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The productivity and output levels of construction plant and equipment depends in part upon a plant operator’s maintenance proficiency; such that a higher degree of proficiency helps ensure that machinery is maintained in good operational order. In the absence of maintenance proficiency, the potential for machine breakdown (and hence lower productivity) is greater. Using data gathered from plant and equipment experts within the UK, plant operators’ maintenance proficiency are modelled using a radial basis function (RBF) artificial neural network (ANN). Results indicate that the developed ANN model was able to classify proficiency at 89 per cent accuracy using 10 significant variables. These variables were: working nightshifts, new mechanical innovations, extreme weather conditions, planning skills, operator finger dexterity, years experience with a plant item, working with managers with less knowledge of plant/equipment, operator training by apprenticeship, working under pressure of time and duration of training period. It is proffered that these variables may be used as a basis for categorizing plant operators in terms of maintenance proficiency and, that their potential for influencing operator training programmes needs to be considered.

Owing to the importance of the investment behavior in China, the purpose of this paper is to find the influence of executive network and government governance on investment efficiency.

The paper use China’s listed companies as sample to make an investment efficiency determinant model.

In this article, the authors find that larger executive network and higher government governance will lead to more corporate investment efficient. Furthermore, the informal institution – executive network, is not only an effective way to alleviate financing constraints, but also can solve underinvestment problem. While the improvement of local government governance can provide institutional protection, it will also be more conducive to restrain overinvestment behavior.

The authors have not explored conduction path. Especially, the authors have not examined whether information spillover effect or the release of resources constraints in executive network plays a more important role to ease investment insufficient.

Under the Chinese circumstance, relationship governance can not only promote companies to improve investment efficiency, but also provide an important guarantee for sustained macroeconomic growth.

The purpose of this study is to present a system dynamic (SD)-based remanufacturing economic analysis model of used automobile engine under two recycling modes. The authors will compare the remanufacturing cost, sales profit and sales revenue from time and space dimensions incurred in different recycling modes in the long run.

The remanufacturing economic analysis model is based on SD methodology. The authors can simulate the relations of impact factors on automobile engine recycling and remanufacturing and further analyze and compare the cost, sales profit and sales revenue incurred in different recycling modes in the long term.

Sinotruk Steyr engine remanufacturing in Shandong province is taken as the research case subject. The revenue, cost and profit under the two recycling modes from 2015 to 2035 are analyzed and compared. The results show that different recycling modes have significant varying influence on the economy of engine remanufacturing.

This economic analysis model can provide a method reference to decide the recycling mode for auto components and other product remanufacturing. Moreover, this model can guide and support the sustainable development of remanufacturing industry.

The spatial resolution of seepage monitoring methods based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) temperature sensing technology is limited by the distance between measurement points. Improving the spatial resolution for a given number of measurement points is a prerequisite for popularizing this technology in the seepage monitoring of rockfill dams. The purpose of this paper is to address this problem.

This paper proposes a mobile-distributed seepage monitoring method based on the FBG-hydrothermal cycling seepage monitoring system. In this method, the positions of the measurement points are changed by freely dragging the FBG sensing cluster within the inner tube of a dual-tube structure, consisting of an inner polytetrafluoroethylene tube and outer polyethylene of raised temperature resistance heating tube.

A seepage velocity calibration test was carried out using the improved monitoring system. The results showed that under a constant seepage velocity, the use of the dual-tube structure enables faster cooling, and the cooling rate accelerates with an increase in the diameter of the inner tube. The use of the dual-tube structure can improve the sensitivity of the seepage evaluation index ζ_v to the seepage velocity. When the inner diameter increases, ζ_v becomes more sensitive to the seepage velocity.

A mobile-distributed seepage monitoring method based on FBG sensing technology is proposed in which the FBG sensors are not fixed. Instead, the positions of the measurement points are changed to improve the spatial resolution. Meanwhile, the use of the dual-tube structure in the presented monitoring system can improve its sensitivity.

The aim is to focus on an automated management and evaluation system to control the operation of community health service (CHS) efficiently.

On the basis of analyzing existing health laws, regulations, CHS work situation, the authors established the execution method and supervision norm of management for CHS. They used Delphi expert consultation activity and analytic hierarchy process to construct weight coefficient allocation list and synthesize evaluation models: GI=∑_I=1^NCiPi. The authors synthesized computer technology to design corresponding software, and then completed the spot usage.

The automated management and evaluation system for CHS has been completed. The system possesses automated management function, automated evaluation function, searching function, the functions of supervision and statistics analysis as well as the feedback. Automated management includes guide and filling‐in, checking‐up, modifying and saving, converging, submitting, examining and approving, receiving, saving to file and issuing formation, etc. Automated evaluation can rank automatically synthesized index or any selected single criterion index in the order of either high to low or low to high. The feedback function is able to be used to convey timely the state of execution, and to offer the bases for further adjustment.

The automated evaluation makes the difficult evaluation work of daily supervision simple and maneuverable.

The systemization and automation of CHS management can control effectively practical operation of CHS.

The study is the first to establish an automated compliance management and evaluation system for Chinese CHS.

This is a special issue of Chinese Management Studies and this study aims to engage with debates on innovation in China and to provide new insights for innovation research in the context of China, seeking to develop a greater understanding of the concept of “innovation with Chinese characteristics”.

This study reviews the Chinese innovation management literature in general and the selected papers in this special issue in particular and proposes two new directions for future research.

The nine papers that constitute this special issue present research on important aspects of innovation in China, ranging from the effectiveness of government subsidisation for innovation, the impact of fiscal decentralisation on innovation, the role of management behaviour in promoting (or discouraging) innovation and the effects of differing business models on innovation. These papers shed valuable new light on the theory and practice of innovation in China. The papers are discussed in the context of four primary arguments about innovation management in China identified from the broader literature in the field. These relate to the pattern of China’s innovation performance over time, the reasons for its effectiveness, the role of alliances and influences of indigenous factors. It is also shown that management of the internationalisation of innovation and of efficient internal innovation are two important directions for future research on Chinese innovation in an era of de-globalisation.

The studies presented here provide valuable contributions to theory building in innovation research, as well as some important ideas for directions of future research on innovation in China in the new era of de-globalisation.

This study examines how unilateral supplier transaction-specific investments (TSIs), directly and indirectly, influence international buyer opportunism and the extent to which detailed contracts enable suppliers to safeguard against international buyer opportunism. The study also examines whether relationship length affects the efficacy of detailed contracts in cross-border outsourcing relationships.

The hypotheses are tested by using data collected from multiple informants working for 229 manufacturing suppliers in China. Multiple regression with a three-way interaction is used to test the hypotheses.

Unilateral supplier TSIs encourage international buyer opportunism through increased supplier dependence. Contract specificity negatively moderates the effect of supplier dependence on international buyer opportunism. This moderating effect is stronger in long-term cross-border buyer–supplier relationships than in short-term ones.

The current study extends the cross-border outsourcing literature by examining how emerging-market suppliers in a weak power position can proactively safeguard against international buyer opportunism by using detailed contracts. Our findings show that supplier dependence mediates the relationship between unilateral supplier TSIs and international buyer opportunism; detailed contracts, however, can help dependent suppliers safeguard against international buyer opportunism. In particular, the findings highlight the importance of long-term buyer–supplier relationships that enhance the efficacy of detailed contracts.

The purpose of this paper is to present a method to achieve small satellite formation keeping operations by using the differential lift and drag to control the drift caused by J2 perturbation in circular or near-circular low earth orbits (LEOs).

Each spacecraft is equipped with five large flat plates, which can be controlled to generate differential accelerations. The aerodynamic lift and drag acting on a flat plate is calculated by the kinetic theory. To maintain the formation within tracking error bounds in the presence of J2 perturbation, a nonlinear Lyapunov-based feedback control law is designed.

Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is efficient for the satellite formation keeping and better accuracy advantage in comparison with classical approaches via the fixed maximum differential aerodynamic acceleration.

Because the aerodynamic force will reduce drastically as the orbital altitude increases, the formation keeping control strategy for small satellites presented in this paper should be limited to the scenarios when satellites are in LEO.

The formation keeping control method in this paper can be applied to solve satellite formation keeping problem for small satellites in LEO.

This paper proposes a Lyapunov control strategy for satellite formation keeping considering both lift and drag forces, and simulation results show better performance with high accuracy under J2 perturbation.

Traditional switching harmonic suppressor design methods require domain experts to adjust design parameters due to various complex performance requirements and practical limitations in switching ripple suppressor designs. The purpose of this paper is to present a method for filter parameter design.

An improved non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA II) was used in the inductor-capacitor-inductor (LCL) filter design to find the optimal design parameters, and a method was proposed to handle the constraints by transforming the them into decision variables.

The performance of the proposed algorithm in parameter designing was verified by simulation on MATLAB and experimental results on hardware-in-the-loop plat-form with StarSim software. The results indicate that the optimization algorithm has a better effect than the traditional expert parameters on each optimization index, especially on the switching harmonic suppression.

The paper presents an improved multi-objective optimization algorithm with ingenious constraints handing to obtain better filter parameters and reduces switching harmonics.

Extant research on the crowding-out effects of government subsidies on the positive role of firm innovation resources or activity remains limited. This paper aims to investigate the crowding-out effects of subsidies on the utilization of technological capabilities and also the contingency mechanisms of market-oriented economy based on the resource-based view (RBV), given the co-existence of the subsidies and technological capabilities for firm innovation in transitional economy.

This paper used panel data of 115 Chinese high-tech firms from 2002 to 2010. Fixed-effects model was used to test several hypotheses.

This paper empirically demonstrates that the subsidies crowd out the utilization of firms’ technological capabilities for invention outcomes in the near-term. Furthermore, this paper finds that the crowding-out effects are weaker when firms have high export intensity or are located in provinces with high market-oriented systems.

The findings of this paper apply to Chinese firms. Future research could test their generalizability to different samples and other transitional economies.

This paper highlights the crowding-out effects of the subsidies, revealing that high-tech firms should balance the direct effects and crowding-out effects of the subsidies.

This paper highlights the neglected interactions between the subsidies and technological capabilities based on RBV and provides a more nuanced understanding of the crowding-out effects of the subsidies in transitional economy.