Search results
1 – 10 of over 2000Tingting Mei, Qiankun Wang, Yaping Xiao and Mi Yang
The purpose of this paper is to study the rent-seeking behavior of stakeholders in construction projects and to provide a reference for further studies on collaboration in China…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the rent-seeking behavior of stakeholders in construction projects and to provide a reference for further studies on collaboration in China, which could thus improve the collaborative management in construction and reduce the waste of resources.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors discuss and analyze the current situation of rent-seeking behavior in infrastructure construction projects, integrated project delivery (IPD), and the application of a building information model (BIM) in China. The authors analyze the collusive behavior between the supervision department and the contractor via the rent-seeking model on the basis of the game theory and present that BIM and IPD have a positive impact on rent-seeking activities of construction projects. The key factors influencing the rent-seeking activities from the perspective of the owner are studied via a questionnaire survey.
Findings
The research status of IPD in China includes the application of IPD, IPD collaborative management and the combination of lean construction (LC), IPD and BIM. The enthusiasm of the adoption of BIM and IPD is higher for design institute, construction units, research institutions and universities. The findings indicate that the owner appears to have a significant influence on stakeholders in construction projects, such as supervising efficiency, rewards and punishment. Therefore, the results also demonstrate that the construction project based on BIM and IPD can effectively avoid the rent-seeking activities of the participants.
Research limitations/implications
The findings are primarily based on questionnaire data originated from Central China; hence there are some limitations that are worth noting.
Practical implications
First, it provides compelling data evidence for the adoption of BIM and IPD in China. Second, it paves a solid foundation for the behavior of stakeholders in construction projects based on BIM and IPD.
Originality/value
In this paper, a game model of contractor, supervisor and owner is established, and a preliminary attempt is made to introduce BIM and IPD into the model for the behavioral research of participants.
Details
Keywords
Xin Chen and Yingxi Liu
This study aims to explore the switching behaviour of short video (SV) users and its influencing factors and promote the sustainable development of SV platforms (SVPs) and the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the switching behaviour of short video (SV) users and its influencing factors and promote the sustainable development of SV platforms (SVPs) and the marketing strategy formulation of library and information institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
Using the qualitative research method of semi-structured interviews and grounded theory, this study conducts an exploratory study on the user switching phenomenon of an SVP. The authors encoded the interview text at three levels, extracted the factors influencing user switching behaviour on an SVP and constructed the corresponding theoretical model.
Findings
This study identifies the following major internal and external factors influencing user switching behaviour of SVP: platform quality, social environment, individual characteristics and use needs. It also elaborates on the impact of these internal and external factors on user switching behaviour.
Originality/value
This study explored the factors influencing SV user switching behaviour and constructed corresponding theoretical models, enriching research in information technology and social media switching. In practice, this study helped the existing SVPs and library and information institutions establish a corresponding early warning mechanism to prevent the loss of existing users and attract new users.
Details
Keywords
Gerald W. Fry and Hui Bi
The purpose of this paper is to analyze critically the evolution of educational reform in Thailand. Three major phases are identified. The special focus of the paper is an…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze critically the evolution of educational reform in Thailand. Three major phases are identified. The special focus of the paper is an assessment of the third reform which began with the passage of the Office of the National Education Commission (ONEC) (2002).
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology for the study is mixed methods including document analysis, direct participant observation, and compilation of major statistical performance indicators from diverse sources.
Findings
The success of the most recent reform has been clearly mixed. Major structural and legal changes have occurred but overall system performance remains disappointingly low, despite large Thai educational expenditures as a percent of national budget and the presence of much impressive educational leadership talent. The paper identifies what is called the “Thai educational paradox”. The essence of the paradox is Thailand’s failure to achieve its educational potential. The paper identifies key factors explaining the paradox.
Originality/value
The paper has significant theoretical, policy, and practical implications. From a theoretical perspective, the study confirms the persistence of strong regional disparities and a lack of fiscal neutrality associated with a neoliberal model of capitalistic development. From a practical policy perspective, it is imperative for Thailand to improve the overall quality of its educational system and to reduce regional disparities. There have been numerous studies of each of Thailand’s three phases of reform, but this paper’s original contribution is its presentation of a historical, interdisciplinary, and integrated perspective on the evolution of educational reform and the many obstacles associated with its implementation.
Details
Keywords
Yongzheng Zhang, Evangelos Milios and Nur Zincir‐Heywood
Summarization of an entire web site with diverse content may lead to a summary heavily biased towards the site's dominant topics. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel…
Abstract
Purpose
Summarization of an entire web site with diverse content may lead to a summary heavily biased towards the site's dominant topics. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel topic‐based framework to address this problem.
Design/methodology/approach
A two‐stage framework is proposed. The first stage identifies the main topics covered in a web site via clustering and the second stage summarizes each topic separately. The proposed system is evaluated by a user study and compared with the single‐topic summarization approach.
Findings
The user study demonstrates that the clustering‐summarization approach statistically significantly outperforms the plain summarization approach in the multi‐topic web site summarization task. Text‐based clustering based on selecting features with high variance over web pages is reliable; outgoing links are useful if a rich set of cross links is available.
Research limitations/implications
More sophisticated clustering methods than those used in this study are worth investigating. The proposed method should be tested on web content that is less structured than organizational web sites, for example blogs.
Practical implications
The proposed summarization framework can be applied to the effective organization of search engine results and faceted or topical browsing of large web sites.
Originality/value
Several key components are integrated for web site summarization for the first time, including feature selection and link analysis, key phrase and key sentence extraction. Insight into the contributions of links and content to topic‐based summarization was gained. A classification approach is used to minimize the number of parameters.
Details
Keywords
Sifeng Liu, Yingjie Yang, Naiming Xie and Jeffrey Forrest
The purpose of this paper is to summarize the progress in grey system research during 2000-2015, so as to present some important new concepts, models, methods and a new framework…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to summarize the progress in grey system research during 2000-2015, so as to present some important new concepts, models, methods and a new framework of grey system theory.
Design/methodology/approach
The new thinking, new models and new methods of grey system theory and their applications are presented in this paper. It includes algorithm rules of grey numbers based on the “kernel” and the degree of greyness of grey numbers, the concept of general grey numbers, the synthesis axiom of degree of greyness of grey numbers and their operations; the general form of buffer operators of grey sequence operators; the four basic models of grey model GM(1,1), such as even GM, original difference GM, even difference GM, discrete GM and the suitable sequence type of each basic model, and suitable range of most used grey forecasting models; the similarity degree of grey incidences, the closeness degree of grey incidences and the three-dimensional absolute degree of grey incidence of grey incidence analysis models; the grey cluster model based on center-point and end-point mixed triangular whitenization functions; the multi-attribute intelligent grey target decision model, the two stages decision model with grey synthetic measure of grey decision models; grey game models, grey input-output models of grey combined models; and the problems of robust stability for grey stochastic time-delay systems of neutral type, distributed-delay type and neutral distributed-delay type of grey control, etc. And the new framework of grey system theory is given as well.
Findings
The problems which remain for further studying are discussed at the end of each section. The reader could know the general picture of research and developing trend of grey system theory from this paper.
Practical implications
A lot of successful practical applications of the new models to solve various problems have been found in many different areas of natural science, social science and engineering, including spaceflight, civil aviation, information, metallurgy, machinery, petroleum, chemical industry, electrical power, electronics, light industries, energy resources, transportation, medicine, health, agriculture, forestry, geography, hydrology, seismology, meteorology, environment protection, architecture, behavioral science, management science, law, education, military science, etc. These practical applications have brought forward definite and noticeable social and economic benefits. It demonstrates a wide range of applicability of grey system theory, especially in the situation where the available information is incomplete and the collected data are inaccurate.
Originality/value
The reader is given a general picture of grey systems theory as a new model system and a new framework for studying problems where partial information is known; especially for uncertain systems with few data points and poor information. The problems remaining for further studying are identified at the end of each section.
Details
Keywords
Yidu Zhang, Yongshou Liu and Qing Guo
This paper aims to develop a method for evaluating the failure probability and global sensitivity of multiple failure modes based on convex-probability hybrid uncertainty.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to develop a method for evaluating the failure probability and global sensitivity of multiple failure modes based on convex-probability hybrid uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
The uncertainty information of the input variable is considered as convex-probability hybrid uncertainty. Moment-independent variable global sensitivity index based on the system failure probability is proposed to quantify the effect of the input variable on the system failure probability. Two-mode sensitivity indices are adopted to characterize the effect of each failure mode on the system failure probability. The method based on active learning Kriging (ALK) model with a truncated candidate regions (TCR) is adopted to evaluate the systems failure probability, as well as sensitivity index and this method is termed as ALK-TCR.
Findings
The results of five examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the sensitivity index and the efficiency of the ALK-TCR method in solving the problem of multiple failure modes based on the convex-probability hybrid uncertainty.
Originality/value
Convex-probability hybrid uncertainty is considered on system reliability analysis. Moment-independent variable sensitivity index based on the system failure probability is proposed. Mode sensitivity indices are extended to hybrid uncertain reliability model. An effective global sensitivity analysis approach is developed for the multiple failure modes based on convex-probability hybrid uncertainty.
Details
Keywords
Sifeng Liu, Yong Tao, Naiming Xie, Liangyan Tao and Mingli Hu
The purpose of this paper is to summarize the advances in grey system theory research and various application achievements in science and engineering. At the same time, it…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to summarize the advances in grey system theory research and various application achievements in science and engineering. At the same time, it commemorates the 40th anniversary of the birth of grey system theory and the 10th anniversary of Grey Systems–Theory and Application.
Design/methodology/approach
Firstly, the innovations of theoretical research in grey system theory were summarized and some of the widely recognized new results are briefly described. By searching and combing the research results of grey system theory in China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) database and Web of Science by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), this paper shows the rapid development trend of grey system theory in the past 40 years, and the successful applications of grey system theory in the fields of social sciences, natural sciences and engineering technologies.
Findings
More than 227 thousands literature were found by input 10 phrases such as grey system, grey number and sequence operator etc. in CNKI database. After entering the new century, the number of grey system papers included in CNKI database is increasing rapidly. Since 2008, more than 10 thousands papers have been included per year and more than 15 thousands papers have been included per year since 2014. Grey system method and model are widely used in physics, chemistry, biology and other fields of natural science, as well as transportation, electric power, machinery and other fields of engineering technology, and a large number of valuable results have been achieved.
Practical implications
It can be seen that the grey system theory plays an important role in promoting China’s scientific and technological progress, innovation and development and high-level talent training from tens of thousands of literatures marked with important national science and technology projects and a large number of grey system literatures published by China’s double first-class universities and double first-class discipline construction universities.
Originality/value
Both innovations of theoretical research and practical application play important role in the growth of new theory. The innovations of theoretical research provide methods and tools for practical application, which is conducive to improve application efficiency and broaden application fields. A large number of practical applications needs have become the source of theoretical innovation and the solid background for the birth of theoretical innovation achievements.
Details
Keywords
Zhifeng Lin, Likun Xu, Xiangbo Li, Li Wang, Weimin Guo, Chuanjie Wu and Yi Yang
The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of a fastener composite coating system, sherardized (SD) coating/zinc-aluminum (ZA) coating whether it has good performance…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of a fastener composite coating system, sherardized (SD) coating/zinc-aluminum (ZA) coating whether it has good performance in marine environment.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, SD coating was fabricated on fastener surface by solid-diffusion method. ZA coating was fabricated by thermal sintering method. Corrosion behaviours of the composite coating were investigated with potentiodynamic polarization curves, open circuit potential and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy methods.
Findings
Neutral salt spray (NSS) and deep sea exposure tests revealed that the composite coating had excellent corrosion resistance. Polarization curve tests showed that corrosion current density of the sample with composite coating was significantly decreased, indicating an effective corrosion protection of the composite coating. OCP measurement of the sample in NaCl solution demonstrated that the composite coating had the best cathodic protection effect. The good corrosion resistance of the composite coating was obtained by the synergy of SD and ZA coating.
Practical implications
SD/ZA coating can be used in marine environment to prolong the life of carbon steel fastener.
Social implications
SD/ZA composite coating can reduce the risk and accident caused by failed fastener, avoid huge economic losses.
Originality/value
A new kind of composite coating was explored to protect the carbon steel fastener in marine environment. And the composite coating has the long-term anti-corrosion performance both in simulated and marine environment test.
Details
Keywords
Haiyue Fu, Shuchang Zhao and Chuan Liao
This paper aims to promote urban–rural synergy in carbon reduction and achieve the dual carbon goal, reconstruct the low-carbon urban–rural spatial pattern and explore planning…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to promote urban–rural synergy in carbon reduction and achieve the dual carbon goal, reconstruct the low-carbon urban–rural spatial pattern and explore planning strategies for carbon mitigation in urban agglomerations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose the idea of land governance zoning based on low-carbon scenario simulation, using the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration as the empirical research area. Specifically, the authors analyze its spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of carbon balance over the past two decades and simulate the land use pattern under the scenario of low-carbon emission in 2030. Furthermore, the authors create spatial zoning rules combined with land use transition characteristics to classify the urban agglomeration into carbon sink restoration zone, carbon sink protection zone, carbon control development zone and carbon transition agriculture zone and put forward corresponding targeted governance principals.
Findings
The study findings classify the BTH urban agglomeration into carbon sink restoration zone, carbon sink protection zone, carbon control development zone and carbon transition agriculture zone, which account for 28.1%, 17.2%, 20.1% and 34.6% of the total area, respectively. The carbon sink restoration zone and carbon sink protection zone are mainly distributed in the northern and western parts and Bohai Rim region. The carbon transition agriculture zone and carbon control development zone are mainly distributed in the southeastern plain and Zhangjiakou.
Research limitations/implications
The authors suggest restoring and rebuilding ecosystems mainly in the northwest and east parts to increase the number of carbon sinks and the stability of the ecosystem. Besides, measures should be taken to promote collaborative emission reduction work between cities and optimize industrial and energy structures within cities such as Beijing, Langfang, Tianjin and Baoding. Furthermore, the authors recommend promoting sustainable intensification of agriculture and carefully balance between both economic development and ecological protection in Zhangjiakou and plain area.
Originality/value
The authors propose a zoning method based on the optimization of land use towards low-carbon development by combining “top-down” and “bottom-up” strategies and provide targeted governance suggestions for each region. This study provides policy implications to implement the regional low-carbon economic transition under the “double carbon” target in urban agglomerations in China.
Details