Interesting Point Of Departure Research Articles

Critical success factors in implementing Industry 4.0 from an organisational point of view: a literature analysis

Industry 4.0 is an emerging technological innovation inspired by the advent of intelligent systems such as the internet of things, cloud computing, cyber-physical systems and smart manufacturing. However, its implementation faces significant challenges such that understanding the crucial factors in its successful integration into organisational processes becomes an interesting point of departure. Thus, this paper establishes a list of critical success factors (CSFs), mostly derived from the general innovation domain, that would aid in organisational strategy development in implementing Industry 4.0. As such, 29 CSFs from the relevant domain literature are initially extracted from 78 published articles. By removing redundant and irrelevant CSFs, a list of seven CSFs is established. This work contributes to the literature as it is one of the relatively few papers to develop a list of CSFs devoted to Industry 4.0. Stakeholders would find it beneficial as it provides them a framework in facilitating the adoption process efficiently.

Critical success factors in implementing Industry 4.0 from an organisational point of view: a literature analysis

Industry 4.0 is an emerging technological innovation inspired by the advent of intelligent systems such as the internet of things, cloud computing, cyber-physical systems and smart manufacturing. However, its implementation faces significant challenges such that understanding the crucial factors in its successful integration into organisational processes becomes an interesting point of departure. Thus, this paper establishes a list of critical success factors (CSFs), mostly derived from the general innovation domain, that would aid in organisational strategy development in implementing Industry 4.0. As such, 29 CSFs from the relevant domain literature are initially extracted from 78 published articles. By removing redundant and irrelevant CSFs, a list of seven CSFs is established. This work contributes to the literature as it is one of the relatively few papers to develop a list of CSFs devoted to Industry 4.0. Stakeholders would find it beneficial as it provides them a framework in facilitating the adoption process efficiently.

Continuing the Vietnam War Debate

Some day, hopefully, there will be bookshelves groaning under the weight of tomes written to justify—or criticize—the war decisions of America’s leaders after September 11, or to argue the war on terror was or was not lost, and why. We already have that for the Vietnam war—both the French war and the American one. And where some probably hoped that history would come to its judgment and settle, that has not been the case. Instead the Vietnam War debate continues and Gregory Daddis’s Withdrawal opens the next phase of the argument. In an interesting point of departure, Daddis opens with his time in Iraq as an Army lieutenant colonel and historian, and what he observed on colleagues’ reading tables. One of those books, the product of another former officer, was Lewis Sorley’s A Better War (Disclosure: I have been a friend of Sorley’s, and have had him speak to a class of mine; I have also had Daddis speak at a conference I helped organize). He became concerned that the “better war” thesis “manufactured a narrative that misinterpreted the complicated nature of American strategy” (xii). Gregory Daddis sets out to explore that terrain. It soon led to historical minefields.

Book Review: Higher education for the public good: views from the South. Leibowitz, B. (ed.)

Recently, an employee at one of my institution's partner NGOs asked an insightful and illustrative question: 'If all the university buildings burnt down, even though the university is one of the main employers in this town, would the people - the people of this community - come together and rebuild those buildings?' He answered, tentatively, that he thought they would not, and I can't help but think that I agree with his opinion on the matter. Perhaps my community partner colleague's question is an unfair one - would the people of our community come together to rebuild the local and sole hospital building in our town, or the town hall, if they burnt down? I cannot answer these questions, or offer an analysis of the complex reasons why people might respond differently or in the same way to these scenarios here, but my colleague's question does provide us with an interesting point of departure for asking questions about the role that universities, seen as social institutions, might play in contemporary South African society - questions which in the wake of the #FeesMustFall protests need to be critically addressed.

The Mongol Conquests in World History by Timothy May (review)

Reviewed by: The Mongol Conquests in World History by Timothy May Anne F. Broadbridge The Mongol Conquests in World History. By Timothy May. London: Reaktion Books, 2012. 320 pp. $45.00 (cloth). This work is part of the Globalities series, which investigates big ideas, big changes, and big events in the context of the big picture. The Mongols are therefore natural for inclusion, and May has used them to write a synthetic work designed for a general audience. Thus, although he does refer to some academic controversies and occasionally offers his own scholarly opinions, his overarching aim is to give a broad picture of Mongol activities and their extraordinary impact on practically everyone. This he does very well. The book is divided into two main sections. In the first, May narrates the rise of Chinggis Khan (d. 1227), the course of the Mongol conquests, and the establishment of the Great Mongol Empire. He then follows that empire through its dissolution in the 1260s, down to the politically fractured history of the subsequent Mongol-influenced [End Page 696] states. This section is clear and easy to read, which is no mean feat considering the convolutions of the historical material. May has therefore done a real service to general readers interested in Chinggis Khan. In the second section, May models a theory of the “Chinggis Exchange” on Alfred Crosby’s 1972 concept of the Columbian Exchange, which explained the way Columbus’s discovery of the Americas led to the transmission of biological matter between continents, which in turn transformed politics, economics, and society. Although the comparison is compelling and the theoretical potential of a Chinggis Exchange significant, May does not fully elaborate this idea, even though it would have strengthened the second half of the book. Nevertheless, the material within these chapters reflects his conviction of the Mongols’ worldwide importance and does suggest the possibilities that the concept of a Chinggis Exchange could provide. Chapter 4 (“Pax Mongolica and Trade”) provides a useful general survey of policy, routes, and developments in trade under Chinggis Khan and his son Ögedei (r. 1229–1241) and in the post-empire khanates. To highlight the global impact of the Mongols, May draws “international” connections, like noting that a London fish market collapsed after Russian merchants stayed home to prepare for Mongol invaders and reminding us that Columbus stumbled across the Americas while seeking the Grand Khan. In chapter 5 (“New Forms of Warfare”), May analyzes the Mongols’ impact on warfare, especially during the Crusades, and in Eastern Europe and Russia, China, Japan, and the Muslim Middle East. He compares the roles of gunpowder versus naphtha weapons in the premodern era, and ends with Chinggis Khan’s influence on twentiethcentury warfare in Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Israel. This chapter is particularly strong and reflects May’s well-known expertise in all realms of Chinggis Khan’s military. Chapter 6 (“The Mongol Administration”) tackles a topic that May acknowledges is both huge and little studied, but it achieves only mixed results. Although it does provide a nuts-and-bolts description of administration and administrative terminology in and after the empire, ranging even to the Crimean Tatars and Temür, some trends in Mongol administration (like the financial reforms of the 1230s) could have used elaboration, and questions of impact are (perhaps of necessity) left unanswered. May opens chapter 7 (“Religion and the Mongols”) by asking why the Mongols did not immediately convert to a world religion, then hypothesizes about the reasons that Christianity made only modest [End Page 697] inroads on the Mongols while Islam and Buddhism eventually spread among them. Although an interesting point of departure, much of this chapter is speculative, and this reviewer would have liked to see these arguments fleshed out in more detail. Chapter 8 covers the Black Death, which originated in the Mongol Empire and spread because of the empire’s robust trade, a fact known by Mongol specialists but not by many others. May spends this brief but gripping section detailing the rise of the plague and its enormous impact on Europe, the Middle East, and the Mongol khanates, two of which (the Yuan and the...

The Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos: Fragile memory and contested meaning in Post-dictatorship Uruguay

Nearly thirty years after the Uruguayan civil-military dictatorship (1973–1985) ended, the ways in which memory of this period is treated remains the subject of considerable contestation. In early 2010, controversy erupted over the filming of an advertisement for Sprite. During the shoot, the Memorial de los Detenidos Desaparecidos, conceived and constructed between 1998 and 2001 in homage to the victims of state terrorism, was covered up by the production company, rendering it camouflaged against the landscape of its location in Montevideo's Parque Vaz Ferreira. This episode demonstrates that rather than draw a line under the past, the construction and continued presence of the Memorial precipitates new debates over how memorial sites are interpreted and preserved. It provides an interesting point of departure from which to explore the fragility of memory in post-dictatorship Uruguay and the open-ended meanings of memorials, particularly within shifting judicial, political and urban contexts. Through analysis of the Memorial's aesthetics, peripheral location and the consumer-driven context it inhabits, this paper examines the Memorial's complexities and the threats to memorialisation in Uruguay, arguing that they are intimately tied to the broader struggles of state and society to address recent repression, which go beyond the dichotomies of remembering versus forgetting.

Designing IB Curricula for Future Global Careerists: A Boundaryless Career Perspective

New career realities appear to be reshaping the necessary tools, skills and attitudes individuals must possess in order to establish a successful career in the international business arena. In particular, the boundaryless career perspective provides an interesting point of departure from which to analyze the kinds of competences future global careerists will need to become masters their own careers. Accordingly, this article presents the main arguments behind boundaryless career theory and discusses them in light of the extant literature on international careers. Based on this discussion the paper goes on to spell out the implications of the boundaryless career for IB curricula design, suggesting ways in which they can help IB students—the future global careerists—accumulate valuable career capital prior to embarking on their international career paths. The authors are grateful for the financial support provided by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES).

Elaine Reichek: Pixels, Bytes, and Stitches

Since the early 1970s feminist artists have been using embroidery as a vehicle to reclaim female agency in contemporary artistic practice and to question the validity of a hierarchy of genres in the history of art. Roszika Parker's Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and Making of the Feminine, published in 1984, was the first text to research and evaluate the history of this art form and its important role, as a form of cultural production, in validating women's contributions to global history.1 For the last four decades, the New York-based artist Elaine Reichek has been making work that unravels the tradition of the embroidered sampler—as an educational exercise designed to “frame truisms and life lessons for girls and young women within decorative patterns”—retooling this domestic format to critique the patriarchal and modernist assumptions of our culture.2 In her most recent bodies of work Reichek uses the medium of embroidery to interrogate the complicated relationships among art history, representation, and technology.3 By juxtaposing hand-made cross-stitches with those produced by a computer-programmed sewing machine in samplers that simulate famous works of art, Reichek offers an incisive commentary on the many forms of translation and remediation that are integral to the history of mark-making and illusionism in Western visual culture. For those interested in cyber-based art practices, her longtime engagement as a classically trained painter-become-needlewoman with the history of technology and mechanical and digital production offers an interesting point of departure.

The Indépendant, a Typeface as Period Document

[The Independant is a modish display type from 1930 which was cast in Brussels by Etablissements Plantin, the Belgian branch of the Dutch company 'Lettergieterij Amsterdam' (Amsterdam Type Foundry). The typeface was designed by G. Collette and J. Dufour, probably by using matrices that were engraved in the Netherlands. It is the only hot-metal typeface which was created in Belgium in the twentieth century and the history of this design provides an interesting point of departure for the historiography of graphic design in Belgium during the interwar period. Because nothing is known about the designer duo Collette and Dufour and there exist no other typeface creations of theirs, it is sometimes suggested that the Independant might be based on a German source of inspiration. Research has shown that sure enough it is an original design, to which Henry van de Velde also reacted enthusiastically. By referring with its name to the hundredth anniversary of the national independance, the Independant set itself up as a concept specific to Belgium. However, the typeface fits into a much larger picture and is linked up with the international predilection for reduction and standardization of the modernists. But more than anything else the Independant is an art deco typeface which sought to conquer the market by responding to a generally felt need for heavier display types which had arisen in the late twenties both in America and in Europe. The Independant was however not an innovating design, but the typographic transformation of a trendy letter form which had been in existence for a longer period of time in other contexts and disciplines. Not surprisingly, it soon passed into disuse., The Independant is a modish display type from 1930 which was cast in Brussels by Etablissements Plantin, the Belgian branch of the Dutch company 'Lettergieterij Amsterdam' (Amsterdam Type Foundry). The typeface was designed by G. Collette and J. Dufour, probably by using matrices that were engraved in the Netherlands. It is the only hot-metal typeface which was created in Belgium in the twentieth century and the history of this design provides an interesting point of departure for the historiography of graphic design in Belgium during the interwar period. Because nothing is known about the designer duo Collette and Dufour and there exist no other typeface creations of theirs, it is sometimes suggested that the Independant might be based on a German source of inspiration. Research has shown that sure enough it is an original design, to which Henry van de Velde also reacted enthusiastically. By referring with its name to the hundredth anniversary of the national independance, the Independant set itself up as a concept specific to Belgium. However, the typeface fits into a much larger picture and is linked up with the international predilection for reduction and standardization of the modernists. But more than anything else the Independant is an art deco typeface which sought to conquer the market by responding to a generally felt need for heavier display types which had arisen in the late twenties both in America and in Europe. The Independant was however not an innovating design, but the typographic transformation of a trendy letter form which had been in existence for a longer period of time in other contexts and disciplines. Not surprisingly, it soon passed into disuse.]

How APT is your theory: Present status and future prospects

To begin with, we thank the commentators for their remarks, which both intrigued and challenged us in various ways. Time and space limits prevent us from doing justice to all the points they raised, so we will focus on those we consider most significant and are best prepared to deal with. One of these points, of course, is the overall character and status of our proposal. Pienemann terms Acquisition by Processing (APT) ‘an interesting point of departure’ (p. 38) for the development of a theory of acquisition and processing. Harrington and Carroll say in effect that it can't be done; others seem more open to the possibility. In any case, we quickly accept Roeper's suggestion that what we have presented is more a ‘prole-gomena’ (p. 21) to a theory than a full-fledged theory in itself.

PERSPECTIVES IN HEALTH PLANNING

PERSPECTIVES IN HEALTH PLANNING James R. Kimmey CopyRight https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.60.3.589-a Published Online: August 29, 2011

Some halo effects in perception of geometrical patterns

SUMMARYThe present article contains a report on an experimental study, in which subjects were requested to judge specific characteristics of a complex geometrical pattern. By a systematic variation of a number of specific geometrical characteristics of the stimuli, we were able to examine the extent to which the subject's judgments of one specific stimulus characteristic was systematically influenced by irrelevant aspects of the pattern. A number of such halo effects were found. In short, some subjects were “misled” by the curvature of a line when judging length, others were “misled” by length when judging curvature, etc. The observed individual differences present, according to the authors, an interesting point of departure for a functionalistic approach to certain geometrical illusions, and appear to be in some respects roughly analogous to halo effects in perception of personal attributes examined in previous experimental studies.

"Die Gebildete Umgangssprache" and Our College Grammars: The German Present Tense in Future Meaning

THE RENEWED and increased emphasis on everyday German that has come about as a result of our Army Training Programs provides an interesting point of departure for an examination of our College German grammars. Many of us may well ask to what extent our formal treatment of grammar is helpful in giving our students a command of informal speech and writing. The average elementary grammar, whether German or English, or what not, bases its material largely on formal, literary German or English, wholly neglecting, or at least strikingly underemphasizing, informal speech and writing. All of us know that even such a select group as professional teachers, who are addicted to more formal speech than their fellows-with the possible exception of ministers-speak and write informally at least ninety-five percent of the time. Just why, in the face of this incontrovertible fact, grammars, almost without exception, are built up on formal, literary speech and writing is something that all grammarians should be asked. Whatever their answer, the fact remains that one cannot learn cultivated, colloquial speechdie gebildete Umgangssprache-from our English, German, or other grammars. What one can and does learn is formal, literary English or German-which is grammatically correct, if one has learned and can apply the forms and rules, but which sounds hopelessly stilted to the native American or German-and is therefore one of the surest earmarks of foreignism. I have not attempted to analyze our college grammars with respect to their consideration of informal speech and writing in general, but have limited my task to an analysis of the treatment of the future tense, specifically the present tense in future meaning, in some of our commonly used grammars. It is fairly general knowledge that in German the present tense is very often used in future meaning. One only needs to read a few pages of German, or to speak it, or to hear it spoken, to find out how common this use is. Nor does one have to examine those German writers who are noted for their accurate reproduction of colloquial speech-cultivated, colloquial speech-to prove this point. I picked up Thomas Mann's Tonio Krdger for illustrations. Now, Thomas Mann very often has his