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Strategy.

The case is suitable for upper level undergraduate business and MBA students.

FOTILE, one of the fam ily businesses in Zhejiang, Ch ina, has now become the leading brand in the Ch ina kitchen appliance industry and has successfully entered into the global market. It has gone from a traditional family business in the 1980s to a modern enterprise because of the successful transformation from the first generation (Father: Lixiang Mao) to the second generation (Son: Zhongqun Mao) and the blending of a family business with the modern enterprise system. They both have strong beliefs that family businesses have their own advantages, but they have different ways and strategies of running the business. The case describes the process of how the father and his son worked together designing the strategies to successfully grow FOTILE.

The case is a vehicle for exploring strategies to operate a family business, to successfully develop a sustainability model, to manage a growing company through its entrepreneurial stage, and to merge western business culture with Chinese Confucian culture. It should help students to: explore strategies of managing/leading a family business and transferring successfully the business from one generation to the next; understand the importance of marketing, focusing on overall strategy and sustainability; know how to identify market opportunities, exhibit start-up intent, perform start-up planning, mission development, and feasibility analysis, and acquiring initial resources; and appreciate the close link between culture and strategy.

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This paper forms an e-commerce supply chain that include a manufacturer providing products and an online platform providing service. The reselling platform mode and the agent platform mode are considered through an exploration of the manufacturer Stackelberg (MS), vertical Nash (VN), platform Stackelberg (PS) power structures. The purpose of this paper is to explore the pricing and platform service decisions under different platform selling modes and channel power structures.

Based on the game theory models, this paper investigates the interaction between the manufacturer and the online platform under four different scenarios. The optimal solutions of four models are provided. Through comparison analyses, this paper evaluates the impacts of platform selling mode and channel power structure on the pricing and platform service decisions and the members’ profits.

The manufacturer prefers the MS power structure in any platform mode. The online platform prefers the PS (MS) power structure under a low (high) service cost efficiency in the reselling platform mode, while prefers the PS and VN power structures in the agent platform mode. Moreover, the manufacturer prefers the agent (reselling) platform mode under a low (high) service cost efficiency in any power structure. The online platform prefers the reselling platform mode in the MS and PS power structures, while prefers the reselling (agent) platform mode under a low (high) service cost efficiency in the VN power structures.

The analysis result provides important managerial implications that help the supply chain members develop a better understanding of the selection of the platform selling mode and the effect of the channel power structure in the presence of platform service.

The purpose of the research was to test whether the novel synthesized additive TEAT can be a substitution for the traditional additive ZDDP partly or entirely in mineral oil.

The extreme pressure, antiwear (AW) and friction reducing property of TEAT was examined, the tribological property of the combination of TEAT and ZDDP was also examined. The worn surfaces of the steel balls were observed using a polarizing optical microscope and x‐ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy.

The results show that: TEAT can enhance the P_B value of the base oil obviously; TEAT shows better AW performance than ZDDP in high load and a wide range of concentration, it shows better friction‐reducing performance than ZDDP in high load and all the concentration tested; TEAT alone can provide a better AW and friction reducing property than ZDDP and the combination of TEAT and ZDDP; and the tribochemical reaction occurs between novel compound and metallic surface, generating sulfur containing layer mainly exists in the form of FeS.

These findings indicate that TEAT presents better tribological properties than ZDDP in a wide range of practical conditions. TEAT may be a substitute for ZDDP in the future.

The development of China's solar photovoltaic (PV) industry is in a transition period from pursuing scale and speed to focusing on efficiency and quality. “Smart PV projects” (SPVPs) were proposed by the ministries of the Chinese government in 2018 to encourage intelligent upgrading and to fill the gaps in traditional PV projects. However, only a small number of PV enterprises are in progress, and only a few SPVPs have been built. The intelligence level of China's PV projects needs to be improved. The purpose of this study is to analyze the willingness of the main participants to be involved in the intelligent upgrading of PV projects by establishing an evolutionary game model that includes three parties.

A tripartite evolutionary game model is constructed that considers PV enterprises, project owners and the government. The evolutionary stability strategies of each party and the corresponding stable conditions are obtained. The parameters that affect the decision behaviors are also analyzed.

The four stages of the intelligent upgrade of PV projects and the effects of the government subsidy strategies are examined. At different stages, adopting different measures to promote cooperation among the three parties involved is necessary. Government subsidies should be provided to PV enterprises during the initial stage and should be biased toward project owners during the intermediate stage. During the peak stage, PV enterprises constantly need to decrease project costs and improve quality and service, thus helping project owners reduce their initial investments and obtain additional gains. The government's reputation drives it to continually adopt incentive strategies.

This research focuses on the interactions among the three parties. Based on evolutionary game analysis, several conditions that facilitate the intelligent upgrading of PV projects are illustrated. Implications for different developing stages are proposed from the perspectives of each party for the decision-makers of SPVPs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of AlN nucleation thickness in reducing the threading dislocations density in AlN layer grown on sapphire substrate.

In this work, the effect of the nucleation thickness at 5 nm, 10 nm and 20 nm on reducing the dislocation density in the overgrown AlN layer by metal organic chemical vapor deposition was discussed. The AlN layer without the nucleation layer was also included in this study for comparison.

By inserting the 10 nm thick nucleation layer, the density of the dislocation in the AlN layer can be as low as 9.0 × 10⁸ cm⁻². The surface of the AlN layer with that nucleation layer was smoother than its counterparts.

This manuscript discussed the influence of nucleation thickness and its possible mechanism in reducing dislocations density in the AlN layer on sapphire. The authors believe that the finding will be of interest to the readers of this journal, in particular those who are working on the area of AlN.