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Although technological diversification is often understood as an explorative activity, the authors argue that it can also be explained as exploitation. The purpose of this paper is to examine how exploitative technological diversification (ETD) affects firm performance and what factors may moderate this relationship.

The sample consists of 1,569 Chinese listed firms with 7,555 observations from 2003 to 2014. Patent data were collected from the State Intellectual Property Office, while financial information was collected from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research database. The system generalised method of moments model was used for testing the hypotheses.

The empirical findings indicate that the relationship between ETD and firm performance is inversely U-shaped. Moreover, this relationship is negatively moderated by environmental munificence, which refers to the availability of resources in the environment where the firm operates, and positively moderated by environmental dynamism, which refers to the extent of volatility and unpredictable change in firms’ external environments.

Overlooking ETD limits applications of diversification logic and the precision of their predictions. This paper tries to fill this gap by empirically testing the relationship between ETD and financial performance.

Firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviour is embedded in the institutional context. Under this logic, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the institutional antecedents of CSR, especially how two sub-national institutions – regional institutional development and industry dynamism – and their interactions affect firms’ CSR.

The sample consists of 608 Chinese listed firms, with 2,694 observations made from 2009 to 2014. The data were collected from two sources. The CSR information was acquired from the CSR rating agency Rankins CSR Ratings, and the financial data from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research database. Panel ordinary least squares regression was used to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results indicate that firms located in advanced regional institutions and more dynamic industries are more likely to engage in CSR. Moreover, macro institution, termed as regional institutional development, positively moderates the relationship between micro institution in terms of industry dynamism and CSR.

Overlooking how the institutional environment influences CSR decisions limits understanding of firms’ CSR activities. This paper offers an institutional explanation of CSR and, in particular, investigates different levels of sub-national institutions and their interaction.

Collaborative robots (cobots) are widely used in various manipulation tasks within complex industrial environments. However, the manipulation capabilities of cobot manipulation planning are reduced by task, environment and joint physical constraints, especially in terms of force performance. Existing motion planning methods need to be more effective in addressing these issues. To overcome these challenges, the authors propose a novel method named force manipulability-oriented manipulation planning (FMMP) for cobots.

This method integrates force manipulability into a bidirectional sampling algorithm, thus planning a series of paths with high force manipulability while satisfying constraints. In this paper, the authors use the geometric properties of the force manipulability ellipsoid (FME) to determine appropriate manipulation configurations. First, the authors match the principal axes of FME with the task constraints at the robot’s end effector to determine manipulation poses, ensuring enhanced force generation in the desired direction. Next, the authors use the volume of FME as the cost function for the sampling algorithm, increasing force manipulability and avoiding kinematic singularities.

Through experimental comparisons with existing algorithms, the authors validate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that the FMMP significantly improves the force performance of cobots under task, environmental and joint physical constraints.

To improve the force performance of manipulation planning, the FMMP introduces the FME into sampling-based path planning and comprehensively considers task, environment and joint physical constraints. The proposed method performs satisfactorily in experiments, including assembly and in situ measurement.

Using volatility cones as the estimate of actual volatility instead of GARCH models, the purpose of this paper is to explore whether volatility arbitrage strategy can provide positive profits and how the transaction costs existed in the real market affect the effectiveness of volatility arbitrage strategy.

A number of hedging approaches proposed to improve the hedging results and final returns of Black-Scholes model are analyzed and compared.

The general finding is that volatility arbitrage strategy can provide satisfactory returns based on the samples in Chinese market. Regarding transaction costs, the variable bandwidth delta and delta tolerance approach showed better results. Besides, choosing futures together with ETFs as hedging underlying can increase the VaR for better risk management.

This paper offers a new method for volatility arbitrage in Chinese financial market.

This paper researches the profitability of the volatility arbitrage strategy on ETF 50 options using volatility cones method for the first time. This method has advantage over the point-wise estimation such as GARCH model and stochastic volatility model.

Digital healthcare has become one of the most important Internet applications in the recent years, and digital platforms have been acting as interfaces between the patients and physicians. Although these technologies enhance patient convenience, they create new challenges in platform management. For instance, on physician rating websites, information overload negatively influences patients' decision-making in relation to selecting a physician. This scenario calls for an automated mechanism to provide real-time rankings of physicians. Motivated by an online healthcare platform, this study develops a method to deliver physician ranking on platforms by considering patients' browse behaviors and the capacities of service resources.

The authors use a probabilistic model for explicitly capturing the browse behaviors of patients. Since the large volume of information in digital systems makes it intractable to solve the dynamic ranking problem, we design a ranking with value approximation algorithm that combines a greedy ranking policy and the value function approximation methods.

The authors found that the approximation methods are quite effective in dealing with the ranking optimization on the digital healthcare system, and it is mainly because the authors incorporate the patient behaviors and patient availability in the model.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to present solutions to the dynamic physician ranking problem. The ranking algorithms can also help platforms improve system and operational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how post-1997 Hong Kong has been perceived in Taiwan and to critically evaluate the demonstration effects of Hong Kong under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy on cross-strait relations.

“Today’s Hong Kong, Tomorrow’s Taiwan” has become a dominant discourse in cross-strait relations in recent years. The paper has adopted discourse analysis of selected texts during and after the 2014 Sunflower Movement to elucidate the disapproval of the developments of post-handover Hong Kong and the construction of the Movement’s self-identity.

It has observed the following arguments which shaped the prevailing perceptions among critics of the “One Country, Two Systems” policy: political infiltration of China in Hong Kong could be extended to Taiwan in the sense that the Beijing authorities would adopt the identical approach to manipulate Taiwan through the cross-strait trading agreements; negative perceptions and images of China and Chinese capitals as a collective aggressor and a threat, raising fear and worries in both Hong Kong and Taiwan; and Kuomintang, as a ruling party at that time under the leadership of President Ma Ying-jeoh, was dismissed by protesters as an incompetent gatekeeper and defender of Taiwan’s interests.

The pervasive sentiments and perceptions about post-1997 Hong Kong has been articulated discursively by the young activists in Taiwan and Hong Kong into a statement – “Today’s Hong Kong, Tomorrow’s Taiwan” – which has brought about a somewhat unexpected bonding effect between Hong Kong and Taiwan through a strong disapproval of “One Country, Two Systems” and the China factor, which has be reproduced, delivered and circulated in both societies since 2014.

Micro ultra-thin tubes have important implications in aerospace, nuclear energy and other fields. In microassembly process, these parts are characterized by following reasons: the small size can easily lead to damage when gripping, even for low intensity and the parts are mainly affected by the instability of light source, for vision-based systems, the visual information about ultra-thin tubes is difficult to gather and the contact state is hard to monitor.

The paper presents a new method to adjust the position deviations based on contact forces during microassembly processes. Specific research is such that the assembly model was established based both on mechanic calculation and numerical simulation; the assembly task was carried out on an in-house microassembly system with coaxial alignment function (MSCA), the contact statements were controlled based on force sensor feedback signals and the model of the relationship between contact force and assembly deviations was established. Through a comparative study, the results of experiment and simulation differ by less than 11 per cent, validating the accuracy and feasibility of the method.

The model of assembly force and position deviations of micro ultra-thin tubes based on MSCA has been built. Besides, the assembly force threshold, and the assembly process parameters have been obtained.

The assembly process parameters obtained from experiments can be applied in the precision assembly and provide theoretical guidance and technical support to the precision assembly of the multi-scale parts.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a buoyancy-gravity adjustment device and a fuzzy intelligent controller for the depth control of a storage tank in-service inspection robot.

The structure of the robot is first designed based on the construction of the bottom of a crude oil tank and explosion-proof requirements. The buoyancy-gravity adjustment system is used to control the vertical movement of the robot. The motion analysis of the robot indicates that the diving or rising process is influenced by hydrodynamic force and umbilical cord tension. Considering the nonlinear model in-depth control, a fuzzy intelligent controller is proposed to address the depth control problem. The primary fuzzy controller is used to compensate for initial error with fast response. The secondary fuzzy controller is activated by an intelligent switch to eliminate the steady error.

The proposed fuzzy controller can better solve the complicated hydrodynamic problem of the coupling of umbilical cord and the robot during depth control by classifying the error values of depth, velocity and acceleration.

The buoyancy-gravity adjustment device and the depth control system of the robot can move through the heating coils by safe and accurate diving or rising.

Firms have already begun integrating artificial intelligence (AI) as a replacement for conventional performance management systems owing to its technological superiority. This transition has sparked a growing interest in determining how employees perceive and respond to performance feedback provided by AI as opposed to human supervisors.

A 2 x 2 between-subject experimental design was employed that was manipulated into four experimental conditions: AI algorithms, AI data, highly experienced human supervisors and low-experience human supervisor conditions. A one-way ANOVA and Welch t-test were used to analyze data.

Our findings revealed that with a predefined fixed formula employed for performance feedback, employees exhibited higher levels of trust in AI algorithms, had greater performance expectations and showed stronger intentions to seek performance feedback from AI algorithms than highly experienced human supervisors. Conversely, when performance feedback was provided by human supervisors, even those with less experience, in a discretionary manner, employees' perceptions were higher compared to similar feedback provided by AI data. Moreover, additional analysis findings indicated that combined AI-human performance feedback led to higher levels of employees' perceptions compared to performance feedback solely by AI or humans.

The findings of our study advocate the incorporation of AI in performance management systems and the implementation of AI-human combined feedback approaches as a potential strategy to alleviate the negative perception of employees, thereby increasing firms' return on AI investment.

Our study represents one of the initial endeavors exploring the integration of AI in performance management systems and AI-human collaboration in providing performance feedback to employees.