Search results

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of countries has some of the highest electricity consumptions and carbon dioxide emissions per capita in the world. This poses a direct challenge to the GCC government’s ability to meet their CO₂ reduction targets. In this review paper the current household electricity consumption situation in the GCC is reviewed.

Three scenarios for reducing energy consumption and CO₂ emissions are proposed and evaluated using strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) as well as the political, economic, social, technical, legal and environmental (PESTLE) frameworks.

The first scenario found that using solar Photovoltaic (PV) or hybrid solar PV and wind system to power household lighting could save significant amounts of energy, based on lighting making up between 8% to 30% of electricity consumption in GCC households. The second scenario considers replacement of conventional appliances with energy-efficient ones that use around 20% less energy. The third scenario looks at influencing consumer behavior towards sustainable energy consumption.

Pilot trials of these scenarios are recommended for a number of households. Then the results and feedback could be used to launch the schemes GCC-wide.

The proposed scenarios are designed to encourage responsible electricity consumption and production within households (SDG12).

All three proposals are found viable for policymakers to implement. However, to ensure successful implementation GCC Governments are recommended to review all the opportunities and challenges associated with these schemes as laid out in this paper.

The pandemic impacted consumers' shopping processes, leading them to approach the online channel for grocery shopping for the first time. The paper contributes to the retailing literature by identifying different grocery shopper segments willing to switch online moved by heterogeneous motivations. Integrating the technology acceptance model 2 (TAM-2) and the protection motivation theory (PMT), this study identifies technology-related and Covid-related motivations jointly impacting channel switching.

A mixture regression model was estimated on the 370 valid questionnaires, filled out by Italian shoppers, delivering four internally consistent segments.

The results reveal the existence of four segments willing to switch towards the online channel for grocery shopping in the aftermath of the pandemic. Utilitarian shoppers would switch online as they consider the online channel useful and easy to use. Responsive shoppers will prefer the online channel driven by the fear of being infected in-store. Novel enthusiasts show interest in the online channel to not catch the virus and cope with emotional fear, although they consider online shopping as an enjoyable and useful activity as well. Smart shoppers consider online shopping as an easy-to-use alternative for their grocery purchases.

This paper identifies technology-related and Covid-related motivations jointly impacting shoppers' channel switching to online and presents a novel method – i.e. mixture regression – allowing for the identification of shopper segments motivated by different reasons, both emotional and utilitarian, to switch towards the online channel for their grocery shopping. Among other motivations, the fear of Covid-19 is identified as a relevant motivation to switch to online.

We present an approach for pricing American put options with a regime-switching volatility. Our method reveals that the option price can be expressed as the sum of two components: the price of a European put option and the premium associated with the early exercise privilege. Our analysis demonstrates that, under these conditions, the perpetual put option consistently commands a higher price during periods of high volatility compared to those of low volatility. Moreover, we establish that the optimal exercise boundary is lower in high-volatility regimes than in low-volatility regimes. Additionally, we develop an analytical framework to describe American puts with an Erlang-distributed random-time horizon, which allows us to propose a numerical technique for approximating the value of American puts with finite expiry. We also show that a combined approach involving randomization and Richardson extrapolation can be a robust numerical algorithm for estimating American put prices with finite expiry.

Switching power converters for photovoltaic (PV) applications with high gain are rapidly expanding. To obtain better voltage gain, low switch stress, low ripple and cost-effective converters, researchers are developing several topologies.

It was decided to use the particle swarm optimization approach for this system in order to compute the precise PI controller gain parameters under steady state and dynamic changing circumstances. A high-gain q- ZS boost converter is used as an intermittent converter between a PV and brushless direct current (BLDC) motor to attain maximum power point tracking, which also reduces the torque ripples. A MATLAB/Simulink environment has been used to build and test the positive output quadratic boost high gain converters (PQBHGC)-1, PQBHGC-8, PQBHGC-4 and PQBHGC-3 topologies to analyse their effectiveness in PV-driven BLDC motor applications. The simulation results show that the PQBHGC-3 topology is effective in comparison with other HG cell DC–DC converters in terms of efficiency, reduced ripples, etc. which is most suitable for PV-driven BLDC applications.

The simulation results have showed that the PQBHGC-3 gives better performance with minimum voltage ripple of 2V and current ripple of 0.4A which eventually reduces the ripples in the torque in a BLDC motor. Also, the efficiency for the suggested PQBHGC-3 for PV-based BLDC applications is the best with 99%.

This study is the first of its kind comparing the different topologies of PQBHGC-1, PQBHGC-8, PQBHGC-4 and PQBHGC-3 topologies to analyse their effectiveness in PV-driven BLDC motor applications. This study suggests that the PQBHGC-3 topology is most suitable in PV-driven BLDC applications.

Stakeholder theory understands business in terms of relationships among stakeholders whose interests are mainly joint but may be occasionally conflicting. In the latter case, managers may need to make trade-offs between these interests. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of managerial decision-making about these trade-offs.

This paper draws on the ordonomic approach which sees business life to be rife with social dilemmas and locates the role of stakeholders in harnessing or resolving these dilemmas through engagement in rule-finding and rule-setting processes.

The ordonomic approach suggests that stakeholder interests trade-offs ought to be neither ignored nor avoided, but rather embraced and welcomed as an opportunity for bringing to fruition the joint interest of stakeholders in playing a better game of business. Stakeholders are shown to bear responsibility for overcoming the perceived trade-offs through the institutional management of social dilemmas.

For many stakeholder theorists, the nature of managerial decision-making about trade-offs between conflicting stakeholder interests and the nature of trade-offs themselves have been a long-standing point of contention. The paper shows that trade-offs may be useful for the value creation process and explicitly discusses managerial strategies for dealing with them.

COVID-19 is bringing hardship and tragedy. Health workers are having to take appalling risks; loved ones are being lost; lockdown is causing great distress. And, as always in testing times, the disadvantaged are being hit worst. As we emerge from the shadows, the call from the vested interests, from the systems current winners, will be for a rapid return to business as usual. We must resist this; business as usual got us into this mess.

COVID-19 is trying to tell us something; we health educators and social marketers must listen, think and, above all, take action.

At the dawn of a new decade, as ever more corporations are pursuing sustainable working conditions and advocating employee well-being, employees are increasingly tending to feel fatigued and drained by their work, which compromises their performance. Drawing on the job demands–resources model and social acceleration debate, the authors test a moderated mediation model. Specifically, the authors hypothesise that unreasonable tasks raise perceptions of emotional exhaustion when the pace of work is increased and investigate the moderating role of psychological detachment.

This study used a sample of 245 employees from Europe, all knowledge workers, to test the hypotheses.

Apart from unreasonable tasks being directly related with emotional exhaustion, this relationship was mediated by the perceived work pace. In addition, the authors establish psychological detachment as a relevant moderator for the mediating effect.

Managers and HR practitioners are equipped with a better understanding of the effects of an increasing speed of work, the conditions leading to it and the individual and organizational resources that may help to create healthy and meaningful job positions, which facilitate employee efficiency.

Our study expands the literature on contemporary stressors and adds to what is known about the ‘dark side’ of job demands that affect the organizational bottom-line, as well as the resource-based mechanism that can buffer the negative effects.

There is evidence that spirituality at the workplace has positive effects on work outcomes, and there are different models conceptualizing the construct. To date, there is no discussion highlighting how digitalization is affecting workplace spirituality and vice versa. The present review tries to close this gap by discussing the psychological dynamics in light of digitalization and spirituality in the context of work.

This is a conceptual discussion based on an extensive narrative review. The conceptual design is further tested with a real-life case study.

The result is a model that may guide future research, which consists of the four highly interdependent domains, namely psychology (with the dimensions of emotion, cognition and behavior), digitalization (with the dimensions of platforms, data and algorithms), spirituality (with the dimensions of meaning, self-transcendation and belonging), as well as the workplace (with the dimensions of work tasks, location, community and culture and values). The discussion includes implications for the future of work, suggestions for management decisions and potential future research directions.

To date, there are many discussions about digital transformation and a limited amount of them have invested in analyzing psychological dimensions. The application to spirituality and the workplace – especially when the two are combined – is almost wholly absent, which makes the present discussion both innovative and original.

Auxiliary power system is an indispensable part of the train; the auxiliary systems of both electric locomotives and EMUs mainly are powered by one of the two ways, which are either from auxiliary windings of traction transformers or from DC-link voltage of traction converters. Powered by DC-link voltage of traction converters, the auxiliary systems were maintained of uninterruptable power supply with energy from electric braking. Meanwhile, powered by traction transformers, the auxiliary systems were always out of power while passing the neutral section of power supply grid and control system is powered by battery at this time.

Uninterrupted power supply of auxiliary power system powered by auxiliary winding of traction transformer was studied. Failure reasons why previous solutions cannot be realized are analyzed. An uninterruptable power supply scheme for the auxiliary systems powered by auxiliary windings of traction transformers is proposed in this paper. The validity of the proposed scheme is verified by simulation and experimental results and on-site operation of an upgraded HXD3C type locomotive. This scheme is attractive for upgrading practical locomotives with the auxiliary systems powered by auxiliary windings of traction transformers.

This scheme regenerates braking power supplied to auxiliary windings of traction transformers while a locomotive runs in the neutral section of the power supply grid. Control objectives of uninterrupted power supply technology are proposed, which are no overvoltage, no overcurrent and uninterrupted power supply.

The control strategies of the scheme ensure both overvoltage free and inrush current free when a locomotive enters or leaves the neutral section. Furthermore, this scheme is cost low by employing updated control strategy of software and add both the two current sensors and two connection wires of hardware.

Sustainability is regarded as a core value that the coworking movement aspires to. However, most sustainability efforts focus on the providers’ perspective while neglecting the coworking members’ role. Therefore, this paper aims to explore sustainable coworking from the members perspective by focusing on sustainable behaviors.

This study uses a flexible pattern matching approach. Theoretical patterns are identified using literature on coworking space and sustainable behavior while matching them with the empirical data. Data were collected from three different coworking spaces in Sweden through interviews and observations.

Based on the theoretical patterns, three constructs for sustainable coworking were identified, namely, productive behavior, prosocial behavior and responsible space sharing behavior. Through the empirical data, the constructs were further concretized to understand their different aspects. The findings uncovered a new layer of complexity where members can show the same behavior and be perceived differently.

This study offers a more holistic understanding of sustainable coworking by highlighting the members’ role and identifying different member perceptions on sustainable coworking behaviors.