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This study aims to investigate the relationship between mentors’ paradox mindset and career mentoring directly and indirectly through self-efficacy and work engagement, drawing insights from attachment theory.

A serial mediation model was tested using survey data from 297 employees working in a bank company in China.

Paradox mindset had a significant indirect effect on career mentoring through self-efficacy and work engagement, self-efficacy had a significant indirect effect on career mentoring through work engagement, and paradox mindset had a significant indirect effect on career mentoring through self-efficacy and work engagement.

The results offer practical insights for human resource managers by investigating how mentors’ mindsets affect their psychological states and behaviors. By training and developing mentors’ paradox mindset, mentors can better deal with tensions with a high level of self-efficacy and work engagement in the increasingly changing and demanding work environment and foster functional mentoring relationships.

Findings of this study provide fresh insights into the relationship between individual differences and mentoring relationships by uncovering the critical role of paradox mindset in enhancing self-efficacy and work engagement. Moreover, the interaction of mentors’ paradox mindset and self-efficacy advances previous studies on attachment theory by investigating the underlying mechanisms of mentoring relationships involving affectionate or emotional factors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of how paradoxical leadership cultivates subordinates' paradox mindset.

This study used the grounded theory approach. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and observations from eleven top managers and their six subordinates in five Chinese organizations. Managers and their subordinates were asked how they perceived and dealt with tensions in the workplace.

Paradoxical leadership promotes subordinates' paradox mindset by helping them learn to face, cope, and live with tensions. First, paradoxical leaders acted as role models for their subordinates and directly influenced followers' attitudes, motivation, and positive psychological states towards tensions. Moreover, when managers help their subordinates reduce stress and anxiety and build confidence, followers learn to cope with tensions. Consequently, subordinates' capacity to live with tensions is increased and they develop the paradox mindset.

The results imply that reducing subordinates' stress and anxiety and building their confidence can be integrated into work practices and training, which provide insights for managers to cultivate their subordinates' paradox mindset.

This paper investigates how paradoxical leadership impacts and cultivates subordinates' paradox mindset in a tension-setting work environment. The findings not only provide fresh insights into the detailed process of developing employees' paradox mindset but also deepen the understanding of the leader–follower relationship.

This study aims to qualitatively investigate when and how individuals' paradox mindset influences their individual unlearning.

This study adopted Charmaz's constructivist grounded theory approach based on constructivist ontology and interpretive epistemology. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 16 employees of a research company. The employees were asked about their perceptions of their roles and other factors that stimulated them to unlearn in a tension-setting environment.

This study developed a process model of paradox mindset for enhancing individual unlearning through three relational mechanisms, namely, enabling motivation to unlearn, understanding to unlearn and engaging in the unlearning process. The unlearning process is found to be influenced by paradoxical frames and emotions. Moreover, external factors, such as organizational changes, stimulate the adoption of paradoxical cognition and emotions while resource availability facilitates the unlearning process.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to qualitatively investigate how a paradox mindset facilitates the process of unlearning through relational mechanisms. This model provides a holistic understanding of the cognitive, emotional and motivational processes involved in accepting the tensions of unlearning and promoting the unlearning process. The findings also have implications for research on paradox theory and the management of unlearning tensions at the micro level.

This study examined the dynamical and positive effects of leader consultation on employee proactivity from a motivational perspective.

Survey data were collected twice a day from 107 employees in a week by using an experience sampling method.

On a daily basis, leader consultation had a positive effect on employees’ state work engagement, which in turn promoted employees’ proactivity. Moreover, authoritarian leadership weakened the positive relationship between leader consultation and employees’ state work engagement.

The findings provided a new perspective regarding the potential dynamic motivational effect of leader consultation on employees and generated interesting implications for paradoxical leadership theory.

Drawing on the work-home resources (W-HR) model, this study examines the ripple effects of proactive helping behavior at work on helpers' family relationship quality at home via positive affect and work-family interpersonal capitalization, and tests the moderating role of independent self-construal in the resource spillover process.

Using an experience sampling methodology, data was collected (N = 382) from multiple sources in five consecutive working days. Multilevel path modeling was used to examine the hypotheses.

The results indicated that proactive helping other at work can generate affective resources for helpers, which in turn triggers them to share daily work experiences and feelings with their spouses at home, and strengthens their family relationship quality. Moreover, the effects of helping others on family relationship quality were more pronounced for helpers with relatively high independent self-construal.

The findings explore the enrichment effects and unintended family-related distal outcomes of helping behaviors for helpers, and contributes to the W-HR model by uncovering an affective-behavioral ripple mechanism linking work and family. Finally, our results identify the boundary condition, that proactive helping behaviors are more rewarding for helpers with higher independent self-construal.

Drawing on the extended self-theory, this study explores the dynamic process through which reactive helping could influence proactive helping through self-investment and investigate the moderating role of task difficulty in affecting this process.

This study, with a sample of 582 diary surveys from 66 employees, used experience sampling techniques to analyze the proposed hypotheses.

The results revealed that self-investment could mediate the positive relationship between reactive helping and proactive helping. Additionally, task difficulty acts as an essential role in facilitating the process raised by reactive helping. Further examination revealed that the moderated mediation effect in this model was also significant.

Managers should encourage help-seeking and positive responses to requests, especially in groups with difficult tasks, which could build helpers’ extended self at work and increase their proactive helping behaviors at the following episode.

As verifying the dynamic trajectory of reactive helping, this study enriches our understanding of whether and how helping behaviors are likely to grow over time. Besides, it complements current pieces of literature by exploring the potential positive implication of reactive helping with a helper-centric perspective.

Prior literature on online customer reviews (OCRs) suggests that individuals are socially influenced by information shared by others. Given that the online environment brings together users from different cultures, understanding how users differ in their processing and generation of OCRs across cultures is imperative. Specifically, this paper explores how cross-cultural differences influence OCR generation when there are inconsistencies between recent and overall review ratings.

The authors employ an empirical study and an experimental approach to test the predictions. For the empirical study (Study 1), the authors collected and analyzed actual review data from an online hotel review platform, Booking.com. This was followed by an experimental study (Study 2) in which the authors manipulated the thinking style represented by each cultural orientation to further explain how and why cross-cultural differences exist.

The results show that compared with the review ratings of users from collectivist cultures, those of users from individualistic cultures are more likely to follow recent review ratings. Based on the experimental study, the authors further find that such cross-cultural differences in OCR generation are driven by differences in thinking style.

This research extends the literature by demonstrating the cross-cultural differences in individuals' herding tendencies in OCR generation. The authors also add to the literature by showing in which direction OCR herding occurs when there is a discrepancy between overall and recent review ratings. From a managerial perspective, the findings provide guidelines for online platforms serving the global market on predicting customers' OCR generation and constructing appropriate response strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the efficiency of vibration signals for fault diagnosis system of induction motors.

A fault diagnosis system for induction motors using vibration signals is designed based on pattern recognition. Genetic algorithm is used for feature reduction and neural network tuning.

The usage of genetic algorithm improves the system performance through selecting significant features and optimizing network structure. The efficiency of vibration signals is demonstrated.

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis for induction motors is one of the main industry maintenance parts. Motors faults usually result in whole production line breakdown. In this paper, one fault diagnosis system is proposed for induction motors based on feature recognition through combination of feature extraction, genetic algorithm and neural network techniques. From the paper, one can learn practically the whole procedure of feature‐based fault diagnosis system and the efficiency of GA and vibration signals for motor fault diagnosis. One real test has been done to validate the system performance. The results indicate that this system is promising for the real application in industry.

The use of genetic algorithm for feature selection and neural network tuning; the choice of vibration analysis for fault diagnosis of induction motor.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (RTK) is probably the most popular classical novel in Chinese literature. Of more than 1,000 characters in this extensive, three‐volume novel, Kong Ming in RTK is widely seen by the Chinese as the most remarkable strategist. This paper attempts to develop a cognitive schema of Kong Ming on strategy.

First, the paper reviews broadly the traditionally, four most popular novels within the Chinese classical literature: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and A Dream of the Red Mansions. After emphasizing the role of the RTK in influencing Chinese strategic thinking, the paper utilizes the methods of textual analyses in research. Focusing on a specific episode of global strategy making and taking (Chapter 38), the methodology is explained.

From textual analysis, the paper presents as its finding a schematically linear, cognitive structure of the strategy process. It also presents the central role of the “Counselor of Strategy” in Chinese strategy making process. From this research, a Kong Ming‐grounded, cognitive model of strategy process is developed. If the RTK (more than say, any MBA program) continues to influence Chinese strategy processes, then fast strategic decision making (as exemplified in our analyses) may be one of the pivotal reasons for the equally fast rise of the Chinese economy in our global economic landscape.

Kong Ming (or Zhuge Liang) had been hailed by the Chinese with such lofty epithets such as the “Divine Strategist”. His exploits during the declining Han dynasty and emergence of the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Shu and Wu (220‐280 CE) are still cited by the Chinese people in their daily conversations on strategy. In this paper, we draw lessons for CEOs through a Kong Ming‐grounded model for strategy.

China is not only the biggest importing country of the raw materials of forest products, but also the biggest exporting country of intermediate and final forest products. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors use the Khandelwal (2010) method and trade data from 2000 to 2014 of bilateral forest products between China and ten main developed countries to evaluate the quality of China’s forestry imports and exports. Subsequently, the influencing factors of product quality are analyzed.

The results show that the current export quality of plywood and fiberboard is decreasing, and the export quality of particleboard and paper products is on the rise. A further study finds that several factors have the positive effects on the quality of forestry exports, including gross domestic product of the importing country, forestry export value of the importing country as well as the number of forestry higher education graduates of the exporting country. Moreover, the study also finds that the status of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member has a negative effect on the quality of forestry exports, while the distance cost has a negative influence on fiberboard, paper and paperboard.

The study suggests that China needs to strengthen the research and development investment on forest products, and improve the quality of forest products to promote the trade development of forestry exports.

The existing literature has not shown much research regarding the quality of China’s forestry exports through econometric analysis. Therefore, the research results provide new perspective about the influencing factors on China’s forestry trade activities.