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Social manufacturing has emerged. It aims to integrate the manufacturing resources of micro- and small-scale manufacturing enterprises (MSMEs) and help MSMEs cope with the dynamic, service-oriented and personalized market demands. In social manufacturing, MSMEs cooperate with each other through manufacturing resource sharing. However, because MSMEs are distributed and decentralized, the efficiency of establishing reliable cooperation between MSMEs is relatively low. Therefore, this paper presents a blockchain-driven cyber-credit evaluation system (BCCES) to implement distributed cyber-credit evaluation. BCCES can provide reliable cyber-credit for distributed MSMEs without the trusted third party. This can improve the efficiency of establishing reliable cooperation among unauthentic MSMEs.

The paper proposes a BCCES to evaluate MSMEs' cyber-credit in decentralized environment. In BCCES, a cyber-credit evaluation model is proposed by improving set pair analysis (SPA) method, and cyber-credit smart contract and distributed consensus mechanism are designed according to the runtime logic of distributed cyber-credit evaluation.

The results confirmed that BCCES is feasible and effective to implement cyber-credit evaluation without the trusted third party. With the advantages of blockchain, BCCES can automatically realize cyber-credit evaluation through smart contract and distributed consensus. At the same time, BCCES can evaluate the real-time cyber-credit of MSMEs based on their latest service evaluation. In addition, we can design corresponding smart contracts according to actual requirements, which makes blockchain applicable to different distributed scenarios.

The paper combines blockchain and SPA to implement cyber-credit evaluation in social manufacturing and provides a new feasible idea for cyber-credit evaluation without the trusted third party. This can also provide MSMEs a reference of applying blockchain to other distributed scenarios through combining smart contract and different algorithms.

Sharding of blockchains consists of partitioning a blockchain network into several sub-networks called “shards,” each shard processing and storing disjoint sets of transactions in parallel. Sharding has recently been applied to public blockchains to improve scalability through parallelism. The throughput of sharded blockchain is optimized when the workload among the shards is approximately the same. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the problem of balancing workload of account-based blockchains such as Ethereum.

Two known consensus-based distributed load-balancing algorithms have been adapted to sharded blockchains. These algorithms migrate accounts across shards to balance transaction processing times. Two methods to predict transaction processing times are proposed.

The authors identify some challenging aspects for solving the load-balancing problem in sharded blockchains. Experiments conducted with Ethereum transactions show that the two load-balancing algorithms are challenged by accounts often created to process a single transaction to optimize anonymity, while existing accounts sparsely generate transactions.

Tests in this work have been conducted on transactions originating from a blockchain platform rather than using artificially generated data distributions. They show the specificity of the load-balancing problem for sharded blockchains, which were hidden in artificial data sets.

This chapter reviews the underlying technologies of cryptoassets, including fundamental cryptographic primitives used in distributed ledger technologies and permissionless blockchain technologies and their consensus protocols such as proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. It discusses the pros and cons of existing approaches to improve blockchain scalability and considers the requirements for security and decentralization. The chapter also examines the following techniques: layer 1 tuning, layer 1 sharding, and layer 2 solutions. It concludes with an overview of technologies to swap cryptoassets off-chain, technical requirements for cross-chain transactions, and reviews cross-chain atomic swap implementation using hashed time lock contracts.

The purpose of this paper is to present a concept of the protocol for public registries based on blockchain. New database protocol aims to use the benefits of blockchain technologies and ensure their interoperability.

This paper is framed with design science research (DSR). The primary method is exaptation, i.e. adoption of solutions from other fields. The research is looking into existing technologies which are applied here as elements of the protocol: Name-Value Storage (NVS), Berkley DB, RAID protocol, among others. The choice of NVS as a reference technology for creating a database over blockchain is based on the analysis and comparison with two other similar technologies Bigchain and Amazon QLDB.

The proposed mechanism allows creating a standard database over a bundle of distributed ledgers. It ensures a blockchain agnostic approach and uses the benefits of various blockchain technologies in one ecosystem. In this scheme, blockchains play the role of journal storages (immutable log), whereas the overlaid database is the indexed storage. The distinctive feature of such a system is that in blockchain, users can perform peer-to-peer transactions directly in the ledger using blockchain native mechanism of user access management with public-key cryptography (blockchain does not require to administrate its database).

This paper presents a new method of creating a public peer-to-peer database across a bundle of distributed ledgers.

The paper aims to build the connections between game theory and the resource allocation problem with general uncertainty. It proposes modeling the distributed resource allocation problem by Bayesian game. During this paper, three basic kinds of uncertainties are discussed. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to build the connections between game theory and the resource allocation problem with general uncertainty.

In this paper, the Bayesian game is proposed for modeling the resource allocation problem with uncertainty. The basic game theoretical model contains three parts: agents, utility function, and decision-making process. Therefore, the probabilistic weighted Shapley value (WSV) is applied to design the utility function of the agents. For achieving the Bayesian Nash equilibrium point, the rational learning method is introduced for optimizing the decision-making process of the agents.

The paper provides empirical insights about how the game theoretical model deals with the resource allocation problem uncertainty. A probabilistic WSV function was proposed to design the utility function of agents. Moreover, the rational learning was used to optimize the decision-making process of agents for achieving Bayesian Nash equilibrium point. By comparing with the models with full information, the simulation results illustrated the effectiveness of the Bayesian game theoretical methods for the resource allocation problem under uncertainty.

This paper designs a Bayesian theoretical model for the resource allocation problem under uncertainty. The relationships between the Bayesian game and the resource allocation problem are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and explore blockchain technology and its potential implementation to hospitality and tourism firms’ wide range of business operations and transactions from a technological and functional point of view. This study’s central interest is to produce novel and rigorous in-depth-review analysis and foundations for a broad discussion and outlook on the potential applications of blockchain technology benefiting hospitality and tourism research, as well as the industry as a whole.

This study identifies and proposes several potential areas of the adoption and implementation of blockchain technology to the hospitality and tourism industry, including payment and cryptocurrencies, tracking and service customization, the disintermediation of hospitality and tourism, innovative loyalty programs, smart contracts, integrated property management systems, verified rating and review systems, collaborative initiatives and due diligence and smart tourism, each of which represents fertile avenues for future research.

This paper provides extensive critical discussions, reviews and answers to a fundamental question: “What critical functions of Blockchain mechanisms can be implemented to the existing core operational (i.e. booking and reservation systems, guest management, etc.) and business functions (i.e. loyalty/reward programs, agent transactions, etc.) of hospitality and tourism companies?”.

Future studies should specifically delve further into various angles of this “BizTech” environment based not only on business operations and competition but also on vendor and customer collaboration.

This study intends to serve as a guidance for future research, facilitate knowledge accumulation and create a new understanding and awareness in both practice and academia. One of the most important applications of blockchain in this industry would be that pertaining to direct booking, online reservation systems (i.e. airlines and online travel agencies) and check-in/out with digital identities. With industry-wide blockchain adoption, guests’ personal information can be digitally validated, saved and secured as previously established cryptographically secured codes verify one’s identity without disclosing essential personal information.

It is obvious that the hospitality and tourism industry needs urgent technological transformation, industrial innovations and new growth avenues such as the adoption of blockchain technology and systems to maintain its global market share in the future. Therefore, the implementation of blockchain systems can promote the formation of multi-center (i.e. guest operations and customer service), weakly intermediated (i.e. loyalty programs and/or review and rating systems) areas in this industry.

This study aims to offer a bibliometric and coding analysis of blockchain articles published in the accounting, auditing and accountability fields.

The data were collected using the Scopus database and a bibliometric and qualitative coding analysis with the keywords “blockchain” and “accounting” or “auditing” or “accountability.” Of the 514 initial sources, 93 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and conference proceedings in the areas of business, management and accounting were finally selected. Nonscientific sources such as nonpeer-reviewed books and white papers were excluded.

This study reveals a promising and multidisciplinary field of research dominated by scholars and less by practitioners. Qualitative research, especially discourse analysis, is the most used method among authors. This study gives some useful insights about blockchain's definition and characteristics, business models, processes involved, connection with other technologies and relationships with accounting theories. Among the most interesting insights, the results confirm that technology as an external force can create an intersection among several research areas: accounting, auditing, accountability, business, management, computer science and engineering fields. Finally, in terms of research themes, although blockchain has a clear effect on auditing accounting, the links with the area of accountability are less clear and validated.

This study highlights the current state of the field, combining methodological approaches and providing valuable future research insights. Additionally, it is also a starting point for professionals to fully understand blockchain's characteristics and potential with a constructive and systemic approach.

The purpose of this paper is to solve the non-fragile consensus problem of networked robotic manipulators over communication networks by using information from topology-dependent memory.

This paper proposes a topology-dependent memory protocol with distributed consensus controllers for multiple networked robotic manipulators.

The distributed controller gain fluctuations are taken into account with sampled data information exchanges. By the derived results of model transformation, the topology-dependent memory protocol is investigated using sufficient consensus criteria in the form of linear matrix inequalities.

A novel consensus protocol with topology-dependent memory is designed, which can potentially improve consensus performance and deal with the controller gain fluctuations of the robotic manipulators in practical applications.

Bearing in mind reviews of the existing corporate management leadership theory, this chapter presents a theoretical framework of holistic leadership for top and middle management as well as the staff for strategically promoting knowledge creation activities in companies in industries with rapidly changing competitive environments. “Holistic leadership” here refers to leadership with characteristics that allow for the coexistence of centralized leadership, distributed leadership, and dialectical leadership and their dynamic application according to circumstances by practitioners at each management level (top management, middle management, and staff) of the three practice layers, that is, the formal organizational layer, the psychological boundary layer, and the informal organizational layer. This new theoretical concept of leadership has been derived a posteriori from existing theory and cumulative fieldwork by the author to date.