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The purpose of this study is to prepare thermal transfer ribbons with good alcohol resistance.

A variety of alcohol-resistant thermal transfer inks were prepared using different polyester resins. The printing temperature, printing effect, adhesion and alcohol resistance of the inks on the label were studied to determine the feasibility of using the ink for manufacturing thermal transfer ribbons. The ink formulations were prepared by a simple and stable grinding technology, and then use mature coating technology to make the ink into a thermal transfer ribbon.

The results show that the thermal transfer ink has good scratch resistance, good alcohol resistance and low printing temperature when the three resins coexist. Notably, the performance of the ribbon produced by 500 mesh anilox roller was better than that of other meshes. Specifically, the ink on the matte silver polyethylene terephthalate (PET) label surface was wiped with a cotton cloth soaked in isopropyl alcohol under 500 g of pressure. After 50 wiping cycles, the ink remained intact.

The proposed method not only ensures good alcohol resistance but also has lower printing temperature and wider label applicability. Therefore, it can effectively reduce the loss of printhead and reduce production costs, because of the low printing temperature.

Governments all over the world are increasingly entering into partnership agreement with the private sector through public–private partnership (PPP) models for the development and management of public projects and services. Thus, the purpose of this study is to first examine the factors that enter into government's attitude, value for money (VFM) and PPP-based waste management projects (WMPs) in Ghana. Further, this study examines the relationship between PPP-based waste management and VFM, along with the mediating role of government's attitude.

Data were collected through a survey questionnaire from four metropolitan municipal assemblies of Ghana. This study’s sample consisted of 230 respondents, and structural equation modeling was employed to conduct an empirical analysis. The structured model had evaluated the critical success factors (CSFs). Subsequently, the measurement model helped in the path analysis of the proposed model.

The authors found a nonpositive relationship between PPP-based WMPs and VFM; however, government's attitude will influence the achievement of VFM. Reliance on quality targets is ranked as the highest CSF in PPP-based WMPs in Ghana. Also, incentives for private sector participation and effective private sector participation are ranked as the least CSFs.

Most of the questionnaire's items were self -rated by employees of municipal assemblies who were not policymakers. This must have increased the possibility of common method bias. In addition, the study was limited to Ghana (a developing economy); therefore, the generalization of the results should be done with much caution.

This study suggests to develop a network of private sector consortiums considering international and national participants who are engaged in PPPs in order to ensure successful delivery and hence valuing for money.

This study offers a novel perspective to investigate the relationship of PPP-based WMPs and VFM and shows how the government's attitude mediates this relationship.

This paper aims to investigate whether family CEOs benefit investment efficiency under uncertainty with Chinese family firms and to test the moderating effect of ownership structure, including family ownership, the separation of family control from family ownership and the multiple large shareholder structure.

Fixed-effects models are designed for a sample of 5,734 firm-year observations for Chinese family firms from 2009 to 2014.

The results show that investment efficiency is low under uncertainty, and having family CEOs can reduce this negative relationship. Further analysis reveals that for firms with family CEOs, the negative effect of uncertainty on investment efficiency is weaker when the family has higher ownership, when family control is less separated from family ownership, or when family firms have multiple large shareholder structures.

The authors do not distinguish founder-CEOs and descendant-CEOs. Most of Chinese family firms are still managed by founders, so the authors cannot explore the generation effect although different generations manage firms differently. Because family succession is becoming a more and more important problem in China, further research may be able to explore the generation effect.

This paper suggests that in emerging economies with weak investor protection, outside minority shareholders can avoid expropriation from family owners by investing in firms with large family ownership, little separation of family control from ownership or multiple large shareholder structure. In addition, policymakers can encourage institutional investors to participate in family business to improve corporate governance.

Drawing on both Type I and Type II agency theory perspectives, the authors argue that although family CEOs can generally benefit firms’ investment efficiency, the benefits vary with firms’ ownership structure. In other words, family CEOs are not absolute agents or stewards but some extent of combination of both.

Drawing upon the self-protection theory, the purpose of this study is to examine whether and how workplace loneliness leads to workplace territoriality.

Three-wave data from 243 employee–colleague dyads in China were collected to provide stronger empirical evidence supporting the hypotheses presented in this study. Path analysis and the bootstrapping method were used to test the predictions of this study.

The results of this study showed that employees’ workplace loneliness was positively related to their territorial behavior; employees' self-serving cognitions mediated the relationship between workplace loneliness and territorial behavior; and self-sacrificial leadership negatively moderated the relationship between workplace loneliness and self-serving cognitions and the indirect relationship between employee workplace loneliness and territorial behavior through self-serving cognitions.

The findings of this study suggest that organizations should pay attention to employees’ self-serving cognitions and cultivate self-sacrificial leadership to manage the territorial behavior derived from workplace loneliness.

This study highlights the positive effects of workplace loneliness on self-serving cognitions and subsequent workplace territoriality and shows that self-sacrificial leadership plays a buffering role in this process.

Charitable giving in China has moved from being subjected to government attention and public skepticism to receiving government encouragement and public support. The role played by political connections in philanthropy is indisputable, although very few studies have explored their association from the perspective of the country’s first Charity Law of 2016. This study aims to contribute to the ongoing debate about the 2016 Charity Law and offers an understanding of the future trends in corporate charitable giving.

Using empirical analysis of data collected from listed companies in China, this study analyzes the impact of political connections on corporate charitable giving before and after the 2016 Charity Law. The study adopts three leading theories from previous research into corporate charitable giving and political connections: corporate social responsibility, resource dependence theory and stakeholder theory. A conceptual framework is outlined, and hypotheses are formulated accordingly.

The results show that political connections have a substantial positive impact on corporate charitable giving, both before and after the implementation of the 2016 Charity Law, which has significantly promoted and increased the amount and proportion of charitable giving. Although the 2016 Charity Law attempted to weaken the political connections of enterprises, the influence of political connections on corporate charitable giving has proved difficult to diminish or eliminate, as charity is dominated by the state.

This study explores the association between political connections and corporate charitable giving from the perspective of China’s Charity Law of 2016.

Precast wall lifting during prefabricated building construction faces multiple non-lean problems, such as inaccurate lifting-time estimation, unreasonable resource allocation and improper process design. This study aims to identify the pathways for improving lifting performance to advance lean construction of prefabricated buildings.

This study developed a methodological framework that integrates the discrete event simulation method, the elimination, combination, rearrangement and simplification (ECRS) technique and intelligent optimization tool. Two schemes of precast wall lifting, namely, the enterprise's business as usual (BAU) and enterprise-leading (EL) schemes, were set to benchmark lifting performance. Furthermore, a best-practice (BP) scheme was modeled from the perspective of lifting activity ECRS and resource allocation for performance optimization.

A real project was selected to test the effect of the methodological framework. The results showed that compared with the EL scheme, the BP scheme reduced the total lifting time (TLT) by 6.3% and mitigated the TLT uncertainty (the gap between the maximum and minimum time values) by 20.6%. Under the BP scheme, increasing the resource inputs produces an insignificant effect in reducing TLT, i.e. increasing the number of component operators in the caulking subprocess from one to two only shortened the TLT by 3.6%, and no further time reduction was achieved as more component operators were added.

To solve non-lean problems associated with prefabricated building construction, this study provides a methodological framework that can separate a typical precast wall lifting process into fine-level activities. Besides, it also identifies the pathways (including the learning effect mitigation, labor and machinery resource adjustment and activities’ improvement) to reducing TLT and its uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the operation strategies of a manufacturer who produces brown and green product simultaneously.

The authors establish three models to examine the joint decisions of pricing and advertising. Three advertising strategies are: non-advertising investment (NA), advertising investment for brown product (BA) and advertising investment for green product (GA).

The theoretical analysis shows that advertising investment can substantially increase the product greening level and manufacturer's profit. More importantly, we find that the GA strategy is more likely to be the best strategy as the advertising investment efficiency increases. The BA strategy is more likely to be preferred as the R&D cost increases. Finally, the modeling results are verified by numerical experiments, and more insights are obtained.

This paper considers the case in which a single manufacturer produces the brown and green product simultaneously. In fact, many manufacturers in the market produce brown and green product at the same time. Furthermore, in addition to advertising investment for brown product and green product, manufacturers can also invest in advertising for brands.

The paper contributes to the investigations on green production and advertising decisions of a manufacturer who produces brown and green products simultaneously.

This paper aims to focus on how political resources and their correlation with business models affected the headquarters location decision making of successful private enterprises established in small cities.

The paper constructed a research model which included political resources and a business model as contributing factors; selected eight companies as the research object; and used cross‐case study method to explore the function of political resources and a business model to the headquarters location decision of private enterprises.

The special political environment during China's economic transformation created substantially different political resources between different regions and governments at different levels, which forced private enterprises to relocate their headquarters in order to chase political resources conveniently. The relevance of a business model and political resources determined the significantly different ways that private enterprises obtained political resources: enterprises which were highly dependent on local political resources found it difficult to make a decision regarding corporate headquarters relocation; those enterprises with a high political resources optimization capability would be driven by the pursuit of political resources to make their headquarters relocation decision; those enterprises with an inconspicuous connection between political resources and a business model would rather be “hermits” in a metropolis and relocate their headquarters.

This paper's research results would be conducive to further study of private enterprises' headquarters location decision making during China's economic transformation.

The paper indicates the importance of political resources and the relevance of corporate business models to the headquarters location decision of private enterprises; the paper further makes clear the status of political resources as an important factor in location theory.

Preparing CrAlN coatings on the surface of silicon nitride bearings can improve their service life in oil-free lubrication. This paper aims to match the optimal process parameters for preparing CrAlN coatings on silicon nitride surfaces, and reveal the microscopic mechanism of process parameter influence on coating wear resistance.

This study used molecular dynamics to analyze how process parameters affected the nucleation density, micromorphology, densification and internal stress of CrAlN coatings. An orthogonal test method was used to examine how deposition time, substrate temperature, nitrogen-argon flow rate and sputtering power impacted the wear resistance of CrAlN coatings under dry friction conditions.

Nucleation density, micromorphology, densification and internal stress have a significant influence on the surface morphology and wear resistance of CrAlN coatings. The process parameters for better wear resistance of the CrAlN coatings were at a deposition time of 120 min, a substrate temperature of 573 K, a nitrogen-argon flow rate of 1:1 and a sputtering power of 160 W.

Simulation analysis and experimental results of this paper can provide data to assist in setting process parameters for applying CrAlN coatings to silicon nitride bearings.

This paper seeks to examine how leaders shape employee creativity by using interpersonal emotion management (IEM) strategies. Drawing on the social information processing (SIP) theory, the authors argue that psychological safety translates leader problem-focused IEM into employee creativity, an impact which is moderated by organizational justice.

Data were collected in two waves from 201 employees and their leaders in China. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

Leader problem-focused IEM is positively related to employee creativity, and this relationship is mediated by psychological safety. Organizational justice positively moderates the relationship between leader problem-focused IEM and psychological safety as well as the indirect relationship between leader problem-focused IEM and employee creativity via psychological safety.

This paper identifies a novel and useful predictor of employee creativity from the perspective of leader problem-focused IEM and provides practical insights for organizations regarding ways of improving employee creativity.