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This paper examines the inflation hedging performance separated into expected and unexpected inflation in Korean equity funds. In particular, using the bootstrap approach, we identify whether the inflation hedging performance is based on skill or luck. We use the equity funds of the average net asset value (NAV) over 5 billion Korean won and over the 80% stock position. The sample data cover the period from January 2002 to March 2015. The main findings are as follows. First, most equity funds demonstrate a hedging performance against the unexpected inflation shock and this hedging performance seems to come from the fund manager’s skill. Second, our findings are robust across the sieve bootstrap results for the serial dependence and heteroscedasticity. Third, the equity funds have slightly different inflation hedging performances depending on their investment style. Among the investment styles, small-cap, growth, or small and growth style funds demonstrate more hedging performance against unexpected inflation shock. This hedging performance seems to come from the fund manager’s skill. Finally, in the case of the funds separated by winner and loser, the winner funds have more hedging performance for unexpected inflation shock than the loser funds.

The paper aims to identify and analyze passengers’ riding paths for providing better operational support for digital transformation in megacity metro systems.

The authors develop a method to leverage certain passengers’ deterministic riding paths to corroborate other passengers’ uncertain paths. Using Automatic Fare Collection data and train schedules, a witness model is built to recover the actual riding paths for passengers whose paths are unknown otherwise. The identification and analysis of passenger riding paths between three different types of origin–destination) pairs reveal the complexity of passenger path choice.

The results show that passenger path choice modeling is usually characterized by complexity, experience and partial blindness. Some passengers choose paths that are not optimal due to their experience and limited access to overall metro system information. These passengers could be the subject of improved path guidance in light of riding efficiency improved through digital transformation.

This research contributes to the improvement of metro management and operations by leveraging ongoing digital transformation in megacity metro systems. Based on the riding paths and trip chains of a large number of individual passengers identified by the proposed method, metro operation management could prevent risks in areas with concentrated passenger flow in advance, optimally adjust train schedules on a daily basis and deliver real-time riding guidance station by station, which would greatly improve megacity metro systems’ service safety, quality and operational efficacy over time.

This research primarily aims to explore the influences of the individuals' perceptional characteristics and cultural aspects of the learning organization on organizational commitment in Korean organizational settings.

The approach takes the form of examining the integrative determinants of performance improvement, designed as a research framework, which conceptually shows the relations among the environmental variable – supportive learning culture, individuals' characteristics – interpersonal trust, collectivistic tendency and motivation to collaborate, and organizational commitment. The samples were collected from Korean profit organizations. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the construct validity of the hypothesized measures, and structural equation modeling was adapted to examine the sequential effects among the variables.

The results suggest that interpersonal trust and collectivistic tendency have significant impacts on the employees' motivation to collaborate; in turn, through the organizational supportive learning culture, they have positively significant impacts on the employees' organizational commitment. Furthermore, supportive learning culture plays a mediating role to enhance the effect of the individuals' perceptional variables to organizational commitment.

In order to more accurately measure human behavioral, longitudinally quantitative and in‐depth qualitative approaches are recommended for future research. The conceptual research framework was developed based on theoretical assumptions. Therefore alternative frameworks possibly could be considered.

The research presents evidence that the learning culture could lead to management‐related beyond simply learning‐related outcomes. In this regard, the supportive learning organization culture could be assumed as the overall aspect of organizational culture promoting positive non‐learning outcomes in the workplace.

Discusses the 6th ITCRR, its breadth of textile and clothing research activity, plus the encouragement given to workers in this field and its related areas. States that, within the newer research areas under the microscope of the community involved, technical textiles focuses on new, ‘smart’ garments and the initiatives in this field in both the UK and the international community at large. Covers this subject at length.

This study estimated greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation and sought systems that could manage these emissions based on the IPCC guidelines to prepare for greenhouse gas regulations on international airlines. For this purpose, policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation were developed based on international agreements and the cases of advanced countries. In addition, marginal abatement costs and greenhouse gas reduction measures were derived for the effective execution of these policies. While estimating greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation, it was found that there has been an average increase of 3.9% and 12.9% for domestic and international flights, indicating that it is urgent that we prepare global greenhouse gas regulations. The estimated marginal abatement cost of greenhouse gas from airplanes was approximately. USD 123, and this amount could be used to decide the price of emission rights, the amount of carbon tax, and could be referred to when distributing incentives for voluntary agreements.

The measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for aviation transportation were classified into four types: voluntary agreements, international collaboration, greenhouse gas reduction technology and operation process development, and application of emission trading and carbon tax.

Looks at the eighth published year of the ITCRR and the research, from far and near, involved in this. Muses on the fact that, though all the usual processes are to the fore, the downside part of the industry is garment making which is the least developed side. Posits that the manufacture of clothing needs to become more technologically advanced as does retailing. Closes by emphasising support for the community in all its efforts.

The purpose of this study provides the enhancing factors of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and examines their differential effects on corporate social performances for business-stakeholder groups (i.e. investors, employees, suppliers and customers) and public-stakeholder groups (i.e. communities and the environment).

This study uses a differenced-equation model to test the differential effects of CSR-enhancing factors. The study tests the impact of each factor controlling the effects of the other CSR-enhancing factors in one multivariate analysis with survey data of 776 small and medium-sized enterprises from Hong Kong.

This study finds that firms give more CSR efforts for public stakeholders than for business stakeholders as firms’ financial resources, institutional conformity and their perceived regulatory pressure increase. On the other hand, firms provide more CSR efforts for business stakeholders than for public stakeholders when such efforts are based on their strategic motivation.

The main contribution of this study is to clarify diverse CSR-enhancing factors for different stakeholders, in particular, business vs public stakeholders, thus to help firms understand the effective ways to increase CSR actions for specific target stakeholder groups.

The purpose of this study is to offer explanations of the wide variation in the impact of market size on new market entry decisions – i.e. its positive impact lessens because of unreliable predictability of market size on post-entry profit and entry motivations other than post-entry profit.

On the basis of the two explanations, this paper builds a contingency frame that the impact of market size on new market entry depends on entry-context-specific variables. It validates the contingency frame, empirically analyzing 219 parameter estimates of the impact of market size on market entry obtained from 41 existing empirical studies.

The meta-analysis results reveal that the entry-context-specific variables used in this study – niche market entry, high-tech market entry, entry by industry incumbent firms and the year of market entry – notably moderate the impact of market size on new market entry decisions, as the research frame suggests.

This study examines the various literature and study outcomes in the areas of marketing, economics and strategy to elucidate whether and when market size is a critical driver of new market entry. In most cases, the greater the new market size, the greater is the propensity to enter the market. However, the contingency arguments stated in this paper suggest that firms may and do enter a new market even if the market size is not large at the time of entry.

This paper enhances the understanding of the relative importance of market size in market entry decisions, which depend on various entry contexts. It clarifies the direction and magnitude of the impact of such entry contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impacts of time segment modeling approach for berth allocation and quay crane (QC) assignment on container terminal operations efficiency.

The authors model the small time segment modeling approach, based on minutes, which can be a minute, 15 min, etc. Moreover, the authors divided the problem into three sub-problems and proposed a novel three-level genetic algorithm (3LGA) with QC shifting heuristics to deal with the problem. The objective function here is to minimize the total service time by using different time segments for comparison and analysis.

First, the study shows that by reducing the time segment, the complexity of the problem increases dramatically. Traditional meta-heuristic, such as genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, etc., becomes not very promising. Second, the proposed 3LGA with QC shifting heuristics outperforms the traditional ones. In addition, by using a smaller time segment, the idling time of berth and QC can be reduced significantly. This greatly benefits the container terminal operations efficiency, and customer service level.

Nowadays, transshipment becomes the main business to many container terminals, especially in Southeast Asia (e.g. Hong Kong and Singapore). In these terminals, vessel arrivals are usually very frequent with small handling volume and very short staying time, e.g. 1.5 h. Therefore, a traditional hourly based modeling approach may cause significant berth and QC idling, and consequently cannot meet their practical needs. In this connection, a small time segment modeling approach is requested by industrial practitioners.

In the existing literature, berth allocation and QC assignment are usually in an hourly based approach. However, such modeling induces much idling time and consequently causes low utilization and poor service quality level. Therefore, a novel small time segment modeling approach is proposed with a novel optimization algorithm.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effects of intermittent and continuous heating protocols using graphene-heated clothing and identify more effective body region for heating in a cold environment.

Eight males participated in five experimental conditions at an air temperature of 0.6°C with 40 percent relative humidity: no heating, continuous heating the chest, continuous heating the back, intermittent heating the chest, and intermittent heating the back.

The results showed that the electric power consumption of the intermittent heating protocol (2.49 W) was conserved by 71 percent compared to the continuous protocol (8.58 W). Rectal temperature, cardiovascular and respiratory responses showed no significant differences among the four heating conditions, while heating the back showed more beneficial effects on skin temperatures than heating the chest.

First of all, this study was the first report to evaluate cold protective clothing with graphene heaters. Second, the authors provided effective intermittent heating protocols in terms of reducing power consumption, which was able to be evaluated with the characteristics of fast-responsive graphene heaters. Third, an intermittent heating protocol on the back was recommended to keep a balance between saving electric power and minimizing thermal discomfort in cold environments.