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Working arrangements’ hybridity has become paramount, particularly after the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. A remote working environment has indubitable advantages (e.g. the ability to work from anywhere and at any time). However, such flexibility comes at the cost of being virtually always connected. This duality poses challenges for talent management (TM) in determining who can thrive under these specific conditions and how. This study explores how employees respond to this extended connectivity – namely, work connectivity behaviour after-hours (WCBA) – and its influence on proactive talent behaviour by constructing and testing a theoretical model that differentiates employees’ reactions to this condition.

This study collected data from 400 mainland Chinese employees using online and offline methods. Owing to the potentially varied effects of working in digital environments on employees, a dual mediation regression model was employed to test the hypotheses.

Remote and hybrid work and, specifically, the increased connectivity experienced by employees can be a “double-edged sword” in influencing their proactive behaviour (PB). While employees experience increased organisation-based self-esteem, which positively correlates with more intense PB, this prolonged exposure may also cause emotional exhaustion (EE), which has a negative correlation with PB. Jointly considering both mediation effects revealed that WCBA’s total effect on PB remained negative.

This study enriches the debate regarding the development of TM practices specifically designed for remote work. It recommends paying greater attention to how employees react to increased connectivity experienced in remote and hybrid working environments. Increased self-esteem or passive EE are possible elements for identifying employees’ talent potential. The separation between work and after-work is becoming blurred in the digital age, which reduces employees’ motivation and ability to exploit their inner talents. Therefore, organisations must find alternatives to preserve their talent pools. This study enriches theoretical research on WCBA, promoting an in-depth application of the theory of job-demand resources in the digital age.

This commentary and conceptual paper is aimed at investigating marketing perceptions of the country-of-origin (COO) perspectives, and emphasis is placed on the “Cool Japan” concept.

A review of research on COO and the concept of “Cool Japan” was conducted, including commentary of previous relevant theoretical frameworks.

The evidence has shown that the brand images of various COOs is dependent on their cultural exports. In the case of Japan, the “Cool Japan” initiative, which initiated the creation and dissemination of Japanese cultural contents such as anime, games and art, has led to tremendous and sustainable economic growth in Japan till date.

As previous studies on COO are wide-ranging, they are not exhaustively presented in this paper. However, the importance of considering not only animosity, which has traditionally been taken into account, but also the coolness aspect is suggested.

This paper shows that “coolness” is an important concept when nations or regions consider their branding strategies and an integrated approach is needed.

This paper extends previous COO research and adds coolness to the traditional animosity. It also considers these in comparison across countries and goes as far as the need to propose a new scale. Conceptual findings from this paper would therefore provide future directions for advancing COO research Cool Japan.

According to the critic Tom Lubbock, ‘Cloth is the universal free element. It doesn't have to explain itself. It performs’ (Lubbock, 2002). Cloth drapes and folds, becoming a membrane separating what is outside from what is inside. In this chapter, I draw on the writings of de Certeau, Rendell, Tschumi, etc. to develop ideas concerning the ways in which the use and understanding of textiles may move our perceptions of the boundaries of space, and the location of place. I argue that cloth may contain the identity of place, and that lace and lace net-works provide a starting point for the exploration of fluid space as described by Isozaki, Ishigami, etc. ¹ I also discuss those structures/mise-en-scène which frame our awareness and interpretation of place and space. Examples of work drawn from art, cinema and architecture are used to illuminate those ideas which question the materiality and purpose of form and enclosure.

Purchasing behaviors have been studied in various countries. Previous studies involving consumer decision-making styles for sport products have only been seen in one country in order to either identify factors of Purchase Style Inventory for Sport Products (PSISP) or classify consumer shopping behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to identify consumers’ decision-making styles (shopping styles) for sport products from Japanese, Singaporean, and Taiwanese college-aged consumers.

The scale of PSISP was adapted to measure consumer decision-making styles (shopping styles) for sport products. This instrument is composed of 35 items under nine dimensions. CFA, 3 (Nationality) × 2 (Gender) MANOVA and ANOVA were employed.

According to the results of this study, there were significant different decision-making styles among three different countries in East Asia. Overall, Japanese male and female college-aged students exhibited higher brand consciousness than Singaporean and Taiwanese males and females.

As consumers from different countries show different lifestyle, education, economic, religion, and culture, they might have their unique shopping styles. Therefore, the dimensions related to decision-making styles need to be explored, and the scale needs to be validated using a substantial sport industry sample in the future study.

This study helps East Asian advertisers or markets to rethink and develop appropriate marketing strategies as well as to understand the different decision-making styles of local consumers and better approach new and existing consumer markets.

This paper is important for international sports marketers to predict consumer shopping patterns and maintain proper inventory levels, particularly when marketing in global markets.

The purpose of this paper is to arrange zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires into an appropriate position on electrodes and to research the properties of ZnO nanowires.

In this paper, dielectrophoresis (DEP) was used to fabricate ZnO nanowire devices, and the responses to temperature, ultraviolet (UV) light and breath of the device were studied.

The number of the bridged nanowires is increased with alternating current voltage. ZnO nanowires demonstrate a good photoconductivity illuminated by 365-nm UV light, and show a stable performance in monitoring unnatural breath of high frequency and low strength.

In this paper, DEP is a promising method for controllable assembly of ZnO nanowires. ZnO nanowires demonstrate a good response to 365-nm UV light and exhaled breath, which show great potential application in UV detector and medical monitor.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a new two-phase Discrete Element Method (DEM) model to investigate the movement of fresh concrete which consists of mortar and aggregate. The established DEM model was adopted to simulate the mixing process of fresh concrete based on the commercial software package PFC3D. The trajectories of particles and particle clusters were recorded to analyze the mixing behavior from different scales. On one hand, the macro-scale movement was obtained to make the mixing process visualization. On the other hand, the relative micro movement of the single particle and particle clusters was also monitored to further study the mixing mechanism of the fresh concrete.

A new two-phase DEM model was designed to simulate the movement of fresh concrete which consists of mortar and aggregate. The linear-spring dashpot model was used to model all the contacts between particle and particle/wall to characterize the viscidity of fresh concrete. Moreover, two sets of parallel bond models were employed to characterize the contact between the mortar particles and mortar/coarse aggregate particles, namely the pbond1 and pbond2. The hybrid treatment enables the current DEM model to handle the yield behavior.

The mixing process of fresh concrete is mainly composed by the transportation in the x-direction and the overturn and fall off in the y- and z-directions. With these movements in different directions, the concrete particles can be fully mixed in the mixing drum.

A new two-phase DEM model was proposed and used to simulate the mixing process of fresh concrete. The outcomes of the simulation would be helpful for making the transporting truck visualization and the movement behavior of fresh concrete observable. The model can provide dynamic information of particles to reveal the interaction mechanism of fresh concrete in the truck mixer which is extremely difficult to obtain on-line in physical experiments or building site.