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This case is suitable for undergraduates, MBA students and students from business administration departments in the teaching of human resources management and performance management.

Luodian Electric Power Construction Corporation Group (LEPCC Group) is a state owned enterprise transformed from a construction unit of Luopu Power Supply Bureau (LPSB), a governmental organization in charge of all the electricity supply in Luopu City. The general manager of LEPCC, Gu Ming tried to set up a modern market-oriented management system for LEPCC. Unfortunately the problems that had accumulated in the past two decades during which LEPCC was a governmental organization made his reforms very difficult. The first headache for Gu Ming was the performance appraisal reform in LEPCC. The existing performance appraisal system seemed to have at least three problems in practice: unclear appraisal objectives, an improper assessment system, a different appraisal standard for similar positions. What should Gu Ming do to build a proper performance appraisal system to help the fast-growing LEPCC Group to make LEPCC a competitive market-oriented player?

The first objective of this case is to enable students to understand that the issues of working performance are issues of people first, rather than issues of the management system. If the management focuses on the system instead of on the staff of the company to design the performance management system, the system will be fruitless and inefficient. The second objective is to cultivate students' capability to apply the basic theories of human resource management and the knowledge of performance appraisal in case analysis and practical management. This case, seemingly about performance appraisal, is in fact about the organizational structure and processes of the organization. Reform should start with organizational analysis, job analysis and job descriptions. Only when all these have been done correctly, can the performance management system be designed more reasonably, scientifically and efficiently.

Teaching notes are available; please consult your librarian for access.

The purpose of this paper is to further explore the co-citation and bibliographic-coupling relationship among the core authors in the field of Chinese information science (IS), to expose research activity and author impact, and to make induction analyses about Chinese IS research patterns and theme evolution.

The research data include 8,567 papers and 70,947 cited articles in the IS field indexed by Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index from 2000 to 2009. Author co-citation analysis, author bibliographic-coupling analysis, social network analysis, and factor analysis were combined to explore co-citation and bibliographic-coupling relationships and to identify research groups and subjects.

Scholars with greatest impact are different from the most active scholars of Chinese IS; there is no uniform impact pattern forming since authors’ impact subjects are scattered and not steady; while authors’ research activities present higher independence and concentration, there is still no steady research pattern due to no deep research existing. Furthermore, Chinese IS studies can be delineated by: foundation or extension. The research subjects of these two parts, as well as their corresponding/contributing authors, are different under different views. The general research status of core authors is concentrated, while their impact is broad.

The combined use of some related methods could enrich the development and methodology research of the discipline, and the results establish a reference point on the development of IS research.

This paper aims to enhance the reliability of self-validating multifunctional sensors.

An effective fault detection, isolation and data recovery (FDIR) strategy by using kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) coupled with gray bootstrap and fault reconstruction methods.

The proposed FDIR strategy is able to the address fault detection, isolation and data recovery problem of self-validating multifunctional sensors efficiently.

A KPCA-based model which can overcome the limitation of existing linear-based models is used to achieve the fault detection task. By using gray bootstrap method, the position of all faulty sensitive units can be calculated even under the multiple faults situation. A reconstruction-based contribution method is adopted to evaluate the amplitudes of the fault signals, and the fault-free output of the faulty sensitive units can be used to replace the fault output.

The study aims to understand how cultural route heritage is conceptualized and managed in China by systematically reviewing the research literature on Chinese cultural route heritage (CRH). The study intends to inspire further discussion on the theoretical and practical development of cultural routes since the development is still at a liminal stage in China.

A total of 253 research articles related to Chinese cultural rote heritage from major Chinese and English research databases China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus have been comprehensively identified and reviewed for the purpose of the study.

Four major themes of research on Chinese CRH have been identified: conceptual evaluation, list of the routes and characteristics of the routes, conservation and utilization. The results revealed that China has very rich resources in CRH, many of which were formed a long time ago, which exist across vast geographic regions and have assumed multiple functions and undergone dynamic reciprocal exchanges among diverse cultures and ethnicities.

The paper summarizes some major obstacles faced by CRH in China and proposes a strategic model to address the need for a more sustainable development of CRH in the Chinese context.

The paper offers a comprehensive overview of CRH in China and discusses practical issues in management and development of heritage great in size, number and complexity.

45 steel is a common material for the manufacture of various components such as shafts or gears. However, its poor surface properties often limit its applications. The purpose of this paper is to find a way to enhance the surface performance of 45 steel, which is expected to improve the wear resistance of 45 steel.

Double glow plasma surface metallurgy technique was used to prepare hafnium carbide (HfC) coatings on the surface of the 45 steel with two preparation process; one is to diffuse two elements together, while the other is to diffuse step by step. The scanning electronic microscopy and the X-ray diffraction were used to analyze the morphology and phase of the HfC coatings. And then the wear tests were carried out for this coating.

Coating diffused step by step shows better performance; it has a 15-µm alloyed layer which is uniform and dense and its hardness can reach up to 1326.5 Vickers-hardness (HV). While the coating fabricated by diffusing elements together owns a 10-µm alloyed layer and its hardness is 1204.1 HV. According to the wear test results, both coatings have a protective effect on the substrate and the coating prepared by step-by-step diffusion process has less wear volume, indicating that it possesses better friction reduction.

A new method which diffuses elements together was successfully used to prepare compound HfC coating, which can reduce the cost of coating preparation and improve the efficiency of coating preparation.

Building on social informational processing theory, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical model of moderated mediation in which social loafing tendency serves as an intervening mechanism that explains associations among two dimensions of leader–member relationships (formal and informal relationships, namely, leader–member exchange and leader–member guanxi) and customer service performance.

The authors designed a field study to test the hypotheses presented in this paper. A survey of 304 supervisor–employee pairs and matched customers generally provide support for this model.

The authors found that social loafing tendency played a mediating role between leader–member relationships and customer service performance. Co-worker service-oriented OCB moderated the positive relationship between leader–member guanxi and loafing tendency.

More samples should be collected from both private and state-owned company. Both the informal and formal leader–member relationships should be unanimously included in examining how the leader–member relationships influence focal employee’s attitude and behavior, particularly in societies where the informal relationship plays noticeable role.

Managers should properly deal with formal and informal relationship with subordinates.

The influence of leader–member guanxi on employees and organization is controversial in extant literature. In some sense, this finding contributes to extant literature by further clarifying the influence of guanxi on the focal employee’s performance.

China after 1949, especially since entering the 21st century, significant progress has been made in leadership research under Chinese context. However, so far there has been no systematic review and prospect of China's leadership research in the past 70 years. Therefore, with the help of scientific visualization software Citespace, this paper analyzes the research papers on leadership in the context of China from the top international journals of management science and applied psychology (1949–2018), supplemented and verified the previous research conclusions based on qualitative review, and quantitatively demonstrated the research evolution of leadership field.

Using a scientific visualization tool CiteSpace and 145 international leadership works, which were published in 64 top international journals and collected from the Web of Science database, and 852 domestic works which were published in 28 top domestic journals and collected from the CNKI database from 1949 to 2018, we draws keyword co-occurrence knowledge graph and keyword strategy map to visualize the landscape and evolution of leadership research and analyze the hot topics and research trends in the field of leadership.

The research found that: (1) Before 2002, there were only 7 articles published in 64 international top journal, mainly focusing on Western leadership theories such as transformational, cross-cultural comparison and the adaptability in Chinese context; (2) From 2003 to 2012, scholars had begun to introduce mainstream quantitative research paradigm in international academic community; (3) From 2013 to 2018, researches tended to be synchronized, with 461 and 99 papers published respectively. How emerging leaderships (such as ethical leadership) affect on various emerging outcome variables (such as creativity, voice behavior, unethical pro-organizational behavior etc.) is hot topic for future research.

Different from the previous qualitative reviews on organizational culture research, this paper, for the first time, uses bibliometric research methods to systematically analyze the evolution path of leadership research during the 70 years of China(1949–2018, and puts forward the future research prospects.

Corrosion is considered as one of the issues that threaten the safe operation of steam generator (SG) tubing. Some sulfur-related specie can cause corrosion degradation of SG tubing. Sulfur-induced corrosion of SG alloys in high temperature and high-pressure water is one of the most complicated processes. The purpose of this study is to study the effect of reduced sulphur on passive film properties of steam generator (SG) tubing.

In this paper, the effects of reduced sulfur on passive film properties of SG tubing were reviewed from the aspects of thermodynamic calculations and experimental.

Thermodynamic calculations are mainly presented by E-pH diagrams, volt equivalent diagrams and species distribution curves. The stability of sulphur species highly depends on temperature, solution pH, and electrochemical potential. Experimental data indicated that reduced sulfur species can interact with the passive film, which led to changes in film thickness, film structure, semiconductivity and pitting growth rate.

The state-of-the-art discussed in this paper gives basis for resolving engineering problems regarding with sulfur-induced corrosion.

This paper aims to evaluate the sulfide stress cracking (SSC) resistance of L80 casing steels with different alloying chemistries (e.g. Ti-B and Mn-Cr-Mo) by correlating the reduction in area ratio with the mechanical property, inclusion and carbide.

SSC tests were conducted in 5.0 Wt.% sodium chloride and 0.5 Wt.% acetic acid solution saturated with H₂S using constant load tensile method. The microstructure and fracture morphology of the steel were observed using scanning electron microscope. The inclusion and carbide were identified by energy dispersive spectroscopy and auger electron microscope.

Among all the testing steels, electric resistance welding (ERW) L80-0.5Mo steel demonstrates the highest SSC resistance because of its appropriate mechanical properties, uniform microstructure and low inclusion content. The SSC resistance of L80 steels generally decreases with the rising yield strength. The fracture mode of steel with low SSC resistance is jointly dominated by transgranular and intergranular cracking, whereas that with high SSC resistance is mainly transgranular cracking. SSC is more sensitive to inclusions than carbides because the cracks are easier to be initiated from the elongated inclusions and oversized oxide inclusions, especially the inclusion clusters. Unlike the elongated carbide, globular carbide in the steel can reduce the negative effect on the SSC resistance. Especially, a uniform microstructure with fine globular carbides favors a significant improvement in SSC resistance through precluding the cracking propagation.

The paper provides the new insights into the improvement in SSC resistance of L80 casing steel for its application in H₂S environment through optimizing its alloying compositions and microstructure.