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The purpose of this paper is to study how the software outsourcing teams, namely, vendors, transfer effective knowledge to enhance team performance; it reports on a study of transactive memory system (TMS) theory and makes deep analyses and discussions about the influence of the cooperative behaviors of TMS on software outsourcing team’s performance under the framework of three behavioral characteristics dimensions – specialization, credibility and coordination.

This paper is an empirical study based on investigation interviews to 28 software outsourcing teams and data of questionnaire surveys on 124 software outsourcing teams; structural equation model is used to test the data we collected.

This paper finds that both credibility and coordination have a significantly positive impact on knowledge transfer and project success, whereas specialization has a significant negative impact on project success. The results of data analysis show that TMS is an effective coordination mechanism.

The conclusion of the study can help us understand the coordination mechanism of knowledge transfer in software outsourcing team and provide theoretical support and paradigm reference for vendors in China to accumulate knowledge and improve the success rate of projects in the context of software project development.

The purpose of this paper is to further explore the co-citation and bibliographic-coupling relationship among the core authors in the field of Chinese information science (IS), to expose research activity and author impact, and to make induction analyses about Chinese IS research patterns and theme evolution.

The research data include 8,567 papers and 70,947 cited articles in the IS field indexed by Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index from 2000 to 2009. Author co-citation analysis, author bibliographic-coupling analysis, social network analysis, and factor analysis were combined to explore co-citation and bibliographic-coupling relationships and to identify research groups and subjects.

Scholars with greatest impact are different from the most active scholars of Chinese IS; there is no uniform impact pattern forming since authors’ impact subjects are scattered and not steady; while authors’ research activities present higher independence and concentration, there is still no steady research pattern due to no deep research existing. Furthermore, Chinese IS studies can be delineated by: foundation or extension. The research subjects of these two parts, as well as their corresponding/contributing authors, are different under different views. The general research status of core authors is concentrated, while their impact is broad.

The combined use of some related methods could enrich the development and methodology research of the discipline, and the results establish a reference point on the development of IS research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the design elements of environmental features that affect consumer experience in shopping malls and develop a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between architectural design and consumer experience.

Through the systematic literature review, 13 design elements were obtained and then verified through interviews of 30 professional designers. The obtained elements were made into a questionnaire to collect data across China from 1,016 consumers of different groups. Data were analyzed using cluster analysis, principal component analysis and difference analysis.

The results show that design elements that influence consumer experience in shopping malls are a four-dimensional construct: visual atmosphere, physical environment comfort, space structure and business planning, among which space structure and business planning play a larger role in the consumer experience. In addition, the perception differences of consumers for those elements are significant due to the individual differences.

This paper comprehensively investigates the architectural design elements affecting consumer experience in the Chinese mall context. Moreover, it provides unique insights about the relationship between architectural design and consumer experience by exploring the categories, weights and perception differences of those elements.

This article analyzes the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) stimuli on customer engagement as well as on value co-creation. The moderating role played by customer ability readiness is also examined.

Total 426 questioners are collected from the customers who consumed intelligent service robot.

First, the perceived interactivity (PI) of AI stimuli have a significant positive impact on value co-creation; second, customer engagement plays a mediating effect on the relationship between PI and value co-creation; finally, customer ability readiness has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between AI stimuli, customer engagement and value co-creation.

Firstly, the method of questionnaire survey has certain limitations, In future research, more advanced survey methods (such as social perception calculations) can be used to make survey samples more comprehensive and analysis results more accurate. Secondly, the paper used a single-dimensional test for the two variables of customer engagement and value co-creation. Future research should divide the dimensions of customer engagement and value co-creation into more specific way. Finally, this study lacks research on the regulatory effect of customer ability readiness and further division of customer readiness.

First, this paper uses the arousal theory to participate in marketing theory and value co-creation theory, which is the cross and fusion of theory, and also the enrichment and expansion of the existing theoretical research, with a certain theoretical innovation. Second, based on previous research, this research developed and designed a measurement scale for AI stimuli. Finally, through empirical research, it is found that the perceived personalization of AI stimuli does not have a significant direct effect on value co-creation, which is a new views and insight.

First, when using intelligent customer service robots, companies should pay attention to improving the PI and personalization of intelligent customer service robots. Second, companies should attach importance to the development environment of customer engagement, proactively and effectively identify customer needs. Finally, companies should provide customers with a good support atmosphere, publicize and explain in advance the use of intelligent customer service robots to increase their confidence.

The study develops a scale of AI stimuli and is among the first to integrate and examine the inter-relationships between customer engagement, customer ability, and value co-creation from the increasingly important phenomenological perspective of AI.

L'Ecole internationale des sciences touristique de Rome est un organisme privé ayant pour but de promouvoir la connaissance culturelle à caractère multidisciplinaire du phénomène touristique par I'enseignement théorique des disciplines correspondantes. Ces disciplines seront intégrées par des travaux pratiques et par des éventuels stages professionnels.

As an example of structure-efficiency relationship study, this paper aims to evaluate the corrosion inhibition effect of two cationic surfactants, cetyl-trimethyl ammonium chloride (CTAC) and cetyl-dimethyl-hydroxyethyl ammonium chloride (CDHAC), and to discuss the effect of structure on the performance by thermodynamics methods.

The effect of the two cationic surfactants, CTAC and CDHAC, on the corrosion of the mild steel in HCl solution was investigated by using weight loss measurements, and the activation energies of CTAC and CDHAC involved in the corrosion inhibition were calculated and discussed.

The weight loss measurements showed that the corrosion inhibition efficiency of CDHAC was higher than that of CTAC in any case. The effects of the structure on performance were discussed, and the following data are available from the results, all of ΔS are positive, the values of ΔG are both close to −40 kJ·mol-1 and the values of ΔH are 10.960 and 36.996 kJ·mol-1, which indicate that the surfactant molecules are spontaneously adsorbed on the surface of the steel surface, and the adsorption on the steel plate is endothermic chemical adsorption.

The available data show that most organic inhibitors undergo physisorption on the metal surface, while in the presence of non-bonded and p-electrons, the inhibitor molecules may undergo chemisorption. This work showed that the two surfactant molecules are spontaneously adsorbed on the surface of the steel surface, and the adsorption on the steel plate is endothermic chemical adsorption.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the means for enhancing the image and business legitimacy of a socially discredited industry – pawnbroking in pre-1949 China – are explored. Previous studies suggest companies operating within such industries cannot solely rely on hard marketing strategies “to maximize sales and profits as they do with soaps and shoes” (Davidson, 2003, p. 7). Instead, they must find soft strategies for improving company and industry image and legitimacy.

This research relies on qualitative analysis of historical data and documents.

Soft strategies deployed by Chinese pawnbrokers – such as interpretations, moral value advocacies and institutionalized arrangements – contributed substantially to improving pawnbroking’s image and business legitimacy.

Interconnections among ethical values, image, business legitimacy and select marketing strategies are clarified. The efficacy of historically analyzing previously implemented business strategies and their embedding contexts is discussed.

Strategies Chinese pawnbrokers used to mitigate their previously negative image and boost their business legitimacy suggest strategies current socially disapproved companies can use to improve their image and business legitimacy.

A historical analysis of pre-1949 Chinese pawnbroking can suggest soft marketing strategies for overcoming consumers’ negative company and industry impressions.

In recent years, knowledge graph completion has gained increasing research focus and shown significant improvements. However, most existing models only use the structures of knowledge graph triples when obtaining the entity and relationship representations. In contrast, the integration of the entity description and the knowledge graph network structure has been ignored. This paper aims to investigate how to leverage both the entity description and the network structure to enhance the knowledge graph completion with a high generalization ability among different datasets.

The authors propose an entity-description augmented knowledge graph completion model (EDA-KGC), which incorporates the entity description and network structure. It consists of three modules, i.e. representation initialization, deep interaction and reasoning. The representation initialization module utilizes entity descriptions to obtain the pre-trained representation of entities. The deep interaction module acquires the features of the deep interaction between entities and relationships. The reasoning component performs matrix manipulations with the deep interaction feature vector and entity representation matrix, thus obtaining the probability distribution of target entities. The authors conduct intensive experiments on the FB15K, WN18, FB15K-237 and WN18RR data sets to validate the effect of the proposed model.

The experiments demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the traditional structure-based knowledge graph completion model and the entity-description-enhanced knowledge graph completion model. The experiments also suggest that the model has greater feasibility in different scenarios such as sparse data, dynamic entities and limited training epochs. The study shows that the integration of entity description and network structure can significantly increase the effect of the knowledge graph completion task.

The research has a significant reference for completing the missing information in the knowledge graph and improving the application effect of the knowledge graph in information retrieval, question answering and other fields.

The purpose of this article is expository in the main; critical to a lesser degree. It will attempt to show how Karl Marx, enraged by the imperfections and inhumanity of the capitalist society, “fought” for its supersession by the communist society on which he dwelt so fondly, that society which would emerge from the womb of a dying capitalism. It asks such questions as these: Is it possible to create the truly human society envisaged by Marx? Is perfection of man and society a mere will‐o'‐the‐wisp? A brief analysis, therefore, of the imperfections of capitalism is undertaken for the purpose of revealing the evils which Marx sought to eliminate by revolution of the most violent sort. In this sense, the nature of man under capitalism is analysed. Marx found the breed wanting, in a word, dehumanised. An attempt is, therefore, made to discuss the new man of Marxism, man's own creation, and the traits of that new man, one freed at last from the alienating effects of private property, division of labour, money, and religion. Another question that springs to mind is this: how does Marx propose to transcend alienation?

This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business network that thrived in pre-1949 China, are analyzed.

The Critical Historical Research Method (CHRM) undergirds a study of Shangbangs’ historicity (i.e. their socio-historically embedded multiplicity, including organizational forms, activities and connotations.

As informal regional, professional, project-based, special-product-based or mixed marketing networks, Shangbangs relied on “flexible specialization” and coupled multiple business needs to market goods and services, business organizations, specific social values and, when necessary, to debrand business rivals.

This analysis extends theories about marketing networks by probing their subtypes, diverse marketing activities, multipronged channels and relationship building with social entities (including underground societies, business associations and guilds) in response to pre-1949 China’s market uncertainties. Substantiating an alternative approach to “flexible specialization” and marketing innovations within the pre-1949 Chinese economy shows how a parallel theoretical framework can complement western-based marketing theories.

This first comprehensive analysis of Shangbangs, an innovative historical Chinese marketing network outside the conventional market-corporate dichotomy, can inform theory building for marketing strategy-making and management conditioned by social contexts.