An ever-winding stream : (re)surfacing competing for advantage from the continuous entwinement of navigation and wayfinding

Error on title page – year of award is 2023.This research is a strategy coup de grâce. It has helped mend deeply-rooted, intuitive, in situ sponte sua beliefs about the nature of strategy’s river-flow—echoed from a minuscule, scarcely-inhabited river-cave of the strategy field-flow—with its actual unfolding in real, earth-bound organisational settings. In a nutshell, the research charted the until-now uncharted becoming of competing for advantage. For what Sheryl Crow sings in her immensely popular ‘Everyday is a winding road’ is simply the sentiment Bob Dylan so effectively describes ‘Like a rolling stone’ in a way that completely resonates with what the Beatles had sung even before in their ‘Long and winding road’. Namely, that strategy is wayfaring, meandering, and forever oblique. And hence, strategy is not either linear or curve, but both linear and curve. Deliberate and emergent. Content and process. Planning and wayfinding, in a universal, uninterrupted coping, which echoes ‘the best-laid plans of mice and men’ (Burns, 1785, added emphasis) so beautifully captured in the evocative poetics of Scotland’s national bard. Over a 9-month immersion during most of 2018, in an automotive manufacturing site in the outskirts of Glasgow’s Green-Glen, the research amassed a comprehensive volume of data anchorings following a ‘near documentary’ style of inquiry (Chia and Holt, 2009). A wayfinding methodology-of-sorts emerged, which included extensive field note-makings, reflecting-in-action, photographic animations, and annotated information supported by news articles, company records, semi-formal interviews, live off-the-cuff conversations, shadowing-in-observation, and attendance of both formal, fixed meetings, and informal, impromptu coming-together gatherings. Analysis followed to reconstruct the river-flow of the case-streams. Namely, the metamorphosis of Rosti Automotive Larkhall (RAL), from being a general plastic injection moulder, to becoming a tier 1 automotive supplier, in the period covering 2016-2018. Overarchingly, the research crystalizes a triple-win of exciting possibilities for the field of strategic management and the social sciences more broadly. Namely, (i) a tried-and-tested wayfinding-process philosophical-methodology focused on explicating the dynamics of processes-in-motion; (ii) a fresh reconceptualization of a central construct—the central construct, perhaps—of the strategy field, competitive advantage, towards a forever becoming-idea—the primordial hunch of strategy—competing for advantage; and (iii) this new conceptualisation is born out of the two most basic motions—currents—of the competing river-flow: competere and concurrere, from which concurrere emerges as the vital traversing of strategy, its wayfinding and zero-degree of organisation (Chia and Holt, 2009; Cooper 1986: 321).This research is a strategy coup de grâce. It has helped mend deeply-rooted, intuitive, in situ sponte sua beliefs about the nature of strategy’s river-flow—echoed from a minuscule, scarcely-inhabited river-cave of the strategy field-flow—with its actual unfolding in real, earth-bound organisational settings. In a nutshell, the research charted the until-now uncharted becoming of competing for advantage. For what Sheryl Crow sings in her immensely popular ‘Everyday is a winding road’ is simply the sentiment Bob Dylan so effectively describes ‘Like a rolling stone’ in a way that completely resonates with what the Beatles had sung even before in their ‘Long and winding road’. Namely, that strategy is wayfaring, meandering, and forever oblique. And hence, strategy is not either linear or curve, but both linear and curve. Deliberate and emergent. Content and process. Planning and wayfinding, in a universal, uninterrupted coping, which echoes ‘the best-laid plans of mice and men’ (Burns, 1785, added emphasis) so beautifully captured in the evocative poetics of Scotland’s national bard. Over a 9-month immersion during most of 2018, in an automotive manufacturing site in the outskirts of Glasgow’s Green-Glen, the research amassed a comprehensive volume of data anchorings following a ‘near documentary’ style of inquiry (Chia and Holt, 2009). A wayfinding methodology-of-sorts emerged, which included extensive field note-makings, reflecting-in-action, photographic animations, and annotated information supported by news articles, company records, semi-formal interviews, live off-the-cuff conversations, shadowing-in-observation, and attendance of both formal, fixed meetings, and informal, impromptu coming-together gatherings. Analysis followed to reconstruct the river-flow of the case-streams. Namely, the metamorphosis of Rosti Automotive Larkhall (RAL), from being a general plastic injection moulder, to becoming a tier 1 automotive supplier, in the period covering 2016-2018. Overarchingly, the research crystalizes a triple-win of exciting possibilities for the field of strategic management and the social sciences more broadly. Namely, (i) a tried-and-tested wayfinding-process philosophical-methodology focused on explicating the dynamics of processes-in-motion; (ii) a fresh reconceptualization of a central construct—the central construct, perhaps—of the strategy field, competitive advantage, towards a forever becoming-idea—the primordial hunch of strategy—competing for advantage; and (iii) this new conceptualisation is born out of the two most basic motions—currents—of the competing river-flow: competere and concurrere, from which concurrere emerges as the vital traversing of strategy, its wayfinding and zero-degree of organisation (Chia and Holt, 2009; Cooper 1986: 321)

Data Science and Knowledge Discovery

Data Science (DS) is gaining significant importance in the decision process due to a mix of various areas, including Computer Science, Machine Learning, Math and Statistics, domain/business knowledge, software development, and traditional research. In the business field, DS's application allows using scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data to support the decision process. After collecting the data, it is crucial to discover the knowledge. In this step, Knowledge Discovery (KD) tasks are used to create knowledge from structured and unstructured sources (e.g., text, data, and images). The output needs to be in a readable and interpretable format. It must represent knowledge in a manner that facilitates inferencing. KD is applied in several areas, such as education, health, accounting, energy, and public administration. This book includes fourteen excellent articles which discuss this trending topic and present innovative solutions to show the importance of Data Science and Knowledge Discovery to researchers, managers, industry, society, and other communities. The chapters address several topics like Data mining, Deep Learning, Data Visualization and Analytics, Semantic data, Geospatial and Spatio-Temporal Data, Data Augmentation and Text Mining

Thin Hypervisor-Based Security Architectures for Embedded Platforms

Virtualization has grown increasingly popular, thanks to its benefits of isolation, management, and utilization, supported by hardware advances. It is also receiving attention for its potential to support security, through hypervisor-based services and advanced protections supplied to guests. Today, virtualization is even making inroads in the embedded space, and embedded systems, with their security needs, have already started to benefit from virtualization’s security potential. In this thesis, we investigate the possibilities for thin hypervisor-based security on embedded platforms. In addition to significant background study, we present implementation of a low-footprint, thin hypervisor capable of providing security protections to a single FreeRTOS guest kernel on ARM. Backed by performance test results, our hypervisor provides security to a formerly unsecured kernel with minimal performance overhead, and represents a first step in a greater research effort into the security advantages and possibilities of embedded thin hypervisors. Our results show that thin hypervisors are both possible and beneficial even on limited embedded systems, and sets the stage for more advanced investigations, implementations, and security applications in the future

Some Prototype Examples for Expert Systems v.1

This report consists of the nineteen term project reports for the graduate-level course EE695G ” Expert Systems and Knowledge Engineering”, which was offered for the fall semester of 1984 in the School of Electrical Engineering. The purpose of the term project is to provide each student an opportunity of designing and implementing a prototype expert system. The application area of each of these expert systems was selected by the student(s) working on the projects. This report is published for the purpose of documenting these results for future reference by the students of the above-mentioned course and, possibly, other workers in expert systems. The nineteen reports are grouped into seven parts based on their application domains. Part 1 - Manufacturing consists of six reports, and Part II - Robotics contains three. Two reports in each of Part III - Vision and Part IV - Management, and one in each of Part V - Structural Engineering and Part VI - Automatic Programming. The last part, Part VII - Others, consists of four reports with different applications

A PC-based data acquisition system for sub-atomic physics measurements

Modern particle physics measurements are heavily dependent upon automated data acquisition systems (DAQ) to collect and process experiment-generated information. One research group from the University of Saskatchewan utilizes a DAQ known as the Lucid data acquisition and analysis system. This thesis examines the project undertaken to upgrade the hardware and software components of Lucid. To establish the effectiveness of the system upgrades, several performance metrics were obtained including the system's dead time and input/output bandwidth.Hardware upgrades to Lucid consisted of replacing its aging digitization equipment with modern, faster-converting Versa-Module Eurobus (VME) technology and replacing the instrumentation processing platform with common, PC hardware. The new processor platform is coupled to the instrumentation modules via a fiber-optic bridging-device, the sis1100/3100 from Struck Innovative Systems.The software systems of Lucid were also modified to follow suit with the new hardware. Originally constructed to utilize a proprietary real-time operating system, the data acquisition application was ported to run under the freely available Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems (RTEMS). The device driver software provided with sis1100/3100 interface also had to be ported for use under the RTEMS-based system. Performance measurements of the upgraded DAQ indicate that the dead time has been reduced from being on the order of milliseconds to being on the order of several tens of microseconds. This increased capability means that Lucid's users may acquire significantly more data in a shorter period of time, thereby decreasing both the statistical uncertainties and data collection duration associated with a given experiment

Research & Technology Report Goddard Space Flight Center

The main theme of this edition of the annual Research and Technology Report is Mission Operations and Data Systems. Shifting from centralized to distributed mission operations, and from human interactive operations to highly automated operations is reported. The following aspects are addressed: Mission planning and operations; TDRSS, Positioning Systems, and orbit determination; hardware and software associated with Ground System and Networks; data processing and analysis; and World Wide Web. Flight projects are described along with the achievements in space sciences and earth sciences. Spacecraft subsystems, cryogenic developments, and new tools and capabilities are also discussed

Research and Technology Report. Goddard Space Flight Center

This issue of Goddard Space Flight Center's annual report highlights the importance of mission operations and data systems covering mission planning and operations; TDRSS, positioning systems, and orbit determination; ground system and networks, hardware and software; data processing and analysis; and World Wide Web use. The report also includes flight projects, space sciences, Earth system science, and engineering and materials