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With the rapid development of e-commerce, logistics demand is increasing day by day. The modern warehousing with a multi-agent system as the core comes into being. This paper aims to study the task allocation and path-planning (TAPP) problem as required by the multi-agent warehouse system.

The TAPP problem targets to minimize the makespan by allocating tasks to the agents and planning collision-free paths for the agents. This paper presents the Hierarchical Genetic Highways Algorithm (HGHA), a hierarchical algorithm combining optimization and multi-agent path-finding (MAPF). The top-level is the genetic algorithm (GA), allocating tasks to agents in an optimized way. The lower level is the so-called highways local repair (HLR) process, avoiding the collisions by local repairment if and only if conflicts arise.

Experiments demonstrate that HGHA performs faster and more efficient for the warehouse scenario than max multi-flow. This paper also applies HGHA to TAPP instances with a hundred agents and a thousand storage locations in a customized warehouse simulation platform with MultiBots.

This paper formulates the multi-agent warehousing distribution problem, TAPP. The HGHA based on hierarchical architecture solves the TAPP accurately and quickly. Verifying the HGHA by the large-scale multi-agent simulation platform MultiBots.

This paper aims to improve the diversity and richness of haptic perception by recognizing multi-modal haptic images.

First, the multi-modal haptic data collected by BioTac sensors from different objects are pre-processed, and then combined into haptic images. Second, a multi-class and multi-label deep learning model is designed, which can simultaneously learn four haptic features (hardness, thermal conductivity, roughness and texture) from the haptic images, and recognize objects based on these features. The haptic images with different dimensions and modalities are provided for testing the recognition performance of this model.

The results imply that multi-modal data fusion has a better performance than single-modal data on tactile understanding, and the haptic images with larger dimension are conducive to more accurate haptic measurement.

The proposed method has important potential application in unknown environment perception, dexterous grasping manipulation and other intelligent robotics domains.

This paper proposes a new deep learning model for extracting multiple haptic features and recognizing objects from multi-modal haptic images.

The paper aims to better understand why borrowers do not sanction one another in group-lending microfinance programmes.

The paper utilises interviews conducted in 16 villages in Western China. The data were complemented by ethnographic fieldwork of an NGO in the region.

The paper confirms the relevance to microfinance of existing literature showing that punishing others is costly, so people tend to wait for others to do it. It also reveals the existence of particularistic metanorms – norms of sanctioning that focus on whom one can and cannot punish. Additionally, it shows that people may punish according to whether they believe others are punishing.

The results are not immediately generalisable to all group-lending programmes.

Fieldwork in rural China is difficult to conduct. Although cultural and social patterns are known to be important in development work, little is known about how it affects microfinance.

This paper's purpose is to suggest that manufacturers strategically place soft orders for assembly materials with suppliers in Silk Road Economic Belt countries who probably doubt the realization of the soft orders placed.

First, a two-stage Stackelberg competition is constructed, taking into account the supplier's trust level in formulating the decision process in the assembly supply chain. The authors then provide a buyback contract to coordinate the supply chain, in which the manufacturer obtains enough supplies by sharing some of the perceived risks of not fully trusted suppliers. Furthermore, the authors conduct a numerical study to investigate the influence of trust under a decentralized case and a buyback contract.

The authors found that all supply chain partners in Silk Road Economic Belt countries experience potential losses due to not fully trusting certain conditions. The study also shows that, in Silk Road Economic Belt countries, operating under a buyback contract is better than being without one in terms of assembly supply chain performance.

On the one hand, the authors only consider the asymmetry of demand information without considering that of cost structure information. On the other hand, a natural extension of the paper is to integrate single-period transactions into the multi-period transaction problem setting. As all these issues require substantial effort, the authors reserve them for future exploration.

Doing business with not-fully-trustworthy partners in Silk Road Economic Belt countries is risky, and this study reveals how trust works in global cooperation and with strategic reactions in situations of partial trust.

The goal of this research is to establish which contextual factors influence the selection of relational governance instruments in supply chains (SCs) and how these factors impact the expected performance.

A systematic literature review (SLR) identified 103 conceptual, empirical and analytical studies between 2007 and 2017.

A conceptual framework is developed from the categorization of contextual factors, relational governance instruments and expected SC performance. The conceptual framework provides three propositions: (1) The choice for relational governance instrument is influenced differently by the contextual factors; (2) the impact that the contextual factors have on the governance instruments and SC performance is mediated by trust; (3) The SC performance is affected differently by the instruments of flexibility, solidarity and information sharing.

The findings of this research can help business managers better govern and know the contextual factors and use different relational governance instruments and trust dimensions to drive the expected results of the SC.

The synthesis reveals contingencies of relational governance instruments in SCs for performance expected in different contexts and proposes a standpoint for further research in the area.

In this paper, we investigate whether internal control and whether corporate life cycle would affect firm performance in the emerging markets of China.

We use Chen, Dong, Han, and Zhou’s (2013) internal control index on the effectiveness of internal control and Dickinson’s (2011) definition on firm life cycle. We use multivariate regression analysis.

We find that the internal control improves corporate performance. When dividing firm life cycle into five stages: introduction, growth, mature, shake-out and decline, we find that the impacts of internal control on firm performance vary with different stages. The positive impact of internal control on firm performance is more significant in maturity and shake-out stages than other stages.

Our findings would have implications for the regulators and policy makers with regards to the importance of internal control in corporate governance and the effectiveness of implementing standards and guidelines on internal control in public firms.

In addition, our findings on the various roles of internal control at different stages of firm life cycle would help managers and board of directors find more focus in risk management and board monitoring, respectively.

Although the prior literature have examined the link between internal control, information quality and cost of equity capital (Ashbaugh-Skaife, Collins, Kinney, & LaFond, 2009; Ogneva, Subramanyam, & Raghunandan, 2007), our study would be the first attempt to investigate the link between internal control and firm performance during different stages of firm life cycles.

This study is designed to identify the policy shift on migrant children's11There are various definitions of migrant children in urban China. In this research, migrant children refer to the children from rural areas who have resided with their parents at the urban areas for at least six months without local household registration status. education at national level in urban China22With the rapid socioeconomic development and urbanization in China, the definition of urban China is changing. In this research, urban China refers to the major cities in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Chongqing, and so forth. during the past decades. Meanwhile, it is expected to explore the policy limitations reflected by the practice at school level regarding accommodating migrant children's education.

This study is conducted through policy review regarding education for migrant children and analysis of data collected through questionnaires and interviews at one public junior high school in Beijing.

This study identifies a positive change of involving migrant children in urban public schools. However, there is a need for flexible mechanism that can fully accommodate various needs regarding migrant children's education in urban public schools.

The study argues the necessity of a multipartnership for establishing a sustainable public education system for accommodating migrant children education in urban public schools.

Being different from other research on the same issue in urban China, this study leads a new round of discussion on the quality education for migrant children.

South Koreans in the city of Ulsan claim that eating whale meat is a tradition, but what is the role of SMOs in making whaling into a tradition identified with a local identity? In following account of a confrontation that took place in Korea between anti-whaling protesters from Greenpeace and local defenders of whaling, it is shown that tradition is not an inevitable outcome of conserving the past; instead, it is an outcome of mobilization, framing, and choices made by movement participants. Tradition in the whaling town of Ulsan was formed through the encounter between opposed social movements, prompting strategic choices of counterframing, frame bridging, and the dissonance between framing and feeling rules. Through the encounters with transnational activists, the Korean defenders of whaling refashioned themselves as rooted cosmopolitans, utilizing global norms to justify local practices in the name of heritage and tradition.

Literature indicates that global geographic diversification (GD) has mixed effects on a multinational corporation’s (MNC) performances. The purpose of this paper is to examine how an MNC’s GD influences its stock market and financial performances directly and indirectly via operational performance (i.e. changes in inventory levels).

Using firm-level data collected from Compustat database for the period 2000-2011 and estimating a mediating regression model, the authors examine the direct and indirect effects of GD on an MNC’s stock market (Tobin’s q) and financial performances (ROA), with inventory level being a mediator. Additionally, the examination is implemented separately under two economic situations: financial crisis vs without financial crisis.

The results show that GD enhances an MNC’s stock market performance, while deteriorating its financial performance in the presence of a financial crisis. In contrast, GD has little direct impact on an MNC’s stock market and financial performances during periods without financial crisis. The indirect effects of GD are mediated by changes in inventory levels.

This study suggests that MNCs need to carefully weigh the benefits and costs of global strategy obtained through GD. The results also indicate that GD is highly appreciated by the stock market investors during economic downturns and tighter inventory management may further enhance firm values.

This paper is the first empirical research to estimate both direct and indirect effects of GD via inventory in the operations management literature, highlighting the value of GD depending on the different economic situations and echoing the role of operations in implementing GD.