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Comparative opinions widely exist in online reviews as a common way of expressing consumers’ ideas or preferences toward certain products. Such opinion-rich texts are key proxies for detecting product competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to set up a model for competitiveness analysis by identifying comparative relations from online reviews for restaurants based on both pattern matching and machine learning.

The authors define the sub-category of comparative sentences according to Chinese linguistics. Classification rules are set up for each type of comparative relations through class sequence rule. To improve the accuracy of classification, a comparative entity dictionary is then introduced for further identifying comparative sentences. Finally, the authors collect reviews for restaurants from Dianping.com to conduct experiments for testing the proposed model.

The experiments show that the proposed method outperforms the baseline methods in terms of precision in identifying comparative sentences. On the basis of such comparison-rich sentences, product features and comparative relations are extracted for sentiment analysis, and sentimental score is assigned to each comparative relation to facilitate competitiveness analysis.

Only the explicit comparative relations are discussed, neglecting the implicit ones. Besides that, the study is grounded in the assumption that all features are homogeneous. In some cases, however, the weights to different aspects are not of the same importance to market.

On the basis of comparative relation mining, product features and comparative opinions are extracted for competitiveness analysis, which is of interest to businesses for finding weakness or strength of products, as well as to consumers for making better purchase decisions.

Comparative relation mining could be possibly applied in social media for identifying relations among users or products, and ranking users or products, as well as helping companies target and track competitors to enhance competitiveness.

The authors propose a research framework for restaurant competitiveness analysis by mining comparative relations from online consumer reviews. The results would be able to differentiate one restaurant from another in some aspects of interest to consumers, and reveal the changes in these differences over time.

Despite growing evidence that large UK organisations are increasingly incorporating the environment into corporate strategy, there continues to be considerable scepticism as to whether this is leading to any meaningful action to reduce industry’s environmental impact. One possible explanation is the existence of a “gap” between policy formulation and implementation, and the authors suggest that this may be due to a failure on the part of business to ensure congruence between organisational context, values and capability. Utilising data drawn from a recent survey of corporate environmental policies and practices, the authors explore the interaction of external and internal factors with regard to policy development, and search for evidence of congruence. They conclude that very often policy formulation takes little consideration of the organisation’s capability to implement environmental strategies, and suggest that until this question is taken seriously, a gulf will always exist between what companies aim to do, and what they actually achieve.

Taking issue with the predominance of reviews of James March’s writings that focus on his technical contributions to organizational studies, this study aims to emphasize the central significance and contemporary relevance of his critical reflections on the meaning of life and work in modern organizations.

The paper uses a novel framework illustrated by extensive original quotations for capturing and making more accessible March’s profound contribution to organization studies. His work on organizational behaviour and decision-making is viewed as identifying and grappling with three key paradoxes of modernity: of rationality, performance and meaning. His prescriptions on how to handle and address these paradoxes are explored through a focus on his reflections on the poetry of leadership.

Whilst March himself emphasized that not all of his insights can be captured in an article level overview, March, his collaborator Olsen and others who worked with and studied under him have confirmed the accuracy of the review and the value of the enterprise.

Capturing March’s advocacy of sensible foolishness and playful seriousness in the face of ambiguity, uncertainty and contestation hopefully contribute to enhancing practitioners’ “lightness of being” in coping with and finding meaning in challenging environments.

Through the range of ideas covered, the framework used and the extensive use of March’s own worlds, the study, hopefully, communicates the depth and richness of March’s humanitarian enterprise and the “playfully serious spirit” that he advocates and exemplifies – in a way that is often omitted from narrower, more technical and somewhat dry treatments of his work.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how pregnant women position themselves in the relationship with their immediate leader as a result of their pregnancy. Secondly, this study explores what kind of discourses pregnant followers' produce and use when they represent the reasons why the relationship with their leader developed the way it did during their pregnancy.

In total, 40 interviews were carried out among 20 working women, adopting a discursive approach in data analysis while focusing on their representations about their periods of pregnancy both during and after the experience.

Women positioned themselves as “accepted” or “dismissed” in the relationship with their leader due to their pregnancy. The study identifies three different discourses relating to the positioning, namely “similarity”, “expectations”, and “rooting deeper”.

There is a lack of research exploring the explanations behind the nature of leader‐follower relationships in the context of the followers' pregnancies. Furthermore, the discursive approach adopted in this study is less used within studies concerning relationships between leaders and followers, and studies concerning pregnant working women.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors driving the adoption of “green innovations” notably green food and certified organic food and to examine the attitudes of Chinese consumers towards genetically modified food.

A mixed methods approach was used. A total of 402 consumers responded to a structured questionnaire and 58 consumers responded to a survey designed to gather qualitative data. Data analysis involved content analysis, the probit model, frequency distributions and the t-test for two unrelated means.

This study shows that affluent, middle class Chinese citizens are opting out of the conventional food market. There is a gender divide, with men showing a preference for green food and females showing a preference for certified organic food. Certified food purchase is associated with demographic variables, such as income, education, age, gender, presence of young children, household size, living in developed cities and overseas experience. A follow-up study shows that the absence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs ) motivates the purchase of organic food. Overall, the results suggest that Chinese consumers are turning towards certified food for health reasons and are sceptical about genetic modification (GM) food.

This paper provides some insights into how Chinese consumers view innovations in the food sector. The study found that almost half of the sample is unaware that the concept of green food is different to that of organic food. The priority for the certified organic industry is to address this lack of knowledge and clearly explain what certified organic food is and how it differs from green food. Small-scale farmers could use consumer aversion to GMOs as a promotional tool. The ultimate goal of this paper is to help marketers better promote certified organic food, but inferences can be drawn in terms of Chinese sustainable consumption. Negative attitudes towards genetically modified foods exist due to human health concerns. Hence, Chinese policy makers need to confront these perceptions, real or perceived, if they wish to maintain public trust in biotechnology.

Based on the qualitative data, stressing the GM-free status is likely to enhance sales since there appears to be a segment of consumers that distrusts GM technology.

The contribution of this research lies in examining what drives the adoption of “green innovations”, notably green food and certified organic food in China. This research is important given that little is known about what Chinese consumers think of, and how they react to, innovations in the agro-food value chain.

Recent times are witness to the business — environment debate becoming more frequent and also tempered with a greater sense of urgency. The present article begins by examining the business—environment interdependence and reasons for corporate environmentalism. Since environmental challenges can significantly alter the competitive context of organisations, they demand a strategic response from firms. The basic premise of the article is to present an analytical review of existing literature on Corporate Environmental Strategy (CES) in order to understand the range of environmental strategies available to organisations, examine the factors that influence the choice of a firm's green strategies and, advocate the outcomes of a well‐designed CES. Based on the review, the article goes on to suggest a theoretical framework for CES. The framework provides a useful representation of relationships between the dominant paradigm of the firm, factors influencing CES, the CES itself and its outcomes for the organization. It is hoped that the suggested relationships will help set an agenda for empirical research and also help firms in developing a competitive Environmental Strategy.

This paper aims to examine the influence of interactive social media marketing communications on teenagers’ cognitive, affective and behavioral attitude components in South Africa. The study also considers the impact of a number of additional factors such as usage (access, length of usage, log-on frequency, log-on duration and profile update incidence) and demographic (gender, age and population group) variables on young consumers’ attitudes toward social media marketing communications.

A survey was used via three self-administered questionnaires, which were distributed to over 13,000 learners in the age range of 13-18 years (Generation Z cohort) at colleges and high schools in South Africa. A generalized linear model was used for statistical data analysis.

The study ascertained that social media marketing communications had a positive on each attitude component among adolescents, but on a declining scale, which correlates to the purchase funnel. The results also revealed that teenagers who used social media for long time periods; updated their profiles frequently and were from the Colored and Black population groups, displayed the most favorable attitudinal responses to social media marketing communications.

Social media was collectively analyzed and did not consider the number of different social media types, which could be examined individually. This investigation only considered the Generation Z cohort, but other cohorts to attitudes toward social media marketing communications could also be assessed.

Companies and their brands should consider using and/or adapting their strategies based on the declining impact of social media marketing communications on the hierarchical attitude stages among young consumers and the divergent influence on usage and demographic variables when targeting the lucrative and technologically advanced, but capricious, Generation Z consumers.

This research established that social media marketing communications had a favorable influence on cognitive, affective and behavioral attitude components among young consumers, but on a declining scale, which is in congruence with the purchase funnel model. This investigation also makes an important contribution to attitudinal research in developing countries, where there is a lack of research in social media marketing communications.

The purpose of this paper is to determine a set of routes for multiple salesmen starting at and turning back to the home depots. The objective of the algorithm is to be efficient and to minimize the total cost of all salesmen.

The new method first generates a SModel, then deletes all redundant edges in the model and reorganizes isolated paths. According to the given statistics, about 16.5 percent of the nodes have a degree greater than 2 in the SModel, which means that there must be redundant edges in the model. The authors refer to those edges connected to nodes with a degree greater than 2 as redundant candidate edges. By deleting redundant edges, the original graph is simplified to a great extent, then related operation is adopted to generate expected result.

A simple model is used to simplify the original graphs by deleting redundant edges. Based on the simplified results, two strategies are proposed to determine primal edges linking with home depot. Simulations are carried out to illustrate the performance of the proposed method.

Although new method can efficiently solve the variance of multiple traveling salesmen problem (MTSP) with multiple salesmen open path, it does not consider the workload balance. To a great extent, the total course time of this variance of MTSP is decided by the last achieved salesman's time cost.

This method can be used to simulate many everyday applications such as transportation logistics, job planning, vehicle scheduling, and so on. The main applications include print press scheduling, crew scheduling, school bus routing, mission planning, and the design of global navigation satellite surveying system networks. Moreover, it can be used to solve the problem of multiple traveling robots, and can be considered as a relaxation of the vehicle routing problem (VRP) with the capacity restrictions removed.

This paper proposes a new method to solve a heterogeneous MTSP with multiple depots and open paths. A simple model (SModel) is introduced to implement it. The model can transform a complicated graph into a simplified one. Based on the model, the subsequent workings of the new method involve merely linking paths together. Based on SModel, the greatest advantage of the new method is that it can find a global solution efficiently.

Global sourcing can bring many benefits to organisations, but it can also expose them to a number of risks. The purpose of this study is to understand how managers assess global sourcing risks across the entire supply chain and what actions they take to mitigate those risks.

A multiple case study approach was used, involving 15 cases in seven different industries. Each case consisted of interviews with managers directly involved in the global sourcing decision, supported by documentary evidence. A cross‐case analysis was conducted to analyse patterns across different industries.

The study revealed that most companies do not have a structured supply chain risk management and mitigation system. Nevertheless they do use a number of informal approaches to cope with risk. The paper proposes that a multidisciplinary approach is required when dealing with global sourcing risks. It presents a classification of risks covering four categories: supply risk, process and control risks, environmental and sustainability risks, and demand risks.

The paper addresses a research gap concerning managers' approaches to assessing and mitigating supply chain risk in a global context. In this context, this study proposes a new categorisation for global sourcing risks and offers a characterisation of global sourcing risk mitigation strategies applicable to different industries.

Chinese began to arrive in Florida at the turn of the 20th century. Currently there are more than fifty thousand Chinese living in Florida. This article provides information resources for scholars and students of Chinese studies, and for people interested in the history of Chinese Americans and Southeast regional studies. It consists of archive papers, books, journal and newspaper articles and Internet resources containing information on Florida and China. The list is arranged by authors’ last names when available.