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This paper addresses a gap in task performance research, with a focus on supply chain operations, by exploring the role that defensive pessimism (DP)—a phenomenon sparsely studied in supply chain literature—has in the workplace. It investigates the roles that task complexity, perceptions of control and employee situatedness in the workplace play as predictors of DP, as well as addresses the relationship between defensive pessimism and supply chain performance.

Five hypotheses are developed and empirically tested employing the data-generating method, Monte Carlo simulation and then applying factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) to survey data from practitioner members of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.

The results reveal that task complexity and external locus of control heighten perceptions among employees that task completion could be outside their locus of control. The increased tendency to be defensively pessimistic about workplace commitments negatively impacts supply chain performance. This study found that task complexity and external locus of control encourage DP, negatively impacting supply chain performance (SCP).

This study explored underlying causes of defensive pessimism, a self-limiting behavior among supply chain professionals. In understanding the role of DP, it is possible to enhance SCP by managing task complexity, external locus of control and job autonomy—predictors of defensive pessimism in work commitments.

Based on the density dependence theory, this paper attempts to explore how two types of interdependence among firms located in the same national high-tech zones (NHTZs) – mutualism and competition – affect entrepreneurship in the NHTZs. The authors suggest that increasing firm density can help enhance legitimacy and form mutual networks. However, as the competition becomes fierce, the above positive relationship will weaken when the firm density exceeds a certain level. In addition, the authors are interested in whether the age of NHTZs would affect their sensitivity to legitimacy and competition and whether firm density affects entrepreneurship.

This article formulates two hypotheses from the theoretical deduction. The hypotheses are examined using the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with a unique, unbalanced panel dataset of Chinese NHTZs spanning from 2014 to 2021. Considering potential endogeneity risk among the variables, the authors attempt to lag variables and ultimately find the results are still robust.

Drawing upon the density dependence theory, the empirical results show firm density is conducive to promoting entrepreneurship, while the positive relationship between community density and NHTZs' entrepreneurship gradually weakens as the firm density surpasses a certain level. The dynamics between mutualism and competition have different impacts on NHTZs' entrepreneurship. In addition, the results demonstrate that the linkage between firm interdependence and entrepreneurship is stronger for younger NHTZs. Firm density has an impact on entrepreneurship through legitimacy and excessive competition effects.

On the one hand, the research period of this paper is 2014–2021, as the China Torch Statistical Yearbook only started to publish operating revenues in 2014, so the data period of this paper is relatively short. More research can be done in the future when more data is disclosed. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis cannot be conducted because of the limited data and materials. In future research, the qualitative analysis of entrepreneurial activities in NHTZs, such as questionnaires or case studies, needs to be supplemented, which will be an interesting direction.

Most existing research has not distinguished the differences between NHTZs (Wang et al., 2019), especially the differences in legitimacy and access to resources caused by the age of NHTZs. This article considers the heterogeneity between NHTZs, which helps to provide theoretical and practical evidence for a transition economy like China to make trade-off decisions on balancing absorbing new entrants with promoting the efficient allocation of resources based on the density and age of NHTZs.

Drawing upon density dependency theory, this paper enriches the literature on agglomeration and entrepreneurship with a new perspective and extends the study to NHTZs.

First, this paper provides new evidence on how agglomeration affects entrepreneurship from an ecological perspective with the help of mutualism and competition interdependence. Most studies have explored the role of agglomeration in entrepreneurship, focussing on social networks, knowledge spillovers or resource endowments (Acs et al., 2013; Capozza et al., 2018; Yu, 2020). Drawing upon density dependency theory, this paper enriches the literature on agglomeration and entrepreneurship with a new perspective and extends the study to NHTZs. Second, the emphasis of science parks has been primarily on qualitative or case studies (Salvador et al., 2013; Guo and Verdini, 2015; Xie et al., 2018). We have diversified the quantitative research between agglomeration and entrepreneurship by using panel data from Chinese NHTZs from 2014 to 2021. Third, most existing research has not distinguished the differences between NHTZs (Wang et al., 2019), especially the differences in legitimacy and access to resources caused by the age of NHTZs. This article considers the heterogeneity between NHTZs, which helps to provide theoretical and practical evidence for a transition economy like China to make trade-off decisions on balancing absorbing new entrants with promoting the efficient allocation of resources based on the density and age of NHTZs. Finally, this paper meticulously investigates the profound influence and underlying mechanisms of firm density within NHTZs on entrepreneurship. It discerns two distinct mechanisms at play: the legitimacy effect and the impact of excessive competition resulting from firm density. This comprehensive analysis significantly contributes to our comprehension of the intricate interplay between firm density and entrepreneurship, shedding light on the dynamics of competition and mutual benefits.

This study examines the impact of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) of Chinese multinational corporations (MNCs) and formal and informal institutional distances between the home and host countries on the innovation performance of parent company.

This study uses panel data to conduct an empirical analysis on the data of 59 mature Chinese MNCs and their 872 overseas subsidiaries over the past 11 years and draws interesting results.

Results show that OFDI and formal and informal institutional distances between countries exert a significant positive impact on the innovation performance of the parent company and formal and informal institutional distances negatively moderate the impact between OFDI and the parent company's innovation performance.

Although international business research pays increasing attention to transnational differences in institutions and cultures, research on the relationship between technology spillover and distance is relatively limited. In addition, few studies consider the impact of FID and IFID on transnational reverse knowledge spillovers. This research fills these research gaps, and the conclusions have certain practical significance for multinational companies.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation efficiency (IE), as well as the moderating role of absorptive capacity.

This study uses a sample of industrial enterprises from Chinese provinces from 2005 to 2016, and it tests the research questions using the method of stochastic frontier analysis.

The results of this study indicate that entrepreneurship promotes IE, and that absorptive capacity plays a positive moderating role. In addition, the effect of entrepreneurship on IE differs between the central and eastern regions and the western region.

This research provides direct policy implications by demonstrating the role of entrepreneurship and absorptive capacity in IE, thereby guiding corporate management practices and the formulation of government innovation and entrepreneurship policies.

Although building information modelling (BIM) brings various benefits and open up the construction industry to many new possibilities, it is not without some challenges. Blockchain has the potential to resolve some of these problems. It has shown that blockchain and BIM can potentially work together in bringing various benefits to all project stakeholders. However, there is a lack of research and knowledge in relation to blockchain-based BIM. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to close this gap by looking into the potential functionality and workability of blockchain within a BIM environment.

A four-stage preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses systematic literature review technique has been used to review the blockchain- and BIM-related information sources published. A total of 53 journal articles, 13 books and 27 other resources including that of reports and websites have been included in this paper.

Blockchain-based BIM has countless possibilities, ranging from simple tasks such as tracking of orders to automation of construction payment claims. The literatures have suggested that the several weaknesses that BIM possesses including trust issue, asset ownership issue and data reliability issue could be resolved by incorporating blockchain into its processes.

Because of the lack of researches on the workability of blockchain and BIM, this paper aims to close this gap by proposing a framework for the interaction between blockchain and BIM for a typical building project. This paper has reviewed a substantial amount of currently available knowledge on blockchain-based BIM and its relevancy to the construction industry. This paper believes that the information could be of use to potential BIM tools maker and the construction industry for the betterment of BIM implementation throughout a project life cycle.

This paper aims to analyze energy and exergy analysis of solar-based intercooled and reheated gas turbine (GT) trigeneration cycle using parabolic trough solar collectors (PTC) with the use of MATLAB 2018.

In the first section of this paper, the solar-based GT is validated with the reference paper. According to the reference paper, the solar field is comprising 30 modules in series and 35 modules in parallel series, where a total of 1,050 modules of PTC are taken into consideration. In the second part of this paper, the hybridization of the solar, GT trigeneration cycle is analyzed and optimized. In the last section of this paper, the hybridization of solar, intercooled and reheated GT trigeneration systems is examined and compared.

The results examined the first section, the power produced by the cycle will be 37.34 MW at 0.5270 kg/s mass flow rate of the natural gas consumption and the efficiencies of energy and exergy will be 38.34% and 39.76%, respectively. The results examined in the second section, the power produced by the cycle will be 38.4 MW at 0.5270 kg/s mass flow rate of the natural gas consumption and accordingly the efficiency of energy and exergy is found to be 40.011% and 41.763%. Where in the last section, the power produced by the cycle will be 41.43 MW at 0.5270 kg/s mass flow rate of the natural gas consumption and the energy and exergy efficiencies will be 39.76% and 40.924%, respectively.

The author confirms that this study is original and has neither been published elsewhere nor it is currently under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The study aims to provide a basis for the effective use of safety-related information data and a quantitative assessment way for the occurrence probability of the safety risk such as the fatigue fracture of the key components.

The fatigue crack growth rate is of dispersion, which is often used to accurately describe with probability density. In view of the external dispersion caused by the load, a simple and applicable probability expression of fatigue crack growth rate is adopted based on the fatigue growth theory. Considering the isolation among the pairs of crack length a and crack formation time t (a∼t data) obtained from same kind of structural parts, a statistical analysis approach of t distribution is proposed, which divides the crack length in several segments. Furthermore, according to the compatibility criterion of crack growth, that is, there is statistical development correspondence among a∼t data, the probability model of crack growth rate is established.

The results show that the crack growth rate in the stable growth stage can be approximately expressed by the crack growth control curve da/dt = Q•a, and the probability density of the crack growth parameter Q represents the external dispersion; t follows two-parameter Weibull distribution in certain a values.

The probability density f(Q) can be estimated by using the probability model of crack growth rate, and a calculation example shows that the estimation method is effective and practical.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the policy instruments used by the China's Government on prefabricated construction (PC) development, with the aim to clarify the pattern and discover the focus of the policy instruments using the methods of bibliometric analysis and content analysis.

Through a thorough screening by all researchers, 25 policies were identified from 1995 to 2021 were selected and analysed. The external attribute analysis clarified the issuing year, organisation, and the format of each policy. The content analysis was adopted firstly to analyse the policy instrument. An analysis framework including environmental instruments, supply instruments and demand instruments was applied in categorising and counting of each policy instrument. The bibliometric analysis was then carried out to extract keywords of the policy instruments, construct a co-word network and complete the cluster analysis.

The results indicate that the policies lack consistency and had relatively low authority. The results of content analysis show that the policy system relies heavily on environmental and supply instruments, whilst the use of demand instruments seems to be grossly inadequate. The results of the bibliometric analysis identify the core ideas of each policy instrument category, discuss the existing problems and then put forward the corresponding countermeasures.

This study comprehensively and systematically analysed the policy instruments on facilitating the development of PC in China which broaden the research perspectives of the PC development by introducing the methods of political science. The research findings afford helpful information for future policy adjustments and elucidate the effective delivery of policies to facilitate PC development for developing countries.

This study provides an in-depth understanding of policy instruments used by China's Government on PC development. By integrating the policy instrument analysis framework into the mixed methods of content analysis and bibliometric analysis, this study provides an innovative way to conduct policy instrument analysis.

The emotion regulation research has drawn considerable attention from academicians and scholars in the contemporary world. As a result, the publications that are specifically dedicated to emotion regulation research are rapidly escalating. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of research articles that have been published in the field of “emotion regulation.” The study primarily examines the growth and development of scholarly publications, seminal studies, influential authors, productive journals, research production and collaboration among countries, emerging research themes, research hotspots and thematic evolution of emotion regulation research.

The Web of Science Core Collection database was used to gather the study’s data, which was then analysed using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix, Biblioshiney open-source package of the R language environment.

The study’s results reveal that the research on emotion regulation has grown significantly over the last three decades. Notably, Emotion and Frontiers in Psychology are the most dominant and productive journals in the field of emotion regulation research. The most prominent author in the area of emotion regulation is identified as James Gross, followed by Gratz, Wang and Tull. The USA is at the forefront of research on emotion regulation and has collaborated with most of the developed countries like Germany, England and Canada. The keyword analysis revealed that the most potential research areas in the field of emotion regulation are functional magnetic resonance imaging, amygdala, post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, alexithymia, emotion dysregulation, depression, anxiety, functional connectivity, neuroimaging, mindfulness, self-regulation, resilience and coping. The thematic evolution reflects that the research on emotion regulation has recently focused on issues including Covid-19, non-suicidal self-injury, psychological distress, intimate partner violence and mental health.

The results of this study highlighted the current knowledge gaps in emotion regulation research and suggested areas for further investigation. The present study could be useful for researchers, academicians, planners, publishers and universities engaged in emotion regulation research.

The innovation process demands an interaction between environment agents, knowledge generators and policies of incentive for innovation and not only development by companies. Universities have gradually become the core of the knowledge production system and, therefore, their role regarding innovation has become more important and diversified. This study is aimed at identifying the mechanisms of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, as well as the operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process.

This study is aimed at identifying, based on a systematic literature review, the mechanisms of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, as well as the operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process.

The analysis of the 72 selected articles enabled identifying 15 mechanisms of U–I collaboration, proposing a new classification for such mechanisms and developing a framework presenting the operationalization steps of the interaction process.

In this paper, the authors screened nearly 1,500 papers and analyzed in detail 86 papers addressing U–I collaboration, mechanisms of U–I collaboration and operationalization steps of the U–I collaboration process. This paper provides a new classification for such mechanisms and developing a framework presenting the operationalization steps of the interaction process. This research contributes to both theory and practice by highlighting managerial aspects and stimulating academic research on such timely topic.