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This paper, a theoretical article, aims to revisit the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) communication model and its transmission processes and interface as proposed by Lloyd, Quist and Windsor in 1990. More specifically, the focus of this paper is on the classifications of the SELECT (i.e. the means to select symbols) and TRANS (i.e. the means to transmit messages) components of the AAC transmission processes and interface.

The field of AAC is evolving at a rapid rate. As the field continues to evolve in terms of its clinical, social, research and theoretical underpinnings, it is incumbent upon academics and practitioners in AAC to be cognizant of terminological and theoretical changes that may be needed to keep pace with the evolution of the field.

The authors welcome feedback from academics and clinicians with the hope that a more thorough discussion will lead stakeholders to more accurate and descriptive terminology related to the means to select and transmit components of the AAC model transmission processes.

The goal of this article was to suggest that the aided versus unaided classification continue to be used to classify the means to select but a new taxonomy be adopted for the means to transmit, thereby eliminating the use of the terms high and low technology. Terminology developed to describe TRANS should be unambiguous, include both expressive and receptive communication and be clinically relevant. In the opinion of the authors, the proposed taxonomy meets all three of these criteria.

This chapter examines how proponents of industrialization used multiple modes of communication to socially construct the rational myth of industrialization in the French construction sector after World War II. We illuminate the respective roles of visual and verbal communication in this process. Our findings suggest that actors construct rational myths according to the following step-by-step method: first, they use visuals to suggest associations between new practices and valuable purposes; then they use verbal text to establish the technical rationality of certain practices; and lastly, they employ both verbal and visual communications to convey their mythical features.

The purpose of this study is to examine the decision-making process for entrepreneurial firms when entering foreign markets and how and why they entered those markets.

A nascent theory in entrepreneurship called effectuation is combined with internationalization process theory as the conceptual framework to study decision-making under uncertainty. The central concept in both these theories is relationships and how they can be used to gain knowledge and thus reduce uncertainty and in the case of effectuation to co-create opportunities to enter foreign markets. The research design involves a multiple case study of software firms from Finland and New Zealand.

It was found that entrepreneurs differentiate between foreign market selection and foreign market entry during their internationalization process, potentially using different decision-making processes in them. They tend to interweave effectuation and causation logics as substitutes in their decision-making. Uncertainty during foreign market entry is not always a barrier because it can provide opportunities depending on the logic used. In addition, there is evidence that entrepreneurs who have existing relationships in foreign markets tend to use effectuation to select and enter foreign markets.

This paper transposes effectuation from its original field of entrepreneurship research to the context of internationalizing entrepreneurial firms. Consequently, it contributes toward understanding the decision-making process for selecting and entering foreign markets.

When the augmentative and alternative communication (ACC) model (Lloyd et al., 1990) was proposed, these components of symbols were not considered, nor were they contemplated when superordinate (Lloyd and Fuller, 1986) and subordinate levels (Fuller et al., 1992) of AAC symbol taxonomy were developed. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the ACC model and propose a new symbol classification system called multidimensional quaternary symbol continuum (MQSC)

The field of AAC is evolving at a rapid rate in terms of its clinical, social, research and theoretical underpinnings. Advances in assessment and intervention methods, technology and social issues are all responsible to some degree for the significant changes that have occurred in the field of AAC over the last 30 years. For example, the number of aided symbol collections has increased almost exponentially over the past couple of decades. The proliferation of such a large variety of symbol collections represents a wide range of design attributes, physical attributes and linguistic characteristics for aided symbols and design attributes and linguistic characteristics for unaided symbols.

Therefore, it may be time to revisit the AAC model and more specifically, one of its transmission processes referred to as the means to represent.

The focus of this theoretical paper then, is on the current classification of symbols, issues with respect to the current classification of symbols in terms of ambiguity of terminology and the evolution of symbols, and a proposal for a new means of classifying the means to represent.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon10.1108/JET-04-2021-0024

Alternative payment means have been expanding rapidly in recent years. The need to identify the segments of customers that are targetable for both financial and nonfinancial institutions is growing. The purpose of this paper is to use two different methods, discriminant analysis and decision trees, in order to compare the effectiveness of the two methods for segmentation and identify critical consumer characteristics which determine behavior and preference in relation to the use of payment means.

Using data from 321 bank customers, decision tree and discriminant analysis methods are used, first to test the same set of variables differentiating the customers and then to compare the respective results and prediction ability of the two methods.

Results show that discriminant analysis has a better model fit and segments the customers in a more effective way than the decision tree method. In addition, each method shows different variables to differentiate the customer groups.

The findings are limited to the sector and country of the study, as well as the convenience sample that has been used.

Suggestions for financial managers to better understand their customers’ behavior and target the right group are discussed.

This is the first attempt to compare decision trees and discriminant analysis as alternative segmentation methods for payment means.

Recent evidence on consumer decision-making suggests that highly complex choice scenarios lead consumers to use simplistic decision heuristics, often resulting in suboptimal decision-making. This study aims to investigate the relationships among consumers’ primary information source, patient satisfaction and patient well-being, specifically focused on the search for mental health professionals. The selection of a mental health provider is of interest, because practitioners work from a highly diverse set of theoretical bases, may hold a wide range of different credentials and provide drastically different therapeutic approaches, therefore making the selection complex and difficult for consumers to self-navigate.

Three studies were undertaken, with data sampling from both patients of mental health services and practitioners.

Consumers selecting a provider based on self-performed searches, rather than receiving external input (referrals from physicians, relatives or friends), report lower satisfaction with their mental health provider. In turn, patient satisfaction positively impacts patient well-being. Practitioner data corroborate these findings, revealing that a large percentage of patients stem from a self-performed internet search, though mental health providers recognize that external referrals are likely to lead to better outcomes.

The results reveal the importance of understanding the consumer search and, particularly, the use of the internet as a search tool. The results present several implications for service providers, including the need to identify patients’ primary source utilized within an information search, as it can adversely impact patient satisfaction.

The aim of this conceptual paper is to review Bernstein’s communication wheel to make it a tool that can be used in the selection of a corporate communication mix.

A critical analysis of Bernstein’s communication wheel shows it to be a checklist, a starting point in the examination of corporate communication mix, but it is not as such of great help to the decision maker.

The findings of reviewing literature highlight that the principle of a clear distinction between strategic decisions and operational decisions is applicable also in the field of corporate communication. For each stakeholder relationship, the authors’ framework suggests typical combinations of activities and means to be used. These combinations are useful to experiment with expert systems which are functional to the choices of corporate communication mix.

The analysis of communication gaps gives directions for formulating strategic decisions. In this framework, tactical decisions concern the components of the communication mix architecture (or communication chain): activities, means and vehicles of communication. On the contrary, Bernstein’s communication wheel includes only generic channels (or media) and gives no indications as to the architecture of the communication mix.

This study illustrates the hierarchy of decisions relating to corporate communication mix, the communication wheel could also be useful in communication planning. If this assumption is held to be true it then becomes possible to lay out a framework for a progressive decision-making path that means making sequential choices (first strategic, then tactical). In the stakeholder approach, the aim of strategic decisions is to choose the stakeholder groups on which a firm has to focus its corporate communication activities.

This paper aims to propose a method for better discovering topic evolution path and semantic relationship from the perspective of patent entity extraction and semantic representation. On the one hand, this paper identifies entities that have the same semantics but different expressions for accurate topic evolution path discovery. On the other hand, this paper reveals semantic relationships of topic evolution for better understanding what leads to topic evolution.

Firstly, a Bi-LSTM-CRF (bidirectional long short-term memory with conditional random field) model is designed for patent entity extraction and a representation learning method is constructed for patent entity representation. Secondly, a method based on knowledge outflow and inflow is proposed for discovering topic evolution path, by identifying and computing semantic common entities among topics. Finally, multiple semantic relationships among patent entities are pre-designed according to a specific domain, and then the semantic relationship among topics is identified through the proportion of different types of semantic relationships belonging to each topic.

In the field of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), this method identifies semantic common entities which have the same semantics but different expressions. In addition, this method better discovers topic evolution paths by comparison with a traditional method. Finally, this method identifies different semantic relationships among topics, which gives a detailed description for understanding and interpretation of topic evolution. These results prove that the proposed method is effective and useful. Simultaneously, this method is a preliminary study and still needs to be further investigated on other datasets using multiple emerging deep learning methods.

This work provides a new perspective for topic evolution analysis by considering semantic representation of patent entities. The authors design a method for discovering topic evolution paths by considering knowledge flow computed by semantic common entities, which can be easily extended to other patent mining-related tasks. This work is the first attempt to reveal semantic relationships among topics for a precise and detailed description of topic evolution.

The purpose of this research is to develop a distributed system with an innovative supplier selection approach within a mass customization (MC) environment. The aim is to help manufacturers to identify appropriate suppliers for the components, materials and services required within the procedure of product design and manufacture.

To identify the barriers for the supplier selection issues, current researches regarding the issues of supplier selection and MC have been reviewed. Based on the findings, the new supplier selection approach has been developed.

Within the global manufacturing environment, conventional way of appraising suppliers cannot enhance manufacturers' competitiveness advantage over their rivals. It is inevitable for manufacturers to identify appropriate competitive priorities for each of their potential market segments when designing products. Selecting appropriate suppliers is a fundamental issue to fulfill manufacturers' development strategy. The approach will enhance supplier selection efficiency and flexibility under the MC environment, enabling manufactures to avoid or minimize risks when external conditions change.

The case study is limited to selecting suppliers of two components for an ink cartridge, however, the general approach is applicable to other type of products.

The whole concept of this selection system is to provide a supplier selection approach for MC environment by utilizing the web‐based technologies to deliver a means which enables geographically dispersed functions making supplier selection more efficiently. Manufacturers can utilize this approach to evaluate and to find most appropriate suppliers based on various situations.

The supplier selection approach focuses on the general supplier selection issues incorporating with product market position and development directions issues for MC, which provides a more dynamic and robust method to select and evaluate potential suppliers according to a range of conditions.