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Management science, operational and financial risk of overseas enterprises.

This case is mainly applicable to international business course and project management course.

Since 1992, the Great Mekong sub-regional economic cooperation between China and ASEAN countries was officially launched and set free economic zone. Hydropower is starting to develop in recent years in Cambodia, and it is a good significance to Cambodia's industry. Furthermore, most of hydropower plants in Cambodia are built by Chinese companies. Thus, this paper will analyze the current risk and condition of Kamchay hydropower, as well as the development of Chinese enterprise for Cambodia economic and social development.

This case study provides students concepts on international business, project management, and operational risk of overseas enterprises. The principle of project contracting, labor cooperation, and project financial in international process are considered together with the implications they have for advancing understanding of the problem of the host country's government interests and the various risk of enterprises in international BOT projects.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Strategic management.

This case is suitable for graduate students, postgraduate students and MBAs.

YC Company is a foreign trade SME operating in the lighting fixtures export business in Ningbo City, a major outdoor lighting products manufacturing base in mainland China. Established by Li Lele in 2008, the sales revenue and gross profit of YC Company have been increasing every year, reaching $ 4.06 million and ¥ 1.00 million, respectively, by the end of 2011. However, the growth rate of profit lagged far behind the growth of sales revenue. If this situation were not controlled, YC Company would hardly survive in this increasingly competitive market. Li Lele, the CEO of the company, was trying to find a way to enlarge the profit margin.

This case lets students learn more about strategic management. Students are expected to learn: how to precisely identify and map a problem; and how to select a better solution by analyzing the context and using some strategic analysis tools, such as Porter's Five Power, Smile Curve, SWOT. In the learning process, students are expected to acquire a better knowledge of some strategic management theory/method, international business, the condition of small and medium trading companies in China.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Rivers flowing through the land are a source of life. They have different importance and functions such as for drinking, sailing, irrigating crops, generating electricity, sightseeing, fishing, and so on. In addition, animals like amphibians, birds, and mammals also live and propagate near the river environment. Therefore, rivers are ecosystems for some animals and plants that are special, rare, or on the brink of extinction (Water Resources Agency, Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2006).

The purpose of this paper is to calculate the Hugoniot relations of polyurea; also to investigate the atomic-scale energy change, the related chain conformation evolution and the hydrogen bond dissociation of polyurea under high-speed shock.

The atomic-scale simulations are achieved by molecular dynamics (MD). Both non-equilibrium MD and multi-scale shock technique are used to simulate the high-speed shock. The energy dissipation is theoretically derived by the thermodynamic and the Hugoniot relations. The distributions of bond length, angle and dihedral angle are used to characterize the chain conformation evolution. The hydrogen bonds are determined by a geometrical criterion.

The Hugoniot relations calculated are in good agreement with the experimental data. It is found that under the same impact pressure, polyurea with lower hard segment content has higher energy dissipation during the shock-release process. The primary energy dissipation way is the heat dissipation caused by the increase of kinetic energy. Unlike tensile simulation, the molecular potential increment is mainly divided into the increments of the bond energy, angle energy and dihedral angle energy under shock loading and is mostly stored in the soft segments. The hydrogen bond potential increment only accounts for about 1% of the internal energy increment under high-speed shock.

The simulation results are meaningful for understanding and evaluating the energy dissipation mechanism of polyurea under shock loading, and could provide a reference for material design.

This paper aims to focus on the variable stick force-displacement (SFD) gradience in the active side stick (ASS) servo system for the civil aircraft.

The problem of variable SFD gradience was introduced first, followed by the analysis of its impact on the ASS servo system. To solve this problem, a linear-parameter-varying (LPV) control approach was suggested to process the variable gradience of the SFD. A H_∞ robust control method was proposed to deal with the external disturbance.

To validate the algorithm performance, a linear time-variant system was calculated to be used to worst cases and the SFD gradience was set to linear and non-linear variation to test the algorithm, and some typical examples of pitch angle and side-slip angle tracking control for a large civil aircraft were also used to verify the algorithm. The results showed that the LPV control method had less settling time and less steady tracking errors than H_∞ control, even in the variable SFD case.

This paper presented an ASS servo system using the LPV control method to solve the problem caused by the variable SFD gradience. The motor torque command was calculated by pressure and position feedback without additional hardware support. It was more useful for the electronic hydraulic servo actuator.

This was the research paper that analyzed the impact of the variable SFD gradience in the ASS servo system and presented an LPV control method to solve it. It was applicable for the SFD gradience changing in the linear and non-linear cases.

This purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the theoretical background and applications of inverse reinforcement learning (IRL).

Reinforcement learning (RL) techniques provide a powerful solution for sequential decision making problems under uncertainty. RL uses an agent equipped with a reward function to find a policy through interactions with a dynamic environment. However, one major assumption of existing RL algorithms is that reward function, the most succinct representation of the designer's intention, needs to be provided beforehand. In practice, the reward function can be very hard to specify and exhaustive to tune for large and complex problems, and this inspires the development of IRL, an extension of RL, which directly tackles this problem by learning the reward function through expert demonstrations. In this paper, the original IRL algorithms and its close variants, as well as their recent advances are reviewed and compared.

This paper can serve as an introduction guide of fundamental theory and developments, as well as the applications of IRL.

This paper surveys the theories and applications of IRL, which is the latest development of RL and has not been done so far.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the general method for the solution of the Boolean function's primary function, and its application in encryption systems.

In the Boolean function theory, there is always a lack in the general method for the solution of primary function. This paper uses a very useful tool – e‐derivative, and by the help of this tool, obtains some very useful theorems.

The paper not only finds the method of solving the primary function of the Boolean function but also provides its application in encryption systems.

The Boolean function's primary function is also very useful in the detection of circuitry, not introduced in this paper.

This paper is very useful for information security.

The paper solves the initial‐value problem of the Boolean function's primary function, and constructs some Boolean functions with many cryptographical characters which are very useful in encryption systems.

This study aims to examine newcomers experiencing maladjustment due to cognitive diversity, specifically, how maladjustment affects their turnover intentions; the mediating role of reported workplace bullying; and the buffering effect of perceived inclusive practices in the hospitality sector.

The authors collected time-lagged data from 403 respondents and analyzed the data through hierarchical regression analyses using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) 25.0.

Role ambiguity, low self-efficacy and social exclusion could each lead to newcomers’ reported workplace bullying (NRB). Perceived inclusive practices buffered the impacts of role ambiguity and social exclusion. NRB negatively mediated the relationships between role ambiguity and NRB; and social exclusion and NRB.

Hospitality practitioners should specify work procedures to minimize role ambiguities and record service processes to correct mistakes, reward veterans who help newcomers improve self-efficacy, invite newcomers to develop inclusive practices and review employee comments on third-party platforms to understand factors responsible for turnover intention.

This study contextualized cognitive diversity into newcomers’ maladjustment-bullying-turnover model in China’s hospitality industry. It highlighted the buffering effect of perceived inclusive practices in the relationships between maladjustment and reported bullying and turnover intentions among newcomers and confirmed the important role of self-efficacy in addressing adverse work events.

This study explored how the Singaporean government responded to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis from early January 2020 to the end of May of the same year. It evaluated the capability of Singapore's leadership management in a crisis during the peak and ravaging period of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The study utilised a systematic design analysis approach, analysing Singaporean cases on the Covid-19 crisis using a systematic and narrative approach to underscore the country's response to the pandemic attack from January 2020 to May 2020.

Against the backdrop of Singapore's peculiar political system of government dominated by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) and culture of bureaucracy, the government has increasingly executed several control measures, including strict travel bans, contact tracing, the circuit breaker–lockdown, mask-wearing, social distancing orders as well as financial support to businesses and employees from top to the bottom in the country. However, the treatment and health issues of the migrant workers in the dormitories continue to be the major concern among academics and scholars. At the same time, policy inadequacies truncate the excellent measure of Singapore's response to Covid-19. The case point review concluded that the mortality rate in Singapore remains low compared to other nations of the world. Singapore's case points unveil fundamental learning that an excellent leadership-driven harmonised strategic model is essential for crisis management in any society. The finding of the analysis demonstrated that Singapore adopted a contingency and value-based leadership model to advance good governance and tackle the spread of the deadly coronavirus in its country.

The study has demonstrated a profound analysis that has not been conducted hitherto. Investigation of the Singapore case point is not a popular analysis among Nigerian scholars. Therefore, from Nigeria's perspective, the study has showcased the good and the wrong sides of a coin in Singapore's leadership and power dynamic in crisis management.