Singapore's online retail deviants:analyzing the rise of blogshops' power

Geography, retailing, and power are institutionally bound up together. Within these, the authors situate their research in Clegg's work on power. Online shopping offers a growing challenge to the apparent hegemony of traditional physical retail stores' format. While novel e-formats appear regularly, blogshops in Singapore are enjoying astonishing success that has taken the large retailers by surprise. Even though there are well-developed theoretical frameworks for understanding the role of institutional entrepreneurs and other major stakeholders in bringing about change and innovation, much less attention has been paid to the role of unorganized, nonstrategic actors-such as blogshops-in catalyzing retail change. The authors explore how blogshops are perceived by consumers and how they challenge the power of other shopping formats. They use Principal Components Analysis to analyze results from a survey of 349 blogshops users. While the results show that blogshops stay true to traditional online shopping attributes, deviations occur on the concept of value. Furthermore, consumer power is counter intuitively found to be strongly present in the areas related to cultural ties, excitement, and search for individualist novelty (as opposed to mass-production), thereby encouraging researchers to think critically about emerging power behavior in media practices.

Strategizing networks of power and influence:the internet and the struggle over contested space

Whilst some authors have portrayed the Internet as a powerful tool for business and political institutions, others have highlighted the potential of this technology for those vying to constrain or counter-balance the power of organizations, through e-collectivism and on-line action. What appears to be emerging is a contested space that has the potential to simultaneously enhance the power of organizations, whilst also acting as an enabling technology for the empowerment of grass-root networks. In this struggle, organizations are fighting for the retention of “old economy” positions, as well as the development of “new economy” power-bases. In realizing these positions, organizations and institutions are strategizing and manoeuvering in order to shape on-line networks and communications. For example, the on-line activities of individuals can be contained through various technological means, such as surveillance, and the structuring of the virtual world through the use of portals and “walled gardens”. However, loose groupings of individuals are also strategizing to ensure there is a liberation of their communication paths and practices, and to maintain the potential for mobilization within and across traditional boundaries. In this article, the unique nature and potential of the Internet are evaluated, and the struggle over this contested virtual space is explored.

Human resource management in emerging markets:an introduction

The shifting of global economic power from mature, established markets to emerging markets (EMs) is a fundamental feature of the new realities in the global political economy. Due to a combination of reasons (such as scarcity of reliable information on management systems of EMs, the growing contribution of human resource management (HRM) towards organisational performance, amongst others), the understanding about the dynamics of management of HRM in the EMs context and the need for proactive efforts by key stakeholders (e.g., multinational and local firms, policy makers and institutions such as trade unions) to develop appropriate HRM practice and policy for EMs has now become more critical than ever. It is more so given the phenomenal significance of the EMs predicted for the future of the global economy. For example, Antoine van Agtmael predicts that: in about 25 years the combined gross national product (GNP) of emergent markets will overtake that of currently mature economies causing a major shift in the centre of gravity of the global economy away from the developed to emerging economies. (van Agtmael 2007: 10–11) Despite the present (late 2013 and early 2014) slowdown in the contribution of EMs towards the global industrial growth (e.g., Das, 2013; Reuters, 2014), EMs are predicted to produce 70 per cent of world GDP growth and a further ten years later, their equity market capitalisation is expected to reach US$ 80 trillion, 1.2 times more than the developed world (see Goldman Sachs, 2010).

Real-time temperature estimation for power MOSFETs considering thermal ageing effects

This paper presents a novel real-time power-device temperature estimation method that monitors the power MOSFET's junction temperature shift arising from thermal aging effects and incorporates the updated electrothermal models of power modules into digital controllers. Currently, the real-time estimator is emerging as an important tool for active control of device junction temperature as well as online health monitoring for power electronic systems, but its thermal model fails to address the device's ongoing degradation. Because of a mismatch of coefficients of thermal expansion between layers of power devices, repetitive thermal cycling will cause cracks, voids, and even delamination within the device components, particularly in the solder and thermal grease layers. Consequently, the thermal resistance of power devices will increase, making it possible to use thermal resistance (and junction temperature) as key indicators for condition monitoring and control purposes. In this paper, the predicted device temperature via threshold voltage measurements is compared with the real-time estimated ones, and the difference is attributed to the aging of the device. The thermal models in digital controllers are frequently updated to correct the shift caused by thermal aging effects. Experimental results on three power MOSFETs confirm that the proposed methodologies are effective to incorporate the thermal aging effects in the power-device temperature estimator with good accuracy. The developed adaptive technologies can be applied to other power devices such as IGBTs and SiC MOSFETs, and have significant economic implications.

Irrelevant or transformative power? The OECD DAC and foreign aid policies in Central and Eastern Europe

The paper examines the impact of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) on the emerging foreign aid policies of the Central and Eastern European (CEEs) countries. The Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the DAC in 2013, and the committee has aimed to socialise them into the norms of the international development system. Generally, however, there is little evidence of impact due to the soft nature of the DAC’s policy recommendations, and the fact that the committee, reacting to the challenges to its legitimacy from non-Western donors, has become much less demanding towards potential members than in the past. The paper, however, argues that one must examine the processes of how the norm and policy recommendations of the DAC are mediated domestically. The case of the Czechepublic’s reforms in its foreign aid policy between 2007 and 2010 shows that domestic actors can use the OECD strategically to build support for their own cause and thus achieve seemingly difficult policy reform.

Fast and efficient user pairing and power allocation algorithm for non-orthogonal multiple access in cellular networks

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is emerging as a promising multiple access technology for the fifth generation cellular networks to address the fast growing mobile data traffic. It applies superposition coding in transmitters, allowing simultaneous allocation of the same frequency resource to multiple intra-cell users. Successive interference cancellation is used at the receivers to cancel intra-cell interference. User pairing and power allocation (UPPA) is a key design aspect of NOMA. Existing UPPA algorithms are mainly based on exhaustive search method with extensive computation complexity, which can severely affect the NOMA performance. A fast proportional fairness (PF) scheduling based UPPA algorithm is proposed to address the problem. The novel idea is to form user pairs around the users with the highest PF metrics with pre-configured fixed power allocation. Systemlevel simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is significantly faster (seven times faster for the scenario with 20 users) with a negligible throughput loss than the existing exhaustive search algorithm.