Understanding Person Product Relationships - A Design Perspective

Abstract The corporate headquarters (CHQ) of the multi-business enterprise, which emerged as the dominant organizational form for the conduct of business in the twentieth century, has attracted considerable scholarly attention. As the business environment undergoes a fundamental transition in the twenty-first century, we believe that understanding the evolving role of the CHQ from an organization design perspective will offer unique insights into the nature of business activity in the future. The purpose of this article, in keeping with the theme of the Journal of Organization Design Special Collection, is thus to invigorate research into the CHQ. We begin by explicating four canonical questions related to the design of the CHQ. We then survey fundamental changes in the business environment occurring in the twenty-first century, and discuss their potential implications for CHQ design. When suitable here we also refer to the contributions published in our Special Collection. Finally, we put forward recommendations for advancements and new directions for future research to foster a deeper and broader understanding of the topic. We believe that we are on the cusp of a change in the CHQ as radical as that which saw its initial emergence in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Exactly what form that change will take remains for practitioners and researchers to inform.

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The Transformative Potential of Ruins: A Tool for a Nonlinear Design Perspective in Adaptive Reuse

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13105660 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (10) ◽

pp. 5660

Author(s):

Elena Guidetti ◽

Matteo Robiglio

Keyword(s):

Adaptive Design ◽

Future Research ◽

Existing Buildings ◽

Quantitative And Qualitative Research ◽

Transformative Potential ◽

Nonlinear Design ◽

Mental Construct ◽

Design Perspective ◽

Novel Concept ◽

The Relationship

In recent years, the heritage preservation debate has seen a growing interest in emerging theories in which the concept of potential plays an essential role. Starting from the assumption that memory is an evolving mental construct, the present paper introduces the concept of “transformative potential” in existing buildings. This novel concept regards the inevitability of loss and the self-destructive potential as part of the transformation of each building. The “transformative potential” is defined here as the relationship between spatial settings and material consistency. This research hypothesizes five “transformative potential” types by analyzing five best-practices adapted ruins in the last 15 years. The analysis integrates quantitative and qualitative research methods: morphological analysis (dimensional variations, critical redrawing, configuration patterns) and decay stages evaluation (shearing layers analysis, adaptation approaches). The goal is to test the “transformative potential” effectiveness in outlining patterns between specific stages of decay and adaptive design projects. Adaptation projects may actualize this potential in a specific time through incremental and decremental phases, outlining a nonlinear relationship between decay and memory. The study provides insights for future research on adapting existing buildings in a particular decay stage.

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On complexity reduction of the discrete-event subsystem of Flat Hybrid Automata for control design

at - Automatisierungstechnik ◽

10.1515/auto-2020-0061 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 68 (7) ◽

pp. 529-540

Author(s):

Tobias Kleinert ◽

Frederik Zahn ◽

Veit Hagenmeyer

Keyword(s):

Heuristic Algorithm ◽

Adjacency Matrix ◽

Discrete Event ◽

Control Design ◽

Differential Flatness ◽

Hybrid Automata ◽

Connected Automaton ◽

Strongly Connected ◽

Design Perspective ◽

Technical Systems

AbstractThe class of hybrid systems describes most technical systems in great detail. However, the respective models and their behavior tend to be very complex. Recently, a new subclass of hybrid automata has been introduced, the Flat Hybrid Automata (FHA) that relies on the concepts of differential flatness for the continuous parts, and strongly connected automaton graphs for the discrete event part, in order to deal with the complexity from a design perspective. Therefore, we introduce in the present paper an approach to reduce the automaton graph of an FHA in a systematic way by removing edges from the adjacency matrix. The main contribution of the paper is twofold: Firstly, based on practical considerations we develop a heuristic algorithm to reduce the automaton graph. Secondly, we present possible ways to include knowledge about the system in the reduction.

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