Internationalization of small and medium sized UK manufacturing enterprises:technology and knowledge transfer perspective

This dissertation examines internationalisation of small and medium sized enterprises. There has been a journey to achieve this. The research has started as an action research as Teaching Company Scheme Associate. This has been done in two research cycles, which investigated factors for successful internationalisation of a small and medium sized UK manufacturing enterprise. This has revealed that successful internationalisation requires good technology and knowledge transfer to the new operations. The action research is followed by a survey that has been conducted within UK manufacturing companies. The data collected was analysed under three models: entry mode selection, role of factory and level of internationalisation. The first two models explain two major aspects of internationalisation decision. The last is showing what makes successful internationalising small and medium sized companies. These models provided several important results. The small and medium sized enterprise internationalisation is harder to achieve because most of these organisations do not have experience in technology and knowledge transfer. The success of internationalisation depends on the success of the transfer. This is achieved through employee ownership of the new knowledge. There are many factors affecting this result such as the network relationships such as trust, control and commitment and cognitive distance between two organisations. The last is a product of the difference between prior knowledge and the required level of knowledge. The entry mode and role of factory are decided through these factors while the level of internationalisation can only be explained by absorptive capacity of the recipient organisation and the technology transfer ability of the host organisation.

Age-related macular degeneration and modification of systemic complement factor H production through liver transplantation

Purpose: To investigate whether modification of liver complement factor H (CFH) production, by alteration of liver CFH Y402H genotype through liver transplantation (LT), influences the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Design: Multicenter, cross-sectional study. Participants: We recruited 223 Western European patients ≥55 years old who had undergone LT ≥5 years previously. Methods: We determined AMD status using a standard grading system. Recipient CFH Y402H genotype was obtained from DNA extracted from recipient blood samples. Donor CFH Y402H genotype was inferred from recipient plasma CFH Y402H protein allotype, measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. This approach was verified by genotyping donor tissue from a subgroup of patients. Systemic complement activity was ascertained by measuring levels of plasma complement proteins using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, including substrates (C3, C4), activation products (C3a, C4a, and terminal complement complex), and regulators (total CFH, C1 inhibitor). Main Outcome Measures: We evaluated AMD status and recipient and donor CFH Y402H genotype. Results: In LT patients, AMD was associated with recipient CFH Y402H genotype (P = 0.036; odds ratio [OR], 1.6; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.0-2.4) but not with donor CFH Y402H genotype (P = 0.626), after controlling for age, sex, smoking status, and body mass index. Recipient plasma CFH Y402H protein allotype predicted donor CFH Y402H genotype with 100% accuracy (n = 49). Plasma complement protein or activation product levels were similar in LT patients with and without AMD. Compared with previously reported prevalence figures (Rotterdam Study), LT patients demonstrated a high prevalence of both AMD (64.6% vs 37.1%; OR, 3.09; P<0.001) and the CFH Y402H sequence variation (41.9% vs 36.2%; OR, 1.27; P = 0.014). Conclusions: Presence of AMD is not associated with modification of hepatic CFH production. In addition, AMD is not associated with systemic complement activity in LT patients. These findings suggest that local intraocular complement activity is of greater importance in AMD pathogenesis. The high AMD prevalence observed in LT patients may be associated with the increased frequency of the CFH Y402H sequence variation. © 2013 by the American Academy of Ophthalmology Published by Elsevier Inc.

SNX4 coordinates endosomal sorting of TfnR with dynein-mediated transport into the endocytic recycling compartment

SNX-BAR proteins are a sub-family of sorting nexins implicated in endosomal sorting. Here, we establish that through its phox homology (PX) and Bin-Amphiphysin-Rvs (BAR) domains, sorting nexin-4 (SNX4) is associated with tubular and vesicular elements of a compartment that overlaps with peripheral early endosomes and the juxtanuclear endocytic recycling compartment (ERC). Suppression of SNX4 perturbs transport between these compartments and causes lysosomal degradation of the transferrin receptor (TfnR). Through an interaction with KIBRA, a protein previously shown to bind dynein light chain 1, we establish that SNX4 associates with the minus end-directed microtubule motor dynein. Although suppression of KIBRA and dynein perturbs early endosome-to-ERC transport, TfnR sorting is maintained. We propose that by driving membrane tubulation, SNX4 coordinates iterative, geometric-based sorting of the TfnR with the long-range transport of carriers from early endosomes to the ERC. Finally, these data suggest that by associating with molecular motors, SNX-BAR proteins may coordinate sorting with carrier transport between donor and recipient membranes.

Editorial

The American Academy of Optometry (AAO) had their annual meeting in San Diego in December 2005 and the BCLA and CLAE were well represented there. The BCLA does have a reasonable number of non-UK based members and hopefully in the future will attract more. This will certainly be beneficial to the society as a whole and may draw more delegates to the BCLA annual conference. To increase awareness of the BCLA at the AAO a special evening seminar was arranged where BCLA president Dr. James Wolffsohn gave his presidential address. Dr. Wolffsohn has given the presidential address in the UK, Ireland, Hong Kong and Japan – making it the most travelled presidential address for the BCLA to date. Aside from the BCLA activity at the AAO there were numerous lectures of interest to all, truly a “something for everyone” meeting. All the sessions were multi-track (often up to 10 things occurring at the same time) and the biggest dilemma was often deciding what to attend and more importantly what you will miss! Nearly 200 new AAO Fellows were inducted at the Gala Dinner from many countries including 3 new fellows from the UK (this year they all just happened to be from Aston University!). It is certainly one of the highlights of the AAO to see fellows from different schools of training from around the world fulfilling the same criteria and being duly rewarded for their commitment to the profession. BCLA members will be aware that 2006 sees the introduction of the new fellowship scheme of the BCLA and by the time you read this the first set of fellowship examinations will have taken place. For more details of the FBCLA scheme see the BCLA web site http://www.bcla.org.uk. Since many of CLAE's editorial panel were at the AAO an informal meeting and dinner was arranged for them where ideas were exchanged about the future of the journal. It is envisaged that the panel will meet twice a year – the next meeting will be at the BCLA conference. The biggest excitement by far was the fact that CLAE is now Medline/PubMed indexed. You may ask why is this significant to CLAE? PubMed is the free web-based service from the US National Library of Medicine. It holds over 15 million biomedical citations and abstracts from the Medline database. Medline is the largest component of PubMed and covers over 4800 journals published in more than 70 countries. The impact of this is that CLAE is starting to attract more submissions as researchers and authors are not worried that their work will not be hidden from other colleagues in the field but rather the work is available to view on the World Wide Web. CLAE is one of a very small number of contact lens journals that is indexed this way. Amongst the other CL journals listed you will note that the International Contact Lens Clinic has now merged with CLAE and the journal CLAO has been renamed Eye and Contact Lenses – making the list of indexed CL journals even smaller than it appears. The on-line submission and reviewing system introduced in 2005 has also made it easier for authors to submit their work and easier for reviewers to check the content. This ease of use has lead to quicker times from submission to publication. Looking back at the articles published in CLAE in 2005 reveals some interesting facts. The majority of the material still tends to be from UK groups related to the field of Optometry, although we hope that in the future we will attract more work from non-UK groups and also from non-Optometric areas such as refractive surgery or anterior eye pathology. Interestingly in 2005 the most downloaded article from CLAE was “Wavefront technology: Past, present and future” by Professor W. Neil Charman, who was also the recipient of the Charles F. Prentice award at the AAO – one of the highest awards honours that the AAO can bestow. Professor Charman was also the keynote speaker at the BCLA's first Pioneer's Day meeting in 2004. In 2006, readers of CLAE will notice more changes, firstly we are moving to 5 issues per year. It is hoped that in the future, depending on increased submissions, a move to 6 issues may be feasible. Secondly, CLAE will aim to have one article per issue that carries CL CET points. You will see in this issue there is an article from Professor Mark Wilcox (who was a keynote speaker at the BCLA conference in 2005). In future articles that carry CET points will be either reviews from BCLA conference keynote speakers, members of the editorial panel or material from other invited persons that will be of interest to the readership of CLAE. Finally, in 2006, you will notice a change to the Editorial Panel, some of the distinguished panel felt that it was good time to step down and new members have been invited to join the remaining panel. The panel represent some of the most eminent names in the fields of contact lenses and/or anterior eye and have varying backgrounds and interests from many of the prominent institutions around the world. One of the tasks that the Editorial Panel undertake is to seek out possible submissions to the journal, either from conferences they attend (posters and papers that they will see and hear) and from their own research teams. However, on behalf of CLAE I would like to extend that invitation to seek original articles to all readers – if you hear a talk and think it could make a suitable publication to CLAE please ask the presenters to submit the work via the on-line submission system. If you found the work interesting then the chances are so will others. CLAE invites submissions that are original research, full length articles, short case reports, full review articles, technical reports and letters to the editor. The on-line submission web page is http://www.ees.elsevier.com/clae/.

A new three phase method (SDP method) for the multi-objective vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delvery and pickup (VRPSDP)

Transportation service operators are witnessing a growing demand for bi-directional movement of goods. Given this, the following thesis considers an extension to the vehicle routing problem (VRP) known as the delivery and pickup transportation problem (DPP), where delivery and pickup demands may occupy the same route. The problem is formulated here as the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup (VRPSDP), which requires the concurrent service of the demands at the customer location. This formulation provides the greatest opportunity for cost savings for both the service provider and recipient. The aims of this research are to propose a new theoretical design to solve the multi-objective VRPSDP, provide software support for the suggested design and validate the method through a set of experiments. A new real-life based multi-objective VRPSDP is studied here, which requires the minimisation of the often conflicting objectives: operated vehicle fleet size, total routing distance and the maximum variation between route distances (workload variation). The former two objectives are commonly encountered in the domain and the latter is introduced here because it is essential for real-life routing problems. The VRPSDP is defined as a hard combinatorial optimisation problem, therefore an approximation method, Simultaneous Delivery and Pickup method (SDPmethod) is proposed to solve it. The SDPmethod consists of three phases. The first phase constructs a set of diverse partial solutions, where one is expected to form part of the near-optimal solution. The second phase determines assignment possibilities for each sub-problem. The third phase solves the sub-problems using a parallel genetic algorithm. The suggested genetic algorithm is improved by the introduction of a set of tools: genetic operator switching mechanism via diversity thresholds, accuracy analysis tool and a new fitness evaluation mechanism. This three phase method is proposed to address the shortcoming that exists in the domain, where an initial solution is built only then to be completely dismantled and redesigned in the optimisation phase. In addition, a new routing heuristic, RouteAlg, is proposed to solve the VRPSDP sub-problem, the travelling salesman problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup (TSPSDP). The experimental studies are conducted using the well known benchmark Salhi and Nagy (1999) test problems, where the SDPmethod and RouteAlg solutions are compared with the prominent works in the VRPSDP domain. The SDPmethod has demonstrated to be an effective method for solving the multi-objective VRPSDP and the RouteAlg for the TSPSDP.

When moving information online diminishes change:advisory services to SMEs

Improving the performance of private sector small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in a cost effective manner is a major concern for government. Governments have saved costs by moving information online rather than through more expensive face-to-face exchanges between advisers and clients. Building on previous work that distinguished between types of advice, this article evaluates whether these changes to delivery mechanisms affect the type of advice received. Using a multinomial logit model of 1334 cases of business advice to small firms collected in England, the study found that advice to improve capabilities was taken by smaller firms who were less likely to have limited liability or undertake business planning. SMEs sought word-of-mouth referrals before taking internal, capability-enhancing advice. This is also the case when that advice was part of a wider package of assistance involving both internal and external aspects. Only when firms took advice that used extant capabilities did they rely on the Internet. Therefore, when the Internet is privileged over face-to-face advice the changes made by each recipient of advice are likely to diminish causing less impact from advice within the economy. It implies that fewer firms will adopt the sorts of management practices that would improve their productivity. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

International session at the BCLA conference

Full text: It seems a long time ago now since we were at the BCLA conference. The excellent FIFA World Cup in Brazil kept us occupied over the summer as well as Formula 1, Wimbledon, Tour de France, Commonwealth Games and of course exam paper marking! The BCLA conference this year was held in Birmingham at the International Convention Centre which again proved to be a great venue. The number of attendees overall was up on previous years, and at a record high of 1500 people. Amongst the highlights at this year's annual conference was the live surgery link where Professor Sunil Shah demonstrated the differences in technique between traditional phacoemulsification cataract surgery and femtosecond assisted phacoemulsification cataract surgery. Dr. Raquel Gil Cazorla, a research optometrist at Aston University, assisted in the procedure including calibrating the femtosecond laser. Another highlight for me was the session that I chaired, which was the international session organised by IACLE (International Association of CL Educators). There was a talk by Mirjam van Tilborg about dry eye prevalence in the Netherlands and how it was managed by medical general practitioners (GPs) or optometrists. It was interesting to know that there are only 2 schools of optometry there and currently under 1000 registered optometrists there. It also seems that GPs were more likely to blame CL as the cause for dry eye whereas optometrists who had a fuller range of tests were better at solving the issue. The next part of the session included the presentation of 5 selected posters from around the world. The posters were also displayed in the main poster area but were selected to be presented here as they had international relevance. The posters were: 1. Motivators and Barriers for Contact Lens Recommendation and Wear by Nilesh Thite (India) 2. Contact lens hygiene among Saudi wearers by Dr. Ali Masmaly (Saudi) 3. Trends of contact lens prescribing and patterns of contact lens practice in Jordan by Dr. Mera Haddad (Jordan) 4. Contact Lens Behaviour in Greece by Dr. Dimitra Makrynioti (Greece) 5. How practitioners inform ametropes about the benefits of contact lenses and overcome the potential barriers: an Italian survey, by Dr. Fabrizio Zeri (Italy) It was interesting to learn about CL practice in different parts, for example the CL wearing population ration in Saudi Arabia is around 1:2 Male:Female (similar to other parts of the world) and although the sale of CL is restricted to registered practitioners there are many unregistered outlets, like clothing stores, that flout the rules. In Jordan some older practitioners will still advise patients to use tap water or even saliva! But thankfully the newer generation of practitioners have been educated not to advise this. In Greece one of the concerns was that some practitioners may advise patients to use disposable lenses for longer than they should and again it seems to be the practitioners with inadequate education that would do this. In India it was found that cost was one barrier to using contact lenses but also some practitioners felt that they shouldn’t offer CLs due to cost too. In Italy sensitive eyes and CL care and maintenance were the barriers to CL wear but the motivators were vision and comfort and aesthetics. Finally the international session ended with the IACLE travel award and educator awards presented by IACLE president Shehzad Naroo and BCLA President Andrew Yorke. The travel award went to Wang Ling, Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing, China. There were 3 regional Contact Lens Educator of the Year Awards sponsored by Coopervision and presented by Dr. J.C. Aragorn of Coopervision. 1. Asia Pacific Region – Dr. Rajeswari Mahadevan of Sankara Nethralaya Medical Research Foundation, Chennai, India 2. Americas Region – Dr. Sergio Garcia of University of La Salle, Bogotá and the University Santo Tomás, Bucaramanga, Colombia 3. Europe/Africa – Middle East Region: Dr. Eef van der Worp, affiliated with the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands The posters above were just a small selection of those displayed at this year's BCLA conference. If you missed the BCLA conference then you can see the abstracts for all posters and talks in a virtual issue of CLAE very soon. The poster competition was kindly sponsored by Elsevier. The poster winner this year was: Joan Gispets – Corneal and Anterior Chamber Parameters in Keratoconus The 3 runners up were: Debby Yeung – Scleral Lens Central Corneal Clearance Assessment with Biomicroscopy Sarah L. Smith – Subjective Grading of Lid Margin Staining Heiko Pult – Impact of Soft Contact Lenses on Lid Parallel Conjunctival Folds My final two highlights are a little more personal. Firstly, I was awarded Honorary Life Fellowship of the BCLA for my work with the Journal, and I would like to thank the BCLA, Elsevier, the editorial board of CLAE, the reviewers and the authors for their support of my role. My final highlight from the BCLA conference this year was the final presentation of the conference – the BCLA Gold Medal award. The recipient this year was Professor Philip Morgan with his talk ‘Changing the world with contact lenses’. Phil was the person who advised me to go to my first BCLA conference in 1994 (funnily he didn’t attend himself as he was busy getting married!) and now 20 years later he was being honoured with the accolade of being the BCLA Gold Medallist. The date of his BCLA medal addressed was shared with his father's birthday so a double celebration for Phil. Well done to outgoing BCLA President Andy Yorke and his team at the BCLA (including Nick Rumney, Cheryl Donnelly, Sarah Greenwood and Amir Khan) on an excellent conference. And finally welcome to new President Susan Bowers. Copyright © 2014 British Contact Lens Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

CLAE to move to online format

Editorial: The 2015 BCLA annual conference was another fantastic affair. It was the first time the conference was held in the beautiful city of Liverpool. The venue was great and the programme was excellent. The venue overlooked the River Mersey and many of the hotels were local boutique hotels. I stayed in one which was formerly the offices of White Star Liners—where the RMS Titanic was originally registered. The hotel decor was consistent with its historic significance. The BCLA gala dinner was held in the hugely impressive Anglican Cathedral with entertainment from a Beatles tribute band. That will certainly be a hard act to follow at the next conference in 2017. Brian Tompkins took the reigns as the new BCLA president. Professor Fiona Stapleton was the recipient of the BCLA Gold Medal Award. The winner of the poster competition was Dorota Szczesna-Iskander with a poster entitled ‘Dry Contact lens poor wettability and visual performance’. Second place was Renee Reeder with her poster entitled ‘Abnormal Rosacea as a differential diagnosis in corneal scarring’. And third place was Maria Jesus Gonzalez-Garcia with her poster entitled ‘Dry Effect of the Environmental Conditions on Tear Inflammatory Mediators Concentration in Contact Lens Wearers’. The photographic competition winner was Professor Wolfgang Sickenberger from Jena in Germany. The Editorial Panel of CLAE met at the BCLA conference for their first biannual meeting. The journal metrics were discussed. In terms of number of submissions of new papers CLAE seems to have plateaued after seeing a rapid growth in the number of submissions over the last few years. The increase over the last few years could be attributed to the fact that CLAE was awarded an impact factor for the first time in 2012. This year it seems that impact factors across nearly all ophthalmic related journals has dropped. This could in part be due to the fact that last year was a ‘Research Exercise Framework (REF) year for UK universities, where they are judged on quality of their research output. The next REF is in 2020 so we may see changes nearing that time. Looking at article downloads, there seems to be a continued rise in figures. Currently CLAE attracts around 85,000 downloads per year (this is an increase of around 10,000 per year for the last few years) and the 2015 prediction is 120,000! With this in mind and with other contributing factors too, the BCLA has decided to move to online delivery of CLAE to its members starting from issue 5 of 2015. Some members do like to flick through the pages of a hard copy of the journal so members will still have the option of receiving a hard copy through the post but the default journal delivery method will now be online. The BCLA office will send various alerts and content details to members email addresses. To access CLAE online you will need to log in via the BCLA web page, currently you then click on ‘Resources’ and then under ‘Free and Discounted Publications’ you will see CLAE. This actually takes you to CLAE’s own webpage (www.contactlensjournal.com) but you need to log in via the BCLA web page. The BCLA plans to change these weblinks so that from the BCLA web page you can link to the journal website much more easily and you have the choice of going directly into the general website for CLAE or straight to the current issue. In 2016 you will see an even easier way of accessing CLAE online as the BCLA will launch a CLAE application for mobile devices where the journal can be downloaded as a ‘flick-book’. This is a great way of bringing CLAE into the modern era where people access their information in newer ways. For many the BCLA conference was part of a very busy conference week as it was preceded by the International Association of Contact Lens Educators’ (IACLE) Third World Congress, held in Manchester on the 4 days before the BCLA conference. The first and second IACE World Congresses were held in Waterloo, Canada in 1994 and 2000 respectively and hosted by Professor Des Fonn. Professor Fonn was the recipient of the first ever IACLE lifetime achievement award. The Third IACLE World Congress saw more than 100 contact lens educators and industry representatives from around 30 countries gather in the UK for the four-day event, hosted by The University of Manchester. Delegates gained hands-on experience of innovations in teaching, such as learning delivery systems, the use of iPads in the classroom and for creating ePub content, and augmented and virtual reality technologies. IACLE members around the world also took part via a live online broadcast. The Third IACLE World Congress was made possible by the generous support of Sponsors Alcon, CooperVision and Johnson & Johnson Vision Care., for more information look at the IACLE web page (www.iacle.org).

The availability of proprietary restitution in cases of mistaken payments

This article is concerned with the availability of “proprietary restitution” in cases of mistaken payments. It is argued that the mistake of the claimant is an insufficient justification for proprietary restitution, however a close analysis of the case law demonstrates that the presence of additional factors can justify the availability of proprietary restitution in specific circumstances. The basis of proprietary restitution is to be found in the breach of a duty which arises separately from the claim for unjust enrichment. The significant contribution of this article is the analysis that knowledge merely creates a duty to maintain the fund until restitution is made, and that knowledge cannot establish the breach of this duty. Importantly, breach of this duty is established by a second condition which is demonstrated by the wilful misconduct of the recipient. It is this conduct which justifies the imposition of the constructive trust. By adopting this analysis, the proprietary claim in the context of mistaken transfers can be classified as forming part of the law of wrongs, rather than the law of unjust enrichment.

Exploring care relations in later life: disentangling notions of care and choice

The experience of later life varies widely and is often framed in terms of the active lifestyles of the Third Age and the frailty and abjection of the Fourth Age. This thesis sought to understand how the concepts of care and choice are enacted, experienced and interrelated in the context of both informal and formal care in later life and how older people themselves, their families and significant others understand and experience these concepts. The discourse of personalisation that dominates care services has led to an emphasis on individual choice, control and independence so that those in need of care are faced with what has been described as the ‘logic of choice’, a focus on individual responsibility rather than care. Adopting a Feminist Foucauldian theoretical approach and drawing on Tronto’s (1993) ethic of care, this thesis explores the experiences of older people and their informal carers through dialogical narrative analysis. The stories begin with the recognition by individuals that there is a need for care and how this need is met through negotiations with families and significant others. As needs increase the physical and logistical limits of informal care by individuals are reached, often leading to a need to ‘choose’ formal care. Rather than impacting solely on the care recipient, formal care is shown as being an experience that is shared with informal carers. Indeed, the participants depict how informal care continues alongside formal care and how the boundaries between them become blurred. I argue that a binary division between actively making choices and being a passive recipient are not appropriate to understandings of care. By disentangling the notions of care and choice this thesis explores the extent to which these concepts are relevant to the experience of older people in specific care situations.