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This paper aims to investigate and prepare the composite polyurea greases with excellent thermal stability and tribological properties.

In this paper, composite Ba-based (Ba, barium) tetra-polyurea lubricating greases were prepared with two different methods: mixing Ba-based gelatinizer and tetra-polyurea gelatinizer by a physical method; and introducing barium carboxylate into tetra-polyurea molecules by a chemical method. The properties of the products, such as heat stability, water resistance and friction performance, were analyzed with thermogravimetry, water-resistance test and four-ball friction test.

The results indicated that the products obtained by chemically introducing barium carboxylate into tetra-urea molecules showed better elevated temperature tribological properties, and the disadvantages of the polyurea greases with high temperature hardening were also obviously improved. The cone penetration rate at 180°C for 24 h is only 3 per cent. The friction coefficient can be decreased to 0.44 and the last non-seizure load value was increased from 560 N to 1,120 N without any other additives.

The research is significant because the prepared composite grease showed excellent performances, such as the outstanding thermal stability, water resistance and excellent extreme pressure and anti-wear properties, which may be widely applied in steel, metallurgy, bearings and other industrial fields.

The purpose of this paper is to compare corrosion behavior of a modified multilayer material with Cu before and after brazing process.

Sea water acidified accelerated tests (SWAATs), potentiodynamic polarization tests and scanning electron microscopy were used to study the corrosion behavior and macro/micro structures. Results indicate that the corrosion mechanisms of the sheets before and after brazing process are completely different.

The un-brazed material is uniform corrosion, while the brazed material has a high sensitivity to localized corrosion and loses cathodic protection to the core. It is found that brazing process causes copper transition from the core alloy into eutectic phases in the cladding, leading to higher E_corr and different potential distribution compared with those of un-brazed materials.

For the modified multilayer material after brazing, there are two stages of corrosion. First, corrosion attack takes place along eutectic phases in the cladding material, and then core alloy dissolves by forming a galvanic couple with the nobler residual cladding.

The implementation of reverse logistics (RL) as a strategic decision has gained significant attention amongst organisations due to its benefits to sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the literature to evaluate the performance of the RL process based on the three dimensions of sustainability including environmental, economic and social aspects.

Content analysis was adopted to collect and analyse the information.

The findings of this research show that most of the studies have focused on the performance evaluation of RL by considering the factors associated with economic and environmental performance. The social aspect of RL has been overlooked and requires investigation due to its contribution to positive social outcomes. In addition, no research has been conducted to assess the impact of each of the disposition options on the triple-bottom-line sustainability performance in one study.

Although RL can make a significant contribution to improving the sustainability performance of firms, little research has been undertaken on exploring the relationship between RL and sustainability performance. This paper provides practitioners, academics and researchers a broad and complete view of the relationship between RL and sustainability performance with suggestion for future research.

Previous studies showed that the unconscious-intuitive strategy resulted in a better choice for it is more predictive of actual interest. This benefit may be influenced by occupational engagement, for the dual process of career decisions takes it as a tool for multidevelopment and optimal adjustment. Thus, we replicated (and extended) the study of Motl et al. (2018) through two experiments to identify the role of three pre-decisional strategies and then explore the combined effects of occupational engagement and these strategies. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

The authors replicated (and extended) the study of Motl et al. (2018) through two experiments. First, both studies adopted generalized linear mixed-effects models for statistical analyses to distinguish random and fixed effects. Second, Study 2 used a computer-based process-tracing program called “Mouselab” to explore the effect of the pre-decisional strategy self-generated on participants' interest appraisals over time.

Study 1 found that engagement helped promote participants' interest experience when decisions as usual and the intuitive strategy did not produce optimal choices. Further, people with more prior knowledge about situations no longer achieved as many benefits from their allocated strategy (i.e. rational strategy) as those with less. Study 2 failed to find adequate advantages of the intuitive strategy. Specifically, people with less search depth (the heuristic-intuitive strategy) were more interested in their choices. Nevertheless, when the strategy was manipulated as variability of search (VS), it only found the promotion of engagement, but it neither found the interaction between engagement and strategy nor did strategy itself.

The present paper provides mixed support for adaptive career decision-making. Career counselors can use occupational engagement levels as a reference for pre-decisional strategy selection and coach clients to adopt a proper decision-making process/method to make interest forecasts.

The poor leadership style is a key obstacle to the effective implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies. To successfully apply the Industry 4.0 technologies, which can enhance the sustainability of firms, senior management needs to be inspiring and transformational. On the other hand, numerous factors can hinder the Industry 4.0 transition and “Circular Supply Chain (CSC)” transformation. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to evaluate the related barriers of CSCs in the era of Industry 4.0 transition.

The current study developed an innovative decision-making approach with the help of the “Combined Compromise Solution (CoCoSo)” method and “Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC)” method on the “q-Rung Orthopair Fuzzy Sets (q-ROFSs).” CRITIC in this combined method was used to predict the importance or weighting degrees of the CSCs barriers in the age of Industry 4.0 transition.

The results of this study found that the absence of knowledge about the Industry 4.0 technologies and circular approaches was the first barrier followed by the problems associated with data security in relationship management in circular flows, the deficiency of knowledge regarding the data management among stakeholders and the lack of awareness about the potential benefits of autonomous systems in labor-oriented “End-of-Life (EOL)” activities for CSCs in the era of Industry 4.0 transition.

A limitation may be that despite the generalizability of the proposed framework, the results may differ when it is implemented in different sectors. By emphasizing the obstacles to sustainable operations of supply chains (SCs) in the context of circular economy (CE) and Industry 4.0, researchers working in the same domain may be encouraged to find ways to remove such obstacles in different settings. As suggested in this study, the priority of various barriers helps researchers suggest effective strategies for the sustainable development of companies within the current dynamic business atmosphere.

The findings of this paper can aid industry practitioners in fixing their attention on the digitization or automation of their systems in the context of sustainability or resource circularity. Note that within the current context of CE, one of the crucial issues is how to conserve the existing resources; the answer to this question can save the environment.

The current paper proposed a new multi-criteria decision-making method using q-ROFSs to analyze, rank and evaluate the CSC barriers in the age of Industry 4.0 transition. To this end, a new decision-making approach with the help of CRITIC and CoCoSo methods on q-ROFSs called q-ROF-CRITIC-CoCoSo was introduced to evaluate the CSCs barriers in the era of Industry 4.0 transition.

Despite touting the value of green practices, many firms struggle to respond appropriately to the diverse environmental issues. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the external and internal pressures interplay to influence top management championship, which, in turn, fosters the company’s green culture and the adoption of green practices. It thus helps to explain Chinese firms’ diversity with respect to the adoption of green practices.

A conceptual model is developed that summarizes the interplay of external and internal pressures, top management championship, green culture and the adoption of green practices. Data from 148 Chinese manufacturing firms were collected and a structural equation model was used for statistical analysis.

Government policy that provides incentives to adopt green practices and overseas customers’ green demand has significant positive influences on top management championship, while resources pressure has a significant negative effect. Government command and control policy, domestic customers’ green demand and organizational inertia do not impact top management championship. Furthermore, top management championship is positively correlated to both green culture and green practices, and green culture contributes to implementing green practices.

The findings help us understand which external and internal factors inspire or force top management to adopt green practices, and how they do so. Moreover, managers must also be aware of the bridging role of green culture. The findings will be valuable to policy makers in forming and enforcing “stick” or “carrot” environmental policies.

Leveraging a multi-theoretic approach, the authors’ research builds on insights from the institutional theory, natural resource-based view (NRBV) and upper echelons perspective, so as to increase the authors’ understanding on how firms adopt green practices to respond to environmental sustainability pressures. The institutional theory and the NRBV are leveraged in this study to recognize that firms perceive not only external institutional pressure for environmental management but also the internal pressure from resource constraints and capability to change. Upper echelons perspective is integrated into this study to explain the leadership role that top management serves in the management of the organization’s response to dynamic changes in the institutional environment and cultivate green culture within organization.

The purpose of this paper is to use convolutional neural networks in order to solve the problem of the difficulty in the classification of cashmere and wool. To do the research, it proposes a low-dimensional strategy of using part-level features to enhance object-level features. The study aims to use computer version method to find out the most effective and robust method to manage the difficult task of cashmere and wool identification.

The authors try to get a coarse classification result and the initial weights of the model in the first step. The authors use the results of the first step and a Fast-RCNN method to extract part-level features in step 2. Finally, the authors mix the part-level features to enhance object-level features and classify the cashmere and wool images.

The paper finds that not only the texture is the key element of the cashmere and wool identification but also the image colors.

Most importantly, the paper finds that the part-level features can enhance object-level features in the fiber identification task. However, it does not work in contrast, and the strategy can be used in the similar fibers identifications.

This paper is submitted for a special issue of Asian Education and Development Studies on the topic of Greater China Development. The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges and opportunities of developing a free trade zone (FTZ)/free port in China’s Hainan island.

Hainan is to be Mainland China’s newest and largest FTZ. However, the experience of the existing Mainland FTZs is not encouraging, their limited, piecemeal reforms attracting little interest from foreign investors. To make a difference and provide a new engine of growth for the Mainland economy, the approach for Hainan needs to be much bolder. Hainan should aim to develop as a free port, a services centre and a financial centre.

Regarding the financial sector development, the opportunity should be taken to experiment with special drawing rights. Hong Kong can provide the exemplar and expertise to jump-start Hainan’s development. To provide critical mass, mutual access should be opened between Hainan and the nine Mainland municipalities of the Greater Bay Area. An inner border will be needed to distinguish the experimental area from the rest of the Mainland, and an outer border to preserve its integrity vis-à-vis the international environment.

If Hainan can be developed into the China Offshore Centre, it would have the potential to restart the Mainland’s stalled reform process, and to relieve international trade and financial tensions.

The existing Nonlinear Dynamic Vibration Absorbers (NLDVAs) have the disadvantages of complex structure, high cost, high installation space requirements and difficulty in miniaturization. And most of the NLDVAs have not been applied to reality. To address the above issues, a novel Triple-magnet Magnetic Dynamic Vibration Absorber (TMDVA) with tunable stiffness, only composed of triple cylindrical permanent magnets and an acrylic tube, is designed, modeled and tested in this paper.

(1) A novel TMDVA is designed. (2) Theoretical and experimental methods. (3) Equivalent dynamics model.

It is found that adjusting the magnet distance can effectively optimize the vibration reduction effect of the TMDVA under different resonance conditions. When the resonance frequency of the cantilever changes, the magnet distance of the TMDVA with a high vibration reduction effect shows an approximately linear relationship with the resonance frequency of the cantilever which is convenient for the design optimization of the TMDVA.

Both the simulation and experimental results prove that the TMDVA can effectively reduce the vibration of the cantilever even if the resonance frequency of the cantilever changes, which shows the strong robustness of the TMDVA. Given all that, the TMDVA has potential application value in the passive vibration reduction of engineering structures.

This study aims to explore how the ideal employee effects of internal marketing are created and sustained. It aims to reveal the role that outbound marketing activities play in the reproduction of a brand-centric employee culture.

From an organizational ritual perspective, this study conducts a qualitative study of a Chinese department store’s anniversary celebration, which is a multi-day annual sales event. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, supplemented with corporate documents and field observation.

This study reveals that the focal event remains a success because the well-managed coordination of its onstage and backstage activities serves to reproduce an employee culture of espousing and voluntarily enacting corporately mandated role norms, values and beliefs.

For the management of retail events with the aim of building organizational culture, this study points to the importance of emphasizing the symbolism of the sales promotion aspects of an event and paying as much attention to employees’ backstage experiences as to the public execution of a consumer event.

This study shows that external marketing could set the stage for internal marketing, with the ideal effects of internal marketing actually constructed and institutionalized during activities and procedures comprising outbound marketing. This suggests that a more nuanced view of the practice of internal marketing is warranted.