propose a modified bearing area curve method by combining the theory of the bearing area curve, and the relocation technique to calculate wear accurately and efficiently.

H13 steel was chosen as the material of wear pair, and the wear experiments were carried out at 50 N, 60 r/min for 20 min. The surface was measured before and after wear experiments. The relocation was made by comparing the mean lines (planes) of the unworn and worn surface profiles. The calculated results using the proposed method were compared with that of the surface profile method for a two-dimensional surface to validate its accuracy. The method was then applied for a three-dimensional (3D) wear analysis.

The worn surface shows clearly displacement compared to the unworn surface and implies the importance of including relocation in the bearing area curve method. The results from the proposed method are 98 per cent close to that from the surface profile method, indicating that the method is accurate for wear evaluation.

As no feature point or relocation mark is needed to calculate the relocation value using the proposed method, the method can be applied to mild to severe wear. Also, as the deviation of different scans does not affect the relocation calculation, and no matching and stitching is required, this method can be easily applied to a wide wear area and 3D surface wear analysis.

This study aims to determine the ink removal efficiency of papers with different recycling numbers and to examine some electrophotographic printing properties.

The base papers prepared according to the INGEDE 11p standard are subjected to six recycling stages (RS) under equal conditions. The physical-optical properties of the papers obtained at the end of each RS are measured and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key) color measurement scales are printed on each paper with electrophotographic printing. Color measurements of the printed papers are measured using the X-Rite eXact spectrophotometer, adhering to the ISO 13655:2017 standard. According to the measurement results of the optical properties, the ink removal efficiency of each recycling step is determined as a percentage (%) using some formulas.

As general, according to DEMLab and IERIC data, it is determined that the ink removal efficiency increased as the recycling repetition increased. In DEMf factor values, the highest deinking efficiency is obtained after the fourth RS. There is no significant difference between the printing properties of the samples.

It has been a matter of curiosity that papers lose their properties after how many RS. Many studies have been carried out on this subject and it has been presented by experimental methods that the printability properties of papers increase or decrease after which RS. This study can be a pioneer for future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a three-tier assessment model (TAM), aiming to identify and evaluate the competitiveness level of companies. The existing problem is that companies find it difficult to choose a proper model which can be deployed to benchmark with competitors in terms of their competiveness level in the marketplace. Most of the available models are not appropriate or easy to use. The proposed assessment model is able to provide an insight for better planning and preparation so as to gain a better chance of success comparing with their competitors. Most importantly, the proposal model adopts a pragmatic approach and can be implemented without going through tedious mathematical calculations and analysis.

TAM embraces three different approaches deployed in various stages of the application process. The first stage is to identify the relevant criteria using hierarchical holographic modeling and the second stage is to assess the associated weightings of these criteria used to rate the potential competitiveness of related companies. The technique used in stage two is known as fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) which is a combination of two well-established methods including fuzzy logic and analytical hierarchical programming. In stage three, a technique known as technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) is adopted to benchmark the level of competitiveness covering several companies in the same industry.

In this paper, a case study is conducted in order to validate the feasibility and practicality of the proposed model. Results indicate that TAM can be easily applied in various industrial settings by practitioners in the field for supporting operations management practices.

Significant amount of work is needed to ensure that the proposed model can be practically deployed in real industrial settings.

This proposed model is able to capitalize on the benefits of the HMM, FAHP and TOPSIS methods and offset their deficiencies. Most importantly, it can be applied to various industries without complex modification.

This paper suggests a hybrid model to assess competitiveness level embracing three different techniques with the unique feature which is able to provide an insight for better planning and preparation in order to excel competitors. Companies may be able to follow the procedures and steps suggested in the paper to implement the model which is proven to be pragmatic and can be applied in real situations.