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This paper aims to investigate the thermal characteristics of the clutch hydraulic system under various oil flow conditions. Increasing the oil flow is one of the most important approaches to reduce the clutch temperature. However, the effect of the oil flow on the clutch temperature remains to be explored.

The thermal resistance network model and the lumped parameter method are used to study the thermal characteristics of the clutch hydraulic system. The predicted temperature variations of the clutch and the oil are compared with experimental data.

Results demonstrate that the larger the friction power is, the higher the temperatures of the clutch and the oil are. However, the temperature growth rates of the clutch and oil present different trends: the former decreases gradually and the latter increases constantly. Additionally, increasing the oil flow within a certain range gives rise to the decrease of clutch temperature and the increase of oil temperature; nevertheless, their variation trends are gradually weakening. When the oil flow is large enough, it brings a slight effect on the clutch temperature rise.

This paper extends the knowledge into the oil flow supply of the clutch hydraulic system. The conclusions can provide a theoretical guidance for the oil management of the transmission system. Additionally, the thermal resistance network model is also effective and efficient for other hydraulic equipment to predict the temperature variation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the following research question in partner selection decisions in business-to-business strategic partnerships/collaborations literature: How do inertia and uncertainty affect partner selection? Explicitly, the paper analyzes how inertia of previous alliance selection routines and uncertainty of entire market movement shape firms’ preferences regarding exploratory partner selection (i.e. selecting new partners who never collaborate with the focal firm).

Grounded on inter-firm partnerships, partner selection and network theory literature, the study empirically tests a fine-grained sample of 511 open-end funds initiated by 61 fund management firms in China. To do so, it runs Tobit regression for main analysis and applies a variety of sensitivity analyses to check the robustness.

Results show that inertia in previous partner selection has a negative effect on exploration. Importantly, these inertial forces impact domestic firms but not international firms. Market uncertainty also affects exploratory partner selection: short-term market uncertainty encourages exploration, whereas long-term uncertainty inhibits it. These effects also depend on firms’ type: long-term market uncertainty has a negative effect on exploration for international firms but not for domestic firms. Both types of firms exhibit a stronger tendency toward exploration when they encounter short-term uncertainty. However, this inclination is stronger in international firms.

Earlier research has examined how inertia affects exploitation but largely overlooked its effect on exploration. A critical examination of firm and environment level factors provides a deeper understanding of why and when firms have inconsistent preferences for specific partner selection strategies. Thus, this study offers a unique perspective for understanding firms’ exploratory partner selection by focusing on two important characteristics of focal firms: one internal (inertia) and one external (market uncertainty) in nature.

Nested within the industrial organization and corporate finance literature, this paper aims to analyze the market for cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the world economy, developed economies, developing economies and transition economies. As multinational companies hold a large proportion of cash reserves and expand into diverse geographic markets, the paper aims to examine market patterns of high-valuation cross-border acquisition transactions. Specifically, it proposes a framework explaining the influential factors, motives and effects of high-valuation transactions by discussing some case evidences.

Drawing upon inductive and deductive logic, the paper discusses market trends and market patterns of cross-border M&A transactions by triangulating archival data analyses and accessible M&A literature. Some case examples are derived from news archive and official source sites. Regarding sample period, it considers the past two decades 1994-2013 to show market trends in various institutional settings and the past decade 2004-2013 to present market patterns of 62 high-valuation cross-border deals.

The transaction analysis indicates four cycles in the market trend, namely, growing period (1994-2000); declining, but promising period (2001-2006); financial crisis period (2007-2008); and recovering, but reversing period (2009-2013). A number of acquisitions undertaken by firms from emerging economies around the 2007-2008 global financial crisis have exemplified geographic (product) diversification as a primary motive of firm’s global strategy. In particular, a large proportion of sample high-valuation deals are spotted in developed economies such as the USA and the UK. In case of industry pattern, a good number of high-valuation deals are noticed in banking and finance, telecommunications and oil and gas sector.

Although several scholars have examined cross-border acquisitions in economics, corporate finance, strategy and international business literature, there is hardly any study that analyzes high-profile cross-border M&A deals. An exclusive market analysis of high-valuation international deals is important for several reasons. This paper fills this knowledge gap by showing both market trends and market patterns of cross-border M&A transactions. Importantly, to date, this paper is the first to propose a framework explaining the influential factors, motives and effects of high-valuation M&A transactions.

As a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) extension tool, cross-evaluation method was developed to evaluate Decision Making Units’ (DMUs) performances in a competitive situation with limited demand. It identifies DMUs with best performances and rank them by applying peer evaluation mode instead of self-evaluation mode. However, it has limitations in efficiency improvement. That is, it fails to give direct information on how to improve efficiencies of the inefficient DMUs. In this chapter, we propose an alternative way to apply cross-evaluation in efficiency improvement. First, an appropriate and feasible suggestion is proposed to minimize the variation between the weights of a DMU's own optimal Charnes-Cooper-Rhodes (CCR) efficiency and the weights guaranteeing its cross-efficiency score. We exploit several transformations to convert nonlinear programming into a linear one. As a result, an overall optimal set of the weights is obtained, which precisely illustrate the preferences of decision makers and exact characteristics of production process of the evaluated DMU. A further discussion is advanced to examine the existence of non-uniqueness of the weights and to differentiate various sets of the optimal weights by suggesting a unique feasible set of multipliers to best represent the alternative weights selection criterion. Moreover, we develop several models to reallocate the inputs and outputs of inefficient DMUs with minimum amelioration as well as consideration of the preference of decision makers. Finally, we apply our models to evaluate competitive advantages of Chinese cities.

The paper aims to address the issue of Web service providers facing a major issue of estimating the potential effects of changing a Web service to other services, especially in large ecosystems of Web services which have become more common nowadays. Web service providers make constant changes to their Web services to meet the ever-changing business requirements.

The paper proposes an approach to predict change impact by mining a version history of a Web service ecosystem. The proposed approach extracts patterns of Web services that have been changed together from the version history by using association rule data mining techniques. The approach then uses this knowledge of co-changed patterns for predicting the impact of future changes based on the assumption that Web services which have been changed together frequently in the past will likely be changed together in future.

An empirical validation based on the Amazon’s ecosystem of 46 Web services indicates the effectiveness of the proposed approach. After an initial change, the proposed approach can correctly predict up to 25 per cent of further Web services to be changed with the precision of up to 82 per cent.

Traditional approaches to predict change impact in Web services tend to rely on having a dependency graph between Web services. However, in practice, building and maintaining inter-service dependencies that capture the precise semantics and behaviours of the Web services are challenging and costly. The proposed approach offers a novel alternative which only requires mining the existing version history of Web services.

The purpose of this paper is to find how leader humility affects employees’ constructive voice behavior toward supervisor (speaking up) and coworkers (speaking out) from an identification-based perspective, and seeks to verify the effectiveness of leader humility in the Chinese context.

Data were collected from 325 employees in four Chinese companies with two phases. In the first phase, the participants were asked to report the leader humility, their identification of their relations with the supervisor, and their identification with their organization. In the second phase, they were asked to report their voice behaviors toward their supervisors and coworkers.

The results indicate that leader humility strongly predicts both employees’ voice behaviors of speaking up and speaking out. Results further suggest that relational identification with the supervisor explains why leader humility promotes employees speaking up, while organizational identification explains why leader humility promotes employees speaking up and speaking out.

Managers with humility can successfully shape employees’ relational and organizational identifications, which in turn encourage their voice behaviors toward supervisors and coworkers. Hence, behaving humbly in working places could be an effective way for managers to promote organizational cohesion and creativity.

Although leader humility attracts much attention in both academia and practice, researchers have been primarily focusing on conceptual development and measurement issues, and empirical studies are rare. This is the first research connecting leader humility and employee proactive behaviors. Moreover, it takes an in-depth analysis of the constructive voice behaviors by differentiating them based on their targets.

Research about the benefit of voice to organizations generally assumes that leaders acknowledge or act upon employees’ ideas when they are voiced, but is it always the case? Drawing on social persuasion theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore what factors shape the effectiveness of employee voice by integrating message, receiver and source characteristics of employee voice into one theoretical model. Specifically, this paper investigates the influence of different types of voice on leader receptivity, and further examines whether the effectiveness of employee voice might be contingent on authentic leadership and employee expertise.

Data were collected from 353 matched employee–supervisor pairs in a two-phase field study. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationships among the study variables.

Results indicate that leaders respond more receptively to promotive voice than prohibitive voice. Furthermore, leader receptivity is contingent on authentic leadership and employee expertise. The relationship between promotive voice and leader receptivity is more pronounced when employee expertise or authentic leadership is high rather than low; the relationship between prohibitive voice and leader receptivity is significant only when authentic leadership or employee expertise is high.

This research offers a more holistic explanation for understanding the effectiveness of voice behavior. Specifically, these findings emphasize the important role of voice content in determining managerial response, and underscore the value of receiver and source characteristics in shaping the relationship between voice and leader receptivity.

Previous studies have discussed individual effects that certain agritourism activities have on visitor response while ignoring interaction effects. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to discuss both the individual and interaction effects of agritourism activities on tourist revisit intention.

This study classified agritourism activities into four categories and collected 883 valid samples. Logistic regression was then applied to test the influence of agritourism activities on tourist revisit intention.

Based on the results of the statistical analysis, it was found that those agritourism activities, which required mutual cooperation such as do-it-yourself (DIY), animal interaction/feeding and fruit and vegetable picking, enhanced tourist revisit intention. Furthermore, the agritourism groups participating in activities with or without children did not have consistent revisit intentions regarding animal feeding/interaction activities. In particular, this study found that willingness to revisit for tourists with children was influenced by animal feeding/interaction, but not for tourists without children.

This study demonstrates that not all agritourism activities enhance revisit intention. For this reason, agritourism businesses should consider redesigning their activities related to visitor and animal interactions as increasing conscientiousness regarding animal welfare, especially with regard to animal abuse. Additionally, those activities focused on education and ecology are not as appreciated by tourists as they may have been previously assumed between different groups.

The findings of this study reveal that if the types of agritourism activities could fulfill visitors' expectations and desires they are more likely to have a satisfying experience. The authors consider some of these notions to be a kind of unrealistic fantasy regarding agritourism and the kind of activities involved therein. This kind of fantasy is likely formed by visitors 2019 past experiences and culture. As a result, the authors conclude that agritourism activities focused on the education of plants and ecology do not achieve the truly preferred aim of better interaction between people.

农业观光：体验设计、活动及再游意愿摘要

先前研究讨论农业观光活动的各别效果对游客反应的影响, 却忽略了交互作用。因此, 本研究目的为讨论农业观光活动的各别及交互效果对游客再游意愿的影响。

本研究将农业观光活动分为四类并收集883份有效问卷, 应用逻辑回归以检测农业观光活动对游客再游意愿的影响。

根据统计分析结果, 本研究发现农业观光活动需要互助合作, 例如自己动手作、动物互动喂食, 以及采摘蔬果等活动, 都会提升游客的再游意愿。更进一步的, 农业观光族群分为与孩童同行及未与孩童同行二类时, 动物喂食互动活动对其再游意愿的影响并不相同。更特别的是, 本研究发现游客与孩童同行时, 其再游意愿会受到动物喂食互动的影响；但是, 游客并未与孩童同行时则不会。

本研究证实了并非所有的农业观光活动都能提升再游意图。为此, 农业观光企业应考虑重新设计其游客与动物互动的观光活动, 例如增加对动物福祉的责任心, 特别是虐待动物的问题。另外, 关注在教育及生态的农业观光活动在先前区分的不同族群里都不受到青睐。

本研究发现显示了假若农业观光类型必须符合游客的预期及渴望, 游客才能感到满意的体验。作者认为游客对参与的某些观光活动之预想是一种不切实际的想像, 而这类想像是来自游客先前的经验及文化。因此, 作者综述关注植物及生态类的农业观光活动并不能达到人际间互动的目的。

Agroturismo: diseño de experiencia, actividades e intención de volver a visitor

Estudios anteriores han tratado los efectos individuales que tienen algunas actividades agroturísticas sobre la respuesta del visitante ignorando los efectos de interacción. Por eso, el objetivo de este estudio es tratar conjuntamente los efectos individuales y de interacción de las actividades agroturísticas sobre la intención de volver a visitar del turista.

Este estudio clasificó las actividades agroturísticas en cuatro categorías y recopiló 883 muestras válidas. A continuación, se aplicó la regresión logística para poner a prueba la influencia de las actividades agroturísticas sobre la intención de volver a visitar del turista.

Sobre la base de los resultados del análisis de estadística, se mostró que las actividades agroturísticas que requieren cooperación mutua, como el bricolaje, la interacción con animales o nutrición de ellos, así como la recogida de frutas y verduras aumentaron la intención de volver a visitar del turista. Asimismo, los grupos de agroturismo que participaron en actividades con o sin niños no tienen intenciones de volver a visitar consistentes a propósito de las actividades que implican interacción con animales o nutrición de ellos. En particular, este estudio desveló que la voluntad de volver para los turistas con niños está influenciada por las interacciones con animales o nutrición de ellos, mas no para los turistas sin niños.

Esta investigación demuestra que no todas las actividades agroturísticas fomentan la intención de volver a visitar. Por esta razón, las empresas de agroturismo deberían considerar volver a diseñar sus actividades en relación al visitante e interacciones con animales con escrupulosidad acerca del bienestar animal, especialmente con respeto al abuso animal. Además, estas actividades con enfoque sobre la educación y la ecología no son tan apreciadas por los turistas como muchos han ido asumiendo desde diferentes grupos.

Los resultados de este estudio muestran que si los tipos de actividades agroturísticas consiguen llenar las expectativas y los deseos de los visitantes, son mucho más propensos a tener una experiencia satisfactoria. Consideramos ciertas de estas nociones como fantasías poco realistas por lo que se refiere al agroturismo y al tipo de actividades implicadas en aquel. Este tipo de fantasías está probablemente formado por las experiencias pasadas y la cultura de los visitantes. Como resultado, concluimos que las actividades agroturísticas con foco en la educación sobre plantas y ecología no consiguen el verdadero objetivo preferido que es una mejor interacción con la gente.

Given that several publicly announced international merger and acquisition deals have been abandoned in recent years, the purpose of this paper is to present a synthesis of influential articles that examine organizational characteristics of cross-border acquisition transactions. The synthesis is framed through general traits and resources, learning and prior acquisition experience, and top-level management and governance attributes. Specifically, the paper conceptualizes key organizational attributes influencing the propensity of cross-border negotiations, and the most common characteristics and post-deal effects by illustrating several case examples from around the world.

Owing to fairness and integrity principles of the literature survey studies, the paper adopts an exploratory review design to present a synthesis of several influential articles published in strategy, international business and corporate finance journals. Since case method and storytelling are the best qualitative approaches to conceptualizing extant theoretical contributions, a number of case examples—successful, delayed and abandoned—from around the world have been discussed by leveraging the case information from archival sources.

Drawing on resource-based view, organizational learning, upper echelons and agency theory perspectives, the paper underscores three observations. First, organizational characteristics such as firm age, firm size, ownership structure, slack resources, marketing resources, technological intensity, export intensity and business group affiliation have different impacts on the propensity of publicly announced cross-border deals. Second, firm’s prior acquisition experience and firm’s acquisition experience in the target country have positive or moderating effects on the success of a cross-border merger. Third, top-level management characteristics such as CEO foreign nationality and CEO international career experience, and governance characteristics such as board size, the number of independent directors and directors with overseas experience, have mixed effects on the incidence of cross-border acquisitions.

The paper puts forth several recommendations for top-level managers participating in cross-border acquisition negotiations, such as learning from peers in the same industry, learning from predecessors in the target country and learning from failure negotiations in the same industry and other industries.

Nested within the organizational, international business strategy and corporate finance literature, the paper presents a synthesis of influential publications that study organizational characteristics affecting the propensity of cross-border acquisitions. The cases discussed in this paper are unique examples from around the world.

The purpose of this paper was the investigation of corrosion behaviour of Ni-6Al-10Cu-11Fe-15Cr alloy, as a candidate material for inert anodes in aluminium electrolysis industries.

The samples were prepared by casting, and then were oxidized at 1,000°C for 30, 70 and 100 hours, respectively. To determine corrosion resistant of the samples, they were exposed to molten cryolite at 930°C for 70 hours. Then the surface layers were studied.

Results showed that by extension of corrosion time, thickness of oxide layers increases. In addition, it was found that Al2O3 and Cr2O3 are the major oxide compounds that appear on the surface of the sample.

In this paper, the Ni-6Al-10Cu-11Fe-15Cr nickel base alloy has been selected to study its corrosion behaviour in molten cryolite as a candidate for inert anodes. It was found out that by addition Al and Cr into the alloy composition, due to formation of Al2O3 and Cr2O3 following oxidation, the substrate was protected from corrosion attacks.