Suchergebnisse

Low-cost large-diameter cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) film grown on silicon (Si) has been demonstrated to have a wide range of applications in photonics, electronics, photoelectrochemistry and micro-electro-mechanical system technologies. In this paper, the epitaxial growth of SiC on Si by low-pressure chemical vapour deposition is investigated. Two modes were employed to supply the precursors: the alternating supply and the simultaneous supply. Compared with SiC films grown at the same temperature by simultaneous supply epitaxy method, the SiC grown by alternating supply epitaxy (ASE) method has better crystallinity, smoother surface, and better thickness uniformity as confirmed by X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy characterisation. We propose the growth mechanism for ASE growth of 3C-SiC and validate it in detail experimentally. It is found that, Si deposition on SiC follows either Stranski–Krastanov mode or island growth mode, while SiC formation proceeds in two possible reaction paths: redistributing of the formed Si islands or smoothing of the formed SiC islands by decomposition migration process. Both reaction paths are driven by minimizing the surface free energy and reducing dangling bonds density. In summary, the key features of ASE are: (1) Si has a longer diffusion length and thus higher probability to adhere to a crystallographically favourable position; (2) undesirable gas phase reactions can be avoided. The obtained results indicate that ASE is a unique and economically viable method to prepare uniform 3C-SiC on multiple large-diameter Si wafers. ; Queensland Government, Australia ; Australian Research Council

As globalization and internationalization efforts intensify, companies are faced with even greater challenges to manage the supply chain of their products and services, including political, environmental, economic, social, and technological uncertainties. Having knowledge and understanding of Supply Chain Management (SCM) can aid companies to increase competitiveness within their global supply chain network. This book offers a wide range of theories and constructs that are at the core of SCM, such as inter-organizational relationships, information systems, distribution, production, innovation, procurement, sustainability, service, measurement systems, strategy, planning, and more. There are illustrative cases to portray how companies deal with particular supply chain management issues

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand the enabling and constraining roles of blockchain technology (BCT) in managerial work practices and conceptualise the technology–performance relationship in supply chain management (SCM).


Design/methodology/approach
A structured literature review and a theory-driven approach are used. A set of propositions are developed, suggesting how the use of BCT in supply chains can be understood to simultaneously enable and constrain SCM and performance.


Findings
The analysis identifies four enabling and three constraining blockchain identities to explain how the technology either "facilitates" or "impedes" SCM and supply chain performance. Traceability, which emanates from its ability to provide data immutability, ranks highly as a core innovation of the technology. The blockchain is mainly seen as an opportunity to exploit existing supply chain resources and competencies.


Research limitations/implications
One limitation of the research is its conceptual nature. Future research should test the developed propositions empirically. Further research should focus on BCT as an opportunity to explore and as a relationship-building technology. More research is also needed focussing on the complex and simultaneous enabling and constraining effects of BCT in supply chains.


Originality/value
The paper shows the important and complex Janus-faced implications of embedding BCT in supply chains and demonstrates how organisational theory can be applied to explore the relationship between blockchain and SCM.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore the potential for the development of a country logistics performance assessment approach based upon textual big data analytics.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs design science principles. Data were collected using the Global Perspectives text corpus that describes the logistics systems of 20 countries from 2006–2014. The extracted texts were processed and analysed using text analytic techniques, and domain experts were employed for training and developing the approach.FindingsThe developed approach is able to generate results in the form of logistics performance assessments. It contributes towards the development of more informed weights of the different country logistics performance categories. That said, a larger text corpus and iterative classifier training is required to produce a more robust approach for benchmarking and ranking.Practical implicationsWhen successfully developed and implemented, the developed approach can be used by managers and government bodies, such as the World Bank and its stakeholders, to complement the Logistics Performance Index (LPI).Originality/valueA new and unconventional approach for logistics system performance assessment is explored. A new potential for textual big data analytic applications in supply chain management is demonstrated. A contribution to performance management in operations and supply chain management is made by demonstrating how domain-specific text corpora can be transformed into an important source of performance information.

The depletion, increasing demand and price of the petroleum promoted extensive research worldwide on alternative energy resources for internal combustion engines. There were several studies which reveal the significance of research on biodiesel as a substitute fuel to a diesel fuel. It has proven that biodiesel is one of the promising renewable, alternative and environmentally friendly biofuels that can be used in diesel engine with little or no modification in the engine. The stringent emission laws, depletion of fossil fuels and relation of fuels with government policies have forced the world to find alternatives to fossil fuels. Numerous vegetable oils suitability has been investigated for use in internal combustion engines. The effects of different fuels on the performance characteristics of engines have been extensively reported. The high viscosity and low volatility of these vegetables oils are the major problem for their use in the diesel engines. However use of different biodiesels in an engine results in variability in the engine performance and emission due to physical and chemical characteristics of fuel. The effect of these physio-chemical properties on fuel supply system such as fuel pump and fuel filter have already been reported. In this work an attempt is made to improve the combustion characteristics of the engine fueled with biodiesel. Hence a detailed investigation is carried out on the underlying combustion and heat release characteristics. The experimental work is conducted on 4S, single cylinder, water cooled and DI stationary diesel engine. In this work bsfc and thermal efficiency are computed, for different incylinder pressure and peak heat release rate.

Several policy measures that have been proposed to unclog the labor markets in advanced industrial countries, such as early retirement, extension of compulsory education, shorter working weeks, or work sharing, are ineffective. Therefore a more comprehensive approach is required to reduce the amount of time that individuals spend in the labor market during their life span. Such an approach would aim at combining or alternating periods of education, work, and retirement throughout a person's adult life. Elements of the approach are recurrent education, flexibility of labor supply in accordance with the need of the labor market, discriminatory application for the sake of income distribution, and harmonization of the social security system. The scheme could be financed by money now invested in social security schemes of all kinds as well as out of existing educational budgets.

International climate negotiations occur against the backdrop of increasing collective risk: the likelihood of catastrophic economic loss due to climate change will continue to increase unless and until global mitigation efforts are sufficient to prevent it. We introduce a novel alternating-offers bargaining model that incorporates this characteristic feature of climate change. We test the model using an incentivized experiment. We manipulate two important distributional equity principles: capacity to pay for mitigation of climate change and vulnerability to its potentially catastrophic effects. Our results show that less vulnerable parties do not exploit the greater vulnerability of their bargaining partners. They are, rather, more generous. Conversely, parties with greater capacity are less generous in their offers. Both collective risk itself and its importance in light of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report make it all the more urgent to better understand this crucial strategic feature of climate change bargaining.

Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfil normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with other advocacy actors. The analogy of the firm is a useful way of studying advocacy actors because individuals, via advocacy NGOs, make choices which are analytically similar to those that shareholders make in the context of firms. The authors view advocacy NGOs as special types of firms that make strategic choices in policy markets which, along with creating public goods, support organizational survival, visibility, and growth. Advocacy NGOs' strategy can therefore be understood as a response to opportunities to supply distinct advocacy products to well-defined constituencies, as well as a response to normative or principled concerns

Purpose
Deepening supply-side structural reform is the main objective of the economic work since the Chinese economy entered a new stage of development. By adopting the fundamental principles and methodologies of Marxist political economy, the authors can provide clarifications on the three basic theoretical issues concerning the supply-side structural reform. The paper aims to discuss these issues.


Design/methodology/approach
First, the essential starting point for understanding the supply-side structural reform is the primacy of production, as well as the organic connection between production and consumption in social reproduction, rather than the supply and demand as superficially seen in exchanges. By identifying the right starting point, the authors can avoid alternating between demand and supply management, and between liberalism and interventionism.


Findings
Structural problems, which are closely related to the institutional structure of production and the purpose and nature of production, cannot be solely attributed to the imbalance caused by market failures. Chinese economy has suffered prolonged structural contradictions and structural problems.


Originality/value
To decide whether the financial and the real estate sectors are real economy or virtual economy, the key is to examine whether the monetary capital used in financial activities and real estate commodity (capital) go through the capital circulation process of from monetary capital to productive capital and further to commodity capital, and whether the capital gain is generated by the value appreciation of capital or the value transfer and distribution as a result of the transfer of ownership. With its emphasis on developing the real economy, the supply-side structural reform should foster both development of manufacturing, and parts of financial and real estate sectors that are the real economy.

AbstractScholars of international relations and public policy recognize that quasi‐private actors supply governance services alongside governmental actors. We explore how membership in the dominant trade regime, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/the World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) influences countries' incentives to join the quasi‐private regime, International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Both global regimes seek to remove trade barriers; the former focuses on tariff and non‐tariff obstacles, and the latter on technical barriers. While any firm can subscribe to over 18,000ISOstandards, only national standards bodies, one per country, can becomeISOmembers. We posit that given the substantial political costs of joiningGATT/WTOand the relatively low entry barriers to joining theISO, high trading countries might view theISOas a (partial) functional equivalent of theGATT/WTO. Our empirical analysis ofISOmembership dynamics over the period 1951–2005 lends support to our argument.

AbstractHow does one explain the variation in the EU's success in enacting and enforcing policies that lead to the supply of regional or global public goods? We examine how the EU deploys its positional resources to enact laws that compel governments or firms to contribute to the provision of public goods. We suggest that leaders such as the EU are able to compel public goods contributions if they have the legal authority to do so, and are able to deploy their positional resources to build effective coalitions or reduce the leverage of potential veto players. We look at two issue areas empirically: banking and the environment. In the banking cases, the EU sought to provide regional public goods; in the environmental cases, it sought to provide regional and global public goods. We examine instances of leadership success as well as failure. In the banking cases, we examine Outright Monetary Transactions (success) and banking single resolution mechanism (less successful); the environmental cases pertain to chemical regulation (success) and airline emissions (failure). These cases reveal the EU's skill and limitations in deploying its positional authority to induce contributions for public goods provision from EU member governments, EU firms and nonEU firms.

Bangladesh faces a severe rural to urban migration challenge, which is accentuated by climate change and the Rohingya crisis. These migrants often reside in urban slums and struggle to access public services, which are already short in supply for existing slum dwellers. Given the inadequacy of governmental efforts, nonprofits have assumed responsibility for providing essential services such as housing, healthcare, and education. Would local slum-dwellers in Dhaka be willing to support such nonprofits financially? We deploy an in-person survey experiment with three frames (generic migrants, climate migrants, and religiously persecuted Rohingya migrants) to assess Dhaka slum-dwellers' willingness to support a humanitarian charity that provides healthcare services to migrants. Bangladesh is noted as a climate change hotspot and its government is vocal about the climate issue in international forums. While we expected this to translate into public support for climate migrants, we find respondents are 16% less likely to support climate migrants in relation to the generic migrants. However, consistent with the government's hostility towards Rohingya, we find that respondents are 9% less likely to support a charity focused on helping Rohingya migrants. Our results are robust even when we examine subpopulations such as recent arrivals in Dhaka and those who have experienced floods (both of which could be expected to be more sympathetic to climate migrants), as well as those who regularly follow the news (and hence are well informed about the climate and the Rohingya crisis).

This paper examines variations in firm-level adoption of environmental management systems (EMS) -- ISO 14001 & the European Union's Eco-Audit & Management Scheme (EMAS) -- in the UK, Germany & the US. Drawing on insights from club, institutional, & stakeholder theories, it argues that despite the fact that EMS are created by supranational organizations (one regional & one international), firms' perceptions of their costs & benefits are largely determined by domestic factors. In particular, these perceptions are shaped by EMS promotion & information dissemination in each country (supply aspects) & how the constellation of stakeholders -- suppliers, environmental groups, regulators, & general public -- support their introduction (demand aspects). By finding the right mix of incentives for specific national contexts, governments & interested stakeholders can encourage companies to adopt voluntary environmental codes. 3 Tables, 99 References. Adapted from the source document.