This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the implications of a quality management QM initiative on strategic flexibility. Our study defines flexibility from a strategic approach and examines the extent to which, why, and how the triggering factors of strategic flexibility are related to QM elements. The hypotheses put forward are tested in an empirical study carried out on a ...

This paper outlines a science-based explanation of damage and reliability of critical components and structures within the second law of thermodynamics. The approach relies on the fundamentals of irreversible thermodynamics, specifically the concept of entropy generation as an index of degradation and damage in materials. All damage mechanisms share a common feature, namely energy dissipation. ...

‘Structural realism’ is a buzzword in the scientific realism debate. Various positions with diverse motivations fall under this label. A much advertised distinction is between epistemic and ontological forms of structuralism. This paper scrutinizes the alleged dichotomy between these two ‘alternatives’, and criticises the considerations that have been taken to motivate the ontic variety over th...

The innovation process in SMEs (smalland medium-sized enterprises) is complex and in comparison with large firms the causal relationships between promoting factors and innovation have yet not been sufficiently clarified. This chapter attempts to analyze the innovation process using Structural Equation Modeling, in particular focusing on the role of ICT. Seven hypotheses are demonstrated by two ...

This priming study investigates the role of conceptual structure during language production, probing how English speakers encode information about motion events. Participants read prime sentences aloud before describing dynamic motion events. Primes differed in 1) syntactic frame, 2) distribution of manner and path elements within frames, and 3) degree of conceptual overlap with target events. ...

Nowadays, as the trend of establishing strategic allied relationship between channel members has reinforced, information sharing has became an important method of upholding relationship of channel members and improving relationship quality. This paper selects some distributors of Haier as the research object, applies structural equation model to the research of relationship among information sh...

The importance of preserving and making available the original experimental data underlying biological structural models is discussed, both for crystallography, where the raw data images pose particular challenges, and for other structure determination techniques.

Aiming at design of algorithms for fault diagnosis, structural analysis of systems offers concise yet easy overall analysis. Graph-based matching, which is the essential technique to obtain redundant information for diagnosis, is re-considered in this paper. Matching is re-formulated as a problem of relating faults to known parameters and measurements of a system. Using explicit fault modelling...