The power of words - CEOs' psychological influences: exit, change & hold: the stories of leadership succession: three empirical studies on companies in the FTSE All-Share Index

Leadership transition is a critical period for any organizations. By researching finns in the FTSE All-Share Index, this thesis offers three empirical studies to explore some interesting problems in this important epoch. The samples used for the research are those companies that changed their CEOs in a six-year (from 2002 to 2007) window. This study identified the importance of CEOs' psychological factors not only for the predecessors but also for the new leaders. The first study looks at the old CEOs before the CEO turnover; the second and third studies follow the new CEOs longitudinally after the succession. The first essay investigates how old CEOs' psychological factors influence their types of departure, i.e. voluntary and involuntary CEO turnovers. This study integrates both cognitive and emotional factors, appreciating the proactive roles of CEOs in the leadership succession process. Apart from conventional reasons, e.g. firms' prior perfonnance, old CEOs' power, their future focus attention (FF A) and negative emotion (NE) provide crucial explanations determining the turnover types. Empirically, this study identifies that the level of CEOs' FF A, signaling the planned career management behaviors, will increase the likelihood of voluntary CEO turnover. I also found that the level of CEOs' NE, reflecting the uncooperative behaviors, will increase the likelihood of involuntary CEO turnover. The second essay studies how new CEOs' psychological factors influence the post succession strategic changes (PSSC) of firms. Using the trilogy of mind perspective, on top of cognition, I advocate that new CEOs' emotion and conation serve as the impetus for the PSSC. By tracing the identical new CEOs over years after their succession, the empirical results of this longitudinal study demonstrate that those intra-individual psychological (time-varying) factors of new CEOs are important for the PSSc. New CEOs' future focus attention (FF A), commitment to change (C2C) will significantly increase the PSSC and new CEOs' negative emotion (NE) will significantly reduce the PSSC. Based on the cognitive continuum theory (CCT), the third research study advocates that new CEOs' cognitive reasoning provides new explanations for the mechanism behind the cash holding phenomenon. It is down to CEOs to appreciate the needs and the associated risks. I identify that the degree of analysis (DoA) in new CEOs' cognitive continuum will increase firms' cash holding level because DoA tends to raise the calculated transaction costs, the management controls, the uncertainty avoidance behaviors and the opportunity costs. Using a psycholinguistic approach and computer-aided text analysis (CATA) technique, directly measuring CEOs' mind, we expect to explore the "black box" ofCEOs' roles comprehensively in the leadership succession period

Dynamic Voxel Grid Optimization for High-Fidelity RGB-D Supervised Surface Reconstruction

Direct optimization of interpolated features on multi-resolution voxel grids has emerged as a more efficient alternative to MLP-like modules. However, this approach is constrained by higher memory expenses and limited representation capabilities. In this paper, we introduce a novel dynamic grid optimization method for high-fidelity 3D surface reconstruction that incorporates both RGB and depth observations. Rather than treating each voxel equally, we optimize the process by dynamically modifying the grid and assigning more finer-scale voxels to regions with higher complexity, allowing us to capture more intricate details. Furthermore, we develop a scheme to quantify the dynamic subdivision of voxel grid during optimization without requiring any priors. The proposed approach is able to generate high-quality 3D reconstructions with fine details on both synthetic and real-world data, while maintaining computational efficiency, which is substantially faster than the baseline method NeuralRGBD.Comment: For the project, see https://yanqingan.github.io

PlanarNeRF: Online Learning of Planar Primitives with Neural Radiance Fields

Identifying spatially complete planar primitives from visual data is a crucial task in computer vision. Prior methods are largely restricted to either 2D segment recovery or simplifying 3D structures, even with extensive plane annotations. We present PlanarNeRF, a novel framework capable of detecting dense 3D planes through online learning. Drawing upon the neural field representation, PlanarNeRF brings three major contributions. First, it enhances 3D plane detection with concurrent appearance and geometry knowledge. Second, a lightweight plane fitting module is proposed to estimate plane parameters. Third, a novel global memory bank structure with an update mechanism is introduced, ensuring consistent cross-frame correspondence. The flexible architecture of PlanarNeRF allows it to function in both 2D-supervised and self-supervised solutions, in each of which it can effectively learn from sparse training signals, significantly improving training efficiency. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of PlanarNeRF in various scenarios and remarkable improvement over existing works

EDITORIAL

<p>To make comparisons among the different modes for each strain gauge, each strain was normalized with respect to the average among the fixation modes. The average and standard deviation of the seven specimens are plotted.</p

Everyday-Life Business Deviance Among Chinese SME Owners

Despite its prevalence in emerging economies, everyday-life business deviance (EBD) and its antecedents have received surprisingly little research attention. Drawing on strain theory and the business-ethics literature, we develop a socio-psychological explanation for this deviance. Our analysis of 741 owners of Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) suggests that materialism and trust in institutional justice affect EBD both directly and indirectly in a relationship mediated by the ethical standards of SME owners. These findings have important implications for researching deviant business behavior within SMEs

A Micro-Test Structure for the Thermal Expansion Coefficient of Metal Materials

An innovative micro-test structure for detecting the thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) of metal materials is presented in this work. Throughout this method, a whole temperature sensing moveable structures are supported by four groups of cascaded chevrons beams and packed together. Thermal expansion of the metal material causes the deflection of the cascaded chevrons, which leads to the capacitance variation. By detecting the capacitance value at different temperatures, the TEC value of the metal materials can be calculated. A finite element model has been established to verify the relationship between the TEC of the material and the displacement of the structure on horizontal and vertical directions, thus a function of temperature for different values of TEC can be deduced. In order to verify the analytical model, a suspended-capacitive micro-test structure has been fabricated by MetalMUMPs process and tested in a climate chamber. Test results show that in the temperature range from 30 °C to 80 °C, the TEC of the test material is 13.4 × 10−6 °C−1 with a maximum relative error of 0.8% compared with the given curve of relationship between displacement and temperature

Research on Dust Effect for MEMS Thermal Wind Sensors

This communication investigated the dust effect on microelectromechanical system (MEMS) thermal wind sensors, with an aim to evaluate performance in practical applications. An equivalent circuit was established to analyze the temperature gradient influenced by dust accumulation on the sensor’s surface. The finite element method (FEM) simulation was carried out to verify the proposed model using COMSOL Multiphysics software. In experiments, dust was accumulated on the sensor’s surface by two different methods. The measured results indicated that the output voltage for the sensor with dust on its surface was a little smaller than that of the sensor without dust at the same wind speed, which can degrade the measurement sensitivity and accuracy. Compared to the sensor without dust, the average voltage was reduced by about 1.91% and 3.75% when the dustiness was 0.04 g/mL and 0.12 g/mL, respectively. The results can provide a reference for the actual application of thermal wind sensors in harsh environments

Vertical Interconnection Technology for RF MicroSystem Packaging

In this work, 1.5-level interconnections of RF microsystems with good RF performance, integration process compatibility, and high reliability are developed to meet the future demand for wireless communication microsystems in the millimeter wave band. Numerical models of 1.5-level interconnections based on solder balls with different diameters are established and analyzed using HFSS. The optimized structure parameters of 0.2 mm diameter Sn96.5Ag3Cu0.5 (SAC305) solder balls and 0.3 mm diameter Sn63Pb37 solder balls are selected for the interconnection between glass micro substrates and silicon micro substrates and between silicon micro substrates and HTCC substrates, respectively. Integration process parameters of the vertical interconnection are optimized. The micro substrate interconnection samples manufactured based on optimized integration methods and parameters show high reliability

Feasibility of Anterior Fixation with Single Screw for Odontoid Fractures in Pediatrics: A Computed Tomographic Study

Objective Although it is an effective fixation technique for an unstable odontoid, anterior fixation remains challenging in pediatric populations. Our study measures the anatomical parameters of the odontoid to identify the feasibility of anterior fixation with a single screw for children. Methods We retrospectively collected data from 112 normal male and female children (aged between 2 and 18) in our institute from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022. Subjects were divided into a youth group (2–6 years old), a juvenile group (7–12 years old), and an adolescent group (13–18 years old). Sagittal and coronal computed tomography images of the upper cervical spine were used to measure the screw length, angle, and inner and outer diameters of the odontoid. One‐way analysis of variance with the Tukey test was used to analyze the parameters among the groups, while the t‐test was used to analyze gender differences. Correlations between parameters and age were assessed using Pearson's test. Results There were significant differences between male and female subjects in screw length and inner and outer diameters (of both sagittal and coronal views) but not in screw angle. The narrowest diameter of the odontoid was 4.0 ± 1.5 mm in the youth group, 5.5 ± 1.5 mm in the juvenile group, and 5.6 ± 1.1 mm in the adolescent group, respectively. There were significant differences among the three groups in screw length (p 4 mm. Screw length and inner and outer diameters in lateral view were positively correlated with age, and screw angle was negatively correlated with age. Conclusion It is feasible to insert a standard single screw (Φ 3.5 mm) into the odontoid of children aged 7–18 years old but not those aged 2–6 years old. How the anatomical parameters of the odontoid change with age, especially the narrowest diameters, is worthy of attention