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Disruptive technologies often disrupt the careers of middle-skilled workers. The purpose of this paper is to investigate career transition strategies of middle-skilled workers that partially continue or expand their careers under the condition of disruptive technologies.

This paper established a conceptual framework of career transition strategies for middle-skilled workers by integrating the existing studies of disruptive technologies, technological trajectory transition, boundaryless and protean careers, and careers as repositories of knowledge.

The authors proposed three types of career transition strategies to partially prolong middle-skilled workers’ careers, namely, industry-oriented transition strategy which refers to a transfer to other occupations in the original industry, technology-oriented transition strategy which refers to a transfer to occupations with original technical skills in other industries, and comprehensive transition strategy which refers to a transfer to other occupations in the related industries. Further, this paper discusses the external conditions and individual competencies for each career transition strategy, and timing for implementing a career transition strategy from the perspective of the technology life cycle.

This paper focused on sustainable careers of middle-skilled workers under the condition of disruptive technologies, which received very little attention from the current literature. The findings also suggested for middle-skilled workers to develop a sustainable or long-term career in the current era of many disruptive technologies. The findings may also imply on how firms and government should contribute to help workers on handling scenarios of technological disruption.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Middle-skilled workers are the ones most likely to suffer due to disruptive technologies. This briefing considers the impact of disruptive technology, and looks at possible strategies for helping those workers find new employment.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Ethical decision making, business ethics.

This case is applicable to MBA, EDP and EMBA courses.

TOREAD, a professional provider of outdoor equipment in China, started in business by producing and selling tents. To meet market demand, TOREAD expanded its product line which ranges from outdoor durable tent products to “pan-outdoor” products including footwear and clothing. During the critical expansion phase, TOREAD was challenged by a quality problem in a batch of outsourced sandals that had been manufactured by a contracted supplier. By researching different options and going through an ethical decision making process, TOREAD made the choice of destroying all “problem sandals”. Since then, TOREAD has focused development on product quality improvement and product innovation to establish a sustainable brand image and generate social benefits. TOREAD's decision making in the critical development phase helped it to become the leader in the outdoor product industry in China.

This case may be used for courses such as business ethics and strategy. By learning this case, students can understand the process of making ethical decisions when facing moral dilemmas among corporate decision makers, employees and relevant interested parties, and learn how to make strategic decisions to balance company profit growth and social benefits in critical development phases.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Using classic literary theory pertaining to conflicts, this study aims to investigate the links of various types of conflicts and brand attitudes, in the context of brand stories for search and experience product types.

The authors used a survey of university students to test this study’s hypotheses.

The results reveal significant main effects of four conflict reversal stories on brand attitudes. The influences of man-against-self, man-against-man and man-against-society conflicts on brand attitude are greater for experience than for search products. In contrast, the influence of man-against-nature conflict is higher for search than for experience products.

To generalize the results, this study should be replicated using more heterogeneous populations, setting the study in other cultures, testing actual brands and using a wider range of products.

The findings provide insights for marketers seeking to use appropriate conflicts in their brand stories to enhance customers’ brand attitudes.

Extant research does not address the relationship between different types of conflicts and customer attitudes, and the current study bridges this research gap.

The purpose of this paper is to understand urban sculpture venues that emerged in the recent decade and their connections to the on-going entrepreneurial urban policies and urban strategies in Shanghai. How does this phenomenon relate to Shanghai’s urban policies? How does urban sculpture development reflect the nature and characteristics of the urban sculpture authority?

Case study is the major research method used to achieve an in-depth understanding of the developmental processes, mechanisms and characteristics of urban sculpture projects. Three cases were selected and studied using purposeful sampling methods, including Duolun Road Sculpture Project (2002), the Shanghai International Sculpture Center (2006) and the Jing’an Sculpture Park (2009).

A twofold main argument is established in this paper. Urban sculpture venues emerged as a new type of instrument to advance urban entrepreneurial policies; the use of this instrument, however, also involves politics in that art politically transforms the features and functions of open spaces in Shanghai.

Although scholarly interest in exploring cultural development through urban planning in the Chinese context is evident, urban sculpture planning (termed as “urban sculpture” in the Chinese ideological context) in Chinese metropolitan cities, in particular, is an unexplored topic, and thus leaves a gap in the knowledge. This paper introduces a new conceptual model, i.e., “aesthetic regime,” to describe the role of the urban sculpture authority in the development of the urban sculpture scene. It looks at the artistic representation of artworks, design of the sculpture venues, functionality of the artworks and social mechanisms for the actualization of these projects. An evolutional trend of the three sites across the decade is concerned.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the determinants of the retail space rent in Shanghai.

Hedonic model and spatial regression models are used in the paper. The problem of spatial autocorrelation is tested by Moran's I statistics, and the root mean square error (RMSE) test is performed to find out the best model.

The significant explaining variables are the age, the area of retail space, the distance to the Jing An CBD centre, the type of the retail and the district of the property. A new classification of district in retail research context is suggested in this paper, and it is proved to be better than the districts set up by government to explain the retail rent variation.

This paper presents the first empirical study about the retail rental market in Shanghai. The research helps retail property investors and retail tenants deepen their understanding of the retail market in Shanghai. Spatial econometrics techniques are first introduced into the empirical retail rent research to produce a more precise estimation.

Using Shanghai as an example, the purpose of this paper is to perform grade evaluation and zoning for different land use spaces by GIS by identifying the major restrictive factors in current socio-economic development.

Based on short plate theory, 11 major restrictive indicators that will restrict socio-economic development in Shanghai are identified, and urban land is divided into four subspaces and the restrictive grade evaluation of urban land subspace is achieved with GIS spatial analysis; then, land development zoning is processed according to the results of the evaluation.

In all, 11 major restrictive indicators that will restrict socio-economic development in Shanghai are identified. The restrictive grades of the agricultural production, urban construction and ecological protection subspaces are mainly common, weak and weaker, and the relatively strong restrictive grade of industrial development subspace is mainly concentrated in the more developed industrial districts (counties). The areas of the common and good regions of constructive development and ecological development zones account for 87.4 and 98.3 per cent of each total area, respectively, and urban land still has significant development potential in Shanghai.

This paper proposes various urban land space evaluations and zoning strategies based on restrictive indicators and perspectives, enriching the ideas and methods of urban land use evaluation.

To offer a realistic foundation for urban cultural construction planning, we want to investigate the distribution features of Shanghai's cultural functional elements and examine the distribution patterns in urban space.

In this research, we managed to gather POI geographic data, refined and categorized them to integrate eight categories of cultural functional elements, observed the density and agglomeration, distribution direction and hot and cold spots of overall and each type of cultural functional elements using geospatial analysis methods and then investigated the factors influencing cultural functional elements using geographic detectors.

Our research shows apparent differences between regions and most cultural functional elements are found in the inner city. Second, there are hot and cold spots in the way different cultural functional elements are spread out. Its geographic structure is primarily influenced by third-party traffic service capacity and available time.

This work provides a benchmark for cultural planning in Shanghai by establishing the spatial aggregation impact of cultural functional elements.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that affect the retail rent of shopping centres in Wuhan, an important city in central China.

The study uses a data set of 68 shopping centres in urban Wuhan. A regression model is constructed to estimate the impact on retail rent of a composite range of variables that would capture the physical characteristics, spatial characteristics, potential attractiveness of shopping centres and market condition.

The empirical findings suggest the ceiling height, closeness to metro line station, being situated in commercial central area, vacancy rate and income have significant impact on rental level. Unexpected, the retail mix has a significant negative impact on rent. The impact of the more determining factors found in Western research – size, age, parking space and anchor tenant – is not supported in the Wuhan study.

While 68 shopping centres are included in the test, the sample size is relatively small. The comparatively short history of retail market in Wuhan would not allow to test the rent adjustment process.

This is the first paper to investigate retail rent determinants in a second-tier city in China. The results of the study give designers, developers and investors critical insights into the determinants of retail rent in an emerging market.