Search results for "agility"
showing 10 items of 105 documents
Effect of sisal and hydrothermal ageing on the dielectric behaviour of polylactide/sisal biocomposites
2017
[EN] The dielectric properties of virgin polylactide (PLA) and its reinforced composites with different weight amounts of sisal fibres were assessed at broad temperature (from - 130 degrees C to 130 degrees C) and frequency ranges (from 10(-2)-10(7) Hz), before and after being subjected to accelerated hydrothermal ageing. The synergetic effects of both the loading of sisal and hydrothermal ageing were analysed by means of dielectric relaxation spectra. The relaxation time functions were evaluated by the Havriliak-Negami model, substracting the ohmic contribution of conductivity. The intramolecular and intermolecular relaxations were respectively analysed by means of Arrhenius and Vogel-Fulc…
A dynamic panel study on digitalization and firm's agility: What drives agility in advanced economies 2009–2018
2021
Abstract Firm agility today is not a factor of competitiveness or success but a survival instrument on the market. Disruptive innovations and technological advancement, together with digitalization, change the role of firm agility. We show that the link between the national/industry level of digitalization and firm agility is statistically robust and essential. We study the link on data from 2009 to 2018 in fifteen EU advanced economies using dynamic panel data modeling. The digitalization impact level differs across firms by ownership type (family to non-family firms). Agility in family firms is strongly influenced by the national/industry level of digitization and investments in intangibl…
Meeting the challenges of the 21st century: Social change and the family
2020
The article recounts major changes in the European family and challenges it creates in accounting and supporting families. Fragility and diversity of family relationships, individualization and shrinking size of households are seen both as a result of change in the system of values and the processes of economics. Statistical tools used to assess the family dynamics increasingly become inadequate to monitor and interpret the change and situation in families. Statistical figures also construct the way families are imagined in policies. Fertility, marriage and divorce rates are connected to reproductive functions of the society while employment figures feature the productive needs in societies…
Financial Fragility and Distress Propagation in a Network of Regions
2012
Building on previous works on business fluctuations, we model the propagation of financial distress in a network of regions, each populated by heterogeneous interacting firms and banks. In order to diversify risk, firm sell goods outside their own region and borrow from banks located there. However, this results in ties across regions which propagate financial distress across regional borders. We investigate how the average level of economic integration affects the probability of both individual and systemic failures. We find that the benefit of greater diversification is eventually offset by the effect of financial acceleration and contagion. In particular, beyond a certain level of integr…
Bank fragility and contagion: Evidence from the bank CDS market
2016
Understanding how contagion works among financial institutions is a top priority for regulators and policy makers who aim to foster financial stability and to prevent financial crises. Using bank credit default swap (CDS) data, we provide a framework for the evaluation of contagion among banks in different countries and regions during a period of prolonged financial distress. We measure contagion in terms of return spillovers, following a Generalized VAR (GVAR) approach. In addition, we propose an innovative framework to distinguish between two types of contagion: systematic (linked to global factors), and idiosyncratic (linked to bank specific factors). We find evidence of both types of co…
The impact of social capital and collaborative knowledge creation on e-business proactiveness and organizational agility in responding to the COVID-1…
2020
The purpose of this study is to explore the role of social capital and collaborative knowledge creation in achieving e-business proactiveness in responding to the COVID-19 crisis An online survey was used to collect data from industries that had to continue working during the crisis, such as the pharmaceutical and cleaning materials sectors The sample consisted of 198 managers The findings show that social capital and collaborative knowledge creation have a significant role in achieving e-business proactiveness in responding to the pandemic The results also show the positive impact of collaborative knowledge creation and e-business proactiveness on organizational agility during the crisis T…
Incremental dynamic based fragility assessment of reinforced concrete structures: Stationary vs. non-stationary artificial ground motions
2017
Abstract Artificial and natural records are commonly employed by researches and practitioners to perform refined seismic assessments of structures. The techniques for the generation of artificial records and their effectiveness in producing signals which are significantly representative of real earthquakes are still debated as well as results of the consequent seismic assessment to expect from their application. The paper presents an in-depth comparative study highlighting the effect of employing different typologies of artificial ground motion records on seismic assessment results, especially addressing seismic fragility curves. Three sets of 50 stationary, nonstationary evenly modulated a…
PEM Fuel Cell System Model Predictive Control and real-time operation on a power emulator
2010
Fuel Cell Systems (FCS) seem to be among the most reliable devices to produce clean energy, although they still suffer for many problems, mostly related to the fragility of the Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM). Particularly, this paper focuses on the oxygen starvation, that leads both a decrease of the FCS performance and a shortening in the FCS lifetime. The purpose is to use the Model Predictive Control (MPC) and its capacity of accounting for linear constraints for managing the air system without risking to damage the fuel cell. Two control inputs and no static feed-forward actions have been used. Results show that the MPC is able to avoid the oxygen starvation, even with a sudden incr…
“Houses for One Euro” and the Territory. Some Estimation Issues for the “Geographic Debt” Reduction
2020
The phenomenon of the “houses for one Euro” is the epitome of the progressive and increasing abandonment of the inland territories in which many small towns are affected by continuous and unstoppable depopulation. This process, mostly affecting the southern and insular Italian regions, have been triggered by the quick industrial development started after the second post-war, led by the northern regions, that deeply and irreversibly modified the anthropography of the whole country until now. The impoverishment of a wide part of the Italian territory, is one of the many issues connected to the social-territorial justice that is the original topic by which appraisal and valuation, that is scie…
Why are viral genomes so fragile? The bottleneck hypothesis
2021
If they undergo new mutations at each replication cycle, why are RNA viral genomes so fragile, with most mutations being either strongly deleterious or lethal? Here we provide theoretical and numerical evidence for the hypothesis that genetic fragility is partly an evolutionary response to the multiple population bottlenecks experienced by viral populations at various stages of their life cycles. Modelling within-host viral populations as multi-type branching processes, we show that mutational fragility lowers the rate at which Muller’s ratchet clicks and increases the survival probability through multiple bottlenecks. In the context of a susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered epidemiolog…