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Existing literature is limited in its ability to consider start-ups as a knowledge broker to trigger innovation in a supply chain ecosystem (SCE). In a traditional SCE, start-ups are relatively isolated, leading to structural holes that limit knowledge sharing among members. This paper aims to overcome that limitation and to build frameworks that help to illustrate the interaction between knowledge management and sharing, start-up innovation and an ecosystem from a supply chain perspective.

Following a qualitative approach, this study theorizes about the role of start-ups as knowledge brokers and the implications of knowledge management and sharing with members in an SCE concerning innovation. Conceptual analysis is used for examination, and this study uses a set of qualitative tactics to interpret and generate meaning from the existing literature.

This study develops two frameworks to provide insight into how start-ups can trigger innovation as knowledge brokers in an SCE. The first framework shows how start-ups, and their knowledge base, influence supply chain members and the overall ecosystem, highlighting the isolated function of start-ups and the issue of structural holes in a traditional SCE. The authors propose a model that illustrates how structural holes can be bridged within an SCE, thereby demonstrating how start-ups redefine the ecosystem architecture according to their knowledge broker position in the SCE.

By expanding insight into the concepts of how start-ups can trigger innovation as knowledge brokers in an SCE, this paper extends the so-far neglected area of start-ups and knowledge brokers. This study clarifies the conceptual and theoretical components and processes in an SCE and links the different roles of start-ups as knowledge brokers to the respective supply chain members to better understand the implications on the entire SCE.

This paper aims to propose a framework for how privacy-preserving technologies (PETs) create business value for organizations. The framework was developed by examining the literature on privacy and information technology’s impact (symbolic and function). The authors evaluate the framework’s applicability using multiparty computation (MPC) as an instance of PETs, with expert interviews in the telecommunication industry.

In an illustrative case of four telecommunication companies, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with experts and used MPC as an instance of PET.

The evaluation of the framework indicates that PETs create business value for organizations: enhancing customer interactions, sales, personalized services, predicting market trends and collaboration among organizations. The findings show that business value of PETs is mainly driven by consumers and organizations willing to share data and collaborate.

This study was limited to the telecom sector and focused on MPC as an instance of PET. Further studies should be conducted to explore the benefits of other PETs and MPC. Future research could find out if this framework is also helpful for implementing other PETs or even other types of technology. The authors’ framework provides factors that future studies can use to quantify the impact of PETs. The authors hope that this framework provides an overarching reference for organizations considering the adoption of PETs.

The authors’ findings inform managers in exploring the business value of PETs for organizations. This study also provides insights into which costs and risks to consider when implementing PETs.

This study is one of the few to propose a framework on how PETs create business value for organizations. Future research can use factors in the framework (e.g. customer interactions, sales, personalized services and market trend prediction) to conduct a quantitative study on PETs’ business value. Managers adopting PETs can use the framework to identify areas where PETs impact their organization.

The objective of this study is to examine how formal and informal institutional environment influences managers’ fair value opinion shopping behaviour in the largest International Financial Reporting Standards adopter, China.

To test the hypotheses, I conduct a 2 × 2 between-subject randomised experiment since the inferences about cause and effect are important in this study. The between-subject experimental situations are manipulated on the basis of the financial condition of companies and boards’ oversight.

I find that managers are likely to seek favourable fair value opinions from external valuation professionals when they are under the weak boards’ oversight and high stress to meet the regulation target of the China Securities Regulatory Commission. These results are more pronounced for managers with higher both rent-seeking and favour-seeking guanxi orientations are more likely to engage in fair value opinion shopping.

Consistent with theoretical analysis of Balfoort et al. (2017), this study provides empirical evidence that guanxi influences the neutrality and faithful representation in fair value measurement in China. In addition, the findings extend Salzsieder’s study (2015) and reflect the context-embeddedness nature of accounting.

Numerical instability such as spurious oscillation is an important problem in the simulation of heat wave propagation. The purpose of this study is to propose a time discontinuous Galerkin isogeometric analysis method to reduce numerical instability of heat wave propagation in the medium subjected to heat sources, particularly heat impulse.

The essential vectors of temperature and the temporal gradients are assumed to be discontinuous and interpolated individually in the discretized time domain. The isogeometric analysis method is applied to use its property of smooth description of the geometry and to eliminate the mesh-dependency. An artificial damping scheme with proportional stiffness matrix is brought into the final discretized form to reduce the numerical spurious oscillations.

The numerical spurious oscillations in the simulation of heat wave propagation are effectively eliminated. The smooth description of geometry with spline functions solves the mesh-dependency problem and improves the numerical precision.

The time discontinuous Galerkin method is applied within the isogeometric analysis framework. The proposed method is effective in the simulation of the wave propagation problems subjecting to impulse load with numerical stability and accuracy.

In the case of mass customization, product variety leads to exponentially increased variation in the production system. Providing flexible manufacturing solution for customized product rapidly is the key measure to achieve the goal of cost and delivery time. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

Following introduction, the paper describes flexible manufacturing and numerical control (NC) machining techniques in mass customization. The kernel idea is that NC program for mass customization product should be generated from parametric manufacturing information template, so as to achieve NC program variant design in accord with product variant design. The elements of NC programming system discussed in this paper address the definition of machining feature, the development of NC subprogram, template construct, and the architecture of NC programming system for mass customization product.

Machining feature, NC subprogram, and template are made to help manufacturing system to deal with the increased variation requirements resulting from product variety. The effects can be verified by the case study.

This paper provides a practical NC programming system for mass customization product and makes detailed technical solution to manufacturing system developer and its applications.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a comprehensive study on building, fire and evacuation, so as to effectively improve the efficiency of building fire evacuation and the management level of fire evacuation site. Make up for the difficulties of BIM technology in effectively connecting building information and fire data.

First, this paper establishes a fire model and an evacuation model based on BIM information. Then, the safety index (SI) is introduced as a comprehensive index, and the IRI is established by integrating the SI function to evaluate the safety of evacuation routes. Based on these two indices, the IRI-based fire evacuation model is established.

This study offers an Improved Risk Index (IRI)-based fire evacuation model, which may achieve effective evacuation in fire scenes. And the model is verified by taking the fire evacuation of a shopping center building as an example.

This paper proposes a fire evacuation principle based on IRI, so that the relevant personnel can comprehensively consider the fire factors and evacuation factors to achieve the optimization of building design, thereby improving the fire safety of buildings.

The purpose of this paper is to gain some insight into central bank digital currency research by reviewing the recent advances in central bank digital currency (CBDC) research in a way that would help researchers, policy makers and practitioners to take a closer look at CBDC.

The paper uses a systematic literature review methodology.

The review shows a general consensus that a CBDC is a liability of the central bank and it has cash-like attributes. The review also presents the motivation and benefits of issuing a CBDC such as the need to increase financial inclusion, the need to improve the conduct of monetary policy and to foster efficient digital payments. The review also shows that many central banks are researching the potential to issue CBDCs due to its many benefits. However, a number of studies have called for caution against over-optimism about the potential benefits of CBDC due to the limiting nature of CBDC design and its inability to meet multiple competing goals. Suggested areas for future research are identified such as the need to find the optimal CBDC design that meets all competing objectives, the need for empirical evidence on the effect of CBDC on the cost of credit and financial stability, and the need to find a balance between limiting the CBDC holdings of users and allowing users to hold as much CBDC as they want, and there is a need to undertake country-specific and regional case studies of CBDC design.

This review paper offers new areas for further research in central bank digital currencies.

The increase in demand variability created by manufacturing enterprises presents new challenges for increasing resource usage and sharing flexibility. For this reason, it is of great importance to research manufacturing grids and their service modes. The purpose of this paper is to establish a systematic strategy and a system tool for manufacturing grid systems.

A manufacturing service oriented manufacturing grid (MSoMG) system is presented with open grid service architecture as the system architecture and GT3.9 as a development tool. A framework is proposed to support MSoMG by providing advisory tools and methods for uncertain information analysis and processing, multi-objective decision making of manufacturing grid service execution, manufacturing grid service performance prediction based on knowledge template, and flexible manufacturing grid service scheduling and solution. The methodology of the adopted rough set is discussed in detail. Finally, the design support strategies for MSoMG are investigated to guide the coordination of manufacturing activities.

Many conventional methods and models become very limited for manufacturing grid service with uncertain information. The processing of uncertain information and reasonable application flow can help to improve the completion rate and reliability of manufacturing grid services.

This research provides a solid foundation for manufacturing gird operations and can promote the use of a manufacturing grid mode.

A MSoMG system is presented. The manufacturing grid service with uncertain information is considered as well as design support strategies.

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of social media on the Pakistani consumers' buying behavior, which could be reflected in either complex buying, variety seeking, dissonance reducing or habitual buying. Entrepreneurs need to know how their loyal and prospective customers feel, think and how do they decide on purchasing certain products and services.

The self-administered online questionnaire is used to collect feedback from consumers in order to analyze the data and come up with the findings. A sample size of 396 respondents was used to analyze and find a relationship between social media and consumer buying behavior.

Social media is found to have a partially significant impact on Pakistani consumers' buying behavior; word of mouth and content credibility are the two factors that influence Pakistani consumers' buying behavior. Pakistani consumers, below the age of 40, possess more complex buying behavior, which alerts entrepreneurs to consider it for their future marketing strategies.

Entrepreneurs should make an effort to be differentiated from others while keeping customers aware of the products they provide. In addition, customers should not spend too much time when comparing brands; rather, businesses should make it more captive.

This paper provides different results in comparison to the previous studies, in terms of the factors influencing consumers' buying behavior.

In this paper, an approximate analytical approach is developed for the determination of natural longitudinal frequencies of a cantilever-cracked beam based on the Lagrange inversion theorem.

The crack is modeled by an equivalent axial spring with stiffness according to Castigliano's theorem. Thus, an implicit frequency equation corresponding to cantilever-cracked bar is obtained. The resulting equation is solved using the Lagrange inversion theorem.

Effect of different crack depths and crack positions on natural frequencies of the cracked beam is analyzed. It is shown that an increase in the crack depth ratio produces a decrease in the fundamental longitudinal natural frequency of a cracked bar. Furthermore, approximate analytical results are compared with those obtained numerically as well as from experimental tests.

A new approximate analytical expression of a fundamental longitudinal frequency, as a function of crack depth and crack location, is obtained.