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Agriculture is one sector where the Internet of things (IoT) is expected to make a major impact. Yet, its adoption in the sector falls behind expectations. The purpose of this paper is to present the state-of-the-art of IoT in agriculture and investigate its slow adoption in the sector.

The authors have undertaken a systematic review and a synthesis of 1355 relevant publications over the last decade.

This literature review reveals that the “big three” barriers for the overall sector are cost, skills and standardization. The lack of connectivity and data governance are two key reasons why most of the proposed IoT solutions are standalone systems of limited scope, while the majority of commercial IoT efforts focus on practices in the protected indoor environment. Lastly, the analysis of past research along the five layers of the IoT system architecture reveals limited attention to barriers and solutions at the business layer, which represents a research opportunity for information systems scholars.

It is possible that some of relevant publications were missed in the literature search, although the search queries were kept as broad as possible to avoid the exclusion of any relevant work. Any publication written in any other language other than English was excluded from the review. Given the geographical distribution of the reviewed English publications (see section 4.1), it is highly likely that important works written by Chinese and European scholars in their native language were overlooked.

This study provides practical insights into the technical and organisational challenges on the ground. It is the hope that this literature review lays the groundwork for IS researchers who are well positioned to investigate technology adoption challenges in the relatively understudied agriculture sector.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review of adoption barriers and solutions across all five layers of the IoT system architecture.

This paper aims to represent an empirical study of what role does structural empowerment play in the relationship between multi-stakeholder value co-creation (VCC) and the success of new product development (NPD).

The hypotheses developed in this paper are tested by using data from 243 manufacturing companies worldwide.

The results show that the VCC activities have significant positive effects on NPD success, and structural empowerment moderates the impact of VCC activities on NPD success, but the moderating effect is not significant for customer involvement.

This study contributes to the research of VCC and discusses the positive role of structural empowerment to enhance the impact of VCC activities on NPD success.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how community attachment to an OHC reduces the OHC users' emotional distress and therefore improves their emotional well-being.

A survey study was conducted in one of the largest online health communities (OHC) for people with diabetes.

OHC participants are likely to experience reduced emotional distress when they have developed an attachment to the community. This attachment is, in turn, positively associated with the normative expectations of reciprocity and the affective feeling of gratitude. However, some commonly used behavioral measures of community participation, such as visit frequency and membership tenure, have little to do with either community attachment or reduced emotional distress.

The research highlights the pivotal role of community attachment in appraising the much-debated benefits of OHCs. However, the cross-sectional survey study has its limitations in terms of establishing causality.

OHC managers need to look beyond some of the commonly used metrics, such as monthly visits and number of new postings, and focus on fostering a sense of attachment among existing users in order to fulfill the OHC's potential of emotional support. Our study implies that design features facilitating reciprocation and gratitude expression among users can lead to a strong emotional bond.

This is one of the first studies on the antecedents of community attachment and the relationship between community attachment and emotional distress in the context of OHC.

The salinity of the oilfield produced water has a significant effect on steel corrosion. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of salinity on corrosion behavior of X60 steel and it also provides basic for material selection of gas wells with high salinity.

The weight loss experiment was carried out on steel with high temperature and high pressure autoclave. The surface morphology and composition of corrosion scales were studied by means of scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy and X-ray diffractometry.

The results show that as salinity increases, the corrosion rate of X60 steel will gradually experience a rapid decline stage and then a slow decline stage. X60 steel is mainly exhibiting uniform corrosion in the first rapid decline stage and pitting corrosion in the second slow decline stage. The increase in salinity reduces gas solubility, which, in turn, changes the morphology and density of the corrosion scales of X60 steel. At low salinity, loose iron oxides generated on the surface of the steel, which poorly protects the substrate. At high salinity, surface of the steel gradually forms protective films. Chloride ions in the saline solution mainly affect the structure of the corrosion scales and initiate pitting corrosion. The increased chloride ions lead to more pitting pits on the surface of steel. The recrystallization of FeCO₃ in pitting pits causes the corrosion scales to bulge.

The investigation determined the critical concentration of pitting corrosion and uniform corrosion of X60 steel, and the new corrosion mechanism model was presented.

The purpose of this paper is to test an implication of the pecking order theory to explain capital structure decisions among Chinese listed companies during the 2005-2007 NTS Reform transition period.

The authors utilize direct proxies for information asymmetry based on microstructure models including Probability of the arrival of informed trades (PIN), Adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread (λ), Illiquidity ratio (ILLIQ) and liquidity ratio, and Information asymmetry index (InfoAsy) to examine their relation with firms’ debt financing.

Consistent with the prediction of Pecking Order Theory, the authors find that companies for which stock investors are challenged with more severe informational disadvantages are associated with higher degree of leverage use.

The study provides a more direct test on the positive relation between information asymmetry and financial leverage of Chinese firms. In contrast to previous findings by Chen (2004), the results suggest that capital structure choices among Chinese firms progressively conform to conventional finance theories (e.g. Pecking Order Theory) with the decline of non-tradable shares.

Over the past three decade, China has established a housing finance system that borrows from the collective experiences of advanced economies. After examining the evolution of China’s housing finance system, the paper focuses on analyzing its challenges and recent changes. The paper argues that China’s highly-centralized financial system prefers financial stability but neglects financial liberalization, and then resulted in severe financial repression, which hurts the efficiency and equality of the housing finance service. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis via high-cost financial intervention, China took some policy innovations to promote a decentralized finance mechanism, expand finance resources, and support affordable housing financing, through which China hopes to provide a more stable, affordable, and equal housing finance service to help more households own homes.

The concept of lean and ISO 14001 as a combined approach is an evolving strategy for streamlining operational processes and attaining environmental sustainability in the manufacturing context. This paper explores the critical success factors (CSFs) for a combined lean and ISO 14001 implementation in the manufacturing industry for achieving the operational and environmental benefits.

A systematic literature review (SLR) based on Scopus and Web of Science databases is conducted to present peer-reviewed articles on the CSFs for lean and ISO 14001 implementation in manufacturing operations. This article applies the CSF theory to classify the CSFs for a joint lean and ISO 14001 adoption.

Numerous CSFs are synthesised from the SLR across seven theoretical contexts of industry, competitive strategy, managerial position, environmental, temporal, internal/external, monitoring and building/adapting factors for a combined lean and ISO14001 implementation.

Numerous CSFs are synthesised from the SLR across seven theoretical contexts of strategic direction, competitive strategy, leadership and management, environmental, temporal, internal/external, monitoring and continuous process improvement factors for a combined lean and ISO 14001 implementation.

This paper contributes to academic scholarship by providing a theoretical perspective through classification of CSFs for a combined lean and ISO 14001 implementation to achieve operational and environmental performance. This paper also contributes to practitioners and policymakers who can use the emergent theoretical framework for application in practice for a more efficient and effective deployment of both strategies in the manufacturing industry.

To the best of author's knowledge, this study is the first to propose a theoretical framework of CSFs for a combined lean and ISO 14001 implementation based on the CSF theory and SLR findings in the manufacturing industry.

The purpose of this paper is to examine US equity traders’ use of market orders versus price contingent orders with respect to information content.

Price changes following market and price contingent order submissions are analysed.

It is found that prices rise (decline) after the submission of market buy (sell) orders; whereas, prices decline (rise) after the submission of price contingent buy (sell) orders. Aggressively priced limit orders (i.e. marketable limit orders) convey information, but they are not more informative than market orders. Traders who transact in smaller quantities, engage in more short‐selling, and frequently achieve better performance are more likely to use market orders.

In contrast to prior studies, the paper's findings suggest that, when executing orders, informed traders have a preference for bearing a price rather than an execution risk.

This study attempts to evaluate the antecedences of customer loyalty and the moderating effect of social media. Three antecedences are evaluated in this study, including service quality expectation, product innovation, and customer relationship management. It investigates their impact on the dependent variable, which is customer loyalty and also study their relationships in the presence of the mediating effect of customer satisfaction and moderating effects of social media. The present study was conducted in the hospitality sector of Pakistan, in which eight hotels and restaurants have been studied. The sample was collected from three major cities of Pakistan, namely, Multan, Faisalabad, and Lahore. This present study provides essential intuition for managers and market analysts on building strong customer relationship management through social media and to increase customer loyalty through different factors.

A new expression of the panorama of pansystems relativity is stated. Some modes and related principles or applications are developed. Concrete contents include: new forms of the framework 784e of pansystems theory and its connections with relativity. The paper introduces eight classes of relativity topics, and further research presents many new models of pansystems relativity such as: 23456R, super‐23456R, SSOS, SOMERQ, pansystems dialectics, clustering quotient, field‐net, meta‐topology, image‐boundary, cognition and practice, thinking experiment, etc. These modes present some new understanding to systems, society, methodology, epistemology, wisdom, psychology, hi‐tech, paradox, anthropology, ego, literature, arts, poetics and aesthetics, etc. There are 60 or more related references listed in the paper.