Institutional transplant and American corporate governance: the case of Ferodyn

This paper examines the relationship between employment relations and American corporate governance using the case of Ferodyn*. In response to difficult industry conditions and sagging performance, American-owned Landis* Steel Corporation and Japanese-owned Daiichi* Steel Corporation jointly financed and built Ferodyn, a state-of-the-art high quality steel finishing facility. Although the joint venture was extremely successful in terms of quality, productivity and industrial relations, it came under severe stress from both external and internal pressures. Ferodyn’s success was moderated by the market in that it was never able to extract a price premium for the quality of steel it produced. At the same time, pressures in the form of corporate governance and the parent / subsidiary relationship were substantial. Institutional investor demands for improvements in short run shareholder value ultimately resulted in the sale of Landis to Maxi-metal*, a global steel conglomerate, committed to a strategy of minimising costs. In this case, the organ transplant provides a useful metaphor: Ferodyn was like a strong and healthy ‘organ transplant’ in a weak and ailing corporate ‘body.’ So long as there were buffers in place to protect it from rejection by its host, Ferodyn could prosper, giving rise to exceptionally high labour standards and quality of life for its employees. In effect, the American system of corporate governance and the nature of power relations in the corporation created antigens that weakened both Landis’s ability to support the joint venture and Ferodyn’s ability to survive in an alien and hostile corporate, industry and macro-economic environment. * Ferodyn, Landis, Daiichi and Maxi-metal are fictitious names

A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

The industrial relations implications of automation

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit