Search results

The e-freight program launched by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has gradually become a standard specification for international air freight operations. This study examined critical factors affecting air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the IATA e-freight using a technology-organization-environment model with air freight forwarders in Taiwan as the base. Our findings show that ‘information technology (IT) competence’, ‘trading partner pressure’, ‘government policy’ and ‘competitive pressure’ all have significant positive effects on air freight forwarders’ decision to adopt the e-freight and the top three factors among these are ‘government funding’, ‘government’s active promotion’ and ‘government’s requirement of electronic air waybill (e-AWB)’. Finally, this study proposes strategies that can encourage air freight forwarders to decide on e-freight adoption for the information of relevant oK regyawniozradtison International Air Transport Association (IATA); IATA e-freight; Technology organization environment model; Air freight forwarder

This study examines the influence of stock liquidity on stock price crash risk and the moderating role of institutional blockholders in Vietnam’s stock market.

Crash risk is measured by the negative coefficient of skewness of firm-specific weekly returns (NCSKEW) and the down-to-up volatility of firm-specific weekly stock returns (DUVOL). Liquidity is measured by adjusted Amihud illiquidity. The two-stage least squares method is used to address endogeneity issues.

Using firm-level data from Vietnam, we find that crash risk increases with stock liquidity. The relationship is stronger in firms owned by institutional blockholders. Moreover, intensive selling by institutional blockholders in the future will positively moderate the relationship between liquidity and crash risk.

Since stock liquidity could exacerbate crash risk through institutional blockholder trading, firm managers should avoid bad news accumulation and practice timely information disclosures. Investors should be mindful of the risk associated with liquidity and blockholder trading.

We contribute to the literature by showing that the activities of blockholders could partly explain the relationship between liquidity and crash risk. High liquidity encourages blockholders to exit upon receiving private bad news.

Forecasts of commodity prices are vital issues to market participants and policy makers. Those of corn are of no exception, considering its strategic importance. In the present study, the authors assess the forecast problem for the weekly wholesale price index of yellow corn in China during January 1, 2010–January 10, 2020 period.

The authors employ the nonlinear auto-regressive neural network as the forecast tool and evaluate forecast performance of different model settings over algorithms, delays, hidden neurons and data splitting ratios in arriving at the final model.

The final model is relatively simple and leads to accurate and stable results. Particularly, it generates relative root mean square errors of 1.05%, 1.08% and 1.03% for training, validation and testing, respectively.

Through the analysis, the study shows usefulness of the neural network technique for commodity price forecasts. The results might serve as technical forecasts on a standalone basis or be combined with other fundamental forecasts for perspectives of price trends and corresponding policy analysis.

A flexible decision technology called the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR) is applied to a generic aquaculture conflict to illustrate how GMCR can be used to systematically investigate a wide range of conflicts arising in aquaculture in order to obtain meaningful strategic insights and thereby assist in making informed decisions in aquaculture development. To emphasize the importance of being able to resolve aquaculture controversies, a review of the global economic impacts of the aquaculture industry is provided and the key stakeholders who may be involved in aquaculture disputes along with their legitimate interests are identified. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The GMCR methodology comprises two main stages: modeling and analysis. During the modeling stage, key decision makers (DMs), the options under each DM’s control and each DM’s relative preferences over feasible states are identified based on a thorough background investigation to a given dispute. Within the analysis stage, solution concepts that describe key characteristics of human behavior under conflict are utilized to determine resolutions that could occur when DMs interact under pure competition and cooperatively. Interpretation of the equilibrium results provides meaningful strategic insights for better understanding which strategies a given DM could select as the conflict evolves over time.

The results demonstrate how difficult it can be to balance the interests of different key stakeholders in aquaculture development. In all possible resolutions identified in the generic aquaculture conflict, at least two DMs among First Nations, environmental group and residents (Res) would object to the expansion of aquaculture activities due to the assumption that the government would choose to appease one stakeholder at a time. They also reflect the need for a useful tool box of decision technologies for addressing the vast range of challenges that could arise in the important area of marine economics and management.

The GMCR methodology possesses several unique and key original capabilities in comparison to other conflict analysis models. First, it only requires limited information to calibrate a conflict model. Second, it contains a number of solution concepts that describe how a DM could think and behave under conflict. Third, it furnishes a range of informative output, follow-up analyses and advice for use in real-life decision support. Finally, all of the foregoing advantages of GMCR can be contained within decision support systems that permit practitioners and researchers to readily apply the GMCR methodology to real-life conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an effective and economical management platform to realize real-time tracking and tracing for prepackaged food supply chain based on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and finally ensure a benign and safe food consumption environment.

Following service-oriented architecture, a flexible layered architecture of tracking and tracing platform for prepackaged food is developed. Besides, to reduce the implementation cost while realizing fine-grained tracking and tracing, an integrated solution of using both the QR code and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag is proposed. Furthermore, Extensible Markup Language (XML) is adopted to facilitate the information sharing among applications and stakeholders.

The validity of the platform has been evaluated through a case study. First, the proposed platform is proved highly effective on realizing prepackaged food tracking and tracing throughout its supply chain, and can benefit all the stakeholders involved. Second, the integration of the QR code and RFID technologies is proved to be economical and could well ensure the real-time data collection. Third, the XML-based method is efficient to realize information sharing during the whole process.

The contributions of this paper lie in three aspects. First, the technical architecture of IoT-based tracking and tracing platform is developed. It could realize fine-grained tracking and tracing and could be flexible to adapt in many other areas. Second, the solution of integrating the QR code and RFID technologies is proposed, which could greatly decrease the cost of adopting the platform. Third, this platform enables the information sharing among all the involved stakeholders, which will further facilitate their cooperation on guaranteeing the quality and safety of prepackaged food.

This study examines the impact of debt maturity structure on stock price crash risk (SPCR) in Asian economies and the moderating effect of firm age on this relationship.

The study utilized annual data from 432 nonfinancial firms publicly listed in six Asian countries: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Pakistan and India. The observation period covers 14 years, from 2007 to 2020. The sample was categorized into three groups: the entire sample and one group each for developing and developed Asian economies. A generalized least squares panel regression method was employed to test the research hypotheses.

The results suggest that long-term debt has a significant negative influence on SPCR in Asian economies, indicating that firms with high long-term debt experience lower future SPCR. Moreover, firm age negatively moderates this relationship, implying that older firms may experience a more pronounced reduction in SPCR due to high long-term debt. Finally, firms in developed Asian economies with high long-term debt are more effective in mitigating the risk of a significant drop in their stock prices than firms in developing Asian economies.

This study contributes to the literature in several ways. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this is the first of such efforts to investigate the relationship between debt maturity structure and crash risk in Asia. Additionally, it reveals that long-term debt influences SPCR directly and indirectly in Asia through the moderating role of firm age. Lastly, it is likely one of the first studies by a research team in Asia to compare the nonfinancial markets of developed and developing Asian countries.

Drawing on attribution theory, the current paper aims to examine the effects of review content structures on online review helpfulness, focusing on three pertinent variables: review sidedness, information factuality, and emotional intensity at the beginning of a review. Moreover, the moderating roles of reviewer reputation and review sentiment are investigated.

The review sentiment of 144,982 online hotel reviews was computed at the sentence level by considering the presence of adverbs and negative terms. Then, the authors quantified the impact of variables that were pertinent to review content structures on online review helpfulness in terms of review sidedness, information factuality and emotional intensity at the beginning of a review. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression was employed to test the model.

The results reveal that review sidedness negatively affects online review helpfulness, and reviewer reputation moderates this effect. Information factuality positively affects online review helpfulness, and positive sentiment moderates this impact. A review that begins with a highly emotional statement is more likely to be perceived as less helpful.

Using attribution theory as a theoretical lens, this study contributes to the online customer review literature by investigating the impact of review content structures on online review helpfulness and by demonstrating the important moderating effects of reviewer reputation and review sentiment. The findings can help practitioners develop effective review appraisal mechanisms and guide consumers in producing helpful reviews.

A real-time production scheduling method for semiconductor back-end manufacturing process becomes increasingly important in industry 4.0. Semiconductor back-end manufacturing process is always accompanied by order splitting and merging; besides, in each stage of the process, there are always multiple machine groups that have different production capabilities and capacities. This paper studies a multi-agent based scheduling architecture for the radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled semiconductor back-end shopfloor, which integrates not only manufacturing resources but also human factors.

The architecture includes a task management (TM) agent, a staff instruction (SI) agent, a task scheduling (TS) agent, an information management center (IMC), machine group (MG) agent and a production monitoring (PM) agent. Then, based on the architecture, the authors developed a scheduling method consisting of capability & capacity planning and machine configuration modules in the TS agent.

The authors used greedy policy to assign each order to the appropriate machine groups based on the real-time utilization ration of each MG in the capability & capacity (C&C) planning module, and used a partial swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to schedule each splitting job to the identified machine based on the C&C planning results. At last, we conducted a case study to demonstrate the proposed multi-agent based real-time production scheduling models and methods.

This paper proposes a multi-agent based real-time scheduling framework for semiconductor back-end industry. A C&C planning and a machine configuration algorithm are developed, respectively. The paper provides a feasible solution for semiconductor back-end manufacturing process to realize real-time scheduling.

This study aims to explore whether expected image outcomes (risk and gain) represent a mechanism through which perceived organizational climates, in the dimensions of tradition and reflexivity, affect key components of the innovation process (idea generation and idea realization).

Structural equation models have been conducted to empirically analyse 3 waves of longitudinal survey data from an Italian military organization (N = 410).

Results confirmed that image outcome expectations mediated the effects of perceived climate on idea generation, and that a serial mediation of image expectations and idea generation those on idea realization. Additionally, reflexivity was directly associated with idea generation.

The findings offer guidance for organizations that aim to strengthen employee-driven innovation, highlighting the importance of organizational climate and image outcomes expectations.

Advancing from existing organizational behaviour and individual innovation literature, this article contributes to extend knowledge about the role of organizational climate and image outcome expectations in enhancing innovative work behaviours.

This study aims to research the large cross-section tunnel stability evaluation method corrected after considering the thickness-span ratio.

First, taking the Liuyuan Tunnel of Huanggang-Huangmei High-Speed Railway as an example and taking deflection of the third principal stress of the surrounding rock at a vault after tunnel excavation as the criterion, the critical buried depth of the large section tunnel was determined. Then, the strength reduction method was employed to calculate the tunnel safety factor under different rock classes and thickness-span ratios, and mathematical statistics was conducted to identify the relationships of the tunnel safety factor with the thickness-span ratio and the basic quality (BQ) index of the rock for different rock classes. Finally, the influences of thickness-span ratio, groundwater, initial stress of rock and structural attitude factors were considered to obtain the corrected BQ, based on which the stability of a large cross-section tunnel with a depth of more than 100 m during mechanized operation was analyzed. This evaluation method was then applied to Liuyuan Tunnel and Cimushan No. 2 Tunnel of Chongqing Urban Expressway for verification.

This study shows that under different rock classes, the tunnel safety factor is a strict power function of the thickness-span ratio, while a linear function of the BQ to some extent. It is more suitable to use the corrected BQ as a quantitative index to evaluate tunnel stability according to the actual conditions of the site.

The existing industry standards do not consider the influence of buried depth and span in the evaluation of tunnel stability. The stability evaluation method of large section tunnel considering the correction of overburden span ratio proposed in this paper achieves higher accuracy for the stability evaluation of surrounding rock in a full or large-section mechanized excavation of double line high-speed railway tunnels.