Strategic Link Research Articles

Characterization of physical metallurgy of quenching and partitioning steel in pulsed resistance spot welding: A simulation-aided study

This study mainly focuses on the microstructure evolution of QP980 steel during resistance spot welding and its influence on the mechanical performance of resistance spot welds which is a critical influencing factor on the quality of body-in-white at the service condition. It is observed that the thermomechanically engineered microstructure of QP980 steel changes to form metastable phases such as martensite in the fusion zone and the heat affected zone due to rapid cooling induced by the thermal cycle of the welding. A finite element modeling of the welding process was used to predict the weldment heat distribution, thermal history and microstructure evolution in different welding zones. The modeled thermal history of the weldments shows that the peak temperature in the four-pulse resistance spot welding is delayed because of pulsed welding conditions and holding times between the welding pulses. This heat management approach in pulsed welding prevents void formation. The modeled thermal history and rapid heating, and cooling conditions are discussed here to predict the microstructure evolution and transformation in the fusion and reheated zones. The modeled results were helpful in the prediction of the microstructure at different weld zones. Then the strategic links between the microstructure and mechanical performance of the welded alloy are discussed thoroughly. The microhardness profile of the weld is discussed from a microstructural point of view to disclose the physical metallurgy of the welds. Softening phenomena were not observed in the sub-critical heat affected zone.

Time-evolving traffic resilience performance forecasting during hazardous weather toward proactive intervention

Transportation systems experience significant disruptions and loss during hazardous weather events, exhibiting great needs of timely intervention to effectively improve the resilience of the affected traffic systems. An informed and science-based proactive intervention strategy depends on accurate forecasting of the resilience performance of traffic systems with essential lead time during hazards. A new resilience performance forecasting methodology at both global and local scales is proposed for traffic networks under natural hazards by addressing unique challenges such as scarcity and time-evolving nature of hazard-specific data. The proposed methodology consists of two modules: the local traffic resilience performance short-term forecasting module based on the modified diffusion convolutional recurrent neural network (DCRNN) and transfer learning techniques, and the global traffic resilience performance forecasting module integrating percolation-based robustness assessment and SIR-based congestion propagation modeling. A case study of an urban traffic network during a major snowstorm hazard is conducted as a demonstration, followed by the feasibility investigation to guide proactive intervention during hazards. It is found the proposed methodology can forecast the time-evolving traffic resilience performance with good accuracy at both global and local scales. With sufficient lead time for the forecast, it bears promising potential to assist the stakeholders to make informed and timely decision about possible proactive intervention by providing key information to help identify the optimal moments and individual strategic links for possible intervention.

Moderating Effect of Strategic Linkages on Corporate Leadership and Organizational Performance in Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO)

The urgency of securing safe, affordable, reliable, and nutritious food amid a growing global population and shrinking land productivity underscores the pivotal role of corporate leadership in fostering strategic partnerships and organizational performance. This is crucial for organizations like Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) to enhance performance and drive agricultural innovation that ensure achievement of national targets and mandate. Understanding the dynamics between leadership effectiveness, strategic alliances, and organizational performance is essential for addressing food security challenges and optimizing the impact of agricultural research institutions worldwide. The projected 27% increase in global population by 2050 emphasizes the need for strong corporate leadership and strategic partnerships to ensure balanced diets for over half a billion smallholder farmers. Despite Kenya's higher productivity than East Africa and Africa averages, challenges remain in enhancing food security through effective leadership and strategic alliances, particularly within institutions like KALRO. The study explored the moderating influence of strategic linkages on the relationship between corporate leadership and the performance of KALRO. Rooted in organizational excellence, upper echelons, legitimacy, and stakeholder theories, the research employed a pragmatic philosophy, and mixed methods design to mitigate bias. The target population included 75 management organs, with 60 directors and 188 top leadership units as units of observation. Quantitative analysis, using a composite regression model and ANOVA, revealed a significant impact of strategic linkages on corporate leadership and KALRO's performance. The study verified consistent variances and normality across variables, supporting parametric analyses. Autocorrelation analysis indicated no significant autocorrelation. Multicollinearity tests showed acceptable values, ensuring the reliability of the regression model. No outliers were detected. Cronbach's alpha scores demonstrated strong internal reliability. Significant correlations confirmed associations between variables, aligning with previous research findings. Strategic linkages emerged as enhanced moderator, explaining 69.4% of the variance. In this case, the moderator variable amplified or strengthened the relationship between corporate leadership and organizational performance of KALRO. Rejecting the null hypothesis highlighted the positive impact of strategic linkages on performance. Conditional effects analysis revealed strong corporate leadership influence at low strategic linkages but diminishing at higher levels. Recommendations encompassed gender diversity, inclusive leadership development, regular performance appraisals, enhanced monitoring and evaluation system, and improved linkages. The findings provide valuable guidance for KALRO's leadership amid competing priorities and budgetary constraints.

Who Governs Policing? Mayors’ Strategic Linkages to Police in Latin American Cities

Who Governs Policing? Mayors’ Strategic Linkages to Police in Latin American Cities

Research on Modelling of Strategic Linkage Mechanism Between Urban and Rural Logistics System and New Development Pattern in the Era of Big Data

Research on Modelling of Strategic Linkage Mechanism Between Urban and Rural Logistics System and New Development Pattern in the Era of Big Data

Barriers and facilitators to implementation of the Ethiopian national cancer control plan strategies: Implications for cervical cancer services in Ethiopia.

Following an upsurge in cervical cancer incidence and mortality, Ethiopia developed its first National Cancer Control Plan (NCCP) to support efforts toward the prevention and control of cancer. The NCCP outlines strategies for reducing the incidence of cancer through prevention, screening, early diagnosis, treatment, and palliative care. This study examined barriers and facilitators to the implementation of the NCCP using a qualitative approach. The study entailed doing key informant interviews and reviewing secondary data. Using customized topic guidelines, fifteen interviews were conducted covering a wide range of topics, including political commitment, priority setting, interagency cooperation, the role of evidence, citizen empowerment, and incentives. All interviews were recorded (with consent), transcribed in Amharic, and then translated into English for thematic analysis. Review of secondary data focused on establishing the NCCP's implementation status for HPV vaccination, cervical cancer screening, and treatment, and strategic links to five other national policy documents centered on public awareness, cervical cancer services, HPV immunization, and sexually transmitted infections control. We found that in 2022, 55% of eligible Ethiopian women were screened for cervical cancer (against the annual target), with roughly half of those with a positive result receiving treatment. Overall, 900,000 (8.4%) of the 10.7 million eligible women in the country underwent screening. The study revealed inadequate implementation of the NCCP strategies toward achieving the WHO's 90-70-90 cervical cancer targets by 2030. A key positive strategy was the involvement of high-ranking government officials in the National Cancer Committee, which aided the NCCP implementation. On the other hand, inadequate political support, funding constraints, suboptimal public messaging, lack of incentives, and inadequate partnership arrangements emerged as important barriers. We recommend that decision-makers intensify coordinated efforts, prioritize dealing with identified challenges and optimizing facilitators, and mobilize additional resources to enhance cervical cancer services in Ethiopia.

Agency, authority and universality in the promotion of global ELT textbook series

ABSTRACT There is at present much focus in ELT on describing and promoting teacher and learner agency. However, ELT as a professional field is concurrently characterised by an increasing orientation toward authoritative texts, particularly those imbued with authority at the transnational level. Global textbooks are a notable example, since they, along with global language testing and language policy, play an increasingly important role in determining teaching and learning practices across a range of different settings. Our focus in this paper is on how the authoritativeness of global textbooks is upheld in online promotional materials. Examining websites of three contemporary ELT textbook series, we analyse discourse strategies employed to legitimise the authoritative position of the textbooks and their publishers. We find that publishers legitimised their authority through strategic links to external forces (policy, testing), in this way foregrounding the universality of the textbooks. In contrast, the websites represented the agencies of teachers and learners only minimally, primarily as subordinate to the agency attributed to textbooks themselves. We conclude with a reflection on the need for applied critical scholarship in ELT that can offer practical alternatives and thus disrupt dominant notions of universality and the hierarchization of knowledge these are based on.

From port to disposal: a strategic view to Australia’s O&G decommissioning success across the value chain

Australia’s decommissioning portfolio is forecasted to increase substantially over the next 50 years amounting to US$40.5 billion nationally, with 90% of decommissioning by 2060. High costs, the complexity of our infrastructure geography, ensuring circular economy and carbon efficient principles, will be challenges the industry will need to collaborate through. But Australia has a skilled workforce, a strong sustainability commitment, a mindset of partnership and collaboration as well as a tradition for innovation. These strategic advantages will enable the establishment of new industries early to be a regional player in decommissioning. As the assets are decommissioned offshore, travel to the beach, transported to identified waste providers and go through final end-of-life cycle management including recycling and repurposing, strategic linkages of the value chain will be key for a successful decommissioning industry set up. Understanding the oil and gas (O&G) decommissioning industry’s needs, opportunities and challenges early will strategically enable Australia to pave the way for building decommissioning expertise, critical infrastructure, and sustainable practices. This includes understanding where ports should intersect with waste storage, processing, recycling and disposal capabilities, as we have an opportunity to think differently about turning waste into new resources. And most importantly, how do we ensure availability of a skilled workforce in an already resource-crunched market? As we analyse the port to disposal value chain, it is important to overlay the carbon footprint, regulation, and socio-economic lenses on the journey to support the industry and to ensure long-term viability to minimise conflict with other competing industries or activities.

Contingency Theory in Management: Conceptual Phases and Strategic Link with Performance Measurement Systems

This literature review delves into the dynamic evolution of contingency theory in management, with a specific focus on the relationship between organizational strategy and Performance Measurement Systems (PMS). Employing a systematic literature review methodology, the conceptual phases of contingency theory are examined, spanning from the technological approach to the configurational approach. The analysis underscores the crucial importance of aligning PMS with the overall organizational strategy, as advocated by Kaplan and Norton. Empirical studies by Chenhall, Kaplan and Norton, and Hoque lend support to this correlation, emphasizing its impact on organizational performance. Thus, this review underscores the need for a strategic approach in designing PMS, providing practical implications for managers and prompting avenues for future research.

Moderated Mediation Dynamics: Influence of Strategic Linkages and Policy Implementation on Corporate Leadership and Kenya Agricultural Research Organization's Performance

Global demand for safe, affordable, and accessible nutritious food currently exceeds governmental efforts, notwithstanding huge investments in enhancing capacity of organizations mandated to reverse such trends. With the projected 27% increase in global population by 2050, the need for corporate leadership and policy implementation efforts is urgent. The study explored the moderated mediation effect of strategic linkages and policy implementation on the relationship between corporate leadership and performance of Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO). Rooted in organizational excellence, upper echelons, legitimacy, institutional, and stakeholder theories, the study employed a pragmatic philosophy, and mixed methods design to mitigate bias. The target population included 75 management organs, with 60 directors and 188 top leadership units as units of observation. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS, and qualitative data using NVivo. Cronbach’s alpha (α ≥ .700) confirmed internal consistency. Both confirmatory factor and principal component analyses aided data reduction. Moderated mediation analysis, using Hayes' PROCESS Macro, showed significant interaction (p = .004) between policy implementation (mediator) and strategic linkages (moderator), indicating that the effect of policy implementation on KALRO’s performance varies with levels of strategic linkages (set at -.229). Index below -0.229 shows significant relationships, and vice versa. Recommendations encompass gender diversity, inclusive leadership development, regular performance appraisals, an enhanced monitoring and evaluation system, and improved linkages. The findings provide valuable guidance for KALRO's leadership amid competing priorities and budgetary constraints. Keywords: Moderated mediation, policy implementation, strategic linkages, corporate leadership, KALRO

A Time-Lag Study of the Effect of Organisational Capital on Innovation in Australia SMEs

This study explores the strategic links between organisational capital and innovation performance in Australian SMEs. This study classified organisational capital as information technology as per hardware and software; and equipment or machinery that was applied in the firm. A sample involving SME from various industries was adapted from the Business Longitudinal Database (BLD) from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The analyses validate that information technology capabilities is essential for achieving innovation performance. However the relationship decline over time for different type of innovation. Thus, SME managers should be carefully in investing in appropriate information technology in order to facilitate innovation in their firm.
 Key Words: SMEs, Organisational capital, Innovation, Australia

Navigating the Social Phenomenon A Strategic Exploration of Social Media Engagement in Social Venture Creation

The purpose of this study is to investigate the intricate dynamics of social media engagement in the context of social entrepreneurship. The rising trend of socially conscious entrepreneurship over the years has led to a critical knowledge gap in the understanding of the strategic linkage between social media and the multifaceted elements of social venture creation. This study extracts and synthesizes qualitative insights from the existing literature on social entrepreneurship and social media, employing Gartner’s framework of new venture creation and social cognitive theory as the base pillar to uncover the subtle interplay between social media strategies and the core elements of successful social entrepreneurship. This study aims to unveil actionable insights into the strategic dynamics of social media engagement in social venture creation. The study identifies effective social media strategies tailored to each facet of social entrepreneurship. The research not only uncovers challenges associated with social media but also contributes to the refinement of existing frameworks. By using Gartner's framework, the study positions itself at the forefront of understanding how digital platforms strategically influence the elements of Gartner’s framework in the context of social entrepreneurship. Through this lens, the research aims to offer new perspectives, contributing to informed decision-making in the evolving landscape of digital and social entrepreneurship.

Criteria for Designating a Health Care Facility as a Teaching Institution: An Analysis of International Regulations and Practices

To review international experiences and Chilean regulations to identify hospitals' requirements for university status. A qualitative content analysis was carried out in 6 phases, taking Caceres' proposal as a methodological reference. 66 units of analysis were obtained, which were grouped into 8 codes: comprehensive management, teaching care agreement, strategic link, infrastructure, academic human resources, care-teaching-research management department, quality and safety in health and research, which were subsequently categorized into administrative-managerial, transversal collaboration and evidence-based healthcare. Codes that were later grouped into main and advanced dimensions, therefore, embrace the criteria found to designate a health establishment as a Teaching Care establishment. The findings represent a significant contribution to the requirements that must be considered to strengthen and develop health facilities that currently welcome students, in order to comprehensively develop safe and quality care, teaching and research, promoting effective collaboration between these institutions.

Strategic link of Loyalty with CRM, Attitude, and Satisfaction in Banking Industry

Strategic link of Loyalty with CRM, Attitude, and Satisfaction in Banking Industry

Strategic link of loyalty with CRM, attitude and satisfaction in banking industry

Strategic link of loyalty with CRM, attitude and satisfaction in banking industry

The Impact of Regional and Global Dynamics on Pakistan-Iran Relations

The research explores the geopolitical significance of the "Goldsmith Line," a border between Iran and Pakistan. Serving as a strategic link between the Middle East and South Asia, the Goldsmith Line connects the Balochistan provinces on both sides, inhabited by the Baloch people. The study delves into historical shifts in Iran-Pakistan relations, highlighting the impact of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the potential for enhanced collaboration. Challenges, including security tensions, sectarian elements, and regional dynamics, are discussed. Furthermore, it emphasizes the shared cultural, ethnic, and economic ties between Baloch people on both sides, proposing measures for economic development and border security improvement. It also explores the evolving dynamics of Russia-Pakistan relations, addressing historical contexts and recent developments. The research concludes by examining obstacles and opportunities in current Iran-Pakistan ties, emphasizing the need for cautious navigation amid geopolitical complexities.

ANALYSIS ON ASSOCIATION AND CONTRIBUTION OF PROFILE CHARACTERISTICS OF FARMER FRIENDS UNDER ATMA SCHEME WITH THEIR ROLE PERFORMANCE

In the process of communication of agricultural innovations, the position of village level functionary i.e. farmer friend is very crucial. He first acts as a receiver of innovations and then as an intermediary to convey the messages to other farmers in the village. The role played by the farmer friend as communicator of information about improved agricultural practices is very vital. He gives advice to the farmers for production recommendations. He has to coordinate the work of supply and service agencies for effective implementation of farm production plans. He has to motivate, educate and guide farmers to adopt new ideas and practices. The role of the farmer friend who is at the grass roots is therefore, more important. Under ATMA, diffusion of message into the farming community is mediated through the farmer friends. All communication of innovation when passed from the extension workers through farmer friends in the community finds easy and extensive adoption. The success of Agriculture Development Programme to considerable extent depends on the role performance of farmer friend who is the key position at a village level to implement Agricultural Development Programmes. His service is available to the farmers in the villages and thus forms a strategic link between the research, the extension organization and the farmers. The efficiency and effectiveness of the system mainly depends upon the farmer friends who are expected to perform the duties assigned to them. It is, therefore, important that their proficiency in job performance has to be raised and maintained at a high level. In view of the crucial nature of the role that a farmer friend is expected to play in the new strategy of Agriculture Production, there is need for systematic analysis of his role performance. Hence, it was felt necessary to analyses the roles of the farmer friend while transferring Agriculture technology. As the whole tower of ATMA is standing on the pillar of farmer friend, it is necessary to study the role performance of these Grass root Level Worker and association and contribution of their characteristics with their role performance.

The Strategic Link Between HR Practice and Achievement of Organizational Objectives in Contemporary Organizations

The Strategic Link Between HR Practice and Achievement of Organizational Objectives in Contemporary Organizations

Effectiveness of Transformational Leadership and Organizational Culture in Supporting HR Performance for Corporate Financial Improvement

This study examines transformational leadership and organizational culture's effectiveness in enhancing HR performance, ultimately contributing to corporate financial improvement. It aims to explore the synergistic interaction between leadership and culture and its impact on employee engagement, productivity, and innovation within organizational frameworks. The study employs a systematic literature review (SLR) approach, synthesizing findings from diverse academic sources to identify patterns, relationships, and theoretical insights. Key frameworks such as transformational leadership theory, organizational culture theory, the Resource-Based View (RBV), and contingency theory underpin the analysis, providing a comprehensive understanding of the variables studied. The research reveals that transformational leadership fosters an environment conducive to employee motivation, creativity, and alignment with organizational goals through its core dimensions: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Simultaneously, adaptive and collaborative organizational cultures amplify these effects, creating synergies that enhance HR performance and innovation. The findings also underscore HR performance as a strategic link between leadership, culture, and financial outcomes, emphasizing its role in driving organizational success. The study contributes to theory and practice by highlighting the integration of leadership and culture as essential drivers of HR performance and financial growth. Practical recommendations include adopting transformational leadership styles, fostering adaptive cultures, implementing structured training programs, and establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure and optimize HR performance. These findings offer actionable strategies for practitioners and policymakers to achieve sustainable organizational success.

Convergences between India-ASEAN Relations in the Realm of Indo-Pacific

The "Indo-Pacific" as a strategic concept has gained fresh impetus due to the rising significance of the Indian and Pacific oceans. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations states provide a physical and strategic linkage between both the regions. In India's view of the Indo-Pacific, ASEAN prominence and cohesion" are at the core. This research focuses on identifying developments in India-ASEAN relations in the Indo-Pacific region and expounding on their connection. As a result of the study, the researchers have outlined and analysed different "Convergences" between India and ASEAN that may safeguard their vision of a peaceful, dynamic, and progressive Indo-Pacific.