Triangular Relationship Research Articles

Acceptability measurement and priority weight elicitation of triangular fuzzy multiplicative preference relations based on geometric consistency and uncertainty indices

This paper investigates consistency and uncertainty measurements as well as acceptability checking for triangular fuzzy multiplicative preference relations (TFMPRs). A geometric consistency index is proposed to measure the consistency degree of a TFMPR, and thresholds of acceptable consistency are discussed for TFMPRs. Uncertainty indices are introduced to measure indeterminacy degrees of triangular fuzzy judgments and of TFMPRs and a notion of acceptable TFMPRs are put forward by considering both acceptable consistency and acceptable uncertainty in TFMPRs. We also explore the elicitation of triangular fuzzy weights from acceptable TFMPRs and the aggregation of local triangular fuzzy weights for solving hierarchical multi-criteria decision-making problems. A geometric mean-based equation and a logarithmic least square model are developed to elicit normalized acceptable triangular fuzzy multiplicative weights from an acceptable TFMPR. An equation and a linear program are established to transform triangular fuzzy multiplicative weights into triangular fuzzy additive weights. A geometric weighting-based equation and a pair of linear programs are devised to generate global priority fuzzy weights from local triangular fuzzy multiplicative weights. Three numerical examples, including a hierarchical multi-criteria decision-making problem, are used to illustrate how to apply the developed framework, and comparative studies are provided to show its availability and advantages.

Representing urban shrinkage — The importance of discourse as a frame for understanding conditions and policy

How are shrinking cities perceived by scholars, policymakers and citizens in different national contexts, and how do their discourses affect the nation's policies toward those cities? Although the interest in urban shrinkage has steadily grown among scholars worldwide during recent years, little has been written about these issues. This is the gap which the Special Issue “Urban shrinkage” presenting a cross-national comparison (Japan, US, Germany) seeks to fill. This article sets up the frame for the SI; we outline a circular relationship between conditions of shrinkage, the discourse and the design and implementation of policies to counteract challenges posed by shrinkage. We focus on six propositions with which we try to define the boundaries and limitations of the shrinking city literature. Afterwards, we present a model through which we interpret the triangular relationships of discourse, conditions and policy. Finally, we set the stage for the articles that follow.

Exploring the influence of external actors on the cooperation in public–private project organizations for constructing infrastructure

Though different forms of public–private partnerships exist, in the organizational structure of most forms a public and a private project organization can be derived, resulting in two collaborating project organizations. The literature on project management however mostly considers one project organization. The literature on public–private partnerships considers the public part of the organization mostly as ‘the client’. This research focuses on the relationships between public and private organizations: the two collaborating project organizations, the relationship with their parent organizations, and with external actors. Exploratory interviews in three cases uncovered five mechanisms leading to tensions between project partners: ambiguity, conflict of interest, triangular relationships, unclear purpose and organizational context.

Urban shrinkage in Germany: An entangled web of conditions, debates and policies

Interest in urban shrinkage has steadily grown among scholars worldwide and Germany has received great attention in shrinkage-related research. Little has been written, however, about how the discussion of urban shrinkage has shaped policy responses and vice versa. This paper seeks to fill this gap with respect to the German experience by examining the relationship between (1) the state and conditions of shrinkage, (2) the discussion, and (3) the design and implementation of policies to address the challenges posed by shrinkage. Covering a time span from the 1970s to today, we explore four distinct chronological phases of this triangular relationship. Particular focus is directed to the rapid shrinkage trajectory of eastern Germany in the 1990s, which was seen as a particularly critical challenge, and which was addressed nationally by public policies through the unique development program known as Stadtumbau Ost. Based on our analysis, we conclude that the phases of the German experience identified represent paradigmatic situations that can be found elsewhere, and thus provide insight into why debates on urban shrinkage emerge, how they result in policies and vice versa and, finally, what can be learnt from this great body of knowledge.

Triangular love–hate: management and control in creative crowdworking

This article analyses the ways in which creative crowdwork is managed and controlled within social and economic power relations. It presents findings from a research project on creative crowdworkers focussing on aspects of management and control. The research shows that the design of the platforms and the strategies of their operating companies clearly structure the triangular relationship between platform, clients and workers. In addition to bureaucratic rules and surveillance exercised by the platform, rating opportunities and other control features utilised by clients strongly impact on crowdworkers’ time use, income and creativity and thus on their working and living conditions.

Responses of coral reef fishes to past climate changes are related to life-history traits.

Coral reefs and their associated fauna are largely impacted by ongoing climate change. Unravelling species responses to past climatic variations might provide clues on the consequence of ongoing changes. Here, we tested the relationship between changes in sea surface temperature and sea levels during the Quaternary and present‐day distributions of coral reef fish species. We investigated whether species‐specific responses are associated with life‐history traits. We collected a database of coral reef fish distribution together with life‐history traits for the Indo‐Pacific Ocean. We ran species distribution models (SDMs) on 3,725 tropical reef fish species using contemporary environmental factors together with a variable describing isolation from stable coral reef areas during the Quaternary. We quantified the variance explained independently by isolation from stable areas in the SDMs and related it to a set of species traits including body size and mobility. The variance purely explained by isolation from stable coral reef areas on the distribution of extant coral reef fish species largely varied across species. We observed a triangular relationship between the contribution of isolation from stable areas in the SDMs and body size. Species, whose distribution is more associated with historical changes, occurred predominantly in the Indo‐Australian archipelago, where the mean size of fish assemblages is the lowest. Our results suggest that the legacy of habitat changes of the Quaternary is still detectable in the extant distribution of many fish species, especially those with small body size and the most sedentary. Because they were the least able to colonize distant habitats in the past, fish species with smaller body size might have the most pronounced lags in tracking ongoing climate change.

An axiomatic approach to approximation-consistency of triangular fuzzy reciprocal preference relations

Under the assumption of rational economics, the consistency of judgments is one of the important issues in multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods. We propose three axiomatic properties of the consistent judgments in relative measurements being considered from the perspective of strict logic and rationality: (A1) the reciprocal property of pairwise comparisons, (A2) the invariance of consistency with respect to permutations of alternatives, and (A3) the robustness of the ranking of alternatives. These properties are further applied to analyze the consistency of the judgments expressed by positive real numbers and triangular fuzzy numbers, respectively. The inconsistency of comparison matrices encountered in the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) can be considered to be the case of weakening the axiomatic property (A3). Fuzzifying the judgments is due to the weakening of axiomatic property (A1). A method of weakening the axiomatic properties for triangular fuzzy reciprocal matrices is proposed and a new concept of approximation-consistency is put forward to distinguish from the typical consistency. By considering the permutations of alternatives, an illustrative example is presented to show the use of the proposed procedures for solving the decision making problems with triangular fuzzy reciprocal preference relations.

In/valuable Hare’s Blood

In the performance ‘Hare’s Blood +’ we staged a public auction of a living relic that we had genetically engineered using DNA from a multiple by Joseph Beuys. Beuys had shrink-wrapped the blood of a hare, an animal that was often involved in his animistic rituals. Through a genetic interface, rising bids at the auction led to the cellular suicide of the molecular organism.We reconfigured the triangular relationship between classification, living matter and capital with its biopolitically motivated taxonomy and determination of species. Thus, ‘Hare’s Blood +’ appealed to a post-animistic sacrifice. Profit-orientated production, creation, engineering and killing of life were confronted with principles of exchange and gift economies. Conceptually, ‘Hare’s Blood+’ is governed by De Castro’s multiperspectivism: he argues that the powerful endowment of a non-human species with human subjectivity, that is, with traits of a former human, requires particular rituals, if killed, otherwise the violent exclusion of the non-human will turn against the human.By refiguring the coordinates in which species-modification (laboratory) and art-value production (auction) took place, we aimed to enhance heterogeneous ontological modes of subjectivity and to give voice to the multiple perspectives involved: the DNA of the animal relic, the living carrier cells, the audience and the shaman auctioneer. The concept aimed at a transindividual, relational becoming that would not anthropomorphize the non-human agents involved or subject them to an anthropocentric standard that only serves human interests.What matters was not what the genetically modified organism is in itself, but where it stood in the network of relations. Considering more than the human perspective, it was less the experience of the creation of a new species than the relational transformation and exchange that removed the genetically modified organism from its taxonomy and standardization.

Party and governance in the Arab republics

By focusing on political memoirs as an important source, the article deals with the ruling party and governance in the Arab republics, whether they had a one-party system such as Iraq and Syria, or a multi-party system such as Egypt and Tunisia. However, one country among the republics, Libya, annulled political parties and parliament and created its own unique system of governance. Through memoirs of party members, parliamentary opponents, and ministers, the article analyses the substantial role of the ruling parties in perpetuating the regimes. While the triangular relationship between the leadership, the party, and the bureaucracy differed from one republic to another, the overall structure of governance did not vary widely, except in the case of Libya.

A novel approach for enhancing green supply chain management using converged interval-valued triangular fuzzy numbers-grey relation analysis

The existing literatures are lacking on the cost and benefit concerns, screening the measures and convergence of interval-valued triangular fuzzy numbers-grey relation analysis (IVTFN-GRA) weight together. Nonetheless, Green supply chain management is always suffering the linguistic preferences and system incomplete information in evaluation process to enhance the performance. Yet, those previous studies are merely based on un-converged weight results. Hence, this study proposed a hybrid method to dealing with this multi-criteria evaluation problem. Fuzzy Delphi method proposes to screen the evaluation criteria and converged IVTFN-GRA weight method handles the vagueness system uncertainty and incomplete information with interdependence relations. Hence, the proposed hybrid method enhanced the green supply chain management and compared multi-methods to enhance their performance in Taiwanese electronic focal firm. The result showed that the converged weight is consistent with the real practices, despite the differences with the current average weighting method. The finding in the long-term perspective: resilience and operational improvement are the top weighted aspects.

Study of local-zone microstructure, strength and fracture toughness of hybrid laser-metal-inert-gas-welded A7N01 aluminum alloy joint

Mechanical properties of hybrid laser-metal-inert-gas-welded A7N01-T5 aluminum alloy joints were studied by using local samples that were extracted from the base metal (BM), heat-affected zone (HAZ), and fusion zone (FZ) of the joint to investigate the triangular relationship of microstructure, strength and fracture toughness of the local zones. The BM had the highest yield strength, ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and lowest elongation, which contrasts with the FZ. The yield strength of the HAZ is lower than that of the BM, whereas its UTS is very close to that of the BM, and its elongation is higher than that of the BM. The fracture toughness of the three local zones decreased as HAZ>BM>FZ. To analyze differences in local mechanical behavior, the detailed microstructure of the three local zones was studied by optical microscopy and electron backscattered diffraction, whereas the fracture surface and precipitation were studied by scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The variation of grain size, especially the morphology and distribution of strengthening phase in HAZ in welding process is the key factor that leads to its different mechanical properties from that of BM, which can be elucidated by different dislocation mechanism, sheared mechanism or Orowan mechanism. The as-cast microstructure and second-phase particles that segregate between dendritic branches provide the FZ with the lowest yield strength and UTS. The factors including area fraction of the precipitates, the difference of strength between the matrix and the grain boundaries, the precipitate-free zone along grain boundaries, as well as the grain boundaries angle are taken into account to explain the difference of fracture toughness among BM, HAZ and FZ, and their fracture modes.

Author response: Excess mortality and hospitalized morbidity in newly treated epilepsy patients.

We thank Dr. Sethi for the comment on our article.1 We acknowledge that the association between epilepsy and other conditions may be due to confounders, but the association is present nonetheless; this demonstrates that the larger burden conferred by epilepsy is attributable in part to comorbid conditions. There may even be a triangular relationship among epilepsy, psychiatric, and physical comorbidities, operating through unhealthy lifestyles in terms of diet and physical activity. There was no capacity in our study to reliably assess and account for such lifestyle factors long term. However, this is a worthwhile area for future research, made feasible by the ubiquitous wearable devices capable of tracking physical activity.2

Solution of two-parameter cohesive law using Chebyshev polynomials for singular integral equation

Complex stress and displacement potentials are used to examine the effect of cohesive stress on crack opening and stress around a two-dimensional slit-like crack in an isotropic material. A two-parameter right-angled triangular relationship between the cohesive stress and crack opening is assumed to hold. Following an earlier work, the problem is reduced to a singular integral equation (SIE), which is solved numerically using Chebyshev polynomials. The results quantify the effect that the cohesive stress has on the crack opening, and on the stress field around the crack. Finally, it is also shown that the region of action of cohesive stress (“cohesive zone”) comes out as a part of the solution based on the choice of the two parameters. The presented method is more direct than the commonly used variational methods.

Drawing the Triangle: How Coaches Manage Ambiguities Inherited in Executive Coaching

Abstract Executive coaching is a common leadership development intervention whose complexity is underestimated. The triangular relationships between coachee, coach, and organization give rise to conflicting interests (Fatien-Diochon, 2012). This study examines how coaches perceive triangular relationships and reflect on conflicts of interest and ethical issues. During semi-structured interviews, nine coaches drew their interpretations of how triangular relationships unfold in executive coaching processes. Coaches’ explanations were categorized into three groups. There are coaches who understand executive coaching as a harmonious and congruent process, called naive; some coaches rely on the coaching process to deal with conflicts of interest, and we called them procedural. Other coaches are skeptical when dealing with conflict of interests in triangular relationships, and were called suspicious. In order to support coaches facing ethical dilemmas that may be present in triangular relationships in the executive coaching process, the ethics of the profession perspective developed for the educational sector by Shapiro and Stefkovich (2016) was adapted and integrated into Carroll and Shaw’s (2013) ethical maturity perspective. This adapted model offers coaches an integrative and dynamic view to foster their development and ethical maturity.

Editor's Introduction: Translations, Triangular Relations, and Spiritual Permutations

Editor's Introduction:Translations, Triangular Relations, and Spiritual Permutations Elliott Horowitz and Natalie B. Dohrmann, Coeditor, JQR Writing from Paris to his friend Gershom (Gerhard) Scholem in October 1936, the literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin ended his letter with a request: "Let me hear something about Agnon, for once."1 Both Scholem and the Galician-born writer had been living in Jerusalem for over a decade, where the former taught at the newly founded Hebrew University. Scholem had known Benjamin (1892–1940), whom he had first met as a precocious teenager in their native Berlin, even longer than he knew Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888–1970), whom he had also first met in Berlin.2 On a Friday evening during the summer of 1918—the year following his first encounter with Agnon—Scholem read the Hebrew original of the latter's story about a Torah scribe to the newly married couple Walter and Dora Benjamin, neither of whom had yet achieved a working knowledge of the language. "I read it for perhaps the tenth time," Scholem later noted in his diary, "but as I already knew, it affects me more deeply each time . . . I trembled as if I had to kiss a girl. Perhaps I read well as a result."3 [End Page 379] disorder and early sorrow The future scholar of Kabbalah had begun translating from Hebrew into German when he first gained mastery of Hebrew as a teenager, and he seems to have regarded translation as a means of truly internalizing the language—not only for purposes of scholarship but also for purposes of life (in Palestine). Scholem's first translation, rather curiously, was of the Song of Songs, which may also have caused him to tremble occasionally, and it was published privately in 1916, when he was not yet twenty.4 Late in the following year, while residing in Jena, where he was studying mathematical logic under Frege, he began translating the book of Lamentations.5 In 1917 Scholem sent both his first version of the former book as well as a later one to Benjamin, who was not overly enthusiastic about either, claiming somewhat paradoxically (as was his wont) that Scholem was "not as close to German" as he was to Hebrew and therefore had "not been called" to translate the Song of Songs—unlike the German poet Hölderlin's rendering of Pindar's Greek poems.6 In a letter to another friend, Scholem referred to his recent translation of Lamentations as "different from my accursed translation of the Song of Songs," but Benjamin did not quite agree with this evaluation; writing in late March 1918, he informed Scholem that both he and Dora felt that the translation of Lamentations "has the character of an academic study," since its author had not allowed himself "to be inspired by the German language." Its weakness lay in that it was not intended "to save a text for the German language, but rather to relate it to German in terms of what is correct."7 Despite Benjamin's barbed responses, Scholem kept translating from [End Page 380] Hebrew into German, moving from biblical texts to medieval and modern ones. In 1919 he published a translation, in Buber's Der Jude, of a poetic lament by R. Meir of Rothenberg (d. 1293),8 and a year later his first translation of a story by Agnon appeared in those pages. Benjamin seems not to have responded to the former, perhaps because unlike Scholem's translations from the Bible, it could not be compared with Luther's version. Although he began studying Hebrew only during the summer of 1920, when writing to Scholem in early January of that year Benjamin praised the latter's recent translation of Agnon, describing it as "perfect," based on "the beauty of both the story and the language."9 Der Jude, in which both those translations had appeared, was cofounded in 1916 as a Zionist monthly by Martin Buber (1878–1965), then widely regarded as the leader of German Jewry's spiritual renewal, and the philanthropist Salman Schocken (1877–1959), co-owner of a chain of department stores.10 Shortly after its founding, Buber...

A Public Management Framework for Wireless Broadband Development in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper identifies potential public and private stakeholders needed to help rural communities deliver wireless broadband infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa. These rural areas are not commercially viable for mobile broadband cellular networks. However, few rural communities in the region have attempted to develop Wi-Fi networks. Few have succeeded and some have failed. A public Public-Private Partnership framework that can be customized to deliver and provide sustenance to these initiatives may hold the answer to curb the failure of such initiatives. This study adopts the stakeholder theory of identification and salience on 6 community-based initiatives in developed and developing countries to find out different stakeholder arrangements in these cases. Based on the findings, the interpretive phenomenological analysis is used to explain how the findings could be utilized by the public sector agencies in Africa to help rural communities develop sustainable Wi-Fi networks. The paper concludes that a triangular relationship between the community, the public sector agency, and attractive incentives for each stakeholder, can serve as the basis for organizing such stakeholders to aid the community develop the networks.

The Politics of Pests: Immigration and the Invasive Other

The Politics of Pests:Immigration and the Invasive Other Bridget Anderson (bio) the united nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than one million people crossed into Europe by sea in 2015. At least 3,700 of those attempting to enter drowned. The vast majority of these travellers were from the world's top 10 refugee-producing countries, including Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Like the apocryphal story about the Haitian slave revolutionaries who greeted the repressive French army by singing "La Marseillaise," so some people walking along the motorways of Hungary and Austria were carrying the European flag, as if to say "We share your respect for justice, freedom, and human rights, and here we are! We belong!" This situation was labelled a "crisis," and the responses were schizophrenic. Widespread "Refugees Are Welcome" demonstrations were met with nationalist counterdemonstrations and fire-bombings. As autumn arrived amidst mutual recriminations of xenophobia and hypocrisy, Europe rebordered: checkpoints were instituted between Austria and Germany, Italy and France, Sweden and Denmark, Croatia and Austria, Macedonia and Greece. Thus the crisis brought into question not only the principles of asylum and free movement within the European Union, but also Europe's very idea of itself as a space of liberal values, freedom, moral equality, and human rights. As well as a migration crisis confronting Europe, what started to unfold was a European crisis confronting migrants: a multidimensional crisis of solidarity between member states, many of which are struggling with [End Page 7] austerity and rapidly diminishing state capacity. This crisis was effectively called out by migration (Kriss 2015). The media coverage of these events and their consequences reflected these tensions. Hostility toward mobile people, concerns about security, and demands on resources collided with the unavoidably human face of catastrophe, and for a time negative responses were mitigated by the photograph of drowned toddler Alan Kurdi. This contradiction was encapsulated in an editorial in The Times of January 21, 2016: "compassion is the right response but unconditional welcome is the wrong way to express it." The relation between media coverage, policy, and public opinion is highly complicated, particularly in cases that are depicted as some kind of "crisis." Press coverage is not a neutral mirror of public opinion, nor does it simply shape public attitudes—news organizations are businesses, concerned with building relationships with their readers rather than challenging their views. The relation between media, public attitudes, and policymaking is complex and mutually constitutive, and there is a growing interest in this triangular relation in the case of how migration and asylum are covered (Matthews and Brown 2012). This question has received more attention post-2015, and there continues to be considerable debate about the role of the media in the representation of migrants/refugees, and its relation to public opinion. Several studies were commissioned. The Ethical Journalism Network found that press coverage was fueling sensationalism, anxiety, and intolerance (White 2015), while research commissioned by the UNHCR found that representations of migrants as cultural or welfare threats were prevalent in several EU states. The use of imagery and metaphor of natural disasters permeates the coverage of migration. The particular ways in which migrants are portrayed offer insights into the nature of popular anxieties about the foreigner as invasive other and clues as to the political responses that can help to counter these anxieties. One metaphoric trope that has emerged as particularly powerful in the coverage of the 2015 events is the migrant as invasive insect, a metaphor that has been deployed by politicians as well as press commentators and reporters. [End Page 8] COVERAGE IN CONTEXT For over 20 years, the outsourcing of migration controls, agreements with source and transit countries, re-admission agreements, the creation of migration management policies and facilities in countries of origin, and so on have kept the consequences of war and global inequalities largely out of sight. European publics have been protected to a great extent from the practical reality of forced displacement and economic desperation that is now showing up on holiday beaches. In 2015 tourists began to complain about sharing beaches and pavements with homeless refugees: "It's really dirty and messy here now. And it's...

Customer Domination at Work: A New Paradigm for the Sexual Harassment of Employees by Customers

This Article introduces a novel legal paradigm—customer domination at work—to address the sexual harassment of employees by customers. This new approach challenges the prevailing paradigm, which focuses on the employer-employee binary relationship. I show how, under current Title VII law, the prevailing paradigm leads to a weaker form of employer liability than other instances where employers are liable for the sexual harassment of their employees. The protection for workers is also limited. The same is true of two other legal regimes discussed in the Article: Germany and Britain. More importantly, I argue that the prevailing paradigm precludes a true understanding of the problem of third-party harassment that recognizes the power of customers within an employer- employee-customer triangular relationship, seeing the customer as integral to the organization of work. Within the triangular relationship, customer domination at work is created, consisting of three aspects: masculinity, authority, and service market power. Customer domination is shaped and reinforced by employers, and is exploited by customers in these cases of harassment. This should lead, I claim, to placing stricter legal liability on employers, incentivizing them to change workplace practices that provide customers with such power, and to customers bearing legal responsibility that parallels employer liability.

Integrating organisational culture and human resource management in the context of corporate entrepreneurship: a review and research agenda

This systematic review of the literature investigates the triangular relationship between organisational culture, human resource management, and corporate entrepreneurship. Results show that research has just begun to explore the interconnection of these constructs in combination which can be attributed to the call for moving beyond the exploration of the relationship to performance in each of the related research fields. By analysing and organising this research in terms of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and operationalisation, sample characteristics, intervening mechanisms, and main findings, this study determines the current body of knowledge by presenting an integrative model on the interconnection of organisational culture and human resource management in the context of corporate entrepreneurship. Building upon this model, this study aims to guide future research by proposing promising future research avenues structured around the thematic areas of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and methods, and content-related research avenues.

Demand-side-management by Flexible Generation of Compressed Air

Industrial compressed air systems embrace significant potential for saving both energy and cost due to their share of approximately 7% of the total industrial electricity consumption in Germany. As in electric energy systems based on renewable generation plants supply and demand often do not occur in the same period of time, volatile prices occur and demand side management is gaining importance. Decentralized automation offers opportunities in industrial environments for control of the equipment according to availability of electrical energy. Product-service systems on industrial plants supply manufacturing equipment with compressed air, nitrogen and other technical gases, which partly can be obtained from air by deposition processes. Those systems consist of air compressors, gas separators, reservoirs and lines. With suitable dimensioning and by equipping with automation technology those product-service systems can be used for demand side management purpose. In addition to basic operating parameters like current air pressure and status, those systems can process further information and create, for example, profiles on compressed air consumption over time. By enriching those profiles with data on pressure, volumes, system restrictions and current production requirements, the system control can identify the available potential for demand side management. Evaluation of operational strategies has to optimize conflicting objectives within the triangular relationship of storage design, control of the production according to price prospects and influencing or predicting the use of compressed air.