Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between working capital management (WCM) and firm performance in the context of the Chinese economy. Specifically, it investigates the effects of ownership structures as an internal factor and of institutional environments (IE) as an external factor shaping this relationship.

The study applies two-way fixed effect regression models to a sample of Chinese listed manufacturing firms for the period of 2010 to 2017. WCM is measured by cash conversion cycles (CCC); profitability is measured by core profit ratios; ownership structures are classified based on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs; and IEs are measured from dimensions of factor markets (FM) and legal systems (LS).

First, the results show a negative relationship between CCC and firm performance. Second, the negative relationship between CCC and profitability is significant for non-SOEs but not for SOEs. Third, both the FM and LS strengthen the negative association between CCC and profitability. Fourth, the moderating effect of FMs and LSs is evident for non-SOEs only. The results hold when using alternative measures of WCM and profitability and while controlling for additional variables.

The current study shows that while WCM has a significant effect on the profitability of Chinese firms, such an effect greatly depends on the ownership structures and IE involved. The results thus offer important implications in helping the Chinese government create better IEs and in allowing manufacturing firms to improve upon their WCM practices.

This paper aims to study how state ownership influences the innovation process in terms of allocating resources toward searching for new solutions and converting these efforts into economic value. On one hand, deep pockets of the state provide slack resources that may facilitate risk taking and innovation. On the other hand, soft budgets can create incentive problems and dampen the efficient use of resources. The authors suggest how accounting for competitive context can disentangle these countervailing forces.

The authors use a panel of over 240,000 Chinese firms over the years 2004–2008. The broad sample and period afforded substantial variability in terms of state ownership within and across firms. The authors use a two-stage model and a within-firm (i.e. fixed-effects) design, controlling for all time-invariant firm characteristics and the problematic unobserved heterogeneity that can often lead to erroneous inferences. Furthermore, the relatively short window limits the likelihood of time-varying unobserved firm characteristics biasing the empirical results.

The authors found that private-sector competition has the opposite effect on the relationship between state ownership and the second step of the innovation process. In industries where there is robust private-sector competition, state ownership diminishes the firm’s ability to convert R&D efforts into economic value. Private-sector competition competes away any advantages state-owned firms may have in terms of developing or accessing the complementary resources needed for commercialization. Ultimately, the inefficiencies of state ownership in terms of relatively undisciplined selection and monitoring of R&D activities outweigh any potential resource advantages derived from state ownership.

The state remains a prominent player in many economies throughout the world. The authors explored how state ownership of firms influences the resources they expend in searching out new solutions, and their success in converting such resources into economically valuable new products and services. State ownership has potentially countervailing effects on innovation. The authors disentangle these countervailing effects through consideration of how accounting for competitive context could determine whether the beneficial effects of state ownership dominate its detrimental effects for both searching for new solutions and converting these efforts into economically valuable new products. With a focus of market competition as an external force that drives the difference in innovation between SOEs and the private-sector, this study serves as a parallel effort to Jia et al. (2019) who investigate the joint effect of public and corporate governance on SOEs’ innovation performance, and Zhou et al. (2017) who concern the balance of the institution and efficiency logics on the comparative advantage of SOEs over privately owned enterprises in innovation performance.

As an important emerging topic in recent years, reviews on tourism and hospitality social entrepreneurship (THSE) by theme remain limited. This paper aims to map the current publication trends, reveal the formation path and identify the future research directions of THSE, providing comprehensive and in-depth insight.

This study presents a systematic review of 89 articles on THSE published in the Web of Science, ScienceDirect and EBSCOhost. It follows grounded theory to classify literature and an expert feedback process to ensure validity.

Research on THSE is mainly found in developing countries and regions. Qualitative methods have been the most popular for researchers. This paper classifies THSE research into four main themes: antecedents, processes, effects and challenges.

This review suggests that social enterprise managers should consider the inclusive business model and adopt empowerment, network construction, market approaches and bricolage to mobilize resources. Policymakers should disseminate relevant laws and regulations to provide a flexible and equal environment. Education and capacity building for people should be strengthened to train future social entrepreneurs.

This review provides an integrated process model by clustering articles to update the holistic picture of THSE. This work identifies research gaps that future research should address.

As majority of studies of employee ownership (EO) take place in developed markets and primarily focus on the impact on firm performance, scholars have recently called for other markets, especially large developing markets to be considered, as well as alternative outcome measures.

Through the examination of the implementation of EO by Chinese listed firms during the period of 2011–2019 with total 3,473 firms and 21,204 observations, the authors provide empirical evidence on the positive effect of EO on firm R&D investment within the rapidly growing Chinese market.

The authors find that the adoption of EO promotes higher level of firm R&D investment. This positive relationship is more evident among small firms, non-state-owned firms and local state-owned-firms, compared with their counterparts. As for the plausible channels, the authors find that adopting EO provides a favorable institutional environment, which attracts more technical staff, improves workplace quality, and encourages job stability and greater employee effort, leading to greater R&D investment.

Though the connection between R&D investment/innovation and firm survival performance has been known for decades, the innovation side of outcomes has been ignored by EO research. Therefore, the authors explore the relationship between EO implementation and firm R&D investment within the rapidly growing Chinese market.

Based on the online brand community, this study focuses on how online brand community experience affects customer voice and discusses the relationship between community engagement and community commitment. Specifically, we examine the mediation effect of community engagement between community experience and customer voice and also the moderation role of community commitment.

The survey data is collected through the online survey of people who participate in the online mobile phone brand community. In total, 369 members of online community users (Huawei and Apple communities) were collected as the research samples. Then the structural equation model analysis was tested through the SPSS 25 and Mplus 7 in a two-stage analysis program.

The results show that (1) customer online brand community experience has a positive impact on customer voice; (2) community engagement mediates the positive relationship between online brand community experience and customer voice; and (3) community commitment plays a moderating role between customer experience and customer voice. Compared with low level customer's community commitment, when customer's community commitment is high, the level of community engagement has a greater mediation effect on the positive relationship between community experience and customer voice.

On the one hand, the model of customer community experience to customer voice built in this paper has not been fully validated. Whether the model can get more robust results needs to be extended to more different community scenarios. On the other hand, this paper is actually cross-sectional data, which cannot strictly reveal the causal relationship. The authors recommend that future research may use other research methods to further reveal its internal mechanism.

This paper shows that customer's community experience has an important impact on customer voice behavior. Among them, information experience and sociability remain as the important factor affecting customer voice behavior, which is quiet important for maintaining brand community and product or service improvement. Brand community managers need to consistently create multiple forms of information presentation and interaction channels to enhance the information and social experience of community members.

First, this paper puts forward a new perspective on customer comments or feedback-customer voice, which provides a solid foundation and reference value for future scholars to explore such important phenomena. Second, the relationship between community experience and customer voice behavior was examined, which enriched the research on community experience and also discovered another positive significance of community experience in community construction. Finally, the authors examine the mediation effect of community engagement on customer voice behavior. Community engagement is one of the important indicators that reflexing community performance, which is of great significance to the brand community.

This paper aims to successfully synthesize three-dimensional spindle-like Au functionalized Co₃O₄-ZnO nanocomposites; characterize the structure, morphology and surface chemical properties of the products; study the effect of Au NPs doping concentration, operating temperature different gas to, sensing properties; and introduce an attractive gas sensor for acetone detection.

Au NPs functionalized Co₃O₄-ZnO nanocomposite was prepared by coprecipitation and impregnation methods; the structure and surface chemical property of the products were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, UV-Vis, BET and XPS. The sensing ability of Au@Co₃O₄-ZnO for acetone and mechanism was analyzed systematically.

The results of gas sensing tests show that the unique component structure, Schottky junction and catalytic effect of Au functionalization make it have low operating temperature, excellent selectivity, high response (10 ppm, 56) and rapid response recovery time.

All the characterization and test data of the prepared materials are provided in this paper and reveals the gas sensing mechanism of the gas sensor.

The detection limit is 2.92–100 ppb acetone. It is promising to be applied in low-power, micro detection and miniature acetone gas sensors.

The gas sensor prepared has a lower working temperature and low detection limit, so it has promising application prospects in low-concentration acetone detection and early warning.

The unique component structure, Schottky junction and catalytic effect of Au functionalization Co₃O₄-ZnO make it have low operating temperature, excellent selectivity and rapid response recovery time.

Mixed products, while presenting new business opportunities, raise considerable concerns among managers and researchers. However, whether mixed products (functionally vs culturally) trigger positive or negative consumer reactions is controversial. Hereby, the present research seeks to resolve the conflicting effects by examining the moderating role of service provider type (humanoid service robot vs human employee) in the impact of mixed products on consumer reactions.

Two studies were conducted to explore the effect of mixed products on consumer reactions. Specifically, study 1 was developed to examine the interplay of mixed products and service provider type in shaping consumers' product attitudes and purchase intentions under an offline shopping scenario; study 2 further provided evidence for the mediating roles of perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment in the above processes under an online-shopping context.

The convergent findings of two studies conclude that, when served by a humanoid service robot (vs human employee), consumers exhibit more positive attitudes and higher purchase intentions toward functionally (vs culturally) mixed products. Furthermore, such effect is driven by the perceived usefulness (vs perceived enjoyment) when served by humanoid robot (vs human employee).

First, this is one of the first studies to conceptualize mixed products as the two-dimensional construct (i.e. functionally mixed and culturally mixed), and the findings sheds light on the mixed products literature. Second, this paper introduces service provider type as the boundary condition for the impact of mixed products on consumers' product attitudes and purchase intentions, which expands the match-up hypothesis and schema theory in service marketing. Third, the current research explores the mediating roles of perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment in the above effects, which could make significant contribution to the motivation theory.

This paper aims to explore the damage mechanism of a lubricating film on the worn surface of solid self-lubricating composites under different loads.

By comparing the actual stress with the strength, it is possible to determine the approximate wear state of the lubricating film. To prove the validity of the mathematical model that can predict the initiation of micro cracks or even the failure of the lubricating film, M50-5 Wt.% Ag self-lubricating composites (MA) was prepared. Tribological tests of the composites against Si₃N₄ ceramic balls were conducted at room temperature from 2 to 8 N. The electron probe microanalysis images of the lubricating film verify the wear state of the lubricating film.

The study found that the back edge of the contact area is the most vulnerable to destruction. The tensile stress and the equivalent shear stress have a positive correlation with load and friction coefficient. When the load is 4 N, an intact lubricating film covers the worn surface because the tensile stress and the equivalent shear stress are below the tensile strength and the shear strength, respectively; under other working conditions, the lubricating film is destroyed.

This paper has certain theoretical guidance for the study of tribological properties of solid self-lubricating composites. Moreover, this mathematical model is appropriate to be applied for the other composites.

With the development of the modern technology and aerospace industry, the noise pollution is remarkably affecting people’s daily life and has been become a serious issue. Therefore, it is the most important task to develop efficient sound attenuation barriers, especially for the low-frequency audible range. However, low-frequency sound attenuation is usually difficult to achieve for the constraints of the conventional mass-density law of sound transmission. The traditional acoustic materials are reasonably effective at high frequency range. This paper aims to discuss this issue.

Membrane-type local resonant acoustic metamaterial is an ideal low-frequency sound insulation material for its structure is simple and lightweight. In this paper, the finite element method is used to study the low-frequency sound insulation performances of the coupled-membrane type acoustic metamaterial (CMAM). It consists of two identical tensioned circular membranes with fixed boundary. The upper membrane is decorated by a rigid platelet attached to the center. The sublayer membrane is attached with two weights, a central rigid platelet and a concentric ring with inner radius e. The influences of the distribution and number of the attached mass, also asymmetric structure on the acoustic attenuation characteristics of the CMAM, are discussed.

In this paper, the acoustic performance of asymmetric coupled-membrane metamaterial structure is discussed. The influences of mass number, the symmetric and asymmetry structure on the sound insulation performance are analyzed. It is shown that increasing the number of mass attached on membrane, structure exhibits low-frequency and multi-frequency acoustic insulation phenomenon. Compared with the symmetrical structure, asymmetric structure shows the characteristics of lightweight and multi-frequency sound insulation, and the sound insulation performance can be tuned by adjusting the distribution mode and location of mass blocks.

Membrane-type local resonant acoustic metamaterial is an ideal low-frequency sound insulation material for its structure is simple and lightweight. How to effectively broaden the acoustic attenuation band at low frequency is still a problem. But most of researchers focus on symmetric structures. In this study, the asymmetric coupled-membrane acoustic metamaterial structure is examined. It is demonstrated that the asymmetric structure has better sound insulation performances than symmetric structure.

The purpose of this paper is to study the properties of derived grey verhulst prediction model with multiplication transformation and reduce its modeling complexity.

The paper discussed the parameter characteristics of grey derived verhulst model under multiple transformation, and demonstrated its effect on its simulative value and predictive value by investigating the multiple transformation acting on the raw data sequence of this grey model. The parameter characteristics of this model under multiple transformations and its effect of the simulation value and forecasting value are analyzed by studying the properties of multiply transformation of this model.

The research finding shows that the modeling accuracy of derived grey verhulst model is in no relation to multiple transformations.

The above results imply that the data level can be reduced; the process of building derived grey verhulst model can be simplified; but the simulative and predictive accuracy of this model remain unchanged.

The paper succeeds in realising the properties of derived grey verhulst model by using the method of multiplication transformation, which is helpful to understand the modeling mechanism and expand the application range of derived grey verhulst model.