Community’s evaluation of organizational legitimacy: Formation and reconsideration

With the aim of delving into the legitimacy formation mechanisms used by communities to make judgements about project organizations, this research studied the local community and surrounding environment of four oil extraction projects located in three developing countries. The results of the cross-case analysis suggest that communities' negative perceptions from government and media can influence their judgement of organizational behaviour. Additionally, this research proposes that local communities' anticipation of the consequences of protesting against the organization can make them decide not to take any action. According to institutional theory, when community individuals arrive at a legitimacy verdict about an organization, their future perceptions will mainly be influenced by this decision rather than conscious consideration of the conditions. Accordingly, this research recommends that organizations aiming to recover their reputation need to adopt compensation activities with a substantial influence on the improvement of conditions. It is only in such conditions that communities will consciously evaluate organizational legitimacy. Trivial changes in organizational behaviour will only result in adding new evidences in support of the illegitimacy of organizations.     

Turkish diasporic responses to the Taksim Square protests: Legacy media and social media uses in Belgium,the Netherlands and Germany

Based on an offline and online survey of 967 people of Turkish origin living in these countries, we test how legacy and social media have influenced the participation of the members of the Turkish diaspora in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in the mid-2013 protests in Turkey’s social movement referred to as Gezi Park. This study also investigates how living in Europe can influence the behavior and attitudes of the sampled individuals from the Turkish Diaspora of Germany, Belgium and Netherlands during the period when the Gezi Park demonstration took place. Our results make it clear that social media were used by those who supported the protest movement, while those who opposed the protest movement primarily used or followed traditional sources of media, including Turkish and European television. Furthermore, supporters amongst the diaspora for the Gezi-protests were primarily active in accruing social capital through bonding and social networking among those who belong to the Turkish diaspora under the guise of the Gezi Park protests. Finally, a significant number of the supporters of the protests in the three countries took part in several different means of supporting the movement, including: disseminating awareness about the Gezi protests through social media, engaging in meetings, and in some cases, even severing contact with friends and acquaintances who did not share their support for the protest movement.     

Incorporating supplier selection and order allocation into the vehicle routing and multi-cross-dock scheduling problem

In the vehicle routing problem with cross-docking (VRPCD), it is assumed that the selected suppliers and the quantity of the products purchased from each supplier are known. This paper presents an MILP model which incorporates supplier selection and order allocation into the VRPCD in a multi-cross-dock system minimising the total costs, including purchasing, transportation, cross-docking, inventory and early/tardy delivery penalty costs. The sensitivity of the model on the key parameters of the objective function is analysed and the supply decisions are evaluated when the coefficients of the distribution cost are changed. A two-stage solution algorithm (TSSA) is proposed and the results of the TSSA for small-sized instances are compared with the exact solutions. Finally, a large-sized real case of an urban freight transport is solved using the TSSA.     

Investigation of the effect of carbonaceous supports on the activity and stability of supported palladium catalysts for methanol electro-oxidation reaction

In this study, nitrogen doped graphene (NG) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) were used as supporting materials for palladium active phase to investigate their performance in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). The facile and low temperature solvothermal method was used for the synthesis of NG. Palladium nanoparticles were deposited on the surface of NG and MWCNT by a modified polyol reduction method. The morphologies and microstructures of the prepared catalysts were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction. Also, cyclic voltammetry, chronoamperometry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were carried out to evaluate the electrocatalytic activity and the durability of the obtained catalysts towards methanol oxidation reaction. Pd/NG catalyst had a better activity and durability of methanol electrocatalytic oxidation rather than Pd/MWCNT catalyst, which is related to good dispersion of Pd nanoparticles on the surface of nitrogen doped graphene and the physicochemical characteristics of NG.     

Model‐Reference Adaptive Moment Control of Uncertain Nonlinear Stochastic Systems

In this paper, a new model‐reference adaptive moment control method is proposed to control the first and second moments of an uncertain nonlinear system with additive external stochastic excitation. This method has established a closed‐loop control system that calculates an adaptive stochastic nonlinear input by introducing a Lyapunov function and adaptive update law. The proposed adaptive structure is innovative in trying to minimize two errors simultaneously: the moments tracking error and the error between the nonlinear system output and reference model. Furthermore, the proposed method can control the expected and covariance matrices of the states without needing to solve the complicated Fokker‐Planck‐Kolmogorov differential equation or using the approximate methods. Simulation has been performed on two practical examples, which show a good performance for the designed controller.     

A robust hybrid artificial neural network double frontier data envelopment analysis approach for assessing sustainability of power plants under uncertainty

To assess sustainability of power plants, this paper presents a novel hybrid method. To this end, self‐organizing map method of artificial neural networks is employed. Then, a double frontier data envelopment analysis is developed to rank power plants in each cluster of decision‐making units. Because outputs of power plants might be uncertain, a robust optimization approach is incorporated into proposed double frontier data envelopment analysis model to present ranks that are robust against different uncertainties. A case study is given to validate the proposed model. The case study shows that the proposed model can present improvement solutions that guide power plants towards efficient frontier and far from inefficient frontier. Given the results, decision makers can decide on which power plants should be closed and which power plants should be expanded.     

Gate Oxide Short Defect Model in FinFETs

FinFET technology is one of the most promising candidates in replacing planar MOSFET beyond the 22 nm technology node. However, the complexity of FinFET manufacturing process has caused challenges in reliable device testing. Gate oxide short (GOS) is one of the dominant defects that has significant impact on circuit reliability. In this paper, we present a GOS defect model for FinFETs by introducing the defect as a pinhole in the gate oxide of a triangular fin shape structure. The pinholes are represented by small cuboid cuts of various sizes on the fin top and sidewalls along the channel. The 3D Sentaurus TCAD simulation results in the development of an analytical GOS defect model that can be used in circuit-level fault modeling, which leads to generating more realistic test patterns.