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This case is designed to achieve the following learning objectives: recognize the impact of personality traits on leadership style; identify the key elements in a turnaround strategy; examine leadership best practices from a gender perspective; and assess the role of strategic decision-making on company growth.

The case study describes how Lisa Su (Su), the first woman CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, helped turn around the debt-laden semiconductor firm within a decade through her transformational leadership, vision and values. The case first touches upon Su’s early life and education and the influence of her parents in shaping her personality. It then focuses on the first half of Su’s career, during which she was working on semiconductor projects and was involved in research and product development, and how she made the gradual shift to a people management role in her stint of over a decade at IBM followed by a leadership opportunity at Freescale Semiconductor Inc. The case then describes Su’s move to AMD in 2012 as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company’s global business divisions at a time when AMD was nearly US$2.5bn in debt and revenues had increased only once in the previous five years. There were also rumors of bankruptcy and spin-offs after the company lost more than US$1bn in the year 2012. The cas

This case is meant for MBA students as part of their Organizational Behavior, Leadership, and Strategic Management curriculum.

Teaching notes Student feedback details.

CCS 11: Strategy.

During the pandemic, people have changed their diet and lifestyle, which are highly important to maintain health and well-being. This study aims to investigate the relationship between demographic, socioeconomic, dietary and lifestyle characteristics and adolescents' adherence to the Mediterranean diet (AMD).

In all, 2088 youth from Attica, Greece, 12–18 years old, were recruited in this school-based, cross-sectional study conducted in May–December 2021. The tools Mediterranean Diet Quality Index for children and adolescents, the Family Affluence Scale III and the Godin-Shephard Leisure Time Physical Activity Questionnaire were used to estimate AMD, family affluence and the levels of physical activity (PA), respectively. Mann–Whitney U, Kruskal–Wallis, Chi-square tests, analysis of variance and multiple linear regression approaches were applied.

Empirical results showed that boys (p = 0.000), higher socioeconomic status (p = 0.034) and higher maternal education (p = 0.026) emerged as significant determinants for higher AMD. In addition, healthier dietary patterns (p = 0.000), PA (p = 0.000), more social lifestyle (p = 0.000) and night sleep duration (p = 0.000) were also positively correlated to diet quality. On the contrary, age (p = 0.000), screen time (p = 0.003) and the negative consequences of COVID-19 affected adversely AMD among adolescents.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was the first that highlighted the important role of several demographic, socioeconomic, dietary and lifestyle characteristics, together with the COVID-19 consequences to the AMD among secondary school children in Greece.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a combined reordering scheme with a wide range of application, called Reversed Cuthill-McKee-approximate minimum degree (RCM-AMD), to improve a preconditioned general minimal residual method for solving equations using Lagrange multiplier method, and facilitates the choice of the reordering for the iterative method.

To reordering the coefficient matrix before a preconditioned iterative method will greatly impact its convergence behavior, but the effect is very problem-dependent, even performs very differently when different preconditionings applied for an identical problem or the scale of the problem varies. The proposed reordering scheme is designed based on the features of two popular ordering schemes, RCM and AMD, and benefits from each of them.

Via numerical experiments for the cases of various scales and difficulties, the effects of RCM-AMD on the preconditioner and the convergence are investigated and the comparisons of RCM, AMD and RCM-AMD are presented. The results show that the proposed reordering scheme RCM-AMD is appropriate for large-scale and difficult problems and can be used more generally and conveniently. The reason of the reordering effects is further analyzed as well.

The proposed RCM-AMD reordering scheme preferable for solving equations using Lagrange multiplier method, especially considering that the large-scale and difficult problems are very common in practical application. This combined reordering scheme is more wide-ranging and facilitates the choice of the reordering for the iterative method, and the proposed iterative method has good performance for practical cases in in-house and commercial codes on PC.

The use of drugs outside the approved indication, called off‐label use, is a growing phenomenon in medical practice. Especially, when a drug approved for systemic use is used locally in small quantities, the drug price per treatment can fall far below the potential value of the drug. This paper aims to outline the potential value of off‐label Avastin^® used for wet/neovascular age‐related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of legal blindness in western countries.

The van Westendorp price sensitivity measurement (PSM) method was used to find an optimal price range for an Avastin formulation potentially approved by German regulatory authorities for neovascular/wet AMD. A survey was conducted among a majority of German AMD specialists as the central part of the buying center. Germany, the largest pharmaceutical market in Europe, was selected for the study.

The effective total response rate was 25.1 percent (51 questionnaires).The price range found is clearly above the price for currently used “off‐label” Avastin and far below the price for other comparable drugs approved for the treatment of neovascular AMD. The van Westendorp PSM method found for Avastin used in the eye the optimal price at €95 ($131), the indifference price at €200 ($276) and the acceptable price range between €90 ($124) and €310 ($428). The discussion provides further implications for pricing strategies for new drugs.

As price sensitivity and availability of drugs have become an increasingly political and public topic, off‐label application of drugs is turning into an important challenge for the pharmaceutical industry. Taken in total, the results provide support for the view that off‐label application not only creates major threats for pharmaceutical companies, but can also offer growth opportunities.

This study aims to espouse the concept of sustainable environment, social and governance (ESG) practices as the proxies of sustainability reporting (SR). In the presence of smart technology adoption (STA), ESG drives total quality management (TQM) of sustainability matters in advanced medical device (AMD) companies post-pandemic.

This study uses two stages of rigorous data collection. Two focus groups comprising board members, investment advisers and senior managers of AMD were formed to establish the external validity of the constructs proposition. It then used a Web survey to solicit 240 respondents from AMD. Data were analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to provide robustness of predictive power in the model estimation.

Results show SR has positively impacted TQM. It reveals positive relationships between SR and ESG and ESG and TQM. Findings indicate that STA moderates the relationships between ESG and TQM with large effect sizes.

This study offers direction to expedite strategies and action plans by sustainability practitioners in an asymptotic quest for ESG and TQM best practices. Future research should focus on the protection of sustainable social using qualitative methodology.

Using the lens of corporate sustainability, this study develops a framework that integrates ESG, TQM and STA to examine the synergistic effects post pandemic. It provides evidence that ESG practices and STA adoption drive TQM in transition to attain sustainability among the AMD at the country level.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an evidence‐base for home modification guidelines for people with visual impairment due to age‐related macular degeneration (AMD), from the perspective of people with AMD, by exploring the home modifications they find useful and would recommend to other people with visual impairment due to AMD as being effective.

People with impairments may not be aware of their own coping with inability strategies until they are asked to express their strategies. A qualitative approach using semi‐structured individual interviews was used to elicit the perspectives of people with AMD with regards to their preferred home modification interventions. Interviews were recorded and then transcribed verbatim into text for thematical analysis using Nvivo 8.

In total, 31 individuals (aged 79.1±5.6 years) with AMD and no other ocular diseases were recruited from a low vision clinic or the Macular Degeneration Foundation database in a metropolitan city. Interviewees had not received any formal home modification assessment from a government provider. Nevertheless, 70 per cent of participants stated that they undertook home modifications themselves or with the assistance of family and friends. The most important functional modifications as perceived by the participants concerned the installation of hand rails, non‐slip matting, colour contrasting safety stair nosing, single lever taps, slip resistant flooring, lift chairs and motion sensors that activated pathway lighting. Kitchens, steps and bathrooms were perceived as hazardous locations. Most participants had difficulties with reading fine‐print material on kitchen appliances, washing machines, microwave ovens and remote controls for electronic devices in the home.

An evidence‐base for useful home modifications as suggested by people with visual impairment was perceived to be a valuable resource for other people with visual impairment who may not yet have developed adaptive strategies. Industrial and interior designers and low vision rehabilitation services who aim to improve functionality of the home environment will also find these suggestions useful.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an efficient iterative method for large-scale finite element equations of bad numerical stability arising from deformation analysis with multi-point constraint using Lagrange multiplier method.

In this paper, taking warpage analysis of polymer injection molding based on surface model as an example, the performance of several popular Krylov subspace methods, including conjugate gradient, BiCGSTAB and generalized minimal residual (GMRES), with diffident Incomplete LU (ILU)-type preconditions is investigated and compared. For controlling memory usage, GMRES(m) is also considered. And the ordering technique, commonly used in the direct method, is introduced into the presented iterative method to improve the preconditioner.

It is found that the proposed preconditioned GMRES method is robust and effective for solving problems considered in this paper, and approximate minimum degree (AMD) ordering is most beneficial for the reduction of fill-ins in the ILU preconditioner and acceleration of the convergence, especially for relatively accurate ILU-type preconditioning. And because of concerns about memory usage, GMRES(m) is a good choice if necessary.

In this paper, for overcoming difficulties of bad numerical stability resulting from Lagrange multiplier method, together with increasing scale of problems in engineering applications and limited hardware conditions of computer, a stable and efficient preconditioned iterative method is proposed for practical purpose. Before the preconditioning, AMD reordering, commonly used in the direct method, is introduced to improve the preconditioner. The numerical experiments show the good performance of the proposed iterative method for practical cases, which is implemented in in-house and commercial codes on PC.

Offering an example of a small open developing economy, the purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons for relative stability in Armenia’s foreign exchange market. Relying on a single currency and derived cross-currency exchange rates, the paper models short-term effects between exchange market pressure and financial and macroeconomic factors.

Following a literature review, the paper sets the macroeconomic context with an initial variance comparison of standard currency pairs and derived cross-currency exchange rates. Then, the core analysis is carried out with a vector error correction model, focusing on short-term cross-dynamics in monthly data. The orthogonal impulse response function analyses help solidify and further inform relevant conclusions.

Three broad factors influence Armenia’s foreign exchange market: external push factors; domestic banking sector competition, and foreign currency risk perceptions; and domestic macroeconomic and dual, cross-pair, exchange rate target priorities. The central bank’s implicit management of the foreign exchange market’s expectations, pull factor, is consistent with trader market power’s contribution to lower volatility. Yet, the risk of financial and real-sector decoupling remains.

The results are relevant for emerging markets attempting to leverage the global liquidity and low interest rates, while being exposed to external pressures in the post-crisis environment, in which international reserves may be scarce while currency stability is an implied priority. This study can be further adapted to a more comprehensive structural short-term analysis of currency determination or similar dynamics in other small open economies.

The purpose of this paper is to show that high technology companies often find it challenging to select their first reference customer. This is a challenging decision because such clients are not simply an immediate source of revenue, but also a source of learning, a technology test bench and a powerful promotional tool. This paper aims to explore not only the factors that make such decisions strategically crucial, but also the motivations for a client organization to assume such a risk and the characteristics of such organizations.

Theoretical and case studies. These ideas are illustrated with examples in both hardware and software, with a longer examination of HP's adoption of AMD's Opteron technology for its server line.

The choice of the first customer is a strategic decision, not just a tactical one. It has implications in terms of revenue generation, technology development, business development and industry focus, and it can be decisive in the success of a new technology.

This is one of the first papers to address the selection of the initial reference customer in high technology industries.

Describes the “Journey to Excellence” (JTE) empowerment program at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Emphasizes the role of two lower level managers in promoting its progress. Shows how factors such as team skills and problem‐solving training, efforts to bring supervisory and engineering functions to production worker level, and support from higher level executives led to the success of the program.