On the foundations of strategic alignment

The notion of strategic alignment has assumed considerable importance in the discourse on business strategy. A critical gap in the literature on strategic alignment is the absence of crisp, actionable definitions of alignment. This paper seeks to address this gap in three ways. First, we provide a conceptual tool-kit that can be used to describe strategies in a domain-independent fashion. Second, we define conditions that can be used to evaluate two alternative notions of alignment: basic alignment and full-alignment. Third, we show that these two notions define the end points of a spectrum of varying degrees of alignment, with the conditions defined in our framework providing a rich vocabulary for describing alternative intuitions on alignment

Medical tourism : a conceptual framework for an innovation in global healthcare provision

The purpose of this chapter is to establish a conceptual model that can potentially fill research gaps in the literature about medical tourism as an innovative concept in global healthcare provision by developing emerging economies as they are providing low cost alternatives in medical treatment at internationally accredited medical facilities to treat patients from developed countries. Major databases such as Ebscohost and Emerald have been used to search relevant literature. The literature on medical tourism is reviewed so as to understand the key drivers of medical tourism as well as research gaps in the existing literature. Three major drivers of medical tourism have been identified; namely cost, waiting time, and perceived quality. Further empirical research is needed to test the conceptual model in order to better understand what drives a decision to engage in medical tourism. This chapter makes three major contributions; firstly, the identification of the medical tourism literature from the service marketing and management perspectives; secondly to propose a conceptual model representing innovation in medical tourism for global healthcare by developing emerging economies; thirdly, the identification of research gaps in the medical tourism literature through which future research can further the knowledge of why people travel abroad to developing countries for medical treatment

Sustainable ship loading planning for prefabricated products in the construction industry

This paper focuses on sustainable transportation of prefab products from factories to construction sites by ship. Since the transportation cost for all the prefab products of a construction site is mainly dependent on the number of cargo holds used on ships, a loading plan for prefab products that minimizes the number of holds required is highly desirable. This paper is therefore devoted to the development of an optimal loading plan that decides which prefab products are loaded into each cargo hold and how to pack these prefab products into the holds so that as few holds as possible are used. We formulate the problem as a large-scale integer optimization model whose objective function is to minimize the total number of cargo holds used and whose constraints represent the cargo hold capacity limits. We develop a heuristic to solve the problem and obtain a high-quality solution. We have tested the model and algorithm on a case study that includes 20 prefab products. We find that different cargo holds carry prefab products that have quite different densities. Moreover, the orientations of many prefab products are different from their default orientations. The results demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model and algorithm

Guest editorial: Security in next generation wireless networks

In the past decades, the evolution of wireless technologies has brought significant changes in modern communication networks through its wireless extension of wired networks. Wireless communications offer organizations and users many benefits such as portability and flexibility, increased productivity, and lower installation costs. However, risks are inherent in any wireless network. As the technologies of next generation wireless networks are emerging, security has become a primary concern in order to provide dependable and secure communication between the wireless nodes in a hostile environment. The next generation wireless networks face many unique challenges in security such as open network architecture, shared wireless medium, limited resource constraints, and highly dynamic network topology. This special issue in Security and Communication Networks presents current research focusing on the standard or protocol related security, attacks and defense applications, security architecture and frameworks, and theories and methodologies in security in next generation wireless networks

Guest editorial: Security in next generation wireless networks

In the past decades, the evolution of wireless technologies has brought significant changes in modern communication networks through its wireless extension of wired networks. Wireless communications offer organizations and users many benefits such as portability and flexibility, increased productivity, and lower installation costs. However, risks are inherent in any wireless network. As the technologies of next generation wireless networks are emerging, security has become a primary concern in order to provide dependable and secure communication between the wireless nodes in a hostile environment. The next generation wireless networks face many unique challenges in security such as open network architecture, shared wireless medium, limited resource constraints, and highly dynamic network topology. This special issue in Security and Communication Networks presents current research focusing on the standard or protocol related security, attacks and defense applications, security architecture and frameworks, and theories and methodologies in security in next generation wireless networks

Super Water Repellent Fabrics Produced by Silica Nanoparticle-containing Coating

In this paper, we report on superhydrophobic fabrics (polyester, wool and cotton) produced by a wet-chemical coating technique. The coating solutions were synthesized by the co-hydrolysis of two silane precursors, tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and an alkylsilane, in an alkaline condition. Without any purification, the as-hydrolyzed solutions were directly used to treat fabrics, and the treated fabrics had water contact angles (CA) as high as 170° and sliding angles (SA) as low as 5°. Three alkylsilanes have been used for the synthesis of the coating solutions, and all contain three hydrolysable alkoxyl groups and one non-hydrolysable alkyl, but with different chain lengths (C1, C8 and C16). It was found that the CA value increased with an increase in the alkyl chain length, while the SA showed a reverse trend. When the functional group had a C16 alkyl, the treated fabric surfaces were highly superhydrophobic, with the CA not being affected much by the fabric type, while theSA values were slightly affected by the original wettability of the fabric substrates. The superhydrophobic feature was attributed to a highly rough surface formed by the particulate coating. Aside from the superhydrophobicity, the influence of the coating on the fabric softness was also examined

Powering future body sensor network systems: A review of power sources

© 2020 Elsevier B.V. Body sensor network is a promising medical technology to address the overwhelming global aging, which requires advanced micro power sources with high energy density, long lifetime and good biocompatibility. Potential candidates include batteries, fuel cells, energy harvesters and supercapacitors, each of which have their own merits and demerits. Batteries are currently the most mature product which has been extensively employed in the body sensor network, but the improvement of their energy density is relatively sluggish due to the cumbersome material storage. On the contrary, micro fuel cells can achieve much higher energy density because of their lightweight fuel and oxidant, which can be refueled instantly when applied in wearable sensors. For implanted devices, both abiotic and biotic fuel cells can utilize the dissolved glucose in the body fluid as fuel. As for energy harvesters, they can receive energy from both the external environment such as solar and radiofrequency, and the human body itself such as body heat and motion. Finally, supercapacitor is an effective energy storage component especially for energy harvesters, which can achieve excellent cycle stability. In general, the selection of micro power sources should consider the specific requirement from the specific sensor node, so that a body sensor network with hybrid power supply is much more reliable than that with single type of energy supply. With the continuous development of different power technologies, the body sensor network is expected to be more lightweight, unobtrusive and reliable, leading to a low-cost and ubiquitous healthcare in the near future

The employment effects of minimum wage hikes on job and geographical mobility: evidence from China

As most studies on the employment effects of the minimum wage rely on static employment frameworks, dynamic factors, such as labour mobility, have not been sufficiently explored. To address this gap in the literature, this study examines the employment effects of minimum wage hikes and the dynamic impact on job mobility (local position shifts) and geographical mobility (cross-regional labour relocation). We use data from the Urban Household Surveys in China from 2010 to 2014 and the China Household Finance Surveys from 2017 to 2019. The analysis reveals that minimum wage hikes negatively affect employment; however, the unemployment effect is nonlinear, with a less pronounced unemployment effect at the 60th percentile. From a dynamic perspective, the minimum wage hikes are associated with an increased likelihood of job transition among urban workers. Additionally, these transitions are often accompanied by a wage decline, especially in the low-friction service industry. Further, the hikes are associated with a higher incidence of return migrants and no significant increase in the aggregate unemployment rate. This study provides new evidence on the effects of minimum wage increases on dynamic job-mobility patterns and geographical reallocation, offering important new insights for minimum wage policies.</p

First-principles study on effective doping to improve the optical properties in spinel nitrides

The high-pressure and high-temperature spinel phases (γ) of the Si3N4 and Ge3N4 have attracted great attention due to the wide, direct electronic band gaps. Their derivatives, spinel SiGe2N4, have also raised notice because of its stability and interesting properties. However we noticed that the optical properties of this group are not satisfied comparing to those of well-known semiconductor. The main purpose of present study is to find the possibility of improving the optical properties of IVA group spinel nitrides by first-principles calculation combining the random phase approximation (RPA). The focus of present work is put on raising the peak value of the imaginary part of dielectric function(ε2) by site substitution as the simulation of doping. We proposed a method to select doping elements based on detailed analysis on ε2 to identify the largest interband transitions. Various doping effects by different dopants at different doping sites in different doping concentrations are investigated, by taking γ-SiGe2N4 as the example, and the trend of re-distribution of energy band by different dopants is revealed. Calculations show that for γ-SiGe2N4, substituting Si in tetrahedrally coordinated cation sites in spinel structure with Ga and As significantly raises the peak value of ε2, which proposed an effective approach to improve optical property of IVA group nitrides

Active varying sampling period-based networked systems H∞ control

This paper studies the problem of designing robust H∞ controllers for networked control systems (NCSs) with both network-induced time delay and packet dropout by using active varying sampling period method, where the sampling period switches in a finite set. An active varying sampling period method using both clock-driven and event-driven sensor is proposed, then by modeling the system with varying sampling period as a switched system, H∞controllers are designed by using LMI-based method. The simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the active varying sampling period method and the proposed H∞ controller design