Business Continuity and Strategic Resilience in High-Context Cultures: A Case if an Asian Insurance

The study analyses Thenextgen Advisory, an insurance intermediary located in Penang, Malaysia, with a specific emphasis on its franchise model and innovative sales strategies. The findings have shown five problematic areas - systems and processes, culture, human capital, leadership styles, and organisational climate - which require strategic decisions and practices to maintain dynamic capabilities in the face of environmental changes while also accessing qualitative resources. To achieve strategic resilience, the implementation of matrix structures to transform organisational processes is pivotal in this case. This involves focusing on open communication systems, technological diversity, interactive control, and embracing low-context cultures to foster adaptive innovation and clear communication. The use of affective commitment and integrated transformational leadership styles is critically suggested to inspire employees with organisational purposes. These strategies will enable the organisation to sustain its dynamic capabilities during environmental changes while achieving superior competitive advantages

Start-up rheometry of highly polydisperse magnetorheological fluids: experiments and simulations

An extensive experimental and simulation study is carried out in conventional magnetorheological fluids formulated by dispersion of mixtures of carbonyl iron particles having different sizes in Newtonian carriers. Apparent yield stress data are reported for a wide range of polydispersity indexes (PDI) from PDI = 1.63 to PDI = 3.31, which for a log-normal distribution corresponds to the standard deviation ranging from to . These results demonstrate that the effect of polydispersity is negligible in this range in spite of exhibiting very different microstructures. Experimental data in the magnetic saturation regime are in quantitative good agreement with particle-level simulations under the assumption of dipolar magnetostatic forces. The insensitivity of the yield stresses to the polydispersity can be understood from the interplay between the particle cluster size distribution and the packing density of particles inside the clusters

Dynamic simulation of non-spherical particulate suspensions

Particle-level simulation has been employed to investigate rheology and microstructure of nonspherical particulate suspensions in a simple shear flow. Non-spherical particles in Newtonian fluids are modeled as three-dimensional clusters of neutrally buoyant, non-Brownian spheres linked together by Hookeantype constraint force. Rotne–Prager correction to velocity disturbance has been employed to account for far-field hydrodynamic interactions. An isolated rodlike particle in simple shear flow exhibits a periodic orientation distribution, commonly referred to as Jeffery orbit. Lubrication-like repulsive potential between clusters have been included in simulation of rod-like suspensions at various aspect ratios over dilute to semidilute volume fractions. Shear viscosity evaluated by orientation distribution qualitatively agrees with one obtained by direct computation of shear stress

Dynamic yield stress enhancement in bidisperse magnetorheological fluids

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