An Audit of export services in England: developing business focused support

One of the key thresholds in the development of small and medium sized enterprises is exporting and trading internationally. A brief review of the academic and practitioner literature highlights a number of benefits associated with exporting that include exposure to differing ways of ‘how to do’ business and opportunities for the development of joint ventures and strategic alliances. However, several regions within the United Kingdom perceive that they have too few SMEs who trade internationally. Recent estimates suggest that approximately three per cent of the SMEs in the United Kingdom are actively exporting (Bank of England, 1999). Government policy makers have responded to such concerns by providing a range of support programmes to increase the number of SMEs who trade internationally and enhance the skills and capabilities of those SMEs who export, so that they can efficiently and effectively manage the exporting and market development process. Therefore, in the majority of the English regions, there are a range of publicly funded organisations providing advice, consultancy, information and training to SMEs wishing to trade internationally and those businesses already exporting. In addition, SMEs can access a number of export services from private sector organisations such as banks, accountants, freight forwarders and export agents. There has been no overall national ‘stocktake’ or audit of such provision. However, the need for such a stocktake is becoming increasingly important due to the introduction of a number of new support organisations into the institutional landscape and the re-organisation and re-branding of British Trade International as Trade Partners UK and the appointment of a series of Regional International Trade Directors. The introduction of the Small Business Service will have a major impact on the coverage and nature of provision for exporting SMEs within each of the English regions. The introduction of the Small Business Service, however, provides an opportunity to explore and examine alternative configurations of small business support and the types of organisation that are best placed to satisfy the needs of exporting SMEs. This paper presents the key findings to emerge from an audit of export services within each of the English regions. Based on a research and development project undertaken in conjunction with Trade Partners UK, the paper offers insights into: • The coverage of export services available to SMEs within England; • The effectiveness and appropriateness of current configuration of export services; • The ways in which the effectiveness of the current configuration of export services could be enhanced. The audit was based on a series of face-to-face and telephone interviews with local, regional and national providers of export provision. A key argument within the paper is that effective configurations of export and trade development support arise from insights into, and appropriate responses to, the exporting and trade development process as experienced by SMEs. The paper concludes with a number of implications in terms of how business-driven forms of support can be developed.</p

Servant Leadership and Its Impact on Ethical Climate

Many leaders in intercollegiate athletics are under attack due to an overemphasis on winning and revenue generation. In response, some have recommended a transition to a servant leadership approach because of its focus on the well-being of followers and ethical behaviors (Burton & Welty Peachey, 2013; Welty Peachey, Zhou, Damon, & Burton, 2015). The purpose of this study was to examine athletic directors’ potential demonstration of servant leadership and possible contribution to an ethical climate in NCAA Division III institutions. Participants were 326 athletic staff members from NCAA Division III institutions. Results indicated athletic staff members believed athletic directors displayed characteristics of servant leadership. Athletic department employees perceived athletic directors exhibited servant leadership characteristics of accountability, standing back, stewardship, authenticity, humility, and empowerment most often. Staff members who perceived athletic directors displayed servant leadership characteristics were more likely to report working in an ethical climate. If athletic directors choose to model the characteristics of servant leaders, they could promote more fully the NCAA Division III philosophy of prioritizing the well-being of others, being a positive role model for employees, and fostering ethical work climates within their athletic departments

Influence of water absorption in flexible epoxy resins on the space charge behaviour

The aim of the current work is to achieve a better understanding of the influence of water uptake in flexible epoxy resins on the space charge dynamics at high electric fields. The space charge behaviour was studied using pulsed electroacoustic (PEA) technique. The samples were prepared from Araldite CY1311, which is a bisphenol-A epoxy resin. This particular resin was chosen because its glass transition is 0°C and hence it is in a flexible state at room temperature. All samples were conditioned in containers with saturated salt solutions or de-ionised water so that various water uptake levels were obtained. It was found that the space charge dynamics was correlated with the amount of absorbed water in the samples and this is consistent with the dielectric measurements made on the same material where ion transport was identified as the main charge transport process from the observed QDC behaviour

Limitations of Kramers-Kronig transform for calculation of the DC conductance magnitude from dielectric measurements

The Kramers-Kronig (K-K) transform relates the real and imaginary parts of the complex susceptibility as a consequence of the principle of causality. It is a special case of the Hilbert transform and it is often used for estimation of the DC conductance from dielectric measurements. In this work, the practical limitations of a numerical implementation of the Kramers-Kronig transform was investigated in the case of materials that exhibit both DC conductance and quasi-DC (QDC) charge transport processes such as epoxy resins. The characteristic feature of a QDC process is that the real and imaginary parts of susceptibility (permittivity) follow fractional power law dependences with frequency with the low frequency exponent approaching -1. Dipolar relaxation in solids on the other hand has a lower frequency exponent <1. The computational procedure proposed by Jonscher for calculation of the K-K transform involves extrapolation and truncation of the data to low frequencies so that convergence of the integrals is ensured. The validity of the analysis is demonstrated by performing K-K transformation on real experimental data and on theoretical data generated using the Dissado-Hill function. It has been found that the algorithm works well for dielectric relaxation responses but it is apparent that it does not work in the case of a low frequency power law in which the low frequency exponent approaches -1, i.e. in the case of QDC responses. In this case convergence can only be guaranteed by extrapolating the low frequency power law over many decades towards zero frequency

The Southern Vilnius Photometric System. IV. The E Regions Standard Stars

This paper is the fourth in a series on the extension of the Vilnius photometric system to the southern hemisphere. Observations were made of 60 stars in the Harvard Standard E regions to increase a set of standard stars.Comment: 6 pages, TeX, requires 2 macros (baltic2.tex, baltic4.tex) included no figures, to be published in Baltic Astronomy, Vol 6, pp1-6 (1997

Statistical Analysis of Partial Discharges from Electrical Trees Grown in a Flexible Epoxy Resin

Electrical treeing is a long-term degradation mechanism in polymeric insulation, which can lead to electrical failure of HV insulation systems. The rate at which trees grow across the insulation depends on the PD activity occurring within them and hence the detection of the onset of electrical treeing could be established by PD monitoring. In this paper, a statistical analysis of the partial discharges detected during the growth of trees in an epoxy resin will be reported. The aim of this work was to provide additional insight into the physical mechanisms that lead to the observed fluctuations in the partial discharge activity. The results demonstrate interesting correlations between a number of statistical parameters, such as average discharge magnitude and standard deviation in the partial discharge amplitudes. These correlations could also be related to physical parameters such as the applied voltage magnitude and the measured power dissipation due to the partial discharges occurring during tree growth. The implications of this work for deterministic methodologies for the simulation of tree growth as well as for condition monitoring using feature recognition strategies for the early detection of tree growth will be discussed

Influence of the temperature on the dielectric properties of epoxy resins

Electrical degradation processes in epoxy resins, such as electrical treeing, were found to be dependent on the temperature at which the experiments were carried out. Therefore, it is of considerable research interest to study the influence of temperature on the dielectric properties of the polymers and to relate the effect of temperature on these properties to the possible electrical degradation mechanisms. In this work, the dielectric properties of two different epoxy resin systems have been characterized via dielectric spectroscopy. The epoxy resins used were bisphenol-A epoxy resins Araldite CY1301 and Araldite CY1311, the later being a modified version of the former with added plasticizer. The CY1301 samples were tested below and above their glass transition temperature, while the CY1311 were tested well above it. Both epoxy systems possess similar behaviour above the glass transition temperature, e.g. in a flexible state, which can be characterized as a low frequency dispersion (LFD). On the other hand, it was found that below the glass transition temperature CY1301 samples have almost “flat” dielectric response in the frequency range considered. The influence of possible interfacial features on the measured results is discussed

Influence of absorbed moisture on the dielectric properties of epoxy resins

The dielectric response of two bisphenol-A epoxy resin systems Araldite CY1301 (Tg ~ 50°C) and Araldite CY1311 (Tg ~0°C) was studied at different levels of absorbed moisture. The dielectric measurements were carried out over the frequency range 1 mHz to 100 kHz and the results were characterised in terms of dc bulk electrical conduction and dielectric processes. The characteristic parameters (frequency and magnitude) of all processes have been found to be moisture dependent. In both resins above the glass transition temperature, absorbed moisture was found to be implicated in the formation of a bulk quasi-dc dielectric response consistent with cluster formation of the absorbed water molecules