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Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the potential to transform the infrastructure, mobility and social well-being paradigms in New Zealand (NZ) amid its unprecedented population and road safety challenges. But, public acceptance, co-evolution of regulations and AV technology based on interpersonal and institutional trust perspectives pose significant challenges. Previous theories and models need to be more comprehensive to address trust influencing autonomous driving (AD) factors in natural settings. Therefore, this study aims to find key AD factors corresponding to the chain of human-machine interaction (HMI) events happening in real time and formulate a guiding framework for the successful deployment of AVs in NZ.

This study utilized a comprehensive literature review complemented by an AV users’ study with 15 participants. AV driving sprints were conducted on low, medium and high-density roads in Auckland, followed by 15 ideation workshops to gather data about the users’ observations, feelings and attitudes towards the AVs during HMI.

This research study determined nine essential trust-influencing AD determinants in HMI and legal readiness domains. These AD determinants were analyzed, corresponding to eight AV events in three phases. Subsequently, a guiding framework was developed based on these factors, i.e. human-machine interaction autonomous driving events relationship identification framework (HMI-ADERIF) for the deployment of AVs in New Zealand.

This study was conducted only in specific Auckland areas.

This study is significant for advanced design research and provides valuable insights, guidelines and deployment pathways for designers, practitioners and regulators when developing HMI Systems for AD vehicles.

This study is the first-ever AV user study in New Zealand in live traffic conditions. This user study also claimed its novelty due to AV trials in congested and fast-moving traffic on the four-lane motorway in New Zealand. Previously, none of the studies conducted AV user study on SUV BMW vehicle and motorway in real-time traffic conditions; all operations were completely autonomous without any input from the driver. Thus, it explored the essential autonomous driving (AD) trust influencing variables in human factors and legal readiness domains. This research is also unique in identifying critical AD determinants that affect the user trust, acceptance and adoption of AVs in New Zealand by bridging the socio-technical gap with futuristic research insights.

Over the years, the impact of the business cycle on firm strategy has been neglected in the area of strategic management and remains one of the most important but least developed research streams in management scholarship. Studies in this area are scattered across time and domains, therefore, there is a need to consolidate this fragmented literature to provide a comprehensive review and thus avenues for further research. This study aims to address this gap.

In this study, the systematic literature review (SLR) method is used to select and examine research articles in the area of firm responses and decisions during recession. This SLR examines 127 studies and carries out a thematic synthesis of the literature.

Based on the SLR and thematic synthesis of the literature, the themes identified in this study include – severity of recession impact (Theme 1); firm specific characteristics (Theme 2); resource adjustment activities (Theme 3); and firm performance (Theme 4), based on these themes and analysis this paper maps and proposes various relationships and linkages in this research domain that can be explored further for the development of scholarship in this field of study.

This paper fulfills the need for a systematic review of the extant literature on firms’ responses during recession. The study synthesizes literature and carries out a thematic analysis from 1980 till the period February 2024 to provide directions to advance this domain of literature.

The literature suggests that increasing the intensity of compensation incentives for corporate venture capital (CVC) managers can contribute to successful exits of direct CVCs. This study explores the impact of compensation incentives on the successful exits of indirect CVCs under different geographical distances between parent companies and indirect CVC managers.

The authors observed the compensation terms of CVC managers through investment announcements made by listed companies and used a probit regression model to test the hypotheses from a sample of 241 investment events with indirect CVCs in China.

The results show that if parent companies are geographically close to the managers of indirect CVCs, increasing the intensity of compensation incentives for managers will help the successful exit of indirect CVCs. However, if parent companies are not geographically close to indirect CVC managers, increasing the intensity of compensation incentives for managers will not promote the successful exit of indirect CVCs.

This study contributes significantly to the CVC literature. First, it sharpens our understanding of the differences in operational mechanisms between direct and indirect CVCs. Second, we find that the threshold returns of indirect CVC managers are non-negligible compensation incentives. Finally, the empirical evidence supports that in indirect CVC investments, the geographical distance between parent companies and managers is concerning because it affects whether compensation incentives contribute to the successful exit of indirect CVCs.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the efficiency model on firms performance. The authors also strive to test the compatibility of the efficiency models of Sharia and non-Sharia manufacturing firms.

The samples are manufacturing industry firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2013 to 2021. This study used 68 firms, with details of 34 Sharia while the remaining 34 were non-Sharia. The data were analyzed using generalized least square (GLS) to test the entire formulated hypothesis. Moreover, current research provides robustness tests to gain more valid and reliable results.

The results demonstrated that cost efficiency (CE), human capital efficiency (HCE) and capital intensity (CI) affect the firm’s performance. The efficiency model is more appropriate to be applied to the manufacturing Sharia firms in Indonesia. The results are robust even though the feasible GLS and panel-corrected standards errors models are added and a split sample is applied based on certain firm characteristics.

This research can bridge the theory and practice that exist in companies. The authors proposed an efficiency model that can maximize firm performance profits. Moreover, it turns out that the efficiency model is more relevant to be applied to Sharia firms in Indonesia. Furthermore, the research findings have several implications notably for theoretical development, global enterprises and practitioners.

This study expands the literature and discussion about the efficiency model by formulating and investigating CE, HCE and CI on the firm performance which previous studies have rarely elaborated on and tested. In addition, the authors divided the sample into two groups (Sharia and non-Sharia firms) to ensure the compatibility of the implementation of the efficiency model on firm performance.

Modern subway transportation systems need to satisfy increasing safety demands to rapidly evacuate passengers under hazardous emergency circumstances, such as fires, accidents or terrorist attacks, to reduce passenger injuries or life losses. The emergency evacuation capacity (EEC) of a subway station needs to be revised timely, in case passenger demand increases or the evacuation route changes in the future. However, traditional ways of estimating EEC, e.g. fire drills are time- and resource-consuming and are difficult to revise from time to time. The purpose of this study is to establish an intuitive modelling approach to increase the EEC of subway stations in a stepwised manner.

This study develops an approach to combine agent-based evacuation modelling and building information modelling (BIM) technology to estimate the total evacuation time of a subway station.

Evacuation time can be saved (33% in the studied case) from iterative improvements including stopping escalators running against the evacuation flow and modifying the geometry around escalator exits. Such iterative improvements rely on integrating agent-based modelling and BIM.

The agent-based model can provide a more realistic simulation of intelligent individual movements under emergency circumstances and provides precise feedback on locations of evacuation bottlenecks. This study also examined the effectiveness of two rounds of stepwise improvements in terms of operation or design to increase the EEC of the station.

This paper aims to compare and analyze the effect of the dual-credit policy and product substitution rate on the automakers’ operational strategies under different production modes (e.g. centralized and independent), and further illustrate which production mode is more conducive to improving new energy vehicle (NEV) development.

The decision-making models for a centralized production mode where an integrated automaker produces both NEVs and fuel vehicles (FVs) and for independent production mode where an NEV automaker faces competition from a traditional FV automaker were formulated. The equilibrium solutions of each production mode were obtained by extreme value and game theory methods. The conclusions of the theoretical analysis were further verified with numerical analyses using IBM-MATLAB R2019a. Some management insights could be obtained by comparison analysis.

Under the dual-credit policy, an increase in the NEV credit trading price will always raise production quantity of NEVs, but only in an independent production mode where a higher trading price will also bring higher total profits to NEV automakers. In addition, only when the NEV credit trading price is high enough, a rising product substitution rate will be more favorable to NEV production and restrain FV production. Furthermore, an independent production mode is more favorable for the initial production of NEVs, but as each of the two vehicle types captures a certain amount of market share, a centralized production mode will be more conducive to the full replacement of FVs by NEVs.

The main contributions of this study include the formulation of decision-making models for FVs and NEVs in not only a centralized production mode but also an independent production mode. Moreover, this paper comprehensively analyzes how the dual-credit policy and product substitution relationship affect automakers’ production and pricing decisions. Then, the specific conditions under which each production mode is more conducive to NEV production and sales are summarized. The results proposed in this study provide scientific managerial insights for automakers and policy makers.

Foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate in complex and competitive international environments, implement market and non-market strategies, manage resources and value-added activities and contribute to the overall performance of their parent firms. Thus, the research question on the determinants of MNE foreign subsidiaries’ performance is of interest to managers and academic researchers. The empirical literature has flourished over the recent decades; however, the domains are fragmented, and the findings are inclusive. The purpose of this study is to systematically review, analyse and synthesize the empirical articles in this area, identify research gaps and suggest a future research agenda.

This study uses the qualitative content analysis method in reviewing and analysing 150 articles published in 24 scholarly journals during the period 2000–2023.

The literature uses a variety of theoretical perspectives to examine the key determinants of subsidiary performance which can be grouped into six major domains, namely, home- and host country-level factors; distance between home and host countries; the characteristics of parent firms and of subsidiaries; and governance mechanisms (the establishment modes and ownership strategy, subsidiary autonomy and the use of home country expatriates for transferring knowledge from the headquarters and controlling foreign subsidiaries). A range of objective and subjective indicators are used to measure subsidiary performance. Yet, the research shows a lack of broader integration of theories and presents inconsistent theoretical predictions, inconclusive empirical findings and estimation bias, which hinder our understanding of how the determinants independently and jointly shape the performance of foreign subsidiaries.

This study provides a comprehensive, nuanced and systematic review that synthesizes and clarifies the determinants of subsidiary performance, offers deeper insights from both theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects and proposes some promising avenues for future research directions.

To solve the problem that the underwater vehicles is difficult to turn and exit in a small range in the face of complex marine environment such as concave and ring under the limitation of its limitation of its shape and maximum steering angle, this paper aims to propose an improved ant colony algorithm based on trap filling strategy and energy consumption constraint strategy.

Firstly, on the basis of searching the global path, the disturbed terrain was pre-filled in the complex marine environments. Based on the energy constraint strategy, the ant colony algorithm was improved to make the search path of the underwater vehicle meet the requirements of the lowest energy consumption and the shortest path in the complex obstacle environment.

The simulation results showed that the modified grid environment diagram effectively reduced the redundancy search and improved the optimization efficiency. Aiming at the problem of “the shortest distance is not the lowest energy consumption” in the traditional path optimization algorithm, the energy consumption level was reduced by 26.41% after increasing the energy consumption constraint, although the path length and the number of inflection points were slightly higher than the shortest path constraint, which was more conducive to the navigation of underwater vehicles.

The method proposed in this paper is not only suitable for trajectory planning of underwater robots but also suitable for trajectory planning of land robots.

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.

This study aimed to identify a specific taxonomy of entry modes for international construction contractors and to develop a decision-making mechanism based on case-based reasoning (CBR) to facilitate the selection of the most suitable entry modes.

According to the experience orientation of the construction industry, a CBR entry mode decision model was established, and based on successful historical cases, a two-step refinement process was carried out to identify similar situations. Then the validity of the model is proved by case analysis.

This study identified an entry mode taxonomy for international construction contractors (ICCs) and explored their decision-making mechanisms. First, a two-dimension model of entry mode for ICCs was constructed from ownership and value chain dimensions; seven common ICC entry modes were identified and ranked according to market commitment. Secondly, this study reveals the impact mechanism of the ICC entry mode from two aspects: the external environment and enterprise characteristics. Accordingly, an entry mode decision model is established.

Firstly, sorting out the categories of entry mode in the construction field, which provide an entry mode list for ICCs to select. Secondly, revealing the impact mechanism of ICC entry mode, which proposes a systematic decision-making system for the selection of ICC entry mode. Thirdly, constructing a CBR entry mode decision-making model from an empirical perspective, which offers tool support and reduces transaction costs in the decision-making process.

The study on entry modes for ICCs is still in the preliminary exploratory stage. The authors investigate the entry mode categories and decision-making mechanisms for ICCs based on Uppsala internationalization process theory. It widens the applied scope of Uppsala and promotes cross-disciplinary integration. In addition, the authors creatively propose a two-stage retrieval mechanism in the CBR model, which considers the order of decision variables. It refines the influence path of the decision variables on ICCs' entry mode.