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The purpose of this paper is to study the evolution of Chinese industrial relations after the market reform of 1978, while basing its arguments and conclusion on analysis of the interactions of key actors in the labour arena in China. The significant phenomena in the evolution of industrial relations are the coming of transnational capital and the emergence of self‐organising protests by migrant workers.

The paper uses a case study approach.

The Labour Contract Law and the local political economy experience strong effects from TNCs and other business players. Meanwhile, globalisation has introduced the civil society movement to China, which has given rise to an increasing number of NGOs working for labour rights. Tight financial and technical connections between grassroots NGOs and international donor organisations make it possible for bottom‐up labour activities to counteract the unilateral influence of the state and market over the Chinese workforce. Since the ACFTU, the official trade union umbrella, has many institutional constraints to undertake a thorough transition towards labour in the near future, workers' representation is diversified.

One implication for further theoretical studies is that tripartism cannot fully disclose the reality of Chinese labour, and that labour representation derives from both unions and self‐organisation of workers, such as NGOs, which opens more room for the entrenchment of the grassroots labour movement to sustain the balance of power among the state, ACFTU, firms, international market forces and individual workers in the long term.

The purpose of this paper is to explore China’s labour dispute arbitration system reform through analysing the degree to which it has attained its stated objectives – notably, independence, justice, efficiency and professionalism – from the perspectives of the arbitrators, previously ignored in research on China.

This paper used a mixed research method using questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaires were sent to all full-time labour dispute arbitrators in Beijing, China with a useable response rate of 71 per cent. Additionally, qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 key stakeholders involved in the arbitration process.

Instead of establishing an impartial platform, the arbitration system endeavours to promote the state’s capacity to rule over labour relations. Its recent reform excluded arbitrational independence owing to concerns about reducing the Chinese Communist Party’s arbitrary power. Arbitrational justice was perceived to improve through case resolution efficiency, which made arbitrators minimise arbitration time, partly because of high caseloads but largely because of their key performance indicators. Quality of arbitration was compromised. The arbitrators understood the spaces and boundaries of the reform, and focused on increasing professionalism to enable them to more fluidly manoeuvre between the different political economic interests, above safeguarding labour rights.

The questionnaire size was too small for regression analysis. Future research should expand the sample sizes and conduct cross-regional studies.

In 2008, China undertook an arbitrational system reform – probing its practical influence contributes to the authors understanding about the changing institutional environment of Chinese labour relations.

As a pilot study on labour dispute arbitrators, this research presents the dynamics of the Chinese labour dispute resolution mechanism.

Drawing its arguments and conclusion from a ten-year survey on workers’ experiences of labour disputes, along with anticipation of trade union reform, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the interaction between labour resistance and its potential for institutional change in the field of labour relations in China.

This paper uses a longitudinal cohort study carried out between 2006 and 2015. The survey was conducted every two years, specifically in 2006, 2008, 2011, 2013 and 2015, in Guangdong Province, China. Questionnaire and interview methods were used; 2,166 valid sample questionnaires were collected, and 215 interviews were carried out over the research period.

An increase in collectivized disputes in China has given rise to an escalation of labour action, characterized by wildcat strikes. Joint action has strengthened the bonds among work colleagues, and it has become more important for workers to pay attention to their rights and interests. In terms of organization, two viewpoints towards union reform were revealed: the pragmatist and the idealist perspectives. Workers with greater experience of resistance were more modest in terms of demands for union reform, while workers with some experience called for their union’s independence from the party-state.

The data contained industry bias, as too many respondents were from electronics-manufacturing and textile and apparel plants.

This paper is original, and increases awareness of the development of the labour movement in China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reliable and steady working conditions of train agent systems while connected to the internet. The train agents can provide more accurate assistant navigation service and more useful “live” information service to ensure traveling crane safety. However, all these services seriously rely on reliability and stability of communication quality of the train agents. To ensure the stable and continuous work of the train agents, the stochastic model of the train agent communication is investigated in this paper.

According to Markov theory, the stochastic model of the train agent communication is established, the reliability of which is also investigated, the availability and mean‐link interruption times in steady state are then given out.

In the end, the steady working condition and controllability of the train agents are discussed.

The correctness of the mathematic model in the main limitation based on which the model will be applied.

A very useful model for the train agent systems description.

From the angle of stochastic model, the steady working condition and controllability of the train agent are given out connected to the internet. It has enormous instruction significance to those special mobile agents design such as the train agents, the plane agents, the ship agents, etc.

This paper aims to focus on corporate social responsibility in relation to economic policy uncertainty in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The following questions are addressed: How does policy uncertainty impact corporate M&A? Does social responsibility play a mediating role in this process? How does policy uncertainty affect corporate M&A through social responsibility?

This paper selects the major M&A events in China as the research object, and uses the Probit model to analyze the impact of policy uncertainty on M&A behavior and the business performance after the event, and further analyzes the internal mechanisms that cause these phenomena.

This paper shows that the higher the policy uncertainty, the lower the probability of a successful M&A, and the worse the business performance of the business after the event.

This paper provides useful reference for the study of M&A and social responsibility in different policy environments. At the same time, it provides direct empirical evidence to enhance the success rate of M&A.

The purpose of this research is to study the Multi-Skill Resource-Constrained Multi-Project Scheduling Problem (MSRCMPSP), where (1) durations of activities depend on the familiarity levels of assigned workers, (2) more efficient workers demand higher per-day salaries, (3) projects have different due dates and (4) the budget of each period varies over time. The proposed model is bi-objective, and its objectives are minimization of completion times and costs of all projects, simultaneously.

This paper proposes a two-phase approach based on the Statistical Process Control (SPC) to solve this problem. This approach aims to develop a control chart so as to monitor the performance of an optimizer during the optimization process. In the first phase, a multi-objective statistical model has been used to obtain control limits of this chart. To solve this model, a Multi-Objective Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (MOGRASP) has been hired. In the second phase, the MSRCMPSP is solved via a New Version of the Multi-Objective Variable Neighborhood Search Algorithm (NV-MOVNS). In each iteration, the developed control chart monitors the performance of the NV-MOVNS to obtain proper solutions. When the control chart warns about an out-of control state, a new procedure based on the Conway’s Game of Life, which is a cellular automaton, is used to bring the algorithm back to the in-control state.

The proposed two-phase approach has been used in solving several standard test problems available in the literature. The results are compared with the outputs of some other methods to assess the efficiency of this approach. Comparisons imply the high efficiency of the proposed approach in solving test problems with different sizes.

The proposed model and approach have been used to schedule multiple projects of a construction company in Iran. The outputs show that both the model and the NV-MOVNS can be used in real-world multi-project scheduling problems.

Due to the numerous numbers of studies reviewed in this research, the authors discovered that there are few researches on the multi-skill resource-constrained multi-project scheduling problem (MSRCMPSP) with the aforementioned characteristics. Moreover, none of the previous researches proposed an SPC-based solution approach for meta-heuristics in order to solve the MSRCMPSP.

The article's aim is to provide an overview of articles in this issue.

The article gives summary information and perspectives on the articles that appear in the issue and provides information helping readers.

The article first discusses three articles showing what three journal editors see as topics and find acceptable as research methods. The other three articles appear because they have important implications that receive limited attention in the literature. These articles address innovative treatment of problems with information commonly collected on return (repurchase), vague units of count and ineffective data collection.

This research provides insights on what three journal editors research, and the priorities and innovative work on the need for better return data, for better terms for units (e.g. of analysis) and for more effective data collection.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of information disclosure by unlisted bond issuers on the stock price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry.

This paper takes advantage of information disclosure during the bond issuance and examines the spillover effect of unlisted bond issuers' information disclosure on listed firms in the stock market. The sample is composed of A-share firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2007 to 2018. All the data are obtained from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research and WIND databases. The impact of bond market information disclosure on price informativeness of listed firms in the same industry is identified through multivariate regression analyses.

Empirical results show that price informativeness of listed firms has a significantly positive association with the information disclosure of same-industry unlisted bond issuers. Further analyses show that the above finding is more significant when information disclosure of bond issuers is a more important channel for acquiring industry information (i.e. when industry is more concentrated, when economic uncertainty is high, and when industry information is less transparent) and understanding the industry competitive landscape (i.e. when bond issuers are relatively large, when bond issuers and listed firms have more direct product competition, when bond issuance firms are large-scale state-owned business groups), and when there are more cross-market information intermediaries (i.e. more cross-market institutional investors and more sell-side analysts). This paper indicates that information disclosure of bond issuers has a positive spillover effect on the stock market.

The novelty of the research is that the authors examine industry information spillover from unlisted firms to listed firms leveraging on unlisted firms' information disclosure in bond markets.

The purpose of this study is to further paradox research at the individual level through applying a framework of three phases of individual response to paradox – recognition, understanding and behaviour.

Critical and integrative review of previous studies of individual responses to paradox.

The role of individual understanding is limited in extant research on individual responses to paradox. Individual understanding tends to be equated with behaviour, and thus knowledge of understanding is not differentiated enough, neither is the link between understanding and behaviour sufficiently developed.

The review does not consider the relationship to interactional, organisational and environmental contexts. The recommendation for future research is to explore individual responses to paradox more entirely, to provide an adequate ground for extending paradox theory across individual and broader levels of analysis.

The review contributes to paradox theory by separating individual understanding and then providing a framework in which recognition, understanding and behaviour can be reintegrated in new ways. In addition to more accurate discernment of individual understanding and of combinations of responses across phases, the three-phase framework facilitates investigation of more intricate influences across phases and paths of evolution of such responses over time.

The properties of materials under impact load are introduced in terms of metal, nonmetallic materials and composite materials. And the application of impact load research in biological fields is also mentioned. The current hot research topics and achievements in this field are summarized. In addition, some problems in theoretical modeling and testing of the mechanical properties of materials are discussed.

The situation of materials under impact load is of great significance to show the mechanical performance. The performance of various materials under impact load is different, and there are many research methods. It is affected by some kinds of factors, such as the temperature, the gap and the speed of load.

The research on mechanical properties of materials under impact load has the characteristics as fellow. It is difficult to build the theoretical model, verify by experiment and analyze the data accumulation.

This review provides a reference for further study of material properties.